To the members of Temple Shalom, to our wonderful choir, to our guests, to my colleagues, my family and friends: on this special night in my life, my heart is filled with so many different feelings that I am, for once, not sure how to start.

What is an "installation?" I have no idea who came up with the word. I feel somewhat like an appliance. However weird the word, the occasion is important—for a rabbi and a congregation to have a formal way, a ritual moment, to acknowledge transition, to welcome one another into our respective lives.

The "match" between clergy and congregation has been compared to a marriage. If that is the case, then, well, then Steve Eisen ran a dating service. And this night, this "Installation," is the chuppah.

Many of you are familiar with Jewish wedding customs. At the end of the ceremony, the groom steps on a glass. The shattered glass is a symbol, a reminder of the sadness of our history, even at an occasion of joy. Until this night I never fully understood the power of that moment. I knew it in my mind, but never felt it in my heart.

It is hard to describe how… excited… my mother was that we were coming here. Never mind me. My mother stood ten feet tall, she beamed, she just glowed, at the idea of her grandchildren being close by.

We are, this week, very, very slightly more hopeful about some kind of recovery than we were before. Perhaps she will, someday, improve enough to join us again. Before I can focus on joy, I needed to step into the broken glass of our life. But I am, indeed, this night, filled with joy. For I am very happy to be here.

My friends let me be blunt. We returned to Washington for family first. Obviously, if the synagogue had not also felt like the right match we would not have come. It would not have worked. But if it had not been here, I might not have been smart enough to feel the same level of "pull," to this place. To this congregation. As it turns out, I’m one lucky rabbi.

[I thought of family. But I did not anticipate the depth of "reconnecting" with friends from years ago. There is a feeling of "wholeness," of pieces falling into place, when a girl in my Hebrew school car pool, or the president of the Temple Sinai youth group board on which I served, show up with smiles and children in the parking lot of Temple Shalom. And, from the phone call from my friend Barry Schwartz letting me know that this position was open, through initial visits and first contacts here, I could not have known how much this congregation would not just meet, but exceed my expectations.

Ashreinu! Mah tov chelkeinu! U’mah na’im goraleinu! How blessed I am! How wonderful my fortune, how precious this opportunity, that I am able to stand before you as your rabbi. I begin, at last, with words of recognition, and appreciation.

To Rabbi Bruce Kahn, who built this community with passion and personal integrity, who has been genuine, honest and supportive from the first moment we spoke, I thank you for your warmth, for your insight… and for your friendship. I look forward to our time to grow and develop together.

To Rabbi Barry Schwartz, for the Thai food in Buffalo, and for the ways we dreamed big dreams together, I am honored to now share a special bond with this congregation with you. I thank you not only for being here tonight, but for the call two springs past, that changed my life.

To a very special team I work with every day—to Rabbi Serotta and Hazan Tasat, to our Educator JoHanna Potts, our Executive Directors Karen Lowe and Helene Sacks, I have never before felt quite this level of trust and comfort. It comes from being surrounded by such talented and terrific people.

And to our first-rate support staff, my assistant, Minister Kecia Hill, Lois Simpson, Carol Kaplan, Pat Neustadt and Debbie Kopp, and to our custodial team of Joe Davis, James Williams, and Daryl Davis, all our planning would go exactly nowhere, without all of you.

To Julie Knoll, the president of Temple Shalom; to Steve Eisen, the chair of the Search Committee, to Wilma Braun and Beryl Tretter and the Transition Committee; to Anne Feinberg and Sandy Kamisar for their work on this Installation Shabbat; and to all of you, for your open arms, your enthusiastic reception, and your personal support at a hard time in our lives, I thank you with all my heart. To the many friends and colleagues and guests who have come here to share this occasion with us, and with Temple Shalom, I thank you for being here.

This congregation is, to me, a new shul, in an old town. Now, many of you know the story of Chaim, stranded on a desert island even before Tom Hanks. Finally, his friend Shlomo rescues him. As they prepare to leave the island, Chaim shows Shlomo the life he has led, what he made for himself on the island. Shlomo is shocked. "Chaim," he says. "I see here, you’ve built… two synagogues." "Well of course," Chaim says. "This one here, that’s the one I pray in. The other one I wouldn’t be caught dead in!"

My friends let me tell you about the synagogue I want to belong to. The place we can build together. And let me speak to you about my vision of a k’hillah k’dosha, a holy congregation, through the prism of the portion of the week. For in its truest sense, Torah is not about "then" and "there," but about "now," and "here." Not about "them," but about "us." It is not strictly history, but our story.

For a synagogue to work, it needs three things. For a synagogue to work, it must be a place of warmth. And depth. And breadth.

A place of warmth. Of comfort. Of joy and welcome. A place with open arms, and open doors, where all can come, and be themselves.

We read this night a story of anguish, and of loss. "When Esau heard the words of his father, vayitz’ak tza’aka g’dolah u’marah, he cried out with a great and bitter cry." Esau the hunter, the simple man, the one who says what he means. His shout is utter honesty, pure emotion. Words of need, and desire, and despair.

We don’t cry a cry like this that often. But it’s there, inside of us, each of us. It is a yearning, a hunger for acceptance, a basic human need to find a place, to be embraced, to feel at home.

Listen a little more, as Esau pleads: "Barcheini gam ani, avi! Bless me, too, father! Halo hatzalta li berachah? Have you not saved a blessing for me?" It is Esau’s ancient question. But it is up to us to answer. Yes! This can be a place, to sob a great sob. And yes. There is a blessing here for you.

Who could not feel the need this year? You would have to be deaf to the music of the soul. Post 9-11, in the days after the disaster, people just… came. They passed by a place of worship, and they simply walked in the door.

And at the High Holy Days. What was that we felt, if not a yearning, to come here, to be together, to find a place of the spirit we could be at home? To be safe, in each other’s arms.

I believe that the most important part of any service is not the percentage of English or the percentage of Hebrew. Nor if we sing this prayer the way your father sung it, or the way my grandmother sung it. The food afterwards—now that’s important. But I believe the most important part of any service, of any synagogue, is the warmth we feel when we come, the way we greet each other, the way we react to each other, the way we reach out to each other in the end.

Look, sometimes our services can be hard. It can feel like everyone else knows what they are doing, and we are outsiders, afraid to stand up at the wrong time, or say the wrong thing, afraid everyone will know that we don’t know all the rules, that we don’t fully fit in. We are so capable in what we do at work and at home. The top of our game, the best in our field, experts and authorities and officials. It is such a shift, so strange to come here and feel that we are fumbling around, we who are used to being so competent.

But there is a secret I want to share, to anyone who ever felt intimidated in a Jewish service. It is this. That everyone feels intimidated in a Jewish service. And all we need to do to not feel that way… is to know that everyone else feels the same thing.

I have a confession. I know Hebrew pretty well. I know my way around a service or two. But for one fleeting second, I am still frightened at the prospect of doing an aliyah, the blessing before and after the Torah reading. I was forced to learn it as a child. And there is something child-like inside me, whenever the words come up.

But no one is perfect. No one knows it all. No one gets it all right, all the time.

We come here to be together. That’s the most important thing. And this is a service, not a performance. We are a congregation, not an audience. Perfectionism is the enemy of acceptance. And intimidation interferes with community.

There are props, and there are stage directions. But all we say, and all we pray, are tools to take us to a higher plane. A place where you can cry out from the depths of your being. For utter honesty. A place where there is a blessing saved for you.

When sobs shake us to our core, when we feel vast oceans of emotion inside us, when we yearn with our innermost being, remember: it should be a Bar Mitzvah, not a bar, where everybody knows your name.

Nine years ago Julie and I moved to the Great Lakes. We were coming from Boca Raton, from Palm Beach County, Florida. It was late afternoon, in late June, when we turned north from Pittsburgh, on the final stretch of highway towards Lake Erie. It was raining. And it was... well, it was 37 degrees out. Julie and I looked at each other. And one of us said: If this stuff turns to snow, we’re turning the car around.

Nine years we were up there. In the tundra. In Erie and in Buffalo. In the land of the frozen chosen. Nine years and we saw a lot of snow. But we know something we did not know then. That is the beauty, the power and the promise of congregations, of spiritual communities where the warmth comes from within.

A synagogue must be a place of warmth. But it must also be a place of depth. A place to probe, to wonder, to be challenged…and to grow.

Isaac’s voice quivers with age. He checks. He asks. He knows that something is going on beyond the realm of the ordinary, and the everyday.

"Hakol kol Ya’akov," he says. "The voice is the voice of Jacob. V’haya’dayim y’dei Esav. Yet the hands are the hands of Esau."

There is a mystery here. And a question. We are the actors on a cosmic and eternal stage, in a play whose very theme is the meaning of our lives. Reach for the script and it eludes us, except … that the reaching is a part of the script.

Our first task is to bring comfort. But the deeper part of what we do is to bring not comfort, but challenge. To look beneath the surface. To unsettle and disturb. To ask questions. Even if we think we know the answer. Even if we never find an answer at all.

In a synagogue of depth there will always be people asking questions. Of each other, and of themselves. Journeys towards a deeper life, baby-steps and parent programs and easy-access introductions … and a community of people who come together on Shabbat, to grapple with an ancient text, and wonder what it is God wants of us, in our lives, in this time, and this place.

We are the People of the Book. Not everyone knows the story any more. Not everyone reads the Book. But it is our role, our sacred task, to keep the flame of learning alive. For there are those who say: "Prayer… prayer is how we talk to God. Study. Learning. Growth. That is how God talks to us."

Warmth. And depth. And breadth. A place that points, in the end, beyond the self…and beyond this place. To somewhere else. That calls us to a higher duty, to the work we must do in the world.

Rebecca is suffering. Years of wanting children, regular doses of prayer and perganol and behold: twins! And the pain is unbearable. "Im kein, lama ze anochi! If so, why do I exist?" In the midst of a struggle, an existential question.

Rebecca seeks out an oracle. But then comes the answer. And it speaks to us still. "Sh’nei goyim b’vitneich. Two nations are in your womb," she is told. "U’sh’nei l’umim mimeiyayich yipareidu, two separate peoples shall issue from your body."

Two nations are in us. Or it is we, who live in two civilizations. One of the twins is Jacob. His name is to be Israel. The Jewish people. Us. The other twin is Esau. He is the older. And he is the other. Them.

We are wrapped together with the world around us, entangled, inseparable. We wrestle with identity. With the angels of our better nature. With the essence of the other. What belongs here? What belongs there? And ultimately we discover that a reunion awaits us. That the wrestling in the womb cannot become a mature embrace until who we are here … makes a difference out there.

Five hundred people squeezed together two weeks ago. It was Mitzvah Day, our annual opportunity to roll up our sleeves and clean up a park, or brighten a heart, or feed a hungry soul. I was … so proud of our congregation as I saw the effort of so many people, working together to make a difference in the world.

Mitzvah Day is fantastic. It is wonderful. It is a very good … beginning.

For the test is not passed or failed in one day, but over the course of a lifetime. The words we pray in here, the lessons we teach down there, do they stay in our soul, or stay in the room? Do they walk with us into the week-day world. In what we say, and what we teach, can it make us better people? Does it matter? Does it make a difference? Does it mean anything at all?

Look around you. This time, not at the people. Look at the wall. Look at the stones, the bricks. Look at the roof. It’s a building. A sanctuary, yes. But a building nonetheless. Sitting here matters most if it helps us take a stand out there. Like the service, like our study, this place is at its sacred best … as a portal beyond itself.

Warmth, and depth, and breadth. It is here, in the place in which I belong. It is here, in the Temple Shalom of today, and of tomorrow.

Jacob is soon to leave his home, on a journey that will lead him, at long last, a changed man, back home. At the beginning of next week’s Torah portion, alone, afraid, he shivers, and he sleeps on a rock.

Jacob dreams, of a ladder, reaching upward. Jacob dreams, of a stairway to heaven. He wakes up in the morning, and he looks at the rock. Then, slowly, he sets the rock on which he had rested into the ground, as a pillar. He recreates the physical setting of his dream. He does what he needs to do, to bring the vision of the night, to the light of day.

And when he opens his eyes he exclaims: "ein ze ki im beit elohim, v’anochi lo yada’ati; behold, this is indeed the house of God. And I, I did not know it."

 

I have come home, and woken up to the potential around me. Come, my friends. Let us dream tomorrow together.

 

Shabbat Shalom.