Before Shabbat

My family moved to Middletown, CT when I was in 3^rd grade. We had been living in Cromwell, a small town 15 minutes away from the metropolis of Middletown. It’s hard for me to remember who I was then. And there’s no one left who knew me well at that stage of my childhood. I think I was a vaguely depressed first born kid.  I had few friends in Cromwell and no cousins to help socialize me. I read a lot. I teased my sisters. I tried to avoid my father.

We moved into a new housing development and were among the first on the dead end street. The street lights were not yet fully functional so that nights could get dark. I mean very dark. On one such night in early spring I walked outside to the back yard to take out the garbage (I think taking out the garbage has been “my job” since 6).

Like I said, I don’t remember who I was then, more than 50 years ago, but I think I was lonely. And I had nowhere to go. There was a chaise lounge set up near the trash cans, so I sat down on it. The back support was set very low, so when I looked up it was like a planetarium.

In the night, in my solitude, on a black canvas, hung an astonishing vista of stars and planets. I sat there, stunned. You might assume in such a situation I would feel even worse, one little kid in a new school, isolated by demographics and religion, looking at the vastness of the Universe. I did not feel dwarfed by the heavens above.

I looked up and experienced genuine exultation! My God! I am connected to the infinite Universe! Sitting on this cheap little chaise lounge next to the garbage cans in my backyard I am part of the cosmos. And if the light I see now is from a star that’s been dead for a million years, then what light might I emit long after my body is gone? If the air I’m breathing contains stardust – yes, literally star dust – from the Big Bang, then what of my dust?

My mom called me back into the house, breaking my reverie. I could’ve been there for 5 minutes – or 2 hours. I don’t remember that part. But I do remember that night. I don’t know who I was then, but I do know that when I walked back into the house, I felt different. I knew that I wasn’t trapped, that there was a way out. When I grew up and saw the motto, “ Per aspera ad astra” – from hardships to the stars – I knew just what it meant.

We are all connected to something so much bigger and grander than our small individual souls. We link to others souls and other places over time and space, from the origins of the Universe to its closing moments, and perhaps even beyond that. The urge to explore the Heavens comes from that truth, which is that, in a way, Pluto is as much our home as this Earth upon which we stand.

This is why we send satellites to study the moons of Saturn, the surface of a comet, the planet of Mars, why we listen to radio waves from all over the Universe – not to explore alien worlds, but to get to know our home that much better.

Of course, it’s a lot to imagine that these truths might be shared by all humans. So many people imagine anyone and anything outside their own arbitrarily drawn circle of color or privilege or social status as alien. I think God is in all of this, that God IS all of this. You may not feel that – and in truth, it doesn’t matter. Just keep looking up and out, towards hope and love and the infinite possibilities in all of us.

Shabbat Shalom

rebhayim

It’s odd celebrating Hanukkah in a quiet, empty nest of a home. There’s no clambering for gifts, no rushing to multiple events at multiple locations. No one is getting positioned in front of a favorite menorah for lighting rights.  There aren’t a multitude of gifts on the dining room table. There are no clumps of wrapping paper from the previous nights’ festivities floating around the house. We’ve only made one night’s worth of latkes, so the house does not have that usual redolence from the magic mix of oil, onions and potatoes. And this year, for the first time in over 3 decades, Liza did not decorate the house with the multitude of Hanukkah zibben-zachen: no streamers, folding paper menorahs, little Maccabees, and so forth.

This empty nest feeling did cause a bit of the blues to enter into the Hanukkah blessings. But it was also an epiphany of sorts. If being Jewish is experienced primarily as the responsibility of passing it down to the kids, and the kids are gone, then isn’t the job done?  Why engage in behaviors mostly deemed pediatric? No wonder so many Jews leave their temple after years of belonging! It becomes largely irrelevant to day to day, week to week, month to month life.

The holidays weren’t “invented” for children only. I know, I know: I’ve heard the “They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat!” theory of Jewish holidays. And yes, it’s a pretty accurate superficial gloss. And we do simplify them, reduce them to a sweet, savory sauce. But they are so much more. They are complex expressions of gratitude and longing and fear and courage.

An empty nest doesn’t have to be devoid of spirituality and community. It can be a place of connection and engagement. This is the challenge of 21^st-century Jewish life: to embrace the various dimensions of Judaism and Jewish life as mature adults, to care about choosing Judaism for ourselves and not for our children. There really is more to it than dreidels and toy Torahs.

A temple thrives when every generation feels engaged. A temple thrives when folks find in it a means by which to navigate a harsh and often hostile world. And if the Jewish tradition gives us anything, it’s instruction on how to have faith and even flourish in a world that has not exactly rolled our the red carpet for us.

Whether your nest is full, or whether it’s empty, we need you as a part of the community. Your input. Your presence. Your passion. You!

Bring your light to your temple. The more light, the brighter, the warmer the flame. It’s beautiful. It’s powerful. That’s an adult Hanukkah message.