Shabbat Hagadol

Many people, from Rabbi Hillel on, have tried to sum up Judaism in one sentence. Of course, when you try to boil down an ancient, evolving, complex tradition into one sentence, you inevitably leave something crucial out. If you focus only on tikkun olam or peace, you miss peoplehood. If you focus only on peoplehood, you miss our profound literary tradition. If you focus on Talmudic thinking and law, you miss Jewish secular culture. Even Hillel saying Torah could be summed up in the line, “that which is hateful to you, do not do to another,” really leaves out some crucial things that make Judaism, well, Judaism, and not some universalistic ethic or philosophy.

I will not try to reduce our palace of a tradition into one room, but I do believe that in many ways, the emotional and spiritual core of Judaism is need for a home. Our sacred texts and stories explore, over and over again, leaving home, finding home, being exiled from that home, and then returning again.  

We start with Adam and Eve finding a home in the garden, and then being exiled from it.

Abraham never feels at home in the place he grew up, and so he leaves that in search of a true home.

The Israelites leave their homes in Egypt only to wander in the wilderness 40 years in the hope of getting to their new home. Getting home was what kept our people together.

When Ruth says to Naomi, “whither thou goest, I will go and where you lodge, I will lodge,” it is about home, and that Ruth’s home is wherever Naomi is.

The heart of Zionism is not colonialism, and certainly not white settler colonialism, but rather Zionism, at its heart, is about the longing and need for home, a place where one is not in exile and where one has agency to shape one’s own life and the life of one’s people.

And after Rome destroyed our national homeland, the rabbinic project was to transform Judaism from a religion rooted in a national home to a religion rooted in the family home, where the table becomes the altar and the home a tabernacle, and the synagogue, the community home.

Tonight is Shabbat HaGadol, the Great Sabbath, just before Passover, where our tradition asks us to turn our hearts toward the holiday and the celebration of freedom that Passover represents. We tend to focus our thoughts on leaving slavery in Egypt, in getting out of bondage. On Passover, the Seder seems to put our attention on getting out, focuses on it, but that’s just the part before we eat. The part after dinner, that so many of us skip over, is actually the part that gives the entire story of Passover its meaning. Being free from slavery is not enough. To be truly free, we must find a home. Freedom without home is wilderness.  Redemption in our tradition is going home, finding home, and making a home.

That is why the Seder ends with “Next Year in Jerusalem.” As in all narratives, it is the ending that shapes the meaning to the entire story.  I mean, if having crossed the sea and escaped Pharaoh, the Jewish people had been devoured by a giant sand worm a la DUNE, we might all be celebrating staying in Egypt.

For a people known for “wandering”, a people spread out all over the world, the belief in the power of home has remained central to our spiritual tradition and our sense of what humans need to flourish.  It is woven throughout our prayers:  Lecha Dodi is about the return home of Jewish people and of God’s presence. Every morning the prayer just before the Shema is Ahava Raba, the prayer for God’s love for our people, that ends with Havienu. The rabbis placed this as the prayer immediately before the Shema, and here is what it says:

Gather us in peace from the four corners of the earth and lead us upright to our homeland….. Truly, You drew us near to Your Great Name, that we might acknowledge You, declaring You One in love. Blessed are you who loves this people Israel.

God’s love is found in the ideal of a home.

While those prayers were written long ago, our history since then has reinforced both the pain of homelessness and the dream of home. We have experienced exiles and expulsions: Babylon, Rome, Spain, Germany, France, England, Russia, Ukraine, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Morocco and the list goes on, and so it makes sense that of all the religious traditions, Judaism leans into the power of a place that can be called home, a place where we feel safe and grounded.

For me, the idea of home also makes me profoundly supportive of a Palestinian homeland, not one that threatens Israel, but one in which two peoples make their homes side by side.

Perhaps, one of the greatest heartbreaks of the current conflict in Ukraine is seeing the loss of home for so many people, the loss of the sense of normalcy and agency that a home affords.

And here in the US and Vermont, we know homelessness is rising at an alarming rate and it likely to rise higher.

As Jews, our tradition obligates us, commands us, to house the homeless, just as we welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the aged and feed the hungry.

When I started here, one of the things that was made clear to me was that the congregation wants to be more involved in the larger community, in tikkun olam, in helping those in need around us. One way we have done this is by our ongoing involvement in founding and supporting the South Burlington Food Shelf.

This Passover, I want to ask our community to step up and be more involved in helping find housing for those who are homeless, whether they are refugees, immigrants, or Americans.

We can do that in many ways: helping tutor immigrants, sponsoring refugees, even creating a warming station here at Temple Sinai, but one immediate way we can do something between Passover and Shavuot is by participating in the COTS Walk to raise money to help find housing for those in need here in our area.

Temple Sinai is creating a team to raise money and march in the COTS Walk on May 1. For those who are able, it would be a great statement of our values and of our place in the local community if Temple Sinai had a big contingent and raised a respectable amount.

So I am asking you to sign up, either to donate to people who are walking or even better – to walk so we show our that we don’t just show up when Israel is attacked, but that we show up in number for ALL our values.  

Feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, helping the elderly, welcoming the stranger – these are core Jewish values that are not controversial, or fads, or hot topics – they are enduring needs.

As a people who profoundly understand how powerful and how fragile having a home is, let’s live up to our values, and fulfill the words of Isaiah that we read every Yom Kippur:

This is the fast I desire:
To unlock fetters of wickedness,
And untie the cords of the yoke
To let the oppressed go free;
To break off every yoke.

It is to share your bread with the hungry,
And to take the wretched poor into your home;
When you see the naked, to clothe him,
And not to ignore your own kin.

Then shall your light burst through like the dawn
And your healing spring up quickly.

May that be God’s will and ours. Shabbat Shalom.