Shabbat Terumah
You can listen to Rabbi Deborah's sermon here or read it below
A number of years ago at the conference of the European Union for Progressive Judaism in London, a question was posed by (or in the name of) Jeremy Leigh. It was remarked that sitting in large fancy rooms eating dinner has been a hallmark of many moments in Jewish history. And so we were asked, if someone was to walk past the room we were in, 150 years on, and remark about the significance in the eyes of history of our gathering there, what would they say? Would they say, here, tonight, some people drank too much wine and gossiped a lot and nobody really remembers it, or would they say that here tonight something that changed the course of Jewish history happened. I don’t remember that gathering for much more than a long walk back from dinner with a broken ankle, and I’m fairly sure that though it was a very lovely conference, it didn’t make the history books.
What’s happening this weekend in our reform movement however, in the story of British Jewry, will.
On 4 January 1942, representatives from the West London, North Western, St. George Settlement, Glasgow, Manchester and Bradford synagogues met at the Midland Hotel in Manchester and founded the Associated British Synagogues, later renamed Associated Synagogues of Great Britain. On the 26th of February 2023, representatives from 42 synagogues of that association which became a movement will meet, and one synagogue, the founding synagogue of our movement, West London synagogue, will from tomorrow no longer be a member.
On this Shabbat, we heard the story of the building of the mishkan, the organising structure of the Israelite community in the wilderness, the traveling framework that helped reinforce the ritual and communal tasks they performed together, and that in time gave way to the fixed structure of a temple in Jerusalem and then in time our synagogues we now gather in. There’s no irony lost on me that it’s this weekend, just as we are in the middle of a Torah cycle focused on how to travel in community together, how to build and relate to each other, that we’re also in this moment in time where Torah is speaking straight to our lives, as our lives give us new material through which to interpret the words of Torah.
I’m sad about this. All of your clergy are sad about this. But I’m not going to talk this morning about the choice that the leadership of West London have made- I am going to talk about why this is not the choice that the leadership of FRS have made.
There’s a verse in our sedra that we drew upon a lot when we were building our own synagogue:
וְעָ֥שׂוּ לִ֖י מִקְדָּ֑שׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּ֖י בְּתוֹכָֽם׃
v’asu li mikdash v’shachanti btocham
Make for me a sanctuary, a holy place, and I will dwell within them.
What does within them mean? Some say it means literally God will be felt within each person, others that b’tocham means in their midst, like when the Israelites built the mishkan God would come and bring god’s presence, like the cloud that covered Mount Sinai, and rest it amongst or upon the community.
The word ‘v’shachanti’ is the root that gives shape to one of the multitude of ways that Jews understand god. V’shachanti, ש-כ-ן, shachan, Shechina- the divine presence. The Shechina accompanies people, dwells with them when they learn, infact it’s the manifestation of the divine that seems to have this special almost mythical property of being able to be summoned by gatherings of Jews. Some say two, others say ten- the origin of the idea of minyan.
There’s a moment in the Talmud when an emperor mocks Rabban Gamliel because of this idea of a divine presence who dwells when there are enough Jews in one place.
He says:
You say that the Divine Presence dwells in any place where there are ten adult male Jews: How many Divine Presences are there?
Rabban Gamliel summoned the servant of the emperor and hit him on his neck.
Rabban Gamliel said to him: Why did you allow the sun to enter the house of the emperor?
The emperor said to him: The sun rests upon all the world; no one can prevent it from shining.
Rabban Gamliel said to him: And if the sun, which is one of ten thousand attendants that are before the Holy One, Blessed be He, rests upon all the world, the Divine Presence of the Holy One, Blessed be He, all the more so rests upon the world.
The text hits at a paradox- it is both true that according to our tradition God’s presence is felt and known everywhere, and that there are moments and times when acting together makes the divine feel more present, where things become possible that would not be possible otherwise.
If the mishkan isn’t really about causing God to dwell in a particular place- especially as God is everywhere- then what is it for? Rather than an organising structure for God, the mishkan is an organising structure for us. There’s a clue to the primacy of this function in the earlier part of the parasha, where Avi explained to us that anyone whose heart moved them- male or female, rich or poor, was able to bring contributions to the building of the mishkan. This is an opt in activity, it only works when people allow themselves to go through the transformative process of understanding its value and thus choosing to be part of making it.
When talking about structures of community, Rabbi Harold Kushner teaches that “We don’t go to synagogue or church at a stipulated time because God keeps “office hours.” We go because that is when we know there will be other people there, seeking the same kind of encounter we are seeking.” I imagine that this kind of voluntary contribution is in the same vein of seeking, it allows people to mark themselves out as wanting to be counted in, because they understand the value of what will then be done together.
In our post- mishkan world, the equivalent structures we build to enable us to meet others, and to do the work of community are our synagogues. But not everything our communities need, and not everything the world needs from our communities can be achieved as individual islands, small clusters of Jews acting alone.
Our prayer books, our Beit Din, our youth movement, our involvement in our European and worldwide movements and our power as part of a collective voice that includes the largest denomination of Jews in North America, they’re all things we can only do because we work together with others.
Let me be honest- at FRS we have a privilege- enough clergy to have our own Beit Din, enough youth leaders to run our own camps, enough contacts and talented people to train our lay leaders and inspire our professional team, enough liturgists to write our own prayer books. Some might say, we don’t need to be part of a movement. The ability to be ambivalent about being part of something bigger is a privilege, because we could only say it if we knew that others will continue to represent the collective, and continue to contribute to the wider picture.
Being part of the Reform Movement means we’re part of a community of 1.8 million reform Jews worldwide in more than 1,250 congregations in over 50 countries. It’s our collective power that means that it’s Rabbi Rick Jacobs who will address Israel’s largest rally tonight, bringing the voice of diaspora Jews into this crucial juncture of our people’s future, it’s our collective power that protects the Jewish status of all of our converts from Barnet to Bradford to Belarus, that ensures cooperation globally for gittin, that makes our voices relevant to those with political power.
It’s the collective power of our reform movement globally that allowed us to be so agile just a year ago, relationships built through youth movement camps suddenly repurposed into organising dozens of buses to help entire communities of our members reach safety from the Russian bombardment of Ukraine. It’s that collective fundraising power that has supported those families for a year now, that has kept them together in community, enabled them to be hosted by our movement in Germany and Israel, that makes a commitment to be with them after the war to rebuild the centres of community that have been destroyed.
This isn’t someone else’s task, it’s all of ours. We step into that responsibility, it helps us to articulate that we aren’t just here for the sake of those who are in this room now or who touch our communal life in some way, but we’re also here because our presence allows something to happen for others. Because we make the voices of others louder, because we are able to share our resources, our space, our learning and our time, and because the diversity of what we are part of enriches us too.
In 1946 Rabbi Leo Baeck addressed the first post war gathering of the WUPJ in London. He said:
‘we have too much little judaism- a Judaism which exhausts itself in belonging to a congregation or perhaps to some Association and which in such service deems to have fulfilled its share of Jewish duty…. Judaism cannot live without the Jewish congregation; but the congregation is not the ultimate purpose; it is not an end in itself, it is there for the sake of Judaism, for the sake of the great Jewish whole.’
This community will continue to be the community that hears the invitation to bring gifts to the building of a sacred space with others. A community whose outlook is always to the greater whole, and who chooses to measure our impact not in terms of how strong this community is, but what kind of contribution the strength of this community can make to the greater tasks which we serve. As we enter a new chapter in the life of Reform Judaism in Great Britain, may the divine presence dwell with all those who gather and journey together, and may we remain open hearted and open armed to all those who wish to travel or rejoin this path with us.
