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Our
Thirtieth Kol Nidre
Kol Nidre
October 12,
2005
A
little boy goes to shul with his mother. He's a bright,
observant and inquisitive little boy so as he sees things
going on in the service and asks his mother what it means.
He has his eye especially fixed on the rabbi. When he sees
the rabbi bow, he says "Mommy, what does that mean." and his
mother says "Oh, that's a way that he shows his respect for
G-d." Then he sees the rabbi get up on his toes and says
"What does that mean mommy?" and she says Oh, it means he
wants to become higher and higher and higher in his
holiness." And then a bit later the little boy sees the
rabbi touch some papers on his lectern and take his watch
off and place it right there on the lectern and the little
boy says "Mommy, what does that mean." And his mother says,
Oh absolutely nothing!"
Tonight I want to talk about time that means
a great deal!
Tonight
is our 30th Kol Nidre at Ohev Shalom. As I look out at you
and see this exquisitely beautiful sight which I am gifted
to see from my vantage on the Bimah, I also recall our first
Kol Nidre held at the Friends Meeting House in Southampton.
I chanted the Kol Nidre that night as I did for the next few
years. My years of chanting the Kol Nidre are over but I
never fail to be deeply moved by the story and stirring
melody of the prayer. Because it begins this holy day of Yom
Kippur it transports me to that higher spiritual place ....
without even standing on my toes.
Kol Nidre - All promises. I wonder/ponder
whether we have fulfilled the promise we had in our first
Kol Nidre in 1976.
After two years at the Friends Meeting House, we bought a
modest little building on Second Street Pike, from
Addisville Reform Church for the High Holy Days of 1978 on
enough acreage to expand in the future. We bought it with
60 families in the spring and doubled our membership by the
High Holy Days that year and it was standing Room Only for
Yom Kippur. One of the highlights of that day was seeing
the Senior Pastor of St. Vincent de Paul RC Church pay us a
surprise visit during the service. It was evidently easier
to get in without a ticket in those days. I always
appreciated that gesture of welcome extended by Father
McBride. We remained friendly over the years, when he was
hospitalized, I visited him and some years later, when he
past away, I went to the church to pay my respects. I walked
in to the church and simply took a seat. Minutes later, I
was invited to sit on the pulpit, an honor seldom accorded a
non Catholic. It was a profound statement of the
relationship we had built.
As
the years went on, we've been involved in Interfaith
Dialogue, a leader in interfaith service and have made a
significant contribution to interfaith relations in the
community. One of our brightest memories was the Friday
evening we welcomed Cardinal Anthony Bevalaqua to Ohev
Shalom when he was first installed as Archbishop. We have
hosted a number of distinguished speakers and scholars great
Jewish musical concerts over the years but the one I recall
most deeply is the Evening with Elie Wiesel when this Nobel
laureate who has taught us how to remember and speak about
the Holocaust spoke from this lectern. Our synagogue has
been committed to preserving the memory of the Shoah from
our Holocaust Memorial, our annual Yom Hashoah service, our
sacred Holocaust Torah which we have repaired and Kashered
on two occasions and is in need of repair again.
After that Standing Room Only Yom Kippur crowd in '78, we
spent the next 3 High Holy Days in tents. One year it was
unbearably hot, the next year it was so cold, many
brought their kerosene space heaters and the third year
was the year of the rain. When I asked the congregation to
please rise, they couldn't because they and their chairs
were sinking deeper and deeper in the mud. We knew it was
time to build our own home and in August 1983 we dedicated
this building on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. A much
younger Senator Arlen Specter, now distinguished chair of
the Senate Judiciary Committee, was our guest speaker. With
great pride, we brought the Torahs in procession into the
Sanctuary and placed them in the Ark. It was a great day.
I look back and am amazed at what a young
community of some 250 families were able to build while only
8 years old. This building was testimony to the love and
dedication people had for their young synagogue.
By
then we were becoming a synagogue family. We had celebrated
a number of Simchas, baby namings and Bar and Bat Mitzvahs.
A number of those babies I named on our Bimah I have
officiated at their B'nai Mitzvah, taught in
Confirmation, seen them go off to college, (some to their
parents’ consternation have come home after college) and I
have stood with them and their life's mate under the Huppah.
And on more than a few occasions, I have named the next
generation here. Yes, it feels great!
I
never anticipated the other side however, the terrible pain
we would come to know over the years in the tragedy of
losing young people and children and young congregants.
When we say Yizkor tomorrow, I will recall each of them
again, as they are forever part of our most sacred memory
here at Ohev Shalom.
As
the saying goes If I had a nickel for every time someone
said to me, Rabbi you should be proud of what you built
here, I'd be O.K. I am O.K. because the compliment is
worth far more than all the nickels added up. And whenever I
hear this sweet compliment, "what you built" I hear you in
the plural. There is no me - but we! We built this building,
this synagogue, this community together. Ohev Shalom today
is the product of thirty years of leaders, workers,
contributors, daveneners, learners, members. We have
reason to be very proud of these thirty years.
Our philosophy since our earliest year is
we welcome you at Ohev Shalom on whatever level of Jewish
knowledge or observance you're at today. My grandfather once
told me that I am not G-d's FBI agent on earth. Our
approach has been that by teaching and not preaching, we
hope to be a resource for your Jewish growth. I am proud of
the Jewish growth that I have seen here over the years by
adults and teenagers and children. We haven't touched every
one as deeply as I might hope but I have seen Jewish lives
blossom and become transformed over the years. One adult in
our community, actually a vice president of the synagogue
some 15 years ago and acting president enrolled in my Alma
Matter, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and is now
a distinguished Rabbi on the West Coast Rabbi Sheryl Lewart
who we knew better as Sherry Shulewitz. A young woman who
grew up here, became Bat Mitzvah, Confirmed and married here
last fall, Kim Blumenthal will be ordained by the Jewish
Theological Seminary this May. This is reason for great
pride though I've always believed that even more than we
need great rabbis, we need committed, loving, dedicated Jews
in the Pews.
Ohev Shalom has always exemplified the teaching of Hillel
"If I am only for myself what am I?" I am proud that our
synagogue from its earliest years has cared about the
Jewish world and Israel far beyond the walls of our own
building. On the High Holy Days of 1982 when we were raising
money to build this building, our then President Mitch
Ziegler who is now living on a Ranch in Reno Nevada, (where
do past presidents go- Mitch and I still keep in touch
regularly) vowed to give a percentage of our Kol Nidre
Appeal (as it was called then) to build an Ohev Shalom
Grove in the United Synagogue JNF Forest in Israel. Five
years later, during our first Ohev Shalom Israel trip, in a
very moving ceremony we unveiled our plaque which still
hangs on the dedication wall of that forest.
That morning, at the JNF forest we also planned to
celebrate Daniel Berkowitz's Bar Mitzvah and plant trees.
Unfortunately, there were no forest rangers to meet us for
the tree planting because they were responding to fires set
by Palestinian arsonists in other forests. I recall asking
our guide, what we would do for our tree planting. He told
me "Go do the service - Al Tidag! Don't worry, we'll have
the trees. After the service, sure enough right on time
there were beautiful little saplings for every one to plant
and we each planted a tree with our own hands. I quietly
went over to our guide and said David, where did you find
these trees. He said, you see these trees we just
planted over here? Yesterday, someone planted them over
there. You do what you have to do.
I am proud that with the rarest exceptions, we have been a
community where there has always been a sense of Love and
Peace, the very meaning of Ohev Shalom. Our earliest years
were our most raucous at times and then we grew up. For the
past number of years, at our Board Meetings you will hear
good will, warmth and laughter, serious discussion and at
times earnest, even emotional debate but seldom a raised
voice and almost never anger. I am very proud of this. We
have truly lived the meaning of our name Ohev Shalom. And I
am happy when guests see this expressed in Services and tell
me they appreciate the warmth and sense of community they
feel here.
We have reason to
be proud of the Social Action work our synagogue does.
Again, this is an expression of Hillel's teaching "If I am
only for myself what am ?" Many of us participated tonight
in Operation Isaiah. Each month, we prepare some 250 -300
Kosher meals in our Cook For a Friend. Each December we host
an amazing party, a family fun day for the Homeless. Twice
a year, we have a clothing drive for the needy and donate
hundreds and hundreds of pounds of near new clothing. I am
proud to be the rabbi of a congregation that annually
updates its wardrobe. We do even more than I’ve described
and there is more we can still do.
Last December the
entire Bucks County Jewish Community and all of the
synagogues sent one bus load to Israel. That was good. This
December, Ohev Shalom will have 3 full buses touring Israel.
That is great. Many of the leaders of Israel Bonds and JNF
in this community are members of Ohev Shalom. That is a
statement and reason to be proud.
Talking about
buses, each Shabbat morning, a little bus carries some of
our dearest members here who for years were part of the
Adath Tikvah
- Montefiore community. There is a Yiddish saying "When
G-d closes one door, He opens another " and our doors opened
to welcome wonderful ATM members in what became a Shidduch
made in heaven. We both have reason to be grateful and
proud.
One of the
greatest days for Ohev Shalom happened one Sunday afternoon.
After we built our Rothman Family state of the art school
building in 1997, we felt it was time for us, as a
community, bring a new Torah into the world. We
commissioned a scribe in Israel, we saw the opening words
of the Torah written in our Sanctuary and some months
later we wrote letters of our names into the Torah to
complete its writing. The day we dedicated our new Ohev
Shalom Torah, we marched in procession on Second Street
Pike beginning at that sacred space known as Giuseppe's with
hundreds of our members of our synagogue proudly walking in
the street following a marching band of our members
leading the procession with the Torah lovingly held under
a Huppah, children and adults singing and dancing around
the Torah and all of the Christian Clergy in the community
walking with us. It was a day for us to share our love for
the Torah with the whole community.
There are many
many more memories and stories, but my watch does mean
something. I share these stories of the past not only to
reminisce and talk about the good old days because I believe
our best days are yet to come.
Because, we have
so much to be proud of together, because we are, I believe
such a special community, I look more and more to our
future and want us to secure the viability of Ohev Shalom
for many many years to come for ourselves, our children and
those yet to be named on our Bimah. While the overwhelming
majority of my time and energy is spent in the spiritual
realm of our community, I can not forget the Talmudic
teaching "Im eyn kemach, eyn Torah." If there's no flour,
there's no Torah. You know what that means!
Those beautiful words of the popular folk song, "To
everything there is a season and a time to every purpose
under the heavens" come from our Bible, the book of
Ecclesiastes. Four years ago, we began an effort to
complete the sacred work of building our synagogue but it
wasn't the right time. 2001 and 2002 were not the right
time. We've been patient, we have learned a great deal and
refocused our vision and now this is the time for us to
complete our synagogue that began when those 60 families
bought that modest building and 250 families built this
structure. To everything there is a season and a time to
every purpose under the heaven. This is our time.
My prayer tonight
is that there will be another anniversary when we can tell
new stories we will compose together. Stories of how we
touch Jewish lives in new and deeper ways, how we become a
more inclusive community where we communicate how each of
our members matter here. Stories about how we continue to
reach out and support the Jewish world and care about the
general community of which we are par . Stories about more
and more Simchas and the story of how we, this generation
of Ohev Shalom responded to the call to complete our
synagogue and together built the foundation for Ohev
Shalom's long term future.
That is the
promise we make tonight on this evening of promises, our
30th Kol Nidre.
Amen.
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