Prior to last week’s Rosh Hashana service, the last time I set foot in this sanctuary was in 1971, a half century ago.  Powerful images of Temple Beth El from my boyhood still reside in the chambers of my mind.  I visualize the temple as a place of grandeur, with congregants housed beneath an ornate domed ceiling rich with relief and painting.  I smell the shellac and wood polish applied to the sturdy, well-hewn benches on which my brothers, parents and I sit.  I hear Rabbi Hertz’s resonant baritone and wafting organ and choral music.  Hundreds upon hundreds of Jews are observing the high holidays – singing, praying, kibitzing – in the heart of Detroit.

It is wonderful that blacks and Jews alike now again make use of this sacred space.  But the past, our past, pricks at us here, doesn’t it, as we confront the scars of time?  We wrestle with the implications of the exposed wrought-iron rebar in the ceiling and the holes in the plasterboard above us.  

I lack even armchair expertise on anything scientific but, as part of my personal search for God, I like reading about the Big Bang and the fabric of our cosmos.  So, I’ve picked up a thing or two about what physicists call thermodynamics, or energy transfer.  Its Second Law dictates that a force called “entropy” increases over time.  This means there is a natural tendency for things, anything really, to degenerate – to become more disordered and diffuse.

I suspect the Second Law of Thermodynamics has exerted itself on the metropolitan Detroit Jewish community and has not been kind.  Our numbers have decreased in recent decades.  Over that period, we scattered from our urban core.  We migrated in a northwesterly direction, far away from Central and Mumford, the high schools from which our parents and grandparents graduated.  We effected a regional diaspora that has seen architectural and spiritual jewels like this building abandoned to generations past.

But fortunately, entropic decay is not inevitable.  It can be stemmed.  Theoretical physicists know entropy can be countered by gravitation forces that cause matter to cluster.  This is how galaxies, stars, planets, and life develop.

The Isaac Agree Downtown Detroit Synagogue has its own gravitational force, albeit one that is spiritual and communal.  That force is growing stronger by the day.  It is helping our Jewish community coalesce and form into a more cohesive whole.  I believe it can staunch the tide of entropy.  

In 1921, we put a stake in the ground in Detroit.  For the entire last century, we’ve stayed put.  Other shuls traveled farther and farther away from the urban center where Jews planted roots.  But not us.

What has kept us here, I believe, is an appreciation that we Jews cannot forsake our past.  We remember and remain part of, and give back to, the city that birthed our community, that gave us our identity.  We sense that a people that lacks a geographic center is not whole.  It stretches itself so thin that it ultimately becomes shapeless.

Our increasing numbers reflect that the gravitational pull of the downtown synagogue is stronger than it has been in many decades.  I know that firsthand, because I happily have been swept up into its orbit.

As a still new board member, I love that the synagogue embraces me fully, tightly, as someone with a strong Jewish identity but who is not observant.  I know to a moral certainty I will not be admonished here as I was at my family’s prior synagogue for mistakenly wearing my tallit upside down.  I love the warmth and wisdom of our wonderful rabbi.  I love the synagogue’s haimish-ness.

I love the compelling vision that has animated its major $4.5 campaign to renovate the synagogue.  That vision is to create a space in the heart of downtown where Jews (and Jewish organizations) can have a top-notch, welcoming place to pray, gather, work together, and build on our historical legacy in Detroit.  I love the fact that, because of the downtown synagogue’s dynamic leadership, this vision is being fully realized:  In just the last few months, word of the transformational project has been heard.  It has excited, inspired, and touched hearts and minds.  We have now raised more than $4.3 million, just $118,000 shy of our ambitious goal.

And what do I love most about the Downtown Synagogue?  I love the diversity (of thought, of background, of age, of skin color) that I see and hear at our board meetings.  I love that the synagogue is pluralistic and egalitarian, that everyone counts, that no Jew is a lesser Jew, that everyone – everyone – is welcome.

The fact that our members do not pay mandatory dues is a powerful testament to the values we hold dear.  But it, of course, also creates challenges that we must overcome together.  We serve 1,000 people each year, a number that is sure to further increase when our renovated building beckons:  Come.  Home.  Be part of our collective history.  Be part of a city that defines us and adds resonance to our lives.

Is it not incumbent on each of us who values the downtown synagogue to do what he or she can to fund its annual $560,000 operating budget?  Whether you can annually give $56, $560 or $5,600, we will cherish and be deeply thankful for your gift – a gift that will help make not only our synagogue but our entire Jewish community whole.   Please consider giving on this Day of Awe.  In making this request, I close with a portion of the Haftarah reading for Yom Kippur, which is from Isaiah, Chapter 57, Verse 12.  Through repentance, through prayer, through tzedakah: 

Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;

You shall raise up the foundations of many generations;

You shall be called the repairer of the breach;

The restorer of streets to dwell in.

L’Shana Tova.