As you know by now Sunday night while walking through Rose Park I was mugged and robbed.   Two individuals who no doubt saw a person they perceived to have expendable cash, jumped me.  I don’t blame them, people do such things out of desperation.  We often have little control over what happens to us, only in how we respond.   I am very grateful, certainly it could have been much worse, I suffered only stitches and much swelling and should heal in a couple of weeks.

I had high hopes to give divrey torah and classes on video this week but until the facial swelling abates I think it wise to refrain from video so as not to alarm anyone.   We have a shul of very knowledgeable and capable members and many of them will be teaching online to help us retain our connection to each other as a community centered around Torah.

These are strange times.  With so many countries in such dire straits, people afraid and in pain, and for us, our Shul, the thing that binds us together in holiness, prayer and community, now closed, part of who we are as Jews seems to some extent amputated.  Overnight, isolation has become the new normal.  What can we do?

The parsha we should be reading this week, Vayakel-Pikudeh, is about the building of the Mishkan.  The Chassidic Rebbes ask why in the verse, “Make for me a sanctuary and I will dwell among them” it does not say “I will dwell in it” (i.e. the Sanctuary)?  The answer is that it means to tell us that the Sanctuary, or synagogue in our case, is both a building that facilitates God’s dwelling among us as a people, and also facilitates the indwelling of God in the hearts of each of us as individuals.

We assume that the community will be there, the shul will be there, that its sanctity of prayer will waft over us even if we do not pray with much fervor, that the joy of Shabbat will be provided for us in the communal realm.  So what are we to do without it?

The Talmud in Berachot recounts that Elijah the prophet said to Rabbi Yosi: “When the Jewish people enter the synagogue and pray God nods and says, “Happy is the Sovereign who is thus loudly praised in His house, and woe is to a father who has exiled his children, and woe to the children who have been exiled from the table of their Parent.”
It seems from Elija’s description that it is precisely the joy of being praised in the synagogue which makes God, as it were, nostalgic for the Temple of the past.  It is precisely the exultant prayer of the synagogue that makes God, as it were, regret the exile, the distance between God and Humans.  And it seems we too are supposed to feel the woe of the distance from God precisely as a result of praising God in Shul.  Prayer, it seems, is like receiving a letter from a loved one far away.  The better it is, the more it makes us realize what we are missing.

Now all of us are twice removed.  From the Temple and from the Synagogue.  The Synagogue recalls the Temple and makes God pine for the Temple, what do we have to recall the Shul when we have no Shul?

The Rebbe of Tosh said that the real source of God’s presence is not actually the Mishkan but the Shabbat, which is why the shabbat is always mentioned in juxtaposition to the Mishkan.  The light of the Miskan may have faded but the Shabbat, the Mishkan’s source, has not.  In fact, says the Tosher, Shabbat is more powerful a Divine light in exile than it is at the time of the Mishkan.

We are in exile within exile, exiled now from our Mikdash M’at, our small Temple, the synagogue.  And so we must make up for our small exile by praising God with a great song on this Shabbat.   So much so that the Master of the Universe will say to us, referring this time to our Shul: “Happy is the Sovereign who is thus loudly praised in the house, woe is to a Parent who has exiled His children, and woe is to the children who have been exiled from the table of their Father.”

You may be having shabbat with two people instead of ten or just by yourself, but do not let the Shabbat go by in despondence, bring some of the joy and energy you love from shul into your house or apartment this shabbat.  Make your table more energetic, more holy.  If you usually sing no shabbat songs, sing one, if you usually sing one, sing three.   Speak words of Torah, even if you are alone.  It will be difficult, but through the shabbat we will merit once again to have God dwelling in our midst and for the Parent who has exiled the children to bring us back, speedly and safely, amen.