Korach 5773 / Rosh Hodesh Tammuz: Building in Joy

On my first day at Torat Yisrael, in the summer of 2004, I sat myself down at the desk in the rabbi’s study and started opening drawers to see what “treasures” my predecessors had left for me.
     I opened a file and found a memo, written in 1985, by my
predecessor, Rabbi David Rosen, making the case that the congregation’s most
promising future could be fulfilled through a move to East Greenwich.
      Here and now, with the leadership spearheading our congregation now, with all the complicated realities of economics and demographics and the very human aversion to risk.  Here and now, when congregations around the country are closing their doors,  it is now that we are  dedicating our new synagogue building in the very promising land of East Greenwich.
    Over and over I have had occasion to marvel at the commitment, the perseverance, the determination, the generosity, the selflessness of the
members of our congregation.  Over and over, I have witnessed delays, resistance, barriers, and I’ve thought, “please God, let them not lose heart.”  And over and over the leaders of this project rolled up their sleeves, regrouped, got creative and got it done. 
 
It is our privilege to dedicate this beautiful building לשם ולטפארת / l’sheim
ultiferet, for the Name and the wonder of God.  Within these walls, generations of our people will come together to delve into the infinite richness of our Torah, to embrace each other as a community of Israel, to find guidance and inspiration from our traditions and practices, to ponder and to attempt and to explore new avenues of Jewish life.   
      During the mindful process of designing this building, it has been our goal to embody or to facilitate some of our most cherished, eternal Jewish values:
 בל תשחית   / Bal Taschit: Our commitment to the mitzvah of avoiding unnecessary waste of resources is expressed in our investment in a unique LED and fluorescent lighting system that barely sips electricity.
מכשול בפני עיוור /You will not throw up a stumbling block before the blind:  Through this mitzvah we are instructed
to anticipate and facilitate safe and accessible movement for all.  In this spirit, one of our first decisions regarding the new building was to build all on one level, making every space in the building accessible to every person coming in.  In that same spirit, one section of the coat rack in the cloakroom will be at a height comfortable to both the wheel chair bound and children to hang up and retrieve their own coats.
הזן את הכל /  Who Feeds All.  In the blessings recited after a meal, we praise God as “hazan et hakol,” the One  who feeds all.  Our tradition encourages us to internalize the values embodied by God’s own actions.  In that spirit, our congregation supports two food-security programs:  the Edgewood Food Closet in our former neighborhood in Cranston, and the Chester Kosher Food Pantry maintained by the Jewish Seniors Agency of Rhode
Island.  We have literally built our commitment into our building: the benches lining our lobby under the windows are actually bins in which we collect non-perishable food items for these programs.
העם: האנשים והנשים והטף / The people: the men, the women and the children.  Towards the end of the book of  D’varim/Deuteronomy, God instructs Moses to gather together the people and readthem the words of the Torah.  In
that text, the “people” , the body of Israel, is defined as “men, women and children.”  Our commitment to making sure that all men, women and children are welcome and comfortable in our sanctuary is expressed through the unique wall of windows separating our sanctuary from our library.  Shades reaching from the bottom of the windows upwards will provide privacy for nursing moms while still seeing and hearing what is happening in the sanctuary.  Bins of quiet toys will keep little ones occupied while their supervising parents can still be part of the service.  A parent, or grandparent!, who needs to “walk” a baby or comfort an unhappy toddler can do so without being cut off from the community.
מה גדלו מעשיך /  How great are Your works?   The Psalmist exclaims “mah gadlu ma’asecha?”  How great are Your
works, O God?  With the gift of conservancy land along the eastern border of our property, constructed an
  eastern wall that is almost entirely of glass. As we sit in our sanctuary, our social hall and our library, we are free to simultaneously enjoy and praise God’s natural world.
     We are celebrating a tremendous milestone in the history of our congregation.  Let us remember that a milestone marks a significant stop along a path, not the end of the route.  Yes, indeed, our geographic wandering is over, but there are many more paths for us to follow as a congregation.  This is a building that we are turning into sacred space by our presence as a kehillah k’doshah, a holy congregation.  How will we express our sense of the sacred here?  How will we pray?  How will  we learn?  How will we celebrate?   What kind of communal goals and aspirations will we strive for?
     TY members have contributed so much time and concern and skill as members of our Building and
Dedication Committees.   Thank them when you see them.  A project like this only comes to fruition when a few people throw themselves, body and soul, into the project.  Our president, Susan Smoller and the chairman of our building committee, Andrew Sholes, and the chairman of our capital campaign, Marc Davis are those “body and
soul” leaders who have inspired us and brought us to this day.
     Our Building Committee and our contractors and our architects and our painters and electricians and plumbers are done. Now it is our turn to fill this beautiful space with the joy, the challenges, the richness, the comforts, the spiritual horizons of the Judaism we love.

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