This Friday night, on Homecoming Shabbat, we kick off our 60th anniversary celebration. Each day this week, a member of our our clergy shares some personal Stephen Wise Temple Moments.
Tonight we begin the celebration of the 60th birthday of the Stephen Wise Temple and Schools community. Rabbi Isaiah Zeldin of blessed memory began the realization of his grand vision of a synagogue community with education at the focus in 1964. Rabbi Zeldin and his spouse, Florence, together with our founding families and then literally thousands upon thousands of others, made this magnificent community possible. Graduates of our schools have gone on to bring the Jewish values at the heart of our educational system into the world as teachers, rabbis, cantors, physicians, attorneys, creators, and entrepreneurs. The world is a better place for this.
One lesson Rabbi Zeldin taught me, both by example and in conversations I was privileged to have with him, is that none of this could have happened without the incredible hard work over many decades of not only “Shy,” but also Florence, as well as devoted staff, clergy, lay leaders, and generous supporters. Rabbi Zeldin saw this as a sacred partnership not just between him and the congregation but with God as well. He once wrote: “I pray to God to give me strength and courage to do my life’s work. God can be my partner in working out my personal and my people’s destiny, but God will not act without the human’s participation and cannot be expected to fulfill the wishes of any person or any people.”
Rabbi Zeldin knew that we would never be successful in realizing our dreams and visions without getting busy with designing, creating, building, and iterating. But in that hard work – countless hours of planning, meeting, fundraising, pastoring and teaching – Rabbi Zeldin experienced God’s presence as well.
I am deeply inspired by this image, this vision of a community coming together for a sacred purpose and becoming God’s partner.
A text from our tradition reminds us that we find not just satisfaction and meaning in the process but joy as well:
Serve the ETERNAL with joy! Come before God with a song of gladness!
עִבְדוּ אֶת־יְהֹוָה בְּשִׂמְחָה בֹּאוּ לְפָנָיו בִּרְנָנָה׃
(Psalm 100:2)
It’s fitting that we begin the next chapter in the Wise story with the opening of Aaron Milken Center this fall. I spoke to Rabbi Zeldin about this project before he died, and it gave him great joy and satisfaction to know that we were continuing to invest in educating future generations of engaged, knowledgeable Jews who will be committed to Am Yisrael, to the highest values of our Torah, and to the holy, and joyous, work of making the world a better place for us and for others.
Please join me tonight for our “Homecoming Shabbat” as we celebrate our community, our founding generation, and the contributions of every person who made it all possible. This Shabbat is also Rabbi Zeldin’s 6th yahrtzeit, so we will find special meaning in our remembering.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Yoshi
