I spent a chunk of Thursday, the 8th of May, VE Day, in a car, listening to Radio 2.
Much
of the day was turned over to callers, sharing memories, letters and stories
from their families.
There
was the remarkable and remarkably sprightly 98-year-old veteran of the
Bletchley Park Enigma cracking team of heroes. And another memory of a, then,
young girl, dancing in the streets among the bonfires of no-longer needed black-out
curtains.
Then
there were the awful stories. A letter from a soldier writing from the
front-line asking if his wife had given birth yet. The man was killed before he
ever met his daughter. The daughter never met her father.
There
was a moment when a journalist, sent out to some anniversary gathering, waved a
microphone before a nonagenarian veteran and asked excitedly what he was
thinking on such a special day, the man responded, “War is awful, just bloody
awful.” And as he said it, you could feel the images he must have seen, and
must still be seeing so many years later.
The
great Israel poet, Yehuda Amichai, wrote this in 1976.
The
diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
with four dead and eleven wounded.
And around these, in a larger circle
of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
and one graveyard. But the young woman
who was buried in the city she came from,
at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,
enlarges the circle considerably,
and the solitary man mourning her death
at the distant shores of a country far across the sea
includes the entire world in the circle.
And I won’t even mention the crying of orphans
that reaches up to the throne of God and
beyond, making a circle with no end.
War
is awful, just bloody awful.
But
my freedom, my very existence, depends on the willingness of those who served,
on front lines and away from the front lines.
I’m
thinking of one of my great-uncle, who was killed manning anti-aircraft guns
and another killed in the Blitz.
I’ve
been really touched by several of the members here – some of you here today –
who have shared stories of your families. Joe Carlebach wanted to share the
story of his father, a refugee from Nazi Germany who served in the Allied
Forces who found our on or around VE day that his own parents had been murdered
by the Nazis.
Rabbi
Natasha shared the story of her grandmother, Parmjit, who was held as a
prisoner by the Japanese in Singapore. VE Day, of course, didn’t mark the end
of the war.
Our
member Margo Schwartz reached out to make sure I didn’t forget the
contributions made from across the Commonwealth. She’s Candian and wanted to
share the story of “the 8 members of [her] family came across the ocean to do
their duty and three made the ultimate sacrifice while serving in the Royal
Canadian Air Force- bomber command. Just wondering,” she wrote, “after all the
national celebrations if you might be remembering those in our community who
fought to keep us free too.”
The
diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
And around these, in a larger circle
of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
and one graveyard.
I’m
committed to that act of memory. I think we all should be.
We
should all be telling the stories of that generation. We should all be
committed to that act of memory.
80 years ago, the
Chief Rabbi of UK Orthodoxy, Joseph Hertz, responded to VE Day by calling for
the Jews of this country to Bentsh Gomel.
Gomel is an
unusual but beautiful blessing.
It’s a blessing
that acknowledge great things done for us, despite our not being quite sure we
are worthy.
The response,
unusually, isn’t an Amen, but rather an acceptance that all of us, hearing
someone Bentsch Gomel, coming together in freedom because of sacrifices we can
never fully deserve, acknowledge a humility before what has been done for us,
to allow us to be here and celebrate and live at all, in the face of the evil
that swept Nazi Europe 80-plus years ago.
That’s my first,
of three, thoughts on this special anniversary.
A commitment to
remember and express gratitude for those who sacrificed their lives to defend a
freedom I so enjoy and so quickly take for granted.
My second thought
is this.
Please, please,
please can we turn towards a different way to solve disagreement and balance
the competing claims of our human difference.
Heartbreakingly
and horrifically not even the War to End All Wars has really ended all wars.
There’s a piece of my heart broken in Ukraine, and another in Israel, and Gaza
too.
I was listening to
the tale of Israeli prisoners taken hostage in the War of Attrition, that
bubbled along between 1967 and 1973 – the little talked about מלחמת
ההתשה. There were
ten Israelis held in an Egyptian Prisoner of War camp, eventually held in
reasonable conditions – Red Cross parcels, they translated the Hobbit into
Hebrew while they were there. But initially tortured and mis-treated, one
murdered. On their eventual release, for some after three years, they tried to
get back to so-called normal life, but, for many, the scars never healed. And
then there are new victims, the new hostages, the new deaths, in Amichai’s
language, “the new larger circles of pain and time.”
There’s an
exquisite prayer for peace culled from the writings of Rebbe Nachman by Rabbi
Jules Harlow, in the Siddur of the American Conservative Movement.
--
--
It’s heartbreaking
we still need that prayer.
That’s the second
thought. Peace.
I also looked back
at the sermon I gave 10 years ago on the 70th Anniversary of VE, I
often get asked if I ever repeat sermons – I’m repeating this bit. Just for
those of you who like to keep track. Once every ten years – a paragraph or two.
Ten years ago this
week, I had been reading Martin Gilbert’s masterful (gevalt) 8-Volume biography
of Winston Churchill.
Having given a
speech announcing VE day in Parliament Square, Churchill, his voice cracking,
as he makes final call, ‘Long live the cause of freedom, God Save the King,’
goes into the Chamber.
He gave thanks to
the parliament that had supported his leadership. And he said this, “the
strength of the Parliamentary institution has been shown to enable it at the
same moment to preserve all the title-deeds of democracy while waging war in
the most stern and protracted form.
“The liveliness of
Parliamentary institutions has been maintained under the fire of the enemy, and
for the way in which we have been able to preserve – and we could have
persevered much longer if need had been.”
We live in a time
of what David Runciman calls Dictator Envy. It’s easy to fall for the notion
that strength comes from bullying, from squashing contrary voices or from
simply demanding that my way is the best way simply because is it my way.
That’s wrong,
dangerous and – the lesson of VE – ultimately weak.
It was wrong,
dangerous and weak 80 years ago, it remains wrong dangerous and weak today.
Strength, real strength, the strength required to defeat the Nazis, comes from wanting
to learn from difference, valuing debate and a privileging a process that can
lead to best outcomes above my own sense of my own right-ness.
To conflate my own
opinion with what must be true is turn oneself into an idol, a dictator and a
fool. To privilege and fight to ensure the voices of others are heard, even in
difference and disagreement, is holy and, ultimately, the source of our strength.
It’s important,
perhaps even more important today than ten years ago to remember the strength
of democracy in the face of demagogy. It’s important to remind ourselves and
remind those we vote for the kind of strength we wish for this country in these
uneven times. Democratic strength takes a kind of strength.
To those who paid
with their lives to bring us, in Europe, 77 years of peace, thank you.
May nation not
lift up sword again nation, and let none still turn towards the fake promise of
war.
And may we always
resist the seductive, dangerous but ultimately weak charms of dictators.
Shabbat Shalom
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