By my friend Rabbi Ozer Glickman z"l who recently passed away, suddenly and tragically
ועשו לי מקדש ושכנתי בתוכם
I returned to the city of my birth last Shabbos as the guest of a shul there. The
community had invited me to serve as what we call in גוזמא לשון a scholar in residence.
My presentations weren't very scholarly and two nights on a pullout bed can hardly be
called residence. It was nevertheless very special. Just blocks from my boyhood home in
Northeast Philadelphia, and together with my sister, her husband, children and grandchildren,
I experienced a rush of memories of the sixteen years of my life in that city before
my childhood ended with the loss of my father .
On Sunday morning, my nephew drove me to Wynnefield where I had the opportunity
to deliver a shiur b'iyun to serious b'nai Torah and then visit with the Kaminetsky
family both with the saintly Rebbetzin 'שתח at home and with her son Rav Shalom
Kaminetsky in the famed Philly yeshiva.
It has been almost forty-three years since I last stepped into that sacred place. It
was smaller than I remembered but much warmer. Exchanging words of Torah with
Rav Shalom was an immense privilege and an immeasurable pleasure.
Sitting with Rav Shalom, it wasn't פרק המניח את הכד ,the גירסא דינקותא with which I
struggled in that very room, that crept into my thoughts. It was a poem I learned with
my Hebrew teacher at Gratz College that year, Mrs. Balfoura Held: לבדי) Alone) by
Haim Nachman Bialik .When I thought about it later, it seemed sacrilegious, at least
at first. Bialik laments the deserted בית מדרש ,narrow and dark, where the שכינה huddles
in a darkened corner. The poet senses himself alone under the broken wings of the
Shekhina. It was once surrounded by flocks of birds who have flown away toward the
light outside. He senses himself a fledging, for he too will be borne away like the wind.
As Philadelphia receded in my rear view mirror, I wondered why Bialik came to
me. I feel more at home in the בית מדרש than I ever have. I am surrounded continually
by younger minds with fresh enthusiasm for the gemara that animate me. And
yet there is a palpable sense of solitariness that afflicts a man of a certain age and perhaps
those of other ages as well. I feel it particularly in places in which I have not been
for some time.
In the command to build the מקדש in Parshas Teruma ,the nation is charged with
preparing a separate place designated for Him so that He may dwell among בני ישראל.
The end of the פסוק is unexpected: the מקדש is constructed not so הקב"ה can dwell in it
(בתוכו but among them בתוכם . A physical locale cannot contain a non-corporeal Entity.
When the people coalesce around that place, however, the שכינה is present.
Our lives are constructed not around place but around the people who dwell together
with us in them. The tragedy and the promise of our lives is that there is an ever
changing cast around us. On the long drive back to Teaneck, I thought about the people who made me what I am today whom I first encountered in Philadelphia.
And so it was for Bialik:
בָּדָד, בָּדָד נִשְׁאַרְתִּי, וְהַשְּׁכִינָה אַף-הִיא
כְּנַף יְמִינָהּ הַשְּׁבוּרָה עַל-רֹאשִׁי הִרְעִידָה.
Alone, I was left alone, and the Shekhina as well,
Her broken right wing trembling over my head.
When we lose the people who define our world, the Shekhina is, כביכול ,diminished and
we feel abandoned and alone.
כֻּלָּם נָשָׂא הָרוּחַ, כֻּלָּם פָּרְחוּ לָהֶם,
וָאִוָּתֵר לְבַדִּי, לְבַדִּי...
They all were borne by the wind, flown away,
and I remain alone, alone...
But there are new people who come in their place: sons, daughters, and grandchildren.
The המדרש בית fills every year with new faces and new songs of Torah. And sometimes I
catch a glimpse of my mother in a daughter's smile, my father's laugh in my own at a
son's antics, the words of my teacher in the questions of my student. The שכינה grows
fuller when my place fills with those who share the brief episode in time alloted me on
this earth and the pain of loneliness recedes.
שבת שלום
