Chayei Sarah: ‘Living On’
This Shabbat — Parshat Chayei Sarah — marks the very last service to be held at Temple Emanuel of North Jersey, now of Franklin Lakes, but famously of Paterson. After a lifetime — like that of our Matriarch Sarah — of over 120 years, Temple Emanuel is concluding our earthly congregational sojourn. Our building and property have been sold in a complicated and fraught process, not unlike the real estate transaction undertaken by Abraham with the Hittite community after Sarah’s death. After the fashion of Abraham, this historic ending has been met by many with distress, grief, and tears.
Commenting on our parsha’s eponymic phrase — “Chayei Sarah” (literally “the lifetimes of Sarah”) — Ibn Ezra observes that “the word life (Chayim/Chayei) is always presented in Scripture in the plural; there is no exception.” As I and many in my congregation approach this final Shabbat, we consider not only the 120-plus lifespan of Temple Emanuel. We are properly focused on what comes next. How will our congregation continue to be a source of impact and inspiration into the future? How will Temple Emanuel of North Jersey enjoy what Rabbi Harold Schulweis called “the immortality of influence” — just as our ancestress Sarah and her actions surely continue to speak to us and to impact Jewish life today?
Of course, there are the countless couples married at Temple Emanuel, the innumerable bar and bat mitzvah celebrants, the many thousands of worshippers and students and affiliated members and guests and congregational leaders whose Jewish lives were shaped by Temple Emanuel under my predecessors, Rabbis Roeder, Kaufman, Buch, Panitz, Glazer, Konheim, Kamins, Finkelstein, and Cohen. There were holiday celebrations, social action projects, adult education, youth programming, and so on. Surely, those who were impacted by Temple Emanuel over the past 120-plus years, and those whom they impacted (and will continue to impact) in turn, are one aspect of Temple Emanuel’s “immortality of influence.” They are part of our “next life.”
Over the course of my rabbinic career, I have devoted a great deal of time to researching, writing, speaking, and advocating throughout the Jewish community regarding the preservation of life through organ donation, and its status as a mitzvah of great sanctity and importance. I and many like-minded rabbis have often used the multiple “lifetimes” suggested by “Parshat Chayei Sarah” as an apt Shabbat to discuss this opportunity for selflessness, empathy, kindness, and faithful adherence to Judaism’s exalted virtue of life.
In so doing, I have on occasion cited a poem by Robert N. Test:
“Give my sight to the man who has never seen a sunrise, a baby’s face, or love in the eyes of a woman.
“Give my heart to a person whose own heart has caused nothing but endless days of pain.
“Give my blood to the teenager who was pulled from the wreckage of his car, so that he might live to see his grandchildren play.
“Give my kidneys to one who depends on a machine to exist from week to week.
“Take my bones, every muscle, every fiber and nerve in my body and find a way to make a crippled child walk.
“If you must bury something, let it be my faults, my weaknesses, and all prejudice against my fellow man….
“Give my soul to God….”
It is well documented that bereaved families of post-mortem organ donors frequently experience profound comfort and emotional healing from knowing that their loved one’s final act on Earth was one of ultimate kindness. Comforting, too, is the knowledge that, somewhere, their heart quite literally still beats, their eyes still see, their lungs still breathe though they are gone. In a very real sense, their loved one lives on.
The bereft members of Temple Emanuel of North Jersey can anticipate a similar sense of comfort and healing and justifiable pride. On behalf of my congregation, I have been working for months to find worthy homes for our sacred ritual items. Our Torah scrolls — the beating heart of congregational religious life — will be given a second lifetime by a minyan in Winnipeg, Canada; by Jews serving in the United States military at Fort Polk in Vernon Parish, Louisiana; by Jewish students at Rutgers and Princeton; by boys and girls at Scout camps; by a newly founded congregation in Israel; by the historic Eldridge Street Synagogue, and by others. One of our sifrei Torah was donated several years ago to the Abayudaya, the vibrant and devoted Jewish community of Uganda.
A scroll containing the haftarot will be used by local Solomon Schechter Day School students celebrating bar and bat mitzvah milestones.
Our bimah furnishings — ark, candelabra, lectern, Torah stand, reader’s table — will be installed by a local congregation, where Temple Emanuel members already have expressed their intentions to “visit” them.
Two local congregations will grant our Megillat Esther scrolls an extended life.
A Staten Island congregation will celebrate next fall in the succah that has long served Temple Emanuel.
Our Chumashim will continue to provide insight and stimulation for a small congregation in New Hampshire.
The Chanukah menorah in use by Temple Emanuel since 1915 will burn brightly in the care of a prominent collector.
The contents of our library — books of a holy nature and of more temporal and mundane topics — have been distributed to untold numbers of individuals and congregations and other Jewish institutions, facilitating continued Jewish learning and education, the very life’s breath of Jewish piety and continuity.
This Shabbat Parshat Chayei Sarah, Temple Emanuel simultaneously grieves and celebrates 120-plus years of Jewish life. As in Rashi’s reading of the Torah portion’s opening verses, we take pride in all that Temple Emanuel achieved at the age of 100, at the age of 20, and at the age of 7. We embrace a confident faith that — worthy of “the immortality of influence” — Temple Emanuel’s next life will also be of a distinguished quality. We are grateful to those who will carry on in our spirit.
“If you must bury something,” let it be our faults, our weaknesses, and any prejudice against our fellow mortals.
Give our congregational soul — and your own — to God.
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