Yom Kippur Shacharit Sermon 5785
Grow Where You Are Planted – How to Love Your Local Community
Imagine the setting. The desert sun rises with a fleeting crispness in the air. The Kohen Gadol – the High Priest – readies himself by immersing himself in a clear, cold pool. His Levitical attendants dress him in silence, meticulously in garb of pure white linen: breeches, a tunic, a sash, a turban. He steps out before the Israelite masses who have gathered under a ripening sky. He gazes upon them; sees the hope and fear in their eyes. He carries the weight of their collective expectations, their vulnerability and frailty. On freshly-washed, unshod feet, he enters the small, dark chamber of the Holy of Holies to seek atonement on behalf of himself, his household and the entire Jewish people.
This is from Parashat Acharei Mot – Leviticus chapter 16 – which is our Torah reading for today.
A surface reading illustrates the fixations and practicalities of this story; the rituals of dress, sacrifice and expiation. It reads like a detailed script for a re-enactment. In fact, that is what we will liturgically do later today, during the Avodah service. If we dig deeper, however, we learn profound lessons on what it means to carry each other, like the Kohen Gadol carried us in ancient times. We will explore the importance of having both a portable civilization and a deep sense of rootedness wherever you are.
In line with our High Holiday theme, ‘Ahavah Rabbah’, ‘A Great Love’, we have been exploring different modalities of love throughout the season. We have looked at the metaphor of a Temple pilgrimage to help us confront grief, loneliness and pain. We expanded the circle to examine the balance of love between the Jewish people and humanity. Last night, we widened the orbit of love further as we have explored God’s love and how to cultivate its presence in our lives.
This is the final chapter, and we will look at the love we hold for our local community. We have come full circle.
This sermon is our love letter to Iowa City. After seven years, this place has become my new home, and deeply entwined with my family’s lives. I feel a little sentimental thinking about it; all the lovely little places I cherish about this town. Hunting for vintage trinkets at Artifacts, walking the smooth hallways of the hospital, hummus at Oasis and Cortado, getting groceries at Hy-Vee or Trader Joe’s and even attending a single – and singular – Hawkeye Game at Kinnick Stadium. I love visiting the university campus and feel deep peace on the winding paths of Hickory Hill Park. What does it mean to root oneself in a place and truly love it?
The High Priest’s Yom Kippur ritual, in a deeper sense, is about place, purpose and belonging too. The Israelites sojourned the wilderness for forty years; no place was ‘home’ and yet every place was. They had a portable home, the Mishkan – Tabernacle. This was their nexus of Heaven touching Earth, the very ‘axis mundi’, or ‘world pole’. The Tabernacle could be easily pitched and disassembled; panels of intricately woven scarlet, purple and sky-blue cloth, implements of silver, gold and acacia wood. We can imagine how Israelite ‘schleppers’ (for lack of a better word) would lovingly wrap up each component in cloth and hide, mount it on beasts of burden and carry it until the next encampment.
Many of us can relate to that transience, and the sheer exhaustion of packing up and moving again. Yet, among the flow of transitions, there is the steadiness of rooting oneself, wherever you are, in hereness, or what is called in Yiddish, ‘doykeit’. Or, in the parlance of the Midwest, growing where we are planted.
For over a hundred and fifty years, this city has been our Tabernacle. Jews have been integral to Iowa City since the election of Moses Bloom in 1873, the first Jewish mayor of a major American city. Agudas Achim Congregation itself dates back more than a century—many of you will remember the centennial celebrations in 2016. Our Jewish population here has always been modest but our contributions significant. Iowa City continues to be good to us. Among the storms raging around us, it often feels like we live in the eye of the hurricane. While the political future is unpredictable, there is no reason to believe that the warm relationship between Iowa City and us Jews should change. Giving voice to our sense of ‘hereness’ opens up new wells of love and appreciation for our home.
Among the many places I love and appreciate, the Bread Garden Market holds a special corner in my heart. Not only do they know to make an excellent cup of Earl Grey (and chocolate croissants), but the Bread Garden has become professionally meaningful too. It has become my synagogue away from synagogue.
Last spring, in 2023, I was accepted in a selective two-year national rabbinic fellowship for mid-career rabbis. The fellowship charges each rabbinic fellow to develop an innovation project. Reflecting on our purpose and place as a Jewish community, I realized that re-engaging the downtown relationships the congregation used to have with the old building was a worthwhile project. We are blessed with this beautiful building in Coralville (God’s gym!) and at the same time, there are many Jews and Jewish-adjacent folks who aren’t served by our location here, for a variety of reasons. We no longer live in an age of Jewish assumptions; where we can assume Jewish continuity without doing outreach; where we can assume Jewish transmission of culture and values without making the case compelling and explicit, and where we can assume synagogue membership without making the case for synagogue membership.
As journalist and researcher Joshua Leifer writes in ‘Tablets Shattered – The End of An American Jewish Century and The Future of Jewish Life’, ‘…the steady drop in synagogue membership in the twentieth century turned into a dramatic plunge in the early twenty first. Over the last twenty years, more than one-third of Conservative synagogues and one-fifth of Reform synagogues have closed.’ In other words, we have to get creative.
At the same time, we live in an age of unrestricted Jewish possibilities—yes, even in these dark and difficult times. It is both a matter of forward-thinking strategy as well as a values-driven proposition to be present at the heart of our urban community. Even in a time like this. Especially in a time like this. This is why ‘public space Judaism’ is the innovation project the synagogue is working with: the idea that, like Aaron’s Tabernacle, we can be Jewish anywhere and everywhere. Scatter seeds and grow where you’re planted.
So, I have been sitting in Bread Garden for the last year, proudly and unabashedly wearing my kippah. I have met congregants, seekers and potential members others for coffee; there were many pastoral conversations. I’ll admit: it felt good to wear my kippah out and about. It allowed me to defiantly snatch some Jewish empowerment out of the maul of this difficult year. It demonstrated to me that yes, here in Iowa City, we get to be publicly Jewish on our own terms, since the days of Moses Bloom.
Our public space Judaism initiatives, or ‘Iowa City Jews’ as per the Instagram handle, have ranged far and wide: vigils, Shavu’ot retreats with all-night learning at a downtown inn, the revitalization of the Free Lunch Program, of which the synagogue has historically been part.
An interfaith Peace Seder, public lectures, a Iowa City Public Library ‘Big Ideas Book Club’, a challah baking session and so much more. And with each encounter and each event, a little of the tension and fear we hold in our bodies dissipates, and local relationships become stronger; whether it is with Trinity Church, the Senior Center or the Iowa City Public Library. It reminds us of our interconnectedness with this lovely place: we love the city and the city loves us. For the second year of my fellowship, I hope to continue building on these achievements and fold them into the strategic planning of our synagogue.
Iowa City is yet again ranked as one of the top small cities in the United States for quality of life and I wholeheartedly agree. I want you to take a moment to lean back and contemplate what you love and cherish here. What made you stay? How does this place impact and shape your Jewishness? And, how can we give back?
While no place is without its problems (or without its anti-Jewish prejudice), Iowa City has allowed us to move through this period with as much tenderness as we could. Shortly after 10/7, the Mayor and I met for support. A few weeks ago, he texted me his blessings, checking in on me. There have been meaningful and important conversations with local officials on how to navigate communal tensions. We have relationships with the churches in our area. The synagogue is part of several interfaith alliances, including the newly formed Alliance Against Christian Nationalism. Not to mention the three excellent Jewish elected officials who represent us well in the State. Among the storms of this world, we are bracing and steadying ourselves. I am reminded of the words of Psalm 29: ‘Adonai oz l’amo yiten, Adonai yevarech et amo vashalom’ – ‘The Eternal gives His people strength, the Eternal blesses His people with peace.’ Confidence and equanimity are braided together. It is through our strong civic relationships that we build peace at the local level.
When Aaron entered the Holy of Holies, he confessed not merely as an individual, but as a member of a collective. The Torah tells us he confessed the sins of his household and of the Israelite community. Reading between the lines, he was invited to be self-reflective. Aaron contemplated the web of relationships that wove him not only to his God but to his people. With renewed resolve, he would exit—with wholeness and with a new vision.
So too may it be for us. Let us reflect on our role in this place. Get involved. Register people to vote. Donate to the food banks. Build relationships with the churches who are fighting the good fight against extremists. Be publicly Jewish. Join the Free Lunch Program. Come to a public space Judaism event. Weave the web of community, sow the seeds of compassion in the fertile Eastern Iowa soil.
And above all, come have coffee with me at the Bread Garden. We have big things to do in our little town. With all our love for Iowa City and Coralville, into the future.
