Yes, I have been working on my on blog for this season. But I yield this platform to my amazing daughter, Rachel Sharona Lewis, who shared this Rosh HaShana Drash with me. I have nothing else to say except that Rachie and my other children, Talie, Yoella and Brian as well as Jeremy, Liz and Mimi, continue to awe me daily. My Bracha for all is that may your children grow and truly be blessings to this world as I know that Rachie is. Shana Tova to all.... And now here is Rachie....
Shana tova!
I am endlessly fascinated by eruv. I have been a checker of the North Charles Community Eruv for the past several years. This recurring task has given me time to think deeply about how this Rabbinic legal loophole - this physical/metaphorical boundary that allows us to bypass the Shabbat prohibition on carrying - is completely interesting and innovative, and slightly delusional. And, it’s completely consequential.
I grew up in a community surrounded by an eruv, where everyone in our Shabbat world lived within 3 square miles. Shabbat was vibrant, predictable and meaningful, and the community, our family's circle of responsibility, was clear and strong. In our community here in Cambridge/Somerville, we reap many of those same benefits. On the other hand, when I have lived in cities with no eruv, I have felt its absence - where responsibility to a set group and collective ritual feel dispersed and inconsistent.
Eruv and all of its related practices was established by our ancient Rabbis as an assertion that, in exile, we can still construct holy space - we can create boundaries in which we bring down God’s presence and a sense of obligation to one another. This aligned with the broader Rabbinic project: even in exile, we get to say, holiness lives here!
Out of the ashes of the Temple, where holiness and ritual were concentrated, Rabban Yochanan Ben Zakkai, the progenitor of Rabbinic Judaism, instituted a variety of decrees that reflect this same ethos. A primary example is the shift from a regime of sacrifices as the direct channel between the people and God to prayer. Rather than relying on the elite class of priests to administer this communication, now connecting with God was democratized, and rather than be confined to the Temple in Jerusalem, could be done anywhere.
In the Talmud, in Mesechet Rosh Hashanah, we see examples of holiday rituals that were once confined to the Temple that become the responsibility of a broader set of Jews after its destruction. While the Temple was standing, when Rosh Hashanah fell on Shabbat, the shofar would only be sounded in Jerusalem, in the Temple. In the burgeoning diaspora, Yochanan Ben Zakkai decreed that any town or city with a Jewish court (a proxy for sufficient communal infrastructure) was obligated to have the shofar blown there as well. He decreed that we all are responsible for bringing the voice of the shofar into our communities, that God’s voice gets to be here, where we are, and not just in Jerusalem.
In moments of challenge and disruption, we have a Rabbinic tradition that tells us to think anew about how to survive, that tells us to adapt and create holy space where there is none yet.
Today’s haftarah offers a different vision in response to the Temple’s destruction. Jeremiah, Chapter 31, describes a longing for what was lost, and the hope that redemption will come, and that that experience of holiness will be restored. God will gather the Jews from the corners of the earth, from exile, and we will once again return to the Temple; od teet’i cramim - we will plant vineyards in our land once again; v’shavu banim l’gvulam, and God reassures our matriarch, Rachel, weeping on our behalf, that her children will return to their borders, to their home.
This vision of redemption reflects the broader prophetic project - motivating the Jewish people to do better in service of restoring the order of the Temple, the order in which holiness was concentrated and we had some control. This sentiment is woven through our liturgy, both today’s and everyday.
As we gather together on Rosh Hashanah, doing the work of teshuva, of repairing what we need to repair as individuals and as a community, against the backdrop of deep disruption in our unstable world, I wonder, what vision of the world is our teshuva in service of?
This year we have seen Nazis emboldened in ways I never could have imagined as a 21st century Jew. And the threats and violence against our black, Muslim and immigrant family, friends and neighbors are escalating at an alarming rate. So much is broken. And so, how do the changes we make address this reality? What are we improving our actions for?
As we hold these two different threads of our tradition - Rabbinic adaptability to what is in an unredeemed world, and Prophetic longing for how things were - I have to believe that the work we are doing today and in this season, on our own and together, is in service of an expansive vision that says we adapt, and that we have the power to bring a sense of holiness and responsibility to and for one another wherever we are, and wherever it is needed.
On the edges of our haftarah, in Jeremiah, Chapter 29, there is a stunning passage. Through Jeremiah, God says to all who have even exiled to Babylon, while you are here…
“Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their fruit...multiply here (have children and they should have children) and don't decrease. And, seek peace in the City I have exiled you to and pray to God on its behalf, Ki b’shloma, yehiye lachem shalom, because in its peace, you will have peace.”
In this passage, we see the seeds of the Rabbinic instinct to survive through adapting. Live here. Thrive here. Plant your gardens here. Pray and work for the sake of this world for your fate is tied up with all of the people around you. This is the vision that I believe our teshuva is in service of. In an unredeemed world, we plant our gardens here, rather than long to do so around the edges of the Temple.
The proximity of this passage to the haftarah makes the point that these visions are not mutually exclusive. However, the visions and values we prioritize will drive the choices we make about how we expend spiritual and material resources and about who we feel obligated to.
This past summer, knowing that the eruv would be okay without me, I stopped checking it. Rather, I committed the same Thursday morning timeslot to volunteering as part of Cambridge Minyan’s Sanctuary work. In the Spring, we joined an interfaith coalition of ten communities who are supporting an undocumented mom and her family as they resist their deportation by seeking refuge in a nearby church. As a security measure, there must be citizens in the building at all times, and so myself, and many other people in this room have taken on this responsibility.
It is not lost on me that I shifted from doing the upkeep of one constructed holy space, the North Charles Community Eruv, to another, the four walls of University Lutheran church in which a diverse community is supporting and walking with a family in their resistance. Both acts require the same toolbox - creating our own boundaries in which we bring holiness and a clear sense of obligation for one another into it. The difference lies in who we decide is within our circles, our eruvim, of responsibility.
In Psalm 27, the additive prayer for the month of Elul and this high holiday season, we say, pray and sing this line often, “one thing I ask of you God: that I dwell in God’s house all the day of my life, that I behold God’s pleasantness and frequent/visit(?) God’s temple.”
The psalmist seems to have intended this verse as a parallelism. That dwelling in God’s house and frequenting/visiting (the translation is not totally clear) the Temple are different versions of the same experience. But, as these ideas have been swirling around in my head, I have begun to think that perhaps they are two different experience and two different places. Dwelling in God’s house is described as an eternal experience, while we can exist in the Temple only in physical or metaphorical fleeting moments. And so, if we cannot always have access to the Temple, and to that concentrated holiness, perhaps beit hashem is referencing something else - perhaps it is a reference to all the holy spaces we create, our eruvim, our Sanctuaries, and all the ways we bring holiness, like the sound of the shofar, in. While we may have moments of longing for redemption, that place, this dynamic and expansive beit hashem, is where we are able to dwell, always.
This Rosh Hashanah, as the foundation of our unredeemed world trembles beneath us, when we deeply need holiness and to bring the sound of the shofar beyond our original borders, I offer both the blessing and challenge that or teshuva be in service of expanding our eruvim of responsibility, planting our gardens here, in this broken world - Ki bshloma yihiye lachem shalom, because it it’s peace, and in the peace of all those in our midst, we shall have peace too.
Shana Tova!
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