My friend and colleague, Rabbi Lisa Greene, leads North Shore Congregation Israel, just down the road from Temple Israel in Bloomfield, Michigan. Both are large Reform synagogues, deeply rooted in the commitment and ideology inherent to our movement.
“I feel literally unwell,” she messaged me last night. Here we are again, navigating that sickening sense of fear and vulnerability as we prepare to gather in our sanctuaries, the very places that should afford us safety. How do we hold this fragility while still encouraging one another to show up, be together and say “yes” to community?
I believe our unique responsibility as Progressive Jews is to reach out, connect and ensure that we are in deep engagement with those around us. And yet, we face this.
What do we do? How do we navigate another event designed to frighten and alarm while still persevering with open hearts? The dilemma I spoke of last week feels even more apposite this Shabbat. How do we resist becoming a ‘fortress’ synagogue yet ensure vigilance and safety without?
One way we have decided to do this at FPS is to up our vigilance and security at our gates and ensure that our welcome is all the stronger inside our building. Both are essential for our bodies and our souls.
This weekend is Refugee Shabbat across the UK. Last night, JCORE launched the event alongside MPs and prominent Rabbis. Tomorrow, we will do the same here at FPS. Migration and the search for ‘home’ have always been central to the Jewish story. We will discuss our own journeys of settling, as well as the journeys of others, during our Breakfast Shiur tomorrow at 10:00am with Lesley Urbach, followed by a service that celebrates and includes too.
We do all of this with hearts full of thoughts for Temple Israel, Michigan, and all of us. Joining us tomorrow will be an extra special gift and mitzvah.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
I cannot resist sharing these words from Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch regarding the impetus to open our homes and synagogues:
Let your house not be closed and sealed only for yourself and your household, to be a place of rest and peace only for yourselves. Rather, let it be open for the benefit of the desolate, for the hungry, the thirsty, and for all who seek shelter and refuge. You should happily and lovingly bring in any guest who has no other letter of introduction… except for that which comes from his being a creation of the Omnipotent, a child of our Father in Heaven. — Horeb 579:2
These words are from Hirsch’s essays on Jewish communal duties in the Diaspora, written as part of his efforts to preserve traditional Judaism for a contemporary, intellectual audience. Published in Germany in 1835, they were translated into English in 1962.
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