It’s Almost September? …. Time to Make an Appointment With Your Past!

September starts on SUNDAY!  Already our calendar programs and Daytimers are filling up.  School calendars, after school calendars, and doctors’ appointments hang juxtaposed to Pilates and Zumba schedules, adhering magnetically to the fridge.

Perhaps even MORE alarming is the arrival of EREV ROSH HASHANAH on Wednesday September 4!  Yes, the holidays are “early” this year as the Jewish lunar calendar plays “catch up,” and so the first Day of the month of Tishrei, the Birthday of the World, arrives Wednesday evening!  Don’t fret.  This won’t happen again until 2089. It DOES mean, however, that you’ll be celebrating CHANUKAH on THANKSGIVING DAY this year!

As you recover from the shock, ask yourself the question: “Are we ever REALLY ready for Rosh Hashanah?”  After all, who has the time to sit in Shul and reflect on their life… we’re too busy living it! God knows we never have enough time. We rush constantly to get things done “on time” yet we always run out of it, squander it, put things off until another time. Try though we may, we don’t even find time for the important things… saying optimistically, “oh well, the time will come,” even though our voices are already tinged with hurt or regret.

Our inability to stop and smell the roses comes as no surprise to God. God knew, even back in the days of Moses, that we might get so busy that we would forget to “take time.” And so God makes annual, structured demands on our time.  It isn’t until we age and mellow that we realize what a “gift” these demands are!

Our calendar is filled with holidays and festivals unique to the Jewish People.  These marked occasions, with a few exceptions, come directly from the Torah.  The Torah refers to the festivals of the Jewish calendar as moadim, "appointed times," and as mikraei kodesh, "callings of holiness." "These are God's appointed times," reads the introductory verse to the Torah's listing of the festivals in the book of Leviticus, "callings of holiness, which you shall call in their appointed times."

These “appointed times” form a map of the physical as well as the spiritual journey of our people. Whether we are born Jews, or become Jews, we each lay claim to the journey of discovery from Canaan to Egypt, to the wilderness, to the foot of Mt. Sinai, and the giving of the Law.

When we mark Passover, Sukkot, Shavuot, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Simchat Torah, Chanukah,Tu B’shvat, Purim, as well as the more recent holidays of Holocaust Remembrance and Israel Independence, we are scheduling an appointment with our past, with our roots, with our God, with our souls, with hopes and dreams that reach into the future.  During some festivals we say a bracha “Al Ha Nisim” “For the Miracles”.  The English translation thanks God for the Miracles that were done “in the days that were, at THIS season.”  Time becomes interchangeable.  That which was THEN becomes NOW.

Just as Shabbat arrives at sunset every week, regardless of whether or not we set time aside for it… it just comes.  I am frequently surprised when my computer alarm goes off late Friday afternoon to alert me to impending Candle Lighting time in Syria, Virginia.  How is it possible? How has another week slipped by?  Where did the time go?  But then, once again, there is the anticipation of Shabbat. Time and time again. 

Soon we will welcome the year 5774 as a community. And though we are here together in time, like science-fiction time travelers we simultaneously visit the past, as the sights and sounds of the shofar, the melodies, words and movement of davening, and the white kippot and Torah mantel all evoke memories of holidays past, of loved ones, of special places and tastes and smells. We rise as one for the Shema, feel the fringes of the tallis, and we are transported to the place of our ancestors.

God has set these appointed times as an appointment with the past, an encounter with an event and phenomenon in our history. This Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, I urge you to make the time and take the opportunity to call forth the particular holiness of these days and to tap the spiritual resources, which they hold. 

Shana Tova, Happy New Year.

May you and all you care for be blessed and written and sealed in The Book of Life.

Rabbi Rose

Creating Sacred Communities – There’s No One Template!

 I hope you’ve all been having a rejuvenating summer.  Gary and I continue on with home improvement projects and trips up and down the New Jersey Turnpike. We also fight our noble battle with the moles, voles and squirrels that attack our produce in situ.

Last week, my summer travels led me to Houston, Texas! Yes, the Piedmont Rebbe saddled up and headed out to the fourth largest city in America, SPACE CITY, HOUSTON!  While there, I had an interesting cultural experience.  I attended an Evangelical Christian service on Sunday morning at a MEGA CHURCH. 

Now this wasn’t my first Mega Church experience. (Well, not counting the one in California, for a “Living Nativity” with live camels for the Three Wise Men.) But, this WAS the kind of Mega Church I’d only read about in my Jewish books on the spirituality of welcoming.

 

The outside of the building was unassuming.  The inside, however, caught me unprepared.  The first thing I saw, passing through the entrance was a large coffee bar with extensive seating, and a lounge area with speakers broadcasting the service.  I walked past signs indicating Sunday school and child care hours.  Entering the sanctuary, I gave out a gasp.  Over a thousand people for an 11:00 am service…. a third of them holding cardboard coffee cups. Two Jumbo-tron screens filled the stage with song lyrics.  A professional seven-piece country band played and sang their hearts out with the help of a state-of-the-art sound system and lighting. I found a seat at the back of the room near the sound and light boards and looked out at a swaying sea of a thousand people up on their feet singing “Holy, Holy, Holy.”

Wow.

And now I would like to tell you about my travels to another spot, a few days before the trip to Texas.  Between Warrenton and Gainesville, there is a fairly new Assisted Living Facility, The Villa.  What makes it new to me is that, so far, there have been no Jewish folks living there.  That changed a few months ago when a couple from Alexandria made the move out to our area. Not long after the move, the husband became ill and died.  I had the honor of meeting the extended family and conducting the funeral.

A week later, the widow approached me to ask if it would be possible to have a memorial service at The Villa, for friends. “I would like to say Kaddish, but there are no Jews at The Villa, and I don’t know any Jews in town,” she said.  “Don’t worry,” I said, “you will have a minyan.”

We have a fabulous, caring community.  In the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, ten members of our congregation of every age, found the time to come and support a Jewish woman that they did not know.  All I had to do was ask and the e-mails and phone calls came in immediately. By the end of the service and social hour, it was impossible to tell that the widow, her son and daughter were not ‘old-time’ friends of the Fauquier Jewish Congregation.  The outpouring of warmth, concern and friendship brought smiles to everyone’s faces.

You may have noticed that FJC is NOT a congregation of a thousand people.  But it certainly is a congregation of small, caring groups.  Even the largest congregation cannot sustain itself unless its membership can find ways to interact intimately!

Last year some of our more established families walked in at Rosh Hashanah and exclaimed “WHERE DID ALL THESE JEWISH PEOPLE COME FROM?” Well, according to a conversation I had recently with Jeff Dannick, Director of the Northern Virginia Jewish Community Center, Jewish growth is heading our way.

Once again we will start up “Tot Shabbat” as the need has reappeared.  Our Religious School is expanding.  There has been increased interest in Torah study and Adult Education, and Book Club is still going strong.  WE ARE OPEN TO ANY AND ALL IDEAS AND REQUESTS FOR WAYS TO CONNECT!

As we approach the coming New Year, I hope you will find a way that YOU would like to connect with people at FJC. 

Judaism doesn’t ask for a community of a thousand.  It DOES require a minimum of ten to make a minyan, the smallest number for a living Jewish community.  I hope we can COUNT YOU IN THIS YEAR!

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Rose Jacob