Rosh HaShanah: Confirmation Service

Sermon by Rabbi Jason Klein
2020/5781

Charge to Confirmands

Shanah tovah, everyone.

Earlier this week, in a very quiet Temple Israel, I put on my face mask and traveled to the floor we affectionately call the Lower Level, and visited the consecration class photograph of 2009, 5770, which you likely saw at the beginning of this service. I struggled a bit. It was easy to pick out Darcy standing alongside you, Shiri, your kindergarten teacher, and our clergy, but it was harder for me to recognize most of your faces right away. Luckily I had Wendy and Abby’s help and I started to see more clearly—Gigi’s stance, Robert’s smile, Melinda’s face. And now, eleven years later, some have gone and some relative newcomers have arrived. I am grateful that you are all here.

You started this afternoon echoing a long-time Temple Israel custom in virtual space. Since you could not pass actual sifrei torah, Torah scrolls, to one another, peer to peer, symbolizing a more adult relationship with Jewish tradition and values as you make your way through adolescence, you shared lessons from this summer, a summer with a bit of a quality of the Passover seder: “Why was this summer different from all other summers?”

The Torah portion that we read next Shabbat is called Ha’azinu, It is the last before Simchat Torah, Moses’ final song of warning to the Israelites before they would cross the Jordan into the land of Israel and he would finish his 120 year life on earth. There is a curious scribal tradition for Ha’azinu. Ordinarily words in the Torah might look something like this:

This is the very beginning of the Torah, Bershit barah, in the beginning, God created, written in a style that appears to be prose. You might also be familiar with a different scribal tradition in the Torah, the tradition of scribing Shirat Hayam, the Song at the Sea, in a different way. The Israelites have escaped Egypt, have crossed over the Sea of Reeds, and are now singing out their joy. 

It has been noted that the way the song is written may resemble two sides of the sea parting with our ancestors crossing in between. The text is both separate and yet connected.

This week’s Torah portion is different; it also appears in verse but in two mini-columns:

Why? Jhos Singer (in Torah Queeries) notes that it is as if at the Song at the Sea there was the beginning of separation—presumably from slavery in ancient Egypt, shown in the scribal tradition; in Ha’azinu, that separation is even more dramatic. There is a column of empty space between one column of text and the other. A whole generation of slaves has died in the 40 years in the wilderness; practically the entirety of the book of Deuteronomy, the last book of the Torah, is Moses’ warning to the people that the stakes will be higher now; the people will be more accountable in their own land, they will be more subject to outside influence as well. How separate are the columns? How wide is the space? Have the parents taught their youth the best lessons they were taught by their own parents growing up? Will the youth remember the lessons of their parents? Will there be a chasm between generations? 

We celebrate Confirmation in the middle of your teenage years to acknowledge that, in the words of Sharon Shorofsky Mack, separation is a lifelong journey. There are likely some ways in which you all may feel a greater sense of independence in and even from your family of origin that you did at the time of your b’nai mitzvah, but you are still a ways off from being further from home in that way that the post–high school years may bring. Confirmation celebrates your ongoing choice—to be engaged in Jewish community, to act Jewishly, and to grow in our faith, our doubts, our hopes, and our dreams.

About a year ago, you all came together; some had known each other since kindergarten or even nursery school; others just met in Minda Hall on Temple’s Lower Level. And in lots of ways, by sharing highs and lows, talking about Jewish tradition from kabbalah to contemporary music, reflecting on your own growth, half of you traveling to our nation’s capital and lobbying for what you cared about, reintegrating with the rest of the group, and transitioning to this world of remote learning and connection, you have become, in your own way, a kehillah, a community within a larger community.

“Yesterday was history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift. That’s why they call it the present.” Today is a gift. You are all together in a way that was unpredictable a year ago—intellectually and emotionally so connected, even when physical togetherness is different. You have likely spent more time in person near your parents and your siblings than you might have imagined these past six months. Perhaps sometimes this is challenging. But it is real. It is the present. It is the moment. It is a gift. That’s why we call it the present. 

Scene after scene in the controversial and thought-provoking Netflix series “13 Reasons Why” reveal adult after adult who somehow just don’t get it. We as the viewers maybe see something obvious about a child who is struggling, about a teenager who is distressed. And somehow these adults appear somewhat oblivious to some obvious cues and clues, leading to a variety of complicated, painful, and tragic consequences for these teenagers.

You are a group who gets it and continues getting it more and more, understanding each other, who appreciates—each of you in your own way—when people show up for you and when you have the opportunity to show up for other people. These six months and now the time ahead, I believe, has provided you opportunities to grow with your family and grow yourselves that you may not have had in other circumstances, and I hope you will feel like a great blessing in the long run. I believe you will. Sure, you have still had to learn a certain kind of independence, a kind of resilience, but you have also learned to connect and reconnect to others near and far in whole new ways, ways in which I believe will come to serve you well in the long term.

You continue to grow in a world that needs you. Sometimes there seems like a gap, like in that Torah reading next week across the generations—sometimes generations talk past one another, you know—all the stuff the “hey boomer” jokes are made of. But the reality is that the generations are intertwined, like the scribal image of the Song at the Sea, the Israelites crossing—one generation entangled with the next. The world as your parents’ generation has shaped for you and that you have found has been wonderful in so many ways—miraculous ways that are hard to count, but it is also profoundly broken. This year of being reawakened to the global climate crisis, and this has been a year—and I believe we are only at the beginning—of re-understanding the American story as one of deeply seated racism that has needed to be undone for hundreds and hundreds of years. We want you to be connected to us like the Song of the Sea, but I hope you will also find the breaks in the columns when you need them, because sometimes the world needs something brand new, and we are depending on you to get us there.

I know Abby, Wendy, all our clergy and your teachers join me in saying we look forward to continuing to learn and grow with you.

Shanah tovah and mazel tov!