Our Eternal Bond (Shabbat Nasso)

Shabbat shalom! It’s so great to be with you. As I arrive at this, my final Shabbat with you all, I’m reflecting on what a privilege it’s been to serve as your rabbi and chaplain over these past five years.

As rabbi, you might think I only learn from our tradition – but the most powerful learning I’ve done has actually come from you, as you’ve demonstrated, again and again, how this community connects us to one another in the deepest of ways, through good times, and bad.

Our holy objects represent how we are bound to each other, and to something vaster than any one of us: when we don a tallis, its fringes remind us of the invisible ways we are joined together; the mezuzot on our doorposts symbolize God’s steady presence when we come home, and when we leave.

*

Usually on Shabbat, I talk about Torah, the holiest object we have at Orchard Cove. But tonight I want to talk about the second holiest object that rests in the halls of our community. The second holiest object at Orchard Cove is not stored in an ark, nor is it a classically Jewish object.

You can see it when you come off the elevator on Skilled Nursing. A quilt. Beautifully crafted with vibrant colors and patterns. If you look more closely, you’ll see ribbons tied into buttonholes along its edge, names and dates written on each one.

Above the quilt, too high to read, a plaque describes how this object was created by the staff at Orchard Cove. It explains:

The individual squares in the quilt represent our residents. The quilt border demonstrates a community by the way it holds the squares together. All parts of Orchard Cove embrace one another to create a whole.

This quilt, like other holy objects, reflects the ways we are connected to each other, and to something bigger. Though I have not personally witnessed this moment, I understand when someone passes on the Skilled Nursing Floor, this quilt is used to cover their body and escort them from Orchard Cove. The bright colors and white ribbons momentarily join this person to all those who came before them, and those who walk alongside them.

*

Our tradition tells us, after those we love depart from us on the physical plane, they are connected to a larger wholeness called tzrur hachayim - the bond, the ties, of life. On one level the people who depart from us are gone. But on another we are all still mysteriously bound to each other and to the Source of all Life.

As I get ready to say goodbye to this community, I sense the many ways you all have become a part of me, as perhaps, in some small ways I have become a part of you. The ways we have connected, in times of grief and joy, on holidays and in ordinary moments – all these precious memories are a part of us now. 

We have become a part of tzrur hachayim together.

Thank you all for welcoming me into this community, and allowing me to be in your lives. It’s been such a privilege. This final Shabbat together, may we each feel the ways we remain – even in moments of transition – tethered to, supported by our Life Giving Source, and through it by all those who came before us, and will come after us. Amen.