I’ve never given a sermon on gates before.
It’s not the sort of thing that happens very often in a Rabbinic career
– that you get to dedicate new gates.
Of course there’s a kind of irony dedicating gates on a day you can’t
see how the click-button, magnet wielding thing works, but trust me if they
look good and work well on a Shabbat and Yom Tov, it’s better during the week.
We’re very happy with them. Thank you everyone who has been involved in
helping fund them.
So, here are some thoughts on gates.
I should say I get that the real reason to build some big gates and
high fences is that we live in an unsafe world. I’m sorry about that. I’m sad
about that. I’m hugely grateful we now are so much more physically secure. But
I’m not going to give a sermon about that. I’m more interested in the religious
idea of a gate.
Actually, there’s a lot to say.
Here’s the opening of a parasha we’ll read in September – Shoftim uShotrim
BChol She-arecha vshaftu et ha-am mishpat tzedek (Deut 16:18) Place judges
and officers at all your gates and judge the people a justice of
righteousness. I love the classic Hassidic reading given to a verse like this –
actually it’s the same reading the Hassidic Rabbis would give to any verse –
what are your gates, they ask. The verse doesn’t say the gates of your house,
or your city, or your place of worship.
Your gates are the exit and ingress points into you – the human being. Places
judges and officers before your eyes, at your ears, at your mouth. Protect and
ensure that there is justice in what you say, what you consume, what you see,
turn your ear to hear that which is just.
It’s a beautiful idea. The gate is not so much the protection from the outside.
It’s the place where we work out how that which is inside engages with that
which is outside. In that sense the glorious flight of poetic fancy that allows
the Chassidic Rabbis to read the verse so radically – so transpersonally - is
actually, not that radical after all. The point of the gate, in that original
verse, Shoftim uShotrim BChol She-arecha
vshaftu et ha-am mishpat tzedek is that it mandates us to act justly.
The point isn’t that the gate stops people from the outside coming in or even
that it stops people inside from going out.
Gates are the way-points by which we express the values by which we
present ourselves to the outside world.
That’s the understanding of a gate that emerges from the word’s most
famous Biblical appearances in the Shema.
Shema Israel, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Ehad … UChatavtem al Mezuzot
Beitecha uVisharecha
Understand[1] this
O’ Israel Adonia is our god, Adonai alone… And write these words on the
doorposts of your house and upon your gates.
Again the point of this writing on gate posts isn’t to protect or divide,
but rather to ensure that we pass through we re-instill our values with us.
Every time we walk past a Mezuzah the idea is that we are reminded of what it
means to hold, as the singular power of the Universe a creator who is beyond knowledge
and description, but a creator who, somehow is aware of us and our actions as
we rise in the morning and when we lie down at night, a creator who demands that
the actions of our heart, our soul and our might are dedicated towards acts of
holiness not only in our own generation, but in the way we raise our children,
both when we are inside in the privacy of our own dwelling and when we are going
along the street.
I’m an Ashkenazi, I wasn’t raised this way and it’s hard for me to
change, but I love and feel a little envious of my Sephardi cousins who, as
they cross the threshold through one gate or another reach up to re-imprint
this commitment, and mark it with a kiss, a gesture of fondness and respect.
A little Halacha – for those who have noticed the absence of Mezuzot on
our new gates. It’s something addressed in the literature – of course it is.
You don’t need to place Mezuzot on your gates or doors unless you sleep in the
property. You don’t need to place Mezuzot on the gates of your office buildings
or Synagogues. So we haven’t – at least not yet.
So that’s the first thing about gates – they are the opportunities to
remind and re-instill in our souls our values as we pass from inside to
outside.
The second thing is that interesting stuff happens at the gate. And
that if you want to understand interesting stuff you should pay close attention
to the people of the gate. You should probably attempt to be one of them.
The haftarah of Parshat M’Tzora is set at Petach haShar – the opening of
the gate. The mighty King, Ben Hadad of Aram has mustered his army against the
Israelite nation and besieged it. It’s a brutal siege, there is desperate
starvation in the city. The head of a donkey goes for 80 shekels of silver so
intense is the hunger. The Israelite King is desperate and sends for the
prophet Elisha, Elisha tells the King not to fret and that the siege would lift.
The King is unimpressed. Meanwhile, BPetach HaShar– at the gate of the city are
four lepers. They are forbidden from entering the city, struck as they are with
a contagion. It’s the lepers who decide to wander into the camp of the fearsome
enemy. It’s the lepers who discover that the prophet Elisha was quite right –
the siege is over. The Aramean camp is deserted. God struck terror into the
hearts of the enemy in their camp and they fled.
The only thing was - no-one in the city realised it. Inside the city
the people were desperate, starving and hunkered down. It took the gate-dwellers
to look beyond the limited horizon of the city-insiders and see possibilities
that those who lived inside the city could never discover themselves.
The Latin word for doorway is limin. The English word liminal expresses
the creativity, the possibility that exists at the gateway. To mix metaphors, the
gate is the place for the canary of the mine. It’s the place to see danger from
afar and the place to see possibilities unknowable from inside. It’s a very Jewish
place.
That’s the role of the gate in the Book of Ester. Mordechai – Mordechai
HaYehudi – Mordechai the Jew, spends his time at the gate. The gate is where Mordechai
hears about the plot to kill the King, the gate is where Mordechai refused to
bow down to Haman. The gate is where Mordechai went in sackcloth and ashes to
call Esther to save her people. You get the picture. It’s where the people with
their eyes open towards the future spend their time.
The second thing is that interesting stuff happens at the gate. And
that if you want to understand interesting stuff you should pay close attention
to the people of the gate. You should probably attempt to be one of them.
Speaking of which, we are keen to expand our cadre of volunteers who
will take their turn on our security rota. Can you give up a Shabbat once a
month, even less often than that, to help keep us safe? It will mean you get to
stand at the gate, which is, as I hope you are getting the sense, a good thing.
The second thing is that interesting stuff happens at the gate.
The third thing is that the gate is a symbol of our wishes for the future.
Shir Hamalot L’David – a Psalm of David, Omdot Hayu ragleinu bshaarayich
Yerushalaim – Yerushalaim habenuyah kir shechubarah lah yachdav.’[2]
Our feet were standing, Jerusalem, O’ Jerusalem the built city, like a
city destroyed but now togethered.’
I know, that’s a horrible translation. That Hebrew resists simple
translation. The point, I think, is that the Psalm records a time when
Jerusalem was destroyed – destroyed by Nebuchanezzer, but then rebuilt and now
come together – yachdav. But it’s not clear, it’s not even clear if the
rebuilding has happened already, or is believed to be rebuilt into the future. The
verse is tricky enough to draw me into a wander into Rabbinic commentary. This
is Rabbeinu Bachya a fourteenth century Spanish commentator[3]
The point, says Bachya, is that there are really two cities of Jerusalem.
One is the very earthly place – Yerushalayim Shel Maata – the earthly centre of
our faith, but a place challenged by … being beloved by many peoples. And the
other is a celestial Jerusalem – Yerushalayim Shel Maala, a place of peace and
gentle ease.
And the verse, Our feet stood in your gates Jerusalem, a city Yachdav
is a prayer for the time when the ease and peace of the heavenly Jerusalem
is fused and becomes part of the earthly Jerusalem. The gate is the place to go
to pray for earthly peace, the place to go to to believe in the possibility of
earthly peace – may it come to us all, and to Jerusalem most especially
speedily and in our time.
The gate is also the place to go to work out how to make peace. You can’t
make peace from fully inside your own dwelling. That’s self-obvious, though I’m
not sure how many of us live out that obvious truth in our daily attempts to
incline the world in which we live towards a more peaceful direction.
Gates are good.
Our gates are very good indeed.
Standing at gates is a very good thing to do.
We should all do more of it.
Shabbat shalom
[1] Rabbi, Lord, Jonathan Sacks is the first I have seen to translate the word Shema as
understand – I think it’s absolutely right. Shema is a command addressed to the
head, the heart and the way we live our life, not the auditory nervous system
[2] Psalm
122 1-3
[3] On
Bereishit 6:6, second comment (thank you Sefaria’s ‘connection’ button!)
וכן
כתוב בפירוש (תהילים קכ״ב:ב׳-ג׳) ירושלים הבנויה כעיר שחוברה לה יחדו, ירושלים
הבנויה למטה כעיר שחוברה לה יחדיו למעלה.
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