blogs/rabbigoldberg

As I look back personally on the past year this Rosh Hashannah, one theme that emerges is being a guest. This has been a year full of transitions for me, and many of those transitions involved time away from home in new places. I had my monthly pulpit in Woodbury, CT, staying in a hotel there once a month to serve as that small community's rabbi. I traveled to quite a few synagogues around the country that were looking for rabbis, including here at KTI, and usually stayed in the home of a congregant I had just met.

Then, there was everything related to my wedding, including bachelor parties, multiple aufrufs, and a 2 week honeymoon in Oregon. And even once I started here I commuted from the city for the first three weeks. With all of that, I was away from home almost every weekend for a good five or six months. I even stopped bothering to unpack my toiletries from week to week.

I got good at being a guest through sheer practice alone. I learned to bring gifts for my hosts, and my own reading materials so they wouldn't have to entertain me on long Shabbat afternoons. I learned to both respect my hosts' privacy and also be open to letting my hosts get to know me. I learned that, far from being a burden, my hosts generally were very happy to have me and to provide whatever I needed to feel comfortable.

It's a tricky thing, hospitality. In a narrow sense, hospitality refers to the act of feeding or lodging guests in our home, or do those business that do so at scale. But it also speaks to our essence as human beings: taking care of others as an expression of our values and commitments, and being taken care of in turn. As the restaurateur Danny Meyer writes, “Within moments of being born, most babies find themselves receiving the first four gifts of life: eye contact, a smile, a hug, and some food. We receive many other gifts in a lifetime, but few can ever surpass those first four…. it's not much of a surprise that we'll crave those gifts for the rest of our lives. I know I do. ”

Meyer, however, observes that even as someone who feeds others for a living, his business is about much more than providing good food at an economical price. Hospitality, whether personal or professional, is not merely about the act of filling someone's belly or giving their head a place to rest. “Business, like life,” he writes, “is all about how you make people feel. It's that simple, and it's that hard. ” Hospitality, he suggests, is ultimately about creating a memorable experience, where a guest feels attended to and taken care of. It's about making someone feel important and welcome. These are feelings that can be elicited whether what's on offer is a slice of pizza or a steak dinner, a pull-out couch or a luxury suite.

The prophet Isaiah tells us, “Look to the rock you were hewn from, To the quarry you were dug from. Look back to Abraham your father And to Sarah who brought you forth,” (51:1-2). We follow the prophet's advice on Rosh Hashanah when we read the stories of our most ancient ancestors. At the beginning of this year, we consider our beginnings as a people, the qualities that distinguished us from those around us. In Jewish tradition, Abraham and Sarah are considered the paragons of hospitality, of the mitzvah of hachnasat orchim. They got this reputation from a specific incident in their lives that the Torah records just before the passages we read on Rosh Hashannah.

Abraham, who is already 100 years old, is recovering from his own circumcision and sitting at the entrance of his tent. Even in that situation, he seems eager to be on the lookout for any potential guests who might come by. Abraham is in the middle of some kind of Divine vision when, sure enough, three visitors come his way. Abraham puts God on hold, as it were, and rushes to greet the three visitors. “My lords,” Abraham pleads with them, “if it please you, do not go on past your servant. Let a little water be brought; bathe your feet and recline under the tree. And let me fetch a morsel of bread that you may refresh yourselves; then go on�"seeing that you have come your servant's way” (Genesis 18:3-5).

The visitors agree to be hosted. Abraham rushes back to his tent (remember, he had just be circumcised at 100 years old!) and he works with Sarah to prepare a lavish meal for their guests. After they eat, the guests prophesize that a year from now, Sarah and Abraham will have their own long-awaited soon, whose birth we read about on Rosh Hashanah.

Abraham's act of hospitality becomes even more striking when we consider the ancient context in which he lived. In Abraham's day, people generally did not travel for pleasure. Anyone on the road was either traveling for trade or fleeing a dangerous situation. Furthermore, the roads themselves were dangerous, full of bandits, wild animals and dangerous climates. Abraham had no idea who these guests were, but he did know that it was his duty to host them.

Perhaps Abraham's own experience of leaving behind everything he had ever known to go on a long journey made him more sympathetic to the needs of travelers. So he jumped at the chance to host people in need. He lived up to his name as Abraham the Hebrew, ha'ivri, which means the one who crosses over boundaries. He and Sarah eager crossed over the boundaries that separate private from public, family from stranger. They responded with compassion and generosity in a climate of fear and suspicion.

From this incident, where Abraham makes God wait so he can run to help travelers, our ancient rabbis determine that “hospitality toward guests is even greater than receiving the divine presence” (Shabbat 127a). If Abraham could interrupt his encounter with the Divine to attend to the needs of strangers, then doing so must be extremely important.

Perhaps what this really means is that hospitality itself is a way of encountering God. Our tradition teaches that God is too powerful for us to encounter directly. But every person is created in God's image, and through our acts of hospitality, through taking in another person into our lives, we can indirectly encounter God (Maharal, Chiddushei Agadot on Shabbat 127a). This is why our sages list hospitality as one of the commandments that has no upper limit. There will always be more opportunities to extend hospitality, and each one can be a way to encounter God.

Hospitality is also a religious virtue because it is a way that we can imitate God. One 17th century rabbi (Shelah, Parshat Vayeira, Ner Mitzvah) comments that, in a sense, we are all guests of God. God brings us into this world and provides the materials necessary to meet our physical and other needs. We stay in this world for a time and then move on. So, when we host guests in our own home, we imitate God's hospitality of all creation, and fulfill the commandment to walk in God's ways.

This kind of hospitality as a religious virtue is characteristic of Abraham and of the Jewish people, his spiritual descendants. The Talmud records that in ancient Jerusalem, it was customary to spread a cloth over the entrance of a house to signal that a banquet was in progress, and that any guest was invited to join in (Bava Batra 93b). And all throughout Jewish history, communities would make different arrangements in order to take care of the needs of travelers.

Saying Kiddush over the wine in synagogue on Friday night is a remnant of this practice, when travelers would stay in synagogue buildings for Shabbat and take their meals there. In my own travels across the Jewish world, I have benefited from Jewish hospitality from Paris to Chattanooga, from Jerusalem to Ho Chi Minh City.

That same section of the Torah about Abraham also gives us a counter-example of what the absence of hospitality looks like. Two of Abraham's three visitors continue on their way to Sodom, a place that God has already decided to destroy on account of its wickedness. Abraham's nephew Lot offers them hospitality, showing the same concern for travelers' welfare as does his uncle. But Lot's neighbors are outraged at this show of hospitality. They form a mob at Lot's door, demanding that he bring out his guests so they can assault them. Not exactly the most hospitable people.

In rabbinic thought, Sodom becomes the model for stinginess and the lack of hospitality. The people of Sodom didn't see any reason to give up any of their wealth to a traveler or anyone else in need (Sanhedrin 109a). Their philosophy, as Pirke Avot says, was “what's mine is mine and what's yours is yours” (Avot 5:10). From that perspective, hospitality makes no sense. Why would I ever let a stranger eat my food, drink my wine, sleep in my bed? Better to keep it all for myself. One commentary even says that the leaders of Sodom made it illegal to help people in need (Pirke deRebbi Eliezer 25:8). Given all this, we should not be surprised that even ten righteous people could not be found in the city. Any society can be assessed on how its treats its most vulnerable, including people passing through in need of hospitality.

While it usually doesn't reach the level of Sodom, our world today can also be a place lacking in hospitality. Jewish educator and synagogue guru Ron Wolfson, in his book The Spirituality of Welcoming, warns about the decline of hospitality in our society and its impact. He writes, “We are in danger of losing the art of hospitality. We don't welcome strangers anymore; we are afraid of them. We don't invite people to our homes anymore; we entertain at restaurants or clubs. We don't greet people on the street; we avoid them. We don't even answer our phones without checking caller ID to see if it is someone we know or want to talk to. When we lose the art of hospitality, we lose a part of our souls. ”

As Wolfson reminds us, the frenetic pace of contemporary life makes it easy to ignore the people around us, whether they are strangers or even people we know well. But modern realities only exaggerate what has long been part of human nature: the tendency to associate only with people we already know and to limit our generosity to that group. This starts on the grade-school playground and merely changes form as we age.

We certainly don't have to like everyone. But we can push ourselves to get closer to Abraham's example of running to greet and share with someone new. We can continue to offer hospitality even if it is not, or cannot be, reciprocated. As Rabbi Michael Adam Latz suggests, welcoming guests “is a spiritual practice that requires discipline .… We all naturally like to spend time with people we know and who know us. For many of us, meeting new people can be challenging. That's exactly why this is a holy obligation: We surrender to the great spiritual ethic of empathy and compassion, kindness and welcome. A vision of the world as it should be. ”

A recent initiative in the Jewish community called OneTable has taken this ethic of hospitality to heart. The organization funds and empowers young Jewish adults to host Friday night Shabbat dinners. They provide individual coaching and what they call “nosh-pitality” events that train people in the practical skills of hosting a dinner. The organization describes a ladder of hospitality, which begins when someone who does not usually mark Shabbat attends his or her first Shabbat dinner. More dinners follow, and then a person eventually hosts a meal through OneTable in their own home for their friends.

But the top of that hospitality ladder, the rung that is the highest embodiment of this mitzvah, is when someone hosts a dinner for strangers. A person whose dinner goes on the OneTable website and pretty much anybody can sign up to attend. Having strangers in your home is a moment of vulnerability. Safety concerns aside, having a new group of people share Shabbat together could result in an unpleasant experience or a bad group dynamic. But it also holds transformative potential, for people who never otherwise would have met to come together, share good food, and experience something new. This is the kind of hospitality that Abraham showed and that our tradition calls on us to practice.

What would it look like if we more fully lived out hospitality here at KTI? It starts by how we treat each other here in the synagogue. This is a well-established, tight-knit community. Many of you have been here for many years and basically have your friends within the community. And that is great! But there is no upper limit to how friendly and hospitable we can be. Everyone in this room was once new to the community, and I'd bet that part of the reason you are here is because someone once welcomed you with a friendly smile and warm hello. Those little things really matter. They put new people at ease and they are a concrete expression of our deepest values.

So, let's practice. I mean it. In a moment, I want you to find someone sitting near you who you don't know. Introduce yourself and say shana tova. Let's try it. [Wait 30 seconds.]

See, that wasn't so hard! What if we all made it a habit to always introduce ourselves to someone we don't recognize? The positive feelings would be absolutely infectious.

But our hospitality need not end at the synagogue door. The next step is bringing people into your homes. This allows us to get to know each other in a deeper way through sharing a meal. I intended to model this in the coming year by having as many of you as possible as guests in my home. The synagogue has given me a hospitality budget, and I'm not afraid to use it!

I'm sure some of you already host other KTI people in your homes. For others this would be new. This Rosh Hashanah, this new year, I want to challenge all of us to do this more often. Yes, it requires vulnerability to offer or accept an invitation when you don't know the other person that well. But the depth of our relationships with one another are the lifeblood of this or any community. And we can get there through hospitality.

Yes, there will obstacles, other priorities, the inevitable social dynamics of any group. But with trust, care, and generosity of resources and spirit, we can overcome these challenges. We can cross the boundaries that separate people just like Abraham and Sarah did. If we do, if we engage in holy hospitality, we will touch and be touched, and become more whole as individuals and a community.

The Chofetz Chaim, an influential 19th and 20th century rabbi, took the commandment of hosting guests very seriously, even dedicating a chapter of one of his books about it. Once in his old age, he hosted a young student in his home. The elderly rabbi made a point of making the guest's bed himself, bending and stretching his tired arms to spread out the sheets and blanket. The watching student felt guilty that the old man was going to all this trouble just for him. “Please, let me help you!” the student cried. The rabbi replied, “You will do no such thing! Would you put on my tallis for me? Pray for me? This commandment to welcome guests, like those others, is on me to fulfill. ”

More than any scholarly wisdom the rabbi taught that student during his visit, the student learned how to make someone feel at home and that their presence is not only tolerated, but cherished. All of us have this ability. May we in the coming year be privileged to use it.