Returning to the synagogue was nothing like I had imagined.
Generally I don’t get emotional about religious services. After all, I’m a Rabbi. I know that sounds like a contradiction in terms — who more than a Rabbi should get excited about services — but when your job is to help everyone else get excited, it’s hard to leave emotion for yourself. When you are worrying about who gets the right honor, who is insulted at whom, whether you’re running late, and what you will say in today’s sermon, it’s easy to lose your own fervor in smoothing the path for others. That’s just part of the job and a challenge every Rabbi faces.
I had another reason to be stoic about services. Since I was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer over a year ago, I’ve missed a lot of them. Then came COVID. As someone in a high risk category, I just ruled myself out. When the time came to reopen, with a minyan metzumtzam — an exact count of 10 — I did all the planning, together with my shul’s President and Vice President, but I felt so detached, so disconnected, while dealing with the petty details and frustrations of a minyan I might never attend. But that’s also part of the job.
But then, on a particularly frustrating day, when the juggling of people’s schedules and preferences was endless, I had a wild idea. In my medical portal, I described my minyan’s procedures and asked my oncologist if I might be permitted to attend. I predicted to my wife that he would reply: Outdoors - yes, indoors - no, after radiation starts - no. To my shock, he responded: If the precautions are observed - yes, yes, and yes. Just like that, on the first day of the month of Tammuz, I was re-inducted into the world of minyan.
This time, instead of welcoming my members to a world which I had choreographed, I stepped into their world, constructed according to my specifications. As I looked around, I saw 12 masked figures, more than 6 feet apart, holding prayer books they’d brought from home, just as we’d stipulated. I thought of the phrase “As the Lord commanded Moses,” which repeats numerous times in the Biblical account of the construction of the Tabernacle in the wilderness. The prayers were streamlined, but not rushed. The Torah was removed from the holy ark, read, wrapped, and returned, all by one gloved person, just as we’d stipulated. At one point, the Chazzan looked to me for a nod to proceed to the next prayer. As I nodded, tears welled in my eyes.
But these weren’t the tears from my microscopic testosterone level, the ones I take Celexa to staunch. These were tears of gratitude and joy that I was still relevant, that over 25 years with this congregation, I had helped nurture a group of people that now had built a spiritual home in which to welcome me. As I write these words I wonder whether God ever has the same feeling. It felt good to be a member of the minyan.
I can’t say that I focused enough on the words I was saying. I was too overflowing with feelings I was trying to understand. Gratitude was one, towards people and God. I found myself thinking that being part of a minyan isn’t a given, but a gift. So many people can still not come back, and, until yesterday, neither could I. In communities where only 10 people were permitted to gather, women were often excluded. While my congregation found workarounds to enable a few women to come, the accommodations were far from ideal. Having to sign up and fill out a waiver before attending reminded me that no one can just expect to be able to enter and pray, unprepared.
But the feeling that most captured my imagination was the sense of prayer mingled with profound vulnerability. Breathing through a mask reminded me that dangerous droplets could lurk just beyond—that no one can be assured of surviving an encounter with God. We have grown accustomed to viewing the synagogue as our home, which God visits, and, on a Jewish legal level, that is true. It is the home where we not only pray but claim possession of a seat, run events, feast on a Kiddush spread. But we often forget that every synagogue is also called a mikdash me’at - a mini-Temple — a reflection of God’s own home, where we must walk with care.
Standing “before God” inspires joy, but also entails greater scrutiny of our own conduct. God examines the deeds of those who venture closest not only on Yom Kippur, but day by day and action by action. The Talmud says, “The Holy One, blessed be He, holds those closest to him responsible for (straying even a) hairsbreadth.” In the Bible, not everyone who encounters God this way lives to tell about it. The two sons of Aaron did not. Uzza, who accompanied the Holy Ark back to Jerusalem in the days of King David, did not. But the figure who most embodied the danger entailed by the encounter with the Divine is the High Priest, who entered the Holy of Holies once a year, on Yom Kippur. Talmudic lore records that the Kohen Gadol did not pray in the Holy of Holies, and only uttered a brief supplication upon exiting, so as not to alarm the people, who would fear that he had been struck down. There is even an account that the High Priest would have a rope tied around his midriff so that, in the event that he died, he could be pulled out of that most holy and dangerous sanctum.
Standing there with my mask, I felt that we had restored this element of true trepidation to our prayer. We had returned to the synagogue and were feeling each day some of the tension of the High Priest on Yom Kippur. I know the feeling cannot last. The eminent Jewish philosopher, Michael Wyschogrod, whose brilliant mind wandered towards the end of his life, was convinced that every day was Yom Kippur, and needed to be reassured by his family that it was not. One cannot live perpetually as a Yom Kippur Jew. But in our lives, individually and communally, sometimes Yom Kippur comes early.
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