The deceased had three sons, now in their 60s and 70s, and one is an architect; an architect who built synagogues.
It had me thinking about the verse Tasu Li Mikdash v’Shechanti Botocham - Make for Me [God] a Sanctuary and I will amongst you.
The verse contains a disjunct
God wants a building
NOT to dwell in the building – for God does not dwell in buildings – but rather
so God can dwell in people - us.
People can be dwelling places for that which cannot be seen or directly experienced in a way that buildings cannot. For buildings are ultimately ... just buildings, and humans are refractions of the divine encoded into flesh - we are vessels for experiencing.
But the way humans experience, so often, is by encountering buildings, specifically buildings that are designed to infuse and
encode into us the sensibilities woven into them as they were built.
And I was
thinking about all this in the context of this bereavement – a matriarch who had
passed away whose greatest act of building in life was that of a family, not of
a literal building, but a figurative one – a figurative building into which she
wove her values, values which infused her sons, her grandchildren and great-grandchildren
even as they couldn’t be with her; trapped, as they were on the other side of
the world; trapped, as she was on the other side of the veil that separates the
living from the dead.
Of course, it’s not only architects who build. It’s not even only the engineers and the plumbers and the plasterers and the painters.
Each of us, in our varied
professional encounters, and personal encounters, we are all building as we go.
Forgive me, this simile might not work for many of you – but we are all avatars
in Minecraft pumping out construction before us at every turn.
What if we
were to accept ourselves as building-creatures, always building everywhere we
go, always building spaces which embed within those who encounter them the very fabric of the
values and norms with which we erect the buildings that survive our disappeared
presence?
The human life
as a life of building.
Actually, it’s
not a new idea.
The end of
the first Masechet of the Talmud Bavli, Brachot ends with a Rabbinic re-reading
of a verse from Isiah.
Brachot 64
אָמַר רַבִּי
אֶלְעָזָר אָמַר רַבִּי חֲנִינָא: תַּלְמִידֵי חֲכָמִים מַרְבִּים שָׁלוֹם
בָּעוֹלָם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״וְכׇל בָּנַיִךְ לִמּוּדֵי ה׳ וְרַב שְׁלוֹם בָּנָיִךְ״. אַל
תִּקְרֵי ״בָּנָיִךְ״ אֶלָּא ״בּוֹנָיִךְ״.
In the original, the prophet suggests that our children,
studying about God make for more peace in the world.
In the re-reading Rabbi Chanina is reported to say, don’t
say, ‘your children,’ but rather ‘your builders’ – not Banaich, but Bonaich. The Rabbi conflates the human with the builder, for we are, surely, one and the same.
I’m reminded too of almost the last reported words of Abraham
Joshua Heschel, the great Rabbi of the last century. In an interview just
before his death, in 1972, Heschel gave this instruction.
‘Above
all,’ he insisted, ‘remember that the meaning of life is to build a life as if
it were a work of art. You are not a machine. Start working on this great work
of art called your own existence.
Heschel’s nephew is a member here, of course, and an architect. Perhaps that’s not a coincidence. Of course it's not a coincidence, nothing is ever a coincidence.
So, what if we were, truly, to see our existence as a great work of
art, a building, a building that through our actions and our inactions, shapes
and structures the way that those who came into contact with it would be
lifted, or crushed, by that interaction. Build a life with holiness and
dedication, and we’ll successfully code into those we encounter, holiness and
dedication. Build a life with love and we code into those we encounter love.
This is the end of the Festival of Pesach, we are standing here at a Yizkor service. And I wonder if the reverse
is true. When we think of those we have loved and lost, what is the building
they have left behind? It’s us, touched, shaped, borne, of our parents’ great
acts of creation. But it’s also the other shapes we see around us when we
reflect on what our parents, and those we have loved and lost have left as
their markers still, on the other side of their passing.
What are the
values and the coding of their Mikdashim? How are we to detect their
encouragement to us to live up to the standards of holiness that their life
built around us?
We’ve been
in darkness, and now we are emerging.
We’ve been
in Egypt and now are in the wilderness.
We’ve been
in lockdown and now we are in – whatever it is – Step 2 stage B.
It’s a good
time to build with the intent of inspiring in those who will wander into those
buildings holiness, love, the values we would wish to survive us.
And it’s a
good time to reflect on the buildings that have formed us, left by those who
loved us and formed us. What are the markers of these buildings that we wish to
allow ourselves to feel are truly of them, and in so doing, we make their
memories a blessing.
Chag Sameach
--
Photographs are the work of Stanley Saitowitz, http://www.saitowitz.com/
In honour of Zelda Saitowitz of blessed memory
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