Shabbat Shalom, I’m tremendously honoured to have been invited by Rabbi Rosenfeld and Rabbi Taylor to give this talk.
Today is a very special Shabbat, Shabbat Tshuvah, and in essence, this is what I would like to talk about with you today. I’m going to try to frame a few ideas however in a slightly unique context. As some of you will know, I work for the organisation World Jewish Relief, and have spent the last four months or so working on World Jewish Relief’s Nepal Earthquake Response. It has been an exceptionally trying and difficult period for me. I have been exposed to both the depths and heights of the human experience. I have seen terrible suffering and pain, as well as tremendous acts of Chesed, not the least of which has been performed by many here in the UK-Jewish community in support of our work.
So today, I would like to share with you a couple of stories from my time in Nepal, and relate them to a few of the concepts which we are meant to be considering as Jews during these 10-days between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur.
Before I left, I had been in contact with Rabbi Cheski Lifshitz who had promised me a dry place to sleep and a warm meal in the Chabad Centre of Kathmandu; and of course I had been in contact with the agencies World Jewish Relief would partner with on the ground, but other than that was going into the unknown.
When my plane landed in Nepal, I was struck by the dust. It was everywhere and choking. It was the dust of tens of thousands of homes crumbled to the ground. The dust of the rescue effort desperately trying to save the last lives. And the dust of the ashes of the dead. Rubble was strewn through every street, found outside almost every house and in almost every neighbourhood. Buildings leaned precariously into the street, not yet fallen, but certainly not still standing either. As I became accustomed to the scene that unfolded before me as we drove away from the airport, I began to notice the hundreds of tents pitched across much of the open space left in the city. People were understandably terrified, for those whose homes had fallen there was nowhere to live, and for those whose homes were still standing, the frequent aftershocks made the thought of returning home impossible.
Thursday and Friday blew past in a haze. I hardly stopped to eat or think. There was so much work to do, and so many people that needed our help. But then something truly incredible happened. After a long day in the field, distributing humanitarian relief to rural communities outside of Kathmandu, I returned to the city and began to think about Shabbat. It was late in the afternoon and the sun was already beginning to dip low over the city. I made my way to Chabad and was shocked to find at least 200 people there preparing to welcome the Sabbath. Israelis, and other Jewish travellers and trekkers from across the country, had gathered at the centre, and I think it is fair for me to say, that a huge percentage of the total Jews in the entire country had gathered there together on that Shabbos evening. I vividly remember stepping into the Shul, and being overwhelmed by the stark contrast between the joy that I felt for the Shabbat and the pain and suffering which I had been working in only a few hours earlier.
In reflecting on this experience, I began to think about the famous line in the Torah from Parshat Truma:
ועשו לי מקדש, ושכנתי בתוכם
Make for me a Mikdash, and I will dwell in them
Of course I cannot speak for everyone at the synagogue that night, each had come for his and her own particular reasons. Most, unlike me, had been in Nepal during the earthquake, and had been in terrible fear for their own lives, and the lives of their friends and companions just a few days before. But looking at people’s faces, hearing the emotion in their prayers and talking with them, led me to believe that I was witnessing a very special part of the Jewish experience that night.
This sentence from Parshat Truma is often cited, and often analysed for a few reasons, not the least of which is its strange switch from the singular to plural. But on this occasion what resonated with me most was the Parsha’s basic message. The Parsha tells us that if we build a place for HaShem, that HaShem will then come and dwell in each of us, and from this we are meant to understand that HaShem is omnipresent. What was so amazing to me in this moment was that a group of Jews gathered together for Shabbat, many of whom probably had not been to synagogue in some time, and joined together for Shabbat prayers. And from our collective and heartfelt prayers arose an incredible sense of spirituality and connection. It really felt like we had built a Mikdash, at least in the spiritual sense, by coming together like this for Shabbat, and in return, I could certainly feel HaShem’s protection and comfort.
While sitting around the Shabbat table later that evening, I heard the most incredible story from a young Israeli backpacker. I don’t remember the name of the girl or even really what she looks like, and frankly, with all that had happened that day; I remember the impact of her story on me much more than the particular details. But the gist of what she shared was that she had been hiking with a group of her friends when the ground began to move. She was on a mountain pass of some kind, between two villages, maybe a third the way up the mountain and above a valley. As the ground began to shake, rocks from higher up the mountain began to rain down on her. Her friends all scattered in different directions and she found herself alone. By some miracle, there was a large boulder resting on the trekking path next to where she was standing, and she ducked underneath it; on the side facing the valley there was a small space just large enough for her to hide in, protecting her from the rocks falling from above. As the earthquake continued, she realized that this rock too may fall, and if it did, it would surely kill her. Before she realized what was happening, as an instinct more than a conscious thought, she began to pray. The prayers which she began to recite spontaneously were from Thilim, something that she explained to us that night around the Shabbos table, that she didn’t ever even remember learning. Those of us listening to her story speculated that she must have heard them as a child, perhaps from her mother or grandmother reciting them, and that they were locked deep within her, ready to be called upon and to give her strength and protection in her time of need.
Such stories are both miraculous and common among those that I spoke with, and are important for us to learn from today, on this Shabbat, Shabbat Tshuvah. This period, the time between Rosh Ha’Shanah and Yom Kippur is a special time for us to be repentant, for us to think sincerely about the year gone by and our lives. Tshuvah literally means ‘to return’, and this Shabbat gets its name from the first word we heard in today’s Haftarah. This Shabbat is our opportunity to return to HaShem. While we may not have taken every chance throughout the year to act as we aspire to, and we may have missed opportunities to practice our Judaism as we would like, this Shabbat we are told to focus our concentration and energy, to repent for our wrongs, and where possible to correct them.
We are taught that there are three things that we can do to ‘Tear up the Evil Decree’: Tshuvah, Tfilah and Tzedakah.
· Tshuvah, is the process of return, it is something that takes place between a person and himself;
· Tzedakah, the act of charity, happens between a person and his fellow man; and
· Tfilah, the act of prayer, is the relationship between a person and HaShem.
The girl that I met that Friday night had clearly understood the importance and power of Tfilah, and while we all so clearly see that at that particular instant in time she had taken the physical steps she was able to protect herself, what she wanted, what she needed, was the protection of HaShem. She sought this protection through Tfilah. We would all do well to learn from her example. We are just like that girl. It may not seem like it to us, but this Shabbat, Shabbat Tshuva, our life also hangs in the balance, there might not be rocks raining down from above, or a precarious boulder protecting us from them, but on Rosh Ha’Shanah it is written, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed. This is our chance to right the wrongs we have committed throughout the year, and to have ourselves inscribed into the book of life.
But Tfilah is not enough, we must also consider our relationships with our families, our friends, business partners and acquaintances; every person who may have intentionally or unintentionally wronged or upset throughout the course of the year. We must apologize for and assuage these wrongs, but we are also encouraged to think more widely than just the people we know. For we are commanded to give Tzedakah.
This of course is something that I can speak about with some deal of authority. I have the tremendous honour, and great responsibility, of transforming the exceptional generosity of the gifts of Tzedakah made to World Jewish Relief into the actual programmes which help real people in real places. While on the plane to Nepal I could not help but feel that I was the sharp end of a very long stick. After the earthquake the Jewish community here in the UK rallied in support of the Nepali people, individuals, schools and synagogues around the country donated to us, and then my boss told me that it was time to get on a plane and turn the Jewish community’s good will into the food and shelter that was so desperately needed in Nepal. In some small way this was practicing the lesson from the first line of today’s Parsha V’yelech. I went out and was proactive, in the same way that Moses was told to go out, and to be proactive.
Today, I’m proud to say that we’ve supported some 1,700 households in three districts by providing both emergency food supplies and shelter support. But our help goes much further than merely giving a hungry person a meal. We are taught by Maimonides that the highest form of Tzedakah is not to give a simple gift of support, but rather to in a dignified way help to improve someone’s condition so that they can provide for themselves and their families. That is why, working with my Team in Nepal, we have spent the past three months developing a long-term livelihood development programme. The premise of the programme is that we do not have nearly enough money to rebuild the tens of thousands of homes which have been damaged across the country. But we do have the funds and expertise to help people to develop new businesses, improve their farms and to learn new skills, all with the intent of helping them to improve their incomes, so that in a few years’ time they will have sufficient savings to move out of the transitional shelters which World Jewish Relief helped them to build, and back into their own new earthquake resilient homes.
Whether you give to projects for refugees, programmes in Israel or to the Synagogue here at home, Tzedakah offers us the opportunity to relate to all on a physical level, and through the act of charity, to attain spiritual solace.
Finally, on Shabbat Tshuvah, it seems only right for me to speak briefly about Tshuvah, the concept of return. What made that first Shabbos of mine in Nepal so special is that everyone there felt and understood that it was what is called a מקרי קודש a ‘Holy Occasion’. It was holy not only because every Shabbat is holy, but because many of the people that I was praying next to were praying quite literally in thanks for their opportunity to return. For the opportunity to have made it out safely with their friends and companions; to have survived the calamity, and for the indescribable gift of being able to return home.
This Shabbat is our opportunity to return, to correct the transgressions we have made, to make up for missed opportunities to appreciate and rejoice in the Shabbat and to resolve to do better should we find ourselves in a similarly trying situations next year.
After all, we must always be optimistic that this coming year will be a sweet, happy and healthy one and at the same time to appreciate the blessings we have already been given. And I guess this is the final message that I would like to relay to you by way of one final story.
On one of my first days in Nepal, I was participating in a food distribution that I had helped to arrange with a local partner organisation. We had purchased sacks of rice and rented a big construction truck in order to feed a village that had not yet received any kind of support. After getting the distribution site all set up, I thought the best way to get a full picture of what we had accomplished would be to take a few minutes to watch the distribution from afar. So I walked by myself up a small hill, overlooking the long line of people patiently waiting for their package. As I watched the line, an old man with a walking staff and a face weathered by a lifetime of farming sat down next to me. He sat beside me quietly for a moment, and then asked what I thought of the beautiful hills surrounding us. He was encouraging me to see beyond his destroyed village, and to appreciate the incredible scenery of the valley below and the mountains above, even though these same mountains were the ones which had trembled and destroyed his home and his village. This man forgave the mountains, as we should all hope to be forgiven by those from whom we seek forgiveness.
Add new comment