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How many of you are here for the first time? How many of you needed your GPS or map directions to get here? How many of you felt a little disoriented pulling into the Transit-Drive-In on Rosh Hashanah?
I remember the first time I ever really felt lost, and I mean, really lost. I was eighteen-years-old and I was embarking on a one-year of study in Israel at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I arrived alone at the old Lod Airport on an El Al flight at four in the morning completely jetlagged and with no idea of how to get to my final destination. I grabbed a sherut (shared cab) and told the driver to bring me to The University. The driver asked me which University I meant. I had no idea. I could only tell him it was in Jerusalem.
The cab driver dropped me off in the middle of the Mount Scopus at a bus stop, depositing my two huge – fifty-plus-pound – duffle bags on the sidewalk next to me. The campus was empty and immense. I felt so tiny and so very, very tired.
There was an office door nearby, which I tentatively knocked on. The door was unlocked. Inside, I explained in broken Hebrew who I was, and where I was trying to go.
“You are on the wrong campus,” I was told and instructed to take the next bus across town to Givat Ram, the secondary campus of the University. Somehow, I managed to follow the directions, sitting on top of my duffle bags on the forty-five minute bus ride.
I arrived almost in tears, completely unsure of what I would do next, cursing myself for how ill prepared I had been for my trip, but knowing I had literally no one to call for help. It was still barely 10 AM, and with the seven hours difference to the states, 2 AM back home in Philadelphia.
I lugged my huge bags down to the nearest building and there collapsed. I had all but given up.
Opening my eyes, I found myself staring at the face of my best friend from high school getting ready for our intensive Hebrew class that morning. I had arrived. And, so began one of the most important years of my young adult life.
Sometimes you have to get lost, to truly find where you are going, and more importantly, to find out who you will be going with.
The Torah describes a moment like this in the Book of Genesis, where Jacob, running scared from his brother Esau after having just stolen his birthright and blessing, is forced to encamp on a mountainside, with only rocks to use as a pillow. He is scared and alone, unsure of whether he will even survive the night.
From out of that bleakness, a ladder appears carrying angels up and down from the heavens back down to earth, and God’s voice resounds promising our patriarch he will soon find safety.
Upon waking, in Genesis 28:16, Jacob says the following: ”‘Surely God is in this place; and I knew it not. Aken yesh adonai bamakom hazeh, va’anochi Lo Yadati”
We arrive here, at the start of 5781, in a similar state – unsure of where we are headed. The world is in disarray, our lives have been upended by a disease we cannot even see, nor truly understand. We long for connection and comfort, hoping to open our eyes and for the world, Pre-Covid, to be restored.
Yes, my friends we are lost and hopefully, by coming together, we will find what we are seeking.
How perfect that we are here at the Transit-Drive-In, a place where for decades, the faces of our heroes and heroines have illuminated the darkness and offered a brief respite from our hectic lives.
When the idea was first offered at the beginning of the pandemic, it seemed so strange – a Drive-In was very far from the standard image of our High Holy Days. And, yet, the more we mulled it over, explored our options, the more perfect it became. And, thanks to the generosity of Rick Cohen, who is the third generation proprietor of this Buffalo institution, this is exactly where we are.
Movies have often served as the places where holiness is most tangible, where ineffable is expressed, and where the unimaginable comes to life.
This is where Humfry Bogart greeted Igmar Bergman with his famous line, “here’s looking at you kid.”
Where Julie Andrews danced around Salzburg singing the “Sound of Music”
Where Roy Hobbs broke the clock tower at Wrigley Field in The Natural
Where the Death Star was destroyed
Where ET phoned home
Where Harry Potter finally defeated Voldermert,
And, in more recent memory, where the Avengers finally collected the Tesseract (if you do not know that reference, as the nearest young person in your vicinity)
In each and every one of these cases, the story revolved around someone seeking, and only through their search, by occasionally losing their way, did they find what they were looking for.
One particular heroine comes to mind as the very embodiment of teshuvah – our return home on this most auspicious day. A young girl whose house has just been swept away in a storm, and who, with only dog-in-hand, must find her way back to her family in Kansas – Aunt Em and Uncle Henry. This is, of course, none other than the story of Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz.
We, in Jewish Buffalo, have a special fondness for the movie version of the tale because it features the music of Harold Arlen, the son of a local cantor who took his talents in a different direction.
The scene that comes to mind is from the end of the movie where our young heroine has already overcome many obstacles in her path. There is only one thing left on her plate – to actually go back home. Things look bleak as the Wizard has been revealed to be a phony. How will she ever accomplish her seemingly impossible task?
It is at this moment that we see Glinda in her poofy pink dress, waving her magic wand, asking Dorothy if she is ready.
“You don’t have to stay here any longer,” the Good Witch tells her. “You’ve always had the power to go home.”
Then, Glinda instructs the young girl to tap her ruby red slippers three times, saying, “There is no place like home.”
And, suddenly she is there.
We, too, have always the power to go back home, we only had to be ready to use it.
By home, I do not mean our physical home, but our spiritual home – the place we feel most connected to those we love, and even the Wicked Witch of the West has no power. When we come together as a minyan, a quorum of ten or more, whether virtually or in-person, we make a statement to one another that we are not alone in the world. And, only with the permission of the group are certain prayers are possible.
Among those is the Jewish version of Glinda’s incantation – the Kedushah, or holiness prayer from the Tefillah prayer. It, too, has us clicking our heels together three times, just as Dorothy does in the movie, rising higher with each click, ascending just like the angels in the Book of Ezekiel.
For our purposes we need not have ruby red slippers, we only need one another – a minyan of fellow seekers. As I recite these words from the Kedushah, I encourage you to lift up with each word, and like, in the Wizard of Oz, seeking a bit of magic to enter into our lives.
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, Holy, Holy, Holy
Being lost is never fun, no matter how young or old you are. Like I felt so many years ago, in my arrival in Israel in my Junior Year of college, it can be truly terrifying. Some of us have that feeling right now, with doctors and politicians at a loss for how to proceed, perhaps putting our economic and physical lives in grave risk.
To the many members of our academic community, students, teachers and administrators, we know how very disorienting this time has been.
To the many who have suffered through Covid or had friends or family suffer or even die for it, we extend our arms around you.
To the many seniors and isolated members of our community, cut off from friends and family, we are here for you.
I also hope you know that I, Cantor, Joanne, Bruce, and our entire Shir Shalom community are here for you.
Like Dorothy, we are all trapped over the rainbow, with little idea of how to return home.
But, just as I found out nearly three decades ago, by finding the faces of one another, we will find our bearings, and in doing so, we will find God. Even Dorothy could not do it alone, but needed the Tin Man, the Lion, and the Scarecrow to help her out.
That is the true reason for our gathering on Rosh Hashanah. By clicking our heals together, we signal to one another that we are here at our Yellow Brick Road, and that Kedushah, holiness, exists, even here, most especially here, at the Transit-Drive-In.
May holiness abound and surround us in 5781 wherever we happen to be.
A Shanah Tovah U’Metukah – A joyous and sweet new year to all of us.
Last Updated on 09/20/2020 by Marc Slonim