We came together for the first Erev Shabbat since the tragedy in Florida, reeling from the loss and suffering. Rabbi Ben offered a tremendous sermon, which we are sharing for all who could not be present.
Rabbi Benjamin H. Spratt
Parshat Terumah
2.16.18 / 2 Adar 5778
Insanity
Insanity.
We have many definitions for it, and we toss around the term sometimes pejoratively, sometimes humorously. But surely one of our most familiar definitions of insanity, typically misattributed to Albert Einstein, is doing the same thing again and again, and expecting different results.
This week’s horror at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was the 8th school shooting in 2018, and the 30th mass shooting in six weeks. There is so much of late that feels insane. When we have 14 year olds gunned down in our halls of learning on a regular basis, we face such an abomination of our communal and national ideals I struggle to find a more soul-shattering illustration of insanity. The conversations I’ve had over the past two days, with our middle schoolers, with my 9 year old daughter, remind me of just how far the insanity spreads.
But it is actually our response to such tragedy that I want to focus on tonight.
In the immediate moments after hearing of horror, our psyche begins to reel and spin. And so begins the centripetal force moving responsibility outward onto the world around us. Before the screams have stopped echoing, before funerals have taken place, before our collective hearts have fully broken open, the soapboxes are placed, and the clarion calls for change fill our screens and airwaves. Gun control. Mental health support. Violent video games. Social media. We rage at politicians, at classmates or teachers who should have seen the signs, at parents, at psychologists. We fill our conversations with the rhetoric of what others should have done to prevent this, and what others need to do to stop it from ever happening again.
And then it happens again. And the same words are offered. The same messages delivered. The same conversations started and concluded. Again. And again. And again. And even as we grow weary, even as we despair, we play our part in the same cycle of moving out responsibility onto the shoulders of others, and embrace the insanity of doing the same thing and expecting different results. The blood of children cries out to us this week, and I at least have done a fabulous job at redirecting the horror, the shame, the rage onto the shoulders of things and people beyond myself. But I have done this before, and perhaps it’s time for a new path.
Over the past two weeks we’ve read of the Israelite’s revelation at Mount Sinai; when God charges this redeemed clan of slaves to become a holy nation. We can imagine the Israelite’s shock, having faced a string of supernatural terrors; walking through a split sea, wandering in the desert and relying on manna from heaven, standing at the base of a mountain surrounded with smoke and fire and hearing ethereal shofar blasts. They are threatened with divinely-ordained death, trembling in fear and uncertainty.
And then we open to this week’s Torah portion, Parshat Terumah, as God invites each and every Israelite to bring gifts of gold, silver, bronze, and many other materials. “V’asu li mikdash v’shachanti bitocham, let the Israelites build Me a tabernacle so that I might dwell within them” (Exodus 25:8). And in response to this invitation, the entire community joins together in building a sanctuary for God. But the Hebrew is important here – the purpose of building the tabernacle was not for God to dwell within it, but b’tocham, within them – within the people. As a midrash offers, it was not the Tabernacle that brought God into the people, but the act of each and every person feeling needed and necessary, and engaging in the collective work of building.[1] This, suggest our sages, is what allowed the Israelites to stand in the face of fear and uncertainty, and take the long and winding journey forward – they built together, and stood together, in a way in which each person was needed. And in so doing, God came to be within them.
This week I read the reflection of Glennon Doyle Melton, who learned of a remarkable practice of her son’s teacher:
Every Friday afternoon, she asks her students to take out a piece of paper and write down the names of four children with whom they’d like to sit the following week. The children know that these requests may or may not be honored. She also asks the students to nominate one student who they believe has been an exceptional classroom citizen that week. All ballots are privately submitted to her.
And every single Friday afternoon, after the students go home, she takes out those slips of paper, places them in front of her, and studies them. She looks for patterns.
Who is not getting requested by anyone else?
Who can’t think of anyone to request?
Who never gets noticed enough to be nominated?
Who had a million friends last week and none this week?
You see, [my child]’s teacher is not looking for a new seating chart or “exceptional citizens.” She is looking for lonely children. She’s looking for children who are struggling to connect with other children. She’s identifying the little ones who are falling through the cracks of the class’s social life. She is discovering whose gifts are going unnoticed by their peers. And she’s pinning down—right away—who’s being bullied and who is doing the bullying.
Ever since Columbine, she said. Every single Friday afternoon since Columbine. Good Lord.
This brilliant teacher watched Columbine knowing that all violence begins with disconnection. All outward violence begins as inner loneliness.
That is a plague the reaches into the corners of every neighborhood and city. That is a disease for which we all bear responsibility. And the statistics of solitude may be more important for us to ponder than the number of guns, the number of mass murders, or the national budget for mental health support.
Over the past 8 years, teen suicide has increased by 25%, and horrifically has nearly tripled in tween girls.[2] Over the past 20 years, social isolationism in adults has nearly quadrupled,[3] and now 1 in 3 adults in the US say they feel alone in the world. Bullying in schools has doubled in the 21st Century. And the fastest rising demographic of violence in America are socially-isolated teen boys.[4]
Even as I pray we will create legal pathways to better control access to guns while expanding access to mental health support, there is work to be done right here, right now. In our city, in our neighborhood, in our apartment buildings, in our congregation.
About fifty years ago, in an essay called “The Vocation of the Cantor,” Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel asked the question “What does a person expect to attain when entering a synagogue? In the pursuit of learning one goes to a library; for aesthetic enrichment one goes to the art museum; for pure music to the concert hall. What then is the purpose of going to the synagogue?”[5] Heschel’s response is that in a synagogue we should cultivate a sense of humanity. It is here that we teach compassion; it is here that we cultivate conscience. It is here that we elevate being a mentsch as our most prestigious aspiration. But most important of all, in Heschel’s words: “To attain a degree of spiritual security one cannot rely upon one’s own resources. One needs an atmosphere, where the concern for the spirit is shared by a community.” A community in which each person is needed, every person is necessary, and together we build a sanctuary of divinity. That community of concern, that community of spirit is right here. The world needs this synagogue. And we need you. Each and every one of you.
The late Pete Seeger, reflecting on his life and career, said, “My main purpose as a musician is to get people singing and to get them to make music themselves…[it’s a simple message:] I want to show people …what it is to [come] together. Revolutionists as well as religionists forget that heaven doesn’t come in one big bang. It comes in many steps. Brick by brick. Building together…I have sung for Americans of every political persuasion, and I am proud that I never refuse to sing to an audience, no matter what religion or color of their skin, or situation in life.”[6] In order for the song to be complete, we need every voice, and we need to make it together.
So we need to be more than rage. It is time we reverse our direction of energy, not the centripetal force that casts responsibility away, but a movement of feeling our sacred role in knitting this world together. We are called to be builders of belonging. In a congregation of this diversity, filled with lives and stories and unique souls each created in the image of God, we need to boldly say that every person here is needed. Each of us is necessary. And that you, no matter how you feel, who you are, and what you are grappling with, you are not alone.
You who have had your life shattered with the loss of a spouse, you are not alone.
You who face the heartbreak of infertility and miscarriage, you are not alone.
You who suffer with disease and pain, you are not alone.
You who hurt in the depths of depression or anxiety, you are not alone.
You who have been abandoned and forever misunderstood, you are not alone.
You who struggle with finances amidst so many people of prosperity, you are not alone.
You who are trapped in relationships and jobs that sap your soul, you are not alone.
You who are searching to find your identity, in gender, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, you are not alone.
This community must begin with belonging. Let this be our collective pledge this Shabbat – if you feel alone, come and sit with me. Tell me your story, and I will tell you mine. Whatever the struggle, whatever the circumstance, in this community you are not alone. You are needed. You are necessary. You are not alone.
And so, let these be the words that bind this community together: When I was out of work and was feeling low, you were with me. When I had problems in my marriage; when my wife was sick; when my mother was dying; when our son was in trouble; when I lost my partner; when I was worried about my sister, you were there for me to lean on. When I was new in town and feeling alone; when I received a terrible diagnosis; when I was tired and hopeless; when we lost our baby and my heart was breaking, you gave me your hand.
As Seeger said, redemption comes when we gather together, connecting one to another. Brick by brick walls are torn down, and sanctuaries built back up. We, through small acts of connection, bring God into this world. Like our ancestors long ago, we can build the very thing we seek, and fulfill the very purpose of this synagogue:
a sanctuary of security,
a place of peace,
a community of compassion.
One person at a time.
Shabbat shalom.
[1] See Exodus Rabbah 33:6, as each person bringing forth offerings of their own volition is reread as each person using God as an offering, as a pathway for connectedness and relationship. The act of building the Tabernacle (a medium for sacrifice) is then understood as a model of divine-human relationship: as humanity offers up divine offerings, the offering itself is God, and so the act of creation indeed becomes the tangible form of humanity and divinity coming together.
[2] http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/04/22/474888854/suicide-rates-climb-in-u-s-especially-among-adolescent-girls
[3] http://happierhuman.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/P13.-Social-Isolation-in-America-Changes-in-Core-Discussion-Networks-over-Two-Decades.pdf
[4] http://news.psu.edu/story/323147/2014/08/18/research/neglected-boys-may-turn-violent-adolescents; https://qz.com/1095247/the-sociological-explanation-for-why-men-in-america-turn-to-gun-violence/
[5] http://www.hebrewcollege.edu/sites/default/files/Heschel%20-%20The%20Vocation%20of%20the%20Cantor.pdf
[6] https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5417854