Sermons

 Sermon Dialogue

John Wilkinson	Third Presbyterian Church
Laurence Kotok, Senior Rabbi	Temple B’rith Kodesh
January 31, 2010	Luke 1:26-56

(Many thanks to Beth Wlodarczyk for her transcription gifts)

JW: Over the course of many years we’ve covered many topics and have had many interesting conversations, some of a theological nature, some of a political nature. We continue to learn that there really is no distinction in our life together between theology and politics. But this morning we hope to continue a conversation that Rabbi Kotok and I actually have in sidebars almost all of the time, which is, the future of our faith. Who are we as congregations, who are we as congregations in the Northeast, in Rochester? How do we pass on our traditions to the generations to come?

This year we do so in the midst of thinking about buildings, and facilities. I’m very thankful that none of the commandments included this: Thou shalt not covet thy neighboring synagogue’s building renovations! Because, in fact, I do covet Temple B’rith Kodesh’s building renovation! They addressed some of the themes that we’re talking about, accessibility and hospitality, and also looked in creative ways at their worship space. That’s less of an interesting conversation than the deeper questions about how those things serve to form community as we think about the future.

And so it’s my distinct pleasure, as always, to welcome Rabbi Kotok to our sanctuary and to our congregation, as we talk a little bit about the nature of our faith.

I’m going to start with an easy question, at least one that people ask me a lot. I never have a really good answer. I hope it opens up some other conversations about the difference between the words “temple” and “synagogue,” and how they indicate what it means to live in community in the Jewish tradition. So, we welcome you.

LK: Thank you. It’s always a pleasure to be back. It’s hard to imagine a year has transpired since we have done this weekend together. But I’m thankful that we are in health and able to continue moving forward. It’s also important for you to understand that our relationship is much more than this symbolic, focused weekend of a Friday night and a Sunday morning. We see each other at least once a month, and sit with some other colleagues for an hour and a half, two hours, talking about all of the things that affect all of us, because we all don’t live in those isolated vacuums where the problems or the issues that we face in one community aren’t really that much different from those which happen in others. So we have built not only awareness and trust, but the opportunity to grow and to learn together.

On the very basic level, this issue of temple and synagogue are really reflections of history. The temple that stood in Jerusalem, the first temple, built by Solomon around the year 925 BCE stood until the year 586 BCE when the Babylonians destroyed it. About 50 years later, there was a remarkable shift in the political nature of the world. The Babylonians were off the map; they were history. The Persians had come on the scene, and the Persians, in their own sense, said, “Go back! Go back to your land. And you know what? It’s not a problem if you rebuild your sanctuary, the temple, the central sanctuary that stood in Jerusalem.” And they did that, and that sanctuary is rebuilt, and ultimately destroyed by the Romans in the year 70, 1940 years ago.

Now, that terminology that was used in the word “temple” related for a long period of time to the specific building that stood in Jerusalem. And because of the nature of its coming to a conclusion in disaster and destruction, it was felt that that term could only be used for a building that would be reinvented and recreated within the environs of Jerusalem. Hence, the word synagogus, Greek, for the new place where Jews gathered and continued their faith and their learning. The words today are synonymous, but the word “temple” is not used by certain segments, strains of Judaism, who still believe that the only temple building can be that which would be rebuilt in Jerusalem. The conservative and the reform movement have now moved beyond that in terms of identification and see the word as both similar. We are not, in a sense, waiting to reuse the terminology if the temple itself were to be rebuilt in Jerusalem.

JW: That’s very helpful. Share with us a bit of the evolving nature of your community and your congregation and, while we don’t want to spend a lot of time on your building renovations (as wonderful as they are in my mind), how you thought about the life of your temple as you look to the future.

LK: As I mentioned Friday night, for those of you who were there, when I arrived in Rochester in 1996, the B’rith Kodesh building had been in existence for just about 30 years, developed by a really amazing architect named Pietro Belluschi. A sculptress by the name of Louise Kaish, who is actually going to be coming to our community built a lot of the sculpture pieces in the building. It was --- and it still is – big, it was very public space oriented, and --- in my mind – it had not been brought into the way in which people relate to each other in a modern time, nor was it particularly warm or engaging. It was public.

We’ve done certain things over the course of time to kind of reflect that. One of the major things that happened was that our prayer space, our pulpit, our bima, which was --- I refer to it as a “nosebleed” bima, because it was really high and very small --- reflective of a certain statement about the role and the interrelationship between the rabbis and the congregation. Much as I mentioned Friday night, when you go to a lot of other church settings, the place where the minister or the priest speaks from can be up there, with some circular staircase and some kind of a very elaborate turret. It’s a statement about this connection and relationship.

And times have changed. We still have a special role as clergy, but our relationship to human beings, I believe, is far more intimate than it has been in the past, and actually far more honest about the need for that kind of interrelationship. Architecture reflects that. It reflects time and place and also message. The other piece I mentioned Friday was when I had been on Long Island, one of the other congregations, synagogues, in our neighborhood had its pulpit, its bima with lecterns like this, where the service was led from, but across the front of it, there were no staircases, there was a wall and then there was a very elaborate metal fence that had Jewish stars on it. But it was a fence! And it was kind of saying, “Stay away! This is not for you. Only those who can get up here are the ones who will be up here! You’re there, we’re here!”

Now, understand that the evolution of synagogues is in many ways very different from the evolution of churches and the way in which churches have configured themselves in terms of their spaces. Let me give to you some of the backdrop of that. The synagogue throughout history was the vessel of Jewish continuity. It had really three names that reflected what the hope was of what would take place within it the building. In no particular order: Beit ha tefila, a house of prayer; Beit ha sefer, a house of learning; and Beit ha knesset, a house of assembly. And all of those were aspects that took place at different points of time. It reflected the idea that community was more than just worship, more than just getting together, more than just study. They all were the components of what were necessary to create an integrated model.

JW: That’s fascinating. I presume those components are evolving over time as we do into this 21st century, in terms of how those three interact and what the needs are for the community. Has that been the case?

LK: Well, we have lots of folk who come in the door for a whole lot of different reasons. I’m sure it’s not dissimilar for you. For us, we’re perfectly great with the idea that there are people whose connection is they want to work on social justice. They are not interested in prayer. Okay with me. There are people who come to Torah study, bible study, on Saturday morning, who leave afterwards and don’t come to the service. That’s okay. They may or may not find that to be their contact point. But we are trying to provide opportunity, both physically and spiritually. We have too many doors in our building. We are thankful we have so many doors, so there are a lot of ways for people to walk in and out (sometimes unknown to us!), but nonetheless, there are a whole lot of ways for people to come in. I like that as a kind of projected symbol of how we want to offer ourselves to be accessed by the community.

JW: We’ve been thinking a lot about the interrelated dynamics of accessibility. This is a building that was built much before yours was, so getting around, if you can even get in here, has been a challenge. We hope to remedy that. Also, as we said on Friday night, when this building was built, that was the front door, and people came in it, came for worship, maybe got back in their carriages and headed home. The issue of where you go for a committee meeting or where the minister’s office was wasn’t even on the table. So we are trying to respond in kind in terms of hospitality and accessibility, but then to link that in with this space (sanctuary) being our central space and everything flowing from it. It was interesting to hear a very parallel conversation about the interaction between learning, and service, and gathering, and worship.

LK: Well, in the same breath, our movement created a model that B’rith Kodesh participated in well before I got there, which was known as l'hiyot, the idea of life and the acceptance of life. It has to do with accessibility. So on our pulpit, on our bima, we have a lift. In our religious school, we have an elevator. We have bathrooms that are handicapped accessible. We have a loop system in our spaces so that people who have hearing issues can access what’s being said. These are some of the new phenomena that are critically important to the evolving populations that we serve. So it’s not just what happens in the spaces, it’s also who can get in. How do they get in and access spaces which have changed so radically over time.

JW: Speak to us a little about the issue of generations, of passing on the traditions to the future, and the bottom line about why any of this matters in the first place, beyond just needing a building in which to gather.

LK: Well, you know, part of the challenge is also the perspective of faith communities to the ideas of religious and secular. Jews don’t really make a distinction between the world in that way. The entire world is part of the religious role, responsibility, and connection. We don’t really see distinctions. There are people in the world who believe that these buildings, regardless of what name is on the door, are the dwelling places of spirituality and God, and I believe that is a mistake. I go back to the words of the book of Exodus, where it describes the sanctuary, the moveable sanctuary, the tented meeting, which was being built during the wilderness experience of the people of Israel, and the idea that people were to bring their gifts. And from that would be crafted this sanctuary that would be not only mobile, but would be accessible. And there is a brilliant, powerful statement in the text that says, You shall make for God a sanctuary. And then comes the most intriguing second phrase: that I may dwell among them.

Now, it’s very interesting when you think about that, because for many people they just gloss by it, they don’t get the imprint and the importance of it. It doesn’t say, build a sanctuary so I’ll dwell in it! It says that God will dwell among them, the community. Not limited to the four walls of a building, just like the ethics, the values, the morals that are taught in this space don’t live just in this space; they have to have life beyond this space. And in the same way, we build these sanctuaries, these buildings to provide human beings focus, to provide human beings a base from which to move from. So, when John asks the question why we build these places, the answer is not so that they are monuments to themselves or to peoples’ good fortune, but they are to reflect who and what we hope to be.

And there are some enormous challenges with that, I must tell you, because in some cases the buildings are hollow. They are beautiful, but there’s nobody inside of them. Or, there’s no connection between what’s being said inside and what takes place outside.

And John and I over the years have had enormous conversations about our being miffed by what I’m going to describe to you. We all surf channels, right? Every once in a while I am watching channels that reflect these mega sites, and you see a guy who’s very charming, Joel Osteen, in a former arena in Houston. Not only did he buy it, but people go there! Thousands of people show up and listen to whatever it is that he’s presenting! I don’t get it! Okay? I have to tell you in the most central core, we’ve talked about this, I don’t get it! Why is that message compelling to 16,000 people to walk in there!

It’s nice that you are all here today, but not every seat is taken --- nor are they all taken in my place, and I believe we’ve got a pretty powerful message to be taught and to be spoken to people. And yet, there are places around this country that are storefront places that are filled with people. They are not beautiful like this, with gorgeous woodwork and stained glass windows, and a remarkable organ.

JW: I want to echo a comment I made Friday night. I agree, and we are certainly not in our efforts attempting to build a monument or a museum or a concert hall. What it all comes down to me on Friday night was a wonderful group of fifth graders standing right about here, and for us this morning it was this wonderful Junior Choir, what kind of faith into which we will nurture our children, and what kind of church might we have so that 25 years or 50 years from now, whether Third Presbyterian Church in Rochester or Temple B’rith Kodesh in Rochester, or wherever God’s spirit leads them, the children will have been taught faith and given a faith and then will take that faith on, a faith that certainly lives beyond the four walls of our buildings that makes a difference in all the world. The issue of generations and passing on the tradition is really compelling in all of this.

LK: Well, as a young rabbi in 1982, I was confounded and much thankful for now, but not particularly at the moment, by this conundrum in physical reality. In February 1982 my congregation was set on fire and destroyed by arson. The building was gone. The Torah scrolls were saved. But we then went along --- and some of you know this story --- we held our worship in the basement of the conservative synagogue in the community. We ran our religious school at the Episcopal church in Glenn Cove on Long Island. My office for the following year was in a trailer on the property until we actually got an office in an office building, a small office that we kind of did central stuff in. And that went on for four years until we built a new building.

It taught me amazing lessons, because it wasn’t about the building. I mean, the building was nice and the building was important, but it was about the issue of community and what people shared with each other even when there was no place to go. In some ways they were more committed as a result of the trauma than they were when they took it for granted. This is part of the human nature dilemma that we are faced with. We do great in crisis a lot of times, and then with times become normal and it’s just – well, you know, we’ve got this beautiful building, here we are --- the issue is: do I need to go? And I believe you do! The concept of continuity is what all of us are in. Because we all need to find the way to transmit to other generations, to other individuals, what we believe is important, what we believe is sacred. That’s part of the religious quest, which requires people to care about this.

One of the other things that we talk about on a fairly continuous level is that we live in a world that is becoming more and more secular, with more and more people saying, “I don’t care! It doesn’t matter to me! Yeah, my parents were Presbyterian or my parents were Jewish, but you know what? It doesn’t mean anything to me.” And the question is: whose failure is that? Is it the family’s failure to transmit those values to their children? Is it the institution’s failure to annunciate it in a way that was compelling? Or is it the culture we live in that people succumb to?

JW: I’m going to let that be the last word, and hopefully challenge us and not distress us. But the issue of community and how we carry on the tradition is an important conversation for us to continue to consider.