I had the pleasure of attending the Kol Nidre service at Congregation Beth Elohim last night, the eve of Yom Kippur.
Rabbi Andy Bachman delivered a thoughtful and thought-provoking sermon about religion, transparency, and architecture. It was fascinating. The sermon, from which this is an excerpt, is titled: The Transparent Synagogue.
Read the rest at his blog, Ideas (the blog is subtitled: Thoughts
during the day in the life of Rabbi Andy Bachman building community at
Congregation Beth Elohim). I am so glad he put this sermon online (it is just one more element of "the transparent synagogue).
One usually ends a Drash on Yom Kippur with such a wish; but this
year, more than ever, we need to reassure ourselves that in our time of
great uncertainty, the sustainability of our our Tradition and what it
offers us–not just in the piety and seriousness of these Days of Awe
but also in times of trouble in our nation and the world–our Tradition
can shelter us, our People can comfort us, and our Synagogue can
provide something of a structure to use in building our lives anew in
this Season of Renewal.Structure is a good thing–even for the
most free of spirit. It says everything about our values. Our words are
a structure; our Torah a scaffold of our beliefs and values.I
married a couple recently–they are both architects, in their early
thirties. When this couple first walked into our Congregation–two
structures as profoundly beautiful as they are in need of repair (like
our great nation) they were in awe. Just as people should be when they
walk into a place that Jacob himself found awesome as he awoke from a
dream and called the spot “Beit Elohim. How awesome is this place and I
did not notice!” They noticed, and said so, and after first thinking
they’d get married in the picnic house in Prospect Park where they had
booked their reception, they opted to build their own Chuppah, get
married in our Chapel, and then go eat in the Park. It was a class
move.The Chuppah’s was all about transparency–there was a
steel structure which held a modestly opaque silk that was illustrated
and adorned with digitally rendered red and white flowers. It was both
the Chuppah and the “idea of the Chuppah.” I really enjoyed standing
there.Their Ketubah–the marriage contract–bore the same
qualities. A friend designed it with an abstract illustration. When I
looked at it, I could see a couple, the woods in the Park, or, from
another angle, nothing but pleasant execution of drawing skill. The
heading was the Hebrew date, rendered in traditional language, followed
by their own uniquely written vows to one another. And at the end they
had declared their union to be a “valid acquisition of one another.”
That notion is taken directly from the Talmud–though in Traditional
Judaism, only the man acquires the woman. Here, their mutual
acquisition, their commitment to one another, to their shared values,
and to the Jewish Tradition, was all part of the transaction.For
me, the fascination and pride in this encounter is two-fold. One, the
overall engagement with the Tradition. I admit it’s my line of work but
hey, that’s a good thing. Two, is the fact that one member of this
couple grew up as a relatively unaffiliated Reform Jew and the other
member of the couple is not Jewish. But Judaism and the structures of
Judaism, the infrastructure of Judaism, the architecture of Judaism,
not only speaks loudly and to the hearts of such seekers but provides
the foundation upon which these people have begun to design and
construct their lives. But we know that–that’s why we’re here. We’ve
had the date circled in our calendar for a long time. Notwithstanding
my friend Allen, who called me today from LA and when I said I couldn’t
talk too long because I was preparing for Yom Kippur, he joked, “but
that’s not for six months!” It reminds me of the actor Jeffrey Tambor’s
joke on Garry Shandling’s Larry Sanders show a few years back. When
being interviewed about his desire to study Judaism more seriously with
his rabbi (whom he had a big crush on) Tambor’s character, Hank
Kingsley was asked if he observed Judaism. “The major holidays,” he
offered. “Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and the 4th of July.’”) Even for
those most “outside” the fold, the structure remains.Our two
buildings here at Beth Elohim were constructed at the dawn of the
twentieth century. And this sanctuary still has a foot firmly planted
in the 19th century to be sure. Around Grand Army Plaza, next to our
neighbor Union Temple, the architect Richard Meier is completing a
decidedly twenty-first century building made of glass and white steel,
a paragon of transparency, constructed on the principles, as he put it,
of Louis Kahn’s tradition of the “architecture of occasion.” Meier says
that such buildings “encourage public gatherings and contemplation,
inspire creativity, give pleasure, and infuse both visitors and
occupants with a sense of event.”“Encourage public gatherings
and contemplation, inspire creativity, give pleasure, and infuse both
visitors and occupants with a sense of event.”Sounds like a great mission for a synagogue and a great reason to be Jewish.
It’s
a sign of our post-modern era and our digital age that we have the
ability to both deconstruct but also rebuild the idea of what it means
to be Jewish while at the same time holding on to what we firmly
believe are the Eternal Values of Jewishness and Judaism. This is the
adaptability factor–a quality all good historians credit for Judaism’s
survival.Transparency means something today. We are hearing
calls for it in government, in how our schools are run, in business
(God knows we need it especially in business) and in religious life as
well. It seems to be a standard now by which people assess and judge
their affiliations. A century ago the Rabbi was rather distant and
opaque. He stood upon this Bimah, high above and far removed from the
people below. In the sixties that began to change with the shift toward
greater folkiness and proximal nearness. Rabbi Sack was to most, Rabbi
Sack. Rabbi Weider was to most, Jerry. That says alot about a
generational shift toward accessibility, further democratization of the
Tradition, and an intimacy that served as a counter-weight to the
distant and fear-inspiring models of leadership from of old.
