Becoming a K’hillah K’dosha – a Holy Community
Erev Rosh Hashanah 5767, September 22, 2006
Rabbi Bruce Kadden
I have some good news and some bad news.
The good news is that God does not require us to be perfect. Nowhere in the
Torah or the entire corpus rabbinic commentary does it say that we have to be
perfect.
The bad news is that God does require us to be holy. On Yom Kippur we will
read from chapter 19 of Leviticus, which teaches: Kiddoshim tihyu ki kadosh
ani Adonai Eloheichem – You shall be holy because I, Adonai, your God, am
holy.”
Now, when you hear the word “holy,” what comes to mind? For many, the word
“holy” conjures up images of an individual going off to an ashram to seek
enlightenment. We think of someone who turns away from the temptations of
society to go on a spiritual quest: a monk in a remote monastery, or a
kabbalist in the hills of Safed.
But that is not what Judaism means by being holy. For Judaism, holiness
is not an individual pursuit, but a communal endeavor. “Kiddoshim tihyu
– you shall be holy” is written in the plural, as if to say you, as a community,
shall be holy. In parashat Ki Tavo which we read two weeks ago, God
affirms that we are to be an “am kadosh – a holy people.”
Whenever we recite a prayer which affirms God’s holiness, such as the
mourner’s kaddish, we need a minyan, a community of at least 10
Jewish adults. We can, of course, still pray as an individual or as a group of
two or four or nine, but when we speak of k’dusha, of holiness, we must
do so in a community so that we recognize that holiness requires community.
There is something special about a community, something that is missing when one
is alone, or with a small group, that is present in a community.
Holiness requires community, but being part of a community does not guarantee
holiness. Temple Beth El is a community of Jews and non-Jews who come together
to worship God, to learn Torah and to pursue g’milut chasadim, acts of
kindness locally and around the world.
We are a community, but we are not yet a k’hillah k’dosha, a holy
community. That is the challenge that I want to lay out for us this year:
becoming a k’hillah k’dosha, a holy community. Tomorrow morning I will
speak about how the importance of being a caring community, supporting each
other in time of need. On Yom Kippur I will address how a holy community deals
with the issues of money and of life and death.
This evening, I want to lay out a vision of a k’hillah k’dosha, a holy
community. What would a k’hillah k’dosha look like? How can we work
toward transforming Temple Beth El into a k’hillah k’dosha?
A synagogue has three primary purposes:
--it is a beit t’filah – a house of prayer, a place where we gather to
worship God;
--it is a beit midrash, a house of study, a place where we gather to
learn;
--and it is a beit k’nesset, a house of gathering, a place where we
come together to be with one another, celebrating together, mourning together,
sharing life’s joys and hardships.
We can, of course, do each of these things on our own, and there are times
that it is appropriate to do so. But Judaism teaches, in the title words of a
classic study of the shtetl, that Life is with People. Coming together
as a community has always been of great importance for Jews.
In 2004 we celebrated the 350th anniversary of Jewish life in
North America. That date was not the first time a Jew set foot on North
American soil, which was much earlier, but the date when a group of Jews arrived
and formed the first Jewish community on these shores.
Our tradition teaches, “Kol Yisrael aravim zeh bazeh – all Israel is
responsible for one another,” reminding us of our obligation to reach out to
other Jews and include them in our community.
Judaism was able to survive centuries of persecution in no small measure
because of the strength of its communities and the ability of those communities
to support its members. Throughout our history, Jews have come together to
support fellow Jews in need, to ransom Jews who were captive, to rebuild
communities that were damaged or destroyed.
One of the saddest scenes in all of Jewish literature is the scene at the end
of the Fiddler on the Roof, when all of the residents of Anitevka leaves
their shtetl to start over, as individuals and as families, elsewhere. That
story has been repeated too often in our history.
Yad VaShem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, has a section called the Valley of
the Communities. The Valley of the Communities is a massive 2.5 acre monument
dug out of natural bedrock. Over 5000 names are engraved on the stone walls,
each identifying a Jewish community which existed for hundreds of years. In
most cases, all that remains of the community is its name.
Many of these communities were k’hilot k’doshot, holy communities.
These 5000 communities may be gone forever, but there are still thousands of
vibrant Jewish communities throughout the world. We are one such community, and
while we cannot replace any of the lost communities, we can help assure that
their existence was not in vain by striving to become a k’hillah k’dosha.
To become a k’hillah k’dosha, we first have to understand what it
means to be kadosh, to be holy. It is a difficult word to define; we can
best understand it by looking at the ways in which the root is used in various
words and phrases.
The root koof-dalet-shin is found throughout our liturgy. I already
mentioned the Kaddish, but there is also the Kiddush, the prayer
we recite over the wine on Shabbat and festivals, and the K’dushah, the
third blessing of the Amidah. The Kaddish and K’dusha are prayers
which sanctify God, which affirm God’s uniqueness. The Kiddush
sanctifies Shabbat, or in the case of this evening, sanctifies the Shabbat and
the new year. In other words, it proclaims their uniqueness: Shabbat is unique
among the days of the week and Rosh Hashanah is unique among the days of the
year.
The root koof-dalet-shin is also found in many other blessings,
including the blessings we say before performing a mitzvah such as lighting the
Shabbat and festival candles, donning a tallit, hearing the shofar, dwelling in
a sukkah or eating matzah on Pesach. Each contains the phrase, “asher
kiddshanu b’mitzvotav – who has sanctified us with mitzvot,” that is
“who has made us unique with certain responsibilities.”
We light candles for many reasons: for birthdays, for romance, when the
lights go out, but the lighting of candles on Shabbat and festivals is unique,
different, because it ushers in a special observance. We can sit in an outdoor
booth any time during the year (all right, maybe not in the Pacific Northwest),
but sitting in a sukkah is different because we do so to commemorate our
ancestors’ wanderings in the wilderness. We can eat matzah any day of the year
(not that most of us would want to), but when we do so on Pesach, we are
recalling the story of our ancestors’ Exodus from Egypt. In each case, saying “asher
kiddshanu – who has sanctified us,” means that we are doing something
special, something for a unique purpose.
The root koof-dalet-shin is also found in the phrase Beit Hamikdash,
the Temple in Jerusalem. It was a house like no other house, a unique
institution, devoted to the worship of God through prayer and sacrifice.
What each of these uses of the root koof-dalet-shin have in common is
that they point to something unique, something extra-ordinary, out of the
ordinary. To become a k’hillah k’dosha is to become an extra-ordinary
congregation as a beit t’fillah, a beit sefer, and a beit
k’nesset.
As a beit t’fillah, a house of prayer, our worship services should
have a sense of k’dusha, of holiness. An important component of the
holiness of our service is the siddur, the prayer book we use. This
fall, after many years of anticipation, we will begin using a new prayer book,
Mishkan Tefilah.
Mishkan Tefilah will help provide our worship services with a renewed
sense of holiness through poetic and moving English readings, gender sensitive
translations, and transliterations on the same page of the Hebrew to facilitate
participation for those who are just learning Hebrew.
A new prayer book in and of itself, however, cannot imbue a worship service
with holiness. Indeed, while the liturgy, the music and the ambiance play a
significant role in creating a sense of k’dusha in prayer, what is most
important is that each of us comes ready for the experience. This is not as
easy as it sounds. For it is difficult to leave the distractions of the
everyday world behind, and enter the sanctuary ready to pray.
We are often still thinking about what happened during the day, a conflict at
work or a disagreement with a family member. At other times we are focused on
the future, an important assignment that is due or something that we need to get
done. It is challenging to put aside the past and the future and focus on the
present, but to fully appreciate our worship experience it is necessary to do
so.
It is said that the pious ones of old would spend a whole hour preparing for
prayer in order to better concentrate their minds on God. And the rebbe of
Tsanz, when asked what he did before praying, replied, “I pray that I may be
able to pray properly.”
Now, most of us do not have a full hour to prepare ourselves for prayer. But
we can do a few things to help us enter the sanctuary in the appropriate frame
of mind. We can, first of all, leave our everyday concerns outside. We can
remind ourselves to stop thinking about the past or the future and focus on the
present.
Of course, sometimes we come to services, at least in part, because of
something happening in our lives or in the world: an ill friend, to say
Kaddish for a recently deceased relative or for a Yahrtzeit, a war in
Israel or a tragedy in our community. We want to be with our community, we want
the comforting presence of friends, and we want to feel the reassurance of God’s
loving support.
But too often, it is not these concerns that we bring with us, but the
trivial and mundane thoughts and feelings of everyday life. That is what we
need to leave behind when we come together to pray.
Even when we are able to enter our sanctuary ready to pray, it is not always
easy to find meaning in the liturgy. Words that are thousands of years old in a
foreign language do not always speak to us. Some have suggested that we do more
of the service in English, but I am not convinced that doing so would make the
experience more meaningful, because prayer, at its heart, is not really an
intellectual experience, but an emotional experience. At its best it should
move us to feel connected with our fellow worshipers and with God. But it can
only do so if we come ready to experience it.
While our worship focuses on the emotional side, our educational programs
focus primarily on the intellectual side. A synagogue is a beit midrash,
a place of study and learning for children and adults. Study, like prayer, is
something that we can do alone, but that Judaism encourages us to do with
others. Judaism recognizes the value of learning in community, the give and
take, the discussions, even the arguments that enhance the learning process.
The classical Jewish learning style is called chevruta, where pairs of
students study a text under the guidance of a teacher. Learning in chevruta
recognizes the value of each of the students and the contribution that each
makes to learning. It also affirms the importance of helping one another learn,
rather than competing with each other. It was a type of cooperative learning
long before cooperative learning was a buzzword in contemporary education
circles.
Furthermore, Judaism has always believed that a classroom of students
–whether children or adults—should be a community. Of course, a class does not
become a community simply by spending time together. It takes a conscious
effort on the part of the teacher, as well as the students, to make a class into
a community. That is a goal that we take seriously here. We want our classes
to be communities. We want our students to care about each other, to support
one anther, to be there for each other.
We try to encourage this in a number of ways. We provide opportunities for
students to get together outside the four walls of the classroom, whether it is
for a havdalah service, a Shabbat dinner, or a retreat. Older students
are encouraged to participate in Temple Teens and in NFTY and BBYO to further
enhance their relationships. Often, the relationships that begin in our gan or
Religious School continue into adulthood validating our efforts to create a
community of learners.
Our adult education classes should also be opportunities for building
community. In her book Jewish Lives, Jewish Learning, Diane Tickton
Schuster emphasizes the importance of helping adults develop relationships
during the learning process. Adults should be “encouraged to find a community
of learning that includes partners for dialogue, mentors, and facilitators,” she
writes. Just as important as the formal learning that takes place is the
opportunity to build relationships with fellow learners.
The synagogue is not only a beit t’filah and beit midrash, it
is also a beit k’nesset, a house of gathering for the Jewish community.
It is our home, a place we gather to celebrate simchas and to comfort
each other at times of sadness and tragedy.
Synagogues, according to Dr. Ron Wolfson, “are the sacred communities that
can create the conditions for spiritual formation by engaging the individual in
uplifting prayer, serious study, works of social justice, acts of healing and
comfort, and connectedness to others.”
Whether we gather for serious purposes or fun, for board meetings or choir
practice, to participate in tikkun olam, repairing the world, or to
explore the middot, which guide us in our personal behavior, our
gatherings should have a sense of k’dusha, of holiness. Because we
gather as Jews under the auspices of the synagogue, our endeavor has a special
purpose which makes it different than similar gatherings elsewhere.
But this special purpose, this k’dusha, does not happen by itself. It
is not something that occurs automatically whenever and wherever Jews gather.
Rather, it is something that we must work to create. Our gatherings have a
sense of k’dusha when everyone is welcome and valued, when there is
respect and caring toward one another, and when the deep and enduring values of
Judaism pervade the gathering.
Not every gathering, of course, will be able to attain this sense of
k’dusha, but attaining k’dusha should be the goal of every
gathering. That is truly what it means to be a k’hillah k’dosha, a holy
community.
At the top of the Temple’s letterhead is the name of the congregation in
Hebrew, Beit El, preceded by the Hebrew letters koof-koof. These
letters stand for the phrase k’hillah k’dosha. Congregations place these
letters before their names, not because they believe that they are a sacred
community, but because they hope that they might, at their best, approach
becoming a k’hillah k’dosha. I invite you to join me this year as
together we work to make Temple Beth El a k’hillah k’dosha as a beit
t’filah, a house of prayer, a beit midrash, a house of study, and a
beit k’nesset, a house of gathering.
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