Why Our Synagogue Ought Not Become a Church
Sermon Parshat Re’eh
Good Shabbos, everyone. Shabbat Shalom. You may not have seen me for two weeks, but that doesn’t mean what I talked about last time isn’t relevant.
I spent Shabbos in a remarkable place, not too far from here in distance, but which is still very different. Lawrence, Long Island. A beautiful place, with luxurious houses, and wealthy or well-off people. From a Jewish, not only financial perspective, it is a great place. The people seemed to have money, but they use it for good cause. Definitely, as someone with Cantorial training, I could appreciate that they have not only a cantor, but also, for every other week when the cantor is away, an excellent baal tefila. The baal k’riya was a middle- aged Man, and he was really good. The synagogues were spotless, and shelved with the new OU siddur. The text of the torah Scroll they read from was really clear, and the parchment white.
I tell you of this not to bore you with the details of my week off, but to provide a contrast to what is going on here. This wonderful congregation has been worshiping in this space for almost 40 years, and now the corporation threatens to evict it and displace it with-of all options a church. The shul is almost broke, the Torah parchment is off-white, and the ink smudged–most of the sifrei Torah are posul; and we can’t afford to have them corrected We can only afford a minimal upkeep of the building-I am sometimes disgusted by how the mens’ room smells. The people who attend are not wealthy, and most of them are elderly–and the corporation approaches us, not to help us maintain our facilities, on behalf of the thousands of Jewish congregants who davened here over the past almost 40 years, who gave both their precious time and resources so that there should be a Traditional Jewish house of worship this neighborhood–But rather to insult them, not only by threatening to evict them from their synagogue, but by planning to replace them with a Church.
Moses, at the beginning of our Torah portion, after describing what we are to do with the idolatrous articles of the inhabitants of the Holy Land, mentions a puzzling stipulation: Lo taasun kein laHashem Elokaichem- You shall not do that to the Lord your God. And the commentaries ask, “Why would we do that?” Would Jews dare to the Mizbeach, the Altar, or the Aron, the holy Ark in the Temple, and Smash it? Of course not! Rather, the Torah means to tell us, according to our tradition, that one who erases even one letter from G-d’s name, or removes even one stone from His Temple Altar has done something wrong.
I would like to discuss another interpretation of this verse, You shall not do thus to the Lord your God, and apply it to our situation.
One may argue: Hey, it’s already set up. We have a large sanctuary, a smaller chapel, a couple of Hebrew School classrooms, and kitchen space, It would be so logical and convenient that, if this congregation’s membership has depleted, another religion’s large congregation ought to move in. Our verse comes to tell us, “No. They may have altars, and we have altars. They have holy scriptures, and we.
Within the verse’s context, of a description of the sacrificial service which would later on take place in Jerusalem, this verse comes to command us not to utilise bamot, altar
