Dedication Invocation by Professor Deborah Lipstadt

Mizmor shir hanukat ha-bayit l’David….Haphacta mispedai l’machol.

A Psalm of David: A song for the dedication of the House: You have turned my lament into dancing… and girded me with joy. [Psalm 30]

We gather to celebrate the dedication of this house, built with stones from Georgia and those from Jerusalem, a house many of us here have longed for for decades. For too many years Emory Hillel made do with the most modest quarters, quarters which made it exceptionally difficult for it to serve the Jewish community at this great university.

Now our lament has been turned into dancing and our hearts are filled with joy. It is not, of course, just a new building that we inaugurate today. Of far greater import is what such a facility will make possible throughout the campus. This building will enable the Hillel community to enhance the already great contribution it is making to the life of this campus. Students who never set foot in this building will benefit from it.

It is not by chance that we dedicate this house on Sukkot, a festival which marks the fall harvest and the coming of the cold harsh days of fall and winter. We observe this festival by building flimsy structures which, though they make take many different forms, all share one characteristic: impermanence. They are temporary dwellings. A strong wind can easily tear off their roofs.

Going out into the sukkah represents as an act of faith. Just when it would make sense to pull inward, to gird ourselves for the coming cold winter winds, we emerge from our sturdy homes and enter the Sukkah. We do so with the faith that we will be safe under God’s protective canopy. The Sukkah’s fragility speaks to the fragility of our own lives which are so often buffeted by the unpredictable.

Well aware of that fragility and uncertainty, our hearts today are filled, not just with joy, but with a prayer that God will protect and shield and strengthen the hands of all those who have worked tirelessly to make this building a reality.

These indefatigable workers have yet another task in front of them: transforming this magnificent building into a living breathing organism, an organism that replenishes those who enter its welcoming doors even as it is replenished by them. We pray that the One who Makes Peace in High Places will bless them and protect as they undertake the next phase of their work.

So in a spirit of celebration, hope, and gratitude and with the knowledge that our lives are as fragile as the sukkah and in continuous need of being sheltered in God’s embrace let us together recite a prayer which will also conclude this ceremony.

It is a blessing in which we not only express our gratitude to God for having given us life, sustained and brought us to this day but in which we pray that God will continue to sustain us as we work together to help Emory’s Jewish community and the university as a whole go, in the words of the Psalms, m’hayil l’hayil from “strength to strength.”

Together let us say: Baruch ata Adonai elohenu melekh haolam shecheyanu, v’keyemanu, v’higiyanu la zeman ha zeh. Blessed are you Sovereign of the universe who has given us life, sustained us, and brought us to this magnificent moment.