Rabbi Cohen's Installation Drash at CBST

Last week as we stood together to bring in this New Year I could not quite believe how fortunate I am to be able to be here, two years exactly since my first drash at CBST on Shabbat Shuva 5761. There have been many moments of Shehechyanu towards my arrival here. And for someone who has already been here for two years, it was quite a ride. I have so much gratitude for everyone who had a hand in the process. I am humbled by the hugeness of the work that we do here and excited at my future with you.

First and incomparably I want to thank Rabbi Kleinbaum for being the teacher and mentor, and now colleague, that I never even knew I could hope to have, and for shepherding all of us through this search process. I thank Rabbi Young, whom we all miss a lot, who has taught me so much and who continues to teach me, even from across the ocean. I also want to thank Rabbi Margaret Moers Wenig, who has also been a great teacher of mine. I am grateful to Mike Vine and the entire CBST Board of Directors for welcoming me with open arms, and to Amos Gil for his hard work and his particular dry humor. And to my two former co-Cooperberg-Rittmaster Rabbinical Interns David Dunn Bauer and Tracy Nathan who both made the trip to be here tonight. I especially want to thank the members of all of the search committees over the last three years. You brought me here.

I also really want to thank Joyce Rosenzweig and so many members of the CBST Community Chorus who, despite the time of year and the long hours they have spent practicing and singing these weeks, have come tonight to lift us up in song. I want to thank each of you who is here tonight. All of you have been my teachers. And you should know how many people have come here tonight to see what all the fuss is about. Here tonight are former employers and supervisors, former students, friends from every stage of my life, some of whom are here for the first time tonight, many of whom will be making the long trek up Ninth Avenue tonight. And my family: my mother—the first Jewish feminist I ever knew, my father—the first person I saw dedicate his life to creating the change he believes in. And my sisters, Maya, Tamara, and Gwynn, who are my inspiration for all things.

I first came to CBST almost ten years ago, and returned almost every year for the family pilgrimage festival of Pride Shabbat. As most of us know, on Pride Shabbat CBST welcomes the new Cooperberg-Rittmaster Rabbinical Interns and ushers out the old ones (when the system works). I remember one service, one of the first I ever attended at CBST. At that service I watched the Cooperberg-Rittmaster Rabbinical Interns being welcomed— among them a certain Roderick Young, and I thought to myself, "I want to do that. I am going to do that." It was before I had even started rabbinical school, before I was even sure I wanted to become a rabbi. But I knew I had to do it. I had to come to CBST.

It has been said that there are few things more difficult to pronounce than "Cooperberg-Rittmaster Rabbinical Intern Ayelet Cohen." While we are all still trying to get used to it, I have seen more than a few looks of sheer relief at the ease with which "Rabbi Cohen" rolls off the tongue. But I must say I was sad to give up the title after two years. I will forever be thankful to Bill Fern for his unparalleled generosity in endowing and sustaining the program that first brought me to CBST and every year helps to create rabbis who will leave here to do such transformative work in the world. It was a tremendous honor to carry the names of Lou Rittmaster, who I have had the pleasure of getting to know a little bit, and of Irving Cooperberg, z"l. While I never had the opportunity to know Irving, I count him as one of my most important teachers. His amazing wisdom, which I have learned through Rabbi Kleinbaum and from others here who knew him, seems to be everywhere in this Kehilla Kedosha, from the chairs in which we sit to the spaces we inhabit to the deeply and uncompromisingly Jewish way we fill these holy spaces with meaning and pride as gay men and lesbians, bisexuals, transgendered people, and straight allies.

People ask me often why I want to be at CBST. As a straight woman, as a Conservative Rabbi, why a gay synagogue? Why CBST? Some people really want to know. Some people think they already know the answer. Some are so convinced that they know that they don't even bother to ask. "She couldn't find another job." Some people have said that I like to make trouble in the Conservative Movement, which may be true, but is hardly the foundation for a career. And some people are sure that they have figured it out: "Her sister is a lesbian." Oh, that makes sense! But that is only part of the story.

My first memory of being in shul is of Kol Nidrei in Jerusalem when I was three or four years old. My sister was grown up - six or seven. I remember the Orthodox shul in Jerusalem. The women were upstairs, the men were downstairs, and the kids were outside. This was back before everything in Jerusalem was paved and developed, and if memory serves, the area around the shul was an uncultivated woody area with thorny bushes and rocks. The way it worked is that the Imas (the mothers) would make little sakiot, baggies of goodies to get the kids through the long services. And of course, our Ima made up the best sakiot of anyone. One little boy wanted my sister's sakit. And he chased her around the shul, through the brambles and over the stones, until she tripped over a root and fell and cut her knee. I remember seeing my big sister lying there on the ground, bleeding. And I was terrified. I went into the shul, scared and tiny among all of the tall men in their white tallitot, to get the Abas (the fathers) to come outside and help.

Part of the reason I wanted to become a rabbi in the first place and a Conservative rabbi in particular is because I want to help transform the Jewish world so that its values catch up with its rhetoric and so that moral leadership is really moral. And to be honest, I don't want to let other straight people off the hook. Straight people who happen not to have a lesbian sister or a gay uncle or a transgendered child too often think they can just sit back because it isn't their problem. It's not about having a gay sister. It's about each of us doing the work we need to do to repair this world. In particular I want to single out my colleagues and friends Rabbi Danielle Upbin, Rabbi Bill Plevan and soon-to-to-be-rabbi Tracy Nathan, who are doing the work to transform the Conservative Movement and make it so we can one day un-ambivalently and proudly say that we are graduates of the Seminary and Conservative Rabbis.

But this too is only part of the story. Because what is the point of making a community inclusive if it is so spiritually empty and intellectually undemanding that no one cares if they are chased away? CBST is a great synagogue. What we do here is a model for Jewish life in the 21st century. We are serious, we are engaged, we know how to have a good time. We love learning and davening and asking questions and singing. We are creating the answers to halakhic and spiritual and liturgical questions that other communities have been afraid to even ask. This community, this shul, is so important to us that we rage and we hurt, deeply, when it is not giving us what we want. Not one of us has to be here. It isn't automatic. It isn't expected. It isn't easy. We have sought this place out and we demand that it meets our needs and we make it so.

This is a place where people want to come to learn and daven. With all due respect, forget Tamara. This is a shul that my sister Maya—not the famous lesbian—actually likes to come to. And so it is a place where I want to be.

Look at us. We are so blessed to have this level of spiritual leadership, to reach the heights that we do in tefillah, to have this sense of community, and to be led in community by the people who give of their time and their resources to make this place possible.

Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav taught that each person in the world has at least one speck of goodness. Each person in a community, no matter how difficult or complicated they may be, has a speck, a dot, a nekuda, of goodness, some unique quality that belongs to no one else. I look around here tonight and see each of you, and I look beyond these walls to see all of those people who could not be here tonight but had a hand in making this possible, each of you with your own nekuda, your unique gift. Reb Nachman taught, that a community is each of these nekudot, each of these literal dots, laid out on a piece of paper, so that each dot can be read as a musical note and together they make up a piece of music. And that is the tune, the niggun, the musical anthem of a community, composed of the nekudot, the unique gifts, of each of its members.

I thank every one of you who has helped me find my nekuda and I thank each of you here for inviting me to add my nekuda to the score of this community.

I look forward to the music we will make together.