Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue

The season of autumn has begun in earnest:  it’s colder in the mornings; more wind and rain than sunshine; the leaves are beginning to turn.  A line from a Simon and Garfunkel song comes to mind: ‘August – die she must; the autumn wind blows chilly and cold’.

I wonder how many people here went away on holiday during the summer?   Holidays away from home are like islands:  We inhabit them for a while, and then we leave them to return to the shore of our daily lives – and sometimes it can feel like we’ve never been away.  Even if you didn’t take a holiday this summer, can you recall that feeling?

Before going away, of course, there are all the preparations:  First, we have to decide where we are going – which can take some time – and unless we’re planning to stay with family or friends, we need to book the hotel or arrange the holiday-let.  Then, if we are not travelling in this country by car, or choosing a package deal, there are train or plane tickets to buy; and if we are planning a trip abroad, there are the passports to find.  Then there’s the packing – which usually involves several stages: choosing what we want to take with us, washing and ironing those items that aren’t immediately pack-able, gathering toiletries – and buying any that are missing – bringing out the suitcases; and the last hurdle: managing the feat of getting everything in.   What a palaver!  If we weren’t making all that effort to go on holiday, we’d certainly need one by the time we’d finished all our preparations.   Even if you haven’t been away for a while, do you recall everything you had to do the last time you went on holiday?

A fortnight from today it will be Rosh Ha-Shanah – the New Year.  Actually, to speak of the ‘New Year’ is a little misleading – although Rosh Ha-Shanah will, indeed, usher in the New Year of 5770.  As the Hebrew tells us, Rosh Ha-Shanah is the rosh, the ‘head’ of ha-shanah, the ‘year’.  Falling at the beginning of the seventh month of Tishri, Rosh Ha-Shanah is the high-point of the year, marking the moment, when, six months having passed, the year turns.

Rosh Ha-Shanah marks a turning point, and so, apart from, proclaiming a New Year, the Shofar, the ram’s horn, calls us to reflect on our actions, turn our lives around, and return to one another, to our true selves – and to the Eternal: which for some means God; and for others represents a sense of the Transcendent; that which is larger than ourselves and our finite lives.

Rosh Ha-Shanah: the first of the ten days of t’shuvah – literally, ‘returning’ – an intensive period of Repentance, that culminates in Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, At-one-ment; it is a big deal; a very big deal; it is momentous.  Like a holiday, the aseret y’mei t’shuvah, ‘the ten days of returning’ – also known as yamim nora’im, the ‘awed days’ or ‘days of awe’ – represent a special period of time outside our daily routine. And yet, unlike the way we approach a holiday, many of us – perhaps most of us – do little or no preparation for the yamim nora’im.   Yes, those who attend the synagogue for Rosh Ha-Shanah and Yom Kippur services, do make a note of the dates when these two particular days fall, and make plans to attend.  But what else do we do?   Do we think about where we will be going during the ten days?  Do we think about what we will need for our t’shuvah journey?  Do we reflect on the year that is drawing to a close and get ourselves ready for a new one?  Do we begin to turn ourselves round?

In Sephardi tradition, the Jewish way that originated with the Jews of Sepharad – those who lived in Spain and Portugal until the expulsions of 1492 and 1497 – the Shofar is blown every morning during the month of Elul as an aid to preparation.  In both Sephardi practice and the Ashkenazi tradition that has its roots in Jewish life in northern and central Europe during the Middle Ages, it is customary to recite psalms and penitential prayers each day during Elul, and for the congregation to gather for a special service late on the Saturday night or early Sunday morning prior to Rosh Ha-Shanah, when the Shofar is blown.  Known as S’lichot, because of its emphasis on the quest for ‘Forgiveness’, which is one of the goals of the t’shuvah journey, this service serves like an intensive warm-up for the yamim nora’im – an opportunity to direct our minds and hearts on the time ahead.  With Rosh Ha-Shanah only a fortnight away, our S’lichot service will be held next Saturday night – so do check your tickets for the details.

There are other Elul traditions to help us prepare for the ‘awed days’ from Rosh Ha-Shanah to Yom Kippur.  There is the custom of expressing our best wishes to people l’shanah tovah – ‘for a good year’ – both in person, and when writing letters – and these days, emails.  This simple practice serves as a daily reminder to ourselves and others.  It is also traditional to visit the graves of loved ones during Elul – reminding ourselves of our connection with those who went before us, and the legacy we have received from them.  On a more demanding level, Elul is the time to begin to orientate ourselves to the major challenges of the yamim nora’im: T’shuvah, T’fillah and Tz’dakah.  Translated most usually as, ‘Repentance, Prayer and Charity’ – the Hebrew words are more complex:  We are called to ‘return’ to the true path of our lives, to judge ourselves – l’hit’palleil – essentially that is what tfillah, ‘prayer’, means, and to practice ‘righteousness’ by giving to those in need.  Each of these tasks, T’shuvah, T’fillah and Tz’dakah, represents a demand on our time and our energies.  But before we can start to grapple with the challenges of T’shuvah, T’fillah and Tz’dakah, we need to engage in cheshbon ha-nefesh, literally make an ‘account of the soul’.  Think back to the holiday analogy:  The preparations for our holiday surely begin when we sit down and do an account – a cheshbon – of the state of our finances, work out what we can afford, and draw up a budget.  And so, the t’shuvah journey begins in Elul with just such a cheshbon – an account of the state of our souls.

A bit heavy isn’t it?  A bit like those over-packed suitcases!   And now, we’re already two weeks into Elul.   But there is another way of looking at it:  we have, yet, two whole weeks to make a start – and the getting started is crucial.  Let me share with you a mashal, a ‘parable’ related by the 19^th century sage, Rabbi Chayyim of Zans, and re-told by S.Y. Agnon, in his wonderful ‘Treasury of Traditions, Legends and Learned Commentaries Concerning Rosh Ha-Shanah, Yom Kippur, and the Days Between’, entitled, Days of Awe (Schocken Books, New York, 1965, pp. 22-23):

There was once a poor countrywoman who had many children.  They were always begging for food, but she had none to give them.  One day she found an egg.

She called her children and said, “Children, children, we’ve nothing to worry about any more; I’ve found an egg.  And being a provident woman, I’ll not eat the egg, but shall ask my neighbour for permission to set it under her setting hen until a chick is hatched.  For I am a provident woman!  And we’ll not eat the chick, but will set her on eggs, and the eggs will hatch into chickens.  And the chickens in turn will hatch many eggs.  But I’m a provident woman, I am!  I’ll not eat the chickens and not eat the eggs, but shall sell them and buy me a heifer. And I’ll not eat the heifer, but shall raise it to a cow, and not eat the cow until it calves.  And I’ll not eat it then, either, and we’ll have cows and calves and buy a field, and we’ll have fields and cows and calves, and we won’t need anything any more!”

The countrywoman was speaking in this fashion and playing with the egg, when it fell out of her hands and broke.

Said our Master [that is, Rabbi Chayyim of Zans]: “That is how we are.  When the Holy Days arrive, every person resolves to do Teshuvah, thinking in his heart, ‘I’ll do this, and I’ll do that’.  But the days slip by in mere deliberation, and thought doesn’t lead to action, and what is worse, the person who made the resolution may fall even lower.  Therefore every person ought to exercise great caution so as not to fall even lower, God forbid.”

A cautionary tale for all those who make great plans; but fail to execute them – and a call to action:   Elul is a month of preparation for the ‘awed days’ that lie ahead; but for Jews, preparation is always practical; it is never simply a matter of what’s happening in our heads.  Just think of those holiday preparations:  all the thoughtful mental planning in the world won’t get the tickets booked and the cases packed.  So, the time for t’shuvah is now during this month of Elul.

And something more, which gives the month of Elul an important historical dimension:  Interestingly, the word Elul only came into usage after the Babylonian exile, which began in 586 BCE – and is in fact a Babylonian name, which was later adopted into Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic.  The first occurrence of the word is in the biblical book of Nehemiah, which relates the return of ‘N’chemyah, son of Hachalyah’ to Jerusalem forty years after the destruction of the city, to oversee the work of repair.  Significantly, the month of Elul is mentioned in the context of a verse in chapter six stating that ‘[t]he wall was finished on the 25^th of Elul, after fifty-two days’ (6:15).  Then, later, chapter 8 relates how the Israelites, having settled back into their towns, assembled before the Watergate at the beginning of the seventh month, and listened to Ezra the scribe read ‘the scroll of the teaching of Moses’ – sefer torat Moshe (8:1ff.).

From that time onwards the sixth month of Elul became the signal of a new beginning.  But it is important to acknowledge that Elul of its self does not bring renewal – either then, or now; it is up to us, as it was up to our ancestors before us, to use the month for this purpose.  And so, another cautionary note – this one of a linguistic nature:  Disconcertingly, a similar word in the Bible, the Hebrew noun, Elil, means ‘worthlessness’ – as in Jeremiah chapter 14, verse 14, where Jeremiah rails against the worthless divinations and deceits of false prophets.  Spelt almost identically – except for the difference of a vowel – ‘u’ in Elul, ‘i’ in Elil, the words Elul and Elil – the one Hebrew, the other, Babylonian – are not related; although, curiously, in Jeremiah 14:14 Elil is written to look like Elul.  But even without this scribal error, the surface similarity between these two very different words teaches us an important lesson:  Unless we take steps to renew our lives during Elul, the gift of Elul will be worthless.  As Rosh Ha-Shanah approaches, may each one of us find our own ways to begin the journey.  And let us say:  Amen.

Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah

Brighton & Hove Progressive Synagogue – Adat Shalom Verei’ut

5^th September 2009 / 16^th Elul 5769

On Wednesday, I travelled to the Sternberg Centre in Finchley, North London, to participate in a meeting of a Jewish – Christian – Muslim Dialogue group that I have been part of since 1994.  Originally compromising eighteen members – six Jews, six Christians, and six Muslims, the proportions have slightly varied over the years, some of the personnel have changed, and the numbers have dwindled to a hard core of around a dozen.  Unremarkably, it has been difficult to maintain the level of Muslim participation during the ‘War on Terror’ era – although there have been some stalwarts: Imam Sajid has been a member even longer than I have: ever since the group was set up by Rabbi Tony Bayfield, in his capacity as Director of the Sternberg Centre in 1992.

Unlike most interfaith initiatives, this group has focussed on in-depth discussions; on drawing on the resources of our faiths/peoples/civilizations, and our experiences – mostly as religious professionals and academics, specialising in our respective traditions – to explore key issues related to the encounter of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, both in the past and in the present.  And so, we have rarely met for less than five hours.  Indeed, for the first ten years, our meetings always took the form of twice-yearly 36-hour residentials.  More recently, however, as Muslim members, in particular, have grappled, post-9/11, with challenges to interfaith dialogue from within, and with the onslaught of Islamaphobia from without, our meetings have been shorter – and, recently, also more frequent.

For most of its life our JCM dialogue group has concentrated on talking together – albeit a lot of our talking has taken the form of writing papers, which we then discussed.   But following the military offences launched by the United States, Britain, and their allies against the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban in Afghanistan, we began to feel that perhaps the time had come for us to communicate what we had learnt from our dialogue experience to the outside world.  And so it was that during 2003, we began to work on crafting a Platform Statement, which subsequently was published in 2005, simultaneously, in Jewish, Christian and Muslim journals, under the heading, ‘Tough truths for Jews, Christians and Muslims’ (see MANNA No. 86, Winter 2005; also journals, Interreligious Insight & Encounter) and is signed by five Jews, five Christians and five Muslims.

Producing the statement was very hard work.  Getting everyone involved to agree a single text that we could all sign up to was a great challenge – and, indeed, a couple of people felt unable to sign it.  Every word of what we came up with was scrutinised, analysed and interrogated – and there were several re-writes.  One of the main reasons for this was that we were determined, not only to state our common bonds, but also to challenge, in particular, fundamentalism, past and present and the history of exclusive truth claims in all three traditions.  Further, in making it clear that ‘We must welcome religious diversity and concede that no single religion can claim a monopoly of truth’, the statement is also a call to action to promote reconciliation through initiatives in the arenas of education and politics, as well as religion.  The statement concludes with these words:

We can only achieve our vision of a repaired and transformed world by pooling the best of our respective teachings and talents in partnership and shared endeavour.  Only full and effective partnership can end conflict and bring peace, with opportunities to ponder together the wonders of creation and the mystery of God.

If you would like to read the statement in full, you can find copies of it in the Montefiore Hall.  But why am I telling you all this?  This week we begin reading the fifth book of the Torah – Deuteronomy – known in Hebrew by the first significant word of the text – D’varim – meaning ‘words’ or ‘things’ – in this context: ‘words’:  ‘These are the words which Moses spoke to all Israel beyond the Jordan’ (1:1).  D’varim takes the form of three long – indeed, very long – sermons – plus a final appeal and ‘farewell’ – delivered by Moses to the people encamped on the eastern shore of the River Jordan, prior to their entry into the land, promised, according to the Torah, to their ancestors.   For the past year the JCM group has been preoccupied with writing a book, with the working title, Dialogue, Reconciliation and Action, which, hopefully, will be completed by the spring of 2010.  The book will be special on a number of counts:  For one thing, it is a huge leap from a collective statement occupying a few pages to a manuscript a mounting to around sixty thousand words.  But most significant, we are including discussions between pairs from each of the three traditions, with a Jewish, Christian and Muslim eavesdropper, respectively, and also writing the book as our reflections together progress, with each of the five sections being informed by what has gone before, and each contributor modifying his or her contribution in the light of the ensuing discussion.  In other words, the book is a collective endeavour, both a multi-authored work, and one which reflects different voices speaking with one another and also listening to one another – while dedicated to the same purpose: dialogue, reconciliation and action to transform our conflict-ridden world in the interests of all its inhabitants.

The Torah is also a multi-authored work.  But, by contrast, it represents many different texts written over several centuries – often reflecting earlier oral traditions – and later redacted by different editors, with the singular objective of being received by its readers as the voice of a single author: God.   We don’t know who the editors were, but we do know that they were highly skilled, and that combining narratives of the origins of humanity and the Jewish people, legal codes and sacerdotal material, related to the system of worship during Temple times, they created a brilliant literary master-piece – with the emphasis on the word ‘master’:  The Torah, not only the work of men, and an expression of patriarchal power, is also the work of the victors and would-be victors in the struggle between Monotheism and the pagan cults of the Near East in ancient times.   Promoting a singular vision of religious Truth – with a capital ‘T’, the Torah is a magnificent testament to the politics of truth-making – which is not to say that it does not contain many, many pearls of wisdom  and ethical injunctions, whose transcendent truth continues to speak to us today.

Of course, within the Torah, there are five distinct books – but although these books often relate to distinct sources and concerns, it is clear from critical analysis, that their sources also overlap.  However, D’varim, the Book of Deuteronomy, which we begin to read today, is, indeed, utterly distinct.  Although set on the east bank of the Jordan during the very last days of our ancestors’ wilderness journey, and taking the form of a series of orations by Moses, Deuteronomy was actually written during the time of the reign of Josiah around the year 622 BCE, as part of an attempt to reform the kingdom of Judah, by reminding the people of the covenant they entered with the Eternal One in the wilderness.   But the distinctiveness of Deuteronomy – as its Latin name suggests, this ‘second’ account of the ‘Law’ – is really only a matter of its literary origins.  Like all the other books of the Torah, it is harnessed to the goal of demonstrating that, not only is there only One God, there is only One Truth – and indeed One people – whose task it is to put The Truth into practice.

Obviously, the Torah is a very different literary product from the book my JCM group is writing – for myriad reasons…  Indeed, there is something about this new book that distinguishes its message from the sacred texts of all our traditions, and which gets to the very heart of our speaking with and listening to one another:   The very existence of three distinct religious traditions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam – not to mention all the differences within each tradition – is a declaration that Truth is plural.   Judaism does not teach The Truth; Christianity does not teach The Truth; Islam does not teach The Truth – all three, together, teach truths – and also words that cannot be true in the face of the truths of the other.  All three traditions may be understood as reflecting the different ways in which different peoples and groups have tried to make sense of their apprehension of the Divine.   But I’m just being theoretical – and the point about the book and all its contributors is that we are real Jews, Christians and Muslims, who in our different ways are confronted each time we meet by the challenge, not only of acknowledging the truth of the other, but also of hearing how the other hears our own truths:  And so it was, for example, that during our discussions on Wednesday, when we were reflecting on what a Christian from Sri Lanker had written about his experience of Islam, the Muslim participants were challenged to make space for his perceptions of Islam, rather than be quick to correct his misapprehensions.  And so, as Jews, Christians and Muslims meeting together, we begin with the words of our sacred texts, but we cannot end with them; somehow through our interaction and our listening, however hard it is, we discover ways of saying and doing something else, of reaching beyond the boundaries of our positions and experiences and contexts in order to reach one another.

Hopefully, the book we are creating will reflect this process – but, of course, the challenge is before all of us.   Eileh ha-d’varim asher dibeir Moshe el-kol-Yisrael b’ever ha-yardein – ‘These are the words that Moses spoke to all of Israel beyond the Jordan’.  The opening phrase of today’s Torah portion reminds us that it’s all about d’varim – words.  Indeed, when we read the opening verses of the Torah altogether, we find that the beginning of everything is presented as emerging through a series of Divine utterances – ‘And God said, “Let there be light”, and there was light’ (Genesis 1:2) – and this phenomenon of creation through speech is transformed in the first phrase of the Gospel of John in the New Testament, by the sense that language is the substance of creation: ‘In the beginning was the word’ (1:1).  But the point is that words can say so many different things – words are by definition, plural.  We try – all of us – to fix them and contain them and order them; we try to make sense of them and with them – and we should – that is our unique task and blessing as human beings: to speak and to write and to shape our experience.  But as we speak and write and talk as much sense as we can, we are challenged not only to recognise the nonsense that we speak and write, but also to recognise that no words, however beautiful, are ever true of themselves; truth lies in what we do with our words, when we encounter one another, how we listen, and how we act., May we all do what we can to use our gifts of words for all our sakes.  And let us say:  Amen.

Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah

Brighton & Hove Progressive Synagogue – Adat Shalom Verei’ut

25^th July 2009 – 4^th Av 5769

The Bat Mitzvah of Maia Orme

Today is the anniversary of the birth of the United States of America in 1776.  It might also have been the eve of the first British men’s Wimbledon winner since Fred Perry last won the tournament in 1936, but sadly, that dream was dashed – once again – when the wrong Andy triumphed in the semi-finals yesterday.

Now, you might think it rather odd to preface the really important occasion we are celebrating today – Maia’s Bat Mitzvah – by mentioning these other, seemingly tangential external events, which have nothing to do with Judaism, let alone with the unique moment when a young person becomes responsible for her own Jewish life and begins her journey as a young adult.   Nevertheless in a certain and quite profound sense, they are related:  Britain was once a great power – the greatest power on earth – and a new, fledgling nation defeated it, and went on to become, generations later, one of the world’s two main super-powers, rivaled only by the Soviet Union until 1989, and by the increasing dominance of China over the past twenty years.  Meanwhile, at one time, on the tennis court, as on the football, rugby and cricket fields, Britain not only invented all these sports, but also led the way – and over the past two weeks, as in recent years gone by, some of us cherished the hope that we might just be, finally, on the verge of a come-back, when a relatively new young player showed the promise to succeed.

Once again, it wasn’t to be, but the point is that we hoped Andy Murray could do it.  The achievement of American independence from the British 233 years ago was, ultimately, a triumph of hope and vision over might.  Andy Murray could have been in the final, playing Roger Federer tomorrow – he even has the skill to win.  All he had to do was to play like a winner yesterday and to hold on to the belief that he could win; all he had to ensure was that his will to succeed would effectively overcome his fear of failure…

And so to Maia:   Becoming Bat Mitzvah, is of course, nothing like becoming a nation or winning Wimbledon – but it does involve, not only skill and hard work, but also self-belief, a spirit of hopefulness, and the vision to imagine oneself no longer a child, dependent on one’s parents, but a young adult, taking responsibility for one’s own values and actions.

We tend to take it for granted, but making the transition from childhood, from a state of dependency, towards independence is very hard – not least because it involves the young person – in this case, you, Maia – believing in yourself and in your own possibilities, and being able to value yourself, rather than looking to others to affirm your worth.

This week’s Torah portion, Balak, has much to teach us about the importance of valuing ourselves, rather than seeing ourselves through the eyes of others.   And our principle teacher is none other than a donkey – and a female donkey at that.  We all know about donkeys: unlike horses, who are lithe and graceful, donkeys are the perennial beats of burden, who are also, perennially ill-treated, and looked down upon as stupid.  In fact, ill-treatment of donkeys is such a problem that in Israel today, there is a charity, whose work is specifically dedicated to improving the well-being of donkeys in both Israel and the Palestinian territories.  It’s called Save Haven For Donkeys, and is based at Moshav Gan Yoshiyya, near the towns of Netanya and Hadera (www.safehaven4donkjeys.org).

Yes, apart from children on British sea-side beaches, mostly of yesteryear, queuing up for donkey rides, we humans don’t tend to appreciate donkeys very much – and it is evident from the Torah that our negative stereotypes go back to ancient times.  And so, it is highly significant that in the strange story of Balak, the King of Moab hiring the sorcerer, Bilam, to curse the Israelites, it is the donkey – not the skillful magician – who sees the messenger of God in her path.   To Bilam, the donkey is just a vehicle, and a stubborn one at that, and so he beats her three times in his impatience.   But the donkey not only sees what he doesn’t see, she has the confidence to believe in herself, and assert herself.  We read at Numbers 22: 28b-30:

She said to Bilam: ‘What have I done to you that you have struck me these three times?’/ And Bilam said to the donkey: ‘Because you have mocked me; I wish I had a sword in my hand because now I would kill you!’/ Then the donkey said to Bilam: ‘Am I not your donkey, whom you have ridden all your life long until this day?’ Was I ever inclined to do so to you?’  And he said, ‘No’.

The great sorcerer defeated by the authority and logic of a donkey!  Of course, donkeys are unable to speak human language – indeed, the Torah tells us that ‘the Eternal One opened the mouth of the donkey (:28a).  It is a miraculous moment – but the point, nevertheless is well made:  the donkey has her own identity, a sense of her own being; she is not simply a projection of Bilam’s perception of her.

And just as significant:  the donkey is a she:  The voice of reason, the one who demonstrates vision, is the only female in the story.   And this fact is even more significant because female characters are so marginal in the rest of the Torah.  Of course, there are exceptions:  the matriarchs, Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel – and Aaron and Moses elder sister, Miriam.  But these female characters, with the exception of Rebecca, tend to play second fiddle to the more central male characters – and Miriam is a good case in point:  She might have been the eldest; she might have played an important role in saving her baby brother from Pharaoh’s genocidal decree (Exodus 2), she might have been called a n’vi’ah, a prophetess, and led the women in song with timbrels through the divided sea (Exodus 15), but everything that the Torah has to say about her amounts to just thirty verses in all,  sixteen of which are taken up with an account of how she took the lead, when she and Aaron challenged their younger brother’s leadership, and his special relationship with God (Numbers 12).

So, it is crucial to the story we read in today’s portion, that the only character who exhibits vision and wisdom is a female – and a donkey to boot!    But there is something else going on in the narrative as a whole that is just as important, and actually, much more disturbing for us here today – a gathering of sophisticated 21^st century people, most of whom have now taken on board gender equality and our responsibility as human beings towards other living creatures.  That something else is summed up for us in the words with which we opened today’s service, the words with which we open almost all of our services: Mah—tovu o’halecha Ya’a’kov; mishk’notecha Yisrael – ‘How good are your tents, O Jacob; your dwelling places O Israel’ (24:5).

At first glance, you might be baffled: what’s the problem here?   Let me put this phrase in context:  Balak, the King of Moab has hired the sorcerer Bilam to curse the Israelites – but after the donkey speaks, God opens Bilam’s eyes – and then his mouth – and so all that Bilam can do is bless the Israelites – four times!    The words, Mah—tovu o’halecha Ya’a’kov; mishk’notecha Yisrael – ‘How good are your tents, O Jacob; your dwelling places O Israel’ (24:5), are part of the third round of blessings.

But you may still be thinking:  So, what is the problem here?  The problem is with us the much-cursed and much-blessed people of Israel:   When are we going to stop seeing ourselves through the eyes of others?   When are we going to stop paying so much attention to what they think about us – and start paying more attention to what we think about us?  We hate anti-Semitism; we know where it leads… But why is it that rejecting anti-Semitism, on the one hand, we are so fixated on the nice things that other people say about us, on the other?  Again:   Mah—tovu o’halecha Ya’a’kov; mishk’notecha Yisrael – ‘How good are your tents, O Jacob; your dwelling places O Israel’ – and we are also all so intelligent and creative and…  Yes we are!  At least, some of us are – and some us of are not.  When are we going to start evaluating our own strengths and weaknesses for ourselves?

Maia:  Today’s parashah, Balak, your Bat Mitzvah portion, has some very important messages for everyone here – but, in particular, for you.  Today is a very significant day in your life.  For you, being Jewish means, as you have told me, that you can experience different cultures, food, and music from both your mum and your dad’s sides of the family.  Meanwhile, as the only Jewish girl in your whole year, being Jewish also makes you feel special and different from the other people in your school.  So, you enjoy being different; and you also feel part of the wider society.  If only more Jewish people felt this way!   And your enjoyment of being different extends to your feelings about becoming Bat Mitzvah:  You are very aware that you are the first woman in your family to read from the Torah – and, as you put it, ‘It makes me feel sort of like a pioneer’.

Your confidence to be a pioneer in your family, has been boosted enormously by your mum and your dad and Ella, and also by belonging to this synagogue.  Here, learning about being Jewish in a fun way by playing ‘The Board Game’ with your teacher and tutor, Andy Cable, and your friends, you have also met other young people like you – like Leah, who will be celebrating her Bat Mitzvah next February.  Here at BHPS it is normal for girls and women to be treated equally with boys and men – and that atmosphere has made a big difference to you.

Maia:  The past year has been a real journey for you. You’ve not only grown taller, you feel more confident in doing things on your own, like going into town on the bus with friends, or taking Ella to the cinema to see Hannah Montana – The Movie.  You are learning to create a balance in your life between work and play: You enjoy excelling in Spanish and English – and love reading and thinking about words in different languages; and you also enjoy dancing because it’s a great escape from the stresses of school and exams.   The truth is you like so many different things for example, cooking, chatting with your mates, and ‘eating cake and jumping on the trampoline at the same time’.  And you care with equal relish about the big and the little things of life, like being a good friend, on the one hand, and worrying about whether wearing ‘red jeans with a green top’, ‘looks too much like Christmas’, on the other.  Even your thoughts about the future reflect your playful sense of life:  Wouldn’t it really be wonderful if you could invent a machine that builds houses equipped with all the necessities needed for living in, makes delicious food, and provide water for everyone – for free!

Maia:  Everyone here today – your family, your friends, your teachers and the members of this congregation join me in wishing you well for the future.  As you begin to take responsibility for your own life, I hope that you will remember the lessons of your portion:  Respect others, but don’t look to other people to value you and appreciate you; be proud of yourself as a Jew, as a young woman, as a human being, and, above all, believe in yourself.   May the achievement of this day inspire you to be all of who you are and can be in the weeks, months and years to come.  And let us say:  Amen.

Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah

Brighton & Hove Progressive Synagogue – Adat Shalom Verei’ut

5^th July 2009 – 12^th Tammuz 5769

I don’t know about you, but I’m not crazy about email; I realise that it’s a swift form of communication that can save a lot of paper, but I guess I just receive too many!  Every time I’m about to open my in-box, I feel a faint sense of dread: how many are waiting there for me?

I reserve my emails that are not related to my local rabbinic concerns for Wednesdays, when I do non-congregational work.  So it was that one Wednesday morning – May 13^th to be precise – I read an email from an unnamed ‘archivist of the Dachau Memorial Site’ that touched my life deeply:  The email was about my grossvati, my grandfather, my father’s father. Just over a week earlier, when I had received an email inviting me as the rabbi of one of the local synagogues to attend the opening of the exhibition about Dachau at the Jubilee Library, ‘Names Instead of Numbers’, I had mentioned in my reply that my grandfather, Julius Klempner, had been incarcerated in Dachau following the Nazis’ invasion of Austria in 1938.  It seemed obvious to mention this.  It didn’t occur to me at the time that I had supplied information that might be followed-up.  Brief and to the point, the Dachau archivist informed me:

‘I found the name of your grandfather in the lists of the Jewish prisoners who were interned short after the so-called Reichskristallnacht when more than 11,000 Jews were brought to Dachau.  Most of them were released after some weeks or months, as your grandfather.  You will find the confirmation of his imprisonment in the attachment.’

I downloaded the attachment and found this letter from a certain Albert Knoll (1):

Dear Mrs. Tikvah Sarah

We have examinated the name-lists and the prisoner-numberbooks and we can confirm that the person which you mentioned below had been imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp or in its subcamps.

The length of the imprisonment and further information you will find on an extra sheet of paper.

We are sorry to inform you that there are no other documents because they had been destroyed by the SS short before the liberation.

For your further requests we give you all the information willingly.

Kindly regards

Before it was signed off the letter included a glossary of terms:

Explanation of German Categories of imprisonment:

Schutzhäftling               = Protective Custody Prisoners

Jude                              = Jewish Prisoner

Sicherungsverwahrung = Preventive Custody Prisoners

Arbeitszwang                  = “Asocial” Prisoners

Zigeuner                        = Gypsies / Sinti and Roma

I scrolled gingerly to the ‘extra sheet of paper’.  The text on the document was very brief:

JULIUS  KLEMPNER – 26.11.1885 – Wien

Letzter bekannter Wohnort (last address): Wien

Beruf: Kaufmann (profession: merchant)

Haftart:    Jude [Jew]

Schutzhäftling [Protective Custody Prisoners]

Nationalität:  Österreich [Austrian]

Datum Häftlings-Nr Zu-/Abgangsart Zu-/Abgangsstelle

13.11.1938             31372             Zugang (date of entrance)

Datum Häftlings-Nr Zu-/Abgangsart Zu-/Abgangsstelle

19.1.1939                                      entlassen (released)

I knew my father’s father had been incarcerated in Dachau.  I hadn’t known for how long – nor the date that he had been taken from his home one morning in the early hours.  So here it was: 13^th November 1938 – just a few days after Kristalnacht, the ‘Night of the Broken Glass’.  And now I also knew the date that he was released: 19^th January 1939, sixty-seven days later.   Providing my grandfather’s date of birth, the brief document also helps to explain why my younger sister was named Julia:  She was born three years after his death, on 27^th November 1958 – the day after what would have been his 73^rd birthday.

Of course, my grandfather was one of the ‘lucky ones’; one of the survivors – and fortunately, my father had left Vienna for South Africa two years earlier, so he was spared.  But although my grandfather got out of Dachau, and was also allowed to leave Austria with his wife, and other children – a daughter in her twenties and a younger son in his teens – just before the outbreak of war, the experience of his imprisonment in Dachau destroyed him.   A tie manufacturer, Julius Klempner had enjoyed a comfortable upper-middle class existence.  Living in a large apartment in the centre of Vienna, his wife, Paula, used to spend her afternoons drinking café mit schlagobers – coffee with whipped cream – in her favourite haunts; their children were educated at the best French-speaking gymnasium – the equivalent of the Lycee in London – and attending Vienna’s famous horse-riding school was a favourite past-time.  In the winter months, they skated on the Danube and skied in the mountains; during the summer holidays, they secluded themselves in a lovely villa in the Vienna Woods.  My father, Paul, named after his mother, experienced the domineering side of his father – which is why he left for South Africa at the age of 22 in 1936 rather than join the family business.  I sometimes wonder what would have become of him if he had got on with his father and stayed…  But family dynamics and issues apart, the Klempner family enjoyed a secure life in Vienna, and although I don’t know much about it, small details speak volumes:  I have the beautiful siddur with its ivory cover decorated with mother-of-pearl and gold that was given to my grand-mother to mark her confirmation.

Yes, Julius Klempner was ‘lucky’ to be a survivor – and his immediate family were fortunate to be refugees; many others in the wider family did not escape.  But like all the other thousands of refugees, they lost everything – in their case: an apartment, a house, a factory, and all their possessions.  And in addition to suffering the terror and humiliation of Dachau, Julius Klempner’s life was soon transformed forever:  Having secured ‘domestic permits’ that had enabled them to leave Austria and travel to England just before the exits were sealed, after spending a few months in Swiss Cottage in North West London – the refuge of so many Jews fleeing Hitler – the Klempner family left for a new life in Chicago.  But my grandfather, aged just fifty-four at the time never recovered.  And so, because her husband was unable to work, Paula, who had never earned any money before, became a book-keeper, and supported them both.  He died in 1955, aged 69, a few months after I was born; she worked until she was 75 in the Accounts Department of Marshall Fielding Department Store, and lived until she was in her mid-90s.   It seems that through the experience of being torn out of the stable routines of her life, she found strength, determination and purpose – and the will to survive.

Why am I telling you all this?   I first went to Chicago on a family visit my in 1968.  But my visit ten years ago was particularly significant.  My father had died a year earlier, and although I didn’t realise it then, it was the last time I was to see my father’s siblings.  As usual I stayed with my father’s brother Jack – known as Hansy when he was a boy – and his wife, June.  I made the trip because my aunt June was terminally ill with cancer. I thought I knew why I came, but then, as soon as I arrived, my uncle Jack told me that he had recently been interviewed for the Sho’ah Foundation Archive established by Steven Spielberg.  It was very moving to sit down with him and watch the video of the interview together, and then to talk with him about his experiences, which I had not known about before.  For the first time, I understood that he was a survivor.

And what about me?  What about all those, who are second and third generation?  The one and only time I visited Vienna was forty years ago this summer, when my father drove us across Europe to rendezvous with his mother and aunt, who had flown there from Chicago.  Standing on the street, outside the front door of the mansion-block that housed the apartment where my father had grown up, I remember feeling chilled by the blank anonymity of the feature-less city-street – and bewildered:  what was I to make of the loss of something that I had never known?  My father revealed very little, and being with my grossmutti, my grandmother, didn’t help much either: quiet and impassive, she told me nothing of what it all meant to her – and what she did say, was whispered in German to her sister and her son; was shared among those who did know the loss.

So many thousands of survivors; so many thousands of survivor stories; they all need to be told.  Just this week, on Tuesday, our own dear Hans Levy, marked the 69^th anniversary of his arrival in England, at the port of Liverpool, as a youngster, who was part of the kindertransport.  Hans’ journey away from his home in Germany had taken two years, and the last part of it, by boat around the British coast, under German-fire, took several days.  What a relief to arrive, finally.  But he was a stranger in a strange land, and he never saw his parents again.

A few weeks ago, a week after Pesach, we commemorated Yom ha-Sho’ah, the day set aside to remember the six million murdered by the Nazis.  In recent years, each Shabbat during the Omer period, the seven weeks between the second day of Pesach, and the festival of Shavuot, we have chosen to mark the passing weeks by reading from our Czech scroll, one of the 1,564 scrolls that survived the Nazi onslaught.

We read it to remember the Jewish community of Frydek-Mistek, who once owned it.  All the Jews of Frydek-Mistek were deported and killed by the Nazis.  Only their scrolls – one of which has been entrusted to our care – survive.  Our Czech survivor scroll is very precious to us – and should serve as a reminder, not only of those who were murdered, but of all the other survivors – the people who survived, who should also be very precious to us.  The ‘lucky ones’, we must never forget their suffering and their loss, their lives torn apart, the guilt many feel that they survived while others died.

Somehow, it is very easy to forget the survivors – and not just the survivors of the Sho’ah.  Whenever there is a natural disaster, or terrorist attack, or other catastrophe, the emphasis in the news coverage, is always on the numbers of those who have been killed.  Of course, the numbers of the maimed and injured are also mentioned, but, in most cases, the camera-footage focuses on the dead – and the funerals that follow.  And yet, in every camera-shot of a coffin or a shrouded body, there are the faces of some of the physically wounded, who have not been hospitalised, as well as the faces of others, who appear unscathed – but of course, are not:  these survivors may not have been physically hurt, but what about, their mental anguish; the psychological wounds?   In the past few years, more attention has been paid by mental health professionals to a condition now known as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder:  People may survive a traumatic event, they may even emerge physically intact, but the impact on their psyches can be immensely damaging.

Recently, PTSD has begun to hit the headlines, too:  Just a couple of weeks ago, there was the story about the large numbers of soldiers, who have returned from Iraq, only to perpetrate violence against others and themselves – including murder and suicide; and two years ago, when the country was marking the 25^th anniversary of the Falklands War, it emerged that more soldiers killed themselves after the war than were killed in action.

Yes, we are beginning to hear about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and its impact – but have we taken on board the implications?   Have we registered what the evidence of PTSD tells us about all the survivors in our midst?  Of course, not every survivor suffers consciously from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder – and we don’t know enough about it yet, to have a clear idea of why some survivors of traumatic events seem to be more affected than others.  What we need to be aware of is that being a survivor does not necessarily mean that one has escaped the terrors that killed others; to experience trauma even if one survives, involves experiencing an assault on the psyche.

Today, we begin reading the third book of the Torah, Numbers.  The Hebrew name of the book is B’midbar because the book opens with the words (1:1):  Va-y’dabbeir Adonai el-Moshe b’midbar Sinai – ‘The Eternal One spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai’.  Set in the wilderness,

ba-midbar, in the second year of our ancestors’ journey from Egypt to Canaan, this third book of the Torah reminds us that our people was formed in the wilderness; in the desert; in an alien landscape.  But how could it have been otherwise?  Refugees from slavery, survivors of centuries of abuse, would it have been possible for them simply to leave ‘the house of bondage’ and march to ‘the promised land’?   The Torah reminds us that to survive trauma is to begin a journey out of the furnace towards renewal; recovery cannot be instantaneous – and for some there may be no recovery, not even after forty years.

In a few days time, on Wednesday evening, we will come to the end of our Omer journey and arrive at the festival of Shavuot, when we will recall our ancestors’ experience at Mount Sinai.  But meanwhile, a new journey has begun:  As we read B’midbar over the coming weeks, let us reflect on what it means to survive and to be a survivor, for ourselves as well as for others, and resolve to support one another on our continuing journeys.  And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah

Brighton & Hove Progressive Synagogue – Adat Shalom Ve’reiut

23^rd May 2009 – 29^th Iyyar 5769

NOTE

(1) Postanschrift:

KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau      e-mail:    info@kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de

85221 Dachau, Alte Römerstr. 75    Internet: www.kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de

Tel.: 08131/66 99 7 – 0      e-mail:    info@cc-memorial-site-dachau.org

Fax  08131/22 35      Internet: www.cc-memorial-site-dachau.org

Many people are hyper-active.  I think I’m probably one of them – but that’s slightly misleading:  while I do rush around from task to task and from place to place – the rabbinate is one of the best career options for hyper-active Jews – and enjoy walking and swimming when I’m not working, most of my activity happens in my brain.  It was many years ago now – at least forty; when I began studying for my ‘o levels’ – that I discovered that I suffer from a chronic condition known as ‘sitz fleish’ – a Yiddish expression roughly translated as ‘bottom power’:  One of the reasons why I have a bad back is that I have a worrying capacity to sit for ages and ages so utterly immersed in what I’m doing that I not only forget the passing hours, I forget to move at all.  And so it is that when I eventually rouse myself and try to get out of my chair, I have to carefully and painfully, unbend myself and gently flex my stiffened muscles and joints…

Okay, so I am a little peculiar… but my tendency to live more in my head than in my body is, nevertheless, a version of hyper-activity; a tendency to do rather than to be; to act and make and create, rather than, simply to be and apprehend; to sit and stare, empty of thought.  Could this be a Jewish malaise?   And if it is, might it help to explain why the most-popular counter-religious choice for Jewish people during the past few decades has been Buddhism?

If hyper-activity is a Jewish malaise than the blue-print for it may be found in this week’s Torah portion, parashat T’rumah, which launches into the theme of the building of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle in the wilderness, and occupies the greater part of the remaining portions of the Book of Exodus – five in all, extending from Exodus chapter 25 through chapter 40.   Until the advent of the establishment of the state of Israel, sixty-one years ago, Jews have not been particularly known for our building expertise, but that’s because we lost the skill during centuries of persecution, when we were barred from the skilled trades, and restricted largely to the occupations associated with buying and selling and money-lending.  The Torah reminds us that the very first thing we did as a newly-formed people in the wilderness, fresh from the encounter with the Eternal, was turn our hands to building.   The Hebrew language is very concise.  As I’ve mentioned on other occasions, while writing in the English language often involves multiplying words, writing in Hebrew has the opposite tendency – to repeat key words, again and again.  And so, if you turn to T’rumah, you will find that in the account of the construction of the Mishkan, the verb asah, consisting of the root consonants, Ayin, Sin and Hei, meaning both ‘to do’ and ‘to make’, is used again and again.  From the moment that the text declares at Exodus chapter 25, verse 8: V’asu li mikdash, v’shachanti b’tocham – ‘Let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them’, the verb asah, is repeated over and over: ‘V’asu – And they shall make an ark of acacia wood’ (:10)… ‘V’asita – And you shall make poles of acacia wood’ (:13)… ‘V’asita – And you shall make an ark-cover of pure gold’ (:17) – and so it goes on for every element of the construction and every utensil, and for all the furnishings; in fact the verb asah recurs two hundred times in the Mishkan narrative (Nehama Leibowitz, 1981, p.475).

This repetition of doing-making in the account of the construction of the Mishkan conveys a powerful message about what it means to be a Jew – not so much to be a Jew but to do Jewishly:  and the Torah is only the first building block for this message:  all the subsequent sources of Jewish teaching:  the rabbinic guides for Jewish life – the Mishnah, the Talmud, and the codes of law, which followed – all reinforce the message: to be a Jew is to do this and that, this and that – only ceasing from all that doing on Shabbat, when, according to the rabbis, Jews are prohibited from engaging in thirty-nine categories of work – all derived from the activities associated with the building of the Mishkan in the wilderness.

To do or not to do? – that is the Jewish question.  But if you think that means that Jews are less spiritually-oriented than other peoples, think again.   In her Studies in Shemot – Exodus, the foremost teacher of Torah to thousands of students world-wide until her death in 1997, the Israeli scholar, Nehama Leibowitz, citing the work of Martin Buber, draws our attention to the parallels between the account of the building of the Mishkan and the first narrative of Creation at the beginning of B’reishit, the Book of Genesis (1981, pp. 479-482).  It is not simply Jews, who are defined as a people by doing; the Eternal is defined by doing: Va-ya’as Elohim et-ha-raki’a – ‘Then God made the firmament’ (1:7); Va-ya’as Elohim et-sh’nei ha-m’o’rot – ‘Then God made the two lights’ (:16); Va-ya’as Elohim et-chayyat ha-aretz – ‘Then God made the living creature(s) of the earth’ (:25).  And after six days of making: Va-yar Elohim et-kol-aher asah, v’hinneih, tov m’od – ‘Then God saw all that he had made, and, behold, it was very good’ (:31).  Then – to top it all – we read in the concluding verses of the narrative, so hard to translate into English because of the way in which the verb asah is reiterated – so I’ll give you a literal translation (2:1-3):

Then the heavens and the earth were finished and all their host. / God finished on the seventh day his work which he had done (asah); then he ceased on the seventh day from all his work which he had done (asah). / Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it (va-y’kaddeish oto); because on it he ceased (shavat) from all the work which God had created to do – asher bara Elohim la’asot.

According to the Torah, God is the Creator – and as such the Eternal One is also the Doer par excellence – as much a ‘Doing’ as a ‘Being’ – and each human being, created b’tzelem Elohim ‘in the image of God’ (1:27) is also, likewise, a human doing.  And that’s the heart of the matter: being and doing.  The philosopher, Descartes famously declared, ‘I think therefore I am.’  Jewish teaching seems to urge us to proclaim, ‘I do therefore I am!’

It doesn’t sound quite so lofty!  The words ‘do’ and ‘make’ seem so pedestrian in English, and so very far removed from notions of creativity.  As the young Karl Marx demonstrates in his powerful work, the 1884 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, the onset of industrialisation, and mass production within Capitalist societies precipitated alienation – the alienation of the worker from the product of their labour.  Pre-industrial work centred on creativity; a worker conceived and executed the entire product from start to finish, whether it was a bowl, a table, a bed – and indeed, in some cases, people built their own dwellings.  Expressing their creativity, people were able to take pride in their labour.  The work of constructing the Mishkan involved this kind of creativity.  In the parashah, Ki Tissa, which we will read in two weeks time, we are introduced to B’tzaleil, the chief craftsman, with these words – at Exodus chapter 31, verses 2-5:

See, I have called by name B’tzaleil, the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Y’hudah; / and I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of work, / to devise skilful works, to work – literally, la’asot ‘to do’ – in gold, and in silver, and in brass, / and in cutting of stones for setting, and in carving of wood, to do (in) all manner of work – la’asot b’chol m’lachah.

Ru’ach Elohim ‘the spirit of God’: creativity is spiritual; a way in which we express our essence, and our unique nature as human beings-doings, as images of the Divine.  And the language here directly echoes that used of God at the end of the first creation narrative (Genesis 2:1-3), where, as we saw a moment ago, we find in three short verses three references to m’lachto asher asah – ‘his work which he had done’, and where the narrative closes with the word, la’asot – ‘to do’.

From the Torah onwards, it is clear that doing has been our primary response to our experience of the Eternal.  And so we read towards the end of last week’s portion, Mishpatim, when the text turns from concerns of civil law back to the narrative of the Divine Revelation at Mount Sinai, that the people responded to the words of the Eternal by saying na’aseh – ‘we will do’ (Exodus 24:3;7).  Doing is spiritual.  That is not to say that some of us don’t do too much, and that for many people in modern societies, what they do has become cut off from who they are.   Many people – like me – probably would benefit from being more and doing less.  But from a Jewish perspective, ultimately, there is no conflict between ‘doing’ and ‘being’ – because to do is to be and to be is to do; what excessive doers probably need more than anything else is to pause to reflect on the endless ‘to do’ list that dominates our lives and acknowledge and celebrate our creativity.  This is, after all, one of the central purposes of Shabbat – to cease from work in honour of our labour, and in order to refresh our creative energies before beginning again.   May this Shabbat be such a time of renewal for each one of us.  And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah

Brighton & Hove Progressive Synagogue – Adat Shalom Verei’ut

28^th February 2009 – 4^th Adar 5769

We have gathered here today on this winter’s Shabbat morning to celebrate with Jerome and his family as he becomes Bar Mitzvah.  Today, Jerome leaves his childhood behind and begins the next stage of his life’s journey as a Jew, towards adulthood responsibility.

What does it mean to be a Jew?  What does it mean to be an adult?   What does it mean to be a young Jew, crossing the threshold into the domain of adult responsibility?   Today Jerome is demonstrating his commitment to living his life as a Jew – essentially that’s what becoming Bar Mitzvah means.   But what does it mean to live one’s life as a Jew?

Context is everything, of course.  Here we are in a progressive synagogue, affiliated to a Jewish movement in Britain, known as Liberal Judaism.  While celebrating the core rites of Jewish life, including Shabbat and the festivals, Liberal Judaism places its emphasis on the ethical teachings of Judaism and on the pursuit of justice and peace.  For Liberal Judaism, everything a Jew does begins with a question about its ethical meaning and the ethical impact of our behaviour – which is why, for example, Liberal Judaism’s leaflet on Kashrut is entitled, ‘Ethical Eating’.  What is more, for Liberal Judaism, rather than the individual’s actions being determined by communal norms, the individual is empowered to make informed choices about how to lead his or her Jewish life.

So, today is an empowering moment.  Leaving his childhood behind, from today, Jerome is empowered to begin the process of making informed choices about how to lead his life as a Jew.  Informed choices:  a simple phrase – but the implications are more complex:  Although Liberal Judaism is a distinctive stream within Jewish life it shares with all the other streams of Judaism a commitment to the centrality of education.  In an important sense, today is a celebration of what Jerome has learnt so far about Judaism.  A few moments ago, he led the service for us beautifully and confidently; in a short while, he will give a d’var Torah, his commentary on the week’s Torah portion, and read a section of the portion from the Sefer Torah, the scroll of the Five Books of Moses, which lies at the heart of Jewish life.  Jerome’s preparation for today has largely centred on studying – and not just during the past six months when, with the assistance of his tutor, Andy Cable, he has focussed on studying the prayers of the service and his Torah portion; guided by all his teachers, including Melanie Rubin and Eileen Field, Jerome has spent the past eight years actively engaged in Jewish life and learning together with his fellow students here at Brighton & Hove Progressive Synagogue.

So, from this day forwards, Jerome has the power to choose.  At the same time, an important part of his Jewish education so far has been about learning that in order for the choices he makes about his Jewish life to be Jewish choices, they need to be rooted in Jewish knowledge and experience – and emerge out of a commitment to lead a Jewish life.

As soon as I say this, the questions I raised earlier come to mind, and I feel bound to ask, what does it mean to lead a Jewish life?   As I have indicated, Liberal Judaism provides some powerful answers – and as a constituent of Liberal Judaism, this synagogue creates a nurturing context for leading a Jewish life.  But the reality is that, as Jews in the diaspora, unless we live in places like North West London, Jewish life is very fragile – and so utterly tangential to the mainstream society that we inhabit.

But then, even for those Jews who live in the midst of large Jewish communities, it is not obvious what leading a Jewish life involves.  Last Monday night I returned from fifteen days in Israel – my time there framed by Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza.  Israel is continually referred to as a ‘Jewish state’.  What does this mean?   I know Jewish Israelis who do not live as Jews – and never step foot inside a synagogue.  And yet, for some of these secular Israelis, just as for most religious Jews in Israel, it is axiomatic that they live in a state where the vast majority of the inhabitants are Jews.  At the same time, I know other Jewish Israelis, both those who are religiously observant and those who are not, for whom living in a Jewish state is less about demographics and more about ethics; their sense of their ethical Jewish inheritance impelling them to reach out to those who are not Jews – to migrant workers, to Israeli Palestinians, and to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Israel is a complex place!  It is a Jewish state in at least two dimensions; the demographic and the ethical – which are sometimes in conflict.  To add to the complexity, Israel faces not only demographic and ethical questions at home, but also abroad:   How different might be the current impasse between Israelis and Palestinians if Israel were not such a small state, a tiny minority in the Middle East; a nation that has spent most of the six decades of its existence fighting for its right to exist?   Surely, the two minority peoples, Jews and Palestinians, would have found a way of acknowledging one another and living side by side if they were not surrounded by entrenched autocracies determined to maintain their power?   Who knows?  But the particularity of the Palestinian situation – both part of the larger Arab world and apart from it – only serves to add to the complexity; and that’s without considering the divisions between Hamas and Fatah, and between the Palestinians, who are citizens of Israelis, and the Palestinians, who as yet remain stateless refugees.

But it is not my main purpose today to address the complexity of Palestinian identity.   On the occasion of Jerome’s Bar Mitzvah we are all challenged – not just Jerome – to think about the complexity of Jewish identity, the commitments and the choices we do or don’t make.  Of course, it is a particularly challenging time to be considering all these questions – in the immediate aftermath of the war between Israel and Hamas.  We feel deeply troubled by the conflict.  We fell defensive.  The attention of the world has been focussed on Gaza, and concern for the Palestinian people has translated, not only into anger at Israel, but also into attacks on Jews in the diaspora.  Our hearts break for the people of Gaza, held hostage by Hamas, who have borne the brunt of Israel’s single-minded determination to stop Hamas firing rockets into Southern Israel. We are horrified by the scale of the casualties and the destruction – and also fear for Israel, as Hamas, equally determinedly repairs the tunnels, with Iran at the ready to supply more arms; ever more sophisticated weapons.  First S’derot, Ashdod, Ashkelon; then B’eir Sheva: next Tel Aviv?  Where will it end?  It will end when the talking starts – but at the moment it is very hard to look beyond the seemingly unending conflict, mired in hatred and despair.

In this week’s Torah portion we read that when Moses returned to Egypt to tell the slaves of their impending liberation they were unable to listen to him because they were suffering ‘from a shortness of spirit’ – mikotzer ru’ach (Exodus 6:9).  Spirit – ru’ach – which also means ‘wind’:  the spirit, like the wind should roam free.  But, enslaved in Egypt – Mitzrayim – which means a ‘narrow place’, the slaves’ spirits, too, felt trapped and restricted; completely overwhelmed by their plight, the Israelites could not listen to Moses’ message of freedom.  And so it is with the Israelis and the Palestinians – and also with us.  Although the circumstances are different, like the slaves groaning under Egyptian bondage, we have spent far too long trapped in a narrow place of unending conflict to be able to summon up the hope needed to see a way out; the possibility of an exodus from the morass of fear and violence.

So, what do we do?   The slaves needed convincing that their crushing plight would end – hence the plagues.  We have endured and witnessed enough plagues raining down like barad – like the hail Jerome will tell us about shortly, when he reads from the scroll.  We need signs of hope.  Perhaps President Obama, with his fresh spirit and his wisdom, with his confidence and imagination, will help us to identify the signs of new life.  Perhaps, young people, like Jerome, full of hope and good will for the world, may also play their part in helping to create new possibilities for liberation, justice and peace; for a future when, in the words of one of the ministers at President Obama’s induction, tanks are beaten into tractors – and just as important: when the resources used to construct bombs are directed to the building of homes and schools and hospitals.

When I asked you, Jerome what it means for you to be a Jew, to become Bar Mitzvah and to be part of this congregation, which has been your second Jewish home for so many years, you told me some interesting things:  For you, being a Jew is: ‘A way of expressing my beliefs about the world while being part of a community’.  Very significantly, you understand that you are a human being, who is also a Jew; for you, being a Jew doesn’t set you apart from the world, it connects you to the world.  That’s why you also told me that while ‘becoming Bar Mitzvah means becoming a more understanding member of the community’, it also means: ‘stepping through a door to see the world from a different angle’.   And the world is very important to you.  In your own words, you ‘care most about the planet around me’ and ‘express this by making my views on issues heard’ and ‘by protecting the environment’.  You are also clear about your hopes for the future and the task before you – as you put it: ‘I would like to help make a world where people are more equal and people can fulfil their potential’.

Jerome:   it is clear that you are a very committed Liberal Jew, who has no intention of treating the occasion of the celebration of your Bar Mitzvah as a moment when you receive a shul-leaving certificate!    It is up-lifting for us to know this – for your family, for your community – up-lifting, because your commitment and idealism reminds us that at its core, being a Jew is about making a commitment l’chayyim – to life and to the future.   Before I end, I would like to share with you the words of French Jew, Edmund Fleg, who, living from 1874 to 1963, witnessed the key upheavals of Jewish life in modern times.  This is what he said about being a Jew:

I am a Jew because the faith of Israel demands of me no abdication of the mind.

I am a Jew because the faith of Israel requires of me all the devotion of my heart.

I am a Jew because in every place where suffering weeps, the Jew weeps.

I am a Jew because at every time when despair cries out, the Jew hopes.

I am a Jew because the word of Israel is the oldest and the newest.

I am a Jew because the promise of Israel is the universal promise.

I am a Jew because, for Israel, the world is not yet completed; human beings are completing it.

I am a Jew because, for Israel, humanity is not created; human beings are creating it.

I am a Jew because, above the nations and Israel, Israel places humanity and its unity.

I am a Jew because, above humanity, image of the divine Unity, Israel places the divine Unity and its divinity.

Edmund Fleg was born a Jew, but he also chose to be a Jew and to live as a Jew.  Jerome:  May you, like him, always find good reasons to choose to be a Jew and to live as Jew; and may the achievement of this day, inspire you – and inspire all of us – as you continue your journey.  And let us say:  Amen.

Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah

Brighton & Hove Progressive Synagogue – Adat Shalom Verei’ut

24^th January 2009 – 28^th Tevet 5769

Yom Kippur Shacharit – 10^th Tishri 5767 – 2^nd October 2006

Did you watch a series on the television a few months ago, which recorded the experiences of a white western anthropologist engaging in what that profession calls, ‘participant observation’, among various tribal peoples in various places around the world? Unfortunately, I only caught a snippet of one programme – but what I saw has stayed with me. The anthropologist had lived with one tribe for a while, and now he was staying with a neighbouring tribe. Their way of life was almost identical – but the two tribes saw each other as radically different, and were constantly at war. I caught the bit, when members of the one tribe were explaining that the other tribe were ‘thieves’, who were forever stealing their horses.

I’m sure that the reality of antagonism between different tribes comes as no surprise to us. Sophisticated citizens that we are of a modern democracy – albeit, technically, ‘subjects’ of Her Majesty the Queen – I have an uncomfortable feeling that many of us tend to watch programmes like ‘Tribe’ through the same kind of lens we otherwise reserve for David Attenborough’s forays into the undergrowth. We have a vague feeling that we are observing creatures like ourselves – but from a great distance, both, geographical and temporal, amazingly bridged for us by the wonders of modern technology. We are fascinated by the way that they live. And if we weren’t quite as sophisticated as we are, we would probably echo the attitude of the nineteenth century anthropologist, Sir James Frazer, of The Golden Bough (first published in 1890) fame, and call them ‘primitive’.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if we were to view ourselves through that lens? Around the same time that the series ‘Tribe’ was being screened, it was the World Cup. Living with a lover of the ‘beautiful game’, it was impossible to avoid football fever, and so I watched the closing stages of a few matches. Mostly the cameras followed the action around the pitch, but at different moments, viewers caught glimpses of the crowd. And what did we see? Not just the colours of the nations concerned displayed on football ‘strips’ and flags and banners, but on faces and hair. I wonder what old Frazer would have made of those stadium crowd scenes…

A few weeks ago, in early August, as war between Hizbollah and Israel raged in Northern Israel and Southern Lebanon, I stood here and talked about ‘the perils of taking sides’. I’m not going to rehearse what I said on that occasion – but I do want to explore some aspects of the impulse in a slightly different way, and broaden out the terrain, as well as return to the soil of that all-too-familiar, particular conflict between Israel and Palestine.

But before I take us to the Middle East, I would like us to pause for a moment, and reflect on who we are and what we are doing here. Today, on Yom Kippur, the most sacred day of the Jewish year, Jews across the world have congregated together in great numbers in synagogues – and in halls, and even tents, where synagogue sanctuaries are not large enough to accommodate them all. It feels like a gathering of a great tribe. Is that what we are? Is the People Israel a tribe, once tied to a particular piece of the earth, now scattered across the globe?

Recently, the United Synagogue has set up a young section that it has called ‘Tribe’. Checking the Tribe web-site, I found the initiative described in this way: ‘Tribe is for the future of our community: our young people. It’s about touching young Jews with a vibrant, living Judaism. We work with an entire generation. Any young Jew from the moment they are born until the day they become a parent can join.’ Well, I guess, as a non-parent, young Jew-at heart fifty-one year old, I’m still eligible then. But joking apart, I am a little concerned at the thought of young Jews being encouraged to sign-up to the ‘Tribe’. I’ve no doubt that the name, with its promise of ‘belonging’, is very appealing, but I think that pressing the ‘tribal’ button is very problematic.

On the surface, of course, there is a lot of evidence that Jews are a tribe: Like any tribe past and present, we share a particular set of ancestral roots and rituals, and a common language, and see ourselves as having a distinct identity that is different and separate from other peoples. But the Jewish People is not a tribe. Although we share one sacred tongue, and basically follow the same calendar, and some key common practices, we don’t share the same interpretation of Judaism, we express ourselves in many different languages and cultural forms, depending on where we live now, and where have lived before, and, actually, we don’t even all share the same roots in the past – since throughout the millennia, the Jewish people has always encompassed both Jews by birth and Jews by choice. What binds us together is not blood, nor our particular ways, but our recognition of the fundamental unity of all Creation – expressed, for religious Jews, by the unity of the Creator. Paradoxically, what first made us distinct as a people was the awareness that all peoples are essentially the same – united by our common humanity. As we read in the Mishnah, the first rabbinic code of law, edited eighteen hundred years ago: ‘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’ (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5).

This is all well and good, I hear some of you say to yourselves, but everybody knows that most Jews do see themselves as part of a tribe. If that is true, then, one might argue that it is precisely because some Jews see themselves as part of a tribe that other Jews, don’t want to have anything to do with Jews and Judaism. But, of course, it’s not as simple as this. None of it is. And now I’m going to complicate matters further by turning to the Middle East. When we read the Torah, we learn that the People Israel was originally composed of tribes: The twelve sons of Jacob, later known as Israel, became the progenitors of the twelve tribes. At Sinai, these biological descendants of their common ancestor were augmented by the erev rav, the ‘mixed multitude’ (Exodus 12:38), who fled Egypt along with b’ney Yisrael, the ‘children of Israel’. Nevertheless, the narrative tells us that the tribal organisation was maintained throughout the journey in the wilderness, and as they approached the land they were about to occupy, each of the tribes, with the exception of Levi, the tribe that was assigned responsibility for the sacrificial system of worship, was allotted a particular territory – with the descendants of Joseph’s sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, each becoming tribes in their own right.

If we read the narrative of the occupation of the land by our tribal ancestors, around 1250 years BCE, as it is related in the Bible, from the Book of Joshua onwards, we become aware of how the story of our people became inextricably linked with a particular area of territory, that grew and shrank, at different times, according to their changing political fortunes vis a vis, both the other peoples who inhabited the land, and the successive imperial powers that conquered it from the 8^th century BCE onwards. From this perspective, it is clear that our peoplehood is, in fact, defined by the land – and this was, indeed, the point of view expressed by classical political Zionism in the late nineteenth century. But, as I said on Rosh Ha-Shanah morning, the Zionist movement was a response to the persistence of anti-Semitism in the modern world – of the failure of the process of Emancipation in Western Europe to deliver full equality for the Jewish people. Inspired by the nationalist struggles of various European peoples during the nineteenth century, Political Zionism was, by definition, a child of the Diaspora: The hope was that by returning to the land of our ancestors, Jews would solve the problem of being a victimised minority in other people’s lands, and become a sovereign nation, in charge of our own destiny.

Of course, our people does have a deep historical relationship to the land on the Eastern border of the Mediterranean. But our existence as a people has also been defined, by almost two thousand years of Diaspora experience since the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple in 70CE. And not only that, even prior to that great dispersion, from the days of Abraham and Sarah onwards we have been a people on the move, continually; for ever travelling up to the land, and going out of the land, and settling, not only in that particular piece of the earth, but in the ancient centres of Babylon and Alexandria, centuries before the Romans marched in.

While the usual name for our people, Jew, Y’hudi, connects us with Y’hudah, Judah, the nation that survived following the Assyrian conquest of the Northern kingdom of Israel in 722BCE, as I have pointed out on other occasions, the ancient name of our people, the Hebrews, Ivrim, meaning ‘those who cross over’, reminds us that while our people is connected to a particular land, we have always been a journeying people, forever crossing over borders. Interestingly, the name Ivrim – Ivri in the singular – is always used in a particular way in the Bible, where it is either the name used of us by other peoples, or used to distinguish us from other peoples. So, we find the first reference to this name in connection with Abraham, in Genesis chapter 14, verse 13, where the narrative there tells us that during a battle between the ‘four kings’ and the ‘five kings’ in Canaan at that time, one of the kings escaped, and told Avram Ha-Ivri, ‘Avram, the Hebrew’, that his nephew Lot had been captured.

Avram Ha-Ivri: Abraham the first Hebrew. Abraham: The first ancestor of the Ivrim, because, as we read in Genesis chapter 12, verse 1, he was the first one to leave his land, his kindred, his father’s house, and set out on a journey. But the name Ivri conveys even more than this propensity to cross borders. In the Haftarah set aside for reading on Yom Kippur afternoon, we hear about another famous Ivri, Jonah. As you may recall, according to the Book named after him, Jonah was a very reluctant prophet. Rather than obey God’s word and travel to Nineveh, the epicentre of evil at his time, and denounce the city, he gets on a ship at Jaffa, to flee to Tarshish. When there is a sudden terrible storm that threatens to destroy the ship, the sailors cry to their gods, and do everything they can to lighten the vessel. When that fails, they go in search of their foreign passenger, Jonah, who is fast asleep in the bowels of the ship, in the hope that his God will save them, and then decide to draw lots to find out who is responsible for the raging seas. When the lot falls to Jonah, they begin to question him closely. In response to their questions, Jonah says, Ivri Anochi; v’et Adonai Elohey hashamayim ani yarei, asher asah et-hayam, v’et hayabashah – ‘I am a Hebrew; and I fear the Eternal One the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land’ (1:9). Significantly, Jonah defines himself, not only as an Ivri, but also in relation to God. But in talking of God, Jonah does not speak of his deity; the God of his particular land. Rather, he tells the sailors that the One he ‘fears’ is the Maker of ‘the sea and the dry land’ – the Creator of everything, in other words.

And, of course, it is the Creator of everything, who, at the end of the story, much to Jonah’s chagrin, accepts the repentance of the Ninevites and forgives them. The Eternal One is not a tribal God, concerned only with Israel, any more than Israel is a tribal people. Indeed, the name Israel is just as pertinent as the name, Ivrim: Yisrael: the people who struggle with God – not the people who own God. God does not belong to us alone.

So, if the Jewish people is not a tribe what are we to make of the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, between Israel and Palestine? In 2002, the Israeli writer, Amos Oz, travelled to Germany, where he delivered two speeches. Published with the titles, ‘Between Right and Right’ and ‘How to cure a fanatic’, the two overlap in places – as, when, in ‘How to cure a fanatic’, he declares (Princeton Univ. Press, 2006, pp.61-62):

Essentially the battle between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs is not a religious war, although the fanatics on both sides are trying very hard to turn it into one. It is essentially no more than a territorial conflict over the painful question, “Whose land?” It is a painful conflict between right and right, between two very powerful convincing claims over the same small country. Not a religious war, not a war of cultures, not a disagreement between two traditions, but simply a real estate dispute over whose house this is. And I believe that this can be resolved.

I think that Amos Oz is right – essentially. After all, neither Israelis nor Palestinians are homogenous. Not only the Jewish people, but the Palestinian people, too, encompasses a variety of traditions and cultural expressions. Indeed, Palestinians don’t even share the same religion. While the majority are Muslims, a significant minority are Christians. But even though the conflict between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs may ‘not’ be ‘a religious war, not a war of cultures, not a disagreement between two traditions, but simply a real estate dispute over whose house this is’, I don’t think that this makes it easier to resolve. Both sides in the conflict, in their different ways, are not only caught in a deadlock of conflicting ‘right’ claims, they are not only stymied by their own terror-filled projections about each other, they are also held captive by their own myths about themselves.

The Palestinians were not a free, self-governing people before the Israelis came along. Before the State of Israel was established in May 1948, the Palestinians lived under the British Mandate in Palestine, and, before that, until the end of the First World War, they were subject to Ottoman rule. Meanwhile, before the State of Israel was established, those Jews who had immigrated to Palestine, lived in the Yishuv, the ‘settlement’ that was Jewish life in that land – and the only thing that differentiated them from the Jews ‘settled’ in all the other lands around the world, was their determination to create a ‘Jewish state’ in Palestine. The Palestinians have been victims of colonialism for centuries. Jews have been victims of anti-Semitism for centuries. Possessing and governing their own lands cannot be a ‘cure all’ for all the various terrible pains that each people has endured. Justice demands that a sovereign State of Palestine must be established and justice demands that a sovereign State of Israel must continue to exist, but neither people can be defined, simply, by their ownership of a piece of ‘real estate’ – to use Amos Oz’s expression – or perhaps that of his American translator.

Each people is connected, not only to that particular land, but also to a wider family, a Diaspora family that lives in many lands. Although, for the Palestinians, the experience of living as refugees is much more recent – and was a direct consequence of the establishment of the State of Israel – nevertheless the events that have turned the two peoples into enemies, have also made them much more like one another: The wandering Jews have set up home again in the Middle East; the Palestinians have settled in other countries around the world. How ironic! The great contest between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs is not a contest between warring tribes with their distinct and clearly defined identities. On the contrary, both peoples now bear an uncanny resemblance to one another, not simply because, like the other peoples in the region, they are the descendants of the two sons of Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac, but because their relationship to the one piece of land they are fighting over is equally vexed, and complicated by their particular experiences of living in other people’s lands.

So, what’s the solution? The Jewish people may not be a tribe, but because of our experience at the hands of others, we desperately need a country we can call our own. The Palestinian people may not be a tribe, but because of their experience at the hands of others, they desperately need a country they can call their own. But unless and until both peoples recognise not only the right of the other to the land, not only their common inheritance in Abraham, but their kinship with one another as colonised, persecuted peoples, who have suffered the pains of exile and become rather complex and multi-faceted as a result, the two-state solution will remain an impossible dream.

It is not enough to build walls and fix borders, as if the objective is simply to keep warring tribes apart: The State of Israel will not be secure, and a viable State of Palestine will not be established, until both peoples fully acknowledge one another. On this day of Yom Kippur, the day when Jews all over the world, not only make confession of our wrongs, but also resolve to put right what is wrong, it is right that the Israeli government make a new effort to reach a just and peaceful settlement of the conflict by offering to enter into negotiations with the Palestinian leadership. It’s not just that, as Winston Churchill famously quipped, ‘Jaw, jaw is better than war, war’; talking is the only way that the two peoples can begin to learn to connect with one another, and acknowledge each other’s pains, hopes and fears.

Most of us know this, of course, but what can we do? Well, quite a lot, actually. We can denounce the divisive beat of the tribal drum; we can refuse to give into cynicism and despair; we can add our voices to the voices of the peacemakers, among both the Israelis and the Palestinians; we can support their efforts for justice and peace; we can call on the British government to play its part; we can resolve to play our part. We can begin to hope that it is possible for each and every one of us, and for everyone, everywhere, to begin again. May this sacred day inspire us all to make a new beginning. And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah

Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue – Adat Shalom Verei’ut– 10^th Tishri 5767 – 2^nd October 2006

Yom Kippur Shacharit