The best part of my job is getting to make someone feel like the center of the world, even if it’s only for a moment.
Sometimes that means remembering the name of someone’s kid, or where that kid is applying to college. Sometimes it means sitting down with a family and talking about the hard stuff—divorce, sickness, financial hardship. Sometimes it’s remembering the movie someone told me they loved, asking about a recent vacation, or noticing the person at a program who hasn’t quite figured out where to sit yet.
In the Talmud, we’re offered the instruction, “Da lifnei mi atah omed,” or “Know before whom you stand.” Traditionally, we understand these words vertically: remember that when we pray, we stand before God. They are a call to humility, respect, and awe.
But this year, we’re asking what might happen if we also turn those words horizontally. What would it mean to truly know before whom we stand, not only when we stand before God, but when we stand before one another?
For me, this requires that same balance of humility and awe. There’s no person standing before me whom I can’t learn something from, or work alongside to create a better world.
Call me cliché, but the people at Jeremiah are special.
I was told that from my very first interview, but I’ve come to understand what it means through hundreds of small interactions. This is a congregation filled with people who care deeply about this community, not merely as a synagogue or an expression of Jewish identity, but as Temple Jeremiah specifically. Some of us are here primarily for the High Holy Days, others are here every week. There are even a few of you who I’ve joked should start using the shower in Rabbi’s office and take up residence to save on gas.
What’s struck me most is how invested you are in knowing one another and, personally, in knowing me.
You ask about my girlfriend, Rachel, and my family. You remember my interests. Somehow, in a matter of months, congregants know my favorite book and invite me to sports events because they remember how much I love baseball and football.
Though small, the effect is extraordinary.
To be known is a privilege. It’s also terrifying. Allowing ourselves to be known requires vulnerability; we offer pieces of ourselves without knowing how they’ll be received. Getting to know another person asks something of us too: that we pay attention to the pieces they’ve shared in a moment of explicit trust.
Recently, a family told me that the reason they decided to join Temple Jeremiah was because we’d made such a point of getting to know them personally. They saw us take the time to understand the particular learning needs of their children and saw us think seriously about how our programming could adapt to meet them.
They knew that we had seen them.
During Elul, Jewish tradition asks us to perform cheshbon hanefesh, an accounting of ourselves as we prepare for the year ahead. This year, I’m thinking about that accounting relationally:
Who did I make room for this year?
Who made room for me?
Who am I committing to make room for in the year ahead?
Maybe making room means coming to something you’ve never attended before, inviting a friend to the program you already love, or looking around the room for the wallflower who hasn’t yet found their people and saying, “Come sit with us.” (I know we’ve all felt that relief when someone has done the same for us.)
Sometimes it begins by asking someone a question and caring about the answer.
I’m asking these questions of myself, too. My commitment for the coming year is to listen, because I know before whom I stand.
I stand before a congregation of thoughtful, capable, intelligent, and kind people who know this community intimately. You know what Temple Jeremiah has been, what it is today, and what you need it to become next. My responsibility is to help turn what I hear from you into a community where more people can experience the joy of being a member here.
So this Elul, I hope we give ourselves the chance to know the people standing before us, and the courage to let them know us, too.
There’s always room at the table for one more.