God Prefers Broken Vessels: Message From Rabbi Gartenberg 5/6/05

“God is not like a king of flesh and blood who uses whole vessels and throws away those that are broken. God prefers broken vessels, as the Psalmist declares: ‘A broken and contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.’” (Ps. 51:19) Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg

Moriel loved Havdallah ever since he was a little boy. He focused in on the flame of the candle and delighted in the smell of the spices. He gulped down the grape juice and moved with the songs. From the earliest age Mori showed an enthusiasm for the ritual moment. As we discovered Mori’s autism, we became more and more aware of the restrictions of his condition. As he grew older he would have to move into special environments to accommodate his disability. His social oddities, his physical perseverations, his strange gestures, his otherworldly droning made him more and more separate from the rest of the world. His condition forced him into a separate classroom, a specialized home, a highly routinized existence. As this process took place over many years, I noticed that one very important area remained open for Mori to participate with others-the ritual realm of Jewish life.

Mori loves the tastes of a seder or the singing at a service, or the flame at a Havdalah, or the blast of a shofar. They seem to offer an alternative to the routine. These unusual moments focus his attention. It was Moriel’s love of Jewish rituals that inspired me to dream of a program called Shaarei Tikvah-Gates of Hope. The idea behind this program was to bring the richness of Jewish festival gatherings and ritual moments into the lives of persons with special needs and their families. In partnership with the Jewish Family Service we created a series of festival celebrations for persons with special needs and for their families. This initiative led to four beautiful experiences including a Rosh Hashannah Service, a Hanukah celebration, a Purim Megillah Reading, and a Passover seder. Each of these moving occasions reminded me of certain central teachings in Judaism about how we relate to others and how we connect to God.
These programs are not meant only for people with special needs and their families. Our hope is that people in the community will join us and celebrate with us. We want people with special needs to have an honored place in our community. We seek to reduce their estrangement and isolation.

There are five Jewish values that inspired me to create Shaarei Tikvah. The first is the notion of that we are all made in God’s image-btzelem elohim. If we truly believe in this principle we need to practice it with those who often are the most marginal and hidden in our society. By sharing our tables, our holy times together we confer honor and dignity to those with special needs. At these occasions when we praise God together, we all acknowledge our common standard of dignity.

A second value that inspired Shaarei Tikvah is the Hachnasat Orchim-or welcoming the guest. This is considered one of the basic acts of loving kindness-Gemilut Hasadim for which there is no limit. Hospitality is the quality of generosity, of sharing our bounty with others. It is the giving over of physical resources-food and temporal resources-time to give value and attention to another. Hospitality is a critical dimension of community, for through it relationships form, grow, and become real. To be hospitable to people with special needs is particularly important because in some cases they do not know how to reciprocate.

The third value comes from a rabbinic teaching that we should greet people with a Seber Panim Yafot-a kindly face. Disabled people often face strange reactions from others. A kind and friendly face makes a person relax and feel accepted. In Judaism, the sacred meal is a gathering of people who sit Panim el Panim-face to face. It is over a table that people’s faces are most significant and their smiles and joy most impactful.

A fourth value is gleaned from Maimonides who distinguishes between the simchah shel creiso and the simchah shel mitzvah, the joy of the stomach and the joy of the mitzvah. We can gather for our celebrations to feed our bodies, or we can gather at our tables to celebrate the fulfillment of God’s command. To share our ritual occasions and our sacred gatherings with those with special needs is to make the focus the sharing of a mitzvah experience. Everything is elevated into something more special, more significant. Simchah shel mitzvah is the capacity to transcend our selfishness, to connect to others, and to sense God’s presence in our finite lives.

The final value of Shaarei Tikvah is Havruta-fellowship. Most of us do not have the opportunity to cultivate fellowship with those who are disabled. They and their families are often isolated because of the special requirements of care and attention. But we have an imperative to reduce estrangement for those with special needs. In reaching out we fulfill the commandment of Loving our fellow as ourselves. (Lev. 19:18). One of the goals of Judasim is to instill humanity within each of us. We can only do this by discovering the humanity of the other, especially the other who is more remote, harder to connect to, but fully human.

I hope that people in our community will help Shaarei Tikvah to grow and will participate as partners and celebrants in these beautiful celebrations which bring so much joy to all and bring close those who had been far.