A Jewish Center
Rosh Hashanah Morning, 5783/2022
There is an old Jewish custom during Elul, the month leading up to Rosh Hashanah, of visiting the graves of our ancestors and relatives. In Agnon’s classic collection Days of Awe, he reports that there are even places where Jews lie prostrate on the graves of the pious, to pray, and then rise up to give generously to the poor. I never knew of the custom of visiting graves before Rosh Hashanah when I was growing up, but I now understand that there are many congregations in North America that hold a service in the cemetery before Rosh Hashanah, as a way of remembering and reconnecting to our loved ones, our friends and those who came before us. Let’s do that next September!
But this morning, since Rosh Hashanah is already here, let’s go there in our minds. For one minute, I would like to summon to join us a few of the souls who brought this building to life on Rosh Hashanah in years past. I cannot possibly name them all; we’d be here all day. But here are a few: Ken Hartoch. Natalie Myerson. Oscar Lowenschuss, who would read from the Torah every year on Yom Kippur afternoon. Gela Percal. Ellen Bialis. We said goodbye to those five just in the past couple of months. And behold, we are surrounded by many, many more. Judy Meisel. Sylvia Glass. Sandy Brier. Carol deCanio, who every year quietly and without fanfare polished our silver Torah ornaments. Armando Quiros. Ruth Hartzman. Emily Baron. Katie Rotman, who was taken to the hospital and when they asked her religion she replied “CBB.” Viola Girsh. Eve Senn. Stanley Eigner. Ruth Nebel. David Shor, who for so many years stood proudly at the door as our Head Usher. Yale Coggan. Marlyn Bernstein. Mike Towbes. Daryl Perlin. Carol Pasternak. Ellie Lowden. Bernie Taran. Janet Laichas. Rick Mohun. Margaret Singer. Ken Ryals, who sang his heart out for our High Holy Day pandemic zoom choir, just days before he died. I could go on all day.
For those of you who are new, and for whom those names do not mean much, let me describe briefly how it was here in the old days…. twenty years ago. First of all, the room was oriented differently. There were fixed wooden pews in the sanctuary, facing the ark, with rented chairs set up all the way to the back, and onto the stage. The distance from the back of the room to the front was vast. The choir was hidden, out of sight, in the choir room. There were no early and late services. There were fewer members back then, and you did need a ticket to get in, so everyone fit into one service. Nineteen years ago, we did away with tickets and it began to get more crowded. Fifteen years ago we remodeled, making the room more flexible. We held High Holy Day services during the remodel in the immense Arlington Theater downtown and Jeri Eigner complained that it felt un-Jewish, not to need to fight for a seat.
After the remodel, we moved to double services, to accommodate our growing numbers, and by re-orienting the room we cut the distance in half from the back of the hall to the bimah. The choir came out of its closet and allowed us to see them and to sing with them. Twelve years passed. Twelve seasons of Avinu Malkenu and the blasts of the shofar. Twelve seasons of the choir, of Daniel Hochman’s ethereal kol d’mama daka, and Who By Fire, and gathering together by our hundreds on the beach for tashlikh. And then in the year 2020, Covid came.
That year, on Yom Kippur, the holiest night of the year, there were approximately ten people physically present in the building. The Cantor, Rabbi Brenner, and me, our President Diane Zipperstein and her husband Steve, and John Dent and his brilliant tech team, who miraculously turned this place into a TV studio. Our sacred community gathered only on zoom. It was utterly surreal, and it was an adventure. Last year, in 2021, a small number of people were ready to come back in person, but we encouraged most people to stay home, to keep our numbers down and to stay safe.
Now finally we’re back, and we are getting ready to move out again, in January. We hope it will be just 18 months; but it could be more. Why would we do that?
To answer that question, I would like to speak of a rabbi named Mordecai Kaplan, who may one day be regarded as the single most important figure in the modern era of American Jewish history.
Kaplan was born in Lithuania in 1881 and came to this country when he was nine years old, in 1890. His father was a leading Orthodox Rabbi in New York City who gave his son Mordecai an intensive traditional Jewish education, and at the same time took the risk of exposing his son to modern science and philosophy. As a teenager, Mordecai attended City College of New York during the day and an orthodox rabbinic seminary in the evenings. By the time he was 21 years old, in 1902, Mordecai had a master’s degree from Columbia University and was an ordained orthodox rabbi.
At age 22, in 1903, he was appointed rabbi of Congregation Kehillat Jeshurun, an orthodox congregation in New York. We know from his intensely honest personal diary, that he was already struggling with doubts about orthodox Judaism. He no longer regarded the Bible as authored by God. He doubted the efficacy of prayer and ritual. Kaplan shared his doubts with his parents in 1907 and left the congregation a year later. But he did not leave Jewish life. Instead, he set out to recreate American Judaism, and to establish it on a foundation of ideas that made sense to American Jews in the 20th century.
Kaplan found his home at JTS, the Jewish Theological Seminary, which had become the leading institution of Conservative Judaism. He became the principal of the JTS Teacher’s Institute, serving in that capacity for 54 years until his retirement in 1963. During that half century, Kaplan taught and profoundly influenced many of the leading rabbis and Jewish educators of the 20th century.
He was a radical thinker, who did not hesitate to reject any idea from Jewish tradition that contradicted his own understanding of right and wrong. In 1945, he was the first and only American rabbi ever to be excommunicated by the Union of Orthodox Rabbis, who ritually burned his prayer book in a ceremony in a New York City Hotel. Those Orthodox Rabbis excommunicated him because they understood Kaplan’s significance. He was steeped in Judaism and committed at the core of his being to Jewish tradition and to the Jewish People. And he was calling for a religious revolution. Judaism, he believed, needed to be recreated, reconstructed, for this time and place. For America, in our time.
At the heart of Kaplan’s vision for American Judaism was a new idea, which he pioneered. The Jewish Center. Kaplan was convinced that houses of prayer were not enough for Jewish survival in America, because prayer is only one facet of human life. Kaplan envisioned a place where Jews would come all week long, at any time of day, to create culture and community together. Music and art and food and prayer and study and theater and physical fitness. He called his vision a “Jewish Center.”
In 1915, he was approached by a group of Jews on the Upper West Side who invited him to create such a Center, and he accepted. They built a ten-story building, on West 86th Street, which still exists today: a 24 hour/7 day a week synagogue intentionally designed to cater to the whole range of human needs: spiritual, cultural, intellectual, physical and social.
Which brings me back to us. We are moving out of our building this winter, for 18 months, because we are transforming this campus into the kind of 24/7 synagogue that Mordecai Kaplan envisioned. I wish it were not coming so soon on the heels of the pandemic, and the time we have been away from the building during the past two years. But this coming period of relocation is going to feel completely different from what we have just been through. First of all, we will be able to gather physically….in an alternative location which we will soon be ready to announce. Secondly, we know more or less how long we will need to be out of the building, while during Covid we had no idea how long it would last. And most importantly, these eighteen months will fly by because we have a clear vision of what we will find when we return to this place. Here is the vision:
An art studio, with classes every day, morning, afternoon and evening, in painting, drawing, ceramics, sculpture and jewelry. For little children and adults, teens and the elderly.
A learning kitchen, with classes every day, morning, afternoon and evening, in Jewish baking, breads and especially pastries. Classes in the classic cuisine of the Jewish communities of Morocco, Italy, Persia, Greece, Iraq, Spain, and Tunisia. We will re-learn the age-old wisdom of our kosher dietary laws. And the principles of sustainable agricultural, re-learning how to obtain our food from the earth without poisoning our earth and water. And we will teach our children and ourselves the reality of food insecurity, and of our responsibility to provide for the hungry in the midst of our plenty.
The back patio and picnic area will become a shaded central plaza and park, with hillside gardens and an amphitheater and playground, where families and children can come all week long, and enjoy live music played by our friends, and food prepared by our own hands.
A new library in the round, designed as a large multi-purpose space for Torah study, for yoga, for movies, for Tot Shabbats, and for meditation.
A center for respectful dialogue, dedicated explicitly to relearning the skills of listening and communicating, even with those with whom we disagree.
A media studio with capabilities we are just beginning to imagine, for sound and video recording, for Zoom conferencing with friends around the world, and for experiencing the Jewish past and future through virtual reality.
In the midst of all this living and creating and enjoying, we will also pray together. And sing together. And study our sacred texts. This was Mordecai Kaplan’s vision: a Jewish Center for Culture and Community, with prayer and song and study at its heart.
None of this is a fantasy. It is a reality that we are building together. The working drawings are nearly done and about to be submitted to the County Building Department. We are still raising money but we are confident of reaching our goal. We will hold a celebratory groundbreaking in late January and then we will move out, for a short time. It will fly by.
And when we return, az yimaleh s’chok pinu ul’shonenu rinah. “Then our mouth will be full of laughter, and our tongue with songs of joy.”
L’shanah tova tikateivu v’teichateimu. May we all be inscribed and sealed in the book of life for a sweet, healthy and happy new year!