I am still haunted by the experience of walking into a large synagogue in Jerusalem for the first time one Friday night many years ago. I had been invited to a Shabbat dinner in the neighborhood close to the President’s house in Talbia and was excited to get a taste of Kabbalat Shabbat in a new place. Not one person greeted me, no one shook my hand or said Shabbat Shalom, nor even smiled at me. The only words spoken to me that night by a smartly dressed older man were, “zeh hamakom sheli. That is my seat.” I felt invisible, unseen, less than and rather humiliated that night. And now for something completely different. I have been very involved, as many of you know, with Hazon, a Jewish Environmental Organization based in New York, which hosts an annual Jewish Food Conference, previously in different venues in California and now at Isabella Freedman Retreat Center in Connecticut. In the Shabbat community that is created there, there are Jews and non-Jews, every level of observance and affiliation from very Orthodox to completely secular; multiple ages, genders, expressions of sexuality, people of color, people with different abilities, farmers, activists, rabbis, educators. I could go on, but really the point is, that from the moment I arrived there for the first time, I felt seen, valued for who I was and what I could bring, included and safe. Obviously this was an opposite experience to that Friday night in the Holy City of Jerusalem. I invite you to close your eyes and try to think of a time, or a place where you felt unseen, invisible, unwelcome. What did it feel like? What did you do?…Now, and sadly this may be harder for some of us, try to think back to a place or a time when you felt so welcomed and seen for who you were. How did that feel? What did you do?
For some of you the hard place may have been Bonai Shalom, and I hope for many of you the welcoming place was this community. It is a hard truth that many places and spaces in the wider Jewish world do not feel safe or embracing for many people. We might feel judged for not knowing enough, not being religious enough, wearing the wrong clothes, not having enough money; we might feel out of place because we don’t look like those around us, or we have a different sexual or gender identity, different political views, a special need and so much more. For some people it will only take one such experience for them never to return to that place. I am sure that most of us would love to think of our Jewish world as one full of love and compassion and tolerance, and many of us strive to make it so and yet we have not only seen the humiliation of being ignored in Jewish space, but actual brutal and violent intolerance.
In the same awful weekend at the end of July, we saw an ultra-Orthodox man stab six people in Jerusalem’s gay pride parade, killing a 16 year old girl Shira Banki and unidentified extremist Jewish settlers setting fire to a Palestinian home in the West Bank, resulting in the death of an 18 month old baby Ali Dawabsheh and later his parents. Although every single one of us here was outraged and appalled by these acts of hate and terror, they were awful reminders that the Jewish world is far from immune to religious fundamentalism, even though these were such isolated acts. Homophobia and racism are alive and well in the Jewish world, and I feel proud that members of this community were founders of JABA, the Jewish and Black Alliance, which was a local Jewish response to the Black Lives Matter movement and that others have been involved in organizations like Keshet and PFLAG; I am proud that Bonai Shalom strives to be an LGBT Safe Zone and that we have an active Inclusion Committee, which I will say more about later.
In a passionate and moving speech utterly condemning both of those acts of summer madness, Rabbi Benny Lau, nephew of the former Chief Rabbi of Israel, referring to the ritual in Deuteronomy where the elders of the closest town to an unsolved murder denounce their blood guilt, Rabbi Lau said the day after these events, “It is not possible to say ‘our hands did not spill this blood.” He continued, “Anyone who has been at a Shabbat table, or in a classroom, or in a synagogue, or at a soccer pitch, or in a club, or at a community center, and heard the racist jokes, the homophobic jokes, the obscene words, and didn’t stand up and stop it, is a partner to this bloodshed.”
“In the name of what Torah,” he asked, his voice cracking with emotion, “in the name of what God, does someone go and murder, do people go and burn a baby and his entire family? Whose Torah is this?” After railing against those in the Orthodox world who were lukewarm in their condemnation of these acts, he concluded: “The Torah is a Torah of light, and Judaism must illuminate the world.”
It may sound like a giant leap to suggest that we liberal Jews here in Boulder, Colorado are somehow complicit in these two horrific acts in Israel and the West Bank and yet, if we have not spoken out when we have witnessed words or actions that are racist, homophobic, intolerant and unwelcoming of another, then in a sense, we have. Yom Kippur is the day when we show up together and say multiple times, “al chayt sh’chatanu l’fanecha…for the sin we have sinned before You…” There is a real power to this vidui, this collective confession where we not only look deeply inside ourselves at how we as individuals have missed the mark, but how we could have done better together. “For the sin we have committed before You for not seeing the face of God in the other because they are different to me. And for the sin we have committed before You for excluding, when we could have included.”
The first human beings created in the Garden of Eden, according to the Torah, were literally earthlings, human beings, not defined by race, religion or sexuality, but by the fact that they were created B’tzelem Elohim, in God’s Divine Image. Every single human being since then, according to our tradition, is a descendant of Adam and Eve and, therefore, a manifestation of God’s image, the Divine Face; so every time we make any other person, whoever they are and however different from us they may be, less than, we actually diminish a part of God. The famous teaching in the Mishnah (Sanhedrin 4:5), which I have also heard quoted from the Koran by the way, says that destroying a life is like destroying a whole world and saving a life is like saving a whole world. Lives can be destroyed not only by stabbing or burning, but by ignoring and excluding, by contributing to a person not feeling safe for who they are. The Mishnah continues to teach that when a person stamps out many coins with one die, they are all alike, but the King, the King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be God, stamped each person with the seal of Adam, and not one of them is like his or her fellow.
Cavod habriyot, literally honoring of creatures, is the Hebrew term used for human dignity and was the core teaching that led to the changes almost 10 years ago in the Conservative Movement for full acceptance of openly gay and lesbian rabbis and cantors, as well same-sex commitment ceremonies within our movement. The Talmud explicitly states that “Cavod Habriyot is so great that it can override a Biblical prohibition” (Tractate Berakhot, 19b)
A community can only feel safe if all of us in the community contribute to the sense of welcome, inclusion and acceptance, regardless of who the other person is. Frankly, we all know what it feels like to be on the outside. Every single one of us. In fact, even the person that we perceive as being totally an insider, might experience themselves as an outsider in ways that we will never know. Faith communities should be places of safety and inclusion, but are often not. Just recently, Melissa Chapman, a transgender woman, was told that she could not attend any women’s events at Flatirons Church in Lafayette and was told in a 6 page letter from the pastor “you are a man living in a broken body…” We can put statements up on our website and as many signs as we like declaring our space a “Safe Zone” for people who are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgender, but if someone who identifies in that way walks into our building and doesn’t feel safe, the slogans are meaningless. We create that safety together.
At the end of 2013, Bonai’s Inclusion Committee was formed, which has been assessing how we include people with different physical, mental and emotional needs. We were one of 15 Conservative congregations in the US and Canada to receive a Ruderman Inclusion Action Community grant through the USCJ, working collaboratively with those other shuls. We have also been partnering with Har HaShem, Nevei Kodesh, Jewish Family Services and the JCC to improve the way Boulder’s Jewish communities can be more inclusive of people with various special needs. The committee, led by Judy Megibow, with Diana Blau, Karen Raizen, Miriam Fields and Bill Shiovitz, have articulated a vision of: A community where all members share a sense of dignity, empathy and togetherness; where inclusion is the framework around which congregation activities are centered and a mission to: Assure that all members of Bonai Shalom are able to participate fully in all spiritual, educational, celebratory and life events at the synagogue.
There have already been some programs and discussions about large and small ways we can meet those goals, and a community-wide survey and follow up conversation have provided important information for our next steps. For so many Jewish families with a child or adult with special needs, there is an assumption that the synagogue will not be a safe or welcoming place for them, so they don’t even bother coming. We want to change that and help overcome the painful stigma of difference confronting these families. There are simple ways in which we will make our building more accessible and open, but that is just the beginning!
In July I tore part of my calf muscle on a hike just the day before flying to London. I could barely walk and so I got wheelchair assistance for my two flights. That experience gave me a tiny, tiny and very temporary taste of how different the world looks from a wheelchair and how differently the world looks at the person sitting in it. There was something humiliating about the experience as I witnessed people looking at me like I was less than. I think we all do that in different ways in our fear of not knowing that other.
I recently spoke to Rabbi Fred Greene, Har HaShem’s new rabbi who himself has children with special needs. He had a great but simple insight. He said, “We all have a special need. If we don’t know it yet, we will soon enough.” If we shut out those with special needs, or needs that seem so different to our own, it is like we are shutting out a part of ourselves, making our whole community less than and diminishing a part of God. As Rabbi Alan Lew says in his oft-quoted book on the High Holidays with the apt title “This is Real and You are Completely Unprepared,” “None of us is whole by ourselves. A spiritual community is one in which we find wholeness, completion with others. What we lack is provided by someone else.” (P.205). We do so much so well in our shul and we really have the capacity to be that kind of spiritual community, seeing and being seen.
Ed Frim, an inclusion specialist at United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, was in Boulder a few months back working with our Inclusion Committee, and in a recent article he said that true inclusion goes much deeper than making synagogue life accessible. “Inclusive congregations are mindful of everyone who is part of the community,” he said. “They establish a culture that takes for granted that all, including those with disabilities, have the right to fully participate as part of the congregation.” “It’s not just about training ushers to be welcoming to people with disabilities and helping them find their way, it’s about turning the entire congregation into ushers, who seek to create a welcoming environment,” he said. Just as important as building a culture of inclusion is affecting a shift in attitude about how we think of disabilities.
Rabbi Matya ben Charash, according to Pirkei Avot, says, havei makdim b’shalom l’chol adam – always be the first to greet every person. That’s what being an usher is!
Thirty six times the Torah commands us in some form or other to love the ger, the stranger, the outsider, because we know the soul of the stranger. It is so easy to define someone as other because they are different, but when we do that, we are diminishing the full power of what kehillah kedoshah, sacred community, can and should be: safe spaces where all are seen, welcomed and valued for who we are and what we bring. This is about us needing each other and each playing a role in embracing the other. Rabbi Alan Lew suggests that the very first principal of these High Holiday, these Days of Awe, is the need to be together.
“We need each now,” he says. We need each other deeply. Here in the full flush of the life-and-death nature of this ritual, here in the full flush of our impotence as individuals to meet this most urgent emergency, our need for each for each other is immense. We heal one another by being together. We give each other hope. Now we know for sure – by ourselves, ein banu ma’asim, there is nothing we can do. But gathered together as a single indivisible entity, we sense that we do in fact have efficacy 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, to echo the phrase we always read in the Torah the week before the High Holidays begin – all those who came before us, and all those who are yet to come, all those who are joined in that great stream of spiritual consciousness from which we have been struggling to know God for thousands of years. We now stand in that stream…”
There is a Hassidic teaching in our Machzor attributed to Rabbi Shlomo of Karlin, who asked: “what is the worst thing that the Evil Urge can achieve? To make a person forget that one is the child of a King.” These holidays not only remind each of us that we are the daughters and sons of a King, but that we all have a responsibility to make sure that others know that about themselves too. Whoever they are, whatever they need. Each of us is an usher in making this a reality for this community.