The cavernous brick ceiling vaulted over us like the roof of some massive ark, filled to capacity with refugees from a deluge, a storm that raged with winds and with surging waters that would not relent. Not forty days and forty nights, thank G-d, but a storm that devastated the world we had known. This was the Park Slope Armory YMCA just days after Superstorm Sandy.
On Friday evening and again on Saturday morning, I and two of my colleagues from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion led Shabbat services for Jews and non-Jews evacuated to the Armory from their nursing facilities and assisted residencies in Rockaway and other flooded neighborhoods. A volunteer “wellness coordinator” had contacted my home shul, Congregation Beth Elohim, which has been and continues to be a center for volunteer and relief efforts in Brooklyn and beyond. Our clergy team—Rabbi Andy Bachman, Rabbi Shira Koch Epstein, Rabbi Marc Katz, and Cantor Joshua Breitzer—have been working around the clock, along with a dedicated staff and dozens upon dozens of community volunteers. Our community has prepared and delivered meals, collected and distributed water and batteries and other much-needed supplies, and offered words of comfort and hope to so many people stranded in their ruined homes or displaced to shelters around the city. Unable to lead the services themselves as they attended to the ongoing needs of our spiritual community, CBE’s clergy reached out to rabbinical and cantorial students in the neighborhood, empowering us to bring some Shabbat rest and joy to the evacuees at the Armory.
Imagine creating the rest of Shabbat on an indoor track in a room echoing with sound: confused shouts and cries of disoriented patients, joyful noises of reunion and relief as people are able to contact loved ones via cell phone, volunteers being oriented to the sights and smells of what is basically a medical operation as well as a residential facility. Rows upon rows of army-style cots (just canvas stretched over metal frames) line the room. Residents from nursing homes and mental healthcare facilities lie on these makeshift beds; there is no privacy, no space for personal effects. Indeed, in many case, people have no personal effects to speak of: they came here with the clothes on their backs. Yet Shabbat in that room, with a motley minyan gathered together on folding chairs, was the most joyful and grateful Shabbat I have ever experienced.
Shabbat, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel taught, does not depend on space: it is a sanctuary in time. And so it simply didn’t matter: it didn’t matter that we sat on folding chairs on an indoor track at what is normally a YMCA sports facility. What mattered was that we created a sacred moment in time: a moment for holiness, a moment to invite in the Presence of G-d, a moment to breathe and be reminded that, behold! we are alive! Unable to light candles because of fire code laws, we kindled the spark of Divinity in each of our souls, visualizing that light filling the time and the space of our Shabbat service. We pictured ourselves on the hills of Tzfat or the shores of Hertzelia. We imagined that the canopy of brick above was instead a blanket of stars. One man remarked how beautiful it was, fleeing the storm, to look up and see stars, even over New York City. Beauty in a moment of chaos: a powerful image for our Shabbat in that modern-day Ark.
And so we gathered a little closer together. We sang and we blessed. We laughed and we cried. We prayed for healing. And on Shabbat morning, we shared not the traditional nissim b’chol yom (miracles of every day), but our own blessings of thanks. “I am thankful that I was able to hear my mother’s voice over my cell phone, and to know that she and my sister are alive, and safe.” “I am thankful that I got these new sweatpants, because I lost all my clothing in the storm.” “I am thankful that the Jewish people is alive and celebrating, after all that has befallen us, up to even this storm.”
A wave washed over me, but this time not the waters of the Hudson or the East River or New York Bay or the Atlantic, itself displaced from its normal position by the winds of Sandy. A wave of gratitude and humility, a wave of hope, a wave of belief in the real Truth of the fact that each of these people—these strangers with whom I was so blessed to spend my sacred Shabbat—is created b’tzelem Elokim, in the image of the Divine. I got to experience a moment of that Divinity, there beneath the arch of the Park Slope Armory, and for that I am grateful.
Help and hope will be needed in the coming weeks. Please check the Bronfman Center’s website for ongoing information on how you can respond—with your wallet, with your hands, with your prayers, and with your hearts.
Showing posts with label Shabbat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shabbat. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Monday, April 20, 2009
The Call
When we sing, “Next year in Jerusalem” at the end of our Passover seder, we’re not really talking about Jerusalem. We’re singing our longing, God’s promise, and our hope for a better future, a time of peace and completion, wholeness, shalom.
After sharing seder with a warm and generous Israeli family on a kibbutz near Ashkelon, I traveled to Barcelona for the rest of my vacation, meeting Rachel for some much-needed time together. The modernisme architecture, World’s Fair grounds and buildings, and Gothic streets provided countless diversions and amusements; contemporary art exhibits around the city and the “Blue Period” works in the Picasso museum sparked thoughts and discussions. And the narrow streets of the Jewish Quarter, nearly indistinguishable from other narrow streets in the winding alleyways of the old Roman city, changed how I will sing “Next Year in Jerusalem” at future seders.
Spain’s once-thriving Jewish population, a large group in the city of Barcelona, living mostly alongside their Christian neighbors but in a close-knit community (the “kahal, a Hebrew word we still use today) and geographical area known as “The Call”>, faced persecution and eventually expulsion at the hands of Spain’s Catholic rulers. This is far from a story of redemption; rather, it is one of desperation and mourning—an entire community forced to convert, to migrate, to leave behind a rich culture, personal networks, lives they had built over centuries. The only trace of Jewish life in Spain that Rachel and I could find were a few doorposts marked in places where a mezuzah had once been affixed, some inscriptions along the walls of buildings that now house souvenir shops and clothing stores, and the remains of a 12-th century synagogue that now serves as a museum.
Unlike Barcelona’s Church tours, which focus on art, architecture, and history, the synagogue and museum also explains religion, outlining major Jewish practices and festivals for the non-Jewish tourist. Sadly, I am not sure how many of those the museum gets. When we walked in, the guide immediately asked us if we spoke Hebrew, and later that same day we ran into an Israeli tour group learning about the fraught and tragic history of our people in Spain and crowding together in the alleyways to imagine rather than see vibrant Jewish life in Barcelona.
Touching the stones of these former houses where people celebrated Passover and baked their Shabbat challah, I felt a sense of responsibility, as a Jew and as a future rabbi, to the memory of this community, but more so to Jewish communities around the world. It’s a feeling I never really internalized before, but I imagined what it might have meant, in medieval times, to be forced out of your village somewhere in the mountains, to reach the city of Barcelona, and to know that all you had to do was find the Call, and with it you would find open arms, a hot meal, a place to stay, an invitation to Shabbos dinner.
Later in the week, we visited another Jewish Quarter, in the city of Girona. Similarly, its museum, housed in what was once a major Girona synagogue, not only outlined the history of the Jewish community in Girona and in Spain, but also explained major Jewish beliefs, practices, and philosophies. The streets were narrow, and I could imagine the terrible days of being confined to just two streets with their intertwining courtyards, dead ends, and shallow stairs. Photographs of a nearby palace showed how Jewish cemeteries were raided, their carved stones used as building materials for new, Christian communities.
For the most part, I spent my time in the Jewish Quarters in contemplation—not in overwhelming or debilitating grief, though I certainly felt a sadness for a community that has all but disappeared. And then Friday afternoon came, and sunset approached, and it was time for Shabbat.
The progressive synagogue in Barcelona is not located on the nicest of the Gracia neighborhood’s streets. A metal grate covers the door until just before services begin, revealing curtained windows and a small mezuzah. But inside, it’s Jerusalem.
It was Kabbalat Shabbat at Bet Shalom. Greeting us warmly with a “Shabbat Shalom” and a kiss on each check, the dedicated members of this small but warm and welcoming kahal eagerly spoke with us (in broken Spanish, Hebrew, and English, and with much patience all around) about where we’re from, our visit, our synagogues, and my studies at HUC. Rabbi Jim Glazier, serving the community on his sabbatical from his home congregation in Vermont, graciously invited me to light the Shabbat candles and say the blessing, a great honor. The melodies were familiar, the cantor’s voice and presence were smooth and prayerful, the faces were bright and smiling, the mood in the room was enveloping, open, inviting. After the prayer, we chatted with Spanish, Catalonian, Italian, American, French—I can’t even count all the places of origin—members and visitors, students on their year abroad, families, friends. Rosina Levy, who helped us organize our visit, introduced us to members of the community, translated, learned about our lives, told us about the community’s activities, and generally did much to create a warm atmosphere. Suddenly, several people started setting up tables in the center of the room, and we found ourselves sitting down to a very late dinner (a Catalonian tradition), prepared by a member of the community. People lingered, talking and laughing, eating and drinking (we passed on the shots of Tequila!), sharing stories.
The Jewish Quarter in the old city of Barcelona thrives, but as a commercial center and a tourist destination. The people who live over its storefronts do not light Shabbat candles or bake challah. But in Gracia, a progressive community of Jews, mostly praying without a full-time rabbi, creates a kahal to which all Jews are welcome. They are making Judaism live and continue and thrive in a place that once saw crushing prejudice and mass destruction. They are making each Shabbat, each holiday, each community gathering a fulfillment of the promise of redemption and wholeness, completion and shalom.
After sharing seder with a warm and generous Israeli family on a kibbutz near Ashkelon, I traveled to Barcelona for the rest of my vacation, meeting Rachel for some much-needed time together. The modernisme architecture, World’s Fair grounds and buildings, and Gothic streets provided countless diversions and amusements; contemporary art exhibits around the city and the “Blue Period” works in the Picasso museum sparked thoughts and discussions. And the narrow streets of the Jewish Quarter, nearly indistinguishable from other narrow streets in the winding alleyways of the old Roman city, changed how I will sing “Next Year in Jerusalem” at future seders.
Spain’s once-thriving Jewish population, a large group in the city of Barcelona, living mostly alongside their Christian neighbors but in a close-knit community (the “kahal, a Hebrew word we still use today) and geographical area known as “The Call”>, faced persecution and eventually expulsion at the hands of Spain’s Catholic rulers. This is far from a story of redemption; rather, it is one of desperation and mourning—an entire community forced to convert, to migrate, to leave behind a rich culture, personal networks, lives they had built over centuries. The only trace of Jewish life in Spain that Rachel and I could find were a few doorposts marked in places where a mezuzah had once been affixed, some inscriptions along the walls of buildings that now house souvenir shops and clothing stores, and the remains of a 12-th century synagogue that now serves as a museum.
Unlike Barcelona’s Church tours, which focus on art, architecture, and history, the synagogue and museum also explains religion, outlining major Jewish practices and festivals for the non-Jewish tourist. Sadly, I am not sure how many of those the museum gets. When we walked in, the guide immediately asked us if we spoke Hebrew, and later that same day we ran into an Israeli tour group learning about the fraught and tragic history of our people in Spain and crowding together in the alleyways to imagine rather than see vibrant Jewish life in Barcelona.
Touching the stones of these former houses where people celebrated Passover and baked their Shabbat challah, I felt a sense of responsibility, as a Jew and as a future rabbi, to the memory of this community, but more so to Jewish communities around the world. It’s a feeling I never really internalized before, but I imagined what it might have meant, in medieval times, to be forced out of your village somewhere in the mountains, to reach the city of Barcelona, and to know that all you had to do was find the Call, and with it you would find open arms, a hot meal, a place to stay, an invitation to Shabbos dinner.
Later in the week, we visited another Jewish Quarter, in the city of Girona. Similarly, its museum, housed in what was once a major Girona synagogue, not only outlined the history of the Jewish community in Girona and in Spain, but also explained major Jewish beliefs, practices, and philosophies. The streets were narrow, and I could imagine the terrible days of being confined to just two streets with their intertwining courtyards, dead ends, and shallow stairs. Photographs of a nearby palace showed how Jewish cemeteries were raided, their carved stones used as building materials for new, Christian communities.
For the most part, I spent my time in the Jewish Quarters in contemplation—not in overwhelming or debilitating grief, though I certainly felt a sadness for a community that has all but disappeared. And then Friday afternoon came, and sunset approached, and it was time for Shabbat.
The progressive synagogue in Barcelona is not located on the nicest of the Gracia neighborhood’s streets. A metal grate covers the door until just before services begin, revealing curtained windows and a small mezuzah. But inside, it’s Jerusalem.
It was Kabbalat Shabbat at Bet Shalom. Greeting us warmly with a “Shabbat Shalom” and a kiss on each check, the dedicated members of this small but warm and welcoming kahal eagerly spoke with us (in broken Spanish, Hebrew, and English, and with much patience all around) about where we’re from, our visit, our synagogues, and my studies at HUC. Rabbi Jim Glazier, serving the community on his sabbatical from his home congregation in Vermont, graciously invited me to light the Shabbat candles and say the blessing, a great honor. The melodies were familiar, the cantor’s voice and presence were smooth and prayerful, the faces were bright and smiling, the mood in the room was enveloping, open, inviting. After the prayer, we chatted with Spanish, Catalonian, Italian, American, French—I can’t even count all the places of origin—members and visitors, students on their year abroad, families, friends. Rosina Levy, who helped us organize our visit, introduced us to members of the community, translated, learned about our lives, told us about the community’s activities, and generally did much to create a warm atmosphere. Suddenly, several people started setting up tables in the center of the room, and we found ourselves sitting down to a very late dinner (a Catalonian tradition), prepared by a member of the community. People lingered, talking and laughing, eating and drinking (we passed on the shots of Tequila!), sharing stories.
The Jewish Quarter in the old city of Barcelona thrives, but as a commercial center and a tourist destination. The people who live over its storefronts do not light Shabbat candles or bake challah. But in Gracia, a progressive community of Jews, mostly praying without a full-time rabbi, creates a kahal to which all Jews are welcome. They are making Judaism live and continue and thrive in a place that once saw crushing prejudice and mass destruction. They are making each Shabbat, each holiday, each community gathering a fulfillment of the promise of redemption and wholeness, completion and shalom.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
That These Things Never End
This Friday evening at sunset, I gathered with a crowd of hundreds of Israelis and tourists at the modern pier of Tel Aviv to pray and “l’kabel et haShabbat”—to welcome the Sabbath. Shabbat binds together the Divine and the human. The sun sets and time turns the sixth day into the seventh without our intervention, but it is our intention to “remember” and “keep” Shabbat that confirms the holiness of this day of rest.
On a soft, wooden pier that sloped up and down like gentle hills, we sang Psalms and folk songs not only to mark the time of transition between mundane and holy but actively to invite Shabbat into our lives. We did so with the time-tested words of the siddur (prayer book) and with twentieth- and twenty-first-century songs and poems, including Hannah Senesch’s “To Caesaria”:
Eli, Eli
Shelo yigamer le'olam:
Hachol vehayam
Rishrush shel hamayim
Berak hashamayim
Tefilat ha'adam
My God, My God
May these things never end:
The sand and the sea
The rustle of the water
The lightning in the sky
The prayer of humankind
A haunting melody made by our voices, the rich sound of the cello, and the gentle taps of a drum was replaced, as we finished our singing, with the rush of the waves of the Mediterranean, a sea that somehow feels far more vast and open and daunting and amazing at the long shoreline of Israel. The waves ebbing and flowing paid no attention to the rhythm of our Psalms and petitions, but kept crashing against the pier, spraying us. Inevitably.
This morning, as I was still thinking about the perpetually moving sea, I received an email from a friend I have had since the age of ten. Her brother has cancer, and the prognosis is disheartening. As he nears what is likely the end of his life, both he and his family are struggling with their complex, churning feelings. My friend wrote, “I am taking my life and my brother’s illness one day at a time, because I know that is all I can do.” She is not happy that her brother is ill, but she accepts that he is and seeks out opportunities to be with him in ways that enrich and sustain them both.
On Shabbat, I stopped the flow of my work week, breathed in the salt air, and watched a mundane afternoon turn into a holy evening. But the rhythm of this world also continued: my friend tried to find ways to both worry for her brother and wish for peacefulness for him. These things never end: illness, grief, joy, the care of a friend.
We invite Shabbat for many reasons, among them the desire for rest, in imitation of God’s resting after the work of creation. But the prayers we offer to usher in the Sabbath also indicate that we are cared for, that these prayers are in some way accepted, received, welcomed.
“Kabbalat” is about an active welcoming, but the root “kabal” also means to accept. Perhaps prayer can serve as an interruption to the waves that never end. Perhaps it can serve as a comforting reminder that the waves never end.
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