“We now keep the door locked 24/7. It’s sad, and it was a hard decision,” Rabbi Mike Rothbaum told our group of 18 or so Harvard residents visiting Congregation Beth Elohim in Acton, Tuesday, Sept. 10, through the auspices of Arm in Arm. It’s a scary world today, he said, and the more we can understand our similarities and show love, the better chance we have of making things better.
When the all-volunteer group Arm in Arm was formed almost three years ago in response to hateful graffiti on the Bromfield rock, its mission was exactly that—to help educate people to similarities among people of different races and religions in order to create understanding that leads to respect and inclusion. This trip followed a visit last June to a Hindu temple in Groton. Both that temple and this synagogue are set far back from the street and surrounded by trees.
After a warm welcome, Rabbi Rothbaum asked us to take a moment to observe our surroundings, suggesting that a physical house of worship tells a lot about the religion’s core beliefs. I noticed the simple, clean lines of the room, the neutral tones, and the pendant lights. The seats formed a horseshoe around a central raised area with a platform. Someone mentioned a flame motif. Another noted the large Hebrew words on a front wall. Rothbaum told us they are from the story of Jacob seeking the ladder to heaven, and they signify that this synagogue is a house of God. On the back wall are numerous plaques for members of the congregation who have died, and a light on the plaque is illuminated on the anniversary of their death.
Carlene Phillips, Sarah Saleh, Mary Jane Ellison, Nate Woolcock, Mina Levitsky, Faith Cross, and Sharon McCarthy listen to Rabbi Mike Rothbaum as he reads from the Torah. (Courtesy photo)
But the real focus of attention is a large cabinet at the back of the raised area with writing etched on its opaque glass doors. It was lit from inside, and I could discern some objects in it. Rothbaum told us the cabinet, also called an ark, holds varying sized scrolls, each a Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible that contain the history of the Jews and the laws of God as given to Moses. Each copy is handwritten on kosher parchment, the skin of a cud-chewing and cloven-hoofed animal.
Rabbi Rothbaum invited us to gather around the platform. He asked us to face forward and to remain silent as he lifted a large scroll from the ark. He removed the cloth covering and rolled out the smaller end of the scroll. Reminding us that Hebrew is read from right to left, he found a passage about Noah and read to us in Hebrew, translating as he went. He explained that a portion of the Torah is read at each service.
Being a person
“Jews are supposed to do PR for God,” said Rothbaum. He read from the words of the Torah etched on the door of the ark: “In a place where there are no people, try to be a person.” A “person” in this case is a “mensch,” a good man, said Rothbaum. A good man follows holy obligations, or mitzvahs, to God and to fellow man as summed up by Moses in Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the Old Testament and the Torah.
As we talked about some of the mitzvahs, it was clear that they reflect values fundamental to all religions. There are obligations to God, such as prayer, loving goodness and hating evil, and for Jews, keeping kosher. Obligations to another person include honoring your father and mother and being kind to others. There are also some differences in emphasis from one religion to another, and often these seem based in history.
For example, Rabbi Rothbaum talked about the idea of treating others with kindness. He pointed out that in Christianity, the word “love” in “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” refers to “charity” from the Latin word meaning “to care.” For Jews, the mitzvah is more specific: Based on a Hebrew word for justice, Jews are obligated to show fairness to the poor. Rothbaum said this sense of social justice for the poor and the stranger stems from the history of Jews, who were sent out of Israel and enslaved by the pharaohs. He said Jewish people are told to care for the outsider because Jews know what it was like to be outsiders themselves.
Believing, behaving,
belonging
Rabbi Rothbaum described three states: believing, behaving, and belonging. For a Jewish person, belonging comes first. The Jews are a people; they belong to the nation of Israel and they are a part of its history. For Christians, Rothbaum said, believing comes first, and he referred to the gospel words, “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son . . .”
Belonging to the nation of Israel, what we do is “we raise up holiness,” said Rothbaum. He went on to explain that the words “we will do and we will hear” was the response of the Israelites to Moses when he gave them the laws of God, suggesting they would do first and only then “hear”—understand and believe the why of what they were doing. I found it interesting to think about how it matters which comes first, belonging or believing.
Jews have a 2,000-year-old tradition of discussion, said Rothbaum. (“Put two Jews together and you’ll have three opinions,” a Jewish person in our group joked, and Rothbaum nodded and laughed.) He said Abraham was the “father,” the first Jew, and even Abraham questioned God, asking whether it was wrong to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because of the innocent people who would die.
The Talmud, which is far lengthier than the Torah, is the collection of textual discussions of Jewish scholars over the ages. Rothbaum interjected that there is a kind of symbolism in the opaque glass of the ark doors—like seeing the Torah through the lens of rabbinic interpretation. While we were looking at the Torah, Rothbaum called attention to the words, “Noah was a righteous man in his age,” and he described the written discussion of this text by different rabbis over time: Do those words set Noah forth as exemplary or does “in his age” suggest that he’s exemplary only relatively—compared to others living at the same time? Was he righteous because he saved himself, or does saving himself and not others make him unworthy of being called “righteous”? But what about the fact that all the other people were corrupt? Although Rothbaum had earlier made a joke about rabbinic discussion, I was persuaded that this discussion is important in trying to understand what it means to be a good person, even though the Talmud gives no definitive answer.
Justice, truth, and peace
I, and I know others, learned new things about the Jewish religion, and I was reminded of the many fascinating and instructional stories of the Old Testament, as men and women struggle to be better people. Rabbi Rothbaum was warm and open, funny, and inspiring. His wrap-up words to us were: “Judaism seeks justice, truth, and peace.” How can we not all find common ground in pursuit of those principles?
