The Synagogue
What follows are my remarks from our congregation's annual fundraiser and some tentative thoughts about the meaning of the synagogue for our new age.
...Many of us attend countless charity events throughout the year,
especially during these Spring months.
We are often beseeched to support these worthy charities with dire
warnings. Our gifts are equated with
saving lives. Our monies go to important
research that could in fact save someone from cancer or protect an Israeli city
from Hamas rockets. Please don’t
misunderstand. I am not at all suggesting
that these charities are unimportant.
They do extraordinarily important work.
For those of us privileged enough to have attended the recent AIPAC conference
we came to understand this significant work.
Yet more often than not these
charities appeal to our fears and worries.
They ask for our donations in terms of life and death. The synagogue cannot appeal to such
sentiments. It was once, in the not too
distant past that we could ask for donations to a synagogue by saying “The
Jewish people will die without the synagogue.
Give for our survival. Give so
that we can guarantee your grandchildren will be Jewish.”
Despite the fact that I continue to
believe in this mantra, that the synagogue is the only institution that can
best guarantee Jewish survival, I recognize that such appeals no longer
work. We must appeal to something else
and perhaps even more significant, for survival must be wedded to meaning. In our world most, if not all, believe that
you can live without the synagogue. You
can even have a bar/bat mitzvah without a synagogue, not a good one of course,
but the valued ceremony nonetheless. I
remain perplexed by the belief of far too many that one can become a bar/bat
mitzvah in the absence of community. Yet
we recognize that such is the sentiment of our age.
And that is why I remain even more
grateful for your support this evening.
It is more that just I am really happy to see you. It is because your attendance lends meaning
to our synagogue. It is where we can
best find community. It is where anyone
can be welcomed regardless of station or circumstance, means or knowledge,
commitment or understanding.
Thus the only argument that might
work for our institution is that here one can find meaning and community. In an age when a group of people can be
standing together but each texting someone else on their cell phones, we need
community more than ever.
Here we can find a circle of
community. Here we might become better, our children might become the menschen
we dare to dream they can be. Here we
can learn to love our Jewish traditions and become attached to the Jewish
people. Here our children might come to
love Jewish life. Here, at the JCB, we
can rediscover the joy of Jewish living.
Those arguments can perhaps become the compelling arguments for our age
and in them we can discover our new trope.
So tonight I thank you for helping
to affirm that the synagogue is vital and that our JCB community unique. May we go from strength to strength, m’chayil
l’chayil.