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Flash back to Sukkot. Mickey and I have built our most beautiful sukkah ever, if I do say so. It's big enough for eighteen people to sit at a dinner table inside, sparkling with all kinds of lights, roofed with branches of the four species of our own land (redwood, fir, tan oak and cotoneaster) and bedecked with garlands of grape leaves from Susan's vines next door. I take a delighted breath every time I see it in our yard.
We are so happy to welcome our community into our sukkah, to feast together. The party goes on. It gets cold. We make a bonfire. The sun has set; the just-past-full moon is up. The fire is settling down into coals. People are saying goodbye. And one of our friends stays seated by the fire. She doesn't leave, because she has no place to go. That night will be her last sheltered night, and when she wakes up the next morning she will be homeless.
I tell this story from my point of view and not hers, because I can't even begin to imagine the kind of hurt and fear that must have been in her heart that night. That piece is her story to tell, not mine, and she has been very gracious in sharing her odyssey over these past weeks and months with us all. What I can say from my end is that the juxtaposition of our sukkah -- symbol of shelter, of hospitality, of God's protective hand -- and our friend, about to walk out into that cold night, pierced my heart and still does.
Okay, this isn't a Yiddish novel. She did have a place to sleep that very night. But not the next, or the nights to follow. I sent her out into the night with promises and prayers to try to find shelter for her over the next 24 hours. I did not succeed.
Now this story leaves our one friend in particular and turns to all of us and the difficult questions with which many of us have struggled while she struggles with not having a home. What do we owe each other as a Jewish community? As a community of neighbors on the Coast? As humans? What would it mean to invite someone in to our home because they don't have one? How valid are our personal boundaries? May we say no, even in the face of someone else's great need? What obligation comes with the privilege of having a home? Is being housed a privilege? What if we have an extra bedroom? An extra cabin on our land? Does this bring with it extra obligation? If our Coast community pitches together to provide a minimal shelter, such as the Hospitality House, does this relieve us of our individual responsibility? If it does, in what ways, and to what degree, are we responsible to the Hospitality House?
I made one inner decision that night of our sukkah party, in the face of our friend's crisis. Even though I was the host that night, even though I'm the rabbi here, I was not going to try to solve her problem alone. I would turn to you, our community. That night a few of us talked together with her. We came up against our own limitations, and it was painful, for her most of all but for all of us. The next day I sent an e-mail out to the whole MCJC list, looking for housing for our friend. This in turn engendered a larger conversation -- suggestions, ruminations, more facing our own individual boundaries, accounts of other people's struggles and difficulties. None of it easy, none of it immediately useful. All in the face of the loss and suffering of this one person.
She is now settled, for the time being, at least, and I breathe a sigh of relief. But she is not alone. One Shabbat morning I looked around our little minyan and realized that three people there at that moment were homeless.
We are in a time of national and international economic distress, and we are in a place where jobs and inexpensive housing have been scarce for a long time. If someone is ill or elderly or has difficulties making a living or doesn't have a close circle of family or friends, he or she may be affected first by these scarcities. And so it is tempting to blame the individual who falls through the cracks. Or, yes, to "blame the system." I don't know that either kind of blame yields much which is of use.
My various Monday night yoga teachers have often said that if something feels easy, it's probably not the right direction to move. Better to stretch that underused muscle buried deep in there. Better, then, to turn inward and towards each other than outward towards blame. This inward turn will bring us up against our tight spots, limitations, boundaries, differences, defenses, traumas, resentments, failures and more. So be it. Maybe that's what we're in this exercise of life for, to stretch just those muscles.
Yesterday in our "Meaning and Purpose in Life" conversation at the shul, someone said that we are all cells in one body. Someone else said that we are all unique, and we have to respect our different ways of being. I find these two thoughts useful in thinking about economic vulnerability and hard times. As always, I think we do well to turn towards each other to solve problems, or at least to bear up with them together. As members of our community are affected by economic distress, some of us may be the ones to offer up our spare bedrooms, while others may not have that particular mitzvah in them. Others may have money to offer, or organizational energy for community shelter, or an especially compassionate heart to console and support each other in fragile times, or a dinner invite or a thermos of soup. One of us may be the offering-housing cell, another the nurturing cell, another the changing-public-policy cell. None of us is all of these, and we need not blame ourselves or each other for being the cells we are and not some other kind. Still, we are all going to need to stretch a bit, beyond our easy and familiar positions, if we want to be the community that we can be for each other. I think that getting through these times will take us all, and we are lucky to have each other.
I am a little scared, as I wonder whose need will arise next. It has been kind of a bumpy process, welcoming our most recent Elijah the Prophet, who has come to us offering us the opportunity to provide hospitality and nurture. It hasn't been easy, most especially not for Elijah herself. We have much to learn. I think I would like to end these notes by thanking this teacher, who has opened herself up to us in this time of her own crisis and who has continued to be open to us even when we have not been able to offer her what she has needed. May there be warmth, safety and nurture for her and for all of us.
© 2008 Rabbi Margaret Holub
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Updated 11/30/2008 (rge)