Parshat Vayeitzei, December 3, 2016

It’s wonderful to be back in Sacramento after my trip to the east coast, and I look forward to spending Shabbat with you. This past Shabbat, I was at the Jewish Intentional Communities Conference, attended by over 100 Jews of every denomination as well as Jews of no denominational affiliation, from America and Israel. On Shabbat at the conference, participants chose between three different services – Orthodox, Conservative, and Renewal, after which we all came together for kiddush and a meal.

Among the conference attendees were representatives of Makom, a federation of 14 different networks of Israeli social justice mission-driven communities. Their constituent organizations include both religious and secular organizations, right- and left-wing organizations, and ethnically based organizations representing Russians, Mountain Jews, Ethiopian Jews, and Druse. What unites them all in spite of different interests and ideologies is a shared project of building communities committed to social activism, education, and service.

At a time when divisions between rich and poor, Jew and Gentile, Israel and the Diaspora, right and left, religious and secular all seem to be growing ever wider, it was heartening to see so many good people of widely different backgrounds and worldviews coming together to learn with and from one another over the course of Shabbat.

In Parshat Vayeitzei, we read about the births of 12 of Yaakov’s 13 children. Yaakov’s children represent the first generation in the Torah, in the history of humanity, when an entire generation of children was able to share their inheritance together. Until this moment, in each prior generation, siblings either went their separate ways, establishing their own identities, or else lived together under the dominance of a chosen “first-born” heir. Among Bnei Yisrael, there is no chosen “first-born” who carries on the lineage alone, there are no unfavored offspring who are banished or who live subservient to the heir. This shift in practice represented a fundamental tikkun, a corrective to the history of conflict among siblings.

It seems to me that pluralism, which might appear to be a new phenomenon in the Jewish world, is in fact rooted in our heritage as the heirs of the twelve tribes. When we encounter those whose views and practices differ from our own, we have three choices—we can stay away from them and exclude them from our community, we can try to make them like us, or like the twelve tribes, we can find a way to live side by side, honor the differences between us while also seeking common ground.

Makom and the Jewish Intentional Communities Conference represent beautiful examples of this approach, and our community here in Sacramento represents another. While at times it may be challenging to build community among people with different worldviews and ways of life, the religious, cultural and political diversity of our community are in fact something to be celebrated. When we succeed in doing so, we are not only increasing peace in our own community, we are creating the conditions that will hasten the coming of the Messiah.

May we here in Sacramento, continue to build bonds of friendship, love and community among people of widely differing beliefs and practices, and in doing so, may we help bring closer the ultimate redemption.

Rabbi Garth Silberstein