Strangers and Community
Yom Kippur 5763 Sermon by Rabbi Julie Schwartz
It is a very clear, awesome, and demanding challenge placed before us this Yom Kippur day: what do you want your life to have meant?
I have had the privilege to be present at the bedsides of many dying people. I have experienced this as a privilege because I have grown from each encounter and I have been given the honor of witnessing powerful scenes of love, of reconciliation, and of quiet devotion. No, not every death is so very peaceful nor can every ending include the time for personal good-byes. But the way that an individual dies does not signify the merit of the life rather the way that we mourn for our loved one is the ultimate measure. And so the times that I treasure most in my rabbinate are those spent watching a family cherish their newly lost loved one and assess the way that they have been changed by the relationship.
In the early days of grief, I hear most about the activities that g/g/h/w/etc shared with the family. We will miss her most when we visit the park or take a family trip or taste apple pie. I cannot say anything more to those who are feeling the heavy weight of the loss. But having seen the seasons of mourning turn, I know that while these small acts will be beloved memories, the family and the community will eventually move to realize that the value of the life was not essentially in the good times spent together but in the fashion that human relationships were transformed. That is the command of our existence: to live in relationship.
Again and again, God clearly defines the human condition. We are told that we begin as strangers, gerim. Command after command, direction after direction are placed in the context of our attempt to move from the reality that gerim hayitem b’eretz mitzrayim, You were strangers in the land of Egypt to become something different than, more than strangers. We spend our life as the Jewish people in rituals observing this process. We spend our lives as individuals commanded to overcome our natural state of being strangers.
And we know that it begins so. From the moment of birth, the cries of a baby call us to reassure the little one, no, no you are not alone, I know you, you are not a stranger to me. You are known in this world. Our first act of naming is merely a step towards confirming that this new life has the potential to overcome alienation and separation. Because we give you a name, we can be in a personal relationship with you, we can be join you in this enormous challenge of life. And then each developmental step in a young life, each step is about learning to manage the tension of becoming a person who is both individuated and yet related. From learning to trust through learning to dealing with separation – this is the process of moving ourselves from isolation to relationship.
We say with humor and some regret that one cannot choose one’s own family. But we can and do choose the many other people who fill our world. And we do just that, whether we are social butterflies or those who would prefer a quiet evening at home, we still look for people with whom to share our lives. We look for our beshert, our destined partner and we pray for a meaningful and loving union. We know that the words from Genesis are true for all of us as there God explains that it is not good for man to be alone. God who formed us in the Divine image, God understands best that we are not good when we are alone. In fact the Midrash teaches that human beings were created because God was actually lonely. We came into being in order that God could have companions, partners, journey mates. And so in our lives, we follow God’s example and seek to relieve our loneliness.
Gerim hayitem: You have been strangers says God but you can be more than strangers, you can use the remarkable Torah structure that I give you and keep giving you and allow it to create a web of relationships that will make this life not only tolerable but valuable. But it requires that commitment, the commitment to live in relationship, in community. And as much as our whole life is a yearning for this healing from the existential loneliness that we face, living in community is an incredible burden.
Certainly we realize the most obvious ways that living in community, specifically the Jewish community, the synagogue family, it limits us from the outset. To be a member of a group, for instance this group, requires investment. We invest our precious resources of money, time, and talent. The synagogue tells us about its rules and requirements, its procedures and processes. Just like joining the health club, we look at the rulebook and compare the costs versus the benefits. Everyone hopes to join just the right club where regularly the benefits clearly outweigh the costs. Who would voluntarily sign up for a losing proposition? Yet, we know that the true requirements of membership can rarely be foreseen. The social contract under which we operate is full of loopholes and it is common to be called upon to fill new responsibilities and roles.
As we turn to community in our quest for relationship, we face an even more awesome limitation: the community gains authority over us. We here in America find this idea so very strange. We value the rights of the individual as the overarching good. We work to create laws that say that any behavior is just fine as long as it harms noone else. I am free to do as I choose as Iong as my choice has no effect upon you. But that wonderful freedom becomes a new form of loneliness. For in my quest to do things just for me in my very own way, I am again isolated. My choice of clothing, entertainment, attitude, ethics, and even words may truly be my own choice however I would be deluding myself to think that any one of these could not cause me to be outside my fellows. And so I must adapt my choices to remain in relationship. I cannot eat garlic at lunch if I want to kiss my husband before dinner. I cannot make any comment that may please my own ego and still believe that others will be comfortable around me.
And beyond that the community, the synagogue gains authority. Not only can it begin to circumscribe my choices, it can also demand standards of behavior from me. My synagogue has expectations of me and places responsibilities upon me. If you want to be in relationship with us, says the community, then you will need to be here, to do this, to be available for the greater good. Just because I do not like a particular function or holiday or prayer, my community may set the minimum requirements which then include those things that I might not prefer. My group becomes a force in my life and it drives me, it judges me, it commands me. And in my quest for relationship, I may well have to become involved in order to stay included.
Finally my need to become a member and not a stranger may call upon me to give my only true possession to the group and that one, true possession is my loyalty. To pledge this loyalty is to stake my life on the values of my community and my relationship. To pledge this loyalty is to state clearly that I cannot live without you and that I will not live without you and that life has no meaning outside of relationship. And so I will do whatever is required to ensure that relationship endures. This may mean giving up more of myself than I knew I truly possessed. This may mean placing myself second or third or last in order to allow the community to endure. This may mean seeing myself as smaller than my narcissistic human spirit begs me to do. And this means that my legacy to my community becomes even more important than anything than my individuality.
It is the ultimate balancing act: maintaining our personal focus and rights and privileges while also staying in relationship with my group. How do I retain my own name and still be called by the name even more precious to me, the name Jew. The rabbis give us so many illustrations of the way to be both an individual and a part of larger whole. They suggest that we should look at these competing forces and see the balance as if it was a piece of armor made up of small scales that form the powerful and stronger covering. It is like links in a chain, each a whole unto itself and yet only a part of the greater chain. We are blessed by our Creator with unique personalities and yet we must follow a structure that demands some uniformity. We pray in separate voices but we make a minyan together.
That notion of a minyan, of a quorum required to say certain prayers is itself the essence of our attempts to alleviate our loneliness and move from the curse of being strangers. Can I pray to God by myself? Certainly and each Jew is called upon to do so daily. From blessings for the food I eat to a private daily conversation with God, I can be a Jew all by myself. I don’t need others to help me in these endeavors. But to mourn a loved one through the ritual of saying Kaddish, for that I need others. Not because others will necessarily understand my loss or be able to comfort me in any way. Not because I cannot have a supportive conversation with God all by myself. No the vehicle of saying Kaddish is a discipline to ensure that I am kept in the community at the time that I feel most abandoned and isolated. Those in our midst who have experienced the death of dear one may well have felt at their most alone as they walked the path of grief. The one that I loved is gone and now I am all by myself. So many widows and widowers have surely said these words. By requiring the minyan, the community to be present so that important words of prayer can be said, that person is prevented from turning his feelings into reality. And because each of us is involved in the support of the Kaddish sayer, each of us is reassured that I too will not be alone when my time of grief arrives.
This morning we held a brit milah, a circumcision for an eight day old infant. Even Yom Kippur does not delay the brit although because we are here in synagogue on the holiday, the baby travels to us and not we to the baby. And for a brit as well, we make every attempt to have a minyan. At the end of life and at the beginning, we merge relationships into the life of individuals. Because a brit is about the child joining this Jewish community and so the minyan must provide a group to join.
On more than a few occasions I have been asked to officiate at a Bar or Bat Mitzvah service that a family arranges without the benefit of synagogue membership. There are always good reasons that the family does not belong to a congregation, sometimes even reasons that move my cynical heart. But I have generally refused to assist at such services. Why rabbi? the family asks. We have a borrowed Torah scroll and some prayer books. It will be held in a very nice room and our child has been well prepared by a private tutor. What could be wrong with that? But I am sure that you can already understand my reluctance. As the child demonstrates his/her new skills at leading a congregation in prayer, s/he needs just that: a true community to lead in prayer. It is not about a simcha for the family or friends; it is all about taking on a new role in the larger Jewish family and with that role all of the rights and responsibilities involved.
But what about when we are members of a community and we do make the investment and we do give over some of our autonomy to the greater good and we are still lonely. What about the times when the community fails us and hurts us and does not bring meaning to our lives? How shall we continue then?
There is no doubt that synagogues fail people. There is no doubt that we can and do hurt one another, both by sins of commission and sins of omission. In our disagreements, we become disagreeable. In our struggle to accomplish, we also may damage. In our efforts to connect, we have failed connections. Synagogues, communities are us after all. And we are human and we are frail and we are the reason that we need Yom Kippur. Even our institutions need a Yom Kippur because they reflect both the best and the worst that is within us. We as lonely creatures seeking to find companionship in the synagogue may take care of our own needs first and in doing so neglect the needs of others. Even our attempts to reach out may result in ways that are not our intention.
So first, we, as members of a synagogue, as a body, need to apologize, to make teshuvah as a group, to any who have been hurt or bumped or left unhelped by the community that should have done a better job. And in the spirit of Yom Kippur, we must also forgive one another and ourselves and begin again.
But there is another response to offer when the synagogue is not able to overcome another’s loneliness, and that response is Judaism’s demand, command, whether we like it or not, whether we like the synagogue or not, “Al tifrosh min ha-tzibor” One may not separate oneself from the group. The teaching is inflexible, it is without compassion, it is blunt. It says, simply, You cann’t. You cannot be Jewish and be apart from the community. You cannot fulfill your destiny as a human being on your own. The imperative is clear. We have no choice. We are stuck with one another and so we must find ways to do well together, to make new commitments to care better for one another. Indeed the best therapy for the desire to separate from the community is to jump even more deeply into it. To find new ways to make the synagogue work and succeed and thrive. As well we have responsibility to remember that each of us has a place in this place, in the synagogue family. Whether we much care for each other or not, all of us are expected to come to this place – Jews who have money and Jews who do not, Jews who can read Hebrew and Jews who cannot, Jews who came from Jewish families and those who have joined Jewish families, Jews who fit the membership profile and Jews who fit into no categories. So those opening the doors to the community are bidden to open these doors as widely as possible and those entering the doors are welcomed within. But then, once again, once inside, the community may make new demands. We want us together but that togetherness will have its own requirements. We need to be here, we need to bring one another here, and then we must all do the work together. And so the circle comes full.
I have heard families make many requests as we discuss the funeral arrangements and the ways that they would like to have their loved one remembered. Some of these directions have been painful to me: please don’t say anything about her being a good mother, she wasn’t or please don’t say anything about Judaism, it was never important to him. But usually, people fall into more realistic categories: she was a loving mother but she just couldn’t let go; he was a member of the synagogue but he didn’t get too involved. But I am most touched by those who are able to say to me: she changed our community, he shared himself with others, she made a difference in the synagogue, I cannot count the number of people that he touched. Usually the departed about whom they speak are not heroic people or even exceptional people. They are ordinary people who understand that we have been given this life as a gift, that we are unable to count the blessings that come with each dawn and the responsible response to such a gift is to give more.
The goal for this day is held within the English term: atonement. Rabbis love to point out that atonement can be read as at one ment. Certainly we pray that we will find our ways to forgiveness and become at one with God. But the more difficult task precedes that spiritual achievement. We work first to overcome our strangerness, our estrangement from one another and to join together in true relationship, true community. And in fact, in that process of joining together, of deep and honest meeting, of seeing one another fully and appreciating the similarities that lift us beyond our differences, when we become at one with each other then we are most assuredly at one with God. For it is in transforming a stranger into a fellow traveler that I realize and remember that God is in that person. God is in each person. So we cannot be strangers if we are made from the same blessed pieces of the Divine. And as we come together in community, we bring alive the God that is in our midst.