Rabbi Baruchel and I are moving house.
The month of Adar, and the story of Purim, is one that asks us to be open to the idea of hidden miracles. Yes, it’s true that God goes unmentioned throughout the Megillah, but the presence of God peeks through. Mordechai is at the right place at the right time to save the life of the king. Esther has that special something that moves a man known for taking out his displeasure on disobedient wives. Even the pur, the lots that Purim draws its name from, fall in an improbably and lucky way. Are all those moments just a nice coincidence?
The message of Purim is never that ‘God isn’t there.’ No! The message of Purim is always ‘look for a God who is hiding.’ An entire phrase is drawn from it in rabbinic literature- hester panim. The hidden face.
Which brings me back to moving house.
Today we went to the empty house to take measurements. Where will we put our couch? Do we need to get rid of our cabinet? Can we bust out our meat dishes again? (The current kitchen is too small for two sets of dishes, so we’ve been vegetarian at home since the move.) Hold this, measure that, should we put this there?
On inspection, we found out that the house isn’t entirely empty! There are a few things here and there that the landlord has been storing and using as staging, a cabinet in the basement, a bookshelf in the guest room, a little table in the kitchen. “Your choice if you want them or not.” He tells us “I’ll get rid of them if you don’t.”
And while exploring the basement Rabbi Baruchel looked on top of one of those cabinets and found a book! One of the only things left in this nearly empty house!
I took a photo.
Can you believe it?!
Not only is it a siddur. It’s OUR siddur! Some time ago, maybe the people right before us, maybe before them, who knows… someone from this synagogue lived in this home, and they left it behind.
In any other month that’s a nice coincidence.
But in Adar… that’s a sign.
A sign of what Rabbi? I don’t know yet! I do know that the world can be a frightening place these days, and that uncertainty is everywhere. Moving house is symbolic in many ways, it represents that turbulence as we are readjusting our lives. But for me in that moment, finding that siddur might as well have been a flashing sign that said, ‘This is where you need to be.’
Mishe nichnas Adar, marbim b’simcha!
As the Month of Adar enters, our joy increases!
God knows this lived up to that, it certainly made me smile.
There is a recently published article called What Will “Jew” Be, by the French Rabbi Delphine Horvilleur, which can be found in a new book entitled “Communities of Meaning”, a collection of essays in honour of Rabbi Larry Hoffman and his extraordinary contributions to Jewish thought and life over his many decades of teaching.
In it, she recounts a game she played in her liturgy class with Rabbi Hoffman, in which he wrote the letters “P-A-I-N” on the board, and he asked them to play charades to convey its meaning. Her English-speaking classmates, naturally, made contorted faces as they mimed being hurt. When it was her turn, however, Rabbi Horvilleur mimed eating, with the word “pain” in French, of course, meaning, “bread”. Knowing exactly what he was doing, Horvilleur was happy to play along with this moment of being “lost in translation”.
So it is with prayer, that Rabbi Hoffman was aiming to demonstrate. Whilst we have the words of the liturgy on the page, our interpretation of prayer is also informed by language, time, history, and the minds and bodies that express them.
So it is with Judaism, too, Rabbi Horvilleur expands. Whilst there are certain aspects of our Jewish identities that are baked into our DNA – we have our texts, our holidays, our rituals – it is equally comprised of our own life experiences and the encounters we are exposed to. As she says in summary, “Just as we never precisely know what a text meant originally, we never know for sure what being a Jew meant at the beginning nor what it will mean one day in the future”.
As we grapple with what our Judaism will look like in the wake of October 7, we decide how to shape our own future.
To that end, we understand and acknowledge the fear, the anxiety, the grief, and the sadness that all of us have felt following the tragedy, and the resultant rise of antisemitism here at home in Canada.
That being said, there is a silver lining, too – for those who previously felt that their Judaism was adjacent to who they were, there is a renewed attachment to being Jewish as a core facet of their being, and we are seeing it here at Holy Blossom. This is evidenced in the increase in attendance at worship services, where you, our congregants, come together in prayer as you seek sacred space and sacred community.
I would propose that we have two options as a result.
One is to feel a sense of resentment that being Jewish is no longer an “opt-in” affair. Whether we want to or not, there is no avoiding our Jewishness. It is at the centre of who we are whether we want it to be or not, whether it’s our own internal pressure or whether it’s coming from external forces, and that might feel uncomfortable.
The other is to embrace the opportunity that this brings, and, perhaps unexpectedly, to find the joy in reconnecting with our roots, in reconnecting with our congregation – and to give ourselves permission to feel that spark of contentedness among our people, to find that anchor at a time when our world is so unstable.
We encourage you to keep choosing and finding joy.
It might be through our meaningful and musical Kabbalat Shabbat Services (6 pm every Friday!).
It might be through the sweetness and song of Family Services (our next one being this Shabbat, February 10) or Tot Shabbat (next one March 1).
It might be through the fullness of our educational offerings, such as our Youth Education Centre.
It might be through the absurdity and hilarity of our upcoming Purim festivities.
So, I will conclude with the question with which Rabbi Horvilleur ends her essay: “What Will Jew Be?”, when faced with this crossroads, and the choices we can make as a result, and as we shape this new future together.
Chag Ilanot Sameach!
Tonight begins Tu Bishvat, the ‘birthday of the trees.’ Tu Bishvat, in the days of our ancient ancestors, was when you celebrated a coming arboreal harvest. The trees that were being celebrated had ‘made it through’ the winter, several times in fact. They were counted because our ancestors were confident that soon they would start to bear fruit. With that fruit, of course, came the obligation to bring bikkurim, first fruit offerings, to the Temple in Jerusalem.
It doesn’t necessarily feel like a ‘tree holiday’ here in Canada. When we look outside, we don’t see flowering trees that have survived the harshest rains. We see ice. We see snow. Yet, these seasonal festivals are one of the things which make the Jewish people special and different. Our calendar isn’t set by the land that we live in. Rather, our calendar is set by the seasons of the land of Israel.
Master educator Avrahm Infeld has a story about this clash between the seasons and the Jewish calendar. He writes:
“As a child in South Africa, I remember asking my father to explain why we prayed for rain in the summer. It was December, and in synagogue the prayers included a request for rain, which no child in South Africa wants at that time of year! My father’s answer was very straightforward: “Our rain doesn’t fall in South Africa; it falls in Israel!
Try growing up normal with an answer like that! But being Jewish is not being normal. Being Jewish means living with the knowledge that irrespective of where you actually live, it is only in the land of Israel that the Jewish People are indigenous. With the lesson of the rain my father taught me about the deep connection between the Jewish People and the Land of Israel. As individuals, we can pray for rain in South Africa, or wherever else we may live, but the Jewish People’s collective rain falls in Israel.”
At this time in our people’s history, where one of the great accusations against us that is being leveled again and again is “You don’t belong in the land of Israel. You are settlers. You are a colonialist. You should go back to where you came from.” Tu Bishvat refutes this narrative. Our link to Israel is not something established in 1948, or in 1897, or at any other date in the last few centuries. Our link to the land of Israel is so core to our religious and national identity, that the ancient calendar Jews have used for millennia reflects its time and tides.
So, if this year you looked out the window and thought to yourself. “Tu Bisvhat? Trees? Now? Really?” Remind yourself of this special connection. Even this small festival validates the ancient love we have for our sacred land.
While we remain in the grasp of winter, the red anemone (the national flower of the state of Israel) is blossoming in the south, along the border of Gaza, promising that soon spring- and all its promise of redemption- will come.
With God’s help, so may it be for us as well.
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Founded in 1856, Holy Blossom Temple is Toronto’s first synagogue with a rich history of tradition and modernity in our religious and spiritual expression.