Making a Difference

Last week Friday night we held our annual scout Shabbat to honor our brownies and girl scouts, our cub scouts and our boy scouts. At the service I told a story you may remember from the High Holidays. It is the story about a little boy standing on the beach throwing starfish into the ocean. A passing man sees him and asks: “Why are you throwing starfish into the sea?” “Because the sun is coming up and the tide is going out and if I don’t throw them in they will die,” says the boy.

The man shakes his head: “Don’t you realize there are miles and miles of beach and starfish all along it! You can’t possibly save them all, you can’t even save a tenth of them. In fact, even if you work all day, your efforts won’t make any difference at all.”  The boy listened calmly and then bent down to pick up another starfish and threw it into the sea. “It made a difference to that one.”

This story made an impression on many of the adults who heard it on the High Holidays, and it also made an impression on the children who heard it last week for scout Shabbat.  I am grateful to Karen Zatz for who suggested that I use it for a children’s service. In the discussion that followed it was very clear that the kids got it! They understood that it was not really about making a difference to a starfish, but about making a difference in our world. “Even if you can only do a little, it still helps,” said one of our Brownies, summing up other comments.

The flip side of that story is also true – acting alone, makes it difficult, if not impossible, to effect great change. For that, we have to gather together and work in concert. The Book of Exodus closes with this week’s Torah reading tomorrow morning. It begins with a gathering, a holy convocation where Moses asks the Jewish people to each do their share to contribute to the building of the Tabernacle. The Tabernacle is the portable sanctuary that the Israelites carry with them through their journey to the Promised Land. The text emphasizes the voluntary nature of the contribution. The outpouring of contributions made Moses the greatest fundraiser of all times! The people brought bracelets, nose-rings, all manner of gold jewelry; wool, linen, goat hair, ram skins, silver, copper, acacia wood, precious stones, spices and oil.

Voluntary gifts are brought for the construction of the Tabernacle

The skilled craftspeople and artisans volunteered their labor to weave, to carve, to embroider, to cut and set stones, to work with precious metals and to do all manner of work connected with building the Tabernacle. Working six days a week, the Tabernacle, all of the utensils for worship and the clothing for the priests were ready in two months time!  As in the story of the starfish, each person, contributing what they could, made a difference. Yet no one person could have completed the task – to build a dwelling place for G-d -- alone.

The relationship between a group and an individual can be a complicated affair. In fact, there are three words in Hebrew, “edad”, “Tsibur” and “Kehillah” that define these associations. An “edah” is a group of like minded people. It is related to the word for “witness”. The Jewish people are described as an “edah” at the foot of Mt. Sinai, where they witness the giving of the Ten Commandments and together proclaim “we will perform them and study them.” They are described as an “edah” when they hear the report of the spies sent to the Land of Canaan, and as a group decides they want to return to Egypt. The problem with being part of an “edah” is that it can lead to what is called “groupthink” – the practice of making decisions as a group that discourages creativity or individual responsibility. Another Hebrew word for “group” is “Tsibur”. A “Tsibur” is a collection of individuals. It is a “public” with little that binds them together other than they are in one place at the same time. A congregation on a Shabbat morning where there is a bar mitzvah is a good example of a Tsibur.  Some people are here to worship and do not know the family of the bat mitzvah.  Some people are only here because they are friends of the family. There might people present who are of different faiths. They gather for one purpose, but once that is finished, they will go to their homes and resume their lives without a sense of group identity or connection.

Jews gather at the Western Wall on Sukkot. This is an example of a Tsibbur,

Then there is the Kehillah. This is the kind of group that gathered together to build the Tabernacle, the metaphorical dwelling place of G-d. The Kehillah is a group with a common purpose and shared ideology, like the “edah”. Yet, members of the Kehillah do not lose their sense of individual identity or agency. We see this in the Torah portion. Each individual brings what their heart moves them to bring. Each person donates the particular talents that they possess. There is plenty of room for individual initiative, freedom and creativity. Although bound together in a common task, and sharing a group identity, members of the Kehillah maintain their distinct individual talents and will. Each individual can take pride in their contribution to the community as a whole. Each individual can say, “I contributed this”.

This is the reason why the word for “synagogue”, in Modern Hebrew, is “Kehillah”. You may recognize the word because it is what our Newsletter is called -- “Kehilah(t) Kodesh” – “Kehillah of the Holy”.  In a “Kehillah of the Holy”, everybody has something to give and each person’s unique gift is valued. In a “Kehillah of the Holy” those gifts create a “dwelling place for G-d”. That dwelling place is however, not the Tabernacle, or even the synagogue. That dwelling place for G-d is in the hearts and minds of each one of us. That Kehillah can be found anyplace where we come together to seek G-d and to find meaning in our lives.

Shabbat Shalom