My First Blog Entry: "On Dedication"
This is my first entry into the work of public stream of consciousness sharing. A joyful and serious responsibility to put thoughts into the web that will be retrievable forever. What to share first? It seems clear it should be something embarking from one's "brand. After thirty years in spiritual work, and a long season in spiritual leadership - about what am I known to care? To what am I known to be committed?
The Feast of Dedication is approaching – the Hebrew word for dedication - the quality or act of being set aside for certain purposes - is Hanukkah. I read something long ago that made a deep impression on me in regard to dedication and the kind of perseverance issuing from it. The piece was published in the Russian-language newspaper Rassviet (Dawn) on 22 March 1908. The author was a fireball of clarity named Vladimir Ze'ev Jabotinsky. He was writing to the yordim of "The 2nd Aliyah." Those Zionists who had come to Israel to build the land, lived the challenges in it for a brief season ... and left. They went to Paris, Munich, London, and became "Café Zionists" – people who sat around debating the fine points of Zionist dogma while actual Zionists labored and braved the dangers and hardships of actually living in The Land, and actually doing the work of building the Homeland.
I revisit this article over and over again through the years. It is a major source of inspiration to me - and a major glimpse into the "brand" in which I believe. Jabotinsky wrote:
"If we (Zionists actually living and working in The Land) speak of a personal frame of mind to you I would like to point out one more detail of it: our hardened, condensed, cold mad determination to stick it out on the post the others have deserted and to serve the Jewish cause with whatever is possible - wiith our heads and hands and teeth, with truth and untruth, with honor and revenge, at any price, You went over to the rich neighhbor - we will turn our backs on his beauty and kindness: you worship his values and have left our little patrimony to rot - we will clench our teeth and from the depths of our soul will cry out the the world that every Hebrew-speaking child is to us dearer than anything on earth, wherever your masters may live, from Aachen to Moscow. We will exaggerate our hatred to make it help our love, we will strain our sinews to the very last limit, because we are few, and every one of us has to work for ten others, because you have run away and others will follow you on the same way. Yet, somebody has to remain .... if only we do not break our backs, we shall try to the do job for you as well."
Like the Zionism of Jabotinsky's era, Two Testament (Messianic) Judaism has a road to travel, and in the first years of the third millennium, it is a still a challenging road, not for the faint of heart. Our synagogue in Manhattan, now entering its 16th year, is the longest-surviving Messianic Jewish congregation ever to stand the landscape: in the process we have had great joys and seen great challenges. "There is a wide open door for service, but many adversaries," as the New Testament puts it. Manhattan must be stood. Two Testament faith must flourish here in Jewish space. There is no option. Someone has to do it. We now meet on Park Avenue in the center of the "cathedral district" of the Upper East Side. G-d has done amazing things for us - and we pray we are - and are becoming - the kind of people through whom He may wish to work.
Margaret Mead said not so very long ago: "Never doubt that a small and thoughtful group of concerned citizens can change the world. It is the only thing that ever has." We believe it. And so, here we stand. We are "all in." When G-d lifts His hand on behalf of our People in this place - may it be Heaven's will that we will be the kind of people through whom genuine revival can happen. To this goal, it is my hope that I and all who serve with me can be or become known to be dedicated - set apart - in a state of enduring hanukkah to the purposes of Heaven for our generation.
Shalom.
Rabbi Bruce Cohen
17 December 2008