All Hands are Needed to Build Our Community

I offered the following drash on one of my last Shabbatot as student rabbi at Kolot Chayeinu / Voices of Our Lives.

We’ve likely all heard the phrase. It’s enshrined in Kolot’s mission statement. Maybe you’ve even used the phrase to describe Kolot to your friends. Or perhaps you have a t-shirt on which the phrase is printed. In fact, I’m so confident that you know what phrase I’m talking about that I’ll let you finish my next sentence for me: “Kolot Chayeinu—where doubt can be…” [an act of faith].

I’m told that the phrase originally came from the mouth of Kathryn Conroy. Apparently, in her original formulation, she said: “doubt is an act of faith”—rather than “can be an act of faith.” She still holds by that distinction. In Kathryn’s reasoning, doubt is driven by the faith that doubt is warranted.

This evening, as I reflect on my year at Kolot, you might have faith that I’m going to be speaking about doubt. After all, this week we read from Parshat Emor, where a man is stoned to death for committing an act of doubt—for daring to pronounce God’s unpronounceable name. After all, this has been a year in which I wrestled with my own doubt—learning to distinguish what I say I believe from what I actually believe.

But if you’ve begun to doubt that I’m actually going to talk about doubt, you’ve done so in good faith. Because tonight, I want to talk about the less well-known, second part of Kolot’s mission statement—the part that isn’t often used to describe Kolot to friends and isn’t emblazoned on any t-shirt, the part that for me captures what is truly special about this congregation. The full mission statement reads: “Kolot Chayeinu: where doubt can be an act of faith and all hands are needed to build our community.”

This year, I have seen that all hands are indeed needed, wanted, encouraged, and utilized in building this community. All hands are needed to populate the list of volunteer Torah readers. All minds are needed to hear the wisdom of a new or a seasoned darshan. All voices are needed to the lift souls of the Shabbat morning chant group. All talents are needed to bring parents in as artists in residence for the Children’s Learning Program. All imaginations are needed to create original theatre pieces for the High Holidays. All kitchens are needed to make and deliver home-cooked meals to a house of illness, mourning, or joy. All brave souls are needed to create a race task force, to post “Black Lives Matter” signs on the High Holiday bima, or to sustain an anti-racist Omer counter. All stories are needed for families to discuss what Jewish life is like for interfaith couples. All perspectives are needed to create no litmus tests around Zionism. All heads, hearts, hands, and feet are needed to take what are typically for synagogues barriers to entry and transform them into sources of vibrancy.

One experience in particular proved to me that Kolot is a place where all hands are needed to build our community.

Earlier this year, a blizzard pounded New York with nearly 27 inches of snow—the second snowiest storm on record. It happened to be a Saturday: Shabbat Shirah at that, the Torah portion where we chant the Song of the Sea. It also happened to be the day of an afternoon Bar Mitzvah service. But despite the snow, Kolotniks who were able to make it to the building sprung into action: shoveling the stairs, setting-up the ark, putting together the podium, hanging the fabrics in the sanctuary, arranging the sound system. Later in the afternoon, when the mayor closed the roads and shut down the above-ground subways, the guests of the Bar Mitzvah family were stranded in Manhattan, unable to get to Brooklyn. Nearly a dozen Bar and Bat Mitzvah families showed up that day to fill the breach, to support and celebrate the child who became a Bar Mitzvah, to show that the Bar and Bat Mitzvah ritual is not about “me” but about “we.”

That whole day, the snow came down sideways, like a wall of water. Inside, we chanted the Song of the Sea, as we and our mythic forebears walked through the parted Sea of Reeds—a different kind of wall of water, the one no less astounding than the other. It’s said [1] that the Sea didn’t split until all the Israelites stepped in the water. How true it was that morning.

I’ve found that all hands are needed not only to build this community in particular, but also to mark Jewish time in general. This week’s parshah hints at this. The parshah contains the Bible’s most complete list of the Jewish holiday cycle, but it makes a distinction between Shabbat and all the other holidays. Commentators throughout the generations [2] have tried to understand what makes Shabbat unique. One answer—in the form of a short story by Chaim Nachman Bialik—demonstrates both what makes Shabbat unique and also why all hands are needed to mark Jewish time.

The story is called “Short Friday.”

One Friday evening as Shabbat is rolling in, a country rabbi finds himself stranded on the road, unable to make it home. After midnight, he checks in at a roadside inn. In the morning, the innkeeper is shocked to see that the rabbi checked in after Shabbat began! The innkeeper decides that it must not be Shabbat after all, that he has gotten his days of the week confused. Embarrassed of his mistake, the innkeeper clears the house of all signs of Shabbat. When the rabbi awakes, the house is running like a normal weekday. The rabbi assumes that he has slept all the way to Sunday. He packs his bag and heads home. Just as he is arriving to his village, all of the townspeople begin pouring out of the shul. Only then does the rabbi realize his mistake.

I like this story for two reasons. First, it demonstrates that Shabbat is unlike other holidays because Shabbat is, in a sense, supernatural. That is, there’s nothing in nature that lets you know it’s Shabbat. While Passover always occurs on a full moon, Rosh HaShanah on a new moon, Yom Kippur on a waxing moon, and Chanukkah on a waning moon—Shabbat, by contrast, pays no attention the moon.

And this leads to the second reason that I like this story: because Shabbat is unnatural, “all hands are needed” to make it a day apart. When the rabbi in our story travels on Shabbat, the innkeeper assumes it’s a weekday; when the innkeeper does business on Shabbat, the rabbi assumes it’s a weekday. Without a community in which to observe Shabbat, Saturday looks the same as Sunday or Tuesday or Friday. Shabbat happens only because we all say it does. All hands are needed to mark Jewish time.

So where are we this Shabbat? We’re at Kolot Chayeinu: Where doubt can be an act of faith, and where all hands are needed to build our community.

My prayer for Kolot is that you continue to embody the second half of your mission statement. Because as we know, it’s simply true that doubt is an act of faith. But that’s not obvious to the whole world. Doubt can be an act of faith here at Kolot only because we all say it can—and for this to happen, all hands are needed.

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[1] See http://www.g-dcast.com/nachshon/ at the 3:00 mark

[2] See Sifra 23:144; Rashi on Leviticus 23:3; Heschel, The Sabbath, p. 10

Gavriella Yona Sivan bat Daniel v-Me'irah

This afternoon, we welcomed our daughter into the covenant of the Jewish people and gave her her Hebrew name. Below, the words we shared about that name, and a video of the celebrations.

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Gavriella

Our sweet Gavi,

Leah: Your first name comes from my Grandma Gail. One of the very first things I knew to be true was that my grandma loved me and that I loved her.

When I was only a few years old, my grandmother began teaching me my colors by studying the large oil paintings that hung on her walls. She would point to a man’s overcoat and tell me what color it was: “Not purple, but aubergine.” A wisp-ing flower petal: “that’s blush.” A woman’s hat: “lemon chiffon.” It wasn’t that “purple” or “pink” or “yellow” weren’t accurate; it was that she saw beauty in vivid detail. Not just in the colors on a painting, but the beauty in people too. She saw those she loved with extraordinary clarity and loved us for every detail. Where others would have seen only “purple,” she saw “aubergine.” Her gift for seeing and appreciating us made us all more beautiful.

Daniel: I never met your Great-Grandma Gail, though she and I do share a birthday. And through family stories, I feel like I know her well. One thing I do know about her is that when she was diagnosed with cancer, the doctors told her she had a year to live. But she lived another eight—and in those years, she founded a community center for people whose lives had been touched by cancer. She was a fighter, fierce, strong. And so it seems appropriate that your name, Gavrielle—or Gavriella, as we are going to call you in Hebrew—means “God is my strength.”

In our Jewish tradition, Gavriel is the angel of fire, who sits at God’s left hand. And like a firebrand, Gavriel comes to represent strength, determination, a burning persistence in the face of all obstacles.

Leah: From your Great-Grandma Gail, we hope that you will inherit the ability to see and create beauty wherever you go.

Daniel: And like Gail, or the angel Gavriel, we hope that strength will burn deep within you.

Yona

Leah: Your second name, Yona, is after my dad, your Papa Jonny.

Your grandpa was a seriously silly man. Like a magnet, he attracted those around him, bring them together in laughter—whether it was by publically picking his friends’ noses, or asking my friends at sleepovers if they wanted to sleep in the toothpaste or the orange juice, or, when he left a restaurant, pretending to sign autographs as he walked out the door, as if he were a celebrity and his fellow diners were his adoring fans. He seemed to be perpetually trailed by laughter. Yet, the magnitude of his silly was matched only by the depth of his heart. His jokes and antics helped others let their guard down; his silly was a means of connection, a gateway to the seriousness of his heart. And this was where he really shined, in the quiet moments after the laugh.

Daniel: On the day that your Papa Jonny died, it felt as if our world had flooded. Your mom and I were living in Jerusalem, and as if the weather sympathized, that year was the rainiest winter on record. But as early as the week of Shiva, it brought your mom and me great comfort to imagine the child that we would someday, God willing, name after your Papa Jonny—whose Hebrew name was Yonatan.

Your second name, Yona, is Hebrew for “dove.” And like the dove on Noah’s ark, your arrival is at once a reminder of what we lost when our world flooded, and also a reminder that even after the greatest of floods, we once again walk on dry land.

Leah: From your Papa Jonny, we hope that you inherit a great joy in play and a serious depth of heart. And when your world floods, as it inevitably will, we wish for you the courage and strength to always find the dry land on the other side of despair.  

Sivan

Daniel: Your third and final Hebrew name, Sivan, is after my Grandma Sally and my Aunt Stella. When I was growing up in Tallahassee, my aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents were scattered all over the country. We would see each other a few times year—for a simcha or on a family vacation. But Grandma Sally and Aunt Stella both spent the last few years of their lives living in Tallahassee, and as a result, I grew especially close with them. You could always find them at our piano recitals, community theatre productions, or at our house for Shabbat dinner. On Sundays, I used to go with my mom over to Aunt Stella’s to deliver her a sandwich from Subway, or with my dad to Grandma Sally’s to play Scrabble. They were simple outings, and I loved them.

Leah: Your third Hebrew name, Sivan, is also the name of the Hebrew month in which your dad and I were married. It’s also the month in which the holiday of Shavuot occurs—when, according to our tradition, the Israelites stood at Mount Sinai to receive the Torah. As one legend has it, the Israelites stood beneath Mount Sinai, like a wedding couple standing beneath the chuppah.

Today, as you enter the covenant of the Jewish people, you—as your dad and I did on our wedding day, and as the Israelites did at Sinai—you are joining the Jewish family.

Daniel: As with my Grandma Sally and my Aunt Stella, may that family always be close.

Conclusion

Daniel: Gavriella Yona Sivan—we give you this Hebrew name in honor of your Great-Grandma Gail, your Papa Jonny, your Great-Grandma Sally, and your Great-Aunt Stella.

Leah: There are many gifts we hope you will inherit from them. But most of all, as you carry their legacy with you; we hope that you will make for yourself your own name in the world.