We are moving house today. It is indeed a big week of changes. I am thinking deeply about what it signifies to leave the home I created as a sanctuary for the children and me eleven years ago. In fact, I recall FPSers Melvyn and CA Newman, and Hugh and Doreen Isaacs planting fruit trees for us as soon as we arrived.
During weddings, I often describe that the home is a Mikdash Me’at, literally a small sanctuary, a carved-out copy of the original temple and, therefore, a smaller place of security, holiness and safety. We all try to make our homes feel this way for whoever lives in them.
No-one likes change — at least I don’t — and several of you have told me this week that you don’t either. Yet it is ever-present.
Of course, it would be this week that parashat V’etchanan introduces the Shema, those words etched on our hearts that we teach our children and use so firmly to mark our passageways. How is it possible that Torah echoes life so exquisitely?
The prayer is actually a passage from Deuteronomy 6 that we will read this Shabbat. This translation by Rabbi Janet Burden is so beautifully evocative of making Jewish passageways – both big shifts and smaller domestic movements – throughout our lives:
“These words… repeat them faithfully to your children, [and others’ children]; just as you speak them when you are at home, speak of them in the wider world. Let them guide your hands and focus your vision, both when you take your rest and when you rise each day. Write them on your doors and on your gates, that they may frame your passages through life.”
I love these words and I am taking them into our new home alongside our new mezuzot.
I pray that our new home will be a mikdash me’at for all seven of us who will live there. I hope the 4th and 5th commandments (honouring parents and celebrating Shabbat) will be manifest from every corner of the house. I hope we will feel a sense of homecoming as well as ease. I hope for many Shabbat dinners, lunches, and afternoons and a plethora of Shehecheyanu opportunities of newness, from the placing of our mezuzah to our first Rosh Hashanah here. I hope to welcome many of you through our front door and continue the connections that mean so much to us.
Shabbat shalom,
Rebecca
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