L’shana tova! I hope everyone is starting off 5774 in sweetness. So much has changed in my life over the last lunar year. I can only imagine the same is true of many of you. While in services last night and today, I was struck by a few repetitive thoughts.
1. Count your blessings
2. Everyone wants and craves community
3. It’s not what your shul can do for you, but what you can do for your shul
I want to address each of these, but I’m going to start with the first one. In the quiet minutes (after the superfluous greetings, awkward cheek kisses, and waves) before services start, our prayerbook offers up pages of meditations. The very first one for Rosh Hashanah is this:
Just as the hand, held before the eye, can hide the tallest mountain, so the routine of everyday life can keep us from seeing the vast radiance and the secret wonders that fill the world.
-Chasidic, 18th century
I think more than anything, this is what I appreciate about the High Holy Days. It’s an opportunity to step away from our daily obligations and see the world and ourselves for what they are: miraculous.
I was deeply affected at this year’s Rosh Hashanah services. I went from being overwhelmed with the beauty of the liturgy, to swimming in shame over my absence in the Jewish community, to being swept up in the haunting melodies, to being anxiously motivated to do better this year.
I feel like that’s how a lot of people must feel, sitting before the ark. Ducking the glare of those Torah scrolls, soaking in the buzz of hundreds of voices chanting ancient hebrew texts as one.
I am grateful for so much this year. First and foremost, my family. I am reminded again and again of the gift of family. I have four people on call, 24 hours a day, seven days a week for me. I have four people who would do anything for me. I have four people who make me laugh, call me out, and help me up. It is something that was just given to me. I did not earn my family. It fell into my lap, a gift from God. A guiding light forever in my life. It is rare, and precious, and so hard for others to understand.
I am grateful for those things I’ve built in my life: a rewarding career, unimaginably supportive friends, a precious pooch.
But in counting my blessings, I’m aware of this dangling participle in my life. I’ve been modifying the wrong noun. I have worked diligently to make myself worthy of human connection, but really I should be connecting first. I spend so much of my time trying to be someone worth knowing, that I forget to be known. It’s like carving a key to a home that will never be built.
Sitting in services last night and this morning, I realized that I felt strangely out of place. I have been a member of my shul since I was nine. I’ve been involved in various aspects of temple life, on and off, for 17 of my 26 years. I am friends with some of my clergy. Yet still, I grappled with this feeling of outsider-ness. Much of the dialogue and sermons from the last 24 hours were directed towards community building within the Jewish community. The entirety of our shul (and I think the Reform movement) is soaking up a book by Dr. Ron Wolfson called Relational Judaism: Using the Power of Relationships to Transform the Jewish Community.
I haven’t read it, but I want to. I realized that at my most active, I am coming to temple for my friendships. I am coming to worship with people who get me at an intrinsic level because they are part of this tribe. One of my favorite things about myself is being Jewish, so why was I not feeling jewish enough today?
That got me to wondering what the temple would have to offer me in order for me to be more involved. It’s something I’ve discussed time and time again with a dear friend of mine who is a cantor. What hit me today, is that, at least for me, the temple needn’t do anymore. It has done so much. This is on me. I need to start focusing on doing for my temple, not having my temple do for me.
It’s a gloriously simple concept, and one that I’ve ascribed to in many other areas of my life, particularly work. I am happy at work because of what I am bringing to work, not because of what is is bringing to me. It’s a relationship of give-and-take, not taken-and-then-give. My thoughts were turned upside down today, in a good way.
I’ve been searching for something more from my temple, and I realized that I am looking for me. I am looking to find myself in it. It’s not a matter of programming, trips, or forums. For me, I need to start giving so I can feel belonging. I need to start connecting to feel connected.
So why have I waited so long? It goes back to the dangling participle idea. I have been modifying the wrong noun. I have been looking to make myself better, greater, more studied, more pretty, more ______. In reality, I am worthy now. More so, I feel like more than ever my community needs me. I don’t mean to to say that I have some fabulous set of facilities, abilities, connections, capabilities to bring to the table. What I do mean, is that what I do have I should give. Tzedakah is not money. It’s acts. Action. Doing.
Luckily for me, I have been given tremendous opportunities by my shul to get involved. It’s just a matter of overcoming my fear, and jumping in.
If I learned one thing this Rosh Hashanah, it is this: I am blessed, I crave community, and it’s time to use my blessings to build my community.
L’Shana Tova, may it be a sweet year for all of you.
And You Shall Love 