Shabbat shalom. So I know we’re getting close to the Mendoza line here, which is what my old Rabbi used to call when it gets close to 12pm but I feel like I can’t make it through our Shabbat morning service if we don’t take a little time to talk about our experience in Israel. I talked a little bit this morning during our Torah study about some of the experiences we had, specifically about our experience at Kfar Azza, which was the one of the kibbutzim very, very close to the Gaza border. I’d be happy to share more about that a little bit later.
Last week, I was sitting in Jerusalem at one of my favorite places to daven in the world, a community called Zion, which is a beautiful name for a synagogue in Jerusalem, with Rabbi Tamar Elad Applebaum, who speaks like poetry, and every word she says sounds like music. And unfortunately, she had laryngitis, so she didn’t speak that morning, but the new associate rabbi who was there shared some beautiful Torah about parashat lech lecha and the idea that for any journey, the hardest part of that journey is right before the journey starts. You don’t know exactly what’s going to happen. You’re not exactly sure if you’ve packed the right things, or if you have exactly an idea of where you’re going to go or what you’re going to eat, or what you’re going to experience. And so those first few moments before you go out on the journey end up being the most difficult moments, because once you get on the journey, once you get on that plane or on your donkey or whatever it is you’re taking on your journey, the journey itself becomes exhilarating, and you find yourself immersed and captivated.
For me, that turned out to be true. I was not actually looking forward to this trip. I was excited to be back in Israel because I hadn’t been there in six years, but there was so much going on here and so much that happened over the course of the holidays, I didn’t actually have time to orient myself towards what was going to happen when I got there. And I got onto the plane at Rickenbacker airport, and we made our direct way 10 hours to Tel Aviv and as soon as I got off the plane, it was as if my entire mindset had shifted. The air in Israel feels different than the air here. I walked off the plane and I was just immediately overcome with joy, just getting to be in the place that I had lived for two years, that I had walked the streets of and seen the people, and getting to just hear Hebrew in the air. The entire experience was changed for me. It was also helped by the fact that our tour planning group, Makor, led by Rabbi Zinkow, planned every single moment of the trip, along with Jewish Columbus to make every moment meaningful impactful. The food was incredible. Every moment was unbelievable. We could talk more about the details as we make our way through, but I know we just have a few minutes, so I just wanted to share with you a few vignettes, and hopefully, over the course of the next couple of weeks and months, many people who joined us will have the opportunity to share some of their moments and experiences.
I was sitting at the end of the trip with Sarah and Robert Ferrin talking about our experiences over the course of the trip, and for me, a poem came to mind that really oriented everything that I experienced over that week, it was a poem by Yehuda Amichai called Hatayarim, “The Tourists.” The poem basically talks about how there’s a man who had just got groceries for his family on a Friday afternoon, and he sits down next to a Roman arch in Jerusalem, and the tour group walks by, and the tour guide uses the man as a marker for the tour. He says, next to that man slightly above him, and to the left, there’s an arch from the Roman period, and the Byzantines used that arch to build the next generation of the arches. And that arch led to many, many historical finds in geological and archeological experiences. And that arch led us to the history that brought us to today, and the poet says, What would it have been like if instead of using the man as a marker for the arch, the tour guide had used the arch as a marker for the man? Look, there’s an arch right over there, but next to that arch there’s an old man bringing home food for his family for Shabbat. He has lived his day in Jerusalem, and now he gets to go home with his family to celebrate Shabbat in the holiest of cities. How would that have changed the orientation of the experience? The orientation from the place of Israel to Am Israel, the people of Israel.
For me, the experience of this trip was the fact that in every single place that we went, we got to listen and talk to people who were living on the ground, people who had experienced the trauma and the horrors of the last two years and were finding a way to live, to truly experience. We experienced human beings who were in the places and also the tour guides, half of whom are connected to Columbus, Ohio, like Kim Conrad Worly, who grew up in this congregation, was one of the tour guides. Hadara Arbell, who is the daughter of Alan Gil, who was here, the head of the Jewish Federation here in Columbus, was another one of the tour guides. All of these tour guides had connections to us here in this place. And it was so powerful and real to be able to go to Israel and experience people like us.
That Beit Knesset that I went to in Jerusalem is Shivyoni, an egalitarian place where people pray together in the center of Jerusalem. They look like us. They pray like us. They live their lives like us. Jerusalem isn’t just a place that we look at just for the history. It’s not just a place that we have a biblical and historical connection to, but there are people who are exactly like us, who are living their lives there, and for them, it’s just easy. It’s just powerful. You just get to live in Israel, and us here, we have to make the choices that allow us to step into Judaism every single moment of every single day.
On the first night of our experience there, we got to listen to Ruth Calderon, who is an unbelievable teacher of Talmud. She’s a secular scholar and was also a member of Knesset, and was the first woman to teach Talmud on the floor of the Knesset. And she spoke to us about how the moment that they’re living in in Israel right now is a moment after the shattering of the tablets. Remember the people of Israel in the Sinai Desert, after they had the sin of the golden calf, Moses shattered the tablets, and they have to figure out how they’re going to live in a world that is shattered. Noah has to live in a world after the flood. Abraham in this week’s parsha and Yitzhak, specifically in this week’s Parsha, have to live in a world after encounter with almost death, after encounter with almost sacrificing his son, and after encounter with almost being sacrificed. How do they walk through the world after that fact? Abraham and Isaac never speak to each other again. But Ruth Calderon experiences her son turning towards Judaism after serving in the reserves. After experiencing such trauma, he learns Kabbalat Shabbat and invites his mom to be with him in a beit knesset as he prays the ancient words of our people and orients himself towards Judaism, he steps in.
The last moment of the trip we sat in the morning listening to the words of Rachel Goldberg Polin. Rachel Goldberg Polin lived through the worst trauma that any mother could ever live through. Her son, Hirsch, was murdered by Hamas in the tunnels, and her message for us was one of faith, it was one of hope. First of all, she sat down with us and she oriented herself to us through a connection to Columbus. Instead of saying, I’m here in Jerusalem, she said, I grew up at Camp Ramah in Wisconsin, and everyone from Columbus at Camp Ramah in Wisconsin had really beautiful teeth, because there’s a lot of dentists in Columbus and and all of them are Jews, and my bunk mate was a Zidel. Yesterday I went to the dentist. My dentist is Dr Eric Zidel, and I asked him if he’d spoken to anybody from the Israel trip. He said, on Monday morning, he got more text messages at 4am than he’s ever received. And he grew up at camp with Rachel and Jon Goldberg Polin. And he texted Jon and he said, I can’t believe that I’m still getting connected with you, that I am here with you throughout all of this, and that the 200 people who came from Columbus, instead of thinking about you, were texting me about their teeth.
What Rachel closed with saying to us is that every single evening, she says the Shema, but she does something very unique. She says the Shema twice, one time she covers her eyes and she says the Shema for herself, and she covers her own eyes to focus, and then she turns and she goes like this, and she covers Hersh’s eyes, and she says the Shema again. She says he’s not going to be able to say those words again, but I believe that those words are meant to bring our people together, that those words are meant to help us live on, that Hersh’s memory will be a revolution and will be a light for all the people who continue to hold on to his name.
One week before that, I sat in Tel Aviv at hostage square, and there’s a piano there in the center of hostage square that the mother of a hostage named Alon put in Tel Aviv, as well as other pianos all over the country. Her son was an incredible pianist. Sorry, her son is an incredible pianist. And she said, what would it be like if we could play music everywhere in Israel? And maybe, just maybe, my son in the tunnels will be able to hear the piano. And I sat at that piano and I played the words, I played the song Acheinu, the words that we’ve said every single Shabbat, but we no longer say because there are no living hostages left in Gaza. And I thought to myself, How many times has Acheinu been played on that piano, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times by hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people who are praying for the people of Israel to be moved from Afela Le’ora, from darkness to light.And I thought about our trip where we started in the desert. We started in the south, next to Gaza in the moment of extreme darkness, and we made our way to Rachel Goldberg Poland, who told us to live in the light, to walk into the light, to turn towards each other, and to turn towards Judaism. And that’s the message that I hope to hold on to. Alon was returned alive in the last release and there are now videos of him beautifully playing piano again.
We’re living in a time when there’s a lot of darkness in the world. We talked this morning about righteousness and evil and how God could destroy a city, even if there might have been a a smidgen of righteousness there. We could never know what righteousness there might have been left there, because the entire city has been destroyed. Without even going to look! But how do we find a way to lean into our better urges, to lean towards the light, to hold on to the memories of those who have been lost, and to walk together to the or (light).
We’re going to have many moments to share more memories together. And I’m hoping that you ask the question of each other, what did you see? What did you experience? And I’m hoping that we can bring those 40 members of Agudas Achim who joined us on that trip together at least a couple times over the course of the next few weeks, to share their own experiences. But for now, the message that I’m holding on to in my live processing of the trip that I just did just now is that the only way we can move forward is together, and the only way that we can continue to live our lives in this world is if we lean into our Jewish choices, we turn towards each other and we turn towards Judaism.
So as we make our way this week and beyond, what are the things that you’re going to do, to step into community, to step into faith, to step into those words of the Shema, and really listen to each other as we move from afela l’ora, from darkness and destruction to light and to holiness. Kein Yehi Ratzon, May it be so, and we say, Amen.
