Erev Rosh Hashanah 5773 – Coming Home

Erev Rosh Hashanah 2012
Rabbi Rachel Goldenberg
Coming Home

A slave woman and her son cast out of their home with only a skin of water and some bread. They finished off both hours ago, and the mother, Hagar, desperately lays her son under a bush, not wanting to watch her child die. She sits a distance away, lifts up her voice, and weeps. God takes notice, and an angel calls to Hagar, asking, “What troubles you, Hagar?” The angel reassures her that God has heeded her cry and the cry of her boy and that Ishmael, our ancestor Abraham’s son, will survive and eventually become the leader of a great nation. Then God opens Hagar’s eyes, and she sees a well of water. She and her son both drink, and, the Torah tells us, God is with them. (Genesis 21)

אַחַת שָׁאַלְתִּי מֵאֵת־יְהֹוָה אוֹתָהּ אֲבַקֵּשׁ
שִׁבְתִּי בְּבֵית־יְהֹוָה כָּל־יְמֵי חַיַּי
לַחֲזוֹת בְּנֹעַם־יְהֹוָה וּלְבַקֵּר בְּהֵיכָלוֹ:

One thing I ask of the Holy One
only this do I seek:
To live in the house of God
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Holy One,
[to be at home] in God’s holy place.
(Psalm 27)

Hagar and Ishmael are exiled, but they are not abandoned. They are thrown out of their home, they are wandering in a dry, inhospitable desert, but even there, they discover that they are protected, loved and cared for. God takes notice of them.

Not only do Hagar and Ishmael have what they need to survive. They have a sense of purpose to their lives – Ishmael will become the father of a great nation. They know that they matter. Even in the harsh desert there is a well. They are at home in this harsh world.

Two generations later, our ancestor Jacob is also in exile. In his case, he is running away from home, where he has just caused major upheaval. He stole the first-born blessing of his father from his twin brother Esau, and Esau has threatened to kill him.

Jacob is on the road, and the sun has set. Alone and afraid, with only a stone for a pillow, he goes to sleep. He dreams of a staircase stretching from the earth towards heaven, and angels are going up and down it.
God is standing right next to him and promises Jacob that his descendants shall be like the dust of the earth and that all the families of the earth will bless themselves by him and his descendants. God tells him, “Remember – I am with you. I will protect you wherever you go.”

When Jacob wakes up from his dream he exclaims, “Surely God is present in this place, and I did not know it!” Shaken, he says, “Mah nora hamakom hazeh! How awesome is this place! This is none other than the abode of God, and that is the gateway to heaven.” Jacob names the place where he had the dream, “Beit El,” meaning, “the house of God.” (Genesis 28)

אַחַת שָׁאַלְתִּי מֵאֵת־יְהֹוָה אוֹתָהּ אֲבַקֵּשׁ
שִׁבְתִּי בְּבֵית־יְהֹוָה כָּל־יְמֵי חַיַּי
לַחֲזוֹת בְּנֹעַם־יְהֹוָה וּלְבַקֵּר בְּהֵיכָלוֹ:

We chant this Psalm during the month preceding Rosh Hashana, as we prepare ourselves for the journey of these holy days. We typically call this journey teshuvah, a turning back onto the path of the lives we intend to live, a turning towards God for forgiveness.

One thing I ask of the Holy One
only this do I seek:
To live in the house of God
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Holy One,
[to be at home] in God’s holy place.

That God might shelter me in His sukkah
on an evil day,
grant me the protection of His tent.

The Psalm expresses yearning for God’s forgiveness. But it doesn’t use the language of sin, punishment and repentance. Instead, we have this heartfelt request for just one thing only – to be allowed to sit in God’s house, to dwell in God’s holy Presence, to be sheltered and protected by God’s sukkah – God’s tent.

I wouldn’t interpret the text literally, as if God dwells in some specific, physical place. Rather, to live in the house of God and to gaze upon the beauty of the Holy One is a state of being. It is a feeling of being at home in the world, at home in my life. This, the Psalmist says, is the essence of teshuva and the purpose of this season. As we enter a New Year, we ask what it might mean for us all to truly come home.

Both of these stories – of Jacob and Hagar – illustrate the transformational experience of being forced into exile and coming home, not to a particular location, but to God. Both stories give us hope that when we feel estranged, shut out, cut off, lost, abandoned, fatigued or broken – whether due to traumatic circumstances beyond our control, as in the case of Hagar, or because of some tearing that we have caused, as in the case of Jacob – that there is a pathway back to wholeness and peace.
That path probably does not lead right back to our starting place, but it can potentially lead to a state of being, where I might feel, at least for a moment here and there, that I have found shelter from the harshness of my daily struggles. Just as Jacob has found a gateway to heaven in the middle of nowhere, we too can have moments of knowing that we are held in an embrace we cannot see, but which gives us the strength to face the challenges that confront us, whether it is my work or my lack of work, the raising of my children, or conflicts with family or friends, illness, uncertainty of all kinds, my own shortcomings.

Our tradition uses this motif of finding God in the wilderness over and over again. As Jews we are meant to see our lives as individuals and as a People as a constant cycling between being in exile from and returning to God. This motif is one way to capture the spiritual process of “teshuvah,” or “return.” Writing about this concept of teshuvah, Rabbi Lawrence Kushner posits that the world itself endures “because of the ever-present yearning and gesture of returning home to our Source. Through this return, all life is reunited with the Holy One of all Being.” (The Book of Words, Lawrence Kushner, p. 31-32)

Not only do all of us have within us an ever-present yearning to return to our Source. But God too yearns for our return. We hear this in Moses’ parting words to us, in the book of Deuteronomy, that when “you return to the Eternal your God. . . then the Holy One will restore your fortunes and take you back in love. God will bring you together again from all the peoples where He has scattered you. Even if your outcasts are at the ends of the world, from there God will gather you, from there God will fetch you.” (Deut. 30)

Yes – this is a Jewish idea. God will go to the ends of the earth in order to take us back in love.

According to Kabbalistic teaching, God’s love, or chesed, is constantly flowing into the universe. Our task is to figure out how to access that flow. Sometimes, all we need to do is open our eyes and notice the goodness that is right there in front of us, as Hagar opened her eyes and saw the well of water. In other cases, we need to open our hearts to others who have hurt us or whom we have hurt, removing the barriers to the flow of love between us through apology and forgiveness.

We can also serve as the vessels for God’s chesed in the world, helping the people in our own community or in the world who are experiencing their own physical or spiritual exile.

I experienced this kind of chesed when I and my family were forced to flee our home in Deep River in the wee hours of a cold April morning because of a serious electrical fire that started in our kitchen. Our neighbors Kim and Steve immediately took us in. And I’ll never forget our neighbors on the other side – Phyllis Haut wrapping my son in her huge sweater, and Tim Haut wrapping me in a huge hug. Then, warm clothing arrived from neighbors across the street whose names I don’t even know.

Within hours, we had a place to stay, at Carol LeWitt’s house, until we could find a more permanent refuge. Food and drink appeared miraculously and in such abundance that we are still defrosting and eating it five months later!! And once we found a temporary residence, more things materialized – dishes, pots & pans, cutlery, a toaster, a coffee pot – you name it.

Within minutes of our “exile,” our eyes were opened, and there was a well, overflowing with love. And it hasn’t stopped.

It has been a long haul, and we have several more months to go before we return to our house. But the love that so many people have given us – the compassion that all of you have shown us – is what has made it bearable and even meaningful. Your acts of chesed have helped me to remember that even though I feel displaced, I am at home in this world.

My family and I are not the only recipients of the Divine chesed that flows through this congregation.
This year we lovingly brought several members of our community, among them Leah Pear, Hy Fink, and George Glassman, to their final resting place. This year, so many of you brought food and attended shiva minyans to comfort your fellow community members, even those whom you hadn’t met before. This year, a number of folks put in hours of loving labor to help a struggling congregant prepare her house for sale. This year, this congregation turned out in large numbers to pitch in and celebrate holidays, B’nei Mitzvah, and Shabbat.

When I say that we are a community of “Chesed,” I do mean the extraordinary work of our Chesed committee, co-chaired by Marilyn White-Gottfried and Beth Brewer. And I mean more than that. All of the work we do, as staff and as volunteers, comes from a place of love. I see it every day, from what happens in our office, to the religious school, to the maintenance of the building, to Board meetings. Here, we can create a home to come home to.

In the story of Jacob’s dream, the word, “place,” or, “makom,” in Hebrew, appears six times. In the Midrash, the rabbis teach that this word “makom” is actually a name for God. On the road, in the middle of the night, Jacob finds the comfort and the faith to move into an uncertain future. He finds that aspect of God that is named, “makom.” That experience of knowing that the universe is a caring, hospitable place, and that he matters.

This place can simply be one where you come to be with other Jews, to reconnect with your roots, to learn some Torah, to send your kids to Religious School and get them Bar Mitzvahed. And that is all good stuff. But this place can be so much more. When we bring our love here; when we are open to the love that is offered, this beautiful synagogue building becomes a makom – a place where God dwells – a place where that flow of love is channeled and contained.

So too in the world outside these walls. When we bring our love to the world – when we are open to receive it, any place can be a makom. When we are fortunate enough to experience that makom, I venture to say that we are granted taste of the Messianic Age – a day when there finally will be relief from violence, respite from the overwhelming problems of poverty, hunger, and war – a day when the whole world will return to its Source and come under the shelter of God’s sukkah.

My prayer for this New Year, for all of us, is to know that when we are lost, when we are in exile from ourselves or from others, when we feel overwhelmed by the burdens of the world’s problems, that the flow of Divine love is accessible. There is a path back to the Source.

And when we hear the shofar tomorrow, we will know that it is indeed calling us home.

“Mah nora ha-makom ha-zeh.”
“How awesome is this place.”
(choir sings Mah Nora by Shefa Gold)