Rabbi Malomet's Rosh Hashana Sermon

Dear Friends,

Thank you for your many compliments, yasher koahs, and supportive remarks following the delivery of this sermon. In response to many individuals who requested it online, here it is below. It will be available also in a booklet.

Shanah Tovah.
Rabbi Eliot Malomet

ROSH HASHANAH 5767
A TIME TO REMEMBER AND A TIME TO DREAM

I want to begin with a picture of the pulpit.

I want to begin with that octagonal block of wood that stood at the center of the Bimah, its deep brown stain, its bittersweet chocolate eccentricity, its familiar scratches and imperfections. It had so many curious features, like the way it doubled as a reading table simply by pulling up a leaf that dangled on a piano hinge beneath it. We covered that venerable old shtender with a white cloak of velvet that over the years had been stained with wine, spices and candle wax, and maybe even a few tears.

That speaker’s box had a commanding view of the entire synagogue. I don’t know much about its history, other than the date of its dedication to the Temple, indicated by a small brass plaque adorning its front, now faded: A GIFT FROM THE SISTERHOOD 1953; and that it has served four Rabbis: Rabbi Listokin, Rabbi Ritholz, Rabbi Hilsenrath and myself. Countless synagogue presidents, guest speakers and assorted other personalities have spoken from that place; b’nai mitzvah came of age there; children had their first public appearances at its side singing EYN KELOHEINU and ADON OLAM. And there were times when all you could see was a nose.

And we don’t have it this year.

We are missing it with all of its exceptionality, with all of its moving parts, with all of its private playfulness, its archaic, even medieval, theatricality; we are missing it with all of its secrets.

And my chair. Sturdy, plain, functional, upright, with the slight hint of an art-deco radio console. With no ostentation. I would scratch my head on the crowns of the Hebrew letters adorning the bronze Torah holder that was next to it. Beside the chair, I stored my mobile library of biblical commentaries, concordances and dictionaries, old announcements, old copies of sermons, various scribblings, and historical aliyah lists from milestone events like the Torah dedication or the first egalitarian Torah service.

My little lectern too. Its little drawer upon which I would lazily prop up my siddur. And the contents of this drawer were the rabbi’s equivalent of an old lady’s purse: Years of broken tallis clips, old watches to track the lengths of sermons, a secret rolodex of congregational names, just in case I could not remember them, and a forgotten brass aliyah plate honoring me for Maftir. Advil, Tylenol, Sudafed, Kleenex, handkerchiefs, eyeglass wipes, smelling salts, chocolate kisses and Sunkist candy gels rescued from aufruf candy showers; and some special lemon-honey candy drops, a magical elixir for a sore throat, given to me by the late Dora and Ed Schoen, may their memories be blessed, that I never threw out.

We don’t have the ark, with its padded white upholstered interior, how the Torahs were held in their places by a silver chain lest they accidentally fell out onto the floor and render the entire congregation liable to a forty day fast. From your seats you could see the white curtain that adorned the ark. Simple. Silken. It functioned more like a bride’s veil, shielding the Torahs from view yet hinting to an intimacy found only under a huppah, the intimacy of a people with its book, Israel with its Torah. I puzzled for years to decipher the meaning of the golden Hebrew letters sewed into that curtain, arranged in an alphabet. Simple too, they signified the orthographic totality of Klal Yisrael, all Jews, each one another letter, another type of shape and sound, of resonance, numerical equivalence, mystical meaning. And the velvet stripes, blue and gold, and green and every color, in no particular spectrum, tallis like, symbolizing that there are Jews of every color and every stripe, every persuasion, every comportment and every proclivity, every disposition and every temperament. But I especially liked its story. It was a gift of a Holocaust survivor and her non-Jewish husband, the man who rescued her, brought her back to life and then married her. In gratitude to the Temple, they offered us this veil, which was perfectly white and cleaned once a year just prior to Rosh Hashanah.

There was a special light in that shul. A faucet of light would shower down like den-of-Daniel-like, blue and orange, and red and turquoise, green and gold. And the ceiling that had just been completed a few months ago, had a cool palette, the texture and color of melted mint ice cream.

You would look towards the ark, its white silken veil, its dancing gold Hebrew letters, its colored stripes, and I would look out to the fleecy Tapestry, a work of many hands. A generously thick adaptation of the third chapter of Ecclesiastes, with its robust, bellicose and obese calligraphy, set on a backdrop of riotous puddles of color, its pregnant enthusiasm, unabashed and ebullient, a hand woven text on a textile that had the texture of a shag carpet from a suburban American living room circa 1975.

“For everything there is a season,” it proclaimed in words that seem prescient now, ironic, set in this context of destruction.

LAKOL…ZMAN, to everything there is a season.

And then, for emphatic parallelistic emphasis,

VE’EYT LEKHO HEFETZ TAHAT HASHAMAYIM.

A season set for every experience under heaven.

And the embroidery, the weave, the hands that pulled thread wrote this text:

EYT LALEDET VE’EYT LAMUT

A time for being born, and a time for dying.

EYT LATAAT VE’ET LA’AKOR NATUA

A time for planting and a time for uprooting that which has been planted.

Seven pairs of couplets, to sketch the full range of human experience; its polarities, its extremes, its utlimates and everything else in between.

ET LAHAROS VE’ET LERAPEH

A time for wrecking and a time for repairing

ET LIFROTZ VE’ET LIVNOT

A time for destroying and a time for building.

That text that defined the whole room.

That textile adorned that whole sacred space.

Over the years, despite some admitted ambivalence, I eventually became enamored and attached to that place, that surprisingly interesting space, that charmingly beautiful sacred space that was old and new and old; a place that was as mid-century as a tough old Oldsmobile station-wagon complete with deep stained oak paneling. It was a space that was classic and modern, functional and unpretentious. It was a space that hinted with its plain geometry, with its rectangularity, with its grid of meridians and parallels, its aisles of longitude and pews of latitude, a space that hinted back to a time of order, respect, authority, hierarchy and elegant simplicity.

I want to give you that space today in a portrait of words, a word painting, because it occurs to me today, as it has for the last week, and the week before, that we will probably never have that exact same space again. It will never be the same as it was. I am not sure whether I will ever be able to sit in that chair again, or whether I will ever be able to preach again from that boxy pulpit. I can be quite sure though, that it will never be the same. Therefore it is lost to us. That place with all its patented idiosyncrasies, is lost. And a period of time embodied by that space is now a part of our individual and collective memory.

And when I close my eyes, as I do here in this other place, in a state of sacred dislocation, a state of holy wandering, I can see everyone seated in their regular seats. I see Jack Zeloof on a bench on my left. Ira, in the fourth row on the end. Marge, in the second last row. Beverley, in the corner seat. Alvin and Elly, right there in the front, and beside them, Jonathan and Rachel, and Leah, and Reuben Silver until he died. And Carl and Randy, and Barry and Linda, and the Krolls in the second row, and a whole array of Mitnicks in the third row. And Ina, and Eddy and Frieda, and Gert and Icky, and if you tested me, I could tell you exactly where everyone sat in the whole shul, even in the Kroll Auditorium, which is now in ruins.

We will know soon enough what the extent of the damage was and we will know soon enough what our choices will be. But like the tapestry says, there is a time for mourning. And this is that time.

How do you mourn a building?

You sit. You sit a type of shiva.

A few days ago, I went to sit in my seat one more time. Alone in the vast emptiness of what has become now a damp, dank, darkness, a Temple bereft of its worshippers. I looked at the precious pulpit which is blistered and scabbed from the scorching heat, and looked up at the smoke stained ceiling, and over to the bronze memorial plaques blackened with soot and covered with a powdery grit of ash and carbon. The brass banisters are brittle from oxidation where once they were smooth and polished. Wires from the ceiling dangled like veins untucked from the skin. The plastic vertical blinds that used to flutter in the air conditioner, melted and curled up, atrophied like hands of a patient in a coma. The floor of the auditorium sags into the basement, pulling with it the burnt carpet. A large steal I-beam running underneath the floor shows evidence of the fire’s epicenter. It is black and oxidized. The copper piping, is bent by the intensity of the heat. Beyond the hole in the auditorium is a heap of chairs, disfigured like broken mannequins, their chrome frames rusted, their green fabric burned through, their cushion foams melted like marshmallows on a campfire. They are piled in a tangled sculpture that reminds me of antitank barriers on the Golan Heights. The position of each chair in the pile bears testimony to the arc along which it was tossed from its former location around a table at the Sisterhood hat show the night before.

From my shiva chair, it was a truly dreadful sight. Painful to look at. And difficult to take in with one’s eyes. And it is hard to breathe in there because of the mix of smoke and mold, burnt metal and plastic, carpet and wood.

ET LIKROA. There is a time to tear clothes.

In mourning.

Whenever a synagogue experiences a fire, there are more than just smoke and glowing embers. There is real communal trauma; and in any trauma, there are echoes of previous historical traumas. And to see your synagogue on fire, as many of us did, and to see black smoke coming out of its doorway and glowing embers coming out of the roof, as many of us did, is for a second, to conjure all destructions in Jewish history, from the two Temples right on down through Kristallnacht (November 9-10, 1938).

For Jews, every moment of present is linked with moments in the past. Every moment of destruction, is a reenactment, albeit a partial one, a fractional one, of archetypal destructions. All traumas are linked to one another, and the collective memory of the burning Moorish synagogues of Berlin, Heidleberg, and Munich rises up through the deepest part of the brainstem. Even in an accidental fire such as ours there is the trauma of that horrible pogrom-nacht of November 1938, during which hundreds of synagogues were burned. But that memory passes through the subterranean stations of our brains like a speeding express train. We do not need to board that train. That was there. That was then. This is here. This is now. There is trauma here, but our trauma is nothing like that trauma. This is Highland Park, New Jersey, in 2006, not Berlin, Germany in 1938.

And thank God no one was hurt, and thank God it was not a result of foul play, and thank God no one was hurt! And thank God the Torahs were taken out, and thank God no one was hurt! And thank God we have good people in this town, and that God we have brave people in this vicinity, and thank God we have trained professionals who know how to fight a fire intelligently, and this was a stubborn and difficult fire, and thank God nobody was inside when the floor collapsed, and thank God nobody had smoke inhalation, and thank God no-one was taken to the hospital.

And thank God for all the clich?s that help soothe us in these times. A clich? is a small, elegant and overused truth that comforts the grieving heart like a familiar goose-down duvet.

“It could have been worse.” We all said.

“We’ll get through this, and be stronger.”

“It’s not the building, it’s the community.”

And all of those clich?s are true.

And thank God that we are Jews. Thank God we are able to laugh even through our tears.

ET LIVKOT VEET LISHOK.

There is a time for crying and a time for laughing.

“Good thing we took out more insurance a couple of months ago.”

“Don’t worry, the seating charts for Rosh Hashanah are safe.”

Or, this one, my favorite, from my daughter Elisheva who is five years old, “Do you think we’ll have a new building in time for my Bat Mitzvah?”

How do you write a eulogy for a shul?

It had character, that shul. It was an old leather jacket. It was familiar. It was home. It was heimish. It was private. It was difficult. It was obstinate. It was uncooperative, that building. It was dark at times. It was beautiful. It was rich with history. It was rich with voices. Young voices of children and b’nai mitzvah, boys and girls singing their first Eyn Keloheinu’s, their first Adon Olam’s, and their first aliyahs from that table. And older venerable voices of 80 and 90 year-olds saying the Shehecheyanu, couples celebrating 50 and 60 years of marriage, the laughter and tears of baby-namings and brisses. The rousing moments of oratory and theatrics.

It had a soul, that building. It had music. It had tears. It had laughter. It had celebrations. It had been the valley of the shadow of death. From its hall we buried the young, and the old, and the casualties of a controversial war.

It told of great stories, stories of how it was put together. How the money to pay for it was squirreled away in paper bags, and when it came time to pay the builders, they were paid in cash. How the Board meetings were the best entertainment around. And the characters that populated it over the years were real characters and now, so many of them are gone.

There were all sorts of dramas that played themselves out on that Bimah. The time Dr. Mintz z”l, fainted while reading a haftarah. We called 911 and six doctors in the shul raced to the Bimah. The time Rabbi Funk z”l, chanted his last haftarah on Simchas Torah and the times he lead the Torah procession on Kol Nidre.

And it had a little known weekly sit-com at the windows. When it was too cold from air-conditioning, someone would open the window. Then someone who was too warm from the outside air would close the window. Sometimes this would go on like ping pong. It brought out the best of us, that shul, and at times, the worst of us.

And now all of that is a memory. And the curtain of the ark has been destroyed; its golden letters have melted and burned, the silk, irrevocably and irrecoverably browned by the intensity of the heat. It will need to be buried.

And the tapestry at the back, that shag carpet with its wisdom message, is the most ironic text of all. There is a time for everything…a time for things to come into being, and a time for things to cease. That says it all. Even for buildings. And the irony is that the message on the tapestry is no longer legible. “Proper the work of our hands,” we say, but the work of our hands has been burned and blackened, singed, and scorched. Irrepairable. Irreplaceable. ET LATAAT VET LAKOR NATUA. There was a time to put it up, to create it, and there will be a time, to take it down, to put it away, and, presumably, as a sacred text too, a time to bury it.

Our shul was the central character in the story of our lives. It gave us a complicated intimacy. It gave us a grandfatherly comfort, an unconditional acceptance, no matter who we were, or where we came from, or when we came, or how often we entered, or where we were going afterwards. It shaped the way we experienced our symbols, our music, our prayer to God, our study of Torah. It molded us and habituated us into experiences and expectations. It was our home. With all its beauty, and with all its deficiencies. It was our home. And we lived in it. And we became a community inside our home.

So what now?

Koheleth says: ET LISPOD VET LIRKOD – there is a time for mourning and a time for dancing. And presumably there are times for all the stages in between.

Right now we need to grieve, we need to experience the reality of this loss, and come to terms with the probability that we will never be in that sanctuary as it was ever again.

And we need to gather up our pieces, and bury what is sacred and what can not longer be used ritually.

And there will be a time to start dreaming, and a time to start planning, and a time for raising money, and a time for spending that which has been raised. A time for taking down and a time for building. EYT LAHAROS VEYT LIVNOT. We shouldn’t see this as a tragedy. We should see this is an amazing opportunity.

And while we don’t know tachlis, we don’t know anything of substance and cost, imagination is free. We can imagine what we would like to see in the future. A beautiful, simple, inspiring place, a warm place that welcomes everyone, all kinds of Jews that come to pray here in all their different ways, all the different letters and all the different stripes; a building that accommodates us in a way not only for the next ten years but perhaps the next ten decades.

We have to think big and we have to think intelligently. We have to think beyond ourselves and beyond our own generation. We have to think of a way to embrace our past and create a home for our future and the future of generations to come. We have to remember the spirit that built the shul in the first place, a spirit of imagination and excitement, and implant that spirit into our own lives.

We have to create a space that will embrace our values: reverence for God, respect for the Torah, and Shabbat and Festivals. A space that will embrace our pluralism and the many settings that we come in to pray; we have to create a space that will be inviting and welcoming.

We have to create a building that is safe and efficient; a building that is up to date in all of its systems and state of the art when it comes to its own sustainability. It has to demonstrate a commitment to the energy technologies of the future, and the information technologies of the present. It has to be organized properly so that people can work in it efficiently. And it, and its Bimah, has to be easily accessible to the handicapped.

And it has to have character. And it has to have soul. And it has to once again become the main character of our communal story.

Frankly, and forgive me for being bold here, I wish we could move. I wish we could find a way to create something entirely collective for the whole Jewish community, not only of Highland Park, but of Middlesex County. I wish we could work with the ‘Y’ and the community to create a campus of Jewish life here, that would not only have a ‘Y,’ but a real Jewish center for culture, but a real Jewish center for life long Jewish learning, a real Jewish library, a real Jewish center for Jewish arts, Jewish drama, Jewish dance and a real Jewish center that would welcome every single Jew, no matter what stripe he or she was. I lament the fact that the only place where Jews feel they can gather freely together as Jews is Stop and Shop.

I wish that we could do that, and I wish that we could create a new Jewish institutional legacy for our children and for the Jewish community of the future.

But if that is not meant to be, then we will rebuild at South Third and Benner. And we will make it beautiful and reverent and simple. We will let it give us an uncomplicated intimacy, a compassionate complaisance, and an unconditional acceptance. We will give it character, we will give it soul, and we will make it home once again.

It’s Rosh Hashanah. It’s a time of personal and collective renewal. We are dislocated and detached from our home. We are wanderers and wayfarers in the land; homeless and vagrant, but very strong and very stubborn. This period, this journey ahead will require a lot from us. It will require patience and perseverance, creativity and improvisation; it will require the tenacity of an oak tree and the flexibility of reeds. It will require us to banish the personal pettiness of our lives, and let a traditional concern for community override the trendy concern for the self. This time will require us to become better people, to become bigger of heart, to become more generous of spirit, things which are consistent with this season of renewal. And this time will require sacrifice as well. There will be no possibility of communal achievement down the road without personal sacrifice in the present. And that means time and effort and money.

The burnt tapestry quoted from the book of Ecclesiastes. It said that there was a time for everything under the sun.

EYT LISPOD VE’EYT LIRKOD

A time for grieving and a time for dancing.

There will be seasons and times ahead. The season of grieving, which we are now in, followed by the season of comfort.

There will be a time to organize ourselves, and a time to recognize the talents of all those who helped us, especially the first responders.

There were be a time to chart our direction.

There will be a time to dream, and a time to plan.

A time to consult, and a time to discuss.

A time to argue with each other,

and a time to come to a resolution.

A time to take down, and a time to build up.

And there will be time to take away the burnt chairs, and a time to get new ones. A time to strip the old pews, and a time to set up new ones. There will a time for a new lectern, a time for a new drawer, and a time for new contents.

And there will be a time for new shul that is refreshed and safe. A time for a new sanctuary that is sacred and holy, warm and peaceful, not only for the generation of builders and their children, but for generations to come. And there will be a time for a new pulpit, from which we can study and teach Torah and pray to God.

And there will be a time for a new Torah curtain for Klal Yisrael, a new veil through which we can adorn and love our Torah, and a new ark from which we will take our Torah proudly and parade it through our sanctuary, and open it, and read it, and pore over it lovingly, and discuss it, and learn from its teachings.

And there will be a time for new tapestry that is woven by all of our members, young and old, people who have been with us all of their entire lives and people who have just joined; a time to embroider in it a new text, a text that recognizes our gratitude to God for sustaining us in our lives, and for delivering us from what could have been infinitely worse; a time to weave a new fabric of gratitude to God, for giving us the wisdom to set our course, and the strength to reach our destination.

But now is a time to be grateful too. ET LEHODOT. This is a time to express our gratitude that we are here, that we are alive, that we are privileged to gather with joy and light, radiance and hope. This is a time to acknowledge that we have indeed made it through a challenging year for our people, for our community, and for some of us, as individuals. This is a time to thank God for having given us life, for having sustained us throughout all our journeys, and for enabling us to reach this day, and for endowing us with the hope and the faith, the strength and the good courage to remember the past with love and to dream for the future with joy

EYT LIZKOR VE’EYT LAHLOM.

A time to remember and a time to dream.

Join me:

BARUCH ATA ADONAI ELOHEINU MELEKH HAOLAM SHEHECYANU VEKIMANU VEHIGANU LAZMAN HAZEH.

Blessed are You, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has given us life, has sustained us, and has enabled us to reach this day.

AMEN