Lech-Lecha 2019
"And God said to Avram, go for yourself from your land, your birthplace, and from the house of your father, to the land which I will show you. And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. And those who bless you will be blessed and those who curse you will be cursed, and all the families of the world will be blessed through you."
In this week's parsha, Lech Lecha, God tells Avram about the journey he must go on to fulfill the mission of building the Jewish people. Avram does not know the exact path or where the land of his nation will be, he does not know with whom he will have to contend along the way, and he does not know exactly how long it will take. But God tells Avram the vision and goal before embarking. The vision is vital. The rest - with hard work, strategic thinking and trust in God - will follow.
I came to Kesher Israel just over two years ago with a vision that Orthodox Judaism has a great deal to give the Jewish people: a unique depth of Torah study, fervent commitment to mitzvot, and a powerful, heightened sense of intensive Jewish community. Often though, Orthodox shuls are insular, hard to fit into without the right knowledge and background, and are located in somewhat monolithic Jewish communities.
Kesher Israel occupies a unique place in the Jewish world. Its location and culture have blessed it with a diverse and vibrant constituency. The many young professionals that come to Kesher for several years and move on to other communities offer Kesher Israel an enormous cadre of alumni ambassadors who can take its vision for Jewish community with them to the rest of the Modern Orthodox world. Its location in Georgetown has imbued it with many members who - while being committed to observant Jewish life - are not only involved in the country and the larger world, but indeed its guiding lights. As a crossroads of the Jewish people, Kesher is host to - and has the opportunity to educate - the wide range of the Jewish people, from those who know very little, to those who know a great deal, from those who did not grow up Jewish, to those who have scant met a non-observant Jew. Through its model of an encompassing, observant Jewish life which is integrated within the larger world, it has the potential to transform myriad individuals and the larger Jewish people.
Here is one example:
This past Purim, I was talking in the lobby with two Satmar women from Brooklyn who were in town for a conference. They were waiting for the women's Megilah reading we had advertised. As they were talking to me and watching women walk upstairs for the reading, it suddenly dawned on them to ask, "Does a women's Megilah reading mean that women will be reading the Megilah?!" "Yes," I said. "Is that ok?" they replied, "We have never heard of such a thing." We then had a short discussion in which I explained that women and men have the same obligation to hear the Megilah, that according to almost all opinions, a woman can read for another woman. After a short discussion, slightly more at ease, they went to the Megilah reading. In the afternoon they came to the Kesher community Purim seudah, and told me how the shul had opened their eyes to new ways of seeing Jewish life and their place in it. In addition to the Megilah reading, they said they had never been in a community where the seudah was a community celebration, they had never felt this type of intensive, diverse community connection. In chassidic Brooklyn there are hundreds of shuls and Purim seudot are eaten in homes. The kind of interwoven community as a large body that we - due to our location and culture - work hard to achieve, they found refreshing, inspiring and personally transformative.