Kol Nidrei 5782 (2021) - Main Sermon on Yom Kippur Evening

Shanah Tovah!
 

Right before the pandemic, you may recall that we undertook a major project, in repairing our Lostice Torah. Seems like ages ago! It had been examined and assessed several times since the scroll came to Ohev in 1980, but the cost of repairing the text was well-into five figures, and four times the cost of any other “regular” scroll that might also require extensive repair work. Why does this matter? Well, you see, we cannot read from a Torah scroll if it isn’t Kosher, and it isn’t considered Kosher if even a SINGLE letter is faded or erased to the point where you can’t read the word. And this is across a scroll that, if unrolled, would stretch around this entire Sanctuary! You can imagine how many words, paragraphs, and entire columns were cracked, peeling, hard to read, and badly damaged, after the Lostice Torah endured fire, then water damage, then mold and humidity for decades. 
         

It was a daunting project to envision, but with the help of a generous donation in memory of Sheila and Benjamin Garberman, themselves Holocaust survivors and partisan fighters in WW2, we were finally - after four decades - able to make it happen. I remember looking at the scroll laying on the table, as the Sofer would place one person’s hand after another on top of his hand, while he carefully wrote a letter. 

At that moment, a funny thought jumped into my head: how brilliant of the rabbis to decree that our holiest texts be written specifically on animal hide parchment. You see, there are some very interesting properties that come with animal skins, including things like parchment and leather. They need to be used, handled, maneuvered, to stay in good shape. If you leave a set of tefillin on a shelf or in a closet for decades, it too will atrophy. But if you wear it, bind it, and regularly bring it into your worship experience, the leather becomes smooth and soft, and it even molds itself to its owner’s arm.
    

Torah scrolls also need to be manipulated; they need to be rolled. Years ago, our sofer told us we needed to keep rolling each Torah, so it would remain limber and fresh. I love this image! Just as we need the Torah, the Torah needs us. Just as we keep the rituals and traditions, those same rites and ceremonies help us stay together, united, and in relationship with one another across the generations. It is a symbiotic and beautiful relationship. This was once fabulously articulated by an early 20th century essayist and founder of the cultural Zionism movement, Achad Ha-Am, who stated: “More than the Jewish People have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews.”
    

So you can imagine how terrible it was for the Czech Torahs to be neglected in a damp, cold, jam-packed warehouse. Some of the most irreparable damage came from just decaying in anonymity, year after year. 1,800 Torah scrolls were crying out for Jewish communities to come and roll them back and forth, dust them off, read from them, and dance with them on Simchat Torah. When Siona Benjamin and I imagined our Lostice Megillah, which tells the story of how our particular scroll came to Ohev Shalom, we talked a lot about the third chapter. The first chapter was about history and home, or what I referred to as “connection” from the American Psychological Association’s description of four ways to build up resilience. We need to increase our resilience, in order to mold ourselves into more durable individuals and to withstand the pressures and stresses of our time… much like the scrolls and the tefillin are at their healthiest when they are worked on and manipulated. The second chapter was about the destruction of the Holocaust, but I also hope it was very clear to those of you who heard me speak, that resilience comes from sitting *with* the pain of trauma. We must acknowledge it, be in relationship with that hurt… and then intentionally shift our minds to Healthy Thinking, to turn our traumas into triumphs; our pains into perseverance. 
    

The theme of this third chapter is “Healing.” In the top-left corner of the painting, we see the same Michle synagogue that was being flattened, and nearly toppled, in the previous painting. Smoke rises in the background, symbolizing the devastation of the Shoah from which these scrolls were rescued. A road snakes its way from the Michle synagogue and Prague down into the center of the painting, where you see two trucks driving up to the Westminster Synagogue in London. From inside the trucks, we see the light of the glowing scrolls emanating. Light is a trope through all four images, representing the immortal, unbreakable spirit of our people. It was dimmed and badly bruised in the Holocaust, but now it radiates once again. And why? Because the scrolls - and with them the soul of our people - knew they had not been fully wiped out. Healing and rejuvenation were coming soon.
    

In our Megillah, waiting by the synagogue, already working on previously delivered Torahs, is a little-known sofer named David Brand. He came from a long line of professional scribes. He himself lived in Jerusalem, happily immersed in an Orthodox community. But in order to make a living, he would travel around Europe repairing scrolls. Legend has it that one day in the early 1960s, he knocked on the door of the Westminster Synagogue, and was greeted by the caretaker of the building, Ruth Schaffer. In Yiddish, he softly asked her, “Do you have any Torahs to repair?” She replied, in classic, British deadpan fashion: “We have 1, 564. Come in!” Mr. Brand, as he was known, wouldn’t just begin the work of healing and restoring the Czech Torahs; he wound up staying in London for nearly THREE decades, dedicating his entire life to these Sifrei Torah. 
    

The Memorial Scrolls Trust is the caretaking organization of all the scrolls, and we are in contact with them regarding the stewardship of our beloved Lostice Torah. Their website talks a lot about this amazing and devoted sofer, writing: “Mr. Brand (no-one ever used his first name) stayed to work on these rescued Scrolls for twenty seven years. Rabbi [Harold] Reinhart obtained permission for him to remain and work in Britain and for his family to join him from Jerusalem. He was to be seen regularly at his work desk on the third floor, at a window giving him the best natural light, welcoming guests in his rapidly improving English, chatting to the children and showing them how he made his ink, sharpened his quill pens, and lovingly attended to his sacred work.”
    

In the third panel, inspired by a powerful photograph of the man from the 1980s, Mr. Brand is seen pouring over a scroll, intensely focused on his work… and there are more scrolls behind him, waiting for his tender care and much-needed rolling, touching, and handling. I also love how the description of him emphasized how he sat by the window to receive the most natural light possible. For his own nourishment, perhaps, but also to recharge the flickering embers of light hidden inside each Torah. 

A key aspect of increasing our resilience, according to the APA, is called Wellness. They state, “Take care of your body... stress is just as much physical as it is emotional. Like the Torah scrolls, it isn’t enough to know the teachings or retell the stories; they need physical, tangible care as well. We too need to nourish ourselves - with natural light AND healthy sustenance - with sleep, exercise, and hydration, among other things. We sometimes think of these things as separate, but they are not. Bodily self-care is, according to the APA, “a legitimate practice for mental health AND building resilience.” 

Sadly, I have experienced how intricately linked the physical and mental can be, up close during this horrific pandemic. I have officiated at several funerals in the last 18 months, sometimes actual COVID deaths, and other times deaths that I thought of as COVID-adjacent. For example, someone who was ill, but not life-threateningly so. But when they needed to be hospitalized, they were tragically isolated from family, friends, and their emotional support networks. The mental toll was nearly as devastating as the virus. Now, I’m not saying this should have been handled differently, nor am I placing blame. I just want to bring to light the cruel repercussions of the necessary social distancing of this cursed pandemic… and thus emphasize all the more strongly how we MUST focus on our own wellness, our emotional and physical needs, and our internal storage of resilience.  

Another aspect of Wellness that is crucial for increasing our perseverance, is what The American Psychological Association describes as, “Avoiding negative outlets,” which I actually think doesn’t mean what many people might think it means. It is NOT directing us to avoid sadness, pain, or distress. No, they mean that we have to have healthier outlets and processes for the inevitable trauma and challenges of life. They instruct the reader to avoid numbing the pain with alcohol, drugs, or other distracting agents, which ultimately push us further and further away from being mindful and present to our own pain. We HAVE TO allow ourselves to feel that pain. The APA says that otherwise those other outlets are “like putting a bandage on a deep wound.” Not only isn’t it leading to healing… but the neglect actually makes the wound fester longer and become more dangerous.

I find the metaphor of the Torah parchment or the leather straps of the tefillin to be helpful and inspiring. Because they are indeed metaphors for our own bodies, and for how we incorporate our values and beliefs into our lives. If we relegate them to a dark place - whether a cold warehouse or an abandoned part of our own psyche - they WILL atrophy. But when we bring our Jewish tradition into our lives, actively debating Biblical texts, questioning assumptions, and learning new things; then it becomes a LIVING tradition. And attrition may seem like the preferred option, compared to actively engaging with our own internal pain, grief, struggles, and trauma. That too needs to be handled, tenderly cared for, and brought into the light, in order for us to be the healthiest versions of ourselves we can be.

 

I wanted to add one final image to these reflections on Wellness. Last week, after one of my first sermons, our synagogue president, Joel Fein, pointed out to me the glowing lights in each of our mosaic panels on the side walls of the Sanctuary. He referenced my focus on the notion of light, and how prominent it is in so many things all around us, like the mosaics. I really appreciated that observation, especially because it reminded me how that artist, Heather Bryson, who created all 14 incredible mosaics, intentionally placed the sun (or moon, potentially, in a couple of them) in different positions of rising or descending. 

Initially, I imagined the sun might start low at one end, then gradually rise across the seven panels on one side, then descend slowly along the other seven on the other side. But she said, “the sun represents the life of the community.” Just like life, we ebb and flow. We have great successes, feel vibrant, and alive… and failures, where it feels the energy is gone and the building is empty… say in the middle of a global pandemic. And it doesn’t go in a predictable, linear trajectory. It waxes and wanes, shifts constantly. Sometimes, what should feel like a happy occasion is tinged with bitterness for whatever reason, while conversely, a major challenge and obstacle can become the source of surprising triumph and rejuvenation. 

We don’t know what the future holds. That is one of the reasons why Yom Kippur feels so precarious. When Rabbi Miller sings the Un’tane Tokef, about who shall live and who shall die, we feel that uncertainty quite viscerally. This year, perhaps, more than ever before. And we may be tempted to hide from that truth and instead numb it with some substitute. I mean, isn’t that likely to make it feel a little better in the short term??? But what about the longer term? What about our emotional AND physical well-being, and the slow-but-insistent toll that neglect can take? Ignoring our own pain is like, well, leaving a Torah scroll in a damp warehouse for decades. It slowly disintegrates, eventually beyond repair. We all need an internal Mr. Brand, a sofer who will take care of our needs and make sure we are building up our own resilience to keep going and growing. Because like the Torah scrolls, we don’t function too well when parts of us are cracking, fading away, or breaking. 

One final thought about our Lostice Scroll. It was mostly repaired off-site, and the scribes left a single paragraph at the end of the Torah, so that members of the congregation could hold the hand of the sofer, as I mentioned, when he finished the last letters, and ultimately made the scroll Kosher for use again, after 75 years of disrepair. On the first day the scroll came back to us, the sofer unravelled it to the last paragraph. And I asked him, why did they finish the very last line of text? It was darker than anything before it, and the writing was clear as day, no cracked letters, and appeared to have been fully restored to its original form. He said to me, “We haven’t touched that line.” Inexplicably, a single line of text never wore out; it looked nearly as fresh as the day it was written.

That last verse, Deuteronomy 34:12, talks about the wonders performed by God and Moses, “l’Einei Kol Yisrael,” witnessed by all of Israel. Those last three words, “l’Einei Kol Yisrael,” were the ones that never wore down. It took my breath away, and I’m glad I had the wherewithal to take a picture, which I now keep on the back of the door in my office. “L’Einei Kol Yisrael,” our Lostice Torah waited 75 years for the eyes of Israel, of the Jewish People, to once again look inside the scroll. To once again use it, love it, and care for it. We need this Torah scroll, and the incredible lessons it has to teach us. And in return, it needs us too. 

Shanah Tovah!