Rabbi's Message

Rabbi Elyse Wechterman
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Home and Hope
Rosh Hashanah 5767 (Sept. 2006)

A few months ago, I offered a column and a teaching on the Hebrew concept of “Home.” I noted that one word in Hebrew, Bayit, is used to connote both home and house. It is pleasant to imagine that Jewish culture assumes no distinction between “home” – a word that conjures warmth, welcome, unconditional love and “house” - which at its very basic might be no more than four walls and a door.

Robert Frost once wrote that home is the place that “when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” Wouldn’t it be nice to imagine that every Jewish house has always been a home and that every place a Jew has been at home is a strong house?

I am not so sure we can make that claim- after all – Jewish culture has had its share of homelessness and displacement over the centuries – we certainly know what it is like to live both in a home and in a house – and also without either. For 2000 years we Jews have wandered the globe setting up homes, making ourselves comfortable, building houses. And yet many of us have learned the habit – at least metaphorically - of sleeping with a packed suitcase under our beds ready for the next expulsion. We are a people who never really are at home.

Maybe that is what has made the word “Home” – “Bayit” the very concept of a home so valuable to us.

Inherently, the Jewish concept of home (Bayit) is tied up with another word concept: place or (Makom).

From our earliest texts we Jews have been searching for the “Place” that God will show us to make our “Home”. When God first calls to Abraham in Parsha Lech Lecha, to leave his father’s home, God explicitly says that God will show Abraham Ha Makom - “the Place.” Abraham takes his wife Sarah and follows God’s voice and finds his new home – God’s holy place. It is at that moment that Abraham (then Abram) knew he had reached his new home, the place that later becomes Ha’Aretz – the Land – our Jewish homeland.

And then later – in the passage we will read Sunday morning, Abraham is again called to trust God’s guidance and to take his son Isaac to a “Place that I (God) will show you”. This time it is to a mountain that God leads Abraham, testing his faith with the command to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac.

According to the rabbis, the very spot where Isaac was bound on the alter, Har HaMoriah, Mt. Moriah, is also the very spot on which the Temple – HaBayit – The House (Capitol T Capitol H) HaBayit was built. Our most sacred Jewish home was built on a very particular and noteworthy holy place – a Makom Kadosh.

A sense of place, a sense of home is integral to the health and well being of every human being. Home is a “fundamental human license,” according to author and essayist Barbara Kingsolver. “”Home is a place, geography and psyche; it’s a matter of survival and safety, a condition of attachment and self-definition,” she writes. “It is where you learn from your parents and repeat to your children all the stories of what it means to belong to the place and people of your ken.”

Home is also the place you come back to, the yardstick against which we measure each experience or evolution in our lives. But this yardstick only works if you journey away from home for a while, experience life a little. And then you come back and notice that the counter isn’t as high as used to be, the backyard not quite so big. You knew you had grown up – but you couldn’t really see it until you came back home again.

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob each journey away from home for one reason or another and each return changed men. While their journeys are informative, growthful experiences for all of them, it is only upon the return that those experiences become integrated and absorbed into who they each are.

Just as it is true on an individual level, it is also true on a national level as well. The Hebrews – descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob journey down to Egypt where they spend 400 years. But it is only on their return journey toward home – toward Eretz Yisrael – the homeland and place where God will lead them – that they become Yisrael: a unique people dedicated to an identity tied deeply to their sense of place. .

Can you come home to a place you have never been? According to our tradition – absolutely. When Ruth and Naomi journey back to the land of Israel after the death of their husbands, Naomi is coming back home. For Ruth, the Moabite, this is her first visit. When Naomi urges her not to follow, Ruth says: “For wherever you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die and be buried.” In other words: my home is where you are, you and your people.

Ruth, the paradigm of the Jew by choice, makes her home within the people of Israel. – Like so many conversion students I have worked with Ruth expresses the sense that entering the Jewish people is coming home. She understands what it means to feel rootless and unconnected and longs to build a permanent home within this new community she has found. Ruth comes into our people to find a place (makom) and build a home (bayit). It is not so surprising then that out of her passionate commitment to home-building comes the line of David – and eventually – the fabled Messiah who – metaphorically – will help us all realize our dream of creating perfect homes.

Home – Bayit; Place- Makom

In reflecting on these notions at this time of Rosh Hashana, I am struck by two emotions. On the one hand, I am so grateful and overjoyed to be home – to have come around another year cycle, to have my family together for the holiday, and to see so many of you here all coming back home to reconnect, renew and refresh ourselves for the year ahead.

These holy days are a home for us. Whether you come to the synagogue often during the year or only at the holy days, you know that without this moment in time as a touchstone, our journeys out into the world would be missing something. These days are, for many of us, the opportunity to touch base – with ourselves and our families, with whatever concept of God or Source we carry within us. Hopefully we use these days to reflect on our hopes and aspirations – our dreams for our lives and the lives of our family members. Hopefully – we measure our progress, our growth against the yardsticks of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.

Whether it is the smell of chicken cooking and the taste of taiglach, the sounds of the liturgy or the cry of the shofar – or even the same jokes from the same family members as last year – these holy days do welcome us back, take us in and become our home again each year. For that, we can be filled with filled with delight and joy. What a wonderful home we have built.

And yet – there is another emotion, another reality I sense as I reflect on the notion of home and place. As I look out into the world, beyond the beautiful faces here before me and a little deeper, I sense that so many of us, so many of our brothers and sisters in the world, are really not at home at all.
It seems that the prevailing condition for humanity right now is actually a sense of dislocation, disharmony. So many individuals and communities have lost their homes or are struggling to maintain them.

Think first of the victims of Katrina, and other natural disasters made far more devastating by the lack of attention to building safe homes. And we are at war; our soldiers are far from home in a country where homes don’t even seem to exist any more –not real ones – not safe ones any way. Throughout the world, people, families, entire communities are ripped from their homes by violence, bloodshed, famine, genocide on a daily basis. And more locally, our neighbors and friends, some of our members, are struggling to maintain the roof over the heads of their families – to maintain some sense of dignity, self worth, connection in a society that has gone overboard – to find their place in a souped-up hyper-commercial world of consumerism.

And because we are so blessed and so acutely aware of our blessings at this time, it becomes even more imperative that we look upon the world to see who is not yet included in these blessings.

As Barbara Kingsolver said, home is so important, so crucial to ones sense of self that to loose it is devastating. “It is both a loss of community and then, finally, a loss of self. To be homeless is to be rootless, unconnected – it is an aberration of the Human condition. And, to Jews who know both homelessness and home, it is unacceptable.

Over the course of these high holy days I will challenge us to think about these concepts of home and homelessness in our community. I see three levels or categories of homes deeply threatened and in need of repair – each of which directly connects to us at Agudas Achim on an individual and collective basis – and I want to talk to you about each of them, keeping in mind that as a community and as a people, building safe and loving homes for ourselves and each other must become our number one priority for the coming year.

The first home in need of attention is our homeland – Eretz Yisrael. Tomorrow morning we will read of the birth of Isaac and the banishment of Ishmael – a painful episode that goes to the heart of the conflict between Jews and Palestinians.

It is time for us to look at the conflict – and our relationship to the land – with fresh eyes. To recommit ourselves not to blind flag waving and cheerleading – but to honest and committed engagement. What are we doing to shore up the growth of a safe and secure Israel? How are we connecting to our fellow Jews in that part of the world in their search for safe and peaceful homes? Tomorrow morning I will tell you about our planned trip to Israel this February and about other ways you can actively connect to Israel. And I will talk about what it means that for the first time in my lifetime the state of Israel is fighting for its very survival.

Secondly, on Kol Nidre, Erev Yom Kippur, I want to address the state of our spiritual homes – the places that we house our souls. Whether this is a physical home – the bodies that house our souls – or a more ephemeral one – the selves that house our unique divine spark – it is time to do a little inspection and repair.

The process of Teshuva – repentance and return – starts with what the rabbis call a Heshbon haNefesh – an accounting of the soul – an inventory, perhaps. On Kol Nidre, I would like to outline the crucial values or middot that our tradition holds up as ideal characteristics of a healthy spirit. And then I will ask us all – myself included – to run a check – a self diagnostic. How exactly are we each doing in this realm? Have we paid enough attention? Are the ceilings tight and the floors dry or are there some foundation cracks that need to be repaired and addressed before the wet winter sets in? Are our souls at home – feeling cared for and loved? And if not – what can we do to change that?

And finally, on Yom Kippur morning, when we read Isaiah and the call to take our spiritual work into the realm of justice, I plan to talk very specifically about the houses (or places of residence) of some members of our community. No – I am not going to name names and it isn’t about whose floor is less clean. But it is about the growing gaps in the social service network and the available supports for people – real people – people in this room – as we age, become ill, lose family members and become isolated. How are we going to care for one another?

How do we make sure that people’s houses are indeed suitable homes – safe, clean environments in which to live and flourish. How can we guarantee that our members remain connected and integrated into this community as abilities change and resources fluctuate? In short, how do we make this place, this community, a welcoming home where we know all will be taken in?

So it is a tall order, all this homebuilding and place-making. It would be easy to get discouraged. But I am not. Because through all this talk of dislocation and homelessness, I hold on to one thought: That Hebrew word for place, Makom, is also a name for God. HaMakom – The Place. And God is also Mikve Yisrael – the Hope of Israel. God is the Place of Hope – and as a well-known hasidic parable tells us, where is the Place of God? Wherever one let’s God in.

Where we engage in home building, where we roll up our sleeves – actually or metaphorically – where we struggle to bring people into connection with us and with one another, we build a home - Bayit. And when we do that together, it is not only a home, but a Makom Kadosh – a holy place.

I am looking forward to the journey home over the next few days and the coming year.

Shana Tova,
Rabbi Elyse

Rosh Hashanah 1 | Rosh Hashanah 2 | Kol Nidre | Yom Kippur

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