by Rabbi Nathan Kamesar
Jewish tradition has long taught of the sacredness of engaging with matters beyond what today we would define as falling within a strictly religious sphere.
In the Book of Jeremiah, for example, the prophet, channeling the Divine word, tells us “דִרְשׁוּ אֶת־שְׁלוֹם הָעִיר אֲשֶׁר הִגְלֵיתִי אֶתְכֶם,” “Dirshu et-shlom ha’ir asher higleiti etkhem” — commonly translated as “seek the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you and pray to God in its behalf.”
At one point, this verse supported the development of the practice of offering prayers on behalf of the countries in which we Jews found ourselves. It’s one reason why, for example, prayers for the welfare of the United States have been canonized in many contemporary prayerbooks.
On another level, this verse, and other Jewish teachings like it, support the sacredness of participating in our civic democracies — of voting. Voting, Jewish tradition implies, can be a sacred act.
This coming Tuesday, May 19, will be the primary election in Pennsylvania. Among other offices up for election, the race for US Representative for Pennsylvania’s third congressional district, the district representing Society Hill Synagogue and many (though not all) of the surrounding neighborhoods, is competitive for the first time in ten years, with the retirement of our current Representative, Dwight Evans.
Recent news reports have highlighted facets of this race touching on questions facing the Jewish community, too, including the broader community’s relationship to Israel and the charged, fraught rhetoric that courses through that debate. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Israel, and the debate surrounding it, has become “the defining issue in the race.” The Jewish Exponent also covered the race.
Given the stakes, and given the ongoing tradition of engaging with matters of the broader welfare of the community, we implore everyone to vote on Tuesday, May 19.
I next share the D’var Torah that I offered this past Friday night.
This coming Friday night, May 15, will be the final Friday night service of the season. Remember that we continue to meet for Shabbat Saturday morning services every week throughout the year, always followed by Kiddush lunch. It’s a great way to continue to get to know your community, or to explore the community if you’re considering joining.
We also have our new Summer Shabbat at Home series, in which members of the Society Hill Synagogue community are opening up their homes on select Friday nights throughout the summer, hosting a Shabbat dinner for the opportunity to connect together in the spirit of Shabbat. You can read more about the series here and sign up here!
Rabbi Alan Lew suggests that the purpose of ritual is to render the invisible, visible.
He tells the story of the famous architect Buckminster Fuller, whose students once asked him to name the most important figure of the twentieth century. Sigmund Freud, he said without a moment’s hesitation. They were shocked. Why Freud? Why not Einstein, about whom Fuller had written extensively, or some other figure from the world of science or economics or architecture, to which he had devoted his considerable energy? So Fuller explained himself. Sigmund Freud, he said, was the one who had introduced the idea that the invisible is more important than the visible.
“Judaism,” Rabbi Lew argues, “came into the world to bring that same news: the invisible is more important than the visible. From the beginning of time,” he writes, “humans had seen the world as a play of competing forces, which they had personified as gods. The sea struggled against the earth, the rain either overwhelmed the forests and fields or famished them, men and beasts hunted each other, hatred and vengeance, love and compassion, struggled for hegemony in the human heart. But Judaism came to say that beneath this appearance of conflict, multiplicity, and caprice there was a oneness, a singularity, all-powerful and endlessly compassionate, endlessly just.”
Ritual, he is suggesting, is the Jewish way of engaging with this invisible presence.
We are engaged in a ritual right now, as we will be tomorrow. Tonight we have engaged in the ritual of Kabbalat Shabbat, of receiving Shabbat into our midst, allowing its peaceful spirit to infuse our lives. We are still engaged in the ritual of Ma’ariv, of calling out the Sh’ma, calling out “listen,” for this oneness, with the coming of the evening light.
Tomorrow we’ll be engaged in the ritual of Shaharit, once again calling out Sh’ma, while also bringing our Amidah, our morning offering, of connection to the Divine. From there we’ll move into the ritual of seder kri’at haTorah, the service of taking out and reading from our Torah, our sacred text, re-enacting revelation. And of course, layered onto all of that, we will be engaged in the ritual of celebrating a young person in our community becoming Bat Mitzvah, taking on a newfound relationship to the mitzvot, the sacred callings of her people.
With respect to each of these, this teaching suggests, the rituals in which we are participating have us engaged with realms that are unseen.
Jewish tradition believes in the perpetual presence of the unseen and invites us to live our lives in concert with it. Jewish teachings speak of heavenly realms; of s’firot, divine emanations; of k’dushah, holiness.
And yet, they also recognize that it can be easy to miss all of this. Life is routine, writes Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, “and routine can produce resistance to wonder.” He cites the Jewish mystical leader, the Baal Shem Tov, for the teaching that “replete is the world with a spiritual radiance, replete with sublime and marvelous secrets. But a small hand held against the eye hides it all. Just as a small coin held over the face can block out the sight of a mountain, so can the vanities of living block out the sight of the infinite light.”
The essence of Judaism, Heschel suggests, “is not in grasping what is describable but in sensing what is ineffable. The goal,” he says, “is to train the reason for the appreciation of that which lies beyond reason. It is only through our sense of the ineffable,” he concludes, “that we may intuit the mystery” behind it all.
Perhaps becoming Bat Mitzvah can be an illustration of this.
On one level, the transition that Johanna and her family are going through is visible for all the world to see. Our children grow before our eyes. One minute we pray they’ll sleep through the night, the next they sleep the morning away. One minute they are clutching on to us as we drop them off at school, the next pushing us out of the classroom — I wish I wasn’t speaking from personal experience on that one.
And yet, there is also the unseen. A young person making sense of the world in new ways, aware of unspoken dynamics among her friends, her peers, her community. Paradoxically, we witness something unseen take place over the course of the Bat Mitzvah — a young person proving to us, and more importantly to herself, how much she is capable of; chanting gorgeously before hundreds of people; offering a teaching we hadn’t yet considered based on a millennia-old text. She develops earned confidence; a sense of trust in the core of who she is, as she’ll teach us about tomorrow. Waves of maturity unfold, the legs beneath us strengthen.
Judaism, effectively, has us weave a life in concert not only with the material, but with the transcendent, whose traces are hidden and yet present throughout our lives. Each pause, each weigh station on the arc of Jewish life — a Friday night service, a blessing before a bite of food, a mezuzah in a doorway, a Bat Mitzvah service, the loss of a loved one — has us notice this presence, has us remove our hand so that we sense the infinite light.
We are grateful to Johanna, because her presence at this moment provides us with the opportunity to come together to reflect on the unseen.
As Rabbi Lew writes, “Gathered together as a single indivisible entity, we sense that we do in fact have efficacy” — on the unseen dimensions of existence that we do not otherwise have access to — “as a larger, transcendent spiritual unit, one that has been expressing meaning and continuity for three thousand years, one that includes everyone who is here, and everyone who is not here.”
It’s an honor to be part of this with all of you. Wishing you a Shabbat of Holiness.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi K.