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.

Today we begin reading the book of Leviticus. Vayikra. And He called. It is a book that is mostly about the priestly code. How should the priests act, what do they do, how do they perform all those animal sacrifices.

It is the policy and procedure manual for their job. And their job is to bring the people of Israel closer to G-d through those animal sacrifices. It seems archaic. Outdated. We no longer offer animal sacrifices to be one with G-d.

One of my professors, Rabbi Nehemia Polen talks about it as a reset button. What the priests were trying to do was to recreate that moment at Sinai when we all stood there. There is smoke and fire and quaking and shaking. There is incense and offering—something that goes up, an olah, a rising. And somehow that is supposed to connect us with the Divine and allow us to have a relationship.

You have heard me say this before. The word religion, from the Latin, means to tie back up. People are seeking a relationship, often to replace something they no longer have. When we are children our primary relationship is with our parents, who (attempt) to love us unconditionally. When we leave home, we need to replace that primary relationship and we search for something, or someone else.

Think about it from the Bible’s perspective. When G-d created man, Adam, G-d said it was not good for man to be alone so G-d created a helpmate, a partner, Eve. After Sarah died, Isaac took Rebecca to his tent and he loved her and was comforted.

Today’s portion also talks about relationship. There is a midrash about the very beginning of Leviticus. In that first word, Vayikra, the aleph at the end in every Torah, is written smaller, appearing to float above the line. As Rabbi Peg Kershenbaum tells it, “Without the aleph, you might think that G-d met Moses by chance. Looking over Moses’s shoulder, as it were, G-d says, “this was no accidental meeting. I called to you from this Tent of Meeting. I’m here, now that you’ve spent all these chapters building me a dwelling. Put back the aleph, if you please. Moses, flustered says, “But I wrote, He was dear to Moses.” To this God says, “Hmm, But maybe someone in the future would think (and they’d be wrong), that you meant, “He was cold toward Moses!” (because kar means cold) Put back the aleph so they know.” So Moses wrote the aleph as G-d commanded in a modest but conspicuous way.”

There is another midrash about an aleph. We don’t really know what happened on Mount Sinai.

From Rabbi Larry Kushner’s Book of Miracles: “No one really knows for certain what happened at Mount Sinai. Some people believe that G-d dictated the entire Torah word for word. Others believe that it included the Oral Law as well. Some believe that G-d inspired Moses. In Makot 23a and b, the rabbis of the Talmud were having just such an argument—what happened at Sinai. It teaches us that G-d didn’t give the ten commandments, but only the first two sayings. One who remembers that there is a G-d who frees people and who has no other gods will be religious. Another rabbi argued that it was just the first saying. Still another said that it was just the first word of the first saying, Anochi. But Rabbi Mendl Torum of Rymanov said, “Not even the first word. All G-d said was the first letter of the first word of the first saying, the first letter of the Alef-bet, alef” Now this is somewhat problematic, since Alef is silent. Almost but not perfectly. You see alef makes a tiny, little sound that is the beginning of every sound. Open your mouth (go ahead, do it). Stop! That is alef. G-d made the voice of Alef so quiet that if you made any other noise you wouldn’t be able to hear it. At Sinai, all the people of Israel needed to hear was the sound of Alef. It meant that G-d and the Jewish people could have a conversation.”

So the aleph gives us the opportunity to have a relationship with G-d. To tie back up into something. To bind ourselves to something important.

We no longer have animal sacrifice as a way to make us whole. What are we to do? Last night we read the section from the midrash:

Once, Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai was walking with his disciple, Rabbi Y’hoshua, near Jerusalem after the destruction of the Temple. Rabbi Y’hoshua looked at the Temple ruins and said “Alas for us!! The place that atoned for the sins of the people Israel lies in ruins!” Then Rabbi Yohannan ben Zakkai spoke to him these words of comfort: ‘Be not grieved, my son. There is another equally meritorious way of gaining ritual atonement, even though the Temple is destroyed. We can still gain ritual atonement through deeds of loving-kindness. For it is written “Loving kindness I desire, not sacrifice.” (Hosea 6:6) Avot D’Rabbi Nathan 4:5

Acts of lovingkindness is how we make ourselves whole, how we tie back up into something, how we are holy.

Today is a reset button of another sort. Today, 30 years ago on the Hebrew calendar, I married my bashert—my destined one. My beloved. We were an improbable pair. He was older than I. He was recently separated with three kids. I was young and still mourning the death of my first love.

He wanted to learn more Hebrew. We both had wanted to be rabbis. He wanted conversation and a friend. I am not sure what I wanted but he had these gorgeous blue eyes and an intensity—particularly around spirituality, something my parents askewed, and around making the world a better place, about tikkun olam. We had long arguments about prayer and G-d and the difference between social action and social justice. We still argue about those things. We taught Hebrew School together and we took his 8^th grade class to Washington for the rally for Soviet Jews. We lived out that curriculum as our feet were praying. I drove the van and he taught those kids the prophets, all the way from Boston to Virginia. Somewhere in Maryland he waxed poetic about the Cows of Bashan in Amos and told those kids that he loved me because my deep, brown eyes were like cows. Those kids, now adults with kids of their own still talk about it and how they held the sign at the rally for Peter Paul and Mary. We still sing Light One Candle.

That song became our rallying cry. It was a song we heard on our first date, a Peter Paul and Mary concert. It was the song we used at the Havdalah the night before our wedding. And again at Sarah’s baby naming.

What is the memory that’s valued so highly
That we keep alive in that flame?
What’s the commitment to those who have died
That we cry out they’ve not died in vain?
We have come this far always believing
That justice would somehow prevail
This is the burden, this is the promise
This is why we will not fail!

Just before we got married my father had a piece of advice for Simon, something that worked well for him in his own marriage. Simon should just say, “Yes, dear.” We have discovered that it doesn’t work very well. This is not the same phrase as the midrash about Moses and G-d. In fact, it is quite the opposite. It is condescending and designed to acquiesce but not really agree. In the book the book group is reading this month, the Notorious RBG, Ruth Bader is given a piece of advice by her mother-in-law, Evelyn Ginsburg, to be just before her wedding, “I’m going to tell you the secret of a happy marriage. It helps to be a little bit deaf.” RGB extends that teaching, “Sometimes people say unkind or thoughtless things, and when they do, it is best to be a little hard of hearing–to tune out and not snap back in anger or impatience.”

A woman of valor which Simon read to me last night says, “the law of kindness is on her tongue. I admit we are still working on that one. I am not always the easiest person to live with. Marriage isn’t easy. There have been ups and downs. Learning to navigate the roller coaster isn’t easy.

There is a lovely children’s story—the Keeping Quilt by Patricia Polacco which seems particularly poignant as we have been telling stories of our journeys all year, our incredible journeys.

When Patricia’s great grandmother came to the United States, the only things she had from her old home in Russia were her dress and her babushka which she liked to throw up in the air like she was dancing. When she outgrew her dress, her mother made a quilt to help her remember home. The border of the quilt was the babushka. The quilt became the tablecloth for Shabbat meals. When she fell in love, her husband gave her a gold coin for wealth, a dried flower for love and a piece of rock salt so their lives would have flavor. They were married under the quilt as chuppah. They wrapped their baby in the quilt to welcome her to the family. The baby was given gold, flower, salt and bread. Gold so she would never know poverty, a flower so she would always know love, salt so her life would always have flavor and bread so she would never know hunger. When her daughter grew up and got married, in the wedding bouquet she carried a gold coin, bread and salt. She welcomed her daughter to the world wrapped in the quilt. When her daughter married, again there was gold, bread and salt in the bouquet. Patricia was welcomed to the world with the quilt. It was the tablecloth at her first birthday party. It was the quilt she pretended was a bullfighter’s cape or tent in the steaming Amazon jungle. When she was married it was the chuppah and she carried gold, bread and salt and a sprinkle of wine so she would always know laughter. She then welcomed her daughter into the world with the same quilt.

But there is something else. Early in our relationship, we stopped to tell one particular couple we were going to get married. Nancy was digging in the garden. She stood up, hugged us with those muddy hands and exclaimed, “Alyn, get the champagne.” From this we learned a very important lesson. Always have a bottle of champagne in your fridge. You never know when you might need to toast the big moments—like today—or the little moments, day by day by day. We invite you to join us to celebrate this milestone with a toast of l’chaim and a sip of champagne, a mimosa, just as we did 30 years ago.

Today is a reset button. He still has those blue eyes. He still has that intensity, that deep thinking, the soul of a poet, the commitment to tikkun olam and making this world a better place. He still cares passionately and quite simply I still love him.

So I repeat the words of my Bat Mitzvah haftarah, that we read to Oeach other at our wedding:

I am my beloved and my beloved is mine.
Arise my love, my fair one and come away with me,
For lo, the winter is past
The Rain is over and gone
The flowers appear on the earth
The time of singing has come
Arise my love, my fair one and come away.