Home Shalom Monday Message #21

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“Without synagogues and houses of study, the Divine Presence will depart from the world.” Midrash ha-Gadol Genesis 27:22

Rabbi Abba bar Kahana said, “There is no greater philosopher among the nations than Avnomos Ha-gardi. The nations gathered before Avnomos and asked, ‘Can we overcome Israel?’ He said to them, ‘Go and see what is happening in their synagogues and houses of study. If you hear the sound of children humming there, you cannot overcome them. If not, you can overcome them. That is what the Patriarch Isaac meant when he said, ‘The voice is the voice of Jacob.’ Whenever the voice of Jacob is humming in houses of study, the hands of Esau have no power.” 

So too Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai taught, “If you see cities that are desolate in the Land of Israel, know it is because they did not support the schools there. How do we know this? Because the prophet Jeremiah said, ‘Why is the land in ruins, laid waste like a wilderness with none passing through?’ God replied, ‘Because they forsook My Torah which I had set before them.’ (Jeremiah 9:11-12) What did the evil King Ahaz do when he wanted to drive God’s presence from the world? He destroyed the synagogues and houses of study, thinking, if there are no school children, there will be no adult students, if no adult students, no disciples, no disciples, no Sages, no Sages, no Torah, no Torah, no synagogues and houses of study. Without synagogues and houses of study, the Divine Presence will depart from the world!” Midrash ha-Gadol Genesis-Toledot 27:22

The true strength of the Jewish people lies in the voices of children and adults who continue, even in our own time, to study Torah and the ethical and moral teachings that Torah represents. When we no longer study the sacred texts of our tradition so that every generation can know how it touches and inspires our lives, the ideas and ideals that matter will cease to exist and so then will our religious civilization itself. What might the world be like if we saw this as a personal challenge each week to find one idea, one text, one teaching that will remind us that what we say matters, that what we do matters and that who we are matters? If these ideas and teachings remind us of who we really are, of the difference that each one of us can make in the lives of others, they just might change the world itself.

Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben, Home Shalom and Naomi Ackerman, The Advot Project