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