Tearing our Clothing
Night of Solidarity following the synagogue shooting in Squirrel Hill, PA
October 30, 2018
Congregation B’nai B’rith, Santa Barbara CA
We received the following on Sunday from a member of this congregation: “Last February, our sister-in-law Joyce visited us in Santa Barbara for the first and, as it turns out, last time. When Friday came around, we eagerly brought her to Shabbat services to show off our new Jewish community at CBB. In the moments before the sanctuary nearly filled, Cantor Childs came around to meet her and to make common connection with the Squirrel Hill Pittsburgh neighborhood where Joyce and her family lived for more than 30 years. I should add that it was a Third Friday and I don’t think Joyce ever quite recovered from the Shabbat celebration of the Red Sea Rhythm Rockers. You see, for those three decades, she was a member of the Tree of Life Congregation...being Jewish at Tree of Life came into focus for her after her husband, Steve, passed away nearly two years ago. Just as members of the congregation rallied around her during her period of shiva, so she became a regular at daily minyan...Joyce was present at the start of services on Saturday morning, because she had undertaken the mitzvah to drive 97-year old Rose Mallinger to shul each Shabbat. Our sister-in-law Joyce perished, with Rose at the Tree of Life. I know it sounds like a platitude, but Joyce had more goodness and caring in her than any person I have ever known. We are in shock and we grieve; we will try to live our lives as a tribute to her goodness.”
This came from our members Lorne and Nona, who are in Pittsburgh now for their sister-in-law’s funeral tomorrow. We have several other members of this congregation with close personal connections to the Squirrel Hill Jewish community, including our Cantor, and to the Tree of Life Congregation. And the descriptions of that Shabbat morning service, and of the wonderful personalities who were there that morning could describe almost exactly what happens here every Shabbat morning. So even though we are all the way out here in Santa Barbara, CA, we feel as though we have lost members of our own immediate family. We are in deep mourning.
But the personal connections and the similarity of our situations do not explain why this crowd has gathered here tonight, and comparable crowds all over the nation. The eleven deaths in Squirrel Hill last Saturday morning mean something more and something different than just the loss of eleven beautiful, loving, innocent lives. This evening I would like to try to understand what is different. I do not claim to speak for everyone here. Each one of you is here for reasons known only to you. But I have the responsibility to try to speak this evening, words of truth and words of healing.
I was asked yesterday about the meaning of the torn black cloth hanging on the outside wall of our synagogue. That cloth is a visual reference to the Jewish custom of k’riyah, wearing a torn black ribbon when we are in our period of mourning for someone we love who has died. That cloth is a simple visual way of saying that we as a congregation are in mourning. But the custom of wearing the black ribbon is actually a vestige of a much, much older custom of actually tearing our garment when we learn that a family member has died. Some Jews still do tear their shirt, or their dress, or their suit. I did when my father died.
What is the reason for tearing our clothing in our grief? I will tell you how I understand it. Clothing is much more than simply a covering to keep us warm. Cloth....woven with wisdom and skill, out of plant or animal fibers...is one of the first signs of our humanity. Lifting us out of the animal world, our clothing represents everything that makes us human. Our customs, our songs, our stories, our rituals, our dances, our recipes, our dresses and our hats....all created long ago by our ancestors and passed down with love to us. Clothing represents our culture. Our civilization.
When we lose someone we love, in the raw intensity of our grief, we are seized by a raging wild beast deep inside us, who wants nothing more than to tear off all of the trappings of civilization. All of us human beings, when we are in deep grief, have this wild impulse to tear off everything fine and fancy, and to tear down the carefully constructed civilization of our lives. Our ancient, prehistoric gesture of tearing our clothes gives expression to that impulse...and manages it.
Tear this far; then stop. Tear your shirt. Tear your dress. Then stop. Our Jewish tradition knows that our rage and our grief, if not managed, can destroy the entire world. So we tear, and then we stop; we weep, and then we begin slowly...to heal.
I believe that our gathering here tonight, and similar gatherings all around the country, are occurring because we recognize that we are living in a time in which the terrifying, universal, human impulse to tear, to rage, and to destroy has been unleashed....with no limits.
It did not begin with this President. It first began, according to our sacred scripture , with the very first human family, when Cain rose up and murdered his brother Abel. The entire history of the human race has been one long struggle to master our own murderous impulse. This nation that we love was established, in part, through a genocide of the Native Americans and the murderous and violent enslavement of millions of African blacks. We Jews have been singled out for murder over and over again, in many times and many places. These memories haunt our understanding of ourselves and our fellow human beings. We know what we are capable of, and we tremble.
In the past two decades, we have seen the murders of three thousand innocents in the World Trade Center, and nine wonderful and welcoming worshippers in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, SC and 49 LGBTQ people in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in June 2016. And the school shootings, and and and.....All of this happened before November 2016.
But now we are almost two years into the presidency of a man who manifestly derives both personal pleasure and immense political power directly from inflaming the emotions of hate and rage. Good people may disagree with each other, and we must learn again how to disagree and to remain friends, about the whole range of President Trump’s policies. But quite apart from his policies, we have seen and we must name the President’s unleashing and active encouragement of the wild, destructive impulse that lies deep within all human beings. That impulse went out and cut down eleven Jews at prayer last Shabbat morning. This is what brings us here tonight. The need to name that impulse....in ourselves, and in our nation. Once we have named it, then what?
How do we bring healing to our nation?
As with all important questions, there is no single answer, and certainly no clear answer.
But we do know that we begin, each one of us, with our own heart.
As human beings have done from time immemorial, in our grief, we tear our garment, we weep, and then we stop and begin again. We sew, we mend, we weave, we bind up our world. Not only with our own family, but with the neighbors we have not yet met. My wife walked the streets of our neighborhood canvassing for the election, and met many neighbors she had never met. Some were willing to talk. Some were voting for the other side. But no one shut the door on her.
The very first text I received on Saturday after the shooting, expressing friendship and support was from a member of the Islamic Society of Santa Barbara. His simple act of reaching out helped to calm the wild beast within me.
A neighbor of ours just up the road, a woman none of us at CBB had ever met, brought over an orchid on Sunday morning, just to say “we’re glad you are here.” Sister Vrajaprana of the Vedanta Society sent her love from all the way in Croatia and Father Jon Stephen Hedges wrote from Florida where he is still helping people after the hurricane. Each one of these small acts, (including each one of you braving the traffic and the parking here tonight!) provides an answer to the question that brought us here tonight.
Every week we end our services with these words, which we offer to God:
“You are our hope for a better world, in which the false gods that divide us will disappear and the human family will abandon our old hatreds and fears. L’taken olam, to heal this fractured world, we need vision and hope. We still hold fast to the ancient prophecy: A time will come of a world at peace.”
We are still far from that world, but tonight, in our coming together, we have shared a vision of a united human family and a hope for a world at peace. Here at CBB, we are calling this vision “The Human Family” and you will be hearing much more about it. Tonight, in memory of the holy souls taken from our world last week, we dedicate ourselves to this sacred work.
Now let us join our voices together. I would like to invite up any members of the clergy who are here tonight to help lead us in song.