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We Are Family: A Sermon for Second Day Rosh Hashanah 5765
We Are Family:
A Sermon for Second Day Rosh Hashanah
5765 (2004)
By Rabbi Susan Grossman
We have been speaking about the 3 B’s we will be graded on in life: believing, belonging, and behaving. Yesterday, we spoke about one aspect of believing: believing in things unseen. Today, I would like to speak about one aspect of belonging: what it means to belong to a family.
You may have heard this joke about the woman who received a phone call one day: The phone rings and when she answers, she hears a familiar voice: “Hello, this is mom. How is everyone?” The woman answers, “Oh, terrible. The kids are sick. The car broke down. I have a cold. The laundry needs to be done and I don’t have the strength to do the shopping. I don’t know what I am going to do.” The mother answers, “Don’t worry. I’ll come right over. I’ll take care of the kids so you can get a little nap. I’ll do the shopping and the laundry for you and make dinner for Joe.” “Joe?” the woman interrupts. “My husband’s name is Sam.”
“Sam? Is this 718-332-5294?”
“No, it’s 718-332-5295,” the woman replies.
“Oh I’m terribly sorry. I must have the wrong number!”
“Oh,” the woman cries, “Does this mean you’re not coming over?”
This joke rings so true for us, not only for what it says about Jewish mothers but also for what it says about the difference between family and non-family: We can count on family to come through when others might not.
In my house growing up, family did not just include my parents, my brothers and me. Family included my grandparents, aunts, uncles and all my cousins. My mother of blessed memory, zichrona l’vracha, and her four sisters may have fought at times, but they would always pull together whenever any of them had a problem.
When I would ask my mother about this, she would always say, “Blood is thicker than water.” What she meant was that belonging cuts two ways: It meant, no matter what, we could always count on the members of our extended family to be there for us if we ever needed anything. It also meant that, as part of the family, we were each expected to be there for them if they ever needed anything. That is what belonging meant.
If someone had tsuris, if someone was sick or needed a place to stay, there was never a question of helping out. Family was there for sharing the problems and the perks. It meant everyone chipping in to scrape together enough to get someone out of a jam as much as it meant Uncle Joe, who was a baker, bringing by fresh bread and rolls Sunday mornings on his way home from work, even though our apartment was at least half an hour out of his way when he was exhausted from starting work before dawn.
It was easier to keep up family connections when we all lived in the Bronx near each other. But I wonder if we are not fooling ourselves when we think it is mileage rather than priorities that create the distance that weakens the ties that bind family members together in mutual support.
At a time before telephones were common, my paternal grandmother, living in the Bronx, felt her sister needed her so she packed up a basket full of chicken soup and food, gathered the few dollars she had been saving for a rainy day and took the train to Baltimore to nurse her sister’s family back to health. When asked why she had dropped everything and run down to her sister, she answered: that’s what family is for. She didn’t feel put upon or taken advantage of. She felt great satisfaction that she could be there for her sister and family when they needed her.
That is what family is for. To belong to a family means to be there for each other when we are needed and feel the satisfaction from knowing we were able to help.
What is true for one’s immediate family is also true for our extended family. I don’t just mean our second and third cousins once removed. I mean our larger family, the Jewish People.
All people are related, of course. We are all descended from Adam and Eve; that’s why we should be our brother and sister’s keepers. But it is natural to feel closer to our more immediate family, Am Yisrael, our Jewish family.
We are a family, you know. We are related through our great-grandparents Abraham and Sarah. That’s why we are called the Children of Israel. Israel is the name God gave to Jacob, Sarah and Abraham’s grandson. As Jacob’s children, we are Abraham and Sarah’s great- grandchildren. That makes us all cousins.
Deep down, we know it’s true.
What’s the first thing two Jews do when we meet each other for the first time? We play Jewish Geography. We are trying to find out how we are related to each other.
It has been said that most people are six relationships (six degrees of separation) from knowing someone in common. For Jews, though, it usually only takes two degrees of separation before we find someone who knows someone we know. Why? Because we’re family.
Jewish Geography is our way of affirming not only we both love bagels (which is a rather superficial sort of connection) but we will be there for each other in a way others may not.
That’s why, like my mother and her sisters, Jews may readily fight or disagree among ourselves. But when confronted by a common enemy, we always pull together, whether by building soup kitchens and orphanages in the Nazi ghettos or by building a nation to gather their survivors.
Perhaps you know this story recounted in the wonderful collection, Chicken Soup for the Jewish Soul:
Like many families who live in the religious neighborhoods of Jerusalem, Talya was raising nine kids on a very meager budget. When her tenth, a boy, was born, her friends and neighbors offered to prepare the food for the brit milah, the circumcision ceremony scheduled for the eighth day after birth. Many people offered food, and Talya asked a friend visiting Jerusalem if she could pick up a dish from a neighbor. Happy to help, the friend took the directions, walked over to the apartment and knocked on the door. When she told the woman who greeted her that she was here to pick up some food for the brit milah… the woman pulled a casserole out of her refrigerator and then took a coffee cake out of the oven. She explained she had made it for Shabbat but now she wanted it to be part of the baby’s celebration. She packed up the food and escorted the friend to the door. As she saw the friend out, the woman asked, “So tell me, whose brit milah is it, which family?”
Momentarily stunned, the friend realized she must have gone to the wrong apartment. Embarrassed, she began to explain what happened and held out the bag to return the food. The woman would have none of it. She shook her head, smiled and said, “Take it and enjoy the brit milah!”
The friend then realized, it didn’t matter. There was no such thing as a wrong apartment in Jerusalem.i
I love this story. It sounds so much like the joke I opened with, except for the punch line.
The reason there is no such thing as a wrong apartment in Jerusalem is, for us Jews, we’re all family!
We don’t need to know each other personally to feel a sense of belonging, a sense of responsibility, a sense we can be there, need to be there, get pleasure being there for each other. That is what it means to belong. There are no wrong numbers or wrong apartments among Jews.
I think that is what our Rabbis meant by their phrase, kol yisrael aravim zeh b’zeh: “All Israel is linked one to another.”
I think they were saying that all Jews everywhere are connected. We are connected, not only because there is a good chance that what happens to a Jew in one place can happen to a Jew in another place. We are connected because, as family, we care about and are responsible for each other.
Nowhere is that value more clearly felt than in Israel.
When David and I lived in Israel, we had a friend who would disappear for weeks at a time. Only later did he explain: He would travel to isolated areas to lead whole villages of Ethiopian Jews through dangerous mountain passes to Israeli planes on the other side of the border waiting to airlift them to freedom. His missions were dangerous and completely voluntary. Yet he felt he could not let down a fellow Jew who needed him.
Change the details and this story has been repeated countless times: in Yemin, the Former Soviet Union, Sarajevo, South America… Wherever Jews find themselves in danger, Israel, since its founding, has been there to help.
That is what it means to belong to family.
Whether we live in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, Paris or Peru, New York or Columbia, Maryland, we belong to the same extended family, the great-grandchildren of Abraham and Sarah. To belong means to care and to be there for each other.
That’s why we made a five-year commitment to raise funds to help build a reservoir in Kfar Menachem in Israel with the Jewish National Fund, because our Israeli cousins need help with their water shortage.
That’s why we just made our pledges to Israeli Bonds, an investment that has helped provide housing for over one million immigrants.
There are so many ways to help: We can support Mercaz and Masorati (our Conservative Movement in Israel), participate in Hadassah or send a bear to a child hospitalized in Israel through MDA/Bears for Life.
My dearest friends, I have a secret to share with you. Our donations are important. Our donations are appreciated. But donations alone are not enough.
Our family in Israel feels very isolated right now. European institutions are boycotting Israeli academics and professionals from international conferences. European countries are banning Israeli products from their markets. That, on top of the bottom dropping out in tourism, has devastated the Israeli economy. Thousands are out of work or underemployed.
More than anything else, our family in Israel desperately needs to see us face to face, to touch us and see our smile. They need our visits.
That’s why we have organized a Beth Shalom Mission to Israel, departing June 26. The entire family is welcome, which also means you don’t have to be a Beth Shalom member to come. (Details and the itinerary are in the lobby or on our web site.)
And if you can’t visit this year, maybe you will be able to visit next year or the year after.
Several congregants and I were in Israel together this past February for the Masorati Mission. It was an incredible experience. Everywhere we went storekeepers thanked us for coming. It didn’t matter whether or not we bought anything. Just showing up was enough to strengthen and give them hope for the future.
Another thing that was so incredible was how safe we all felt.
Walking on a street in Israel is not like walking on a street in Washington DC or Baltimore. Crime is almost non-existent. You don’t have to be wary of the bums on the street. (In Israel, even the beggars are family.) Most important, things are much safer now since the security barrier has been built, especially in the north where it has been completed. That’s why our congregants visited Israel this past year and were able to have such a great time.
The most incredible part of our visit, though, was the feeling I get whenever I’m there. In a deep way, nothing compares to visiting Israel.
Thomas Wolfe once wrote a book called, You Can’t Go Home Again about how, if you leave home and come back again, you can’t just pick up where you left off, because so much changes in the interim.
That may be true of the 1930’s America about which Wolfe was writing. But it is not true about Israel.
A Jew can always go home again to Israel.
Israel is always changing and growing. New buildings go up. New excavations uncover more of our family history. There is always something new to visit and see. But at its heart, in the very air and soil, Israel remains the same home we left thousands of years ago. Abraham’s Mount Moriah is still there to see, as is the cave in which David hid from King Saul. The Western Wall, the Kotel, Judaism’s holiest site, awaits us as it has generations of pilgrims. Our souls know this. When we visit, our souls know we are home at last. That’s why our souls sing in Israel as they do not, cannot, anywhere else in the world.
That is why, as much as Israel needs us, we also need Israel. Israel gives us a place we fully and unconditionally belong. That’s what home means. Part of belonging to a family is knowing where one’s home is. In addition to all our other homes, as a Jew, we always have a home in Israel.
That is why, even if we can’t visit Israel, we can keep up our familial connection, and transmit it to our children, by talking about Israel at the dinner table, buying Israeli made products, and putting a few coins in the JNF box each week.
Family connection does not remain alive unless we nurture it regularly in our lives and down through the generations.
What is true about belonging to our large extended family in Israel is also true about belonging to our local branch of the family: our Beth Shalom family.
We are family. Family takes care of each other. That’s why we have a Hesed and a Bereavement Committee to provide food and other support to family members in distress. That’s why we have evening and Sunday services, so mourners will not be alone in their grief. (That’s also why, when we receive the card in the mail asking us to attend services, it’s so important we come at least a few times during our assigned week, to make the minyan and to let the mourners know we care.)
We’re family. So let’s spend some time together during the coming year. If we know people socially or through committee work, let’s come to services for their bnai mitzvah, ufrufs or baby namings, even if we aren’t invited to the party, just to say we care. The bonds that unite us have stretched thinner as we have become larger, so we have to work a little harder to stay connected. Coming often and becoming involved are two of the greatest ways of strengthening those familial ties.
We are family. We may disagree with each other at times. But, hopefully, like my mother and her sisters, we can also pull together to meet our challenges and build our future.
Whether half way around the world in Israel or around the corner in Columbia, for family, there are no wrong numbers, no wrong apartments. As my mother taught me, belonging to a family has responsibilities but also benefits: we know others are counting on us, but we also know we can count on them.
As Jews, we are all family. That means everyone belongs and everyone has a place.
May God bless us with the ability to always be there for each other, and let us say, Amen.
© Copyright. Rabbi Susan Grossman. 2004. All rights reserved.
NOTES:
i Chicken Soup for the Jewish Soul, Rebecca Heisler, 64-5.
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