Vayishlach 2021
This coming week the Mayor of Washington, D.C. will lift the mandatory mask mandate. According to the Mayor, the city is getting out of the business of mandates and leaving it up to individuals, organizations and businesses to make decisions regarding the best way to protect themselves and their constituents, utilizing “layered mitigation strategies.” We plan to make a decision in the next day for what to do in shul for the short term future.
Kesher Israel is blessed with a very diverse community. Like a large family, we all care about each other’s spiritual, emotional, and physical health. We know that whatever decision is made, not everyone will be 100% happy. Whatever guidelines we create for our community in Shul, will for some people feel too constricting and for others too dangerous. Hopefully for most, in the words of Goldilocks, it will feel just right.
The Shul has no agenda except to ensure that congregants can come to davening and events and feel safe, inspired and that Kesher Israel is their spiritual and social home. For many of us, we are vaccinated and healthy, we eat with others at restaurants, go to indoor cultural events and feel for the most part that life goes on relatively normally. For others, such as those with children under five years old, the elderly, and immunocompromised, the opposite is the case, we are worried and pray for the day that we no longer need to fear and life can get back to normal.
A Shul is a “Mikdash Me'at,” a small tabernacle, and we, the community which surrounds it, are a microcosm of the Jewish people. The Jewish people are not a nationality, for we lived without a land for millennia, we are not a religion, since many who are not believers or religious at all are still Jews, and we are not a culture, since Jews from different lands and backgrounds have very different cultures. I believe we are a family and as such we must feel toward everyone in shul- those we spend every Shabbat meal with and those we do not know except by sight at Shabbat davening or kiddush- that they are our siblings, children and parents.
We are called Bine Yisrael, the Children of Israel, the Children of our ancestor Jacob. Why not Abraham or Isaac? What is it about Jacob and his children that they form the bud which blossoms into us, the people of Israel? I think the answer is that even though there was at times, strife among Yaakov's children, ultimately they saw themselves as one family. They did sell Joseph, but in the end they were willing to sacrifice for each other when, in a few Parshas hence, Judah steps forward to sacrifice himself to save Binyamin, their youngest brother. We see it again in this week’s Parsha when Shimon and Levi fight against and kill the inhabitants of Shechem to protect their sister. The children of Israel are not perfect, but in the end, protecting, inspiring, and caring for their brethren is paramount. May we be blessed to do this for our communal family at Kesher Israel.
