G-d’s Crowded Table: Yom Kippur 5787

My favorite picture from college was taken in the afterglow of one Shabbat dinner my senior year at Brandeis. I am on the far right of the frame, my eyes are closed, my head tilted up toward the sky caught somewhere in the middle of a niggun. I’m sitting on a chair at a coffee table that has been transformed into a magical Shabbat table. It’s cluttered with plates, a half eaten dessert, lots of cups, tiny salt and pepper shakers. My friends Josh, Sam, and Zach are to my right. Josh and Sam are facing one another, their eyes are also closed. They are both holding guitars. In addition to some beautiful Jewish art, there are two posters hanging on the wall that I make special note of: One reads, Shalom Achshav, peace now. And the other, יהודים וערבים מסרבים להיות אויבים, Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies. There are fresh cut flowers standing proudly in a repurposed water bottle. A quintessential college scene. And you can feel the movement, the joy, the freedom, and the love in this picture. And it is my favorite because I feel like I wasn’t supposed to be there, and yet, it changed everything for me. 

I don’t remember how I wound up at this particular shabbat dinner. Sometimes, I wonder if I was invited by mistake, because at the time, I belonged to a radically different campus Jewish community. At the time, my entire Jewish life and Jewish identity was rooted in Modern Orthodoxy. I was keeping strict Kosher and observing Shabbat like I had all my life. All of my friends were orthodox, and we all lived within the lines when it came to Israel and our Zionism: lovely, uncomplicated, so many of us planning to one day make Aliyah. 

So you can imagine my surprise and discomfort and overall confusion when I landed in that house and experienced one of the most transformative Shabbatot, one of the most joyous, honest, open-hearted Shabbat dinners of my life. This was a group of people who loved their Judaism and loved Israel so much that they were desperately committed to making it better. And they knew that in order to do that work, we would need to dig down into some difficult truths about our tradition and the land and the people and the government that we all felt connected to and responsible for. They knew that when you love something you fight for it. When you love something, and you are so afraid of losing it, you do everything you can to redeem it.

And all these years later, I’m still surprised that I accepted that invitation. Because the truth is, I didn’t know how to occupy this kind of Jewish space, and was skeptical and suspicious of these kinds of Jews. I didn't think they were serious, I thought they hated Israel and traditional Judaism. Thought they wanted to tear down so much of what I was taught to love, so much of what I felt my family and community had spent generations building. But in reality, my heart was already aching with some of these questions. There was a tiny, almost invisible little fault line making its way across my heart and mind. I was already thinking about what it could look like to go to rabbinical school and learn more as a woman. I was already silently pushing on the boundaries I was living within, feeling that something was missing from the conversations about Israel. And when I walked into that house and was caught by the smell of freshly baked challah, when we sang Shalom Aleichem and made Kiddsuh and Hamotzi, I was instantly and intensely reminded that we were more alike than I realized. Held by all those things I loved most about Shabbat, cradled by that familiar framework of ritual and pause, by the music and liturgy and bracha of it all, I suddenly felt invited into something different, welcome to bring my questions and doubts and hopes to the surface. And I saw around that table an elemental love for Judaism and progressive values and Israel that I didn’t know could coexist, that I hadn’t seen before. And I quickly realized how wrong I had been about these beloved people.

And so when I look back at this picture and I see the look on my face, I know that something was opening in me. That maybe I had found a community where I could be my full self–Jewishly, politically, socially. Where I could ask questions and think out loud about a lot of things I had been taught to take for granted. It was liberating and terrifying. A major personal shift that set me on a path to this incredible place and to the person I am now. Thank G-d, I had a seat around that great big, crowded table.

And in the wake of this Shabbat dinner, and many subsequent conversations and learnings, I slowly changed and became all but unrecognizable to my parents. The next time I came home, I had a nose ring, was flirting with veganism. I wore clogs most of the time, and had an internship with a liberal-Zionist non-profit. I talked incessantly about feminism, and egalitarianism, about a different kind of Israel– did you know, I would ask my parents, I don’t have to make a choice anymore between halacha, traditional judaism, and my identity as a woman? I can have it all! Did you know, there are feminist lenses through which we can read the Torah? Did you know it was indeed possible to care about both Israelis and Palestinians? Had they heard of the Two-State Solution? There was talk, eventually, of rabbinical school and not wearing shoes at my wedding. 

This was a terribly difficult period for me and my parents. I was in the throes of discovering who I was and it was exhilarating. Deepening who I think I was trying to become all along. And I was angry, and skeptical. I was insufferable and trying to understand so many of the decisions they made for us while we were growing up. Decisions I didn’t understand, and didn’t agree with. I think I felt like I had to make up for lost time. 

And my parents, all the while, were trying to locate, in this swirling storm of identity, the daughter they had raised. For them, I know, this change felt so sudden. I had left home one version of myself– the version they helped nurture, that they could see themselves in– and came home someone else entirely. Someone they didn’t recognize. There was anger and grief and disappointment all around. We didn’t know each other anymore. In some ways, we had become each others’ enemy, the inverse of the other. We were looking right past one another, becoming increasingly invisible, fading away moment by moment. 

And meanwhile, we were letting the most important thing slip away, that electrified and elemental truth of who we all were– Jewish, committed to our communities and tradition, to our future. Wanting desperately to protect the ideas and places and people we loved most. Because we were encountering each other from that well-seeded place of pain and betrayal. And we had forgotten that we were actually fighting about and for the same thing. And rather than see each other as fundamentally linked, eternally tethered by a three-corded rope, that while sometimes frayed at the edges, was strong at its center. Rather than see each other as inextricably linked and bound by a tradition that had already weathered so much, that contains so much, we saw each other as impossibly distant, strangers, not at all related. Each one becoming singularly responsible for the destruction of it all. 

I will never forget what it felt like to be called a self-hating Jew by someone I had grown up with. And I’ll never forget how it felt when a dear family friend told me that his brother’s family was still living in their house in Hebron, “no thanks to me.” I’ll never forget the sting of being called a traitor, an idiot for the simple belief that something better was possible, for everyone who called the land home. 

I will never forget the feeling of being invisible in my own community and in my own tradition. How people who I thought knew me and loved me and cared about me were so quick to push me out of the camp. So quick to see me as dangerous, a threat to the entire project. And so it feels like a miracle that my instinct was to run even further and even more deeply into my Judaism. 

כִּי־אָבִי וְאִמִּי עֲזָבוּנִי וַה׳ יַאַסְפֵנִי׃

Though my community abandoned me,

G-D will take me in.

And thank G-d I had those friends and that miracle of a Shabbat dinner. Because on the left, on the right, and at every station in between, people are turning away from communal Jewish life because it is just too hard and too painful to fight. The risk of rejection, the risk of being mischaracterized and misunderstood just not worth it. And so it makes sense that we’ve turned inward. That we’ve taken our rage and our fear and our pain to the internet. We’re screaming into the void about anti-zionists, and self-hating Jews, and fascists. About who is good and right, who has earned a seat at the table, and who has all but abrogated their share in Jewish community.  We’ve offloaded the real labor of talking and listening and reckoning. 

And the irony of it all, the tragic irony of it all, is that in our desperate effort to protect our Judaism, to protect ourselves and ensure that this story goes on, we are tearing each other apart, and letting the Judaism itself slip away. I think in some ways we all feel like we are fighting an existential battle for our future. But the fighting, the way we are talking to and through and past one another– is eroding the very thing we claim to be fighting for. 

What if instead of obsessing over someone’s perceived loyalty, or rage baiting, and commenting. What if instead of letting our own hearts be broken by our own sense of certainty and indignation, about our own need for ideological purity and consistency– what if we actually engaged those people and those questions and those fears in real life? What if we invited those people for Shabbat dinner? What if we sat around a crowded table, and sang Shabbat songs and made Kiddush together and really listened? 

I promise you nothing would fall apart. I promise you that this whole beautiful story would be strengthened and sharpened and made better. It would be hard and it would be scary. But we would be better. And we would become infinitely more capable of walking in this world. And I think we would more authentically reflect what Judaism has always been about. 

Judaism is not about purity tests or identity politics or culture wars. It’s not about shaming people out of their opinions or making them feel small for asking questions. Judaism is about chesed, and ritual, and being in the weeds with people. It’s about making brachot and living intentionally. It’s Midrash and interpretation, it’s turning it over and over and over until you find your place in it. Judaism is eating together and coming to shul and making minyan. It’s being in conversation with thousands of years of history. It’s moving through a broken world together. And it’s about having the courage and the emunah, the faith, in who we are and what we’ve inherited to let it play out in all the beautiful, unusual, complicated ways. It’s about keeping the doors of the shul wide open. About accepting people as they are. About embracing the variety of ways that someone’s Jewish identity may lead them to any number of political ideologies. 

There is a beautiful Midrash in Devarim Rabbah that goes like this:

Jacob, also known by the name Yisrael, is on his deathbed surrounded by his children. He is worried about them, and what their future will look like. He asks them: Will you pray to idols, will you worship other gods? Will you throw this beautiful tradition away after I’m gone? Who will you be without me? 

We can understand Yaakov’s dire existential fear here– maybe we even see ourselves in him. We can hear the urgency, maybe even feel the heat of his tears radiating through time. What was this whole difficult life for, if these sons of mine will wander away and let it all fade into oblivion. I think the tragedy here is that Yaakov can’t see his kids for who they are. He can’t recognize the vibrancy of this next generation of Judaism.

וְעֵינֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל כָּבְדוּ מִזֹּקֶן לֹא יוּכַל לִרְאוֹת

Now Israel’s eyes were dim with age; he could not see.

But the sons reply: Shema Yisrael, listen dad! Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem is our G-d. Hashem is One. We will continue what you modeled for us. We will continue to be in relationship with each other and G-d, and this community, and this story. Don’t worry, the sons say, our Judaism may look different, may be completely foreign and unrecognizable to you, but it is intact, it is strong. It may be hard for you to understand, dad, but please know that there is joy and connection and meaning here. 

And Jacob responds in a whisper: Baruch shem kevod malchuto l’olam va’ed, Blessed be the name of G-d’s glorious kingdom for ever and ever. 

And it's in this moment, the Rabbis imagine, that Jacob takes his final breath. Yaakov lets go, and is comforted, reassured that his children will carry on his legacy, and will keep writing this covenantal story. 

My friend Rabbi Akiva Mattenson adds the following:

Imagine a grandmother on her deathbed, worried about whether her grandchildren will carry on caring about Judaism, or the Jewish people, or the land of Israel. Her many grandkids all have different relationships to these things than she did. And they disagree with one another deeply about what caring about Judaism could or should even mean.Still, if these grandchildren can gather round their grandmother's deathbed, and together commit to carrying on her commitments to the Jewish people, it will mean that they managed to figure out how to see and hear their own political and religious commitments as an echo and continuation of hers. To say that Hashem our God is one is not to state a fact. It is to announce a task. The task of finding our way across our different words, concepts and ideologies toward a sense of our shared human concerns, desires and hopes. It is the task of learning to see ourselves in warm conversation with Jews across time and space, engaged in a shared project of service of God, whether we would all call it that or not. In making that declaration, we aren’t just committing to God but also to each other. We commit to the idea that we care about the same things.

In their 2019 song, Crowded Table, the Highwomen sing:

I want a house with a crowded table. And a place by the fire for everyone. The door is always open Your picture's on my wall Everyone's a little broken

And everyone belongs.

All G-d wants, I think, is to sit with us at a crowded table, where we are all welcome– all of our baggage, our questions, our doubts, our heartache– it’s all good, and it’s all welcome. It’s a table where forgiveness flows freely. Where I can look you in the eye, and I can hold your face in my hands and we can look into our future together. At G-d’s crowded table, our hearts are mending, our future is bright and wide open before us. At G-d’s crowded table there are tiny and constant redemptions and revelations. There is laughter, there is trust. And there is delight and gratitude in it all. 

Gmar Chatimah Tovah!