PJTC Sermons

This past Sunday, not even fifty hours before the Eaton Canyon fire exploded our neighborhoods, homes, and beloved shul, our Religious School Limud LBSRS reconvened after Winter Break. Once again, our devoted volunteers from the Men’s Club laid out their wonderful pancake breakfast for our families. Sticky fingers and chocolate-chip smiles greeted each other -- children and parents -- one friend to the next. We were there. Together.

We moved from breakfast into Kehilla Kedosha – our morning minyan. We sang and prayed, clapping and dancing. A joyous group of kindergartners went up the bimah steps to lead the whole school in Bar’chu. And we were there. Together.

Then, our youngest kids went off to class, and our 3rd through 7th graders joined the congregation in the parking lot, where we replaced the cornerstone that had once marked the spot of our Sierra Madre synagogue almost a century ago. We spoke on that morning about how that stone, first engraved in the 1930s, had traveled from its synagogue property, into the homes and garages of different generations of families. Non-Jews, whom we didn’t even know, cherished and protected it, until it found its way back to PJTC. We placed it next to our Centennial time capsule, and we welcomed it home. We celebrated its return to its rightful place.

Because, you see, its rightful place was not about being on Altadena Drive just north of Washington. The address is not the place. The place is the community.

On that bright and windless Sunday morning, we sang the words of Exodus 25: V’yasu li / mikdash / ve-shachanti b’tocham. God’s words to Moses that simply say, “And you will build for me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among you.”

We spoke about the Mishkan -- the temporary sanctuary that the Children of Israel built in the wilderness. Constructed to careful dimensions and descriptions, the Mishkan had two very clear intents. It was meant as a place for God to dwell among us. And it was meant to be built, dismantled, carried, rebuilt, and unbuilt again and again. The Mishkan was an impermanent, portable, traveling structure – and we carried it with us for forty years in the desert, in the wilderness. We didn’t know where we were going - not really – but we knew where we had been, and we knew who we were. And we were there. Together.

That is why we sent those same words out to you on Wednesday morning. We were all utterly devastated. Shattered. It was all gone, everything was lost. But we thought about the words from our Torah that we had invoked just fifty hours before. V’shachanti b’tocham. God doesn’t say to Moses that God will live within IT - the sanctuary. God says – within YOU – the community, the builders, the ones who build.

And then, 50 more hour elapsed. And in the past few days, I’ve been thinking constantly about a line from Pirke Avot, the Words of our Fathers. In Chapter 3, Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah teaches, Im ein kemakh, ein Torah. Im ein Torah, ein kemakh. If there is no wheat, there is no Torah. If there is no Torah, there is no wheat. 

But what does this actually mean to us today?

Kemach can be translated as wheat or flour -- basic provisions, so kemach represents the sustenance our bodies need to work, to raise families, to live our lives. It is the stuff that keeps us alive – it is the WHAT.

But Torah. Torah is the reason for, the purpose, the meaning, the embodiment of that survival or existence. If basic sustenance is the WHAT, then Torah is the WHY.

This criss-cross structure is neither a riddle nor a paradox. It’s actually a pretty simple equation. If we cannot eat, we cannot live Torah. But if we are not living in a meaningful way, if we are only eating to survive, if we are not embodying our Torah, what’s the purpose? What is the WHY?

The devastating fire has given us the bitter and painful reminder that nothing is permanent. That everything we took for granted and assumed would always be there, can be ripped away before our very eyes. But Cantor Ruth and Laurence, Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater, RJ Brown, and other amazing volunteers, entered our building while ashes and embers fell from the sky to rescue our most sacred and treasured possessions. In ten minutes, they retrieved eleven Sifrei Torah from our shul. The Torah that we just read was carried in their arms, like the Ark of the Covenant was carried on the shoulders of our ancestors in the wilderness, as they journeyed from place to place.

Right now, it is about fifty hours after losing our spiritual home. Some of us have lost our personal, physical homes as well. The devastation is without expression. No words can really reach or describe what we have witnessed, experienced, and shared over the last few days. The tears, the memories, the loss, the grief – all of this envelops us and sometimes makes it hard to breathe.

But, my friends, this morning, with some of us on Zoom and many of us in person, we are here. Through the graciousness and generosity of our friends at Mayfield Senior School, we were here last night. We are here today, and tomorrow, the same children who stood around that cornerstone, the ones who represent the next hundred years, will be here again. We will sing and dance at minyan tomorrow morning, and another of our students will wrap tefillin for the first time. Our kids will write letters of gratitude to the First Responders, and notes of love to their families and friends. They will create hygiene kits for people in need. They will live their Torah. We will here, and we will be together.

Earlier this Fall, those same children of Limud LBSRS made four magnificent banners – imprinted with their handprints and names – that represented the four seasons of the year. The Hebrew words on the tops of the banners read, “La-kol z’man v’eit” – in every time and every season – “yad b’yad” – hand in hand.

Our beautiful banners are gone – but the hands aren’t gone. The seasons aren’t gone. The Torah that guides them is never gone.

Place – my friends – is not an address or city or continent where budlings stand or where buildings fall. Place – Ha-Makom – is where God dwells among us, within us, and within our relationships with each other.

L’Dor VaDor - From generation to generation: We are here.

Le’olam Vaed – For ever and ever: We are here.

This Shabbat and on the Shabbatot of a million generations to come: We are here. We are here. And we are, say it with me, together.