Day 6 - Coming Home to the Mountain
Photo by Kyle Johnson on Unsplash
When I say the word homecoming, what comes to mind? If you grew up in America, then you're likely thinking about the pageantry of homecomings from your high school years. The 'rituals' of Homecoming were developed in America in the 1870's by Harvard and Yale to bring their alumni back to the campus. Their gathering centered around 'The Game', the annual football game between these bitter rivals. Now, every school has a homecoming, but what is interesting about the concept is that it isn't really for the current students, but for the students who have moved on from 'The Game'. The Children of Israel had a similar predicament with the Torah. How do they keep their passions for God and Torah alive without the revelatory experience of Sinai? Remember, Sinai, the place, wasn't the goal, it was just a stop along the way to the Promised Land. We read the following in Exodus 19:2:
וַיִּסְעוּ מֵרְפִידִים וַיָּבֹאוּ מִדְבַּר סִינַי וַיַּחֲנוּ בַּמִּדְבָּר וַיִּחַן־שָׁם יִשְׂרָאֵל נֶגֶד הָהָר׃
Having journeyed from Rephidim, they entered the wilderness of Sinai and encamped in the wilderness. Israel encamped there in front of the mountain...
Rashi (quoting the Midrash) comments on the words, and they encamped their (which is written in the singular) the following:
ויחן שם ישראל. כְּאִישׁ אֶחָד בְּלֵב אֶחָד, אֲבָל שְׁאָר כָּל הַחֲנִיּוֹת בְּתַרְעוֹמוֹת וּבְמַחֲלֹקֶת:
ויחן שם ישראל AND THERE ISRAEL ENCAMPED as one person and with one heart — but all their other encampments were made in a murmuring spirit and in a spirit of dissension (Mekhilta d'Rabbi Yishmael 19:2:10).
When they came to the 'mountain', they were like one person, with one mind, but when they encamped in other places, they fought with each other.
The High Holy Day season doesn't begin with Elul, but with Tisha B'av, when we lost our collective home. How did we keep our people alive? We had to have at least one 'place' where we could share one heart. 'Place' in Hebrew is 'Makom', and makom doesn't just mean a place in space, but also in time. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote in his masterpiece, The Sabbath:
Judaism is a religion of time aiming at the sanctification of time. Unlike the space-minded man to whom time is unvaried, iterative, homogeneous, to whom all hours are alike, quality-less, empty shells, the Bible senses the diversified character of time. There are no two hours alike. Every hour is unique and the only one given at the moment, exclusive and endlessly precious.Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time, to be attached to sacred events, to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of a year. The Sabbaths are our great cathedrals; and our Holy of Holies is a shrine that neither the Romans nor the Germans were able to burn; a shrine that even apostasy cannot easily obliterate: the Day of Atonement. According to the ancient rabbis, it is not the observance of the Day of Atonement, but the Day itself, the “essence of the Day,” which, with man’s repentance, atones for the sins of man.
The Sabbath is our home, a place where we gather as a people every week. If we look at the Sabbath in this way, as a place that exists in time, then we can also look at the Sabbath as our people's weekly Homecoming and our journeys through the week as solitary treks where we might find ourselves cut off from others. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur serve as our annual homecoming; when we come together as a people around the world, but at the same time.
Comments
Post a Comment