Go to Your New Home
Sermon, Shabbat Lech Lecha 5787
Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha, Tucson, AZ
Technically speaking, this Shabbat on the Hebrew calendar, the Jewish calendar marks the 8th anniversary of Congregation Beit Simcha, exactly 8 years since we held our very first Shabbat service. It was Shabbat Lech Lecha 5779, October 20, 2018, when we first gathered as a congregation to celebrate the Sabbath together. I know, each year we celebrate our anniversary in December at Hanukkah, the holiday of dedication and light, and will do so again December 5th, the 2nd Night of Hanukkah this year. Each of those annual events has been a memorable and beautiful experience of our synagogue’s energy, commitment and dedication, and it will be so again this December. But in purely historical terms, our ritual anniversary is this Shabbat, Lech Lecha.
In so many ways this has remained an appropriate Shabbat to reflect on our congregation’s journey, because it is in Lech Lecha that God gives that great initial instruction, “go out, leave” that begins the process of our people becoming Wandering Jews. It was a perfect beginning for Beit Simcha, as we have surely been wandering Jews; and it has remained a steady reminder that all who wander are not lost, that the journey can be the reward, that being peripatetic migrants through the desert is not necessarily a bad thing. But this year adds something very special to Shabbat Lech Lecha.
As you know, last week our congregation, Beit Simcha, completed something that we have been trying to accomplish for 8 long years: we closed escrow on our own temple building. Now that might not seem all that unusual, but as you no doubt are aware we have been almost literally wandering in the desert for 8 years seeking our own synagogue home, so it actually feels mildly amazing. It has not taken us the 40 years our ancestors wandered in the wilderness under Moses, but after 6 different temporary homes and many false starts towards purchasing a property, we finally closed escrow and we have a real home. Please join us Sunday, November 15th at 4pm for a First Look at our building and our development plans at an event we are calling “From Wandering to Wonder.”
Now, I realize that buying or building a home has been a normal enough experience over the years: a group of Jews coming together to form a new synagogue, create a congregation and a community, growing and developing over time and eventually building or purchasing its own property in an area that doesn’t have a temple already, or doesn’t have one of that flavor of Judaism, is nothing new. This is a story that has been repeated many times over the centuries and the millennia of Jewish history on every inhabited continent in the world. Someday, when we humans have settled on Mars, there will no doubt be a new congregation formed on the Red Planet, called B’nai Adom or Beit Cochav Leket Maadim, or perhaps even just Temple Emanuel of Mars or Beit Yisrael Red Planet; and sooner or later they will build or purchase their very own synagogue building inside a dome that’s conveniently located close to the domes where many of Martian Jews live.
So it has happened before, and so it will happen again. And yet, creating a new temple building during a period when so much of the world is hard at work cultivating anti-Jewish and anti-Israel biases, when we are facing forms of antisemitism we thought were extinct as well as newly formed racist anti-Jewish bigotries and conspiracy theories—well, in the face of all that, creating a new sanctuary and a dynamic center for creative Jewish life is a profound act of hope. It has great meaning for our congregants, of course, who have patiently worked and waited for us to get a shul, and who have made it all possible through their generosity and their labor. But it also has great meaning for this community, as it is an act of both great Tikvah, hope, and also a little bit of chutzpah, the courage and nerve to insist that we are here and we plan to be here and to affirm our Judaism in the most positive ways, always.
The best victory over persecution is not some sort of act of revenge or spite; it is to celebrate the incredible joy and wisdom of Judaism in open, energetic and beautiful ways. It is to seek and provide meaning and purpose in a world often devoid of them, to rejoice in the many wonderful qualities of Jewish life, culture, learning, and caring.
Has a congregation created a synagogue before us? Absolutely, and we here in northwest Tucson are quite proud to join the Jewish communities who have done so already, from Capernaum to Cairo to Casablanca to Cordoba, from Bombay to Buenos Aires to Bellz, from Lisbon to Antwerp to Milan to Krakow to St. Petersburg, for that matter, from Rhode Island to South Carolina to Montana to Arizona; frankly, everywhere on this globe. The greatest positive statement we can make is to build congregations and communities, to learn and teach and inspire Jewish life and learning and doing in the most important Jewish organization and institution ever created, the synagogue.
So yes, we are very proud of our own congregational accomplishment, overcoming many obstacles to create our new home, a place for Jews from all over Southern Arizona. May it serve our people, and our God, always.
Now the very first time such a move was contemplated was by our great first ancestors, Avram and Sarai in this week’s Torah portion of Lech Lecha. Lech Lecha meiartzecha umimoladetecha umibeit avicha, Abram was commanded by God, go to the place that I will show you, and I will make of you a great nation and you will be a blessing to all the families of the earth, v’nivr’chu v’cha kol mishpechot ha’adamah. Our patriarchal ancestor was given a great and compelling mission, a powerful charge to forge a new path. And eventually, he was given a new home, in the land that would come to be called Israel, the Promised Land. Like our own Congregation Beit Simcha, initially Abram had no idea where it would all lead, or even where he was going. But he had faith, and he had courage, and he stayed the course.
And so have we. It is tempting when gratification is delayed and frustration seems to abound to give up on your goals. Abraham—he gains that longer name in our Torah portion, too—experiences doubt and delays, and many worries along the way to becoming our patriarch. He questions God, and questions his own destiny at times. But he persists and perseveres and, ultimately, prevails. We, too, here at Beit Simcha, have imitated Abraham, have persisted and persevered, and now, ultimately, finally, we have prevailed.
Are we done? No, of course not. Like Abraham here in Lech Lecha, we are only beginning our full journey of faith. We will need and acquire more resources to revise our building into something even more beautiful and ideal for us. We will have to overcome complications—there are always complications; we are Jews, after all—and we will continue to grow and build our congregation, always seeking to make it better, warmer, more meaningful, more creative, and more Jewish.
May God give us the ability to continue to work together on our own new path in our new home, and may we continue the sacred steps we have taken so far at Congregation Beit Simcha. And may our work in our new home be blessed with the simcha shel mitzvah, the joy of commandment. Please join me in the words of the prayer for all good and new things: Shehecheyanu.