Rabbi Debora S. Gordon
Congregation Berith Sholom, Troy NY
There is an old joke about an atheist who goes to shul — that’s a Yiddish word for “synagogue” — they go to shul every Shabbat and sit next to their friend Ginsburg. One day, someone asks the atheist why they keep coming to services if they don’t believe in God. The reply? “Ginsburg goes to shul to talk to God. I go to shul to talk to Ginsburg."
That joke makes reference to the three Hebrew names for a synagogue:
• Bet T’filah — a house of prayer
• Bet K’nesset — a house of assembly
• Bet Midrash — a house of study
Ginsburg goes to the bet t’filah to pray in the “house of prayer.” Ginsburg’s friend goes to the bet k’nesset to gather and connect with other people, in “the house of assembly.” (In fact, the word “synagogue” was coined in Greek to mean “place of assembly.”) And shul, the Yiddish word I often use for synagogue, means “school” — “house of study.”
3 kinds of bayit (BAH-yeet)— 3 kinds of house. And in Hebrew, the word bayit means both “house” and “home.”
So what’s the difference between a house (or apartment, or dorm room) and a home?
Let’s look at some sayings about home. We’ll start with a non-Jewish one:
“Home is where the heart is.”
When you’re with the people you love, that’s home.
Conversely, no matter how settled you are, how rich or comfortable or well-respected, if you’re longing for another place or other people, that place is what you truly consider to be home.
As Yehudah HaLevi, a 12th-century Spanish poet wrote, Libi va-mizrach va-ani v’sof ma’arav. “My heart is in the East, and I am at the End of the West…. It would be easy for me to leave behind all the good things of Spain.”
Sometimes home is the ecosystem you grew up in, or one you fell in love with: the mountains or the ocean, the plants and trees that grow there, or the color of the sky in autumn.
And sometimes what used to be home fades into the background as new loves make a new home. So home can change over your lifetime, as love leads you new places.
For people who choose Judaism as adults, I often hear them say that joining Judaism feels like coming home. Sometimes all their lives they’ve felt like spiritual seekers, but have always felt a little estranged from places that they have been before.
And of course for people who were raised as Jews, if your childhood experience was a good one, reconnecting as an adult can also feel like coming home.
“Home is where you hang your hat.” This one’s a bit of a challenge. Perhaps it dates from a time when men customarily wore hats on the street; when you got home, you went bare-headed. In that case, home is where you relax, take your shoes off, change into sweats.
But I’ve always heard it differently. To me it has meant, “No place is really home. Wherever I’m staying for the moment is my temporary home.”
This reminds me of a notion I learned first from old gospel songs: I’m just passing through this world, on my way to my heavenly home.
[sing] I am a poor wayfaring stranger
Traveling through this world of woe
But there’s no sickness, no toil or danger
In that bright land to which I go.
I’m going there to meet my mother
She said she’d meet me when I come.
I’m only going over Jordan
I’m only going over home.
And here you see the notion of this world as the wilderness, and Israel as “home” — the Promised Land, on the other side of the Jordan. Implying that all the “traveling” in this world corresponds to the 40 years of wandering in the desert.
It’s not a perspective that’s embraced deeply by Judaism as we know and practice it. Our Judaism focusses with joy and intention on this world; on Tikkun Olam and tikkun ha-nefesh — that is, world repair and “soul repair,” for the sake of the here and now. We aspire to “leave the world better than we found it.”
But we have also had Jewish thinkers who do view this world as a place of preparation for the World to Come. It is reflected in the Talmud, for instance, in the saying that “This world is like an inn (hotel), while the world to come is like home.” (Talmud, Mo’ed Katan 9b)
I think that there is something we can relate to in this viewpoint. A Jew should never get entirely comfortable in this world.
First, because as we’ve seen in the past year, antisemitism can flare up at any time.
But even when we are living in security and prosperity: Our history and culture, our ethics and values, push us to think about the culture that surrounds us, not just submerge ourselves in it. We have a different calendar, which subtly and repeatedly reminds us of the delicate balance between majority and minority. We have guidance — Torah — that reminds us to Do justice, Love tenderly, and Stay humble (paraphrase of Micah 6:8). We have rituals that keep us grounded: Shabbat reminds us that, no matter how important our work is (or we think it is), so is rest and renewal and community time. Ultimately, we have a different history and a longer time frame than do most people around us.
A saying I just found recently: “Home is where the WiFi connects automatically.” Home is a place you’ve been before and will come back to. And home is where your “stuff” is - your WiFi, your modem, your table and chairs and your bed.
What stuff we keep at home is important, too. English designer William Morris wrote: “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” As Jews we have the teaching of hiddur mitzvah (hee-DURE mitz-VAH) — beautifying a mitzvah. You can use any kind of glass as a Kiddush cup, but our synagogue Kiddush cup is silver. You could wrap the Torah scrolls in any clean fabric; but our Torah covers are velvet and embroidered with gold, and the Torah is ornamented with silver fittings. Our Ark is elaborately carved and the windows throw colored light on the beautiful floor in the morning. When you leave tonight, turn and look at the windows of the front façade. They are lit up from the inside now — thanks to the generosity of Joel & Becky Fried, after their child commented on how dark the synagogue looked last Purim, when we were celebrating downstairs and the sanctuary wasn’t lit up. Now, new lighting turns on every evening and the light shines out through our stained glass.
And of course our banners — the banners that Davida Wohl created, back when we set up a framework of poles in the Social Hall to make an overflow prayer space. Originally we had plain blue cloths to make the walls; she envisioned, and spearheaded the creation, of these 12 Tribes banners which are hung this year all over the building.
We could meet anywhere — but we go out of our way to make our Berith Sholom home beautiful.
And then there’s what we learn in our home. Ben Franklin said, “A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.” Here we learn Torah — in its widest sense of “Jewish teaching.”
But we study not only from books; we study each other. We are role models for each other. And even our formal classes are interactive; as Rabbi Chanina said in the Talmud, “I have learned much from my teachers, more from my colleagues, and most from students” (Talmud Ta’anit 7a). (Some of my best tips and tricks for teaching Hebrew come from my students.)
New England poet Robert Frost, in his poem “Death of the Hired Man,” wrote “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” I don’t know if he made up the saying, but that’s where I found it.
And that brings us to Israel.
I grew up knowing that, if antisemitism reared its ugly head in the United States, Israel would take me in. The Law of Return extends automatic citizenship to any Jew who moves there — prompting some pretty tough fights in Israel over the definition of “Who is a Jew?”
Israel would shelter any Jew who could get there, should we need to go.
And this year, antisemitic incidents have skyrocketed. It’s a year where many Jews have felt our home — literal and metaphorical — was under assault. And one of the first casualties, for me, was my sense of Israel as “the place where I could always go if antisemitism got too bad.”
Because the attack on Israel on October 7th shattered the sense of Israel’s invulnerability. Jews were targeted specifically in their homes, in their communities. I’m sure you’ve seen photographs of the destruction.
And since last October 7th, we’ve learned that multiple warnings were given by “border watchers” in the weeks and months leading up to the attack. But these reports were repeatedly ignored and dismissed by officers. Why? Most likely because all the border watchers were young, female soldiers. That failure, and the misogyny and arrogance that led to it, are another piece that has undermined my own sense that Israel would be a safe place to run to.
It is also a brutal reminder that, despite what we like to tell ourselves sometimes, we are goy k’chol ha-goyim, “a nation like all other nations,” not at all special in our humanness and the tendency to go astray.
We now know a great deal more than we did just a couple of decades ago about how trauma works — how it can not only rewire the brain but change how our genes express themselves, so that trauma can be inherited genetically, in addition to the ways that we are shaped by the people who raised us. While the science is still in its infancy, there’s no question that Jews have experienced generations of trauma. And trauma tends to make us think in binaries: black and white, good and evil, us and them.
Palestinians have also experienced generations of trauma. Four generation have now lived in refugee camps, or as exiles. So among Palestinians, as well, is a longing for home.
As for a philosophical home, it has become very clear that much of the Progressive Left is not “home” in the sense that “when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” When we needed support this past year, when we needed the people who routinely speak out against injustice and violence to stand up and condemn violence perpetrated upon Jews, the voices were few. They were there, but they were few. And while the voices of people celebrating the violent murder of Jews were undoubtedly a small minority, they were pretty much all we could hear in the media — or on the university commons.
And for some Jews, the mainstream Jewish community’s tight focus on Israel, and reluctance to talk about Palestinians dying — especially in the horrific first months of the IDF bombing campaign, when the death toll in Gaza rose daily — for some Jews, it’s been hard this year to find a Jewish home in a synagogue.
But Berith Sholom is a place where, when people come here, we do our best to take them in. Our “big tent” does not paper over differences, but prioritizes and prizes the relationships between us. We try to understand where people are coming from, and ground ourselves in the values that we share — justice, kindness, humility, compassion — even when we disagree strongly on what we are called to do and say at a particular moment.
And that’s why this is such a special place. Because ultimately, I think that people are what makes home, home.
אָמַר רַבִּי יוֹסֵי: מִיָּמַי לֹא קָרִיתִי לְאִשְׁתִּי ״אִשְׁתִּי״ אֶלָּא — ״בֵּיתִי״
Rabbi Yosei said: I never called my wife, “my wife” … Rather, I call my wife, “my home.” (Shabbat 118b)
And so it is for us as well. “Home is where the heart is”; where we feel safe and loved for who we are. Home is where we may come in as strangers, and then we become family. How many people have made friends here that you socialize with outside of the walls of this synagogue?
And: “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”
And we do: When the world feels too alien, Berith Sholom offers a place where you are known, in all your human complexity; and where you are respected, as a person created b’tselem Elohim, in the image of the divine, however you express that reflection of God. We’re not perfect but we’re pretty good!
Your Jewish home feeds your soul and mind — as well as your body. We try to surround ourselves with beauty, both physical and spiritual.
And finally, if you want the WiFi password, we’ve got you covered!
I hope that you will connect here, and reconnect, and be part of the family that calls Berith Sholom “home.”
Because, as cultural anthropolgist Margaret Mead is quoted as saying: One of the oldest human needs is to have someone to wonder where you are, when you don't come home at night.
Come home to Berith Sholom. We’re here waiting for you.
167 Third Street
Troy, NY
12180
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