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June 11, 2022
Author(s): Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz,
Parshat Nasso
June 11, 2022 — 12 Sivan 5782
Find Something Heavy to Carry
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
This past week in the holy city of Boston, a miracle happened not once but twice. On Tuesday and Wednesday nights, Paul McCartney, who is eleven days shy of 80 years old, rocked on at Fenway Park. Fenway was jammed to the rafters, and this 80-year old singer wowed and captivated a full park for two and a half hours. Thirty songs. Did I mention that he is 80?
How does an 80-year-old still have the energy, the charisma, the voice to hold that big of an audience for that long?
How does a performer continue to perform the same songs that he has been singing, some of them Beatles classics like Can’t Buy Me Love, Hey Jude and Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da for 60 years, with fresh energy? Can you do that? Can you do the same thing for 60 years, with fresh energy? Could I give the same sermon for 60 years, with fresh energy? Could you hear my same sermon for 60 years, with fresh energy? How does he do that?
And how does a person weather all the changes he has weathered, suffered all the losses he has suffered, and continue to radiate out energy and optimism and song? One review observed:
The emotional highpoint of the evening was a pair of nods to his late bandmates,
John Lennon and George Harrison. McCartney performed Harrison’s classic
“Something” on ukulele before the full band kicked in, and movingly sang “Here
Today,” a song about the final conversation he never got to have with Lennon who was murdered in 1980.
McCartney’s longevity. His resilience. His ability to still thrill thousands of people with songs new and old—how do we do our own version of that? We are not rock stars, but how in our own quiet way do we still rock on? How do we not lose our energy, our love of life, our love of what makes us us?
The answer, this will not shock you, is found in our Torah portion this morning. At first blush it has nothing to do with Paul McCartney or with us. But in fact it has everything to do with both Paul McCartney and all of us.
The Tabernacle, the mishkan, was portable. It had to be assembled, disassembled, carried, and reassembled 42 times, as the Israelites moved in the wilderness 42 times. Our reading tells of three families of Levites who we would call sacred schleppers. They schlepped the sacred parts of the Tabernacle from place to place. If you are ever playing Biblical trivial pursuit, the names of these families are the Gershonites, the Merarites, and the Kohathites. Each family schlepped different things, but the Torah takes pains to note a fundamental difference. Moses gave the Gershonites and the Merarites carts and oxen to carry their stuff. They loaded the parts of the Tabernacle they were responsible for moving onto carts, and the oxen pulled the carts, and the Gershonites and Merarites supervised. Not so the Kohathites. Because the Kohathites carried the most sacred objects, namely, the aron habrit, the ark of the covenant that contained the ten commandments, they had a different deal: v’livnei kahat loh natan, the Kohathites were not given carts and oxen, ki avodat hakodesh aleihem, they had to carry the holiest objects, bakatef yisau, they had to carry these most holy objects on their shoulders.
For the Kohathites, it was personal. They carried their heavy things on their shoulders. No delegation. No carts. No oxen. Me. My shoulders.
The midrash points out a miracle that happened to and for these hard-working Kohathites who carried the weight of the Tabernacle on their shoulders. Aron nosei et nosav. The ark that they carried, carried them. The ark that they lifted up, lifted them up. The weight they bore made them soar.
This is just so real, so human, so true. Think about the heavy things we all carry.
We carry our elderly parents when they are struggling with the challenges of growing older.
We carry our children as they wander through their wilderness years.
When our loved ones encounter loneliness, frustration, mental illness, physical illness, their worry is our worry, their sadness is our sadness, their weight is our weight.
We are, all of us, modern Kohathites. We cannot delegate this. We cannot find a cart to put it on. We cannot find an ox to carry it away. We carry their worry on our shoulders. It is personal. It is emotional. It is literally on us.
But the midrash is also true. The things we carry carry us. Being present for our loved ones, being a listening ear when they have hard news, absorbing their sadness, invests our lives with meaning.
I don’t know Paul McCartney, but I suspect that the secret to his longevity is this midrash. His love of music, his love of the Beatles, his love of the band, his knack for composition, his ability to perform, his rapport with millions of people in stadiums throughout the world for 60 years, all of that is a heavy thing to carry, but the heavy thing that he carries also carries him and keeps him at the age of 80 eternally young.
Paul McCartney is a rock star. He rocks on. Mazal Tov. But what about the rest of us who are not rock stars? How do we rock on?
That brings us to the special power of the community at Temple Emanuel we celebrate today. Here you can find what the Kohathites found: something heavy to carry which will carry you. Something heavy to lift up which will lift you up.
Let me share with you one example. This story begins in Hazelton, Pennsylvania, in the 1960s, when a woman named Elsie Thau was lighting Shabbat candles in the winter months. Elsie was observant, so she would only light the candles before Shabbat came in, at around 4 or 5:00. But because she could not bear to have Shabbat dinner without candles burning bright, she came up with this idea that would enable her to have her cake and eat it too. Long Shabbat candles. She would light the candles before Shabbat, as required by Jewish law, but because the candles were long, they would still shine bright for dinner several hours later.
Roll the film forward 40 years to the year 2000, and her daughter Sandy Thau is working on our membership committee. How can we warmly welcome new members to our community? Sandy remembers her mother’s long Shabbat candles, and she creates a Shabbat box where she puts those long candles, wrapped beautifully in a bow, together with a match box that says Temple Emanuel Seven Gates on one side, and Shabbat shalom on the other. Our fine usher Brian Lefsky drives around town delivering them in person to the home of every new member. Because we have been blessed to have a steady stream of new members, Sandy has to prepare these long shabbat candles wrapped up in a bow in big numbers. And because she is married to Rick, who only knows how to multiply by 18, she either prepares 9 or 18 long Shabbat candles at a time.
Sandy carries a lot here. She carries the memories of her childhood in Hazelton. She carries the memory of her late mother Elsie. She carries the responsibility of welcoming new members to our community in a tangible way that says we care about you. But the things that we carry carry us. The things that we lift lift us up. Which is why Sandy has been doing this for 20 years.
All of which brings us back to one abiding truth in one of the Beatles’ most famous songs which Paul McCartney sang at Fenway. “Can’t Buy Me Love.” That is true. We can’t. We can only earn it by carrying heavy, sacred things on our shoulders. Shabbat shalom.