Taking God With Us

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome. I'm Rabbi David Lyon from Congregation Beth Israel in Houston.
In the cycle of weekly Torah reading, we found ourselves
in Exodus chapter twenty five, in the portion called Truma.
It begins with these words the Lord spoke to Moses, saying,
tell the Israeli people to bring me gifts. You shall

(00:21):
accept gifts for me from every person whose heart so
moves him. And these are the gifts that you shall
accept from them. And what follows is a beautiful list
of extraordinary things to bring for the building of a
tabernacle amish khan, a place where we would find gods
with us, it says in verse eight. And let them

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make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them,
exactly as I show you the pattern of the tabernacle
and the pattern of all its furnishings, so shall you
make it. There are two verses in the first paragraph
of the portion which always stand out in Jewish communities. First,
from every person whose heart so moves him or her,

(01:05):
The words you venolbo literally mean who are inspired moved?
When the heart is inspired and activated to do something.
The rabbis of old taught is that even one person
could have accomplished all the work that needed to be
done if that person was so inspired. Perhaps even we
have felt that from time to time, depending on the

(01:27):
passion we've had for a project or an event in
our lives. And then to build me a sanctuary that
I may dwell among them. This becomes a project for
the Israelite people, that they would erect this tabernacle that
would go with them, so that as they continue their
wilderness journey, God's presence would follow them, protect them, and

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inspire them. What we also read is from the prophetic
teachings in the book Second Kings, where we learn about Solomon, who,
as a result of a treaty he made with King
Hiram of Lebanon, was able to hire laborers to bring
materials from the north to the south for the building
of Solomon's temple. Settled now as they were in Solomon's time,

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they built a majestic temple for God's presence and observance
of rituals. And though the temple would be destroyed and
we built before being destroyed again and for the last time.
When the Romans came to Jerusalem in seventy of the
Common Era, it wouldn't be the end of Judaism. As
we understand our Jewish history, these dwellings, these places that

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we build in order to find God's presence are temporary. Ultimately,
what Judaism had to learn after the building of the Tabernacle,
after the building of two temples and their destruction, as that,
Judaism didn't end, nor did God's presence disappear. Rather, we
had to reformulate how we bring God with us and

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where we can find God. And so as the Temple
was destroyed by the Romans in the year seventy, Judaism
didn't die. The Temple was continued to be found in
places where God sought the people and people sought God's
presence and what would ultimately be called synagogues. A synagogue

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is a Greek word that means a gathering place. Now
Here in America we have many names for the Jewish
house of worship, where we attend, where we visit, where
we go, and where you might also be invited to attend.
We call it a synagogue for sure, because it is
the outgrowth of what happened after the Roman destruction and

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houses of worship were erected and established again. A synagogue
is a gathering place for Jewish people to space and
time together. In Hebrew, we might also call it a
bait to fee law that is, a house of worship
because it is it might be a bait me drush
house of study, which it also is, or a bait

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can esset, again a house of gathering. All of those
words describe the place where Jews go to worship, as
a Christian goes to church and a Muslim goes to
the mosque. But there are two other words that are
important to understand. Sometimes you hear the Yiddish word shull.

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A shull is just the Yiddish word for synagogue, and
some who are a more traditional or Orthodox might use
the word shull because it also connects to something in
the past, part of one's heritage. In my own synagogue
or congregation, we generally don't hear the word shull. But
the other word that we need to understand carefully in

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America is the word temple. My congregation is often referred
to as a temple, but in the reform community or
more liberal parts of the Jewish world, the word temple
is acceptable, but it is not often used and probably
not heard in a conservative Orthodox setting. Why not, because

(05:19):
when the Temple was destroyed in the year seventy, even
though it was so many many centuries ago, it is
still a word reserved for that temple, and there is
an underlying hope in the back of Jewish thought, in
the back of Jewish thinking, that one day a temple
would be erected again. It's really not the expectation among

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progressive Jews. We thrive in our synagogues and in the
places of worship that we've established now, and the erection
of a temple once more, a third temple, meaning on
the Temple Mount in Jerusalem today would cause more crisis
and critic outcomes, and we can even imagine, as difficult

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as it is today, it couldn't possibly get worse, but
it would. So our temple in a reform or progressive
community is not necessarily a replacement of what could be
in Jerusalem far in the future. But rather we do
establish our temple, our synagogue, our congregation here in America

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as the religious home that is ours. But the conservative
Orthodox simply don't use the word temple because it would
have taken away from history and from expectation of something
to come in the future. In Jerusalem. So now you
have all the words, and truly none of them are wrong.
You are welcome to use any of them, except that

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if you're in a Conservative or Orthodox community, I wouldn't
use the word temple. I would use synagogue, or congregation
or shoal. But even more than that, our synagogues, our
places of worship, our house of study, community prayer, all
things that we do together. But the most important place

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in a Jewish community is not the synagogue. It is
the Jewish home. I've often said, and perhaps to you before,
that if it isn't happening at home, it isn't happening.
And if Judaism isn't happening at home, then Judaism isn't happening.
And maybe you might say for yourselves, if Christianity isn't
happening at home, Christianity isn't happening, and Islam might be

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the same for all of us. Our houses of worship
can be places of learning and inspiration and gathering. But
if at home we do nothing and rely on our
house of worship to do everything for us, then we're
really not meeting the mark. We're not meeting the expectations
of what it requires. For a faith, a heritage of

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culture to endure. So the rabbis taught a long time ago,
knowing very well that as synagogue were emerging, as Jewish
communities were dispersing and settling into new places outside of
Jerusalem as a result of the expulsion by the Romans,
even back then and then for centuries. Hence, rabbis taught

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that if you can't be in the synagogue to pray,
then pray in your home, they said. And if you
can't pray at home because you're away on the road,
then pray where you are in the field, perhaps literally
the field, or perhaps in the field of work where
you spend time away from home. And if you're not

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in the field, then pray on your bed wherever you
might lie down at night, perhaps in the hotel, or
perhaps on the road along the way. However, the rabbis
imagine it in their time, and how we imagine it
in our time. There's always a place for prayer, because
wherever we are, God's presence can be found, and we

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can and relate to God where we are. It is
nice to travel, as many people do, and to search
out as Jewish travelers do. The synagogue in that city,
sometimes a historical one, some times one that's difficult to find,
but sometimes even magnificent ones. Last August I traveled to Rome,

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as many of you know, in a small group. We
had a ninety minute meeting with Pope Francis, and we
continue to pray for his health and well being too.
But after the meeting, which was profound, and I can
tell you again about it more another time, I had
a full day to search and to tour Rome with

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two guides, and one guy showed me all about historical Rome,
which is fascinating. Another guide showed me Jewish Rome, and
there we went through the area that was once the
Jewish Ghetto, which was opened and liberated in eighteen seventy.
I found the Great Synagogue there. What a thrill it

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was for me, a rabbi, a Jew, to go across
the world to Rome, to have a profound experience at
the Vatican, but also to find some Jewish roots, some
Jewish history in a place where Jews had lived for
centuries upon centuries, not always well, but ultimately free. And
the Great Synagogue as I walked in, looked like the

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synagogues I've seen around the world, though not like the
modern synagogue in which I lead and worship and teach.
But as I looked around the Great Synagogue in Rome,
I found the very things that I expect to find
in many synagogues, including the very words from this week's
tour a portion Assuli mikh dash bishahanti Pittocham, build me

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a sanctuary that I may dwell among them. And these
words were engraved in the wall in the Great Synagogue.
They are in many places, And while they are not
part of the words inscribed in the walls of my
synagogue and my temple, other biblical words are. But in
the Great Synagogue in Rome, linking heritage, linking text that

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help synagogues and Jewish communities feel connected to each other.
As they might have traveled from city to city, they
would enter that house of worship and feel at home.
And then along the way. We need to be able
to find God in our home where we are, and
along the way as well, whether it's in the hotel

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or on the bed, or in the field, wherever we go.
And what the rabbis really aim to do was to
teach us as you've come to learn for yourselves and
your own faith tradition. Perhaps is that God is not
only found in the synagogue or the church or the mosque,
but it is a central worship space where people come

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together to accomplish through prayer what needs to be done.
Sometimes the home doesn't accommodate everything that we feel we
need to do in prayer, especially when we're alone at
home or on the road along the way. And so
it is not unusual for Jews who travel to seek
out a Jewish community in a synagogue where there is

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a worship service or an opportunity to have home hospitality
on the sabbather special holidays. Perhaps you do the same
when you travel too. God is with us, not only
in our house of worship, but along the way wherever
we seek God, God seeks us too. I'm Rabbi David
Lyon from Congregation Bethisritlin, Houston. To listen again or to

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share this message, you can go to my podcast called
Heart to Heart with Rabbi David Lyon at Sunny ninety
nine dot com on the iHeartRadio app. In this time
and place where life seems complicated and the world is raging,
it is in our house of worship. Look for peace,

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for solace, and for hope, and very often when I
open our worship service on Friday night and Saturday morning.
That's exactly the way we begin by setting aside what
we know is, but also creating for ourselves a space
where we are to find God's hope and our hope
in God's presence. And sometimes when we sing a song

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for peace, I'll remark that it isn't enough to sing
a song about peace, it's to be moved by that song,
so that in our words and our hands and our actions,
we can contribute to peace wherever we are. And as
God is the god of all God's children and God's creations,
that peace isn't available only to those who have power

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or wealth. But very often we have to look at
those who are more vulnerable than ourselves and be sure
that by understanding our faith tradition, we are leaning in
and helping all people find what God's promise is for
them and for all of us together. And if we
can do it, I think, as we've observed many times,

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if we're keen to look and to find it, that
we really don't lose anything at all. When we lend
a hand and a word and kindness. We all gain
something by following God's teachings and leaning in to benefit
from what they help us to find. And if we
can find it in the synagogue, where the church, or

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the mosque, that's wonderful. But if we can find it
at home or along the way, it means that it
isn't only reserved for that very sacred place we call
our spiritual house, but rather it's our heart to take
God wherever we go, a tabernacle that moves with us
in all the times of our life, in times of joy,

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for gratitude, in times of struggle, for hope and peace
and blessing. Thank you for joining me today, and I
look forward to being with you again next time.