| We honor the memory of 6 soldiers serving in the Golani brigade who were killed in a battle in southern Lebanon last week: Captain Itay Marcovich, 22, from Kokhav Ya'ir; Staff Sergeant Sraya Elbom, 21, from Mehola; Staff Sergeant Dror Hen, 20, from Gan Haim; Staff Sergeant Nir Gofer, 20, from Dimona; Sergeant Shalev Itzhak Sagron, 21, from Sderot; and Sergeant Yoav Daniel, 19, from Nahariya. Yoav's smile, his friends said, "broke down all barriers." |
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| Home home
/hōm/
Dear Friends,
This week we commemorate Rabbi Sacks' 4th yahrtzeit, I'm delighted to be joined by my friend and colleague Rabbi Dr. Rafi Zarum, Dean, London School of Jewish Studies (LSJS); The Rabbi Sacks Chair of Modern Jewish Thought, for a conversation this Thursday online, I look forward to seeing you.
A few months ago, I was asked by Israel's National Library to contribute to a literary initiative to mark October 7th. Writers were asked to reflect on one of six words in relation to October 7th and its aftermath: home, unity, renewal, healing, hope, resilience, and memory. I picked home.
"A home is built with wisdom," we read in Proverbs, "and with understanding, it is established; through knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures" (Prov. 24:3-4). Those rare and beautiful treasures are the people we cherish in our homes who grace us with their presence. Home is a place where God dwells with us in the most prosaic of obligations and in the intimate chambers of our joys and sorrows.
All the central and defining buildings that shape religious consciousness in Jewish tradition begin with the Hebrew word "bayit." We pray in a beit knesset, a 'gathering house,' where, in community, we express our fervent hopes and longing. We study in a beit midrash, a home for our intellectual and spiritual explorations. We mourn the destruction of the Holy Temple, our Beit Ha-Mikdash. This sanctuary of God's presence that we yearn to rebuild is the seminal home of our holiness. For the Jew, the synagogue and study hall are extensions of our own homes. Human dwellings serve different functions, and, in other languages, they are distinguished by distinct names. But in Judaism, the home of the mind and heart are interconnected with the personal homes we build. We live in body and spirit in all of these houses.
A home for us is never just a set of walls and floors covered by a roof. It is a place where our tables mirror the altar, our sources of light reflect the flame of the menorah, and the bread we share with strangers mimics the bread once baked by the ancient priests. We can travel the world, but the Jewish home is where we ultimately find ourselves. In loving homes, the space is our shelter, our refuge, our haven, and our emotional fortress because it is also where God lives: "Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty" (Ps. 91:1). The weather inside our homes matters. God blesses, Proverbs tells us, "the home of the righteous" (Prov. 3:33).
"A home," my teacher and mentor Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote, "is a haven in a heartless world. It's where we belong and where, if we are lucky, we raise a family. Home is where we learn the poetry of everyday life, the choreography of chessed, the countless daily acts of reciprocity and kindness that constitute the language of love."
This may explain why the photo of every burnt and desecrated house on October 7th hurts so much. These were spaces where families lived and created memories. Standing amidst the debris of a home in Kisufim, its remaining walls pockmarked by bullet holes, I felt that the most sacred of Jewish spaces had been violated. Even standing in that ruin months later to bear witness and to honor its residents felt like a desecration of private space. In the ruble, I searched for an image of the people now gone. Even God felt exiled from that space.
Tens of thousands in Israel have been displaced from their homes month after month. Parents and children have lived in small hotel rooms; many of them have no home to go back to. Some will decide not to return. They will make their homes elsewhere. We are a people who have, for centuries, moved from one land to another, from one house to another. Difficult as this was, we learned something powerful from the transitions. We can make a home everywhere and anywhere with enough faith in the future. We have learned to adapt and build better the next time.
As we commemorate all that's been lost since October 7th, let us keep the prophet Isaiah's blessing as an aspiration, "My people will live in peaceful dwelling places, in secure homes, in undisturbed places of rest" (Is. 32:18).
What images and associations do you have with the word "home"?
Shavua tov,
Erica
Dr. Erica Brown
Vice Provost for Values and Leadership
Director, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks-Herenstein Center for Values and Leadership |
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"In the beginning God created the world as a home for humanity. Since then He has challenged humanity to create a world that will be a home for Him. God lives wherever we treat one another as beings in His image."
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Faith in the Future
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Do one kind thing this week for someone who is homeless or displaced right now.
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Leadership Scholars Weekend in Washington
by Charli Ernstein, Leadership Scholar Cohort III |
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| Early Friday morning, we embarked on our first journey together as Cohort 3. During the car ride, the bonding had already begun as we discussed our weeks and how we prepared our Divrei Torah and interviews for Shabbos. These connections continued to develop as the weekend progressed, starting at Dr. Brown's house when we heard from Rabbi Brahm Weinberg, Rabbi of Kemp Mill Synagogue, who advised us on communal leadership, and continuing through the night at dinner with Mr. Gary and Mrs. Shanna Winters as our guests,
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| who spoke to us about their work as lawyers to benefit the greater community. Mr. Winters is a prosecutor at the U.S. Department of Justice and President of Kemp Mill Synagogue. Mrs. Winters is the Chief Policy Advisor to Chairman Brown of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.
On Shabbat day, we heard from Mr. Matthew Levitt, the Fromer-Wexler Senior Fellow at The Washington Institute and director of its Jeanette and Eli Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, who has worked tirelessly on counterterrorism and intelligence; Mr. Nathan Diament, Executive Director for the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, to advocate for America's greater Jewish community; Mr. Roger Zakheim, the Washington Director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute , as well as his many other roles in DC; and Mrs. Tamar Zakheim, a physician assistant, who is also active in community work. In between hearing from these incredible people, we had quality time as a cohort during meals, on an afternoon long walk along a nearby creek, and during free time when we further learned about each other.
Motzei Shabbat, sitting around a fire and eating delicious pasta and pizza made by Drs. Brown, we heard from Dr. Brown, Aliza Abrams Konig, and Rabbi Schiffman regarding their leadership stories and the winding paths that led them to work with the Sacks-Herenstein Center. And, post-Melave Malka, we headed to the National Mall for a tour led by Dr. Brown of the Roosevelt, MLK, Lincoln, and Vietnam War memorials. On Sunday morning we heard from Ms. Debi Goldschlag, a Foreign Service Officer at the Department of State, who has traveled the globe in her work for US Foreign Affairs. After hearing about Ms. Goldschlag's time overseas, we parted ways as a cohort, some went on to the DC rally, while others returned to New York to finish midterms. It was an incredible weekend full of learning from others' professional and lay leadership experiences, learning about our fellow members of the cohort, learning about ourselves, and thinking through what impact we can make on the world.
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