Vayelekh 2024 Plaut p. 1388

Source Sheet by Yair Robinson

I want you to take a moment and think about your first concert. Wherever it was: as a child going to see the orchestra doing educational programming for schools, or in a grungy basement pub, or out on a town green. I want you to remember what it was like to be there, to hear the voices and the instruments, to feel the energy of the people around you, perhaps dancing or swaying or even singing along with the performers.

There is power in those moments like that: concerts and performances and sporting events. Witness how many people went to the various Taylor Swift concerts last year, and how many people, without a ticket, went to just stand in the parking lot and vibe with one another, listening to the music blaring in the venue. Or think of the videos of Jewish musician Noah Aronson leading Shabbat services at the Burning Man music festival. Go online and you can see people in all kinds of crazy costumes sharing in Shabbat worship together. Or think of the power of being at a protest, or rally, or march for a cause we care about. We can hear Abraham Joshua Heschel’s voice talking about ‘praying with his feet’ when we attend marches and protests. We know that there is power in gathering, and even those of us whose instinct is to stay home still find profound comfort and a kind of holiness when we come together; the gathering itself being a kind of sacred act. In such gatherings we find ourselves doing things, swept up in the power of the moment, that we would never do on our own. Of course, there’s the possibility of misuse and abuse under such circumstances: angry mobs are the other side of the coin to peaceful protestors, but when things go correctly, there is tremendous sacred power in coming together.

So we turn to our sidre this week, and read the words that we so often open our Torah Services with on Shabbat mornings: gather the people: all of them. Men, women, children and the strangers in your midst in order to hear the Torah. Yes, in this text it’s only at Sukkot of the Sabbatical year, an attempt, I would argue, to make the gathering as painless as possible–it’s hard to leave one’s fields when you’re busy tending to them, but an entirely different ask when you’re letting them go fallow. Regardless, we have presented a model of accessibility. Everyone is to gather to hear the Torah. Now, it’s possible that in each community they also heard the Torah in some form or another, but here, gathered with everyone else, all of Israel, irrespective of gender or age, and even the non-Jews within the community, are compelled to hear Torah TOGETHER. Because it’s not just about the hearing of Torah. It’s about hearing it in community. It’s about coming together as a people; the gathering itself is a sacred act, and makes the hearing of Torah that much more powerful. It becomes a shared lived experience rather than a private or personal moment. The Hebrew of the text actually wonderfully illustrates this. The text says that we gather in part to be seen by God, but the Hebrew word can also be understood that we gather to see God. We come together, then, to see and to be seen, to have the sacred reflected back to each of us in our shared encounter.

Tomorrow night we will anticipate Rosh Hashanah with Selichot, gathering to change over our Torah mantles. And in a few days we will usher in the New Year, then the Day of Atonement. Especially this year, after all of our anguish over October 7th and its ongoing aftermath, and with all the anxiety over the upcoming election and the divisions in our society, we should do be together, not hidden away from one another, but sharing the space together, as best or as much as we can. I know many of us, for a host of reasons, will have to participate via their smart TV or iPad, and I’m glad we can make our service accessible for those who need it. But whether it’s singing together in the building, or standing outside to hear the shofar sounded as part of Tashlich, we should be together. By coming together we can see the holiness in our world, and be acknowledged ourselves, lifted up by being in community together. By coming together, we can be reminded of one another’s humanity, of all that is good in this world, and there’s a lot of good in it. By gathering we can push aside the cynicism and fear that threatens to consume us as a society, truly seeing this world as it is, with all its flaws and challenges, but also its beauty.

It is important for us to gather: On Rosh Hashanah and as we remember October 7th, for Yom Kippur, Sukkot and Simchat Torah, and finally the first week in November as we cast our ballots. It’s important for us to be together, to hear Torah, to see and to be seen, to be lifted up by the sacredness of our gathering. May in our gathering we remember all that is good in our world and each other, and carry the sacredness of those moments forward with us. Amen.

Source Sheet created on Sefaria by Yair Robinson