GAINESVILLE
Look around you for a moment. Really look.
To your left, to your right, in front of you and behind you — there are people who were, not long ago, strangers to one another. Some of you are brand new to Shir Shalom, still learning where we keep the siddurs and which place in Gainesville has the best challah. Some of you have been here a few months, dipping your toes in, wondering if this is truly your place. And some of you — our longtime members — remember what it felt like to sit in those seats, not quite sure if you belonged.
Tonight, we belong to each other. That is what this Shabbat is about.
There is a beautiful and haunting moment near the beginning of the Torah. Hagar, a woman alone in the wilderness, afraid and abandoned, has a profound encounter. An angel speaks to her, and in her astonishment, she gives God a name — a name that appears nowhere else in all of scripture:
אֵל רֳאִי — El Ro’i
“The God Who Sees Me.”
This is very different name than you might expect. God’s name here is not the God who is powerful. Not the God who judges. Rather, it is the God who sees me. Because in that moment of isolation and fear, what Hagar needed most was not rescue — it was to be seen.
I believe that is what most of us need most, most of the time. To be seen. To be heard. To be an authentic part of an authentic community. To walk into a room and have someone know your name. To show up on a hard Shabbat when the week has been heavy, and find a community that holds space for your heaviness without demanding that you explain it.
That is what a kehillah — a community — is for. Not just to fill seats. Not just to sustain an institution. But to be the place where we see one another.
And, these days, that Jewish connection seems especially important.
We are living through a moment of rising antisemitism — in our country, in our world, online and in the streets. Jewish students feel it on campus and in our backyard, even one of the incidents of antisemitism at UF made it on the national news. Jewish families feel it at the grocery store. Some of us have felt the quiet chill of a comment that makes us wonder whether to hide the mezuzah on our door or the Star of David around our neck.
This is not new. The Jewish people has always known the precariousness of the world. Our liturgy carries it — in the prayers we say for those who have suffered, in the Passover seder that insists we tell the story of slavery so we never forget what it means to be vulnerable. Our ancestors knew what it was to need shelter.
And so they built one. They built synagogues. They wrote the Talmud. They built communities even in times where being visibly Jewish was less than safe. And, locally, they built Shir Shalom.
But here we did not build it as a fortress — we are not here out of fear alone. But as an answer to fear. Our synagogue says: you are not alone. When the world outside makes you feel small or endangered or invisible, here — here you are known and counted and here your voice rises with 100 other voices in song, and the sound is greater than any of us could make alone.
“Kol Yisrael arevim zeh ba-zeh”
“All of Israel is responsible for one another.” — Talmud Shevuot 39a
Responsibility. Connection. Mutual shelter. That is the ancient Jewish answer to a world that has not always welcomed us. We turn toward each other.
On this new member Shabbat, I want to speak especially to the new members. You have taken a meaningful step by joining Shir Shalom. But joining is just coming through the door. What is on the other side of the door is what I am really inviting you into tonight.
Come to Shabbat not just on the Shabbatot when something is happening, but on the quiet ones too, when it is just us, just the candles, just the prayers, and the week releases its grip on your shoulders.
Volunteer for the oneg or the community Seder. Be a host or offer to serve on committee. Help set up for a holiday. They may be the mechanical things of a congregation and not especially spiritually elevating, but they are the bones and skeleton of any temple. They are essential and you can be a part of what is essential.
I am inviting the new members, the seasoned members and wanna members to let Shir Shalom be your spiritual home. I mean a real home where you leave your mark, where your presence matters, where your absence is noticed and your return is celebrated.
The Psalmist wrote:
“Ashrei yoshvei veitecha” — אַשְׁרֵי יוֹשְׁבֵי בֵיתֶךָ
“Happy are those who dwell in Your house.” — Psalm 84
Great words. We are happy because we dwell in God’s House, not because we have visited it. Everyone is welcome to dwell here.
We named this congregation Shir Shalom — Song of Peace. And I think about that name often. A shir, a song, cannot be sung alone and be what it is meant to be. A melody needs harmony. Harmony needs other voices.
You are the voices we have been waiting for. Your stories, your questions, your doubts and your faith — all of it belongs here.
And in a world where antisemitism reminds us that we are vulnerable, let us remember that the Jewish people’s greatest strength has never been our smallness or our isolation. It has been this — our stubborn, joyful, ancient insistence on gathering. On lighting candles together. On singing together. On seeing each other.
Welcome home to Shir Shalom. We are so glad you are here.
Shabbat Shalom.
✡
