September, 2020 Megillah
RABBI'S NOTES
Back in March, when we first locked down on account of COVID-19, I had the idea that this was going to go on for some enormous amount of time, like maybe even six weeks! Pesach was in there someplace, and I was heartbroken to think that we might have to have our Seder online. I was whining about this and said, “For all we know, this could stretch on til the High Holy Days!” I didn’t imagine it would come to be, but here we are.
This will be my 36thyear (yes, double CHAI!) leading High Holy Day services with our community. I can hardly believe it! For the past 35 years the services have been essentially similar, even with various changes we’ve woven in along the way:Erev Rosh Hashana, Rosh Hashana morning, with the shofar unless it’s on Shabbat, teachings from community members, the sin buffet,Tashlikh, KolNidre, Yom Kippur all day until sundown, the open ark at Neilah,Havdalah, your beautiful faces in the candlelight, apples and honey, and home gatherings to break the fast.
When I began to get serious about planning this year’s High Holy Day services, I had to acknowledge that the world has fundamentally changed since we broke the fast last year. At an early zoom gathering of rabbis to begin processing these transformations, one of my colleagues called COVID “a Temple-destroying moment.”
By that I think he meant not only that COVID, like the forces that destroyed the ancient Temple, has brought with it great suffering and loss, but also that, because of the ancient cataclysm (which happened twice, but fundamentally and definitively in 69 CE), the whole way of being Jewish had to change.
We don’t know yet how long the changes brought about by COVID will be upon us, nor how lasting will be the social and economic upheaval wrought by this pandemic. But for now, the space that held our Jewish observances, our mikdashm’at (“little temple”), is not available for us to be in together. Nor can our community safely gather in numbers outside to sing and pray and embrace and nosh. We must be Jewish differently.
There is a great sadness in this. For me, not being able to sing together all these months has been a heartfelt loss. Our shared song is like fuel—it propels me through the week. The Shema at Neilah on Yom Kippur with all of you, that alone gets me through to, oh, about July of the following year. To think that we can’t sing Avinu Malkeinu together, oy… But I must confess, I am feeling something else along with the sadness. I find it kind of exciting to deconstruct the High Holy Days as I have always known them, to identify some of the pieces that feel completely essential, or just delightful, and to recompose these pieces into something both old and new.
It has been heartening to me, somehow, to realize that the whole Jewish world faces this challenge at the same time. We’re all in it together. Even the richest, best-educated, most advanced Jewish communities in the world is doing this for the first time. I feel connected to the Jewish people in a different, more practical way than I usually do.
After I talked to my fellow rabbis, I sent around a survey to all of you;thank you to the many who responded! I had long, brainstorming conversations with a number of you. We had a community meeting and shared ideas. After it all shook and rattled,it settled into something like a plan. I reached out to several of you to ask you to take on pieces of the services. Amazingly, almost every person I asked for anything this year has said YES.
I often think these days about Rabbi Benay Lappe and her “crash theory.” Rabbi Lappe is the founder and Rosh Yeshiva of SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva and a lead teacher of “queer Talmud.” I’ve written and talked about Rabbi Lappe before. She teaches that individual people and cultures always have a “master story.” Maybe it’s the Chosen People or the greatest democracy in the world or the class clown, but we live it as long as it works. At some point, however, master stories inevitably crash. When they do, an individual or a group can do one of three things: give up the master story and move on to something new; try desperately to shore up the old story against what made it crash; or invent new forms from the shards of the old.
The Talmud and rabbinic texts grew out of the crash surrounding the destruction of the Temple and the priesthood. When the old way crashed, many left Judaism forever and assimilated into the dominant culture. A few tried (and still do) to preserve the priestly practice. And a few ragtag, marginal characters began to meet in little circles and build new practices. Lots of what gets invented in a time of crash doesn’t last, says Rabbi Lappe, but some of it endures. And it is often the marginal people in the old paradigm who, because they are less invested in the master story, have the flexibility and inventiveness to create new forms from the old.
I don’t think COVID will be a crash on par with the destruction of the Temple, though it is hard to know what the next years will be like, but it is putting a big dent in the smaller paradigm of our shul’s High Holy Day services and, for that matter, in our good old ways hugging, kissing, sharing meals and raising our voices in song.
With inspiration from all of you and hands-on help from many, we have a plan that looks in some ways like “regular” High Holy Day services and in other ways looks pretty peculiar. I hope, of course, that every moment of it will be completely transporting and wonderful, but it will probably be bumpier than that. It has already been thought-provoking to participate in “The World as We Knew It No Longer Exists,” the art installation for Tisha b’Av (huge gratitude to Sandra Wortzel).
I look forward to quiet time in the shul during Elul, in the presence of Luna’s artwork, and to Laura’s Sunday morning meditations.
I remind myself that what is essential will endure, even if the vessels holding it look different. I anticipate more than I can say welcoming in a VERY New Year with all of you, celebrating our capacities to change and invent when life calls for it, relying on our good humor and generosity with each other as we venture into the unknown, and understanding our kinship with Jewish people and with people of faith and practice throughout the world who find new ways to live wisely and courageously in new times. L’shanatova!
