We were invited to dinner, sort of spontaneously, one night last month -- "Turkey and all the fixings, in August!" we kept exclaiming, "like Thanksgiving but in the middle of the summer!" Mickey proposed a toast: "To the cooks! Such great hosts!" "Hear hear!" we all answered, raising our glasses. And indeed the table was heavy with bowls and platters, sauces, relishes, little salads, wine and laughing guests. No potluck, this -- our hosts had cooked it all and offered it up. More to the point for me even than the gorgeous food was that some months earlier my host and I had been quarrelling, and here I was at his table, with his friends and family, enjoying his largesse and his grace. Thanksgiving in August, indeed.
From the Talmud -- Berachot 55a: R. Johanan and R. Eleazar both explain that as long as the Temple stood, the altar atoned for Israel, but now a man's table atones for him.
An old vaudeville line says: I let my husband make all the big decisions, like whether or not there will be trade with China; I just make the little ones, like where we will live, whether or not we will have children, what work we will do…
What follows is an elegy to the little decisions. There is so much in the world that we can't decide about, kingdoms of which we are not the ruler, who will act as they will, favor whom they will favor, destroy what they will destroy. Especially in this day and age when so many crucial decisions get made behind closed doors, by decisors we will never even see on television much less be able to challenge face to face, it is easy to feel like we don't get to make any big decisions, like we are peons, nobodies, at the mercy of powerful agents who care nothing for our well-being or our ethics, that we are powerless to change the way things go in the big world. And in some ways this is probably true.
But there is a sphere in which our decisions are consequential, in which we are the king, the president, the High Priest. None of us should ever feel powerless, because we are the High Priests of the dinner table. "As long as the Temple stood, the altar atoned for Israel, but now a man's table atones for him."
How could the altar atone for Israel? By the gifts offered upon its surface; by the intention of the givers. Offerings atoned for Israel by their sensual loveliness; grains and oil were mixed with incense and burnt to send a column of fragrance upward towards where it was supposed that God breathes, and, incidentally, to spread outward to fill the Temple and delight all nearby. Offerings of fruit and meat and grain also fed and sustained the priests and -- not incidentally at all -- the families who offered them. Offerings created festivity. At the festivals Israelites were commanded to stream upwards to Jerusalem, to the Temple mount, bringing gifts from their flocks and orchards, where they would offer animals in vast numbers, inhaling the delicious odors directed to God and eating the meat themselves along with the priests and levites. Tens of thousands of Jews, we are told by Josephus, would fill the Temple plaza, and for days the sky would be dark with the smoke of their offerings. Our rabbi Ella used to remind us all of how strong and manly those kohanim, those priests, must have been, how broad of shoulder from handling animals all day, how gorgeous and fit and at home in their bodies they must have been making those offerings which were at once so physical and so spiritual.
Arnold Sternberg taught us last year of the function of offerings in restoring what had been taken away by an act of injustice. When an individual committed a crime, a sin, and then set about to repair the damage, he or she was required to restore any injury to particular victims -- through physical repair or through monetary restitution -- and then to do an additional bit of restoration to the society which is injured when an individual is harmed by another. Hence the offering of sacrifices of sin and guilt, which serve to restore the balance, to repair the fabric of justice.
When the Temple stood in Jerusalem, the altar was the center of all this: of sensual delight, of nourishment, of festivity, of restoration. Offerings were made twice daily, three times on Shabbat, an additional offering on Rosh Hodesh -- plus countless offerings for individuals who came to the altar to heal and restore their own lives and those of their neighbors and their community.
How did the altar atone for Israel? This is a functional answer: within its perimeter there was sensual pleasure; there was sustenance; there was celebration; there was restoration. And somehow this changed the cosmic balance for good, cancelled the punishment, turned away the evil decree.
Now there is an altar in every household, and every one of us is a priest. Back to that Thanksgiving in August: I can't say everything about that gathering at that table that evening. I've already disclosed that earlier I had had a quarrel with my host and that I was welcomed with grace and charm. Let's just say perhaps that someone at the table was ill, and in the cooking and serving there was great hope for that person's healing. Let's just say that someone else was getting ready for a long journey, and some portion of the conversation around that table was excitement and encouragement and maybe even a little bit of cautionary advice for the traveler. Let's say that someone else's parents were visiting and sat at table with us that night, and we found ourselves reflecting on the chain of generations, that these strangers had created and raised someone who is precious to us. Let's say that some of the guests had never met each other, and so there was the pleasurable conversation of first connection. And even for those who knew each other well, we took hours to revel in each other's particularity and to reveal bits more of our own through the evening. Much was done at that altar that night, much holy and crucial work to restore our hurting world.
Even in the glorious days when the Holy Temple stood on Mount Zion, Israel was a tiny nation in a tiny land. More often than not Israel was a distant part of some foreign emperor's vast holdings. In the world of big decisions, like the doings of Pharaohs or Caesars, Israel was a bit player at best. And yet we have seen those maps in Arnold's collection, of the world with Jerusalem at its center, and the Temple in the center of Jerusalem. It is said that the goings-on at the altar were of cosmic import, that, in some mystical way, when things were right at that one dinner table, things were right in the world. And that on the day when that table was upended and that family scattered all over the world, something became fundamentally disturbed in the order of things. Likewise today, we may be bit players at best in the making of those big decisions, like whether or not there will be war in Iraq or how Israel will find its way to peace with its neighbors -- though I believe we should try with all our heart and might to weigh in on these huge matters in every way we can. I wish so much that I had wisdom about how to turn the big world in the direction that I think it should go. I am not sure that I do. I am not sure that is so easy to turn the planet on its axis. But I am more convinced than ever that the way we treat each other in the minute interactions of everyday life is part of the same fabric, the same world, that every one of us at every dinner table can be part of the world's peace process. And in this domain we do have immense power.
It is now one year after the catastrophe that was last September 11, nearly a year since the US incursion into Afghanistan, several years into the disaster this is Israel and Palestine today. It is obvious who has born the brunt of each of these miseries. But even for those of us not in the epicenter of any of these events, there has been a haze of secondary damage. I hear reports from other clergypeople, from organizers and healers, that there has been more tension, more struggle, small explosions of anxiety and hostility in synagogues and workplaces and communities. I don't want to make any of us out to be victims of what we have in fact been spared. But I am sure we can all think of repercussions that have shaken us where we live. It's just been easier to snap. The reflex to fight back comes more quickly. It has been that much harder to relax, to enjoy, to trust, to accept, to welcome.
So I am tremendously grateful that our Jewish community has managed to stay one, to stay close, with and through all the strife of our world this past year. I am proud -- maybe not so much proud, maybe relieved, definitely thankful -- that we have managed to expose our very different opinions and feelings to each other, and we still eat together. We have sat at the table together many times this past year, feasting and feeding each other on Shabbat, during Sukkot and Tu B'shevat and Purim and Pesach and on people's birthdays and bar and bat mitzvahs, when people coupled and divorced, when someone was ill, when our parents died, while we studied, when friends visited, when planning, doing business, when we just felt like seeing each other. We know our differences with each other, and yet we continue to love and connect. This is not negligible at all -- here is an intact Jewish community, in pain but not eviscerated by this past year's world struggles. We are a place, not always of tranquility, but of true peace, of wholeness, of shalom in the body of the Jewish people, and by maintaining this wholeness we will be part of our whole people's healing.
My heart's desire for 5763, here at home, among you, the people I love so dearly, is that we serve each other more passionately than ever, that we commit ourselves even more than before to each other's wellbeing, that we delight more even than before in each other's company. I hope more than anything that, when we look back on the lives we all lived together, we will say, this was a place of pleasure, nourishment, festivity and restoration. This was a holy altar, and we were its priests. We created this place of peace together, for each other and for the world. We may or may not have succeeded in averting the evil decree of war, but we made peace at home.
It's not an either/or. It's not everything to be the High Priest of the dinner table. The big decisions need our attention too. But in moments of despair, when we feel absolutely ineffective at turning the decrees of kings and presidents, we can at the very least serve at our dinner tables with the dedication of the High Priest. We can love our nearest people with the same attention that we would put into brokering a treaty between nations. And in our heart's eye we can see this very local priestly service as part of the cosmic service and do it with vigor.
As long as the Temple stood, the altar atoned for Israel, but now a man's table atones for him.
It is my heart's prayer that, whether this be a blessed year of treaties and disarmament at the world level, or -- God forbid -- another year of war -- that we as priests bring about atonement and reconciliation , for pleasure, for nurture, for celebration and for restoration, that by serving and loving those who gather around our table with all the attention of the High Priest in the Temple on Yom Kippur, we will turn the decree to good, for us, for the Jewish people, for all people, for all the world.
© 2002 Rabbi Margaret Holub
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Updated 10/28/2002 (rge)