Well, the “shalom service” was either very wonderful or very weird, depending on whether you want to think about it quantitatively or qualitatively.
From the former perspective, it was weird because — either despite or because of or having nothing to do with advance email-list publicity by my rabbi and I — only two members of our congregation showed up. Also in attendance were some very dear, longtime friends of Ann’s and mine from our RenFaire tribe and a woman and a couple who needed, in light of the matzav, to be with other Jews and happened to find out we were having a service.
Qualitatively, however, it was very profound. We did the straight Erev Shabbat I service from our Reform siddur, and I never heard such loud and earnest davening. The d’var shalom went over pretty well (I’ll post it after this entry); people really had a need to share their fears and hopes. Mostly, we spoke about how wrenching it is that Jews are fighting Jews as a community well as within our own hearts. We also spoke about how none of us want Psalm 83 to be a part of our personal or comunal theology. We all cried a little, as is natural when speaking from the kishkes. Afterwards, we laughed a little too. Everyone was profoundly grateful for the chance to come together. And I am, as always, profoundly grateful to Hashem for allowing me to enable that to happen.
That quantitaive vs.qualitative thing … Despite my firm belief that people should only come to services if they want to, I freely admit to a bit of disappointment that more people didn’t attend. But more importantly, perhaps, is what a difference it made in the lives of those who did attend.
Here is my d’var shalom. When I delivered it, I expanded a bit on my own personal feelings:
D’var Shalom – Erev Rosh Chodesh Iyar 5762
Last December, our religious-school director Susan Jebrock and I attended a meeting of Jewish educators in San Francisco. The lead speaker was a rabbi named Avram Infeld, a big macher in Israeli educational circles. He’s an amazing speaker, one of those larger-than-life characters straight out of a Leon Uris novel or Zorba the Greek.
Among other gems, he told us always to teach value-laden terms in Hebrew, not English. “What does ‘tzedakah’ mean?” he asked us. “Charity,” we answered. “WRONG!” he thundered. “Charity is what you give because of how it makes you feel! Tzedakah is what you give because it’s the right thing to do!”
The word “shalom” has nuances that don’t translate well into English. More than simply “peace,” it carries connotations of “wholeness,” “harmony,” and “integrity.” Shalom isn’t so much a lack of war as what you get when everything is in balance, with no wobbling.
That’s what’s so important about the word “shalom” – since it also means “wholeness,” it necessarily contains the opposite of “peace.” But only in balance with everything else.
We are the balance point where it all comes together.
But to bring it all together, and do that as seriously and sincerely as we can, we have to clearly look and listen to both arms of the balance.
I’d like to read two psalms right now which apply to the matzav, or current Israeli-Arab situation. Both are about as different as they can be.
– Psalm 83. This uses some obscure references, but rather than excerpt them, I’ve left them in for sake of the meter.
– Psalm 122.
I’ve read those tonight partly because they illustrate two ends of the tunnel we seem to be in, and mostly because I myself have been wobbling between those two extremes, on an almost hourly basis, for the past several months. You are the first people to whom I’ve told this other than my companion. I am not used to or comfortable being filled with rage and vengeance; I don’t like it one bit. Hatred and anger do not come easily to me. I prefer to take the bigger view, the view that shows us how to keep human beings from fighting over nothing and everything at the same time. I prefer balance to wobbling.
That’s not always easy. Talking about it makes it easier. Being listened to makes it easier still.
If anyone wants to say anything and would like us to listen, now would be a good time. I only ask that we refrain from discussing political solutions, and stick to airing our fears and hopes – starting our sentences with “I feel” instead of “we should” or “they should.” Remember, the Talmud records the losing opinions, too, since we can learn from them and may reconsider them as times change. We don’t yet know what the losing opinions are in this situation – so let’s try to value and respect these differences, even those that may remain unspoken.
Most of the last part — “I only ask … fears and hopes” and “Remember … remain unspoken” was written by my rabbi. She’s better at saying that sort of thing than I am. I closed with two poems by Yehuda Amichai, “I May I Rest In Peace” and the following “Appendix to (Isaiah’s) Vision of Peace” (translated by Glenda Abramson and Tudor Parfitt):
Don’t stop after beating the swords
into plowshares, don’t stop! Go on beating
and make musical instruments out of them.
Whoever wants to make war again
will have to turn them into plowshares first.
Some people say that the Torah can only be meaningful if the events depicted therein are true. In other words, if 600,000 people didn’t march through the Sinai Peninsula; if the plagues were just a mythologization of natural disasters; if Lot’s wife never turned into a pillar of salt — then nothing else about this Text of Texts can be worth the parchment it’s inscribed on.