Gscene magazine wrote the following report 31st December 2011:

Director of Allsorts LGBT Youth Project, Brighton, awarded MBE

Jess Wood, founder and Director of Allsorts LGBT Youth Project based in Brighton, has been awarded the MBE in the 2012 New Years Honours List announced today for services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and young people.

Allsorts was set up in 1999, when Jess was an artist and volunteered as a mentor with young people in care. The young trans lesbian she was supporting had nowhere to go to find friends or get support. So Jess, with James Newton, a youth worker, set up the project at the Young People’s Centre, Brighton.

The project leapt in size in 2000, when the Diana Memorial Fund gave them a grant of £200,000 to develop services for isolated and vulnerable lesbian and gay young people. It is now one of the largest LGBT youth projects in the country, winning Most Inspiring Youth Project in UK by Creating the Future Awards in 2008 and Stonewall’s Best Community Project in 2009. Allsorts have just won the SE region in the Vinspired national youth volunteering annual awards.

Allsorts runs a weekly drop-in and support groups for trans young people, GBT young men, LBT young women, LGBT under 16s, and A-sorted health and well-being programmes. Young people from the project lead workshops in schools to combat homophobic, bi and transphobic bullying which still accounts for a quarter of all bullying incidents in our local schools. They also create powerful and colourful LGBT youth resources like posters and books about their experience which are disseminated across the UK.

Before she set up Allsorts, Jess worked with homeless men taking them food in the early hours before she went to school and worked for Lancaster Samaritans when she was an under-graduate. At Oxford University, where she was a post-graduate student, she helped set up Lesbian Line and a rape crisis helpline. She was the secretary and a volunteer with Brighton Switchboard in the eighties and on the founding executive of Spectrum. Until recently, she taught Judaism to teenagers at Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue, where she also raised funds and managed their older people’s project.

She was included in the 2011 international list: ‘100 Women: The Unseen Powerful Women Who Change the World’ for her human rights work. She is both the LGBT and one of the young people’s representatives for the Community and Voluntary Sector Forum in Brighton and Hove and an equalities trainer and spokesperson. She is married to Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah.

Michael Casey, long standing trustee and Treasurer of the charity said: ‘Jess is known for her endless hard work, enthusiasm and optimism.  She is an inspiration to everyone who works at or with Allsorts. Every year she helps dozens of young people to turn their lives around and realise their potential.  Many young people come to Allsorts at a very difficult time in their lives – feeling alone, misunderstood and often suicidal.  The services Jess has arranged and built up over the years helps them to be happy in themselves and understand their worth.  Each year at Allsorts, I see young people speak movingly about how the project has changed their lives for the better. None of this would have happened without Jess.’

Jess said: ‘I feel very honoured to receive such an award especially when I think of all the wonderful volunteers and workers in the community and voluntary sector in Brighton and Hove whose incredible achievements also deserve recognition. I know I am only one of many people out there fighting for a better and more just society. What pleases me most is that an MBE for any LGBT individual tells us that the state recognises that the LGBT communities matter and need specific services which the state values and honours. The letter you receive mentions the Prime Minister and the Queen – I think this shows that LGBT people really are included now in the heart of the British Establishment. Let’s hope one day, the state church finds itself able to follow liberal faith groups in the UK and acknowledge us too?’

James Ledward, editor of Gscene Magazine, said: Jess is a born leader and one of the few we have leading the LGBT community in Brighton and Hove at the moment. She has the ability to listen, digest and deliver sensible, measured advice in a ‘professional’ but more importantly ‘human’ manner. Allsorts is a credit to her professionalism, her ability to persuade people to engage and most importantly her deep love of young people.  Her ability to empower young people to take responsibility and hopefully become the community’s next generation of ‘leaders’ is her greatest achievement at Allsorts.

Earlier this year Caroline Lucas, the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, said: “She drives Allsorts forward and makes a real difference to the lives of those involved – many of whom are vulnerable, alienated or marginalised. Jess and the work she does makes it a little easier for all young people to come to a clearer and more positive understanding of their sexuality, not just here in Brighton – which has one of the most vibrant LGBT communities in the world – but in every country across the globe.

Jess is an example of the many powerful women who, unseen, are building a better world and I applaud her and those like her.”

For more details about Allsorts go to www.allsortsyouth.org.uk

http://www.gscene.com

See also: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-16365936

‘At its heart, Judaism is about – is supposed to be about – trouble-making.’

From the prophets who admonished the leaders and people of Israel for their ethical misconduct through to the rabbis who troubled the Torah to make meaning for Jewish life, Judaism has been engaged with troubling and trouble making.

Trouble-making is about challenging and disrupting the status quo. It is also about being troubled and troubling our Jewish texts and inheritance to adapt and change in response to the lives of Jewish individuals, families and communities here and now.

The book falls into four parts. Beginning with an exploration of some trouble-making precedents – the Torah’s account of the creation humanity, Miriam, the 2nd century scholar, B’ruria, and the first woman rabbi, Regina Jonas – Elli Tikvah Sarah goes on to explore: the struggle for gender equality and the inclusion of lesbian and gay Jews, ways of engaging as Jews and Jewish communities to foster Jewish life today, and the challenge to acknowledge, both, Israel and Palestine.

Click here for ordering information or here for a flyer.

David Paul Books www.davidpaulbooks.com

ISBN 09780954848293  |  Paperback. Price £9.99  |  Pub Date 1 February 2012

Rabbi Elli will be talking about her book at Jewish Book Week on Sunday, 19^th February at 3:30PM.

PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED. A NEW DATE WILL BE ANNOUNCED SOON.

Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue Cyberquiz Evening

You don’t have to know anything about computers to participate in the Cyberquiz which this year is being held at the Ralli Hall on Saturday 26^th November at 7pm.

Now in its third year, the Cyberquiz is an interactive and fun quiz evening. Teams are 6- 8  people, so make up a table or come and make up a team with others. The teams in Hove will be answering questions in competition with each other, as well as teams from other Jewish communities from around the country who will be participating at the same time.

The questions are set by members of South Bucks Progressive Synagogue, who are the central co-ordinators. Our results will be emailed to the organisers at South Bucks, who will collate the results and give us feedback about our position versus the other congregations.

Tickets cost £12 and include a fish and chip supper from Bankers fish restaurant, tea, coffee and cake. Please ring Chandra at the office on 01273- 737223 to reserve and pay for your place.

An inclusive, spiritual gathering with contributions from

Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Quaker perspectives

CREATING THE TENT

In celebration of Human Rights Day

Saturday, 10^th December 2011

At Brighton Friends’ Meeting House

This event is open to all people who welcome the opportunity of listening, sharing, and creating the tent together. The programme will include talks, chants, creative exercises, discussion and silence. You may wish to participate in the afternoon event, or in the evening, or in both.

Please bring a vegetarian dish to share at 6.15pm (optional).

Location: Main Meeting Room, Brighton Friends’ Meeting House, Ship Street, Brighton BN1 1AF. For venue information, see: http://www.brightonquakers.co.uk/

A selection of books and CDs will be available to browse or purchase in Room 4.

Time: Afternoon event – registration from 1.30pm

Start: 2pm-6.15pm

Refreshments: 6.15pm-7.15pm

Evening: Sufi Zikr

Time: 7.30pm-9.00pm

Please register attendance by Monday, 21st November 2011

To register: by phone call and donation

Tel: Brighton & Hove Progressive Synagogue, 01273 737223 (Mon-Fri, 1pm-5pm)

Please make cheque payable to: BHPS

And send to: Brighton & Hove Progressive Synagogue,

6 Lansdowne Road, Hove, East Sussex BN3 1FF

Suggested donation for the afternoon event: £10

An additional donation will be welcome for the evening

Places will be limited so do register early

The Sufi Zikr will be kindly offered by Omar Inayat-Khan – great grandson of

Hazrat Inayat Khan who brought Sufism to the West – with Farida Inayat-Khan

The event is organised by

Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah, Brighton & Hove Progressive Synagogue,

And Zohra Evlynn Sharp, Sufi Movement,

In collaboration with the

Brighton Festival of World Sacred Music

and the Quakers in Brighton

Rabbi Elli will be delighted to welcome you to Shabbat Morning Service in Hove.

Please advise when you ring if you wish to attend. Photo ID will be necessary.

From the Rabbi

Before we dedicate this leaf in memory of Archie and Elizabeth Fay, I would just like to say a little about them – and share with you some extracts from the address I gave at Hove Cemetery at the rededication of the stone set in their memory on 12^th September last year.

Archie Fay was born in London on December 10^th 1889. In 1915 Archie married Elizabeth Wainberg, who was a year younger than him, and in 1922, the couple became members of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in London, led by the charismatic first Rabbi of Liberal Judaism in this country, American-born, Israel Mattuck.

Archie and Elizabeth were both very active in LJS until they moved to Hove in 1938, and joined what was then called the Hove Liberal Synagogue. It was a time of upheaval for the congregation: Reverend Goldberg left that same year, and although he was replaced in 1939 by refugee Rabbi Dr Lemle, who came from Frankfurt, following the outbreak of war, Rabbi Lemle was interned, and after his release in 1940, then went to work in Rio de Janeiro, where he founded a synagogue.

Archie Fay very quickly became involved in the congregation as a lay reader, and, significantly, it was very soon afterwards, in 1941 – 70 years ago – that the decision was taken to change the name of the congregation to Brighton & Hove Liberal Synagogue. In November 1944, Archie Fay was inducted as a part-time lay minister by Rabbi Mattuck.  Six years later, on September 9th 1950, following his retirement from his London County Council education post, Archie Fay was inducted, once again, by Rabbi Mattuck; this time as the full-time Minister.

Archie and Elizabeth were at the heart of Brighton and Hove Liberal Synagogue, and were taken into the hearts of all its members.  The Reverend Archie Fay was the principal educator of young and old alike, and conducted many confirmations, weddings and funerals during his time as Minister.

For her own part, in addition to supporting Archie in his work, Elizabeth was also very active in synagogue matters and served as the chair of the Ladies’ committee many times. Like her husband, Elizabeth also gave her life to the congregation unstintingly.

The last service Archie Fay led for the congregation was at Purim, on 17^th March 1962. He died on 18^th April, and was buried on April 24^th.

Following Archie Fay’s death, a fund was inaugurated, which led to the purchase of 26 Farm Road. The new building was dedicated as Archie Fay House on 22^nd March 1964, and has housed our Religion School, the synagogue office and the Council Chamber and Library ever since.

Elizabeth survived Archie by 13 years. Much loved by the congregation, following her death on January 31^st 1975, a fund was also established in her name, and on 17^th September 1976 – that is, exactly thirty-five years ago to the day – the front porch entrance of the synagogue was dedicated to her memory.

I have presented a few of the facts associated with the lives of Archie and Elizabeth Fay, and several people here today will have their own personal memories of them both. For those, who didn’t know Archie Fay, an address that he gave at the synagogue on Shabbat Naso, June 3^rd 1944, just three days before D-Day, gives us a very vivid sense of his personality, his vision and his dedication. Focussing on the repairs to the synagogue that were in process at that time – a major preoccupation of subsequent generations to this day – much of what Archie Fay said all those years ago remains relevant for us now. It is remarkable to think that he was addressing the congregation during a critical moment in what became known as the ‘Second World War’.

These are some of the questions he put to those gathered on that Shabbat morning – starting with his opening paragraph to give you a flavour, both of the context, and of his style of speaking and writing – I especially like the fact that he addressed a lot of questions to the congregation; something, that I’m in the habit of doing myself:

As you well know, the synagogue is under repair. What is being done to it? Well, it is being strengthened, made watertight, made more pleasing to look at, made a little more pleasing to the eye and more pleasing place to be in. So the synagogue will, outwardly at any rate, be a better place in the future. But my friends, all these things are externals. We can visualise our synagogue of tomorrow in its material aspect, a materially brighter and more stable building. But what of the synagogue of tomorrow from another aspect? Today on the eve of great adventures in the field of war, when one can see a little clearer the days when war will be over, everyone is talking and thinking of re-construction – new plans, new schemes, brilliant ideas. For our synagogue we have our new plans, new schemes – but all of a material nature. Are we preparing a synagogue which, when its plans are completed, is going to be a building for something out of date? Is religion and public worship a worn out fetish? For to re-plan and reinforce a building for a purpose which really does not exist is futile. In this very modern age, an age of radio and television, of jet planes and rockets, of human torpedoes and alas! of the jitterbug, is the synagogue an anachronism?

Let us get our thinking right on this point. Is the synagogue, is this synagogue, going to be something worth holding on to in the storms that lie ahead?

Yes, Archie Fay asked these questions way back in 1944! He then went on to remind people of ‘what had been the functions of the synagogue in the past generation’, and then he asked another question – and offered a response, with which many of today’s lay leaders of the shul may well concur:

What can we do to make the synagogue worth keeping? I’d like to see many more of its members take an active part in its affairs, an active interest in its upkeep, not a few devoted members of the Council only. I should like to see it linked up more actively in the citizen life of the town, beyond its four walls, lending its voice and it’s aid both as a community and through its individual members, through all its individual members, to a creation of the fulfilment of the hopes so many have today.

After talking about the importance of attracting the younger generation to the synagogue for the sake of the future, Archie Fay concluded:

How are we to do it – Frankly who knows? But it must be done and we must try to find the means. It rests with you as individuals, this future of the synagogue, you as individuals, for after all the synagogue can only be what its members make it – If we all bestir ourselves as actively to rejuvenate the spirit of the synagogue as we have to rejuvenate its fabric then I am positive that even in this modern age it can be once again a source of strength, once again a place to which a man will come and bring his family, and once again a place from where he can take back into his home a spirit of goodness, of kindness, and of brotherly love, that no cinema, no dance Hall, no football match could ever give. Amen.

As Archie Fay’s concluding words reveal, life was less inclusive and egalitarian 60 years ago, and who knows what he would have made of personal computers and mobiles, and all the other IT gadgets that take up so much of our time now. But as we dedicate this leaf to the memory of Archie and Elizabeth Fay – at a time, when we are about to embark on restoring and reshaping the synagogue building and planning for the future – it is rather special to know that the man who led our congregation 60 years ago, has a message that is relevant for us today, His questions are our questions, and hopefully, we also share his enthusiasm and commitment.

As we pay tribute to Archie and Elizabeth Fay today, and recall their dedication to our congregation, let us not only dedicate a leaf on out Tree of Life to their memory, but also re-dedicate ourselves to the sacred tasks of developing our synagogue to meet the challenges and opportunities of the 21^st century. Zichronam livrachah – May the memory of Archie and Elizabeth Fay be a source of blessing in the life of our congregation now and in the future.

And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah

17^th September 2011 – 18^th Tishri 5771

Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue

Resources

Monthly Bulletin of Brighton and Hove Liberal Synagogue, May 1962

Induction Service for Mr A. M. Fay, Brighton & Hove Liberal Synagogue, Saturday, 9 September 1950

An Address Delivered at the Brighton and Hove Liberal Synagogue on 3^rd June 1944 by Mr A. M. Fay

Liberal Judaism. The First Hundred Years by Lawrence Rigal and Rosita Rosenberg, Liberal Judaism, London, 2004

The Pastores Ensemble at BHPS on the evening of 14th September 2011

A two-state solution is a spiritual as well as political necessity.

In recent years it seems that there has been a growing division within the diaspora Jewish community between the supporters of a “secure” Israel, on the one hand, and the promoters of a “just” Israel, on the other. But the landscape of Jewish attitudes has been changing. According to the initial findings from the Israel survey conducted last year by the London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research, 78 per cent of the 4,000 respondents supported a two-state solution – and 72 per cent described themselves as Zionists.

In his book, Future Tense, the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations, Lord Sacks, an ardent Zionist, writes: “The broad shape of a solution to the problem of Israel and the Palestinians has never been in doubt. It was implicit in the Balfour declaration in 1917, explicit in 1947 United Nations resolution on partition, and set out in detail in all peace proposals since: two states for two peoples, a political solution to a political problem.”

So it seems that perhaps we can talk of “new” Zionists and a “new Zionism” that embraces recognition of the need of the Palestinians for statehood. But what is the substance of this new Zionism? Is the two-state solution simply, “a political solution to a political problem”? Or, is the new Zionism inspired by Jewish values? On February 24 1939, Martin Buber, wrote a letter to Mahatma Gandhi, who had taken the position that “Palestine belongs to the Arabs”.

Buber wrote: “I belong to a group of people who from the time Britain conquered Palestine have not ceased to strive for the concluding of a genuine peace between Jew and Arab… We could not and cannot renounce the Jewish claim; something even higher than the life of our people is bound up with this land, namely its work, its divine mission. But we have been and still are convinced that it must be possible to find some compromise between this claim and the other, for we love this land and we believe in its future.”

Buber’s attitude to the other inhabitants of the land reflected his philosophy of ‘I and Thou’. But Buber’s approach was also rooted in the Torah’s insistence on justice and acknowledgement of the needs and the rights of others (see Leviticus 19). At the time that he was writing, before the Shoah and the establishment of the state of Israel, Buber was part of a group of Zionists called Brit Shalom (“Covenant of Peace”), who hoped that Jews and Palestinians would be able to live together.

If he were alive today, after everything that has happened, I have no doubt that the “compromise” Buber would be advocating would be a two-state solution.

The Jewish community is united in its longing for peace. On the ground, peace between Israelis and Palestinians cannot be achieved in the absence of justice because the Palestinians will not give up their struggle until they have secured a state. But the longing for peace on the part of diaspora Jews is also about something else: peace of mind. New Zionism creates the possibility of congruence in the hearts and minds of those who love Israel, and want the Jewish state to thrive and survive – and who love justice, too.

Diaspora Jewry needs a new Zionism – and so does Israel. According to the rabbis, the root cause of the destruction of the second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE was sinat chinam, “senseless hatred” between the warring factions of Jewish society at that time (Talmud, Yoma 9b). It is unthinkable that the state of Israel, like its previous incarnations, might be consigned to history, but it is possible. What would be the cause this time?

The haftarah, on the Shabbat prior to Tishah b’Av, the day that commemorates the destruction of the first and second Temples – the third of three “haftarot of affliction” – is taken from the first chapter of the book of Isaiah. There, berating the “sinful nation”, the prophet proclaims: “Cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice; relieve the oppressed.”

Isaiah preached during the second half of the eighth century BCE, during the years before and after the northern Kingdom of Israel was wiped out by the Assyrians, and more than a century before the Babylonians destroyed King Solomon’s Temple in 586 BCE and devastated Judah.

In recent months, a new Jewish grassroots movement called Yachad has been launched, determined to raise awareness of the “growing numbers within Israel, including former army generals, heads of intelligence and leading academic and cultural figures, who believe that a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders, with mutually agreed land swaps, is urgent for Israel’s long term survival and security”.

In a few days, the United Nations will vote on the establishment of an independent State of Palestine. The time is now. The haftarah prior to Tishah b’Av, concludes: “Zion shall be redeemed by justice (b’mishpat), and its repentant people by righteousness (bitzdakah)” (1:27).

Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah is rabbi of Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue.

Once again a cheerful crowd from BHPS enjoyed Norma Waring’s hospitality at her beach hut where the Pimms flowed and the nibbles were irresistible.

Raise the Roof

Wednesday 14^th September 19.30 to 21.30

The Pastores Ensemble present their annual programme at the Brighton & Hove Progressive Synagogue.

ENSEMBLE

Mr. Culpeper’s Praeludium. Robert Carrington

2 Victorian Madrigals (instrumental). Beale

SOLO VOICE

Cervieres ( for soprano, mandolin, guitar and bass viol:1^st performance). Carrington

Bass Viol Solos:

Mr Powys His Delight. Carrington

A Careles Humor. Tobias Hume

ENSEMBLE

Laudes Deo.  Christopher Tye.

Susanna Fair (3 viols)   William Byrd

ENSEMBLE

In Nomine.  Elway Beven.

Mr Culpeper His Pavane. Carrington

Interval

ENSEMBLE

The Honiesuckle

The Fairie Round.  Antony Holborne

Lute Solos:

Mr Dowland His Midnight. Dowland

Watkins Ale.anon

VIOL DUET:

Walking Piece for John Cowper Powys for 2 bass viols. Carrington

SOLO VOICE:

Love I thought it rocklike (words by Mervyn Peake soprano and bass viol). Carrington

VOICE AND FULL ENSEMBLE:

10 Aunts and Uncles (short Nonsense poems by Mervyn Peake). Carrington

ENSEMBLE:

Prelude for Harmonium. Henry Smart (arr. Pastores)

Fantasia no.5 (for 3 viols). George Jeffreys

ENSEMBLE:

Hackney. Clement Woodcock (with the cornemuse)

Mr Culpeper His Goodnight. Carrington

£10.00 in advance, £12.00 at the door

A lovely event organised jointly with Robert Carrington (Pastores Ensemble).

Raise the Roof   Wednesday 14th September 1930 to 2130
Pastores Ensemble present their annual programme for their friends at the Brighton & Hove Progressive Synagogue.

A mixture of early music and some premiers! Tickets £10

Buy your tickets in advance by sending a cheque payable to “BHPS” to the BHPS office

Drinks and nibbles

SATURDAY AFTERNOON 17 SEPTEMBER 2011

Don’t let Farm Road go without saying Goodbye

Join in a walk-about from room to room and say a spiritual farewell with our Rabbi

Celebrate with a Chavurah lunch, singing and other performances by our talented members

If you missed the Cabaret – here’s another chance to join with our young people in singing the Finale number “We’ll Fix our BHPS”

All after the service on Saturday September 17 2011

Please bring a vegetarian and/or permitted fish dish to share – and/or desert

Peace between Israelis and Palestinians: if not now, when?

A talk by Hannah Weisfeld, the Director of Yachad.

Tuesday 19 July, at 8.00 PM

Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue

6 Lansdowne Road, Hove BN3 1FF

Yachad is the recently established pro-Israel, pro-peace movement in the UK, which supports a two state solution as the best option for Israel’s long term peace and security.

Yachad seeks to harness large numbers of British Jews, through education, debate or advocacy in support of the steps needed to achieve this goal.

Hannah Weisfeld, the Director of Yachad and one of its founders, will discuss Yachad’s vision and its plans to foster a new type of relationship between the British Jewish community and Israel. 

Admission is free of charge

BRIGHTON & HOVE PROGRESSIVE SYNAGOGUE CABARET NIGHT

Saturday 2 July 2011 at 7pm

By popular demand following last year’s sell out event the BHPS Cabaret returns for another evening of music, food and enjoyment!

Performances by 15 of  our own talented members, kids, teens and grown ups; Rolling Stones, Schubert, Beatles, Yiddish songs, Sinatra & more . . .

Last year we sold out – so reserve your tickets now by sending a cheque payable to “BHPS”,  to Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue,  6 Lansdowne Road Hove BN3 1FF Tel 01273 737223

Adults £8 in advance; £10 on the door  Under 18 family members free – but please still make a reservation.

Includes bagels and cakes and drinks in the interval.

Network Meeting of the Crawley Interfaith Network

Good evening everyone. I’ve been asked to speak to you about Yom Ha-Sho’ah – literally, the day of the Sho’ah: the day set aside sixty years ago for the commemoration of what we Jews prefer to call the Sho’ah, rather than, the ‘Holocaust’. If Sho’ah is an unfamiliar word to you, the word, ‘Holocaust’, actually requires some explaining, too. If you look in the standard dictionary of the Hebrew Bible, compiled in the 19th century by three Christian ministers, the Reverends Brown, Driver and Briggs, you will discover that the word ‘holocaust’ is the translation of the Hebrew word, olah, meaning, ‘burnt offering’. For Jews, the six million killed by the Nazis cannot be equated to a religious sacrifice – that would be too imply that there was something sacred about the mass murder of our people. And so we prefer to use the word Sho’ah, meaning ‘devastation’, ‘ruin’, ‘waste’, ‘calamity’, or ‘ catastrophe’, which also has its origins in the Hebrew Bible (see, for example, Isaiah 10:3)

So, we have a name for the annihilation of the six million, but what about a date for the commemoration of this particular genocide? What historian Lucy Dawidowicz calls ‘The War against the Jews’ in her book of that name (Penguin Books), began in 1933, and did not end until the Allied powers defeated Hitler in the spring of 1945. In other words, the Sho’ah lasted well over 4000 days, so which particular day would be most appropriate for an annual day of commemoration? I will leave you with that question for a moment, while I tell you about a particular chapter during the Sho’ah.

This year the first day of Pesach, the Festival of Passover, coincided with the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which began on 19^th April 1943 – the eve of Pesach that year. To put the uprising in context: within 18 months of Hitler’s decision to liquidate all the ghettos, more than two million were deported to the death camps. By the end of 1942, approximately 300,000 of this number had been rounded up in the Warsaw ghetto and transported to Treblinka, leaving, between 55,000 and 60,000.

In January 1943, a small group of mostly young Jews, using a stash of smuggled weapons, attacked German troops as they were rounding up more Jews for deportation. Within a few days, the troops retreated. Emboldened by this small victory, led by 23-year-old Mordecai Anielewicz, the ghetto fighters, organised as the Z.O.B. (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa – Jewish Fighting Organization), set about acquiring more weapons and making plans to defend the ghetto. As they prepared for the final deportation, the Germans also made sure that they were ready to meet resistance. And so, on April 18^th on the eve of the final deportation to Treblinka, Jurgen Stroop, an SS officer, who had experience of fighting partisans, was put in charge.

Warned of the timing of the final deportation, the ghetto fighters make sure that the Jews who remained in the ghetto went into hiding. When the German troops entered on the morning of April 19^th 750 fighters armed with a handful of pistols, rifles, and Molotov cocktails took on more than 2,000 heavily armed and well-trained German troops – and held out against them for 27 days. The first major blow came on May 8^th when the Germans captured the headquarters bunker of the ZOB at 18 Mila Street, and  Mordecai Anielewicz and a large number of his colleagues were killed in the fighting – although several dozen fighters escaped through the sewers. By May 16^th it was all over.  Approximately 300 Germans and 7,000 Jews were killed during the uprising, and another 7,000 Jews were deported to Treblinka.

Some of the ghetto fighters who survived, emigrated to Israel in 1949, and you can still meet a handful of them at the Ghetto Fighters House at Kibbutz Lohamei Ha-gheta’ot, in the Western Galilee. This valiant moment became so important in the collective psyche of the nascent Jewish state that when Jewish scholars began to discuss setting a date for commemoration of the Sho’ah, the Israelis argued for one that coincided with the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Since Pesach itself wasn’t possible, in 1951 Yom Ha-Sho’ah was established in the calendar as 27^th Nissan, a few days after the Festival, and eight days before Yom Ha-Atzma’ut – Israel Independence day (5^th Iyyar).

So, a date for the commemoration of the Sho’ah was fixed in 1951. But there were other candidates: The Nazis began to persecute the Jewish community of Germany as soon as they came to power in 1933, but it was not until November 1938 that social, economic and political persecution transformed into violent assault. Beginning on the night of 8^th/9^th November, houses, synagogues and Jewish shops were firebombed, windows broken, contents ransacked and burned. Reminiscent of the pogroms of Czarist Russia, this event became known as Kristalnacht, the ‘Night of the Broken Glass’. Would the anniversary of Kristalnacht be an appropriate date to commemorate the Sho’ah? When the debate about setting a commemoration date got going after 1945, a number of Jewish scholars in the diaspora thought so. And there was another compelling reason for choosing this date. In the Hebrew calendar, Kristalnacht took place in the month of Cheshvan. Because Cheshvan is the only month in the Jewish calendar when there are no special commemorations – apart from the weekly Sabbaths – the early rabbis renamed the month, Marcheshvan, which means, ‘bitter Cheshvan’.

Wouldn’t a ‘bitter’ month be a particularly appropriate time to commemorate the Sho’ah? As it happens, the Hebrew date was the 15^th of Cheshvan, that is, in the middle of the month, when there is a full moon. Interestingly, it is only when we remember the Hebrew date that we get an insight into why the events of the night of 8^th/9^th November became known as ‘the night of the broken glass.’ Of course, a massive amount of glass was, indeed, broken. But imagine what all those shards of glass looked like on the 15^th of Cheshvan in the light of the full moon! So why isn’t Kristalnacht remembered by the Hebrew date? Because, a key moment in the Nazi era, the day is significant in an international context.

So, we have a date that recalls the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in April 1943; and we have a date that recalls the beginning of the violent persecution of the Jewish people in November 1938. And, of course, other significant dates during the Sho’ah could also have been selected. At the turn of the millennium when the British government decided to inaugurate National Holocaust Memorial Day, they chose the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army on 27th January 1945, a date which marks, in a sense, the beginning of the end of the Nazi era. From a Jewish point of view, of course, the horror was far from over, with thousands of Jewish inmates perishing on death marches as the Nazis evacuated the camps in response to the Allies’ advance.

In addition to the particular moments during the Nazi period that might have been considered sixty years ago when Yom Ha-Sho’ah was introduced into the Jewish calendar, there was an ancient candidate for Sho’ah remembrance: Tishah B’Av, the 9^th day of the Hebrew month of Av, the day which commemorates the destruction of the first Temple by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and the second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE. Interestingly, for some years after the official decision to fix the date of Yom Ha-Sho’ah, Jewish communities around the world did include commemoration of the Sho’ah on Tishah B’Av. On one level, it is an obvious choice for the date: following the destruction of both Temples so many other devastating events in the life of the Jewish people have been associated with Tishah B’Av – for example, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492.

However, one of the central themes in the Jewish discussion about the date of Yom Ha-Sho’ah has revolved around the particularity of the Sho’ah. The Jewish people can trace a long history of churban – the Hebrew word for ‘destruction’. But the question arises, is the Sho’ah just the most recent example of churban, or is it essentially unique? There are different views. I would argue that on the one hand, the Sho’ah is connected to the Jewish people’s historic experience of churban, and on the other it was utterly distinct on a number of levels, not least because it was the first attempt to wipe out the Jewish people, as a people, from the face of the earth – what the Nazis called ‘the final solution of the Jewish question’, and because the technology employed by the Nazis transformed mass murder into an industry of slaughter. And so, wherever I have practised as a rabbi, we have held, both, a commemoration service on Yom Ha-Sho’ah, and also included commemoration of the Sho’ah in our service on Tishah B’Av – when, incidentally, we also remember all the destructions of the Jewish people throughout history, as well as important destructive moments of universal significance, such as the outbreak of the First World War and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both of which, coincidentally, took place in early August, around Tishah b’Av.

So, as we can see, there are political and theological implications connected with the adoption of any particular date for commemoration of the Sho’ah.

At the moment, Jewish communities around the world are counting the days between the festivals of Pesach and Shavuot, Weeks. Known as ‘the counting of the Omer’, the ritual of counting each day has its roots in the Divine Service of the Sanctuary in Temple times, when, as we read in Leviticus chapter 23, the priest would wave an omer, a sheaf of grain, for seven ‘complete’ weeks, from the day after the Sabbath[1] during Pesach, until Yom Ha-Bikkurim, ‘the day of first-fruits’ on the fiftieth day. If we remember that the ancestors of the Jewish people were farmers, we can see that the period between sowing the seeds and reaping the grain, was a time of great anxiety – hence the marking of time until the first harvest. After the Temple was destroyed the rabbis reinvented the Festival of Weeks as a commemoration of the Revelation of Mount Sinai, since, as Exodus chapter 19 relates, the slaves arrived in the wilderness of Sinai at the beginning of the third month following the departure from Egypt. In this way the rabbis ensured that what had been a sacred feast associated with the land, a particular place, would be connected with a particular time, and could be celebrated in every place. The rabbis also developed the notion that the period between Pesach and Shavuot was a time of mourning because it was during the ‘seven weeks, in the year 135 CE that the Romans finally crushed the three-year-long Jewish revolt led by a messianic figure known as Bar Kochba, which was supported by many rabbis of the day, including, Rabbi Akiva[2].

Why am I telling you this? Because the crushing of the Bar Kochba  revolt was a traumatic event which marked a turning point  for the Jewish people, no less important than the destruction of the Temple, which had followed the crushing of the first revolt against Rome. And so, with this historic resonance, the Omer period as a whole may be seen as another candidate for the commemoration of the Sho’ah. However, this is not just because the Jewish people experienced a trauma in the second century during this time. More importantly, it is because that trauma is not remembered on a particular day. And it is this that, in my view, makes the Omer period an important time for Sho’ah remembrance. After all, the Sho’ah did not take place on one particular day, but rather, day after day after day. And yet, just as the Omer period is time-limited, so the Sho’ah did come to an end, albeit after twelve long and excruciating years – and Hitler’s dream of a ‘thousand year Reich’ was finally shattered.

In my congregation, Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue, in addition to commemorating Yom Ha-Sho’ah, we also remember the Sho’ah throughout the days of the counting of the Omer. And we do something else, which also makes a big difference to the way in which we remember that devastating time: we remember a particular community, and, in particular, the individual members of that community by name. We remember the community of Frydek Mistek in eastern Czechoslovakia, which was destroyed by the Nazis. And we remember this particular community because we are the guardians of one of their Torah scrolls. The community of Frydek Mistek was rounded up by the Nazis between the Rosh Ha-Shanah, the New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement in 1942. All those were deported were later killed – mostly in the death camp of Treblinka. However, in 1962, 1564 Torah scrolls were found in a disused synagogue in Prague. To cut a long story short, the Rabbi of Westminster Synagogue in London, an American called Harold Reinhart, was inspired to rescue the scrolls, and so he brought them back to the synagogue in truckloads, where those that could be repaired were repaired, and catalogued, and then distributed to progressive synagogues throughout the country. So that’s how we got to have our scroll from Frydek Mistek. But it was not until 2002, following the 40th anniversary of the rescue of the scrolls, that we decided, after attending a special conference at the Westminster Synagogue, to make a point of actively preserving the memory of the community of Frydek Mistek, by creating an exhibition, and by reading from their scroll on the anniversary of the deportations[3], and during the Omer period.

And so, remembering the destroyed community of Frydek Mistek amidst the six million, reminds us of the millions of individual lives and the tens of thousands of individual communities that were laid waste.

Yom Ha-Sho’ah: a day for remembrance of the Sho’ah. The Omer period: a ‘complete’ span of time to remember all the days of that devastating, unique long moment, which, did in fact become a past event that we can look back at and remember. As it happens, the date chosen to mark Yom Ha-Shoah, because of its association with the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, does in fact, take place during the Omer period, on the 13^th day of the Omer. In view of this, given the decision was made sixty years ago, to choose one particular day, perhaps it was, after all, a good choice.

Finally, the question I might have posed at the beginning: Why should we remember the Sho’ah? Because we must not forget the terrors perpetrated by the Nazis and their cohorts – and in the hope that one day, human beings will learn not to demonise the other, and so ensure that genocide is finally consigned to history.

I would like to conclude my remarks by counting the Omer:

Ba-ruch  A-tah  A-do-nai  E-lo-hey-nu,  Me-lech  ha-o-lam, a-sher  ki-d-shanu  b-mitz-vo-tav v-tzi-va-nu  al  s-fi-rat  ha-omer.

Blessed are You, Eternal One, our God, Sovereign of the Universe, who sanctifies us by doing Your commands and who commands us concerning the counting of the Omer.

Today is the 43^rd day of the Omer, making six weeks and one day of the Omer.

Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah

Network Meeting of the Crawley Interfaith Network

31^st May 2011 – 27^th Iyyar 5771

[2] The rabbis referred to this as a ‘plague’ – see Talmud (Yevamot 62b)

[3] Our anniversary service is held on Shabbat Shuvah – the ‘Sabbath of Repentance’ between Rosh Ha-Shanah and Yom Kippur.

Dialogue event with local speakers

Tuesday 14 June 2011  -  7.30pm – 9.oopm

•        Imam Mohammed (Al Medinah Mosque)

•        Rabbi Sarah (B&H Progressive Synagogue)

•        Judith Weisz (First Church of Christ Scientist)

•        Revd Peter Wells (Lead Chaplain based at Royal Sussex County Hospital)

Hove Methodist Church

Portland Road

Hove  BN3 5DR

Free entry – all welcome.

Organised by Brighton & Hove Interfaith Contact Group (IFCG)

Dr Izzeldin Abuelaish, Corn Exchange, Brighton Photo © Matthew Andrews 2011

Rabbi Elli and a number of BHPS members attended the Brighton Festival event ‘I Shall Not Hate’ this afternoon.

“On 16 January 2009, during the Israeli incursion into Gaza, Dr Izzeldin Abuelaish witnessed the death of his three daughters by shellfire. His response, moments after the attack, was to broadcast live on Israeli TV, calling for peace and reconciliation. This selfless stand made waves across the Middle East and beyond, leading to a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.”

Israel’s Reactions to Recent Turmoil in Arab Countries

Thursday, 19th May at 7:30pm

Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue

News Release

A thought-provoking free lecture was held on Sunday 6^th February at Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue to honour the memory of a former member and his award-winning work in the field of interfaith relations.

Distinguished academic and philosopher, Dr Brian Klug of St.Benet’s Hall Oxford, spoke to a multi-faith audience of around 60 on the subject “Living in the World: The People of God and the Pursuit of Justice”.

Quoting passages from the Hebrew Bible, his theme was that the Jews may have been chosen by God, but that this distinction was a poisoned chalice, as it required the difficult if not impossible task of doing justice in the World. Defining his interpretation of justice, Dr Klug drew a parallel with the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights arguing that it was rooted in the same scriptures.

“Judaism means nothing if it does not mean social justice” says Dr Klug, who has published widely on race, anti-Semitism, Jewish identity and other subjects.  He believes that to be Jewish is to be rooted in the here and now, taking Tanakh as an ideal but not for each word to be followed unquestioningly and without interpretation.

After the lecture some very challenging questions from members of the audience were answered fully, including one from an Immam over the Jews’ right to Erez Israel.

The discussions then continued informally as the afternoon was rounded off with tea and homemade cakes for all, while those who wished to become further acquainted with his thought,  had the opportunity of buying (at a special low price!) a copy, for signing by the author, of Dr Klug’s latest book; “Being Jewish and Doing Justice: Bringing Argument to Life”.

The biennial Aubrey Milstein Community lecture was established by the Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue in 2005. Aubrey Milstein worked for many years with the City Council, the black and ethnic minority community and the police to foster harmony in the community and to challenge injustice. He was an active participant in the Brighton & Hove Jewish Representative Council, the Interfaith Contact Group and the Racial Harassment Forum, and was a critical friend to the police as a member of the Independent Advisory Group. In his 84^th year Aubrey relinquished his active participation in these activities, but The Annual Aubrey Milstein Community Lecture is intended to keep alive his memory and his commitment to racial and religious harmony.

The intention is that those invited to give the lecture shall be individuals who have also made a significant contribution to one area of Aubrey’s activity. Previous lectures have been given by Aubrey himself, an Imam and Baroness Julia Neuberger.

The “Congregation of Peace and Friendship” prides itself on its openness and welcoming attitude to people from all walks of life. It has an ethos of inclusivity and seeks to create friendly relations and build bridges across all sections of the community. In addition to participation in Jewish life beyond the synagogue doors, Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah promotes engagement with the wider non-Jewish community of Brighton and Hove and beyond,  encompassing multi-faith encounter and study, cross-cultural and social justice initiatives, ecological projects, and ‘arts and culture’ events that are part of the city calendar.

Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue
6 Lansdowne Road
Hove BN3 1FF
Tel. 01273 737223
www.brightonandhoveprosynagogue.org.uk
bhps@freenetname.co.uk

Contact Marguerite Wright
01273 506518 email Marguerite

‘Living in the World: The People of God and the Pursuit of Justice’

Aubrey Milstein Memorial Lecture given by Dr. Brian Klug, Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at St. Benet’s Hall, Oxford.

The content of this lecture is protected by copyright. The two parts are adapted from the prologue and epilogue to Being Jewish and Doing Justice: Bringing Argument to Life ( London : Vallentine Mitchell, 2011). A version of part one appears as ‘A People Apart?’ in the Spring 2011 issue of Jewish Quarterly (no. 217).

LIVING IN THE WORLD:

THE PEOPLE OF GOD AND THE PURSUIT OF JUSTICE

Preamble

I am delighted to be here today at Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue and honoured to give this year’s Aubrey Milstein Memorial Lecture. Delighted to be here because I admire this congregation and everything it stands for: its inclusiveness, egalitarianism and broad humane vision. Plus I am a fan of your rabbi, Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah, and, what’s more, I am fond of your rabbi and even, if I may so as a slightly older cousin, proud of your rabbi. So, that is why I am delighted to be here. I did not know Aubrey Milstein but clearly he was a mensch. In fact, when I googled his name I thought he was more than one mensch. The first item was an article with the headline ‘Aubrey Milstein – Bisley Rifle Champion’. This Aubrey Milstein, at the age of 15, was a member of his school rifle club and the winner of the 1936 Bisley high school rifle championship. Surely this gunman could not be the same person that Elli had told me about, the social activist who (to quote from your website) “worked for many years … to foster harmony in the community and to challenge injustice”. But, as you know, it is one and the same individual, a remarkably well-rounded man whose life was (to borrow a phrase from Isaiah) l’or goyim, a light to the nations (Is. 42:6). This, of course, is how Isaiah describes am Yisroel, the people that the Torah calls the people of God, the subject of my talk this afternoon. In short, Aubrey Milstein, and I do mean the one and only, personified the people as the people ought to be. So, I am honoured to be giving the annual lecture in his name.

Reading about his commitment to inter-faith understanding, I am reminded of an incident that occurred in Michaelmas Term 1998, my first term at St Benet’s Hall, Oxford. As well as being part of Oxford University, St. Benet’s is a monastic house of studies founded by the Benedictine monks of Ampleforth Abbey. After Vespers one evening, about ten minutes prior to the ringing of the dinner bell, there was a gentle knock on my door. It was Fr Henry Wansbrough, the Master. He explained that he was dining out that evening, as was the chaplain, and he wondered: Would I be so kind as to preside at dinner in the Hall in his absence? One does not turn down a request from one’s Master. However, I hesitated, since the role includes saying grace before and after the meal. I explained to Fr Henry that, as a Jew, I could not bring myself to make the customary reference to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. “Why not say the Jewish form of Grace?” he suggested. So, I did. Picture the scene: the long table extending the length of the refectory, the (predominantly) Catholic members of the Hall lining both sides, each standing behind his chair, listening respectfully while I recited Hamotzi, first in Hebrew and then in English. When I finished the blessing, they all said “Amen” – and promptly crossed themselves.

At first, feeling like Woody Allen caught in the glare of the spotlights, I froze. A panic took hold and I thought with alarm: “What have I done?” The ghosts of rabbis past, especially the ones who taught me at the Orthodox Jewish schools in Hendon that I attended from age five to eighteen, seemed to be looking grimly over my shoulder, as though I had committed a grave aveirah [sin]. But once the moment passed, I felt differently. I felt a warm glow – perhaps not unlike the sensation that Aubrey felt in his work with the Interfaith Contact Group and the Council of Christians and Jews. Whether, looking down from on high, he will feel a warm glow when he hears my lecture today, or whether he will fix me with a frosty stare, is a moot point. I certainly do not want to provoke the spirit of the 1936 Bisley rifle champion into pointing a spectral firearm in my direction. Even from heaven, his aim is likely to be unerring.

In the first (and longer) part of this lecture I shall explore the idea that the Jewish people are the people of God. At the heart of this idea, or so I shall argue, is the pursuit of justice. I shall develop this theme in the second (and shorter) part of the lecture, focussing on human rights. The entire argument can be summed up with a question that answers itself. Question: What is the place of the Jewish people in the world? Answer: In the world, wherever we find ourselves, living in its midst and not keeping ourselves to ourselves. I hope the lecture strikes a chord with you. If, at the end, you are moved to say “Amen”, I shall not object. However, I am addressing you as members of a synagogue: please – unless you want to give me cardiac arrest – don’t cross yourselves.

I. The People of God

Among Christians, there is a view about Judaism that is fairly widely held and which goes something like this: Whereas Christianity is inclusive, embracing all people everywhere regardless of their national or ethnic identity, Judaism is exclusive, a private club for the chosen few. There are Jews as well as Christians who subscribe to this view. Some are embarrassed by our so-called tribalism. Others take pride in our supposed superiority. Sometimes, especially these days, this pride takes the form of a politics that asserts our prerogative and privilege over other groups. But, whatever form it takes, there is a fatal flaw, a tiny ingredient that is missing from this characterization of the Jewish people: its Jewishness.

‘Jewishness’ can mean anything from chicken soup to klezmer to Woody Allen. But in the context of this lecture I mean something more specific. I am alluding to the fact that Judaism appropriates the story of the children of Israel as told in the Hebrew scriptures. By ‘the Jewish people’ I mean, in the first place, the group that identifies with the Israelites in the biblical narrative. And by ‘Jewishness’ I mean the quality (or set of qualities) that this act of identification implies. We Jews take it as read that we inherit the mantle of the children of Israel. But how careful is our reading? Perhaps the nuances of the narrative have escaped us and perhaps our identity lies in the nuances. A closer look at the text – plus our relationship to it – subverts the view that Judaism is a private club for the chosen few.

This lecture does not begin to do justice to the complexities of the biblical text. But it does begin to take that closer look. Based on a few scattered passages in Tanakh (principally from Exodus and Deuteronomy), I wish to present the Jewish people in a certain light. In this light, the people remain a particular people: they do not dissolve into an ocean of undifferentiated humanity. But their particularity turns out to be something peculiar. It is not like an ethnicity or a nation – something determinate. In a certain sense, it is more than itself. In another sense, it is never quite itself. Seen in this light, we are (or ought to be) forever scratching our collective kop. A people: but how so exactly? Particularity: but what precisely? These questions are as perennial as the people; and as unsettled; and as unsettling.

To recover this light, let us revisit the place where the Hebrew slaves, after a three-month schlep in the wilderness, find themselves (pun intended): Mt Sinai. They find themselves, to be precise, presented with an offer from someone even grander than the master of an Oxford college: the master of the universe. Now, God was an astute operator: he knew how to drive a hard bargain. First, he lures a destitute people out into the wilds and then, on a bare mountain in the middle of nowhere, amid the razzmatazz of fire and smoke and the fanfare of the shofar, he talks up a storm. He makes them an offer that they had to be mad to accept but which they could not refuse: one does not turn down an offer from one’s master. Besides, they were in no position to say no: they were bereft of the means to survive in the wilds of Sinai. True, they had probably stashed away some unleavened dough. But (to paraphrase Deut. 8:3) man cannot live by matzo alone. As for the manna that had sustained them to this point, God had a worldwide monopoly on its production. It was made in heaven: if he wished to turn off the supply, all he had to do was say the word (in a manner of speaking). So he seems to have had the Israelites over a barrel. Be that as it may, Moses presents them with a choice – not once but twice: first at Sinai, shortly after their departure from Egypt, and again forty years later, in the land of Moab, when they are perched on the verge of Canaan. (For the purposes of the argument, I am consciously conflating these two episodes, treating them as two moments of one event: Israel’s entering into a covenant with God.) Moses says to the people: “I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life …” (Deut. 30:19). Given that these are the options, the choice rather makes itself. But in choosing life the people get more than they bargained for: they get a brand new identity. “Hear, O Israel!” exclaims Moses, addressing the entire congregation. “Today you have become the people of the Lord your God” (Deut. 27:9).

What does Moses mean? He cannot have forgotten that, long before this special day, God had referred to the children of Israel as ‘my people’. He did so when, speaking out of the burning bush, he referred to “the plight of my people in Egypt” (Ex. 3:7) and again when he directed Moses to tell Pharaoh to “let my people go” (Ex. 5:1). For there was an earlier covenant that tied the people to God and God to the people: the one made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. However, the later covenant – the one made with the people – cannot be reduced to the earlier; for, if it could, then it would be redundant. Yet nothing is less redundant in the entire Tanakh than the covenant made at Sinai between God and his people. Far from being redundant, it is the necessary condition for the children of Israel to come into their own. At Sinai they stand before God not merely as the descendants of their ancestors but as menschen in their own right. This is the special significance of the second covenant. It is a coming of age, a rite of passage, the collective barmitzvah of bnei Yisroel. Think of Sinai as an alfresco synagogue, with Moses as the rabbi, addressing the young initiate who has just finished reading his or her parshah. But this barmitzvah girl or boy is an entire people. So, instead of saying “Today you are a man” or “Today you are a woman”, this is what Moshe Rabbeinu says: “Today you have become the people of the Lord your God”.

Some blessing! It is more like a practical joke. Had he been alive to see it, Jacob the patriarch, a consummate trickster, would have applauded the prank that Moses played on his descendants. ‘The people of God’: The very idea is outrageous. Not only is it the ultimate chutzpah, it carries a double dose of mortal danger. For a chosen people is a proud people, the envy of the nations. Pride and envy: the one begets arrogance and chauvinism, the other breeds hatred and contempt. None of which is conducive to happiness and all of which sounds depressingly familiar in the chequered career of ‘the people of God’ from that day forth. Now, if you were God, would you wish these things on your favourite people? Then why does God gull the children of Israel with an offer that is a poisoned chalice? And why on earth does he announce to the nations that the Israelites are the apple of his eye (Deut. 32:10)? If he really loves them, why not do his favourite people a favour – and stay shtum?

Unless there is more to God’s partiality than meets the eye. At first sight, it seems as if, with the insouciance of the divine, God reaches down onto the plane of the nations and picks out one – the people of Israel – that happens to catch his fancy, promising them the earth (or at least a portion of it somewhere in the vicinity of the river Jordan). But, on second thoughts, there is something wrong with this picture of events, something missing from this depiction of God: God. God, the master of the universe, is not just another petty, despotic, nepotistic, totemistic, Mesopotamian deity, some tinpot stone idol, a god or goddess whose dominion is purely local. “For the Lord your God,” explains Moses to the Israelites encamped in the land of Moab on the outskirts of the promised land, is elohei hoelohim va’adonai hoadonim, the God of gods and the Lord of lords, “the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who shows no favor and takes no bribes” (Deut. 10: 17). Really? Shows no favour? Yet, only two verses earlier, Moses reminds the people of Israel: “He chose you … from among all peoples” (Deut. 10: 15). Can a God who shows no favour have favourites? Moreover, in the previous verse Moses points out God this way: “Mark, the heavens to their uttermost reaches belong to the Lord your God, the earth and all that is on it!” (Deut: 10:14). Or, in the words of the psalmist: “The earth is the Lord’s and all that it holds, the world and all its inhabitants” (Ps. 24:1). The dominion of God, who shows no favour, extends to the whole of creation. So, if there is anything to which he is partial it must be the whole; it cannot be one part over and above the rest. God is God of all peoples. Yet Israel is ‘the people of God’? Go figure!

I figure it this way. When God enters the frame, the whole of the frame shudders. If he singles something out, the thing in question, whatever it might be, is not granted a special privilege over and against everything else. Rather, it is raised to a higher power. The part, while remaining a part, is not merely a part: it comes to signify or stand for the whole (which is not the same as the sum). So, on the one hand, when Moses says, “Today you have become the people of the Lord your God”, he does not add “and you have ceased to be what you were yesterday”. Their brand new identity does not erase the old. Nor does ‘raised to a higher power’ mean elevated to a superior rank. They are still the humble house of Jacob, the scruffy, ragtag mob that staggered out of slavery in Egypt. On the other hand, today this mob has taken on a meaning. Becoming the people of God, they become a signifier, signifying what it means to be a people, in the full sense of the word, where being a people means meeting the standard God builds into the word. This makes them representative, rather than exceptional, representing the idea of a people, a people that is wholly a people. As such, they are the apple of God’s eye. As such, they are the people of God. Of God, that is to say (recalling and continuing Moses’ invocation), “God, who shows no favor and takes no bribe, but upholds the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and befriends the stranger” (Deut. 10:18). If such is God, then being of God means partaking of these selfsame qualities. It means being, like God, partial to the utmost impartiality: partial, in a word, to justice. “Justice, justice shall you pursue” (Deut. 16:20): thus Moses directs the Israelites, calling them out of Egypt, calling them to go from being slaves of the ruler of an empire to being subjects of the ruler of the universe. Raised to a higher power, they are called to a higher standard. Called ‘the people of the Lord your God’, they are called to book. The blast of the shofar, the summons “Hear, O Israel”, calls them to the bar of justice. God is a calling; doing justice is the hearing that Israel, being his people, owes the Lord their God.

But he is no more theirs exclusively than they are his exclusively; for then he would not be himself and they would be the people of a god, not God. The choice of Israel is thoroughly inclusive, for they are chosen as an epitome, not as a pet. But why Israel? What makes Israel greater than any other nation? Nothing; that is the point. Not only not greater, but least of all. Consider how exquisite is this choice. God in heaven is seeking a people whose peoplehood is exemplary. As his gaze passes over the mighty empire of Egypt, his eye is caught by a miserable band of wretches who have been downtrodden for generations and have no prior experience of exercising sovereignty as a nation: the obvious choice for the people of God! For God, oddly, it is. Being the lowest of the low makes them attractive to God, who has a penchant for the humble and oppressed. We have seen this in the way Moses emphasizes his concern for the orphan, widow and stranger. We see it again in the assertion of the psalmist that “the Lord is close to the brokenhearted; those crushed in spirit he delivers” (Ps. 34:19) and in the topsyturviness of the just society: “the lowly shall inherit the land” (Ps. 37:11).

Could it be that their innocence – their virginity as a nation, their lack of familiarity with self-government – commended them too? Did God regard them as a tabula rasa, a blank political slate, primed to receive the indelible stamp of his two tablets of stone? Absolutely not! Not for one moment does God harbour the slightest illusion about the feckless people he has chosen. As he tells Moses near the end of the forty-year saga, it is inevitable that Israel will let him down and betray their promise: “You are soon to lie with your fathers. This people will thereupon go astray after the alien gods in their midst, in the land that they are about to enter; they will forsake Me and break My covenant that I made with them” (Deut. 31:16). To put it mildly, this is not a people distinguished by its outstanding merit, a point that Moses immortalizes in his song, written at the end of his life, a swansong, composed at God’s behest, not exactly a love song, sung “in the hearing of the whole congregation of Israel” (Deut. 31:30), whom he addresses thus: “O dull and witless people” (Deut. 32:6). Not that the enemies of Israel get a better press. They are “a folk void of sense, Lacking in all discernment” (Deut. 32:28). It comes to this: neither better nor worse, par for the course: this is Israel. Fundamentally, they are no different from the rest of their kind: humankind: a typical bad lot. And God knows it.

And yet he chooses them, making the offer of a covenant, calling on them to become “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex. 19:6). It is a beautiful idea. But no actual people is – nor conceivably can be – a thing of beauty; not as a people, not as such. A priesthood of priests is one thing, but a kingdom? A holy woman or man perhaps; but a nation? How can an entire people be of God? How can this whole transaction not end (as my grandmother and Elli’s great aunt used to say about almost everything) in tears? Perhaps the Israelites needed the services of a business advisor when they were made the offer in the wilderness “Yes,” this astute advisor might have cautioned, “You are being showered with promises, promises that are practically irresistible, a land of milk and honey, and so on, and certainly they come with a cast iron guarantee from an impeccable source – but on conditions that you cannot meet and with a penalty clause that will strip you of all your assets. Beware!” But they did have an astute advisor – in the person of Moses. For, not only is Moses completely up front about the penalties, he forewarns them of their fate. He lays out the future before them and it’s grim: they will break the terms of the covenant and lose the whole caboodle. (True, there is light at the end of the tunnel of history, but this is hardly of interest to them in their predicament). He could not be clearer about the disastrous consequences of the offer they have received from God:

I call heaven and earth this day to witness against you that you shall soon perish from the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess; you shall not long endure in it, but shall be utterly wiped out. The Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and only a scant few of you shall be left among the nations to which the Lord will drive you (Deut. 4: 26-27).

So, what the devil is God up to? What the heck is going on in the drama enacted with the children of Israel in the wilderness?

There is something vaguely reminiscent about this drama, an echo of events that took place long, long ago, when the dust had barely settled on a newly-created world. Let me try to bring out some of the resonances. God, who had brought every kind of being into existence after its kind, singled out one, the human, which he made in his own likeness: b’tzelem elohim, in the image of God (Gen. 1:27). Think about it: every other creature on the planet knows exactly what it is doing and gets on with its business. Humankind is the only kind that is confused, troubled and, by and large, clueless. Yet we are made ‘in the image of God’: What a heavenly joke! Be that as it may, the human being, being God’s chosen creature, is raised to a higher power vis-à-vis creation as a whole. At this point, the whole of creation is a garden in Eden, a kind of promised land. Being like God, the human couple, Eve and Adam, are called to a higher standard. A beautiful idea! But being all too human, they fall short of their billing (which is their very being) and, unable to avoid going astray, do not long endure in their paradise (or their paradise does not long endure: it comes to the same thing), but are utterly expelled, their progeny scattered to the ends of the earth, where they can be found to this day. Sounds familiar? Hearing these echoes of Genesis in Exodus, it is tempting to say that, in the crucible of Sinai, amid the divine fire and smoke, a bit of humankind is remade in the image of God – with the same instantaneous fall from grace as first time round. How human are the people of God! They are just like the rest of their kind! So much so, that in their story every people – even every person – can recognize themselves; they are less a light, more an illuminated mirror, to the nations. Sinai, which might have been a reprieve (whether for one people or ultimately for all), turns out to be a reprise of an old, universal story.

This is how the Torah tends to work: it tells a universal story through a particular case: one couple (Eve and Adam), one individual (Abraham), one people (Israel). In each case, the flesh-and-blood characters in the story seem to transcend themselves – but never by becoming abstractions. A creation is the opposite of an abstraction and the Torah is the book of creation. And also re-creation. Twice in the narrative the children of Israel are presented with the aseres had’vorim, the ten words or commandments: first at Sinai shortly after they leave Egypt and then again in the land of Moab just before they enter the promised land. But with the fourth clause – the commandment to keep the Sabbath day holy – there is a striking difference between the two versions. In Exodus, the reason given is that God made the world in six days and rested on the seventh (Ex. 20:11). In Deuteronomy, the explanation is that God freed the Israelites from slavery in Egypt (Deut. 5:15). How can this be? Unless the two reasons are ultimately one: unless the second is a reminder of the first, and the creation of the people of God is the re-creation (in some sense) of humankind.

In any case, the outcome of the torrid affair at Sinai is never in doubt for any of the participants. God knows it from the outset, Moses too, and the people are told it in the most forthright fashion. Each party in advance knows fully what lies in store. Yet God (who loves his people) asks of them the impossible; Moses (who led them to freedom) urges them to choose it; and the hapless people, eyes wide open, do. They choose to be what they cannot be. Again, go figure! But this time I won’t. For this intimate triangle – God, Moses, Israel – with an intricate, indecipherable plot, is a paradox on a cosmic scale, a riddle too far for one day: a riddle made for eternity. Suffice to say that becoming ‘the people of God’ seals the fate of the Israelites. The rest, as they say, is, so to speak, history.

But whose? One answer lies inside the text, where the story is handed on from book to book, from Moses to Joshua to the judges to the prophets and duly recorded in the annals of Kings and Chronicles. These are chapters in the career of a people inscribed in a book, a book forever closed: a complete testament. But outside, in the world, beyond the pale of the book, where the future is open: whose history and whose fate?

Enter the Jews, whom I have not mentioned since I began this reading of the biblical narrative, for they are a kind of twist to the Hebrew tale. Who are the Jewish people? They – we – are the people who, peering over the lip of the book, espy the children of Israel and exclaim: “Look! That’s us: We’re them. See?” But no one on the page looks back at them – at us – to confirm our view. There is no mutual embrace. It is a one-sided relationship. We Jews might identify with the Israelites, but the Israelites don’t identify with us. They interest us but we don’t concern them. They are too occupied with being themselves, the people in the book. Seen as holy writ, the book is a finished work: it is complete unto itself and set apart in a manner unlike any other text. Here is God’s word, there God’s world, and between them – a gap, a little like the chasm that separates heaven from earth. In the beginning, God divides the one from the other, earth from heaven; which does not mean that there cannot be passage to and fro – think of the traffic on Jacob’s ladder – but it does mean that every rung is a reach. Likewise, passing from Tanakh to terra firma, every step is a trek that is longer than the distance between Egypt and Canaan – even via the route that the Israelites took; it is infinitely longer. (Imagine the Torah suspended forever one tantalizing inch above the tips of your outstretched fingers: this shows how short infinity can be.)

We take Israel’s story to be ours; but it is a take. We take it as given; but many a slip twixt give and take. What is given is the Torah; but how we take it is down to us. Seeing it as given specifically to us, seeing ourselves in the part of the people who receive it in the text, is already a take – for which we bear full responsibility. We have to see it as our choice; if we don’t, then we are certainly not the people of Israel, who become the people of God through choosing. Let us by all means identify with the Israelites, but let us see this for what it is: an act of identification: an act, a doing, and a pretty audacious one at that, identifying with the people of God: a risk we run, a choice: a choice, like the choice that Ruth the Moabite makes when she declares herself to Naomi, saying: “Your people shall be my people, and your God my God” (Ruth 1: 16). Seeing the Torah as ours, we receive it; but until we receive it, it is not ours. It is not ours till we take it upon ourselves to see it as given to us.

But we would be well advised to think twice about such an undertaking – just as the people whom we choose to regard as our ancestors, the chosen people, might have been wise to ponder what was on offer to them. For, like them, we run a risk or two. For what are we doing when we assume their mantle? We are inserting ourselves into the intimate triangle at Sinai, with its intricate paradoxical plot, writing ourselves into the middle of a riddle ‘made for eternity’. The awesome complexity of this riddle might be the making of an eternal people – but is liable to be the undoing of us, a people in time. We say the Torah is given to us; the risk we run is that in taking it we snatch at it and, thinking we get it, lose the plot. Unless we are very careful (which we are not), we end up spoiling the very thing that we say we prize, leaving our grubby paw prints all over the text as we grab it, flatten it, pocket it, plunder it, laying claim to its promises, covering ourselves in its glory – to our lasting shame. In short, we run the risk that every ‘dull and witless’ people runs when presented with an unfathomable gift: becoming a nation of nudniks – just like the biblical people of God. Being like them, we lack “a mind to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear” (Deut. 29:3).

Who are we, what are we, we Jews, wandering from box to box, from people to nation to culture to ethnicity to religion to race (God forbid!), traversing all the known categories, unable to settle into being one thing and not another? Why is ‘Jewish’ the Houdini among identities: always escaping the boxes in which it is put? Because our point of origin is a conundrum. Taking Israel’s story to be ours, we appropriate the name ‘the people of God’. The people (particular) of God (universal): the very idea is a kind of surd: a quantity that does not add up or make sense, a logical scandal, a formula that is always liable to split apart at the seams. When it does, when it splits, its splinters become fragments that fit, more or less, one box or another. We settle for being a nation, religion, ethnicity, whatever. We settle down, finding our niche, knowing our place, fitting in, adding up, making sense.

But suppose this idea, remaining in tension with itself, holds: then something choice comes into being: a people defined by a surd: an absurd people, conceived within the leaves of a book (or the rolls of a scroll) and dedicated to a simple but untenable proposition: that they are both radically apart from the world and thoroughly a part of it. That’s us, the Jewish people. How can we possibly maintain this impossible stand? By taking the narrative of the Israelites and turning it into a stance, a posture towards existence; in a word, an attitude. Not one but three in one: aspiration, the continual striving to be exemplary; atonement, the sorrowful acknowledgement of repeated and abject failure; and hope, a broad hope, hope not just for ourselves but for the whole creation: the stubborn belief in the light at the end of the tunnel that will wipe away all the tears of history from the anguished and wrinkled face of the earth. It is not so much a stance as a step, like the dance of the lightly-clad David, whirling like a dervish before the Ark of the Lord on the road to Jerusalem, (2 Sam. 6:14). Put on the spot, we are always on the hop, shifting from one position to the other, from aspiration to atonement to hope, and back again, constantly, faithfully, religiously. Holding the pose, performing the dance: this is the inner sense of our ceremonies. This, our style, our ritual, is our raison d’être. (If ritual can be empty, it can also be full.) Thus we loom in the dark, part light, part mirror, to the nations.

Judaism, on this reading, never solves the conundrum that lies at its point of origin. Christianity does. Parsing a human being into ‘spirit’ and ‘flesh’ and substituting the one for the other, it proclaims itself to be ‘the new Israel’, ‘the new people of God’: a people constituted (to quote from Lumen Gentium, one of the principal documents of the Second Vatican Council) “not according to the flesh but in the Spirit”. With this distinction, Christianity resolves the logical scandal posed by the very idea of ‘the people of God’, converting the people into a worldwide church, a spiritual union, a union via communion. Thus, in effect, Christianity replaces the particular (people) with the universal (church). Judaism does not know a systematic distinction between ‘flesh’ and ‘spirit’. It resolves nothing. It is not so civilized. Embracing the scandal at its heart, it insists on the flesh-and-blood particularity of the people – but aglow in the supernal light that pervades the whole creation. Seen in this light, how can we, the Jewish people, be taken for a normal people? And seeing in this light, how can we possibly keep ourselves to ourselves?

Seen in this light, how do the Jewish people appear? Not altogether steady on their feet. How could we be steady on our feet when we cannot fill our own shoes? How can we fill our shoes when we are never merely or quite ourselves? For there is more to being Jewish than being Jewish. We do not add up. We are a wild thing. Our cup runneth over and, looking slightly the worse for wear, we stagger from point to point, doing our dance, recalling our calling, retelling our tale, preparing to meet our maker at the ends of the earth. Who is our maker? “He is bright, he is ruddy; his clothes are red, as when he came from treading the winepress in Edom” (Anim Zmiros, Song of Glory). It behooves us, being the people of such a God, peering over the lip of his luscious creation and drinking in what we see, always to be a trifle tipsy, perpetually a bissel shikker.

If we stand out, it is only to signify that none of the nations stands above any other. For, seen in the celestial light that pervades the whole creation, the Jewish people are to the rest of humankind what an instance is to a universal: an example: a case in point: illustrative, not illustrious. And if, in some sense, we hold ourselves apart, this is not to keep our distance but, on the contrary, to re-establish our involvement in the here and now, where we belong. What is the place of the Jewish people in the world? In the world, wherever we find ourselves, living in its midst, steeped in its joys, immersed in its tsuris [troubles], disquieted by its injustices. A people apart? Only in order to recollect ourselves and, reinvigorated, re-enter the fray of creation, with all our heart, all our soul, all our might.

II. The Pursuit of Justice

So far, based on certain passages in Tanakh, I have been giving a reading of the idea that the Jewish people are the people of God. This reading is implicit in the title of my new book, Being Jewish and Doing Justice. If I stress ‘justice’ it is not only because that is where I wish to place the emphasis; it is also in consequence of a recent experience when I was lecturing in Germany. Perhaps it was the language barrier, but my host misunderstood and called the book ‘Being Jewish and Doing Nothing’: an interesting concept and, as I told her, proffering my thanks, possibly the title for my next book. Certainly, it would be easier to research. Besides, doing nothing has an honourable place in Jewish thought. It is, after all, what God does on the seventh day after completing the work of Creation. Some people think he has been on holiday ever since. Or on strike. Heaven knows! But here on earth there is a job to do. And perhaps this division of labour is part of a divine plan: for six days God makes the world, leaving it to us to make something of it thereafter. But what? In the Mishna, Rabbi Tarfon says “The day is short, the task is great …” He adds, “You are not obliged to complete the task, but neither are you free to give it up.” What task? No one puts it more succinctly than Moses, who, when he tells the Israelites what they must pursue, sums it up in a word (or two): tzedek, tzedek: justice, justice (Deut. 16:20).

Today, the pursuit of justice is often expressed in the language of human rights. And when this language is spoken, many of us hear the voices of those Hebrew prophets, rabbis and other Jewish figures, going back to antiquity, for whom Judaism means nothing if it does not mean social justice and protection of the vulnerable. We think, for example, of the reiterated concern for “the stranger, the orphan and the widow” (Deut. 14:29 and passim) and of Amos denouncing “those who devour the needy, annihilating the poor of the land” (Am. 8:4). We recall the passage in the Mishna that says that “Adam was created alone to teach you that if anyone destroys one life, Scripture reckons it as if he had destroyed a whole world.”  The strength of this admonition reminds us of the right to life.

But are we being anachronistic? Are we reading a modern concept – human rights – into the thought of another era when the concept did not exist? This is a complex question, but the answer, on the whole, is: no, we are not. Let us look briefly at both sides of the argument.

On the one hand, it could be argued that when the Torah enjoins us, say, to care for “the stranger, the orphan and the widow” it is saying that we have a responsibility for their wellbeing, rather than saying that they have a right to our care, let alone a human right in the modern sense. Michael Berger and Deborah Lipstadt maintain that there is “a fundamental theoretical difference between Jewish law and modern notions of human rights”. And the Jewish political theorist Milton Konvitz observes, “There is no word or phrase for ‘human rights’ in the Hebrew scriptures or in other ancient Jewish texts.”

On the other hand, as Konvitz goes on to say, the absence of the word or phrase does not necessarily mean that “the ideas and values” that we associate with human rights in the modern sense did not exist; he thinks they did exist. The scholars who produced the 1985 edition of the Tanakh for the Jewish Publication Society appear to have taken the same view. If you consult their widely-respected translation, you will find that Deuteronomy says: “You shall not subvert the rights of the stranger or the fatherless…”; “Cursed be he who subverts the rights of the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow” (Deut. 24:17, 27:19). Similarly, Isaiah says, “Uphold the rights of the orphan” (Is. 1:17). And when Jeremiah rebukes Jehoahaz, king of Judah, he contrasts him with his father Josiah who “upheld the rights of the poor and needy” (Jer. 22:16). I assume that the translators chose the word ‘rights’ because they wanted to find a contemporary idiom that conveys the ancient ‘ideas and values’ expressed in the Torah.

Besides, what exactly are human rights in the modern sense? Berger and Lipstadt go back to the Enlightenment for the “philosophical basis of modern human rights”. As they see it – and their view is not unusual –, the underlying concept, roughly, is this: each of us (or each adult human being) is an independent individual who, in seeking his or her own interest, comes into conflict with other individuals. Our human rights, on this basis, are the claims that each of us is entitled to make – against each other and the state – in order to promote our own interest and protect our own individual liberty.

This might be the basis for the concept of human rights in the American Declaration of Independence or the American Bill of Rights. But is it the basis for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948, which is the source for subsequent human rights documents? Is this the view of life that it contains? The answer is ‘no’. The preamble does not begin with the principle of the independent self-seeking individual. It refers to “all members of the human family”. In the same vein, Article 1 says that all human beings “should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood”. The sense of this is that we ought to matter to each other and not only to ourselves. Rabbi Akiva, nearly two thousand years ago, ‘reduced’ the Torah to the biblical commandment “You shall love your neighbour as yourself” (Lev. 19:18)..  Similarly, the implication of Article 1 of the UDHR is that the principle of brotherhood – or siblinghood – is fundamental. It is as fundamental as the principle of equality (that no one matters less – or more – than anyone else).

Thus, the UDHR model of the human family is radically different from the model of universal competition commonly associated with the modern idea of human rights. The ‘spirit of brotherhood’ that the UDHR invokes is closer to the spirit of cooperation or at least of mutual concern. ‘Family’ mean kinship; kinship suggests ties; ties imply that we are responsible for each other. (You could say that the ‘R’ in ‘UDHR’ stands for Responsibilities as well as Rights.) With this in mind, Francesca Klug, one of the prime movers behind the United Kingdom Human Rights Act of 1998, has argued that the UDHR represents a ‘second wave’ of human rights, the emphasis shifting from liberty to community. This shift affects the whole sense of the language of human rights today.

Now, just as the UDHR begins with ‘the human family’, so does the human story in the opening chapter of Genesis. Eve and Adam are not just the original couple, they are the originating couple, ancestors of us all. Thus, in both texts, we human beings are not a mere collection of individuals. We are mishpachah: members of a single – a universal – extended human family, sharing the same bubbe and zeyda: grandma Eve and grandpa Adam.

Furthermore, from the notion that Adam and Eve are made b’tzelem elohim, in the image of God (Gen. 1:27), the Talmud infers the principle of kevod habriyos [honour of the created] or kevod haodom [honour of humanity]; or, in ordinary language, human dignity. This inference assumes that the same quality imparted to Eve and Adam – the image of God – is inherited by all their descendants; that is to say, it assumes that this quality is inherent. In other words, human dignity, according to the Talmud, is inherent. This is precisely what the UDHR asserts with the opening words of its preamble. Moreover, the idea of inherent dignity grounds the whole of its system of universal human rights. It is no less basic in Judaism. “The dignity of every person is sacred”, writes Rabbi Chaim Shmulevitz, who for fifteen years was Rosh (head) of the famous Mirrer Yeshiva in Jerusalem. Underlining the point, he adds: “Rabbinic enactments and various scriptural prohibitions are set aside when they conflict with human respect and dignity.”

So, when I, along with many fellow Jews, hear ancient voices from Hebrew scripture and rabbinic literature in the modern language of human rights, are we wrong? I do not think so. This is not to say that the old ideas and values are identical with human rights in the modern sense; they are not. Nor is it to suggest that these are the only voices in the Jewish tradition; far from it. But these are the ones that speak to us – just as they have spoken to countless Jews, observant and non-observant, secular, religious and neither (or not-exactly-either), in past generations. And when at the outset I confessed that I am a fan of your rabbi, Rabbi Sarah, it is partly because she calls those voices to mind, time and again, in her sermons, articles and talks, calling for a Judaism of justice – as she did last Passover in her sermon to this congregation in this shul, from which I have quoted at length in the epilogue to my new book.

We the Jewish people are, in our peculiar way, a particular people. (Let’s be honest: no people are more particular than we are.) But when, as Jews, we refuse to give our particular interests more weight than those of fellow members of the human family; when we reject a politics that asserts our prerogative and privilege over other groups; when we are partial to justice and insist on putting it first: when we choose to live in the world rather than keeping ourselves to ourselves; we are not turning against our Jewish identity: we are turning towards it. We are affirming a Judaism of justice. We are heeding the directive that Moses gave to am Yisroel, the people of Israel, who, finding themselves at Sinai, heard the words pointing the way to the promised land and beyond: “Justice, justice shall you pursue”: words that resound down the centuries and, like the blast of the shofar, remind the people who they are.

Brian Klug

St Benet’s Hall

Oxford

The two parts of the lecture are adapted from the prologue and epilogue to Being Jewish and Doing Justice: Bringing Argument to Life (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2011). A version of part one appears as ‘A People Apart?’ in the Spring 2011 issue of Jewish Quarterly (no. 217).

Rabbi Sarah makes a similar point when she says, “The Eternal One is not a tribal God, concerned only with Israel, any more than Israel is a tribal people.” She adds, “God does not belong to us alone” (‘Beyond Tribalism’, Sermon given on Yom Kippur, 2 October 2006, available on the Brighton & Hove Progressive Synagogue website at  HYPERLINK “http://www.brightonandhoveprosynagogue.org.uk/sermons/beyond-tribalism/” http://www.brightonandhoveprosynagogue.org.uk/sermons/beyond-tribalism/).

In her sermon ‘Beyond Tribalism’ Rabbi Sarah reminds us of the following remark from the Mishna: “It was for the sake of peace among us that Creation began with a single human being: So that none might say to the other: My ancestor was greater than your ancestor” (Bab. Tal., Sanhedrin, 4:5).

Bab. Tal., Sanhedrin, 4:5, in Solomon (ed.), The Talmud, p. 503. In a footnote to the phrase ‘one life’, Solomon points out: “The words ‘of Israel’ appear in some copies, but manuscript evidence as well as the sense of the passage suggest that this is a very late interpolation.”

Michael S. Berger and Deborah E, Lipstadt, ‘Women in Judaism from the perspective of human rights’, in Michael J. Broyde and John Witte, Jr. (eds.), Human Rights in Judaism (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1998), pp. 80-1.

Milton R. Konvitz (ed.), Judaism and Human Rights (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2001), p. 13.

Ibid.

Emphasis added in all cases.

Berger and Lipstadt, ‘Women in Judaism’, p. 82.

Solomon (ed.), The Talmud, p. 522. There is a debate within Jewish tradition about who counts as a ‘neighbor’. Rabbi John Rayner discusses this in ‘The Golden Rule’ in his Signposts to the Messianic Age (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2006), pp. 7-10. He argues that, aside from ‘technical-legal’ considerations, the injunction in Leviticus 19:18 “was always understood in Judaism as applying to Jews and non-Jews alike” (p. 9).

Arguably, it is closer to Kant’s concept of a kingdom of ends, a rather different model that also goes back to the Enlightenment; but this is beside the point.

She believes a ‘third wave’ is now emerging which has to do with a change in the place of human rights in society, rather than a change in the concept. See Francesca Klug, Values for A Godless Age: The Story of the United Kingdom’s New Bill of Rights (London: Penguin, 2000), Introduction, esp. pp. 9-12. I owe my present understanding of human rights to her work.

Chaim Shmulevitz, Reb Chaim’s Discourses (New York: Mesorah Publications, 1989), p. 241. I owe knowledge of this volume to my former schoolmate James Rosenfelder.

Ibid., p. 242. Emphasis in original.