Jacob’s Synagogue: A Model for All of Us
Shmuel Herzfeld
5767
This might surprise you but there has been some controversy about us since I got here.
Actually, it started even before I got here when I started referring to our shul as The National Synagogue.
Then as we started doing more and more programs on the streets of DC, to my great chagrin even more controversy was generated. The more programs we did outside, the more controversy there was.
When we handed out Matzah on K street, people were offended. When we held a Purim parade on Connecticut Avenue, people were offended. When I started driving The Taxi, people got offended. And most recently when we built a Sukkah for hundreds of people in Farragut Square which was covered on the front page of The Wall Street Journal, people were REALLY offended.
Some people have even attacked me personally and viciously. At first I thought I should just ignore their criticism. After all, it comes only from a distinct minority of the Jewish community and, in contrast, the impact has been overwhelmingly positive.
But after grappling with it, I decided that maybe what I take as self-evident is not as obvious as I thought it was. Perhaps it is important to discuss the reason why we go out to the streets; perhaps it is important to lay out why we do what we do.
In fact, when w go out to the streets it represents a core value of who we are as a schul.
Let me explain through the context of this week’s Torah portion.
Did you ever wonder why the Jewish people are called Benei Yisrael, children of Israel? Israel is a reference to Jacob who was also called Yisrael. But why aren’t they called, children of Abraham? After all, he was the founder of the faith. For that matter, we can also wonder why we are not called children of Isaac.
There is an interesting text from the Talmud (Pesachim, 88a) that offers us insight into this question.
The Talmud comments on a verse from Isaiah that discusses a future era. Isaiah says that there will come a timewhen all the nations of the world will say, “Lechu Ve-naaleh, Come, let us go up to the mountain of Hashem, to the House of the God of Jacob.”
Explains the Talmud: It doesn’t say let us go to the House of the God of Abraham or of Isaac, but to the House of Jacob. This is because Jacob is the only one who actually referred to a House of God. In this week’s portion Jacob dreams of a ladder with angels going up and down and when he awakens, he says “God is in this place and I did not know. Indeed this is the House of God, Beit Elokim.” Jacob then builds an altar to Hashem on that very spot.
Jacob is the first one to refer to a House of God. Abraham worshipped God on a mountain and Isaac worshipped in a field. But, the Talmud notes that it is Jacob who is the first to recognize the power of worshipping God in a House. We can say then, (admittedly somewhat anachronistically) that Jacob built the first Synagogue. It was Jacob who recognized that we need a House to worship God.
This leads us to our next question, why is Jacob the first Patriarch to need a House of God? Why not Abraham or Isaac?
Perhaps Jacob needed a House of God because he spent so much time living away from the spiritual center of the land of Canaan. He spent twenty years with the wicked Lavan and at the end of his life he lived in Egypt. Of all the Patriarchs only Jacob spent time with his children outside the land of Canaan.
More than the others Jacob needed a House of God to reinforce his spirituality. It wasn’t enough for him to have a field or a mountain. Jacob needed something tangible—a Beit Elokim to strengthen his spirituality.
Jacob is the symbol of someone who retains his Judaism in the midst of the world at large. He doesn’t seclude himself and meditate on a mountain top or contemplate in a field. Instead, he is a businessman who deals with the chicaneries of Lavan. Jacob says, “Im lavan garti, I lived with Lavan.” And Rashi explains, that Jacob is also saying “ve-taryag mitzvoth shamarti, even though I lived with Lavan, an evil man, I nevertheless observed the Torah. I kept God’s mitzvoth. I retained my Judaism.”
Obviously, Jacob’s House of God is a far cry from today’s modern Synagogue. But we can look at it as our forerunner. It is not surprising that the Synagogue phenomenon is for the most part a Diaspora phenomenon. While Israel certainly has great Synagogues, it is the Diaspora community that feels the need for a Synagogue with greater urgency.
We Americans are not protected spiritually by the land of Israel and so we need the Synagogue to be our spiritual locus; the Synagogue is our lighthouse in the midst of the world. Certainly in America, it is the center of American Jewish life.
And yet, when the Synagogue model is pushed too far, it is also the root of the problems of the American Jewish community. This model can be blamed for many of the problems of the American Jewish community, such as very high assimilation rates.
Perhaps the biggest mistake of American Judaism is that the Synagogue became “the” place for Judaism. Everything Jewish had to happen in the Synagogue, and as a consequence American Jews felt free to confine their Judaism exclusively to the Synagogue.
For too long, many American Jews have taken only one part of Jacob’s message: the necessity to build a House of God. But this is obviously a distortion of Jacob’s dream. The point of Jacob’s Beit Elokim was that it be a locus of inspiration for him when he went out into the world. It was the center of his Judaism, but it wasn’t the ONLY place he would practice his Judaism.
Judaism must gain its strength from the Synagogue and then bring that strength to the world at large. For the Synagogue model to succeed it must reach beyond its walls and seek to impact people in their lives outside of the Synagogue. For the Synagogue to succeed it must have a presence outside the Synagogue.
This is why we are called the children of Jacob. Jacob understood the need for a Beit Elokim. But he also carried the message of the Synagogue into his daily life. He carried it with him when he lived with Lavan for twenty years and later on when he lived with Pharaoh. We need to carry this message of building a Beit Elokim that impacts us when we are outside the Synagogue.
Practically speaking, what does this mean for our community?
One thing it means is that the Synagogue must be our center of religious and ritualistic life, but not the beginning and end of our religious and ritualistic life. We must work very hard as a community to take not only the values of the Synagogue, but also the rituals and prayers of the Synagogue wherever we go, and especially into our homes. To give an obvious example: we can’t just daven when we come to shul; we should daven three times a day, no matter where the day may lead us.
Second, the presence of our Synagogue must not be felt only in the Synagogue. Our model of a Synagogue has to be a Synagogue that serves the whole city; our presence must be felt everywhere; it must be a model that moves beyond our building and reminds Jews that Judaism should be interfacing with their lives whereever they are.
In just a few weeks we will be having another program which will undoubtedly be “controversial.” We will be holding The National Dreidel contest on the corner of Connecticut and K.
And we could use your help that day. Help us open up our Synagogue to the many people who will no doubt otherwise be too afraid to walk into the doors of our Synagogue. Teach them how to spin the dreidel. And help them enter into a Synagogue that doesn’t stop at its walls.