LORD PREPARE ME TO BE YOUR SANCTUARY
PURE AND HOLY TRIED AND TRUE
IN THANKSGIVING
I’LL BE YOUR LIVING
SANCTUARY FOR YOU
(Exodus 25:8)

V’ah-su lee mik-dash v’sha-chantee b’to-ham…
Va-anakhnu n’varaykh Yah may-atah v’ahd olam.
(Psalm 115:18)
Build Me a Sanctuary that I might dwell among them.
And we will bless G-d from now until forever.

What are we preparing ourselves for? What does it mean to be a sanctuary? This is Shabbat Hagadol…the BIG Shabbat, the Great Shabbat and in the old days the rabbi would only give a sermon twice a year. Today, to teach you how to prepare for Passover and Shabbat Shuvah between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to teach you how to do teshuvah, repentance, so that you were prepared for Yom Kippur.

The special haftarah from Malachi this morning talks about what will happen if we are prepared.

“But for you that fear My name the sun of righteousness shall arise with healing in its wings; and you shall go forth, and stamp your feet and march.

So being angry and stamping your feet and marching seems to be appropriate for this day of preparation.

Remember, you, the law of Moses, My servant, which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel, even statutes and ordinances.

Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD.

And he shall turn the heart of the parents to the children, and the heart of the children to their parents; lest I come and smite the land with utter destruction.

That’s what we are preparing for. The GREAT day. Elijah the prophet is coming…just like Elijah the prophet will be there at each of our Passover seders, just like Elijah the prophet is present at every brit milah, ritual circumcision.

How do we know when Elijah comes? When the hearts of the children and parents are turned to one another.

There are lots of stories about Elijah. One of my favorites:

“Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi met Elijah while the prophet was standing at the entrance to the cave of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai. Rabbi Yehoshua asked him, “Do I have a place in the world to come?” Elijah replied, “If the master desires it.”

As Elijah spoke, Rabbi Yehoshua looked about in wonderment. Perhaps it was only the echo from the cave before which he stood, but later on when he would speak of this meeting with Elijah, he would say, “I saw two of us but I heard the voice of a third.”

Rabbi Yehoshua asked Elijah another question about the future time: “When will the Messiah come? Elijah answered, “Go and ask him, himself.” Rabbi Yehoshua was amazed: “You mean I could find him, talk to him—now? Where is he?” Elijah said, “You can find him at the gates of Rome.” “How will I recognize him at the gates of Rome?” asked Rabbi Yehoshua. Elijah told him, “There he sits among the lepers whom you will find unwinding all of their bandages at the same time and then covering their sores with clean bandages. The Messiah is the only one who unwinds and rewinds his bandages one at a time, thinking, ‘I want to be ready at a moment’s notice if I am called’.”

Rabbi Yehoshua traveled from the cave of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai all the way to Rome—a journey that seemed to take him only a few steps. He was not frightened by the strong gates of the enemy nor the pitiful condition of the lepers. Keeping in mind Elijah’s advice of how to identify the Messiah in the most unlikely of places among the most wretched of people, he quickly spotted the one poor sufferer who was unwrapping and rewrapping only one sore at a time.

Rabbi Yehoshua approached him and said, “Peace be upon you, my master and teacher.” The leper looked knowingly at him and replied, “Peace be upon you, son of Levi.” Rabbi Yehoshua asked him, “When will the master come?” “Today,” said the leper.

Rabbi Yehoshua returned to Elijah in the blink of an eye. Elijah said to him, “What did the Messiah say to you?” Rabbi Yehoshua replied, “He said, ‘Peace be upon you, son of Levi’.” Elijah said, “Ah! As to your first question of me, he assured you that both you and your father have a place in the world to come.” Rabbi Yehoshua said, “But he lied to me, saying, ‘Today I will come.’ But he has not come.” Elijah said, “No, he did not say that he would come ‘today’. Rather, he was quoting a Psalm verse to you: Today—if only you will listen to His voice (Psalm 95:7). (from the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 98a)”

When will Elijah come? Today, if we listen to his voice.

And we know that Elijah taught that the voice of G-d will not be the thundering voice but that of the still, small voice.

How do we let Elijah in?

Another favorite Elijah story is in the children’s book, Just Enough is Plenty, where a peddler or a beggar arrives at a home for Chanukah. Despite their own poverty this year, the family warmly invites him in, saying that they have enough but not too much. They have just enough and it’s plenty. They enjoy latkes together. The guest delights the children by giving them coins to play dreidl and then sits on the floor to play. They all go to bed for the night. In the morning he has gone, leaving his peddler’s sack—filled with beautiful cloth for the father, a tailor and a book of Elijah’s Stories for the children right on top.

How do we let Elijah in here? When we open our doors to the hungry. When we invite everyone to our Passover seder. When we listen to the voices of our children.

This all seems appropriate as later today I will be at the Elgin Township Hall with other members of the clergy, elected officials and our own Peg reading names killed by gun violence. I am standing with the children, who are leading us. Children should not be afraid to go to school, to the mall, to the movies.

A few years ago I attended a Chicago Board of Rabbis meeting where Rabbi Joel Mosbacher was speaking. Just six months after he was ordained, his father, Lester, was murdered as he opened his check-cashing business on the South Side of Chicago. He wrestled with his grief for several years and eventually founded an organization, Don’t Stand Idly By. http://donotstandidlyby.org/ He explained his brother had a different response. He went out and bought a gun. What was most striking, shocking about the meeting was almost every rabbi in the room had a personal story to share about gun violence in their own lives.

About two years ago, without knowing that I know Rabbi Mosbacher, I was asked by a local group to approach our mayor and our police chief to sign on to the principles which includes a commitment to smart gun technology of Don’t Stand Idly By. We did so and both the mayor and the police chief signed on.

In today’s Torah portion we read about the wellbeing offering, the Zevach shlomim. The translation, well being doesn’t quite capture the Hebrew. Shlomim carries with it the sense of shalom, peace, wholeness and maybe that is what well being is, a sense of wholeness.

The world is not whole—any check of any news media would tell us that. It wasn’t whole when Rabbi Yehoshua spoke to Elijah. It is our obligation to work for justice. It is our obligation to not stand idly by while our neighbor bleeds as we will read shortly in Leviticus. It is our obligation to work for a time when we can each hear Elijah’s voice.

Sung:
For our teachers and their students and the students of the students
We ask for peace and loving kindness here and everywhere.
May they be blessed with all they need.
And let us say Amen… (Debbie Friedman, z”l)

I woke up Friday morning silently crying and singing that song. It is part of the Teacher’s Kaddish, a prayer that Jews recite when mourning. And today I am very, very sad. I am sad for our students who go to school in fear. I am sad for our African American neighbors who fear a routine traffic stop.

And I am angry. Very, very angry. Because I don’t believe this needs to keep happening. After losing Yuval I have worked on these issues. In 2000 we attended a send-off rally on Westford Common for the Million Mom March. In 2003 a neighbor in 5^th grade brought his family’s gun to school. The girls in my Girl Scout troop talked about where they would hide. Under the stage in the cafeteria if the locks didn’t stick. The school didn’t think there were any problems and did not do lock-down drills.

So today I am so very, very proud of our students. The rabbis of the Talmud teach, much have I learned from my teachers, even more from my colleagues and the most from my students. Today we learn from our kids—thank G-d.

I pause to I offer this Kaddish…a painful Kaddish for the people I know that were impacted directly by violence. Enough is Enough. The time is now to answer the question, “How many deaths will it take till they know that too many people have died.” Too many. Too many.

• For Yuval Berger, my first love, killed in the line of duty in Israel.
• For an unnamed Jewish woman in Grand Rapids, MI who was shot to death in her store just before my parents’ bookstore opened on the same block
• For Lester Moshbacher, Rabbi Joel Moshbachers’ father
• For all those killed in violence in Chicago including Paul ONeal.
• For Olivia Marchand, killed by her own father as she stepped between her mother and her father arguing over college tuition, the day I presented my thesis on domestic violence
• For Columbine, where a friend of mine was awaiting back surgery in which the hospital that the victims arrived. Soon afterwards they moved to Israel to be safer
• For Aurora, CO where they moved back, again to be safer, and their daughter was in the next movie theater.
• And for Aurora, IL that experienced their own terror of guns just this week.
• For Tucson, where Simon’s family shopped at that grocery store every day and knew many of those killed and wounded when Representative Gabby Giffords was shot at a Congressman on Your Corner event.
• For Sandy Hook, where my college roommates’ son was 6 that fateful day. He was in the other elementary school but he lost friends that day.
• For all those in Parkland—especially Ben Wikander the grandson of former congregants of mine at Congregation Shalom and for my friend Susan, who is a retired guidance counselor there and the daughter of a New York City police officer.
• For DeCynthia Clements

For our teachers and their students and the students of the students
We ask for peace and loving kindness here and everywhere.
May they be blessed with all they need.
And let us say Amen…

Our feet are praying. Our thoughts and prayers are not enough.

LORD PREPARE ME TO BE YOUR SANCTUARY
PURE AND HOLY TRIED AND TRUE
IN THANKSGIVING
I’LL BE YOUR LIVING
SANCTUARY FOR YOU

(Exodus 25:8)
V’ah-su lee mik-dash v’sha-chantee b’to-ham…
Va-anakhnu n’varaykh Yah may-atah v’ahd olam.
(Psalm 115:18)
Build Me a Sanctuary that I might dwell among them.
And we will bless G-d from now until forever.

A sanctuary is a place where G-d’s presence dwells. A sanctuary is a safe place, a place where there is no fear. Where brothers and sisters can dwell together in unity. Where G-d can dwell among us. That is what we are building. That is what we are preparing. That is the vision of Malachi. The shopping and cooking and cleaning can wait. This is real. This is now.