Rabbi Yochanan said: One may only pray in a house with windows, as it is written, “In his attic, there were open windows” (Daniel 6:11).

–Berachot 34b

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The sun was setting as we began Neilah, the concluding service of Yom Kippur.  I thought to myself, “These high holidays may be the strangest Jewish holidays I have ever been a part of.”  Because of the pandemic, I spent every service of these high holidays standing in one spot, ten feet away from the four other service leaders and behind plexiglass.  The five of us were the only ones in the sanctuary.  The rest of the congregation was online.

 Beth Tikvah’s sanctuary has huge windows that look out on the trees around the synagogue.  As we started havdallah, I saw something moving by the trees.  I turned my head and saw three of our board members standing outside, looking in at the sanctuary from the windows.  In the next five minutes, a dozen more board members joined them.  They were masked and standing apart.  Each person was holding a havdallah candle, their hands wrapped around the tiny flame to shelter it from the breeze.

Looking at the faces of our board members and the faces of everyone in their own little windows on Zoom, I knew that we had achieved our goal of building community.  Though we may be distant right now, we are not apart.

**

I was twenty-two when my mom died.  She had lived with a terminal illness for many years, but her death was still shocking.  In the days after she died, my family’s rabbis helped us plan her funeral.  On that Thursday morning, I woke up after a fitful night of sleep, put on the outfit I had picked out, and prepared myself for one of the hardest days of my life.  As I walked into the synagogue with my dad and sister, I reminded myself how important it had been to my mom that we had not only a strong connection to our faith and heritage, but also to a religious community that would support us through our grief.

When we took our seats in the sanctuary, I took a moment to look around at the community that had come together to support us.  The floor-to-ceiling windows at the back of the sanctuary flooded the room with light.  Through my tears, I could see friends from all parts of our lives.  These friends had traveled from all over the country to be with us as we buried my mom.

Whenever we walk into a synagogue, we are invited to remember the gift of our community’s presence, especially in our darkest moments.

**

 The windows of Beth Tikvah remind us to look out and feel the presence of our community.  The windows of my childhood congregation remind us that windows help light our spaces so we can see who is gathered there.  I believe we pray in a place with windows for two reasons: first, so that we can look out at the world when we pray, remembering that what we do inside the synagogue should impact our lives outside the synagogue, and second, so that people can look inside the synagogue and see us.

Windows to the world remind us to look out and to ask: Who is on the outside because they are not yet a part of our community?  Who is suffering and how can we alleviate that suffering?  I believe that our prayers are a call to action.  Our job is to rise up from our prayers inspired to build a more just, more compassionate world for all of God’s children.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in his ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail,’ writes to his fellow clergymen about the problem of inaction.  He writes that he fears that the greatest stumbling block to freedom and liberation is not the Ku Klux Klan or the White Citizens Council, but rather the men and women who choose to do nothing in the fight for civil rights.  King offers a harsh reprimand of white churches and synagogues who have “remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of the stained-glass windows.”  Beautiful windows can lull us into thinking that the synagogue is a separate space from the rest of the world.  However, even the most beautiful stained-glass windows should remind us to look out and connect to the world around us not despite our Judaism, but because we are Jews.

If someone were to come to our sanctuary and look in, what would they see?  My hope is to be part of building a community full of warmth and vitality, a place of meaningful Jewish education for all ages, a synagogue where prayer and action live side by side.  I want someone to see people of many ages, races, genders, and family structures sitting together in joyful community.  I hope they would see a group of people who are connected not only to their texts and traditions, but to each other.

The rabbis of the Talmud teach that “one may only pray in a house with windows.”  They explain this requirement by using a verse from the Book of Daniel.  When Daniel prayed, which was forbidden where he lived, he prayed in an attic.  He had installed windows facing Jerusalem in that attic.  For Daniel, looking through a window during his prayer was about longing, hope, and looking towards the future.  Like Daniel, we too have hopes for our Jewish communities and the world.  What kind of Jewish community and world do we want to create?  Windows in our sanctuaries remind us to look out and to look within.  We inhabit sanctuaries and synagogues when we are in them, but those spaces also inhabit us and help shape us into the people we want to become.

I believe that Judaism serves a purpose: to give us the tools to build meaningful lives, communities, and societies.  We are obligated to be in relationship with each other and with the work of building a better world.  As a rabbi, I will be committed to being a teacher for everyone in my community.  I promise to be present with people at baby namings, b’nei mitzvah, weddings, and funerals, and all the moments in between.  I seek to lead a community with compassion, vision, and humor.  As I think about formally entering the rabbinate in a few months, I am honored and humbled to take on the title ‘rabbi.’