Eleven months ago this week, the worst single attack on a Jewish institution in America occurred less than four hours down the road in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In the space a few minutes time, eleven good people were killed, six injured, just for attending services that Shabbat morning. In the space of a few minutes time, our world had changed.
I knew it from the time I first glanced at my text messages from outside of the Ganeinu room that morning.
I knew it from the time I shared the news with the group gathered there with me for Shabbat morning services.
I knew it from the constant stream of calls I fielded from other communal leaders throughout the remainder of the day.
I knew it from the stunned look on the faces of community members during the vigil the next night at the former building of Temple Beth Tzedek, on Getzville Road.
Something in the Jewish community had changed. Shalom had been taken from that day and we have been searching for it ever since.
I look around the sanctuary and I can feel its absence.
I know this feeling, I have felt it before.
I felt it walking the streets of Paris on the way to Friday night services with my kippah in my pocket for fear or being called out for my Jewishness.
I felt it in Berlin entering the non-descript synagogue building with my head down, a bored guard standing outside the entrance of the shul.
I felt it in the intense conversations with the security guards at the central synagogue in Istanbul just to be able to attend a normal Shabbat service.
I felt it in the Jerusalem looking at the flowers left behind beside the bombed remains of Sbarro.
I felt it after 9/11.
I have felt it before, just never here, never in this sanctuary, never here with you on Rosh Hashanah.
The Torah teaches of a time when the People of Israel were at odds with one another. Many had turned to idolatry, and God’s wrath sprang forth against them causing a great plague to afflict those who sinned. The entire community seemed in danger of collapse.
Out of this emerged the grandson of Aaron, Pinchas ben Eleazar, who took it upon himself to restore order, impaling an Israelite man and a Moabite woman right inside their tent. One of the more horrific scenes on record, and one where no one involved can be seen in a positive light.
Pinchas’ actions stop the plague in its tracks. The next day, he is called before the elders of Israel and presented with God’s Briti Shalom, Covenant of Peace, a strange gift indeed for such a horrific act. But, the Shalom he is given is an odd one, the letter vav at the word’s center is broken in half. The reason for this is unknown, but it is a tradition that has been passed down from one Torah to the next, including in our own scrolls, a broken vav at the center of the word Shalom.
And, what is Shalom minus a vav? It becomes Shalem, a word of commerce meaning to pay. When Shalom is broken we all pay the price.
We enter the year 5780 with a broken Shalom. How do we restore it? How do we go back to the world we had before?
There are many things that give me hope – Tikvah:
- I feel hope in the sanctuary of Temple Beth Tzedek filled to capacity on the Sunday after the Tree of Life attack with people throughout Western New York, Jews, Christians, Sikhs, Muslims, of every stripe and denomination – over five hundred strong in a space meant only for two hundred fifty.
- I feel hope in the work of our own member Jay Mesnekoff, traveling to Pittsburgh that week to help with the burial arrangements for the victims.
- I feel hope in the countless phone calls, emails, letters, flowers, dove feathers that came in from all over Western New York to support our community.
- I feel hope in the hard work of our Board of Directors to fill in security holes and ensure our community was better protected in the event of a future attack. We owe them a debt of gratitude for the speed at which they were able to address some of our central needs.
- I feel hope in you and your hard work in adapting to the changes and helping to fund them.
- I feel hope in the broader Jewish community upgrading our security infrastructure, including appointing our new Communal Safety Director, Susan DeMari, and the work she has done to create relationships with local law enforcement.
- I feel hope in our recently restarted Jewish Communal Relations Council to proactively strengthen relations between the Jewish community and our surrounding neighbors.
- I feel hope in the dozens of members of the Jewish community who showed up the Heim Road Mosque after the shootings in New Zealand. This is recognition that what we are doing is much more than a Jewish problem.
- And, for me, most important of all, is the hope I feel in the reaction of our young people. Gathering in large groups to combat gun violence, address climate change, and generally strive to make this world better.
Six months before the Tree of Life, I stood at a podium in front of City Hall in Niagara Square, watching high school student after high school student proclaim their commitment to changing the status quo when it comes to gun violence. The Parkland shooting had occurred the week before and everyone was outraged that nineteen years after Columbine school attacks had continued to be an ever present problem in society. Each student spoke about how each new incident was re-traumatizing. Their entire childhoods had been distorted by our unwillingness as a society to make the changes necessary to prevent future attacks.
Parkland, a largely Jewish enclave of Southern Florida, felt personal. Several of the students from the school had traveled up to be present with us that day. My heart broke with the pain and heartache these young women and men had experienced. But, my heart swelled with pride knowing they would be the ones to help ensure a solution.
We cannot remove brokenness from this world. From the moment we were banished from the Garden of Eden we have been marked by the curse of Cain. Human beings are imperfect creatures and peace is no simple matter.
I think of the words of Israeli poet Yehudah Amichai, who sought not just an ordinary but a wild one that he writes, comes “without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares, without words, without the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be light, floating, like lazy white foam. A little rest for the wounds—”
And, I think of the wisdom of Dr. Neil Gillman, a professor of mine at the Jewish Theological Seminary, who spoke about a midrash connected to a verse from Deuteronomy that calls for Moses to make an ark of wood and place within it the Ten Commandments, not just, the rabbis suggest, the ones that were whole, but the ones the broken ones as well.
Brokenness, he told our class, is not a bad thing. If we can incorporate the two sets of commandments into our lives, both the broken and the whole, we will be stronger for it.
One of the most popular traditions at a Jewish wedding is the breaking of the glass. We do this for many reasons. Most famously to remind ourselves even in our happiest occasions that we still live in the shadow of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. But there is another Kabbalistic understanding that tells us that the broken glass is a reminder of the brokenness in the world and how it is the job of all of us to perform acts of Tikkun Olam, to repair the world.
In Japanese culture there is the concept of Kintsugi, or golden joinery, where the cracks in a vessel are reported with golden paint. Why? So that the brokenness is visible, part of the history of the object, not something to disguise.
We begin the year 5780 knowing the world can never be the same. This feeling we have after Pittsburgh will stay with us for a long time. Tonight we perform an act of Kintsugi on our hearts with stripes of bright, gold paint. There is beauty in our brokenness.
Eleven months is traditionally the end of the first year of mourning. As such, I would like to close my talk tonight with the eleven names of those who died at the Tree of Life synagogue on October 27th, 2018. Let us stand for a moment in silence in their memory.
Joyce Fienberg, 75
Richard Gottfried, 65
Rose Mallinger, 97
Jerry Rabinowitz, 66
Cecil Rosenthal, 59
David Rosenthal, 54
Bernice Simon, 84
Sylvan Simon, 86
Daniel Stein, 71
Melvin Wax, 88
Irving Younger, 69
For these eleven souls, I ask you to commit yourself to eleven acts of kindness, of Tikkun Olam. In this way, we will insure their memories are always for a blessing. Ken Yehi Ratzon, may it be so.
A good, sweet year to all of us.
Last Updated on 11/03/2019 by Marc Slonim