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This year Rosh Ha-Shanah has fallen in early September – not as
early as it could be – but quite soon enough, given that we’ve hardly had a
summer! We kept waiting for
the warmth and sunshine to arrive – and, indeed, we’ve been enjoying a bit
of an ‘Indian Summer’ over the past week or so – but it’s not quite the
same thing. And now, here we are,
starting a new Jewish year, with the prospect of the autumn rains looming… I’m sure I speak for us all, when I say that I just can’t
wait for more rain… Apart from the shock of the realisation that the New Year is upon us, for
those who are involved in organising and leading services, when Rosh
Ha-Shanah begins less than two weeks after the end of August, there’s the
increased pressure of preparation to cope with… But I’m not going to take up our time today, going into all
that. If you are interested, you
can ask me later, or have a word with our wonderful chair of Rites and
Practices, Claudia Gould, and her dedicated team. Rosh Ha-Shanah has not only come quite early
this year, it has also fallen on a week-day – which, of course, it
often does, but didn’t last year. When
the other major festival days – Pesach, Shavuot, Sukkot – fall on
weekdays, attendances at services are very low, made up mostly of the retired
and the elderly, with a sprinkling of the really committed.
But Rosh Ha-Shanah tends to be different – it is, after all, as
its name suggests, the ‘head’ of the year.
But still synagogues can experience
a marked difference in attendance at the morning service when Rosh Ha-Shanah
falls during the week – for obvious reasons. There is much talk these days about Britain being a pluralist,
multi-cultural society. If that
were truly the case, then Rosh Ha-Shanah would have the same status as
Christmas and Yom Kippur would have the same status as Easter.
As we all know both Christmas and Easter are Bank Holidays:
No Christian who wants to attend Christmas morning or Good Friday
services has to worry about these key dates of the Christian calendar falling on
a week-day. By contrast,
throughout their working lives, unless they work for Jewish employers, Jewish
employees are forced to take a day out of their holiday entitlement in order to
attend synagogue. But that’s not all. What
happens when a major meeting that you need participate in is scheduled for Rosh
Ha-Shanah or Yom Kippur? The
fact is, despite token nods in the direction of awareness that not everyone in
this country is White, Anglo-Saxon and Christian, and the ready availability of
calendars giving the major commemorative dates of all the different faith
communities, even local councils that are supposed to be modelling inclusion,
schedule key meetings and events on Rosh-Hashanah and Yom Kippur. But the issue is not just that they keep doing it, despite the
availability of information, and in the face of their professed inclusive ethos.
What happens when you are supposed to be attending this or that meeting,
and you are bold enough to ask, even several weeks in advance, for the meeting
date to be changed? When
it’s June, and you serve on a key city committee scheduled to meet on either Erev
Rosh Ha-Shanah, or on the festival day itself – and you point this out and
make a request that the meeting is re-scheduled? Well this is what happened to one Jew when she did just that.
She was told – very politely and nicely – that the meeting had to
take place on either September 12th or 13th, but that they would
consult their multi-faith calendar more carefully in future to ensure that such
a clash didn’t happen again. But it got a little more complicated than that – and
required a little more assertiveness on the part of the Jewish participant.
When the date was finally confirmed a couple of weeks ago, it turned out
that the meeting was fixed for 2pm on Erev Rosh Ha-Shanah.
The Jew in question, thought about Erev Rosh Ha-Shanah
preparations, groaned, and reluctantly decided that since it was such a crucial
meeting, she would attend – and said so.
She then received a rather sarcastic email – and I quote: ‘but I
thought it was Erev Rosh Ha-Shanah?’ – Question mark. Very clever, eh
– using the right lingo. And she
then received a further email that must have been sent to her accidentally,
because it ran as follows: ‘don’t
pass this on… but this lady is somewhat contrary’. So, what did this singularly bold Jew do? What would you have done?
Ignored it? Sent off a
furious response? In good
Jewish fashion, she let the sender know she had received the email, and
patiently explained, carefully, what the issue was.
Yes, she had decided to try and make the meeting, because it was so
important, despite the pressure it put her under, in the hope that she could get
away by 4pm. And she went on to ask
the sender to imagine that she had been asked to attend a key meeting scheduled
for 2pm on Christmas Eve: Imagine
the presents to wrap, the food to prepare, the family arriving…
Unthinkable! The email did
the trick, the penny dropped, and she received a fulsome apology. Now, listening to all this, some of you may be thinking – yes, that’s
right: When you think about it,
isn’t Erev Rosh Ha-Shanah just as important for Jews as Christmas Eve
is for Christians? Of course, key
meetings, involving a range of parties, shouldn’t be scheduled on Erev Rosh
Ha-Shanah. And as for Rosh
Ha-Shanah day: Unthinkable! But
then, some other people may be thinking: What
a palaver! Fancy making such a
fuss! We are a minority, after all.
How can we expect the majority culture to take into account our
particular holy days? Yes, of course, Jews are a minority – a tiny minority.
The latest figures put together by the Institute for Jewish Policy
Research, drawing on the 2001 census, put the Jewish population of Britain at
around 300,000 – and that’s in a nation that has now topped the 60 million
mark! But why is it that
Jewish people are such a tiny minority?
Of course, we all know that six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis
and their cohorts in just six short years, from 1939-1945.
But it’s not just the horrors of the Shoah that account for the
miniscule numbers of Jews across the globe.
Because of our history of being dominated by massive empires – Assyria,
Babylonia, Persia, Greece, and Rome – we were constantly crushed and reduced.
And then, once Rome adopted Christianity in the 4th century,
becoming the Holy Roman Empire, and Islam spread from the Arabian peninsular
across much of the Middle East and North Africa, our minority status was sealed.
That’s why, while there are 1.75 billion Christians in the world today
and almost 1.5 billion Muslims, there are just 14 million Jews in a global
population of 6.5 billion – and rising. To be sure, Jews are a minority. But
let’s just look at those two words majority and minority a bit more closely:
Majority – that is: major; minority – that is: minor.
Is Judaism a minor religion? Is
this civilization that began to evolve four thousand years ago of minor
significance to the world – let alone to Britain? Where would the world be without the ethical teachings
first encoded in the Hebrew Scriptures? And
when you think about it, where would Christianity be without Judaism?
Without: the Hebrew Bible? And,
even more important, without: Jewish-until-after-the-day-of-his-death,
Jesus? We may be a minority people, but Judaism is certainly not minor.
So, why is it that most non-Jews still know virtually nothing about
Judaism? And why is it that
most employers, institutions and organisations take no account whatever of the
principle holy days in the Jewish calendar?
And, of course, when we look at British society the problem is not
confined to us: Today marks the
beginning of Ramadan. No doubt those who scheduled that key city council meeting
didn’t take into account the needs of their Muslim participants either. The reality is not simply that Jews and Muslims and Hindus and Jains and
Sikhs and Buddhists are minorities in Britain today – all these minorities
live in a majority Culture, which is still a majority Christian culture:
The churches – with the exception of the evangelicals – may be
attracting fewer and fewer worshippers, but the culture of this country is still
shaped by the Christian calendar. Active,
devout Christians may, indeed, have become a minority, but Christianity not only
continues to be the majority culture, it is the dominant culture.
And to fully appreciate the resonance of what this means, we only have to
examine that word dominant a little more closely: dominant as in dominion, or, kingdom.
When Rome adopted Christianity as the Imperial religion, Christianity
mutated into a political reality called Christendom.
To be dominant is to have power.
The majority culture that excludes minorities and pushes them to the
margins is able to do this because it is the dominant culture; the domineering
culture. So, what – if anything – can we do about it? What are we prepared to do about it? Here we are the congregation of Brighton & Hove
Progressive Synagogue – an oasis of inclusion, equality and diversity.
Those terms – inclusion, equality and diversity – are not just glib,
state of the art, ‘buzz-words’, they mean something:
Inclusion means that everyone is included:
birth Jews; Jews-by-choice; Jews whose only Jewish parent is their
father; non-Jewish partners and other non-Jews, who wish to connect with the
congregation; Jews of all ages and of all life-situations, single, married,
divorced, widowed, lesbian and gay. Equality
means that all members enjoy equal rights and equal responsibilities – women
with men, girls with boys – in every area of congregational life, both inside
and outside Shabbat and festival services.
Diversity means that even those who are Jewish acknowledge that we
are not all the same: our life experiences differ; we enjoy different things,
and have different ways of expressing our sense of identity. We may all be
‘progressive’ and ‘liberal’ – and that’s why we are here – but
some of us see themselves as ‘religious’, others as ‘cultural’, still
others as ‘secular’. An oasis is a wonderful place to rest after a dusty desert journey, and
be restored. It is also makes an
ideal refuge, away from the excluding, non-egalitarian world of the majority,
dominant culture. But, if we’ve
discovered a way to make inclusion, equality and diversity a reality here at
BHPS, shouldn’t we be sharing our discovery?
This year we have participated in a new East Sussex Police initiative
involving the training of Police Cadets in cultural awareness. And, so far, we have welcomed four trainees, who have spent a
Friday afternoon with me, experienced an Erev Shabbat meal at the home of
congregants, and attended Shabbat services. We welcomed these Police Cadets as we welcome everyone –
with open arms. But hasn’t the
time come to combine the welcome we extend to all those who cross the threshold,
with a determination to bring our values and experience of inclusion, equality
and diversity to the wider community of Brighton & Hove – and beyond?
The challenge before us is to be prepared to challenge the excluding
practices of the still dominant and domineering majority culture that still
banishes minorities to the margins. I can hear some protests: How
can we possibly do this? After all,
we are talking about a tiny minority trying to have an impact on a powerful
majority culture. I think there are
things we can do. They may be
small – but their impact will be cumulative.
For example, as a synagogue, we can make representations to local
organisations to ensure that important meetings and events are not scheduled on
Jewish holy days. We can also
request that where events and activities involve catering, vegetarian food is
provided, enabling the largest number of people – including Jews – to
participate. As individuals, we can
also make a point of asserting our Jewish needs in the work-place – especially
when it comes to the most sacred Jewish days of the year.
After all, the only way this society has a chance of becoming
‘multi-cultural’ is if the members of the various different minority
cultures express their identities, not only in private, but also in public. In a short while, we will listen to the voice of the shofar, the
eerie blasts of the ram’s horn. The
shofar speaks to us in a language that is deeper than words, much deeper,
even, then music. Each year,
we may hear the voice of the shofar differently, and, each year, we will
make sense of what we hear in our own ways.
Is the voice of the shofar, the voice of the Eternal One
addressing us – or the voice of Humanity, addressing God?
Or, perhaps, a conversation – the different sounds encompassing the
voices of God and Humanity? None of us knows what we will hear until the moment arrives.
But as I reflect on the challenge of making our voices heard as Jews in
the wider society, I hear the voices of the shofar in my head, as if they
were our voices – different Jewish voices – responding in different ways to
that challenge. I hear the T’ki’ah,
the single strong blast: The confident voice of the Jew, who says, I’m not going to
let the dominant culture dominate my life.
I hear the T’ru’ah, the trembling series of nine bleats:
The tremulous voice of the Jew, who is alarmed at the prospect of Jewish
life being more visible, and says, ‘it’s best not to make a fuss and draw
attention to ourselves; you don’t know where the next anti-Semitic attack is
coming from’. I hear the Sh’varim,
the three broken notes: the hesitant voice of the Jew, who wants to be more
assertive, but is not sure – so starts and stops, and starts and stops, and
starts and stops; the Jew, who doesn’t want to stick his or her neck out –
alone. We are not alone. That is
one of the blessings of congregational life – we have one another.
At the very end of all that shofar blasting today, we will listen
to the T’ki’ah G’dolah – the ‘Great T’ki’ah’.
May the T’ki’ah G’dolah stir in us this year a sense of
pride, both in our Jewish inheritance, and in our very special congregation, and
inspire us to do what we can to help to make Britain a truly pluralistic,
multi-cultural society. And let us
say: Amen. Rabbi
Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah Brighton
& Hove Progressive Synagogue – Adat Shalom Verei’ut
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