6 Tammuz, 5771
Shabbat Shalom.
In the Mishkan T’filah there is a poem that has stayed with me since the first time I randomly opened to its page. It is called “Becoming”:
“Once or twice in a lifetime
A man or woman may choose
A radical leaving, having heard
Lech lecha — Go forth.
God disturbs us toward our destiny
By hard events
And by freedom's now urgent voice
Which explode and confirm who we are.
We don't like leaving,
But God loves becoming.”
As its footnote in the siddur points out, Rabbi Norman Hirsch’s poem is based on the Genesis passage in which HaShem tells Abram (soon to be Abraham, arguably Judaism’s first convert) that it is time to go forth and take the first of many small and probably frightening steps that would become the journey to all Jewish people.
Now I did not know the meaning of Lech Lecha when I first started out on the path that would lead me here today. I hadn’t read that Genesis passage - let alone any passage from the Bible - for a good number of years. Decades even. Yet I did hear something - a wind outside my door that knew my name, a song from a dream I had never heard before but somehow knew every word to – tempting me to look beyond the walls of my work cubicle and my NY apartment. And while I didn’t think my decision to move was all that ‘radical’ a good number of friends did, sharing with me their well-intended concerns. I will always love them for that. I have no doubt Abram would have considered himself lucky to have known such good people.
Just how drastic was my path did not become apparent (at least to me) until I found myself out in the concrete wilderness of the urban desert. I wish I could tell you it was a burning bush, unconsumed, that sent me on my way but no, the reasons appeared much more profane – a bad economy, a fruitless job search, an unsteady paycheck – hard circumstances to be sure. But – and I did not understand nor appreciate this at the time – we cannot escape what enslaves us (or perhaps even know we’re enslaved to begin with) without first walking the walk of our own personal exodus.
Luckily, I came to realize you cannot have an exodus without a few miracles along the way. No, the dirty waters of the Riverway did not part for me nor did I have manna rain down but that did not mean the wonders I encountered were any less profound. A kind stranger’s offered couch, a co-worker’s shared lunch, my employer’s support, a best friend’s surprise visit, the smile from a passing stranger…and a community that was there every week with open doors, open hearts, a safe space for a weary body and ragged spirit. These then became the waters from the well that followed me and kept my thirst slaked, enabling me to keep on keeping on.
I realize now this journey of mine was less about needing to arrive at a destination than finally finding a place of heart and hearth. For whether it is the musical prayers of praise during a Friday night Shabbat service or the lively discussions on a Saturday morning Torah study, the activism embedded within Tikkun Olam, or simply the Simcha that makes one want to dance in the streets, so much of Judaism has felt intimately familiar to me, like a remembered love ballad. Look, I have never been a blindly obedient acolyte but rather someone who has always questioned the answer, even if that meant wrestling with angels; I have not been one to wait on the redemption of lottery-ticket miracles but rather someone who needs to learn what it takes to help herself, her community and others; I have never been one to foster anesthetic and unrealistic expectations about human nature but rather has striven to plumb the depths of its untidy sensuous mystery. And finally I have never been one to shy away from shaking timbrels on the far shores of parted waters, singing unto wells, or climbing mountains to meet my ever-patient, ever-loving Higher Power.
This is for me what ‘becoming’ a Jew feels like, then - a homecoming.
Like coming home.
Shabbat Shalom
