Envisioning A Sanctuary

Sermon, Parshat Toldot 5782
Shabbat services held at The Harold Pratt House, New York, NY

Shabbat Shalom! I want to hear a “Shabbat Shalom” that will wake up Mr. Harold Pratt and Mr. David Rockefeller from their peaceful rest.

With the permission of my father my teacher, my mother my teacher, my wife — definitely my teacher — and my friends…my teachers:

I have mixed feelings today.

A feeling of gratitude, and a feeling of pain.

I am grateful to the Almighty, and to all of you for all you have done. For those who are here and for those who are not here.

But there is also a lot of pain. This is not an ideal situation. When there is a family feud, there are no victors. And we are a family, a community, one people.

I remember walking to the Moscow Choral Synagogue as a child with my father, and an obviously intoxicated individual walked over to my father at the top of Archipova Street. He saw my father’s rabbinic hat, his beard, and asked: “I have just read the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ — is it true that you Jews really control the entire world?” My father responded, “Come walk with me to shul, and you’ll see we can’t even control our own synagogues.”

This week, we get a glimpse of the great journey of Jacob. His struggle with his older brother Esav begins en utero, and it continues through childhood, adolescence, through their fight over the birthright, and then over their father’s blessing.

They said, “The blessing, for Jacob? But he is a איש תם יושב אוהלים, a simple man who dwells in the tents! He doesn’t even have a B.A.”

But as we read today from the last biblical prophet Malachi, the struggle continues on long after their deaths.

The parsha that describes his struggle with his sibling actually ends on a very sad note: Jacob got the blessing, but he lost his family. He lost his home. He is forced to run away from the home of his loving mother and guiding father, and he is now heading into over two decades of exile, where he must now rebuild his life.

Next week’s parsha begins with him lying at night, on the cold stones of Mount Moriah. And it is at the lowest point of his life, that he starts to dream. At that point, when he is impoverished, when he is running for his life, only then is he able to finally envision אֵין זֶה כִּי אִם־בֵּית אֱלֹקים וְזֶה: שַׁעַר הַשָּׁמָיִם — This is the House of God, this is the gate of Heaven. He sees a ladder that is grounded on the earth yet touches the skies. And that is the bedrock of the future Jewish sanctuary: Mount Moriah, where the Temples will be built. It is only when he loses his home that he starts wondering, what can a sanctuary look like? What is it supposed to be?

Let us draw inspiration from Jacob. Let us try to envision what a 21st century sanctuary is supposed to look like, a sanctuary that will engage the next generation?

There are four concepts that I want to discuss with you today: inclusivity, substance, sanctity, and community.

Inclusivity: Rabbi Pinchas Teitz of Elizabeth, New Jersey, wrote to Rav Moshe in 1953, regarding a visually impaired person who needed a guide dog to walk into the synagogue. Is he permitted to walk into a shul, with a dog? And while some rabbinic positions saw bringing an animal into the sanctuary as inappropriate, like the Chelkas Yaakov (Rav Mordechai Yaakov Breish from Zurich), Rav Moshe went at length to find a solution for this dilemma. He argued that if we forbid this person, whose only means of attending a service is with a dog, the person will never experience the collective Shabbat, the shofar, the Torah reading, Yom Kippur. And therefore, Rav Moshe writes that it should be permitted, and that perhaps, it is not considered a disrespect to the synagogue since the purpose of the dog is l’tzorech mitzvah, for the sake of fulfilling a mitzvah.

Rav Moshe also ruled against the use of microphones in synagogues on Shabbat — but a week after that, he wrote a response allowing those who have hearing impediments to use hearing aids on Shabbat, which share a similar technology, in order for them to participate in the Sabbath experience. This is not the place to go into the halakhic details of the difference between a microphone and a hearing aid — but you can see the sensitivity that Rav Moshe had, in including every person in the awesome experience of the community.

The next point I want to talk to you about is substance. A synagogue should be a sanctuary for prayer and Torah learning. There are significant limitations about what kinds of activities one is permitted to do in a synagogue — gatherings that do not have specific spiritual meaning to them.

In 1963, Rav Moshe discussed using a social hall of a synagogue for “mundane purposes.” He writes that even though the social hall does not have sanctity, and one can use it for other activities as well, still one should not use it for card games or bingo. While the synagogue community center can and should be a place for communal activities, to conduct spiritual and cultural life — the end does not always justify the means. Just to get people through a synagogue’s door is not enough; a synagogue must offer spiritual substance in all of its activities.

Sanctity. When building a community, real estate is always a problem (not only on the Upper East Side). The question arose whether it’s permissible to convert a church building to a synagogue. Rabbi Avraham Gombiner in the 17th century, known by the name of his work the Magen Avraham, and the Chafetz Chaim both permitted such a conversion. Even though according to the letter of the law this was permissible, Rav Moshe was uncomfortable with this approach, and demanded that significant architectural change be made before a church building could be used as a synagogue. Perhaps in his understanding of American Jews, who are very visual, he understood that the physical space must reflect the Jewish sanctity it seeks to uphold.

In the twentieth century, the wider American Jewish community had three major accomplishments regarding Jewish peoplehood: Championing the memory of the Shoah, advocating for and backing the newborn State of Israel, and fighting in the struggle for Soviet Jewry. These accomplishments defined and invigorated Jewish engagement for generations. While we must continue these efforts — as we face the next generations, these great accomplishments will not be enough to keep the youth Jewish. As many Jews have told me, many feel that they were guilted into being Jewish. When they stood in front of major life decisions, flirting with assimilation, their parents raised their sleeves and showed them a tattooed arm — it was enough to hold them within the fold. For the next generation, it’s not going to be enough to guilt them into Judaism; we will need to entice them, to engage both their minds and their souls.

It’s not going to be enough to prove Hitler wrong. We must prove Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, Rachel and Leah right.

This generation has been blessed to grow up in an age with a powerful State of Israel. This generation is not going to be kept close just by writing checks to Jewish causes; it will need the substance of understanding the depth and wisdom of our Torah. Our sanctuaries must elevate our mundane existences, bring spirituality into our lives, make Jewish observance meaningful, and sanctify our relationships.

And finally, community: There are two words in Hebrew for community, “eidah” and “kehillah.” I heard from Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, the Chief Rabbi of the UK, the following explanation of the distinction between the two: Imagine yourself walking into a Broadway show, and finding your seat; imagine that the person sitting next to you wishes you a good evening at the beginning of the show. That’s a nice gesture. You’d probably respond in kind.

Imagine after the show started, he would whisper into your ear and ask, “Tell me, what do you do for a living?” That would definitely seem impolite, rude, out of place. You’d most probably try to ignore it.

What would happen if at the end of the show, he’d invite you to join him for dinner at his home? That’s the point you’d probably want to call the police.

Now imagine a similar scenario in a synagogue. You walk in for the first time, and the person sitting next to you welcomes you with a warm Shabbat Shalom. Then he or she asks you where you’re from and what do you do? And at the end of services, they invite you for Shabbat kiddush at their home. That would be most welcome, and even beautiful.

What’s the difference between a Broadway show and the synagogue? The answer is simple: In a Broadway show, there is nothing bonding you with the person sitting next to you. You merely came to witness what is happening on the stage. You happened to be witnessing it together. That is an eidah, from the word eidut, which means ‘testimony’.

But a kehillah, that is different. A kehillah is not about passive observation of what is happening on the pulpit. An ideal community is one in which the members are active, interconnected, taking ownership of the destinies of their community.

It is all of us, the collective members of the community, who are compelled to dream — to imagine what a synagogue driven by inclusivity, substance, sanctity, and community can look like.

Let us dream together.

Shabbat shalom.

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