We have come from Egypt, through the sea, on dry land, with the water like a wall to our right and to our left. We wander in the desert, but we know where we are going: to Sinai, the mountain of revelation. We will stand there, all of Israel, to make a covenant with the God of our ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah.
We have come from slavery and degradation. We go to freedom and responsibility. We stand in relationship with the Jewish past, the Jewish present, and the Jewish future. We stand in relationship with God, Torah, and community.
[The following was sung to a beautiful tune by Cantor Joshua Breitzer.] Da me’ayin bata, u’l’an atah holech, da me’ayin bata, u’l’an atah holech, v’lifnei mi atah atid—HaKadosh Baruch Hu…
“Know where you came from, and where you’re going, and before whom you will stand in the future—the Holy One, Blessed be He” (Pirkei Avot 3:1).
These words of wisdom come from a chapter of the Mishnah called Pirkei Avot, the Chapters of our Fathers. It is a custom among many Jews to study these collected teachings from our Sages each year between Passover and Shavuot. We can mark the time of wandering with learning. We can spend the time of transformation enriching our minds and our hearts by learning more about how to live not as a “mixed multitude” of those enslaved to bitterness or idolatry, but rather, how to live as a people committed to love the Eternal our God and to love the stranger as ourselves.
This Shabbat, as we enter the fourth week of the omer, the count between Passover and Shavuot, it is customary to study Pirkei Avot, chapter 3, which includes the teaching: Da me’ayin bata, u’l’an atah holech, v’lifnei mi atah atid—“Know where you came from, and where you’re going, and before whom you will stand in the future” (Ibid.).
This teaching serves well as a preparation for Shavuot: it is important to remember our experience of slavery so that we truly understand our charge not to oppress the stranger. It is important to know that the wandering in the desert will lead to the Promised Land. It is important to remember, with humility, that it is God before whom we will stand in the thundering revelation at Sinai.
“Know where you came from, and where you’re going, and before whom you will stand in the future” (Ibid.).
In a similar teaching, Rabbi Eliezer advises, “[W]hen you pray, know before whom you are standing” (Bavli Brachot 28b). Indeed, in many synagogues, above the Ark are carved the words: Da lifnei mi atah omeid—“Know before whom you stand.”
Conventionally, we understand what this phrase means: Know that you are standing before God. Speak each word, take each action, conduct each relationship—in the knowledge both that God is with you, supporting you, and that God knows and sees and remembers all.
Over the past year, you have taught me to understand differently what it means to “know before whom you stand.” When we gather in this sanctuary to pray, we stand before God. But we stand, too, in Beth Am, a House of the People.
I stand before you.
I stand before a community formed by Jews willing to be flexible enough to merge several traditions into one Temple. I stand before families who have lived and worked in the valley for generations. I stand before people dedicated to learning Torah each month, bringing their unique perspectives to our study of sacred Jewish texts. I stand before non-Jewish spouses who raised Jewish children in beautifully mixed family traditions. I stand before parents and children and grandchildren who gather to hear the shofar and to light the menorah and to recall the Exodus from Egypt.
Before I came here, I had never heard of the Monongahela Valley or the steel mills or the coal mines or the Jews of Pennsylvania—and I only vaguely knew of the Steelers... I knew where I had come from: a Catholic upbringing, an “out” life with my partner Rachel, a meaningful and enriching conversion process, a strong love for Jewish learning, an urban home in Brooklyn. I didn’t really know where I was going when I came to this community! Would we connect? Would our worship together feel at once comforting and challenging, familiar and new? Would we learn together, and would we learn from one another?
Now, as I prepare to leave the valley and return to the city, I know where I come from: I come from Beth Am.
“True community does not come into being because people have feelings for each other (though that is required, too),” writes the philosopher Martin Buber. “[B]ut rather on two accounts [does true community happen]: all of them have to stand in a living, reciprocal relationship to a living center, and they have to stand in a living, reciprocal relationship to one another” (I and Thou 94).
Beth Am is—and has become for me—a true community. It is a place where people have feelings for each other: you are blood relatives and friends; you have opened your homes to one another; you have watched your children learn and grow and establish families of their own; you grieve together; you face the new year with collective anticipation. I have felt and I have been blessed by that feeling of warmth, from the moment you welcomed Rachel and I here to celebrate the High Holy Days with you to your continued well wishes for our baby-to-be.
And Beth Am is a place where each of us stands in relationship to a “living center”: the Torah we gather to hear and to study each month. Jewish tradition serves to bind this community in a way that personal feeling alone cannot. Dedication to Jewish tradition both ancient and modern keeps these doors open, keeps the Eternal Light burning, in this small community.
And Beth Am is a place where members and their families and the student rabbi all stand “in a living, reciprocal relationship to one another.” You have opened your homes and your hearts to me. You have shared your pains and your fears with me. We have discussed the meaning of Judaism and the presence or absence of God. We have studied challenging texts and asked what kind of God demands the death of an only, beloved child. We have watched films that ask us to consider what it means to repent and what it means to pray. We have sung songs new and old. We have meditated on our own personal struggles with bitterness and turned those struggles over to God for help and support. We have prayed for peace and healing.
I have learned to know before whom I stand.
I stand before each of you, blessed and grateful for the opportunity to serve as your student rabbi.
I stand before you humbled and awed by how much you have demonstrated for me the openness and the dedication related in this story:
R. Yose bar Judah of Kefar ha-Bavli said: To whom is he who learns from the young to be compared? To one who eats unripe grapes or drinks new wine fresh from his vat. And to whom is he who learns from the old to be compared? To one who eats ripe grapes or drinks aged wine.
Rabbi [Judah, the Patriarch] differed: Look not at the container, but at what is in it. A new container may be full of aged wine, while an old container may be empty even of new wine. (Pirkei Avot 4:27)
Beth Am learns from young and old, male and female, Jew by birth and Jew by choice. Like Rabbi Judah the Patriarch, a beloved teacher of the people Israel, this community does not judge the container but tastes the wine, to learn for themselves what it has to offer.
The first time I spoke with Phyllis on the phone, I knew and understood immediately that Beth Am rejoices in the opportunity to welcome and to nourish and to teach the next generation of Reform rabbis. “When we travel for a bar mitzvah or a bat mitzvah,” Phyllis said, “we often sit in the pews saying, ‘That was our student rabbi!’” The surprise and the joy and the pride in seeing how your community has enabled each student rabbi to grow bolsters me, and I know it will bolster next year’s student rabbi when he arrives to serve as your student rabbi in the fall.
“Look not at the container, but at what is in it.”
“Know before whom you stand.”
“Know where you come from, and where you’re going, and before whom you will stand in the future.”
I thank each of you for truly looking at what I brought to this community.
I thank each of you for pouring your own wisdom and doubts and questions into our time together this year.
I thank each of you for making me your rabbi.
I thank each of you for allowing me to know you.
I thank you for becoming a part of where I come from and where I am going.
And I thank each of you for helping us all encounter the Divine in this Beth Am, this House of the People.
[With gratitude and joy for the community at Temple Beth Am, Monessen, PA]