Erev Rosh HaShanah: Practice, Priorities, People

(delivered by Rabbi J.B. Sacks on September 15, 2023)

In 2009 archaeologists unearthed an ancient synagogue in the city of Migdal on the Sea of Galilee. It was established over 2,000 years ago.

It’s fascinating. The Jewish community of ancient Migdal built a synagogue at a time when Jewish ritual life was vibrantly observed and celebrated at the sacred altar in Jerusalem–as the book of Deuteronomy commends. Nonetheless, just 100 miles away sits the Migdal synagogue. The huge Magdala stone found there depicts the Temple’s menorah. This suggests that the synagogue was not trying to replace the role of the Jerusalem Temple. Instead, it was built to enhance the lives of local Jews who were seeking meaning and spiritual direction. It would have taken the Jews of Migdal up to two weeks to trek to Jerusalem for a pilgrimage festival. Thus, a space was needed to provide an ongoing connection to G!d, and to empower the Migdal’s Jews of to engage in Jewish living.

In a surprising twist, archeologists digging just two hundred meters away from the Migdal Synagogue found another ancient synagogue dating back to precisely the same period. Oh, my. Do you remember the joke about the Jew who built two synagogues while stranded on a desert island? One to attend, and one to never set foot in. Apparently that Jew was not stranded on a desert island but lived in Migdal!

Seriously, archaeology has shattered our understanding of the synagogue. We have now uncovered over a dozen synagogues that were in use while the Second Temple stood, in addition to outdoor structures clearly designed for prayer.^[1] Scholarship today opines that virtually every Jewish settlement had at that time had a synagogue. The Jerusalem Temple had ceased meeting the needs of many Jews, for while it offered sacrifices to G!d, many did not find it elevating, meaningful, or relevant. A real need arose for local Jewish spaces that reimagined Jewish spirituality.

The word “synagogue” comes from the Greek meaning “place of assembly,” or, in Hebrew, Beit K’nesset. As its name attests, the synagogue functioned as a community center, housing the activities of school, court, tz’dakah fund, and meeting place, all functions which the Jerusalem Temple could not meet efficiently or at all.

The meta-needs of Jews then remain remarkably the same today:

• Rituals and practices to dramatize deeply felt concerns.
• A place for establishing meaningful connections with people, to support one another and create a sense of “home” wherever we went.
• Establishing a microcosm of a society where justice and compassion prevail
• A place where eternal truths can be uncovered and enduring priorities can regain their proper focus.

These meta-needs can be reduced to three P’s: Practice. Priorities. People.

Let’s talk about practice.

The destruction of the second temple by Rome in 70 CE might have been a deathblow to Jewish life, but, because of the synagogue, Judaism survived–and thrived. But the purpose of any synagogue, including CAH, remains the same as it did in the days of ancient Migdal.

It is the place where we practice our tradition. We no longer observe from afar as spectators while priests offer a sacrifice…but a space where we practice together.

It is the place where we celebrate the good and struggle through the bad with people supporting you through it all.

It is the place where we engage each other on deep questions.

It is the place where we can all express our acceptance of one another’s humanity.

In his book Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell famously describes the 10,000-hour rule. That rule of thumb states that, depending on the skill or work, it takes around 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert on most things.

So, we might reflect back: How much training did I get in living Jewishly? Let’s do the math. If one attended religious school regularly for 10 years, with approximately 30 sessions each year, with each session some two to three hours, one will have accumulated roughly 750 hours of Jewish learning. Proudly, some teens don’t stop there and continue their study in a Hebrew High School context, so by graduation they’ve reached about 1,000 hours. To actually hit the 10,000 hour mark, one would have to attend religious school for about 134 years!

So, we can all agree that religious school in no way prepares anyone to engage with our 4,000-year old tradition in any reasonable or mature way. Rabbi Light, you work at a day school. I do not know how many hours a day students do Jewish learning and living there. If you do figure out the hours, let us know!

In any event, the 10,000 hour rule asserts that Jewish life needs a training space to empower, inspire, and prepare Jews to live proudly, joyously, and fully as adult Jews. One thing is clear: We can teach efficiently, but we cannot take short cuts.

Here’s why. We are bombarded by information and encouraged to move through it quickly. We could learn to speed read, but studies show those who read fast self-select texts that are shallower, simpler. Even professional speed readers understand and remember less and less the faster they read. Taking in complex information and internalizing it requires establishing a practice of slowing down and paying attention. Allowing ourselves space and time to think. To inquire. To come back to it, again and again, and we ruminate on it, turning it over in our minds.

Jewish life, a life of spiritual power, requires just that. A practice. Not an occasional trip to Israel. Not intermittent Shabbat dinners or once-in-a-while synagogue attendance, but practice. Creating a habit of personal Jewish practice is precisely what the Jews of Migdal had in mind when they developed their synagogues.

Creating a meaningful pathway for life requires regular, consistent, ongoing attention. In the Mishnah, Ben Bag Bag teaches  הֲפֹךְ בָּהּ וַהֲפֹךְ בָּהּ, דְּכֹלָּא בָהּ, “Turn it and turn it again, for everything is in it. Look into it, grow old over it, and never move away from it.”^[2]

Ben Bag Bag lived in the first decades of the common era, at the very same time as both Migdal synagogues were in operation. Doing something big, doing something meaningful, doing something exciting, doing something memorable, requires practice.

It requires having a resource like Am HaYam to ensure our practice engages purposefully with tradition:

• to provide space for us to practice together
• to learn from each other, and from each other’s practice
• to encourage one another in our practice and lives
• to hold each other accountable for showing up and putting in those additional 9,000 hours we need to attain the expertise and facility to be empowered Jews.

Moreover, practice helps us to uncover the Jewish values which can direct us in our daily lives. They are revealed to us as we study, discuss, and argue Torah. They are revealed to us as the prayers in our service encourage us to see G!d as a model to be emulated as we strive to be holy, igniting the Divine Image within us to live in more God-like ways.

All this is practice.

Now, a word on people.

Judaism is rooted forever in the soil, blood, life-experience and memory of the Jewish people.^[3] And because of our life-experience and memory, we insist on living out our highest values with all people.

On Sunday we’ll again read the story of the binding of Isaac. This year I understand it as the story of a family undermined by an inability to share. They did not talk to one another, and they did not listen. Abraham understands something as a command of G!d to murder, called here sacrifice, his son. He does not share this with Sarah or his son. After three days he takes his son to Mt. Moriah. Abraham does not speak with Isaac. Isaac tries to open up a discussion. “Dad, we have everything we need for a sacrifice except the most important thing–the animal to be sacrificed.” Abraham does not engage. His dismisses Isaac, “G!d will provide.” After Isaac is rescued, Abraham returns to the two servants, but without Abraham. He does not want to discuss what happened. And he and Sarah never talk again; indeed, some threads of our tradition suggest that the news that her husband tried to murder her only son is the proximate cause of her death.

So the story, on the one hand, helps us to understand the importance of sharing with others, particularly those we consider family, our pains and sorrows, as well as our longings and triumphs. On the other hand, the story also underscores how essential it is that we listen for others’ pain and that we do so with a caring ear and a kindred heart.^[4] But both hands point to how we should live with other people.

Here at Am HaYam we have instinctively understood this story, and have woven it into the fabric of our community. In fact, our Mission Statement has a section called “Chesed: Extending Kindness, Hospitality And Generosity To Others.” It states:

• We believe that how we welcome and care for those in our midst defines us.
• We are an inclusive congregation, and we treat one another with civility, respect, and kindness.
• We are aware of, and grateful for, our blessings, and we are committed to sharing and giving generously to others within our community, the greater Jewish community, Israel, and the world.

So, Am HaYam exists as a place where we come together as a people. Here we can be vulnerable with one another, accountable to one another, and ready to do sacred work together. We look to leave this world better than we found it.

So practice and people.

Now, priorities.

This past year we explored the life and legacy of social justice icon Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Upon coming to America, he taught at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati for their rabbinical program. What you may not know is that that 148-year program is currently being phased out. As the debate swirled around this momentous decision, Rabbi Mark Washofsky, the Associate Professor of Rabbinics there, stated something which resonates for me. He said: “What I see when I look around me is not buildings which gobble up a budget, but the concrete manifestation of our founding purpose.”

I feel this way about Am HaYam. We live out our purpose and priorities, for we are a place

• for practicing our tradition,
• for inspiring us and helping us to find direction,
• for helping us to see and know that we are not alone, that we are not just people, but that we constitute a People.
• for ordering our lives with priorities that will make a difference

Priorities.

What are these for you as you enter a new year?

For me, I hope that Rosh Hashanah helps me to reconnect with enduring values, spiritual values, human values. These are the changeless realities in a changing world, the things one could cling to in a slippery time such as ours, the things that the teeth of time will not chew to pieces.

We sometimes read a passage from Rabbi Sidney Greenberg^[5] that enumerates some of these eternal verities. They include:

• The redeeming power of compassion
• The healing power of forgiveness
• The transforming power of love–these endure in every age.
• The nourishment that comes from beauty,
• The strength that comes from adversity
• The joy that comes from generosity–these endure in every age.

These remain priorities for me.

So: practice; people; priorities.

These three are one: Our practice reminds us of our priorities, which only matter when we are connected to other people, people beyond our immediate household. That is how we matter, and how we leave a mark.

As you know, in this New Year we will have discussions about the future of our beloved congregation. Let us all ensure we can continue to provide space for ourselves to live rich, full Jewish lives. But this year will require our focus on which CAH practices continue to inspire and empower, what our community’s priorities are, and how we have solidified as a community, a people.

And as we welcome the New Year 5784, let us make the commitment to do everything we can, in every aspect of our lives, to ensure it is a year of goodness and sweetness. A year which inspires many good and sweet years to come through our efforts to maintain meaningful practice, to deepen our lives with other people, and to be guided by our deepest priorities.

Kein y’hi ratzon. So may it be.

L’shanah tovah u-m’tukah.

^[1] Such a structure is known as a proseuche.

^[2] M. Pirkei Avot 5:22.

^[3] Paraphrased from Rabbi Solomon Goldman (1893-1953), a leading Conservative rabbi, scholar, community leader, and orator.

^[4] This understanding of the Akedah, the Binding of Isaac, comes from Rabbi Aaron Benjamin Bisno. See Greenberg, Rabbi Sidney, ed. The Wisdom of Modern Rabbis: A Treasury of Guidance and Inspiration. New York: Citadel Press (Kensington Books), 2001, p. 229.

^[5] Rabbi Sidney Greenberg (1917-2003) was a chaplain during World War II and the founding rabbi of Temple Sinai in Dresher, Pennsylvania. He was an early supporter of women’s equality, a prolific writer, and an inspiring teacher.