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I cannot imagine the experience of Edan Alexander, the 21-year-old hostage released this week from Hamas captivity, and his family and friends, upon their reunion. Barukh atah adonai matir asurim, a traditional Jewish blessing says: Blessed is the One through whose spirit captives are freed.
Still, our hearts lament the ongoing captivity, for 587 days and counting, of the 58 remaining hostages in Gaza, at most 23 of whom may still be alive. Each week on Shabbat at Society Hill Synagogue, we pray for their safe return.
We also pray each week for peace. We know war unleashes great suffering. Our hearts can hold prayers for the safety and security of the Jewish people in Israel while also praying for the safety and the nourishment of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Children are on both sides of these borders, and we can pray for a resolution that keeps Israel protected from those who would do her harm, while also praying for the safety, dignity, and food aid that would ensure innocent Gazan civilians remain alive.
On one level it is pat, at this point, to simply pray for peace. This moment calls for so much more. On another level, that is the ultimate result for which we yearn: a world where each people can live with safety, dignity, and prosperity. With peace.
I encourage those of you interested in learning where your fellow congregants are in relationship to the conflict in this moment, and in having the opportunity to share your own thoughts, to participate in a Society Hill Synagogue Israel Listening Circle — a small-group gathering organized by our Israel Discussion and Engagement Subcommittee (IDEC) designed to foster respectful, compassionate dialogue about how recent events in Israel and Gaza have impacted our lives.
Sessions will take place on June 8, 9, or 10, depending on respondents’ interest and availability. Trained congregant facilitators will guide each group in creating a safe, caring space for sharing.
You can review the Code of Conduct for the listening circles and a Summary of our Israel Survey Results, which shaped this program, and register here. For questions or more information, please contact Jeremey Newberg, IDEC Chair, at israel@societyhillsynagogue.org.
I’m grateful to Jeremey and the subcommittee’s leadership for establishing this important opportunity for the synagogue community.
Shifting gears, I’d now like to share the D’var Torah I delivered this past Shabbat:
Here at Society Hill Synagogue, we just completed a five-session Adult Education course exploring the meanings and the intentions behind Kabbalat Shabbat, the service we’ve just sung here tonight, and I wanted to share some of our learning with you all.
It all starts in the Talmud, that sacred collection of rabbinic teachings and conversations and dialogue, with a passing reference, amidst its thousands of pages, to two rabbis, Rabbi Hanina and Rabbi Yannai, and this is what it says:
On the eve of Shabbat, Rabbi Hanina would wrap himself in his garment and stand at nightfall, and say:
Come and we will go out to greet Shabbat the queen.
Bo’u v’netze likrat Shabbat haMalkah
בּוֹאוּ וְנֵצֵא לִקְרַאת שַׁבָּת הַמַלְכָּה
Rabbi Yannai put on his garment on Shabbat eve and said:
Enter, O bride. Enter, O bride.
Bo’i khalah, bo’i khalah
בּוֹאִי כַלָּה, בּוֹאִי כַלָּה
For centuries, that’s all we have in reference to Kabbalat Shabbat — no robust service where we all turn and face the door, no Lekhah Dodi, a mystical poem built around this bridal imagery — just a passing reference to a couple of rabbis, lost in the sea of the Talmud.
But over those centuries, a lot happens to the Jewish people. We are exiled, multiple times. We are exiled from the Promised Land; that had been happening even as the Talmud was being compiled — but then we were even exiled from the new lands we had come to call home.
One of those lands was S’farad, Spain, which, in the early middle ages, the tenth, eleventh, twelfth centuries, experienced something like a golden age for the Jewish people, not unlike the United States in the twentieth century — a golden age of diaspora in Spain in which Jewish philosophy, poetry, theology flourished. Only soon, this, too, came to an end with the Spanish Inquisition and ultimate expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492.
And where did many of these Jews end up but back in what was then known as Palestine, part of the Ottoman empire, some in a tiny town nestled in the hills of the Galilee known as Tzfat.
But these Jews did not come empty handed, certainly not spiritually empty handed. They came carrying with them the secrets of Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism. Kabbalah literally means “reception,” from lekabel, to receive. These refugees carried with them a received tradition which continued to blossom as they tended to it.
Part of what that tradition taught them is that they were not alone in their exile. The Talmud teaches that:
In every place to which [Israel was] exiled, the Sh’khinah, the divine presence, was exiled with them.
B’khol makom shegalu [Yisrael] — sh’khinah imahen
בְּכָל מָקוֹם שֶׁגָלוּ [יִשְׂרָאֵל] — שְׁכִינָה עִמָהֶן
As the people of Israel were in exile, so, too, was God.
And exile, of course, does not just mean physical dislocation. Exile is, in essence, the inverse of shalom, of wholeness. Exile is dislocation, physical and spiritual; exile is the rending, the tearing of the fabric of our lives. Exile is the reality of the condition of the world we live in — yes, filled with joy and play and sunshine — but also highly imperfect, with brokenness and heartache, too. The world is in exile.
What the Kabbalists teach is that if we are experiencing this, so, too, is God. If we are in exile, God is, too.
So what do we do about it? Well, here the Kabbalists have a plan, and here is where Kabbalat Shabbat, the reception of Shabbat, linked to that word, Kabbalah, enters the picture.
As a way of articulating the fragmentation of exile, of the world, of God, and of us, the Kabbalists rely on a spiritual language which includes something known as the s’firot, a word meaning something like spheres or vessels or manifestations.
If you took a “spiritual x-ray” of each of us, they teach, and of the world, and of God, we would all have within us the same basic structure of 10 s’firot, 10 divine manifestations — think of it as a universal, spiritual strand of DNA.
Our goal is to keep these s’firot, these spheres, in harmony with one another. Exile serves to create disharmony, but we can work to bring them back into harmony, and we are all interconnected; if we are able to bring our s’firot into harmony, God can experience that healing and harmonization, and vice versa.
Kabbalat Shabbat is a ritual act that helps facilitate this harmonization, this reintegration of our souls, our selves, and of God.
It does so through a careful selection of psalms and a composition of poetry, which stitches our heart back together, our soul back together, having an ultimate effect on the Divine soul.
As I often reference, the first six psalms we sing during Kabbalat Shabbat, referencing the first six days of the week, are deeply steeped in the imagery of sovereignty, majesty, awe.
God is sovereign! Let the earth exult, the many distant lands rejoice (Psalm 97).
Let the rivers clap their hands, the mountains sing joyously together at the presence of God — who is coming to govern the earth (Psalm 98).
God’s voice is majesty (Psalm 29).
Adonai malakh tagel ha’aretz
neharot yimha’u-khaf
kol Adonai behadar
יי מָלָךְ תָגֵל הָאָרֶץ
נְהָרוֹת יִמְחֲאוּ־כָף
קוֹל יי בֶּהָדָר׃
Part of our inner system of being is our inner strength, our inner drive to create, our inner sense of wonder. But on its own, fragmented from the other parts of our self, this part is lost, torn. Unchecked ambition, uncompassionate solipsism, self-centeredness.
And so on Shabbat, we invite it to merge with another part of ourselves, praying that this same healing, this same symbiosis, is evoked in the Divine self, too. And that part is evoked in the culmination of Kabbalat Shabbat, Lekhah Dodi, representing the seventh day: Lekhah Dodi, come my beloved. If the first part of Kabbalat Shabbat welcomed in majesty and awe and power, the second part welcomes in love and intimacy, vulnerability. The prayer is that the merger of these two, the consummation of these two, really inviting all the infinite parts of ourselves to reveal their oneness, is an invitation to healing, to have ourselves — and God — feel whole.
At multiple levels of the Kabbalat Shabbat service, we are seeking to bring about this yihud; this healing and oneness, evoking it in God, too.
As you may know, all Hebrew letters and words have numerical value. Rabbi Reuven Kimmelman points out that if you look at the refrain of Lekhah Dodi, (Lekhah dodi likrat kalah, p’nei Shabbat nekabelah…) it has exactly 26 letters, and what is the numerical value of the central name for God, YHVH, Adonai? 26.
Going a step further if you look at that refrain, the first line has 15 letters, and the second line has 11.
What is the numerical value of Yud Hey? 15.
And Vav Hey? 11.
15 and 11 is 26, Adonai, the Source of Being.
So when we sing Lekhah Dodi, we are singing to heal ourselves, and really, heal God, to bring Yud Hey and Vav Hey together, to unify YHVH, a unification that permeates all corners of the universe.
According to Jewish tradition, exile is the current state of the world’s condition, our condition, God’s condition. We feel our imperfections, the world’s imperfections, in a now pronounced way, all throughout the week, all throughout our lives. We work and we pray to bring ourselves out of exile; to draw on the strength we feel from God, so that we can bring about an age of redemption, of messianic redemption, as tradition calls it, what some understand to be the olam haba, the world to come.
Until that time, Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman teaches, channeling the ancient sages, we are able to persist, and even to flourish, because each week we get a glimpse of that time, that perfect unity and wholeness, through what the rabbis called a foretaste of the world to come: Shabbat.
We take the reins from those who came before us, the originators of this Kabbalat Shabbat ritual, to go out and receive Shabbat, to help us, and God, experience peace, wholeness, Shalom.
Shabbat Shalom and Lag Ba’Omer Same’ah,
Rabbi K.
