Friday 22 July 2011

A Masorti Relationship with Israel - and Much Else

Sermon about two things,

Even though it’s dangerous to try.

Firstly – I’m interested in what it means to be Masorti –

Secondly – I’m interested in our relationship with Israel.

 

This week 17th Tammuz

Midst of Three Weeks

Destruction of Ancient State of Israel

Breach in the wall.

Important to realise the incredible miracle we are living through.

Remind ourselves that a once mighty State of Israel was eclipsed by Roman might and that resulted in almost 2000 years of stateless wandering.

 

Good time to think about in context of Parasha

 

Gad and Reuven,

Standing on the banks of the river Jordan prefer to stay in the Diaspora

In many ways like all of us.

Living in a time of Israeli sovereignty, but finding ourselves here, in London.

 

Gad and Reuven asking to remain outside land of Israel does not go down well.

Shall your brothers go to war and you shall sit here?

Why do you discourage the heart of the people of Israel from going over to the Land.

The tribes go back to Moses, offer to lead out the Israelites in war if they can be awarded land on the far side of the Jordan

Ne­aletz Hushim – Halutzim – pioneers, lead out the troops –

Lo Nashuv – we will not go back, until the land is safe.

Placates Moses.

And this is exactly what happens, they lead out the troops and only return when the war is won.

 

To share some thoughts on the contemporary valence of this ancient debate.

Just as it was then, I believe it is fair to say it remains true that a Jew living outside the Land of Israel is susceptible to being challenged that we are walking out not only on the promise of the land – the covenant, but also on our relationship with those living in the land.

I believe Jews are permitted to live outside the Land of Israel, but we pick up a responsibility when we accept the comforts of a Diasporic existence, a responsibility towards those who make the State a sanctuary for all of Israel. We meet that responsibility, we repay that cost in our support of Israel.

Just as Gad and Reuven did back then, so too today we need to be at the forefront of those supporting Israel.

 

There is a clear-cut view of Israel that, God help us, is getting increasing air these strange days.

It’s the voice of condemnation and attack.

The voice that suggests that everything Israel does is rotten.

And as bad as it is to hear that voice from non-Jews it’s particularly galling to hear Jews attack Israel.

The self-hating Jews Howard Jacobson mocks so mercilessly in his Finkler Question are not being brave and iconoclastic they are forgetting what it means to be a Jew and they have no idea of what is really going on in Israel.

The truth is it is a dangerous time for Israel.

And it’s more dangerous to be in Israel than to live as a Jew in England.

The last thing that an Israeli needs to hear is a whinging Diasporite who pokes from their armchair without the fear of living under the Katushas and sending their sons and daughters off to war.

I don’t like that clear-cut view of Israel, it’s demonstrably untrue and it’s cowardly to utter it.

 

But there is another clear-cut view of Israel which I don’t accept either.

I’ve spent three years of my life in Israel, I speak the language, love the country dearly, I believe passionately in its right to exist in safe ands secure borders. But there has always been something that has held me back.

Something that has held me back from wanting to make my life in the hills of the Galil, the ancient stones of Jerusalem or the party-filled streets of Tel Aviv.

Something that has held me back from throwing all my soul behind the more nationalist voices of contemporary Israeli politics.

 

I was brought up at a time when, as young Jews involved in Jewish Youth Movements, we were taught to argue that that Israel was right even when she was wrong.

Trained to offer simple absolute support. Open wallets, open hearts to those plucky Israelis. And I’ve never really accepted that kind of discourse.

It had the advantage of being clear cut, but it had the disadvantage of being wrong.

Never felt comfortable with the Occupation of territories and governance of people who have not wanted to be part of the Zionist dream.

Never been able to accept that as a Jew, as a fellow seeker of truth, my job is to support, turning off critical faculties, suppressing my inner voices.

 

And then there is a related clear cut voice that, to be fair I only rarely hear today.

There is the clear cut Zionist voice that insists that the only place for a Jew is Israel. The clear-cut voice that assumes that the Diaspora only has any right to exist pending the establishment of a State, the voice that suggests that now the Diaspora should wither away, that the Diaspora is a mere footnote in the central Jewish narrative of our people.

I’ve never accepted that discourse either.

Never felt that the Diaspora was a vestigial organ to a body whose every central system was based in the Land of Israel –

Many of the most incredible gifts of our people have been intimately connected to being in the Diaspora –

The Bible – given in Sinai

The Talmud – Babylon

The Mishnah Torah

I could go on.

 

So my identity with Israel is in tension. There is my love and belief in Israel and my love of the Diaspora, and my concerns about Israel.

A relationship with Israel in tension.

 

I read this week an essay by David Grossman, one of the greatest contemp Israeli authors who helped me understand something quite important about this tension.

Grossman, who was born in Israel lost his son, Uri, killed by an anti-tank missile in 2006.

 

Grossman sets out the value of wandering – which we know much about – particularly as Diaspora Jews.

Wandering, says Grossman, gives us a freshness, an insight, an ability to stand outside discourse – particularly overly nationalist bigotry. Wandering, says Grossman, is at the heart of what it means to be a Jew.

 

But then, Grossman goes on to say, we also have a sense of longing for stability – something we know about – particularly when we consider Israel.

As sense that there is an end to all this journeying, journeying since the time of Abraham the journeying across the wilderness, the journeying of exile. We want to have a home, a place we can just be, not just travel through.

So we have, as Jews, two urges; the urge to wander and the urge to nest.

A relationship in tension.

 

The importance of our wandering, as Jews, is certainly strong.

Even among native Israelis, perhaps especially among native Israelis – the largest Pesach Seder in the world is celebrated in Kathmandu, purely in Hebrew for the 2,000 plus Israelis who congregate there and at every other far-away-backpacker-filled corner of the world.

 

There are problems with lusting after wandering, always

Perhaps, speculated Grossman, the urge to wander explains why we, as Jews, can lack a conviction that we are a people of place – that we deserve to live in a country with traceable secure borders.

Perhaps it explains some of the Jew-driven criticism of Israel.

Perhaps this urge to seek out the new, Grossman goes on, explains why for centuries other people have been so eager to pin us down - determine just what a ‘Jew’ is.

People have wanted to pin us down like some kind of butterfly so we can be properly understood.

 

Perhaps, Grossman goes on, this dangerous wandering aspect of Jews explains why we have been penned into ghettos, confined exclusively into various fields of commerce, as if to make us comprehensible, easy to monitor.

 

Stunning insight.

The place of the tug of security and homeland, and the tug of being a wandering outsider.

This week looking out over the promised land it’s a tug Reuven and Gad clearly feel most strongly.

It’s a tension that cannot be bludgeoned away by argument, or solved in one side or another.

It’s a tension that must be negotiated, a tightrope walk to be attempted with care and courage.

 

So much for our relationship with Israel – my relationship with Israel.

 

What does it mean to be Masorti?

Between one pull and another a Masorti Jew is always going to feel a little uncomfortable with anything that sounds too neat.

Too clear cut.

Are we, as a community Orthodox? – do we accept the Divinity of the Torah is in any way simple and obvious – No.

But we reject the other pole of this argument equally? – Do we consider the Torah to be entirely a human series of voices, human and fallible, as fallible as you or I – Equally no.

There is a tension to our theology. Neither entirely one thing nor another.

 

Do we, as a community – hold onto traditions ancient and strange even though we cannot fully understand why it is so important that we don’t eat pig or we do light candles, this way but not that way – of course we do.

But do we, as a community – believe that sometimes some of these traditions need to be, and this is the language of Rabbi Jacobs, freed of accumulated grime and dirt just as an art restorer strips back the accumulation of grime and dirt attaching itself to an ancient work of art – of course we do.

There is a tension to our practice. Neither entirely one thing or another.

 

Infact you could cut into the thought and life of a committed Masorti Jew anywhere and it would always reveal tension.

Our relationship with Israel is made of the same stuff – tension – as any other element of our Jewish identity.

Judaism is not supposed to be easy.

Judaism is not supposed to be resolved simply.

It’s not supposed to be resolved at all.

 

This is the point.

We live in a world which is entranced by those who suggest that there are simple solutions to complicated problems.

As any sophisticated thinker will tell us – complicated problems need complex solutions.

Solutions that remain in tension.

 

Criticism of Masorti is that we fail to be clear.

For me it is our greatest strength.

We know how to stand in tension between alternate pulls.

Be they the pull between tradition and modernity, between human and Divine authorship of our holy scriptures or between our love of wandering and our desire for a safe homeland.

 

Criticism of Masorti is that it’s wishy-washy. Muddled, unclear.

Suggestion would be that if we could only side on one side of a tension or another we would, somehow, be better.

But it’s not going to be.

We will always be a people who look over the Jordan river at an inheritance so wonderful and feel a tug both to enter the land and to stay outside.

 

Shabbat shalom

Thursday 21 July 2011

Fasting Famine and Foam

 

 

Tuesday was one of the Rabbinically mandated fast days – the 17th of Tammuz; anniversary of the breaching of the walls of Jerusalem. We mark the destruction of Jerusalem in three weeks’ time (all welcome 8th August 8pm).

 

I was hungry and found myself thinking about the famine in Sudan. I listened out for coverage on the radio and the following day’s papers. There wasn’t much. The tales of destructions of the livings of some of the poorest in the world and the deaths of children in numbers not seen since 1992 was drowned out by reports of an 80 year old being hit by a paper plate covered in shaving foam.

 

For me, as an occasional voluntary faster, the key moment at the end of a day’s fasting is the moment when I first eat, or drink again. Water has taste, an apple zings with sweetness and sharpness, it’s a wonderful experience. And on, of course, entirely foreign to the experience of those whose lack of food is neither voluntary nor short-term. Anyone able to make a donation to the World Jewish Relief East Africa Food Crisis Appeal is urged to go to www.wjr.org.uk

 

For those who would rather respond to hunger in the Jewish community I also, this week, had the honour to meet with Rabbi Abraham Israel. Rabbi Israel is the founder of Hazon Yeshaya, the largest provider of emergency food supplies to the terrifying high number of those under the poverty line in Israel (as well as vocational training, dental clinics and much more). It was an inspirational meeting, more information about Hazon Yeshaya can be found at http://www.hazonyeshaya.org and donations to their UK charitable office can be from that web-site.

 

Shabbat shalom,

Eat well,

 

Rabbi Jeremy

 

 

 

Thursday 14 July 2011

Openning Boxes vs Normal Mysticism

I came across the story of Joanna Southcott and her box in a biography of Mabel Balthorp, founder of the Panacea Society. At the age of 64 Southcott proclaimed she was pregnant and would give birth (she was a devout Christian) to the ‘returned’ Messiah on 19th October 1814. That didn’t happen. But she did, on her death, leave behind a sealed box which contained, she claimed, great prophecies that could save the nation. The box was only to be opened in the presence of the arrayed Bishops of the Church of England at a time of great National Crisis. The Panaceans have been campaigning for the box to be opened ever since. I’ve been thinking about this notion of a box which contains great secrets that could save a Nation in a time of Crisis.

 

On the one hand I believe in the revelatory power of Torah. I also acknowledge, and love, the esoteric corners of my Jewish faith – the sorts of teachings that are only supposed to be shared with initiates. But the idea of a box which produces ‘The Answer’ – like some kind of supercomputer programmed to solve the answer to the Great Question of ‘Life the Universe and Everything’ strikes me as profoundly unjewish.

 

Max Kaddushin came up with the term ‘normal mysticism’ to describe Jewish faith. We find meaning and even salvation not through hocus pocus, but everyday action, not through miracle but through the elevation of humdrum; a loaf of bread, a candle, an acknowledgement of a passing season or new moon. Even the esoteric corners of Judaism don’t contain much in the way of practical magic. The point is that Judaism’s great secrets don’t live in boxes, waiting to be exposed, at which point anyone reading them will slam their palm to their forehead and cry, ‘of course, that indeed is the answer to all the world’s woes.’ Judaism’s great secrets lie exposed before us. Respect parents. Observe Sabbath. Keep Kosher. Give charity. Behave kindly. The magic of Judaism, and magical it is indeed, comes in the way these resolutely practical actions creep inside us crossing some Pauline threshold that connects a simple physical deed with an emotional, spiritual and religious gestalt. Judaism is not a faith of Damascene conversions. It is a faith of gentle uncovering. The process of deepening a relationship with Judaism is the process of practicing with more intensity and commitment and understanding from a deeper and deeper place these acts of practice lift and elevate our selves and our souls.

 

The English word ‘observant’ carries a twin valence no single Hebrew word can match. With observance we become more observant. We see more clearly, we see more deeply, we understand more profoundly. These are insights we gain from ongoing commitment, not from opening boxes.

 

Shabbat shalom.

Tuesday 12 July 2011

I'm looking for A New Secretary

My current assistant is leaving to take up a full time job.
I'm looking for a part time assistant, if you are interested ...
Please pass it on, if you can think of anyone who might be.

8 hours a week, part in the office, part flexibly.
Full info below.

SECRETARY FOR THE RABBI

 

We are looking for a part time secretary for the Rabbi to start in September 2011.  The post will be for 8 hours a week, 4 in the office on one morning a week, and the other 4 to be taken flexibly, with the option of working at home. The rate of pay will be £5,200pa.

 

The job will need someone with:

 

  • Warmth, good judgment and discretion
  • An appreciation of the rhythms of Jewish life and in particular the demands made of the congregational Rabbi
  • Excellent attention to detail
  • Excellent communication skills, particularly in writing
  • Comfort working with a broad range of software and computer-based technologies.

 

If you are interested in this post, please phone the Executive Director, Jo Velleman

on 0207 328 1026 between 9.00am and 1.00pm Monday to Friday or email director@newlondon.org.uk   Applications are required by Friday 12th August and interviews will be held on the morning of Thursday 8th September.

 

 

New London Synagogue

33 Abbey Road

London NW8 0AT

0207 328 1026

I'm looking for A New Secretary

My current assistant is leaving to take up a full time job.
I'm looking for a part time assistant, if you are interested ...
Please pass it on, if you can think of anyone who might be.

8 hours a week, part in the office, part flexibly.
Full info below.

SECRETARY FOR THE RABBI

 

We are looking for a part time secretary for the Rabbi to start in September 2011.  The post will be for 8 hours a week, 4 in the office on one morning a week, and the other 4 to be taken flexibly, with the option of working at home. The rate of pay will be £5,200pa.

 

The job will need someone with:

 

  • Warmth, good judgment and discretion
  • An appreciation of the rhythms of Jewish life and in particular the demands made of the congregational Rabbi
  • Excellent attention to detail
  • Excellent communication skills, particularly in writing
  • Comfort working with a broad range of software and computer-based technologies.

 

If you are interested in this post, please phone the Executive Director, Jo Velleman

on 0207 328 1026 between 9.00am and 1.00pm Monday to Friday or email director@newlondon.org.uk   Applications are required by Friday 12th August and interviews will be held on the morning of Thursday 8th September.

 

 

New London Synagogue

33 Abbey Road

London NW8 0AT

0207 328 1026

Friday 8 July 2011

On Gossip and the News of the World - All The News That is Fit to Preach

The opening words of the Jewish prayer service are taken from this week’s parasha.

Bilaam looks over the encampment of the Israelites and says

Mah Tovu Ohelecha Yirsael – How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob

(sometimes the King James translation is the only one that conveys suffienient pomp).

Rashi wants to know what he saw that was so good.

Bilaam, says Rashi, saw that the opening of the tents were not facing one another.

The encampment of the Israelites was arranged to protect privacy.

It is not holy to be a snooper.

As it teaches in the Mishnah[1]

If you share a courtyard with others you may not open a door facing anther person’s door, or a window facing another person’s window.

Privacy is a Jewish value.

Modesty is just the sort of value, properly understood, that we could do well to rediscover in these days of exaggerated self-promotion and, particularly this week, in this time of unasked for exploitation of private conversations and private grief.

‘All the news that’s fit to preach’ – as my stepfather suggested when I told him what I wanted to talk about this Shabbat.

 

We are all, and I include myself in this, a little too addicted to peering into the tents of our fellows.

We have become used to an ever richer diet of gossip and salaciousness.

I’m quite sure I know how acts as wrong as hacking into the phones of murder victims and bereaved soldiers’ relatives came about.

The Mishnah calls it aveira goreret aveirah – one sin brings along another in its wake.[2]

Maybe once there was a genuine reason why someone’s phone was tapped, but then it became too easy to find another way to find out some other piece of news, so a second phone was hacked, and a third and a fourth and on and on until there is no contrary voice saying, hang-on. This is wrong. Privacy is also a value. There are some things that should not be plastered over the front of the papers, even if we find them interesting.

In fact the counter-voice, the one that says, hold-back, be quiet, don’t snoop is especially important when the thing we might find should we peer is likely to intrigue us, amuse us.

We are too used to turning the world around us into an object of our amusement. We need to make the counter voice, that says that the world around us is exists to test our ability to care for it, to care for its inhabitants.

 

I’m not making a case that embarrassing secrets should always be suppressed, that would be ridiculous.

I’m a huge believer in transparency

From a religious perspective. Indeed the sense that a person should behave as if every action is available for maximum scrutiny is a central religious precept – da lifnei mi attach omed – know before whom you stand is usually marked above the ark.

Ztofeh vyodea setareinu – we sing in Yigdal – God observes and knows our secrets, we sing of God in the Yigdal. God is the unseen watcher, looking on and recording all our deeds, our successes and our failures.

It’s a big Rosh Hashanah idea.

 

But this sense of holy oversight, religious oversight, exists within our faith to promote justice, kindness and decency. It’s a brake on our yester hara – the evil inclination within us all, it’s designed to feed out passion for salacious gossip and prurience –

Listen how the great verses which demand our decency are understood by our tradition in the light of our Jewish belief in the importance of transparency

Lo titian michshol don’t place a stumbling block before a blind person, thinking you can get away with it because they can’t see you. Vareyta m’elokecha Because God is watching.

Lo tikalel heresh – don’t curse a deaf person, thinking you can get away with it because they can’t hear you. Ki ani hashem Because God is hearing.

Our deeds are exposed, and we are encouraged to reveal our flaws before the one, and it is a wonderful Biblical turn of phrase, who knows the inner working of our kidneys.

But this value placed on transparency is because this religious faith in transparency improves us, it improves the lot of the society in which we all live, a society where too many secrets, too much privacy can shroud and hide tremendous wrongdoing.

The moral code of the One doing this religious oversight is a code of loving kindness, justice and decency.

When the oversight of our private lives is provided from a place of loving kindness, justice and decency the idea is that we become kinder, more just and more decent.

 

In this religious commitment to transparency our deeds are not revealed to titivate and titillate. Our deeds are not to be revealed to drive up sales.

Again, it would be too easy to simply pour scorn on the journalists. We have the journalism we deserve.

There is a line in the Talmud that suggest that

As the people, so their leaders.

Perhaps it could be reworded, as the people, so their journalists.

We get the media we deserve.

I don’t know how many of us regularly buy the News of the World, but I suspect far too many of us enjoy our salacious tittle tattle, gossipy, sexy … all very exciting.

We are all responsible for the kind of intrusion that doesn’t place kindness, justice and decency at the heart of everything we hold most dear.

 

Looking into other people’s lives is important.

Journalism is important.

Investigation brings out the criminal and the depraved actions that secrecy can protect.

It was, after all, good old fashioned investigative reporting that blew the cover on these allegations of phone hacking.

Investigating the lives of others can be fine.

But we all spend too much time snooping.

Snooping plays into the hands of our Yetzer Hara, the evil inclination that exists in all us us, drawing us into the salacious.

It makes us progressively less and less good

 

A few weeks ago I spoke on a similar issue, it was the week that Ryan Gigg’s private life was unceremoniously outed on the public arena.

I spoke then about the obligation to criticise – Tochecha.

For there is indeed an obligation to criticise, but it is perhaps the most dangerous of all obligations because it is so easily overcooked.

We might begin by thinking that we are doing the important and holy work of criticism, but it so easily lapses into point scoring, self-aggrandising and causing pain to others.

I told this story, it bears retelling.

Tzanzer Maggid in shul of another Rebbe – railing against a third Rebbe, he points out flaw after flaw.

Afterwards the Maggid comes up to the preacher –

But Mitzvah to critcise.

Tzander Maggid – if Mitzvah your yetzer hara – evil inclination - should be telling you not to do it.

If you start enjoying telling truths that cause pain you have the balance wrong.

 

What goes for the obligation to critique goes on this issue of intrusion, I think equally.

If we think our acts of peering into the lives of others are fine, we should check that our Yestzer Harah is urging us not to snoop.

We are too easily turned into treating other people as objects of our own amusement and titillation.

That’s terrible.

We are supposed to treat other people as the test of our ability to be kind and compassionate.

Buber – the holiest relationship to have, with another person, is one in which we do things for other people NOT for our own sake.

We do things for other people because of our love for them, our commitment to them and our desire that they should be immune from pain and suffering.

Prurience is the ultimate defeating of Buber’s notion of an important relationship.

 

We can try this, perhaps next time we are faced with the offer of peering into the lives of others.

Let me set the challenge in the language of that great Rashi which suggests that the greatness of the encampment of Israel is that the tents were pitched to look away from the private business of the other.

For me that Rashi raises image of the second person to arrive at the camp site.

The fist tent is pitched, and the second person comes and they take the decision to pitch their tent to look away.

We need to develop the confidence and the strength to pitch our tent so as to look away.

 

The next time you arrive at one of the many campsites of our lives pitch the tent so you look away.

Pitch the tent so you are not drawn to peer into the lives of others.

Relate to the people around you not as a source of personal amusement, but as human beings to whom you owe a duty of care, particularly if they are vulnerable.

 

For the way in which you set up your tent will strike the person who arrives next, and the person after that.

And in this way we shall build a better and kinder society.

 

Shabbat shalom

 



[1] Baba Batra 60a

[2] Avot

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