I went to see an unusual play earlier in the year. In Echo, by
the playwright, Nassim Soleimanpour. An actor who has never met the writer and
has never seen the script, takes to the stage in front of a 20-foot screen on
which the face of the writer appears.
“Hello,” says Soleimanpour. “Can you confirm, we’ve never met
before?”
The actor, the night I saw the play it was Adrian Lester,
confirms.
“Can you confirm you don’t know anything about what you are
going to be asked to do, you haven’t done any research into what is about to
happen?”
Adrian Lester looks as if he is thinking of firing his agent
and confirms.
And then the story unfolds. Sometimes the actor gets to read
words projected on a screen, sometimes he gets to repeat words whispered into
his earpiece. And sometimes, he’s left to respond of his own volition – it’s as
new to him as it was to us.
What follows is a meditation on the meeting of two people and
the story of one of them – Soleimanpour – an Iranian who fled his home under
threat of imprisonment or worse and is on Zoom from his flat in Germany where
his dog has a walk-on role, and his wife is losing patience with his getting in
the way of her preparing dinner.
And Lester, and the 500 of us sat in the tiered seating all
around, are drawn into this story of a life pulled apart; what does it mean to
flee for one’s life, what do you pack, what do you miss?
And then things get a little astronomical. Soleimanpour, over
the video link, says something about how the universe came into being and, projected
on 20-foot video screens, we see stars and galaxies whizzing and the actor,
this stranger to Soleimanpour and stranger to Soleimanpour’s script, says this,
“In a universe in which everything is pulling apart, to come together is an act
of resistance.”
“In a universe in which everything is pulling apart, to come
together is an act of resistance.”
And I suddenly understood what the point of the play was.
And I knew what I wanted to talk about for Neilah.
Don’t worry, I’m not submitting the theatre ticket as a
business expense.
The play is an exploration of the ways in which we resist
pulling apart. It’s an exploration of how not to succumb to that law of physics
that nods sagely as each of us and every particle within us drifts ever further
apart.
Actually, it’s worse than that. The forces drawing us apart,
are greater even than Newton’s law of thermodynamics – there’s also that
polarizing drive in contemporary society that both compels and terrifies us.
There’s a nice line in Ezra Klein’s book Why We’re Polarized. He’s
talking about the way the Youtube algorithm works and, of course, much else
besides.
Videos about vegetarianism led to
videos about veganism. Videos about jogging led to videos about running
ultramarathons. It seems as if you are never ‘hard core’ enough for YouTube’s
recommendation algorithm.
The greatest marketing wizards in human history are gleefully
drawing us ever deeper into silos of specialization because that’s what keeps
us clicking. And I don’t have anything against vegans or ultramarathon runners,
but we are also being drawn into silos of identities where we are encouraged to
sneer at those in other silos. We increasingly define ourselves and our fellows
not as multi-fashioned souls with a host of different interests and ideas, but as
people who identify in one way in order to demonstrate our difference form
those who identify differently. And in doing so we become complicit in the way
in the falling apart of the universe.
What is it, that has the power to resist this particulation
and polarization? Soleimanpour’s play suggests we need two things.
One is we build our internal strength, our gravitational mass.
We need to treasure and celebrate who we are.
And secondly, we need find ways to encounter and build connection
with others, those who are different to us and even those who disagree with us.
We find our own strength through story-telling and making and
sharing memories.
We, us members of New London, we’re good at stories, I think.
We’ve got the greatest story ever told – about a ragtag bunch
of slaves rescued from a genocidal Pharoah by God with an outstretched hand and
a leader with slurred speech who, when the moment came, found the language we
still use in our Yom Kippur liturgy today. For Moses came up with the phrase - שׁוּב מֵחֲרוֹן אַפֶּךָ – return from Your anger, O God.
Exodus is a story about the value and meaning of freedom,
about the dangers and ultimate failure of human despotism. It’s a story about
believing in things that cannot be seen and a story about the possibility of
anyone becoming great. That’s a story to hold us together, as it does, of
course, year after year, Passover after Passover.
Or, in this 60th Year of New London Synagogue –
there’s the story of our founding.
A story of a decent, brilliant Rabbi who was excommunicated by
the Orthodox because he preached that combining belief and critical thought was
a truer and more powerful way to be Jewish, and decent as a human, than a
retreating into a blinkered fundamentalism. It’s the story of how a group of
people cared enough to found, and fund, a Synagogue that is standing strong
decades later, bringing Jews together, strengthening its future, and our
future.
Storytelling draws us together.
Memories are, in some
ways, similar; but more personal, more revealing our, knowing and unknowing,
intimate self.
When we share memories and even better when we build memories
with others, we open doorways into our hearts, invitations to join, to have
future memories together.
Here’s something my family do every Friday night. We sit
around the Shabbat table and do ‘Highlight of the week.’ The deal is you have
to have one, and you can only have one.
I’m a little tyrannical about it – you can’t be too general,
“oh it was all just lovely” doesn’t count and no-one’s allowed to say they
don’t have anything good worth remembering.
For the sin of being a tyrannical enforcer around the Shabbat
dinner table…
Actually, the other thing I, somewhat tyrannically enforce, is
a zone of phone-free engagement. Especially on Shabbat.
Phones are, I think, anti-memory devices. They are perhaps the
central reason we don’t make memories – too busy confusing pixels and social
media feeds for love and friendship. Put ‘em down.
Instead tell stories, listen to stories, make memories, share
memories. Treasure and celebrate who we are.
And then there’s the harder thing – reaching beyond those with
whom we find an instinctive fellowship.
We, as a human race, are each other’s only hope. As annoying
and frustrating and, frankly as murderous as one human can be to another human,
there is nowhere else for us find the gravitational weight that can sustain our
existence.
We need to seek out difference and find a way to come to terms
with difference in its difference.
This, again, is from Rachel Goldberg-Polin, mother of the
murdered captive from October 7th, Hersh. She was invited to speak at the
Herzlia Security conference on the 263rd day after her son’s capture.
What shall I share with you,
astute governmental policy experts, security virtuosos and learned academics,
given that I am just a mother who, in the before, worked at a high school? I
found myself wandering around the Talmud.
She shares the story of Hillel and Shammai, the greatest
Talmudic Rabbis and the most frequently cited Baalei Machloket – disagreeing
debate partners. Why, Goldberg-Polin asks, is the end result of the vast
majority of their disputes about Jewish law that the law follows Hillel?
It is [recorded.” She lectured
the room of international security experts,] that Hillel was kind and he was
humble, but those qualities alone do not explain his exceptionality. The Talmud
explains that when Hillel would teach his students, he would always present
Shammai’s opinion first, and he would do so in such a compelling and respectful
way that his students, each time, were convinced that this must surely be the
way the law should be understood. Only at the end of Rabbi Hillel's explanation
would he then say, with respect and honor, “I actually think the following,”
and only then would he go on to elucidate his opinion. There was no name
calling, no shouting, and never attempts to tear down Shammai’s ideas, nor Shammai
as a person, as unworthy. Hillel simply disagreed, but only after truly delving
deeply, teaching and endeavoring to comprehend Shammai’s approach. It is
critical to understand the other side. [Goldberg-Polin continued]. You don't
have to agree with the other side, but we must try to understand them, and I
think that is what Hillel did so very well, with conviction and with deference.[1]
Magen Inon, whose mother and father were both murdered by
Hamas terrorists, wrote this,
From this unbearable feeling of
pain and distress, I wish to speak about what I believe is my parents’ legacy.
People from both sides of the border have good reasons to hate one another. But
this cannot be the only option. … Our shared future is based on the belief that
all human beings are equal and deserving of respect and safety. This is how I
was raised and how I am raising my own children. In the long term, and even if
it’s very far away, the only real future is that of hope and peace.[2]
Or, for those who want to hear the same voice from our Muslim
or Arab cousins, I could share with us tonight from, Wajid Iltaf Khan, Lord
Kahn, the Muslim Minister for Communities, or Mayor of Camden, Samata Khatoon
or, the Gaza-born activist, Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, who wrote
this for the Jewish News this week.
In the painful year since the
October 7 massacre in which 1,200 Israelis were killed and hundreds taken
hostage, I have made more connections with Israelis and Jews as a Palestinian
from Gaza than I have in the entirety of my life.[3]
Alkhatib has written powerfully of his opposition to Hamas and
powerfully also to ask for an understanding of how difficult it is for those
within Gaza to speak out with the same forthright condemnation. Alkhatib, a Senior
Fellow at the Atlantic Institute had to seek political asylum in the States
some 20 years ago.
I could go on. I know there is hatred in the world, I know
there is violence and there is thuggery and there is hatred. I know to protect against
that and challenge that takes a certain strength. But we have to stop weaponizing difference.
We have to stop being complicit in the pulling ourselves as a single human race
apart.
It's not a goal to agree with every human in their every opinion.
That’s not the point. It’s that I – we all – have to come to a point where we
demonstrate curiosity and strive for empathy with human existence, even if it’s
a radically different perspective.
And as much as I will condemn and oppose the actions of those
who wish me harm, I can’t, we can’t foster a disregard of their humanity.
Because otherwise this whole thing is going to fall apart.
“In a universe in which everything is pulling apart, to come
together is an act of resistance.”
I left that performance of Nassim Solempanour’s Royal Court
play feeling oddly elated. I had watched in as two complete strangers had met
and fallen into intimacy through story and memory and curiosity and openness
and I too had become complicit in that act of falling into intimacy along with
500 or so fellow strangers. We shared furtive looks of resistance as we made
our way home. In that hour and however-long-it-was, I had felt the resistance
grow to the particulation of our existence.
And I was reminded of the conclusion of one of the greatest
books I have ever read. At the end of An Intimate History of Humanity, a
tour de force exploration of memory, story and human multiplicity and shared
commonality, Theodore Zeldin, born in 1933 Mandatory Palestine to Russian Jewish
parents wrote this;
It is in the power of everybody, with a little
courage, to hold out a hand to someone different, to attempt to increase, even
by a tiny amount, the quantity of humanity in the world. But it is careless to
do so without remembering how previous efforts have failed. History, with its
endless procession of passers-by has so far largely been a chronicle waste. But
next time two people meet, the result could be different. That is the origin of
anxiety, but also of hope and hope is the origin of humanity.[4]
May it come to us all for good.
[2]
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/19/hamas-attack-peace-revenge-border-war
[3]
https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/opinion-how-7-october-changed-my-perspective-as-a-palestinian-from-gaza/?fbclid=IwY2xjawF0wQFleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHZnGcYgRMetWDP9g34v46xQTMUqNl08w27i1RybAMOlVCHWLvSGzE6xIrA_aem_N0ZDmUic2e2ElpgYikhvmw
[4]
An Intimate History of
Humanity, Theodore Zeldin
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