The Seven Gates

This summer the New York Times health reporter Jane E. Brody wrote a piece summing up social science research: “Social interaction is a critically important contributor to good health and longevity.” Social isolation leads to loneliness and shorter lives.

Being part of a loving community leads to longer and happier lives. Our tradition has known this for a long time. The best of times, the worst of times, require being part of a community. You want to get married? A Jewish wedding requires at least a minyan, ten people present. Want to say Kaddish? We need a minyan.

Temple Emanuel channels our tradition’s deep intuition about the need for community. Whatever you are interested in—from learning, praying, and doing social justice, to knitting, playing softball, and socializing—there are friends at Temple Emanuel with whom you can share your interest and walk through life, together through the years. Being part of the fabric of a community that cares adds kindness, compassion and love to your life, and allows you to add kindness, compassion and love to the lives of others.

The prophet Isaiah charges us: “For the sake of Zion I will not be silent, For the sake of Jerusalem I will not be still.” Seventy years after the miraculous creation of our Jewish homeland, how are we who live here in Newton to be faithful to these timeless words?

People who love Israel at Temple Emanuel, but do not live in Israel, engage with Israel. Engagement means promoting an ongoing, passionate, respectful conversation about Israel, in all of its complexity, grounded in Jewish values: peace, self-preservation, justice, land, compromise, and the prophetic ideal that Israel be a light unto the nations. We may well agree to disagree on the issues of the day, but the conversation is suffused by these timeless Jewish values. Engagement means going to Israel, a lot.

This coming year we are sending three missions to Israel for learners at different ages and stages of life. Engagement means listening to, and learning from, the many Israeli thought leaders across the political spectrum who come to 385 Ward Street to speak to us about our beloved homeland. Engagement means speaking up for Israel in the public square, consistent with our principles. If we are engaged in these ways, we will find our own way to express kindness, compassion and love for Israel.

One of the most beautiful sights in the world is a picture we can never take. There can be no photograph. But it is unspeakably beautiful.

That is the picture of parents on the day of their child’s Bar or Bat Mitzvah beaming as their child chants Torah and Haftarah and speaks to the congregation. Why do parents beam? They beam because they take seriously and personally the sacred obligation of transmitting Jewish values from one generation to the next. This moment means the next generation is beginning to get it.

They beam because their children often speak of real impact they have had on the world through their mitzvah projects. They beam because their children are optimistic, forces for good and hope. We are agents of repair, not agents of despair. They beam because their children are beginning to sense that Torah and mitzvah will fill their lives with meaning, purpose and the deepest joy.

We all beam when we are part of a community where kindness, compassion and love are transmitted from generation to generation.

Our Jewish tradition offers so many powerful and profound ways to mark and make meaningful moments in our lives. From prayers for finding your basherte (beloved life partner) to rituals surrounding pregnancy and birth, to bar/bat/B-Mitzvah celebrations, marriage, personal and professional milestone celebrations, birthdays, and anniversaries throughout life, to more somber and sober moments like divorce, miscarriage, and mourning.

Temple Emanuel, through our Clergy and ceremonies provide our community the ability to see the deeper meaning, respond to life changes, guide us through important moments, allow us to expand our focus on self and family into connection with God, the Jewish people, and with Jewish tradition, and help us strengthen and foster our Jewish identity. Join us through the gate of life cycle rituals at Temple Emanuel to mark the milestones of life together.

God commanded the Jewish people upon Moses death to, “…write for yourselves this song and teach it to the children of Israel, put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for Me among the children of Israel” (32:19).

Music has played an important role in Jewish worship and secular life. Singing is always present in Judaism whether in Temple Emanuel or in your own home. Music Is interwoven throughout the different Jewish holidays and the important moments of our lives, from birth to death, and in every class, program and concert in between.

Music in Judaism has a rich history, dating back at least to the First Temple in Jerusalem, when the Levites sang and played instruments as a part of services.

Whether it is our Friday night Shabbat Alive! Services, our once a month Musical Shabbats, our Chamber Music concert series, one of our many Choirs for Children and adults or one of our amazing concerts or musicals, Temple Emanuel is alive with the sound of music.

Our teacher Micah Goodman has observed that our smart phones, iPads, and other screens make wonderful servants and terrible masters. They are wonderful servants if we can control when, how and why they are used. They are terrible masters if we can never turn them off. They are terrible masters if we are addicted to them. They are terrible masters if they get in the way of relationships with our friends and family whom we cannot see because our eyes are glued to those screens.

Shabbat has been around for thousands of years, but it has a new and renewed importance today. Shabbat can help us create a tech free zone, where our cells are off, our souls are on, our screens are out of the way, and we can see and connect more deeply with the people in our lives. Shabbat deeply experienced brings more kindness, compassion and love to the people we love most.

In our Etz Hayim chumash, Rabbi Harold Kushner writes: “We cannot see God directly. We can only see the difference that God has made after the fact. We can recognize God’s reality by seeing the difference God has made in people’s lives.” So too with prayer, we can gauge the impact of prayer by seeing the difference prayer has made in people’s lives.

• Gaining strength after a loss by coming to our daily minyan
• Celebrating a miraculous recovery or a joyful occasion
• Feeling supported and heard by the prayer for healing
• Reconnecting with friends at kiddush after Shabbat morning services
• Being filled with pride as we see our children and grandchildren take their place in the Jewish story
• Getting the emotional sustenance we need to go out and bring more kindness, more compassion, and more love into our world We gather together in prayer so that we can see and feel God’s impact in our lives.

If there is one voice that the biblical prophet Isaiah has no patience for, if there is one voice that the rabbis who made Isaiah the Haftarah on Yom Kippur have no patience for, it is the voice of one who says: What can I do? I am only one person. I am not an elected leader. I am not in law enforcement. I am not a business titan or a philanthropist. What can I, as one person, possibly do? The answer of Isaiah is: you can, and therefore you must, make a difference. To somebody else. Speaking for God, Isaiah says:

This is the fast I desire: To unlock fetters of wickedness, And untie the cords of the yoke To let the oppressed go free; To break off every yoke.

It is to share your bread with the hungry And to take the wretched poor into your home; When you see the naked, to clothe him, And not to ignore your own kin. (58:6-7)

There is brokenness in the world, privation, poverty, suffering, people unseen, people on the margins. We can, and our religious tradition teaches us that we must, step up. We must add to the quantum of kindness, compassion and love in the world. That is at the heart of what it means to be a Jew.