Hear Our Voice

Dear CSK,

For all intense and purposes, summer is upon us. I know that all schools aren’t quite out yet, but they will be in a matter of days. But I’ve decided to assign myself and you some summer school homework. For many years, I have been writing these blog articles, mostly as a unidirectional offering. Perhaps you read them, perhaps you “save them for later.” Today, I’m inviting you to join me in a conversation.  

CSK is a special kind of venture. It is quite unlike most any synagogue in the US.  Of course, it started out as a reaction, and that isn’t that uncommon. However, what is uncommon is that we are still here and thriving.  I spent a lot of time thinking about the philosophy of CSK. Some might say, I obsess, which might be true. I will accept that. But I’m also quite certain that we are doing something more than offering another liberal synagogue alternative in Houston. Discerning what we are doing that is contributing to re-imagining American synagogue life is something that I wish to invite you into.  Thus, here is your summer school homework assignment.  My blogs this summer will strive to offer responses to this inquiry and each blog will conclude with questions to which I would love to you’re your response(s).  You can email me directly ( click HERE) or please feel free to even send me a voice memo. I promise I will read/listen, and I will respond in kind.  I may even request to include your musings in my next blog(s).  Deal? Great, so here goes…

It was Winter, 1999, and I was part of a gathering of graduating HUC rabbinic students in Cincinnati.  Our theses were done, our coursework completed, and most of us were preparing for our job interviews to hopefully get hired as assistant rabbis of a large place or solos of a small one.  Rabbi Rick Steinberg had stepped in for a practical rabbinics seminar, as President Zimmerman was out of town that day.  The parshah was Ki Tissa, the Torah portion that recounts that most famously depicted, “Cecil B. DeMille biblical rave of Israelites gone wild moment” – the Golden Calf.  

As Exodus relates, And Aaron told them to provide him with their gold. And he put it all into the fire, and out came a statue of a golden calf. “Stand back,” Aaron declares, “This is your God, Oh Israel, Tomorrow will be a chag l’Adonai (a holy day to God).” God rails against Moses for what his people are doing; Moses loses his mind against the Israelites engaged in this very early staging of Hair. He melts down the statue and forces the offending Israelites to drink the gold-laden water.  

Once completing his sharing of the text, Rabbi Steinberg looks up and asks, “Especially for you here this morning, soon to be ordained rabbis, brand newly entering the spirit-force of the Jewish people, what do we learn?”  Answering his own question, and publicly recognizing his own limited experience of one-year more than ourselves but “subbing” for his boss (our Rosh Yeshivah), he taught, “When the boss is away, no matter how unprepared you feel you are for this moment, it’s a good idea NOT to inaugurate a chag l’Adonai, a new holy day to the Lord.”

Synagogues, like most religious institutions are bastions of tradition.  All religious traditions start out as innovations on the status quo.  They produce innovative metaphor, symbolism, and philosophy, that recount new stories reframing the world, our lives, our origins, and our destinies. If they catch on, these innovations lead to the development of rituals and traditions necessary for their promulgation.  Ideas are by their nature, boundless, but to be shared, we create structures in which they can “live” and reproduce.

There is a constant tension for all philosophical efforts that seek to create new ways forward.  As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel imagined, there is a “depth theology” that dwells within the mind and heart of every human being.  As understood in Jewish tradition, the notion of the divinity within each of us, the tzelem Elohim, the image of God in every human, is nonetheless not limited to Jewish expression.  It may be called the tzelem Elohim in Hebrew, but for Heschel, it is the indwelling soulfulness that drives every human’s life, expressed in their own way, with the language, metaphor, symbolism, and constructs developed in their part of the world, subject to the vicissitudes of nature, disaster, accident, and coincidence, that serve to form their own understanding of the world.  Heschel reminds us that the deep theology within each of us is pre-lingual.  And as such, it expresses itself in a myriad of ways but all with a common purpose – a rediscovery, a return to the original oneness from which we are formed.  Call that God, the Force, Divinity, or “The Gift(!)”, the one notion that Judaism insists upon is the oneness of which all of us own an equal private share. 

Along the path of the development of our depth theologies, we create containers for our particular stories, rituals, and traditions.  For the Jewish people, striking the balance of keva (fixed routine and ritual) and kavanah (intentional drive and direction), has always been at the center.  The very first “temple,” as described by the Torah, is a traveling tabernacle, the Mishkan.  With precision, God commands its construction to be both a perfect, symmetric, and balanced edifice, that is nonetheless readily able to be broken down into its distinct parts and carried efficiently to enable its reconstruction in a new place.  This ohel moed, this tent of meeting, as it were, must fit specific requirements as an abode for God, but it’s the space that it temporally defines that induces sanctity.  The land on which it stands is “lent” sanctity while it abides, with the camps of the 12 tribes perfectly arrayed around it (3 to the North, 3 to the South, 3 to the West, and 3 to the East).  However the moment the Israelites are commanded to move, the ritualized process of building the Mishkan is reversed, to be carried and then reconstructed by the Israelites at their next commanded stop.  39 in all, the Israelites shlep through the Sinai for 40 years, repeating this ritual of building and sanctifying, breaking camp, and re-sanctifying once again.  The land is lent a notion of holiness by the presence of the Mishkan, infused for that limited period of time, when it, when we dwelled there. With the Mishkan at the literal center, the circumference of the land containing and defined by the Israelite camps becomes holy.  The land outside isn’t “unholy,” per se; it exists “in potential.” 

Within the boundaries of the Israelite camp, the Torah goes to great lengths to confront the inevitable issues that will arise. How do we maintain privacy within this regimented and communal structure? Who is a part of “Us” that dwells within the camp? What rights and responsibilities are we endowed with and called to?  And what are the challenges of the very “temporariness” of this journey, knowing full well that we will not be able to stay in this one place for longer than a short period of time? And lastly, whence is the power of ritual and story-telling?  Where is the balance between continuity and innovation?

To send your response directly to Rabbi Scott, please click HERE.