From the Rabbi

Have you noticed that everything is moving faster these days…? A year feels like a month, a month like a week, and a week is a day. It was wonderful seeing everybody on the High Holidays. It was my 11th year celebrating with Congregation Tifereth Israel, but it felt as though we were there just a month ago.

On Yom Kippur this year, I was bestowing a blessing I called “May you Fast Forward!” — to be spiritually propelled forward through the short interval of self-denial. The common greetings are “May you have an easy fast,” or “May you have a meaningful fast.” I’m not a big fan of the former because the point is not to have an easy fast, but one that is meaningful. But besides being propelled forward spiritually, it also feels appropriate to be moving faster in time.

Isaiah 60 opens with “Arise, shine, for your light has dawned; the presence of the Lord has shone upon you!”  It closes with “The smallest shall become a clan; the least, a mighty nation. I the Lord will speed it in due time.”

The Internet definitely helps in the process of the speed of light; the words flying through semiconductors. A recent story from Israel demonstrates this idea. Forty-nine years ago, during the Yom Kippur War, a shofar and a tallit were found on the battlefield, identified only with initials. Search efforts were made all this time by a fellow soldier, but to no avail. Just before this year’s High Holidays, the fellow soldier’s grandchildren suggested posting it on social networks. Through multiple sharing of the post, 49 years of search came to an end in less than an hour and a half. The owner, whose survival status was unclear until that moment, was found and was reunited with his religious artifacts.

It is evident that humanity can neither predict nor fathom the future; we can’t even imagine it. And it comes to us faster and faster. When it’s time, God says, it’ll happen like a light, like something appearing out of nothing. Last Shabbat, we started once again to read Genesis — the word of God that created something out of nothing, the way we connect heaven and earth.

There are two different opinions regarding the final redemption. One predicts that we will build the Sanctuary of God with our own hands; the other predicts that it will come prepared from heaven. Surely, we can’t really know. Until recently, I was on the earthly side, perhaps the one more rational. But this year, reality made me expand my imagination. A few weeks ago, I officiated at a wedding in the synagogue’s garden. The young couple had made their own beautiful huppah out of simple birch wood. At the conclusion of the ceremony, the couple offered to leave it for me.

Overnight, the huppah became a Sukkah in my backyard. On the earthly side, it simply saved me the time and effort to build one. But on the heavenly side, a Sukkah, which is a sanctuary, came to me prepared. It felt like my own gift from heaven, a wedding gift in the marriage of heaven and earth, like a word, a light, appearing suddenly in one instance and creating a new reality. The Lord had speeded it in due time.

In the new year of 5783, may we all fast forward.

—Rabbi Gadi Capela

With the death and funeral of Queen Elizabeth II this week, hosts of people gathered around her coffin, waiting in never-ending queues just to get a glimpse of her majesty, even if just her spirit. It was the most watched event in human history.  The “queen of the world” had passed away. People saw her as a symbol of the Monarchy, but also as a mother and a grandmother, the head of a family deeply rooted in history. She was a constant in an ever-changing world who extended way beyond her entitlement. It’s hard to be cynical about this historic moment.

Surely, there are those who do not love what she stood for. Those who see The Crown as a symbol of a dominating power, exploiting other peoples through Imperialism and Colonialism. Even though the funeral was a religious service at a church, the processions and everything in between displayed military power. After all, the queen’s coffin was carried on a gun carriage to Westminster Abbey. It was in England in 1534 that King Henry Vlll, whom the Pope titled “The defender of the faith” for going against the recent Reformation, decided then to usurp the religious authority in his kingdom for himself by starting the Anglican Church. The opposite happened in ancient Israel with the Maccabees of the Hasmonean family, who were religious leaders but seized the kingship after their victories over the Greeks. They retained absolute power that inevitably brought absolute corruption.

So, what would Judaism have to say about royalty today? Jews have a complicated history with Britain, the first country to expel Jews from Western Europe in 1290. On the other hand, the State of Israel came out of the British mandate over Palestine. Shortly after the establishment of the State of Israel, my own family walked through Yemen to arrive at Aden, the British refugee city at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, to then be flown to Israel. Would Jews, who intimately experienced the double-edged sword of the Royal British Empire, still want the kingship of the Messiah that we pray for every day? Would we want it to resemble the British model?  Is it even possible to convince the future generation that it is beneficial?  Perhaps there is a different way to unify the people and create “sacredness of something.”

When the people of Israel demanded a king from the Prophet Samuel, he warned them that the sense of security they hoped to achieve through a Monarchy would cost them dearly. The king, Samuel explained, would want to increase horses, for instance, as a symbol of power and military. Because horses are expensive to keep, the king would increase your burden, take you and your children to serve him, essentially bringing you back to Egypt. Do you want that?

In November 2003, I was in London for a short business trip, and my parents flew from Israel to meet me. As it happened, it was the day the Queen officially opens Parliament. Queen Elizabeth, who favored horses, was leading the parade in her carriage, with rows and rows of stallions. This event, which is steeped in tradition, is reminiscent of the meticulous details required “in the service of the Jewish Temple,” everything majestically prescribed.  As much as I appreciate and love the pageantry, pomp and ceremony, I’m not sure I’d like it to come back this way.

For us, God is the King, and Shabbat is the Queen — no thing and no person in the middle. More than the Jewish people have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jewish people.  Long Live Shabbat the Queen!

Shana Tova U’mtuka.

—Rabbi Gadi Capela

When our shul’s next-door neighbors built a pool in their backyard, I toyed with the idea in my mind, that if our synagogue wanted to expand, we could become a modern day “shul with a pool.”  Sounds so cool.

The phenomenon became popular in America in the early 20th century. In his book Shul with a Pool: The Synagogue-Center in American Jewish History, David Kaufman credits the synagogue-center idea to Henry Berkowitz (1857-1924), a member of the first graduating class of Hebrew Union College in 1883. The principal problem Berkowitz and other early HUC graduates of the day faced was a serious drop in synagogue attendance, Kaufman wrote. “Our Jewish congregations have gradually surrendered their influence to the social clubs,” he bemoaned. An auxiliary umbrella organization, formed in the late 19th century to oversee non-religious activities within congregations, marked the first attempt to develop a religious-social synthesis in America. The idea caught on, Kaufman said. “In less than a generation, Cleveland’s temple, under the leadership of Rabbi Moses Gries, would become the first congregation in America to build its own gymnasium — Americanizing and Judaizing its members at the same time.”

Where is the shul with a pool idea today? SWAP, as I decided to call it, is an acronym that alludes to its original spirit — an exchange between the shul and the pool, between the religious and the secular, a sort of separation between Church and State within the shul. In essence, pretty much every synagogue today (perhaps excluding Ultra-Orthodox) is a variation of a shul with a pool. Synagogues designate separate spaces for prayer, study, and socializing. Maybe we forgot to distinguish between religious and secular, and that people can have a choice. Perhaps we can have different memberships. How would a futuristic affiliation to this type of synagogue look?

It would be interesting to contemplate the future model of a SWAP, but in the end, what matters is the pool of people, a pool of loving kindness, the pool as a symbol of good people coming together to develop bonding relationships, to maintain and grow them. Like the Pool of Bethesda in ancient Jerusalem and its inspiration, Bethesda Fountain in Central Park is surrounded by a beautiful, circular pool — meant for healing the city. In the end, it’s about the infinite business of creating a community, going round and round, year by year. It’s the warmth of those who want to have a spiritual pool, a mikvah of healing water to all who gather around it.

Our Journal honoree this year is a definitive example of such warmth and hospitality. Amiability radiates throughout Roberta’s numerous activities in the shul community, and her acts of kindness and charity beyond. May all her merits help us balance our communal merits before God.

As we approach the month of Elul and another new year, I want to thank the members of Congregation Tifereth Israel for granting me a vote of confidence to continue to serve as your rabbi. I hope to carry on this fruitful relationship for many years to come.

May we have a happy and sweet new year of 5783.

—Rabbi Gadi Capela