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As the sun set this evening, we began a new Jewish year.
By the time the autumn festivals draw to a close, the secular year will
have entered its final quarter: 2007
– a year of anniversaries: As
we look back, key dates on the world stage come to mind – several of which are
of particular significance for the Jewish people:
1917 – in the midst of the First World
War: The Balfour Declaration.
As the Ottoman Empire tottered, Lord Balfour, in a letter to Lord
Rothschild, dated November 2nd, declared the intention of the British
Government to establish a ‘homeland’ for the Jewish people in Palestine (see
Doreen Ingram, Palestine Papers. Seeds of Conflict.
John Ingram, London, 1972). And in 1947 – another November date: On the 29th of the month, the General Assembly of
the United Nations adopted a plan to partition the land under dispute on the
eastern Mediterranean sea-board into two states: Israel and Palestine. Earlier
in the same year, another great partition was actually implemented, resulting in
one of the greatest mass movements of peoples in history:
When British rule over the sub-continent they called ‘India’ came to
an end, three sovereign independent states emerged: India, Pakistan and
Bangladesh. As a consequence,
Hindus living in what became Pakistan moved to the new India, and Muslims in the
new India left their homes and re-located in Pakistan.
How extraordinary: two partition plans; one successful – albeit traumatic and
bloody – the other yet to be realised… And so – another anniversary: 1967
– the Six Day War in early June between Israel and the marshalled forces of
Syria, Jordan and Egypt. The
1948 war of Independence had succeeded in establishing the new State of Israel
that had been declared by David ben Gurion on May 15th as the British
Mandate in Palestine ended. However,
it was Israel’s victory against its hostile Arab neighbours in June 1967 that
first exposed the plight of the Palestinians, who having become a refugee people
in 1948, now became an occupied people, as Israel’s capture of the West Bank
mutated into an entrenched occupation. And so – yet another connected anniversary: 1987 – the outbreak of the first Intifada,
‘Uprising’, in the late autumn of that year – the first rebellion of
Palestinians in the occupied territories.
Everyone, including Israel, used the Arabic word, Intifada, chosen
by the Palestinians, and in my Rosh Ha-Shanah morning sermon on 12th
September 1988, as the revolt continued months later, I remember exploring the
significance of this unprecedented step:
In adopting the language of the Palestinian people to describe the
crisis, the Israeli government and media, began the process of acknowledging the
Palestinian side of the story, which led, eventually, to the first – albeit,
sadly short-lived – peace talks between the leadership of the two peoples.
Who can forget that famous hand-shake between Israeli Premier Yitzhak
Rabin and Palestinian Chairman, Yassir Arafat, on the White House lawn in
September 1993, less than seven years after the Intifada began?
A move towards reconciliation made even more significant, not simply
because Arafat was the one-time Terrorist leader of the Palestine Liberation
Organisation, which had vowed to destroy the State of Israel, but because, in
his role as Minister of Defence, it had been General Rabin, who had commanded
his soldiers to break the legs of stone-throwing Palestinian children back in
1987. It seems that most of the key anniversaries this year have something to
do with the Jewish people. So what
of 1997? 1997, by contrast,
was a year for distinctly British moments:
After one hundred years of British rule in Hong Kong, that unique island
of commerce and advanced capitalism was restored to the sovereignty of communist
China. Meanwhile, back home,
in May 1997 – on my birthday, incidentally – the Labour Party came to power
with a landslide victory after eighteen years of Conservative rule – and
millions of people seemed to agree that ‘things can only get better’. And then, at that very end of a very long summer of hope and expectation,
Princess Diana, the ‘English Rose’ par excellence, who became ‘the Queen
of people’s hearts’; the ex-wife of the Heir to the Throne, and the most
photographed individual on the planet, was involved in a high-speed fatal
car-crash in a tunnel in Paris with her new companion, Dodi Fayed.
He was killed outright, along with the driver, Henri Paul, and she was
pronounced dead in the early hours of August 31st.
Only the badly injured body-guard, Trevor Rees-Jones survived.
What caused that crash? Was
it the ‘paparazzi’ photographers on their motor-bikes in hot pursuit? Was it, simply, an appalling case of drunk-driving?
Was the disaster a put-up job as those obsessed with conspiracy theories
allege? Perhaps the forthcoming
Public Inquest, ten years overdue, will come up with definitive answers.
I doubt it. The most significant thing about that summer-ending night was not that
Princess Diana was caught up in a fatal crash – tragically, fatal car
accidents happen all the time – but, rather, the tide of emotion her death
unleashed: The incredible
outpouring of grief, a powerful sign not only that ‘Englishness’ had changed
forever, with Princess Diana dramatising that change in her own complex
personality, but also that England was no longer simply for the ‘English’. I’ll never forget visiting Kensington Gardens on the eve of
Princess Diana’s funeral after attending an Erev Shabbat service
near-by – yes, even people like me were there – and seeing, not just
the flowers and notes, but all those candles:
A warm evening, it felt like we were on a very different place –
Southern Europe or Asia, perhaps – certainly not calm, cool and collected
England. So, 1917, 1947, 1967, 1987, 1997: So
many key anniversaries this year. But
not just on the world-stage. On
Yom Kippur, Cissie Luper, born on 22nd September 1907,
the eldest member of BHPS will celebrate her Centenary – except she’ll have
to wait until the fast is over before she eats any birthday cake!
Cissie, a sunny, life-loving, positive-thinking individual, awarded an
MBE for her charitable work for Leukaemia research, which she became involved in
following the tragic death of her grandson.
A Liberal Jew through and through, and a founder member of this
congregation, Cissie was thirty years old when she took part in the
synagogue’s great move from 29 New Church Road to this building in 1937
– another anniversary. And there’s more: 1947
was the year that two of our most dedicated members joined the synagogue, and
inaugurated what became a legendary Youth Group: I am referring, of course, to our Emeritus President, Derek
Jay, and one of our Emeritus Vice-Presidents, Diana White, who have both
contributed so much to the congregation over the years.
And, incidentally, Diana was familiar with 6 Lansdowne Road long before
it became the home of what was then called the Brighton and Hove Liberal
Congregation, because this sanctuary had been her school’s gymnasium! I’m sure that for each one of us 2007 marks at least one, if not more
anniversaries. I, for one,
can think of several milestones in my own life both large and small:
In 1957, aged almost two I moved with my family from South Shields,
County Durham to London; in 1967, one year short of being a teenager, I spent
long hours in the late summer listening to the Beatle’s ground-breaking album,
‘Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’; in 1977, I graduated from
LSE; in 1987, I had my first experience of serving a congregation, solo, for a
whole year, as a 4th year rabbinic student at Leicester Progressive;
in 1997, after eight years as a Reform rabbi, I joined the Liberal Rabbinic
Conference, and on Kol Nidrey, I fixed a m’zuzah to the
front-door of the restored Uilenburger Synagogue in Amsterdam that had been
closed down by the Nazis in 1942, and conducted the first service there in
fifty-five years for Beit Ha’Chidush, a new progressive congregation
dedicated, as it name indicates, to renewal. As I said, all of us, I’m sure, can look back on the decades from 2007
and identify significant dates in our personal calendars.
But then, no doubt, equally, we could come up with key events if we did
the same exercise any year: 2006; 2005; 2004; and so on…
Whenever we look back, we can locate special moments and milestones, and
thinking in terms of decades is just one way in which we organise and manage the
events of the past. We also, for
example, mark quarter-centenaries – which makes 2007 the twenty-fifth
anniversary of the events of 1982. On
the world-stage, these included the Falklands War between Britain and Argentina,
and the Invasion of Lebanon by Israel in response to katyusha rocket
attacks directed at kibbutzim, moshavim and small towns close to
the Lebanese border that had been taking place since the mid-seventies.
And: in our personal lives? I’m
sure there are people here today for whom 1982 is an important date. Of course, the past is full of happenings – by definition.
If the past were a book, once we’ve lived just a little, each one of us
can open up the book of our lives at any point, and find pages crammed with
events in large and small print. And,
no doubt, there is ‘logic’ in marking the decades of our lives – and the
quarter and half-centuries. And
there is no reason why a congregation like BHPS shouldn’t do the same thing.
And why not mark the anniversaries of key events personally, locally,
nationally and globally as they come up each year. Why not, indeed – as long as we acknowledge that this
is what we are doing; that when we look back, we are imposing order, creating
meaning and trying to make some kind of sense of the past for ourselves.
Eugene Heimler, a survivor
of the Shoah, who devoted his life to helping individuals transform their
life situations said something at a Leo Baeck College seminar one day that I
have never forgotten: ‘Much more than the past shapes the present; the present
shapes the past’. And he went on
to explore how we shape the past by interpreting what has happened to us and to
others in terms of the narratives that we have created. So, here we are now: the
night having descended on the old Jewish year of 5767; the new one scarcely
begun; what else to do but look back and tell our stories? The past is all we know right now. And so why not recall what has happened to us, to our people,
to the world? That is, after
all, what we are called to do on Rosh Ha-Shanah – to reflect on the
year that has just gone. Well,
yes – but reflecting is not the same thing as recalling.
Reflecting involves challenging ourselves, and addressing ourselves with
difficult questions: So, not only,
recalling what happened, but also, asking why did, this, or that, happen – and
being prepared to investigate, what we may have done, or failed to do.
And reflecting is not an end in itself:
We reflect on our past lives in order to move forward into the future; so
that we can start writing a new chapter and make a new beginning – from where
we are now. But how do we do this? How
much easier to order and measure the events that have already taken place; how
much more satisfying to create meaning out of the past, and occupy ourselves
with making sense of it all. No
wonder we spend so much time recalling what has happened – the future is
unknown and, consequently, so very scary to contemplate.
And, it’s not just that it is unknown and uncertain, as long as we
continue to live we have no choice but to move on and begin the next
chapter. This evening the New Year begins – Rosh Ha-Shanah,
literally the ‘head of the year’. The
word shanah, year, is based on the Hebrew root, Shin Nun Hey.
In Biblical Hebrew, the root meaning is ‘change’; in Rabbinic Hebrew
the root meaning is quite the opposite – ‘repeat’.
So, as we embark on the New Year, we face a challenge:
How are we going to live in the coming months?
What are we going to repeat?
What are we going to change?
In a crucial sense, these two questions frame the only options before us:
we can act differently, or we can do the same thing – again and again
and again. Some things we keep
doing are worth repeating. And if we made a change last year – or the year before –
that enhanced our lives or the lives of those around us, let’s hope we do go
on repeating it! After all, we have
developed good habits as well as bad ones. But nevertheless, our bad habits demand our attention.
Perhaps if we are able to summon up the courage to confront them, we will
find a way of thinking and acting in new ways so we can stop being negative, or
hyper-critical, or timid, or controlling, or passive, or obsessive, or
superficial, or perfectionist, or haughty, or vain, or mean, or greedy, or
rigid, or lazy, or arrogant, or humourless, or envious, or withholding, or…
The list of the frailties to which we human beings are inclined is
endless. Perhaps we will not
succeed in banishing or letting go of our failings completely, but if we are
prepared to face ourselves, we will at least be able to acknowledge them,
modify our behaviour, and monitor how we get on with our new ways. The Hebrew date for each Jewish year is given in consonants of the Hebrew
alphabet because each consonant stands for a number – Aleph is
‘one’, Beit is ‘two’, and so on.
Occasionally, the Hebrew date actually spells a word:
In the New Year that began in 1967, following the Six Day War, the word
was Tishkach – ‘you shall forget’ – now there’s grist to
the mill of the meaning-makers! In the Jewish year corresponding to 1987-88, the word
was Tismach – ‘you shall rejoice’ – but I don’t recall
that year being a particularly joyful one – the Intifada was raging,
remember… On Rosh
Ha-Shanah in 1994, the new Jewish year spelt Tishneh – ‘you shall
change – or repeat’. Well,
at least, as we’ve seen that one is eternally relevant!
The fact is, most Jewish years spell nothing at all – just a
series of meaningless consonants. It
is up to us to make meaning; of all the creatures of the Earth, we are the only
living beings capable of reflecting on the past and shaping the future.
May we all find our own ways of rising to the challenge.
And let us say: Amen. Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah Brighton & Hove Progressive Synagogue – Adat Shalom Verei’ut Erev Rosh Ha-Shanah 5768 – 12th
September 2007
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