Some Boundaries Should Be Crossed - Great Neck Shabbat Project 5775

When I was a little boy, my parents often took my sisters and me on trips and we would all sit together in the car.  Sometimes we got along and sometimes there were, shall I say, interpersonal challenges.

Especially when one of us crossed over the date-line.  The date-line was the term we used for an imaginary boundary that separated one person’s space from another.

Years later, we joked about “crossing the date-line” but at the time, it was no laughing matter.

Boundaries are important.  One of the first things we human beings discover is where we end and others begin. This is my toy.  That’s your toy.  Understanding when “not to cross the line” is crucial. 

One day, I will devote a conversation to the importance of maintaining certain boundaries.  God knows, there are ample instances of individuals – including political and religious leaders – crossing boundaries they should not cross, violating people’s privacy, exerting inappropriate power over those who are vulnerable.  

This morning, I want to talk about the positive benefit that can come from crossing boundaries in a healthy way, from sneaking out of our comfort zones, getting to know people we don’t ordinarily get to know, looking at the world through a different lens than we already do.

The Torah presents at least two models for how we relate to the world.  One is the model of Noah.  The other is the model of Abraham.

Noah escaped from the world.   He took his family, a bunch of animals, built a boat and sailed away.  I understand that God commanded this, and that the world was filled with violence.  My point isn’t to judge Noah’s actions – just to learn something from the optics of him sailing away with a chosen few while everyone else drowned. 

Drawing the ultimate boundary.  On the boat – you survive – off the boat, you drown.

This is an extreme example, to be sure.  But with the Noah model in mind, I want to ask us to consider our impulse to focus on our own – our own selves, our own families, our own friends – and to draw a boundary between the “us” that we define and everyone else. 

God promises never to destroy the world again, at least not through a flood.

Generations later, Abraham comes on the scene.  Different model.  Abraham doesn’t escape from the world, Abraham, following God’s command, engages with the world.  God tells him ונברכו בך כל משפחות האדמה v’nivr’chu v’cha kol mishpehot ha’adama.  All the families of the earth will be blessed through you.

There are many ways to interpret that, but it seems clear that Abraham’s mandate, which he accepts, is to walk in the world.  No escape boat for him.  He has a political life, he fights wars and makes treaties, he negotiates with those within his clan and outside of his clan.

He declares that God is שופט כל הארץ shofet kol ha’aretz, the judge of all the earth, and challenges God to act justly.

He discovers, over time, that his son Isaac as well as his son Ishmael will sire great nations. 

Interestingly, the rabbis, through their interpretive imaginations, intensify the two models.

They say of Noah that he had plenty of time, while building the ark, to warn people of the upcoming flood, and to encourage them to mend their ways, but he didn’t do it.  He didn’t engage.  In his mind, it seems, the boundary had already been drawn.  He worked decisively toward the moment of escape.

Abraham, by contrast, was compared by the rabbis to a flask of perfume.  God didn’t want the perfume to stay bottled up on a shelf.  God wanted the beautiful fragrance to spread far and wide.  What is more transcending of boundaries than an open bottle of perfume?

This weekend, Jews throughout the world are gathering across denominational boundaries to celebrate Shabbat.  Many in the community gathered to prepare Hallah on Thursday night, to welcome Shabbat with services and dinner last night, to enjoy Shabbat celebration this morning, and we are looking forward to a range of activities and services this afternoon and evening as well.

Three individuals in our community - Ferry Sedaghatpour, Asal Rabizadeh and Temple Israel’s VP Rebecca Sassouni identified this opportunity and oversaw a steering committee to bring it to fruition.  Robin Fleishman and Lisa Goodwin co-chaired an extensive Temple Israel committee which conceived and implemented engaging programs to help all of us celebrate Shabbat together.

Clergy from different congregations, from different denominations, worked together to plan sessions.   

In all of this, we coaxed ourselves beyond the familiar, we ventured beyond the usual boundaries, in part in the sense that we “hung out” with people that we don’t ordinarily spend time with, but also in the sense that we considered how much we could stretch ourselves in order to accommodate the needs and wishes of others who may see things differently than we do.

This sort of thing happens a lot at college Hillels, where students of varying perspectives and ideologies manage to figure out how to celebrate Shabbat together and support Israel together.

And wouldn’t it be nice of college graduates, when they settle in communities like ours, would find the same spirit of collaboration and cooperation that they enjoyed when they were in college?

Individual events in our community demonstrate such cooperation, and this weekend has brought it to a new level.

It’s so powerful for people of all ages to see that they can cross the street, walk up the block, head to a park, to be with, sing with, shmooze with, people whom they might otherwise have thought exist on the other side of the “date line.”

And by the way – you can share, collaborate, sing with people from a variety of perspectives and still feel, when all is said and done, that you understand why you view things the way you do.  Or perhaps you may feel different about things afterward.  Or something in between.

What’s it going to be – Noah or Abraham?  Are we going to escape or engage?

Well, ladies in gentlemen, the sermon on boundaries ain’t over until the tall-ish rabbi quotes Robert Frost.  And so, with your indulgence, here is a portion of “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost, written in the voice of someone who routinely went through the ritual of repairing a stone wall that he shared with a neighbor.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall, 
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, 
And spills the upper boulders in the sun; 
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. 
The work of hunters is another thing: 
I have come after them and made repair 
Where they have left not one stone on a stone, 
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, 
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, 
No one has seen them made or heard them made, 
But at spring mending-time we find them there. 
I let my neighbour know beyond the hill; 
And on a day we meet to walk the line 
And set the wall between us once again. 
We keep the wall between us as we go. 
To each the boulders that have fallen to each. 
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls 
We have to use a spell to make them balance: 
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!" 
We wear our fingers rough with handling them. 
Oh, just another kind of out-door game, 
One on a side. It comes to little more: 
There where it is we do not need the wall: 
He is all pine and I am apple orchard. 
My apple trees will never get across 
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. 
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours." 
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder 
If I could put a notion in his head: 
"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it 
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. 
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know 
What I was walling in or walling out, 
And to whom I was like to give offence. 
Something there is that doesn't love a wall, 
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him, 
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather 
He said it for himself. I see him there 
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top 
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. 
He moves in darkness as it seems to me, 
Not of woods only and the shade of trees. 
He will not go behind his father's saying, 
And he likes having thought of it so well 
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours." 

What walls do we need?  What walls are best to climb, or simply to allow to erode?

As we consider Noah and look ahead to Abraham, I ask us to consider what we are walling in and walling out.

I ask us to consider what it feels like to climb a few walls here and there. 

I ask us to consider that there may be more than one way to find good neighbors and to be a good neighbor.

Some boundaries should be crossed.

Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck on October 25, 2014, Parashat Noah