Jewish #Disruption©
Parashat Terumah 5779 - February 9,
2019
Facebook has a motto that they were
famous for, and now are infamous:
'Move fast and break things' –
it speaks to their company, the tech industry in general who values
the concept of disruption. Disruption might seem like a negative
term, but recently, it has become the ideal for any company. Move
fast and break things. Disruption is the new model. Disruption leads
to innovation, to startups and new technologies. But it also leads to
people and companies being left behind – people losing their
purpose. The new overtakes the old, and the old slink away. I wanted
to read you something that challenges the concept of disruption:
“At a certain point — somewhere on the way from sounding smart and buzzy to becoming an over-worn cliché — a word loses its power. Disrupt is a good word we have mistreated terribly to the point it has become powerless. We’ve forgotten what it means, even as several smart people have written columns dedicated to reminding us about what it means, really, to disrupt an industry today. I will make this simple (not smart) and short (not long): a disruption is a breaking apart, or renting asunder, or falling to pieces. A disruption is a bad, unsettling, untidy thing.” - (Ryan Bradley, Time to retire theword 'disrupt')
What we see here is a challenge to
breaking things. But I want to state something you may not realize –
we are here, in this place, praying out of this book, because of
disruption. So, today, I want to talk about three disruptions that we
find, one in the Torah, one in the Mishnah, and one today.
I love to ask the following question –
tell me a place where you have felt God's presence strongly. I like
to call these Sinai moments – the lightning and thunder, the
wonders and miracles. Seeing sounds and hearing colors (Exodus
20:18). But those moments just don't last, if they did, they wouldn't
be special. Bnai Israel has just experienced God – from plagues, to
the splitting of a sea, and the giving of the Torah. Now, just a day
later, we are here in Terumah, and God gives the following command:
וְעָשׂוּ
לִי מִקְדָּשׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּי בְּתוֹכָם׃
And let them make Me a sanctuary that I
may dwell among them. (Exodus 25:8)
Why not just live in Sinai? Because you
can't, and God knows this. Sinai is a stop on the road to the
Promised Land, a very important stop, but it's just a place. Ramban,
a famous French Medieval commentator wrote an introduction to this
parashah, probably because he saw it as a pivotal moment. He writes
the following: “The mystery behind the Tabernacle is that God's
presence, which dwelled publicly on Mount Sinai would discreetly do
the same in the Tabernacle. He notes similarities in language between
the two incidents. He writes, “The Presence that Israel saw at
Sinai would always be with them in the Tabernacle. The same utterance
that communicated with Moses on Mount Sinai would come to him when he
entered the Tabernacle.” The Tabernacle is the same as Sinai; the
Tabernacle is the portable mountain. But it's even bigger than a
reconceptualizing of the Sinai experience, it is also a new
beginning. The JPS commentary points out that the completed
Tabernacle is erected in New Year's day as we read in Exodus 40:17.
Nachum Sarna writes, “This underscores the idea that a new era in
the life of the people has begun...”
The Mishkan becomes the place where God
dwells and it is the precursor for the Holy Temple. How could the
people even imagine worshiping God without the Mishkan? We can leave
Sinai because Sinai is just a place where God once dwelled – but
God dwells with us, wherever we go, God is portable.
But all good things come to an end, and
so what happens when the Temple is destroyed and never rebuilt? About
ten years ago, one of our congregants asked me a question during my
interview process: “which Rabbi, dead or alive, do you admire the
most?” It's a tough question, think about it. I blurted out, Rabbi
Yohanan Ben Zakkai. Of course, the next question, why? Here's the
story of Yohanan Ben Zakkai...
The year, 70 CE, the place: Jerusalem.
Now we knew what happened that year, Jerusalem is under siege, the
Romans are at the gates, the extremists inside Jerusalem have fully
taken over. In fact, his nephew was the leader of the Sicari, the
extremist zealots. He pleads with his nephew to give up the fight,
it's over, and everyone will die of hunger. But his nephew cannot
surrender because he will be killed by his followers – the end is
inevitable, it's just a matter of time. So they devise a plan –
Rabban Yohanan, who is considered the rabbi of rabbis, will pretend
to play dead. They are going to sneak him out of Jerusalem, and he is
going to meet with none other than General Vespasian, the General is
who is laying siege to Jerusalem. He approaches the General and he
calls him King. Vespasian says, I should kill you for calling me
king, I'm not Caesar. It is at that moment that a servent comes in
with a note from Rome: Ceasar is dead, and you are going to be the
new King.
Vespasian is impressed – a prophet
rabbi. Then, Vespasian knows he is going to ask him to save
Jerusalem. He says Rabbi, and I'm paraphrasing, don't even think
about it, Jerusalem is as good as destroyed. Yohanan says, ok, but
please, leave me Yavneh, one small little town that no one cares
about, and the sages who live there. Vespasian will be Ceasar, who
cares about some pesky rabbis. You can have Yavneh, but we are still
taking Jerusalem. And so why was he a rabbi whom I admire?
Because without Rabban Yohanan Ben
Zakkai, none of us would be here. We would have gone down in flames
with the second Temple. It's the rabbis whose center is no longer the
Holy Temple, but the Mikdash Me'at – the Batei Knesset, the
synagogue. Synagogues were around during the Second Temple period,
but slowly they become the center over time. (BT Gitten 56a-b)
Yohanan was able to secure the future,
by innovating in the present, while also bringing the past with him.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes, “[The
Israeli historian] Menachem Stern wrote “in establishing the
synagogue, Judaism created one of the greatest revolutions in the
history of religion and society, for the synagogue was an entirely
new environment for divine service, of a type unknown anywhere
before.” It became, according to [the historian] Salo Baron, the
institution through which the exilic community “completely shifted
the emphasis from the place of worship, the Sanctuary, to the
gathering of worshippers, the congregation, assembled at any time and
any place in God’s wide world.” The synagogue became Jerusalem in
exile, the home of the Jewish heart. It is the ultimate expression of
monotheism—that wherever we gather to turn our hearts toward
heaven, there, the Divine Presence can be found, for God is
everywhere.
How can we live without the Temple?!?
How can we live without Jerusalem?!? Where will we find God?
וְעָשׂוּ
לִי מִקְדָּשׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּי בְּתוֹכָם׃
And let them make Me a sanctuary that I
may dwell among them. (Exodus 25:8)
Dwell among them, not it. What is them?
The answer was always there – to dwell in them, in us, in our
hearts, that is where God will dwell. In our synagogues, in our
homes, whenever we study Torah, or eat or drink, or do acts of loving
kindness. When we do Godly things, God will be with us.
After each disruption, brought on by
outside forces, we have constantly evolved and innovated, but all our
innovations have been based on the past. In the first real teaching
of the Ethics of our Fathers (1:2), we read the following:
שִׁמְעוֹן
הַצַּדִּיק הָיָה מִשְּׁיָרֵי כְנֶסֶת
הַגְּדוֹלָה. הוּא הָיָה
אוֹמֵר, עַל שְׁלשָׁה
דְבָרִים הָעוֹלָם עוֹמֵד, עַל
הַתּוֹרָה וְעַל הָעֲבוֹדָה וְעַל
גְּמִילוּת חֲסָדִים:
Shimon the Righteous was from the
remnants of the Great Assembly. He would say, "On three things
the world stands: on the Torah, on the service and on acts of loving
kindness."
Shimon the Righteous was the last
remaining member of the Great Assembly, the authority of Judaism in
Jerusalem. He is among the earliest of the rabbis of the Talmud. He
says that the world stood on three things, Torah, Temple service, and
acts of loving kindness. What do we do in a world where we cannot do
Avodah? Avodah isn't only Temple service, it is service of the heart,
prayer.
The future is built upon the past. This
is what the tech giants don't understand. When we discard the wisdom
of the past, when we are eager to replace and say that our way is new
and improved, we are worse off. In Judaism, we think differently; as
the famous Jewish innovator Rav Kook said we, “make the old new,
and the new holy.”
Move fast and break things – it grew
Facebook, but it's gotten them into much trouble. Our tradition
teaches us that Sinai, the Mishkan and the Synagogue are all
connected, and yet, they are different. The only constant in the
world is change, it is why I am a Conservative Jew, because I believe
in tradition, but also in innovation.
William Pollard, a 20th century
physicist and Episcopal priest known as the Atomic Deacon for his
quest to marry science and faith famously said, “Learning and
innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that
what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.” And so we
see that business as usual, especially in the synagogue business,
isn't cutting it. In South Palm Beach County, there are 69,000
households, and only 10% are affiliated with a synagogue. We need to
ask ourselves tough questions, and come up with innovative answers.
And yet, over the last 10 years, our congregation has grown by
roughly 60%, so we are doing something right.
Part of our vision statement reads the
following: We ENGAGE (לְהִתְעַסֵק -
l'hit’aseik) by incubating (לְטַפֵּחַ
- l’tapeach) new ways of building Jewish communal
experience. We must embrace innovation built upon the richness of our
past. We stand on the shoulders of giants – we can see clearer, but
only because we stand on them. We secure the future, by honoring the
past, and innovating in the present.
As we think about our future here, I
want us to remember the lesson of good disruption; of the journey
from Sinai, to the Mishkan, to the synagogue. There are some new
things coming soon, and I want all of you to be a part of it. All I
have to say is, stay tuned.
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