What a gift to celebrate our beloved Israel, 73 years young this week. The reflective celebration in our home began on Saturday night when we noticed someone on a Havdalah service with whom I had travelled to the USSR and Israel over 35 years ago (and whom I likely have not seen since then!). Following this virtual gathering of letting go of Shabbat and entering into the new week, my daughter and I pulled out my photo albums from that summer. Thinking back to that time of youthful joy, I remembered the stark difference between the atmosphere in the former Soviet Union
(which was hardly former at the time) and the conversations we had with Jews who met surreptitiously with our group of East Coast teens and the breath of life and expression we experienced in Eretz Yisrael.It was really an experience of havdalah - separation and division between living life in the open and treasuring one's identity in careful and private ways.
The ceremony of havdalah, the one that concludes Shabbat, invites us to step into the new week with the entirety of our being. We acknowledge time, lift our spirits with aromatic fragrance, and illuminate our fingertips as we commit to an active role in the world in the week ahead. We shine light into the darkness just like adam harishon following the first sabbath. It is a time of renewed energy and the catalyzation of imagination, creativity and potential.
Last week's havdalah paved the way for another commemoration of Israel's independence, a new tradition launched on Sunday at the Egalitarian Kotel in Jerusalem when a diverse group gathered for a festive reading of Megillat HaAtzmaut/Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel. Twelve readers reflecting a diversity of Jewish expression, representing the 12 tribes of Israel. It was so meaningful to see colleagues and friends offer a spiritual dimension to the words of the declaration, chanting with trope and sharing the vision and values, culture and morals of what it means to intertwine a message that is Jewish and democratic, democratic and Jewish (Yizhar Hess, Vice Chair of the World Zionist Organization (WZO) and former Executive Director and CEO of the Conservative/Masorti Movement in Israel).
Towards the end of the program, they premiered a new song, a piyyut filmed in the building of the National Institutions where the members of the 1st Knesset took their oath and in the square in which they danced on Israel's first Independence Day. The interweaving of melodies from around the world and video from Israel's early years until today honors the sacred nature of difference and separation as parts of a dedicated whole. I invite you to watch this exquisite video which begins with a special havdalah and listen for the melodies and texts of our tradition as they are reimagined to tell the story of Israel's independence.
Wishing you a Shabbat of sacred purpose and a new month of connection.
Shabbat Shalom rg
Congregation Habonim 103 West End Ave New York, NY 10023
