Brexit and Exodus - A Sermon Given on the Day of Departure

Last night Great Britain left the European Union.

And this morning we read the story of the Children of Israel leaving Egypt.

So it’s one of those days when the subject of the sermon is crystalline. But the guts of the sermon are tricky.

When the orthodox Chief Rabbi of this country spoke out publicly in the weeks before the last general election, I got a slew of emails from congregants and others. Literally, half the emails thought it was wonderful that a religious leader should speak out on such an important political matter, and warmly encouraged me to do the same.

And the other half of emails warned and worried about the consequences for Rabbi Mirvis and wanted me to keep away from the issue.

On the one hand … and on the other hand.

But there are similarities between the Exodus narrative and the Brexit narrative that go beyond the letters ‘e’ and ‘x’.

For one thing, not everyone wanted to leave. When Moses first went to the Children of Israel, in events we read a couple of weeks ago, they weren’t interested at all.

Shortly after Moses goes to Pharaoh to instruct the King of Egypt that the Hebrew should be freed, and the foreman of the Israelites comes to him and curses him out, ‘May God look at you and punish you for making us loathsome to Pharaoh.’ And we’ve had a bunch of name-calling and bitterness in this journey also.

But eventually the people leave.

Actually, maybe not all the people. There is Rabbinic commentary to the effect that there were some who stayed behind – maybe in today’s situation, they would be the people – the tens of thousands of people who have rushed out to get an EU passport at some point in the last three years.

But let me leave the politics at this point. I’m going to make some points about leaving Egypt, and I’m not trying to make a point about Brexit; whether it’s good or bad. I suspect I’m firmly with the Chinese premier, Zhou Enlai who, when asked in the 1970s what he thought about the French revolution of 1798; "It's too early to tell." Let me instead think a little more deeply about the Israelites who stayed behind, and what the Israelites who left were doing.

Next week we’ll read a line that says the Children of Israel, as they left Egypt, were hamushim. That’s a word that clearly has something to do with the Hebrew word for 5 or maybe 50, but it’s unclear. Our most important commentator, Rashi thinks it has something to do with learning military techniques from their oppressors - now the Children of Israel march fifty abreast in military formation. But Rashi also says this – there is a Midrash (and it’s in the Mekhilta of Rabbi Yishmael) that records an argument about how many Israelites left Egpyt. Perhaps when the verse says they left Hamushim – it really means that it was only one in five of the Israelites left, or maybe even one in fifty of the Israelites who left.

What happened to the rest?

Shmeitu Harbeh MYisrael BMitzrayim

Many Israelites died in Egypt. They just couldn’t bring themselves to be ready to leave. So rather than be left behind, the idea seems to be, they fell dead. When did they die? The Midrash continues, in the three-day plague of darkness. And while the Egyptians couldn’t see, the Israelites who were to leave buried the ones who were not to leave - so the Egyptians would know what had happened.

Because, it seems, that leaving is hard.

Crazily, it seems, there were Israelites who opposed to leaving Egypt even when they were abused, beaten, and genocidally murdered. Actually, that’s a pattern we’ve seen time and time again in history and across the globe. In the face of oppression and slavery, there are always those who protest against any attempt to overthrow the status quo and leave. They worry about what they might lose, they can’t see what they might gain.

And this is the point about leaving Egypt.

When Moses turns to the people of Israel and calls on them to follow him into the desert he promises them something they cannot see. At the heart of the Jewish faith, there is a god who cannot be seen. That’s in radical contradistinction to life in Egypt where the gods can be seen. Now it might be that the Egyptians gods and magicians and the like are all pretty useless, but at least they are there. The same goes for the foodstuff of Egpyt. Slaves don’t get much to eat, but there’s nothing to eat in the desert – and you can understand an Israelite feeling, you know, I’ll stay right here.

You can look at the entire battle between Moses and Pharaoh, the entire point of Exodus as the battle between the attraction of the material and tangible, as little and as fallible as it may be, and the promise of a future that cannot yet be seen, and might never be seen. 

Here’s another Midrash, a rabbinic commentary on a verse we read last week on the moment when Moses first turns up at Pharaoh’s palace to request the release of his people.

[1]Rabbi Hiyya son of Abba said, ‘This was coronation day, when all the Kings came to crown Pharaoh because he was the Emperor. While they were placing crowns on Pharaoh’s head, Moses and Aaron stood at the entrance to the hallway. Pharaoh’s guards told him, ‘Two elders are standing at the doorway’

Pharaoh asked ‘Have they got a crown?’ The guard replied ‘no.’ ‘Then let them enter last.’ When Moses and Aaron finally stood before Pharaoh he said, ‘What do you want?’ Moses replied ‘The God of the Hebrews has sent be to you to say, “Let my people go so they will serve me.”’ (Ex 7:16).

Pharaoh replied angrily, ‘Who is this GOD that I should listen to His voice. Doesn’t He know enough to send me a crown, rather you come with words.’

Rabbi Levi said, ‘Pharaoh then took the list of gods and began to read, ‘The god of Edom, the god of Moab, the god of Sidon, yada yada yada,’ and he said to them, ‘There, I have finished all my records and your god’s not on the list.’

So Moses and Aaron said to Pharaoh, ‘Fool, the gods you mentioned are all dead. But the LORD is a living God, Ruler of the Universe.’

Pharaoh asked, ‘Is he young or old? How many cities has he captured? How many states has he humbled? How long has he been in power?

They replied, the strength and power of our God fills the world. God was before the world was created and God will be at the end of the worlds. He fashioned you and placed within you the breath of life.’

What else has he done? Pharaoh asked.

They replied, ‘God stretched out the heavens and the earth and God’s voice carved out flames of fire,[2] God rips open the mountains and smashed the rocks.[3] God’s bow is of fire, God’s arrows are flames, God’s spear is a torch, God’s shield is the clouds, God’s sword is lightening,  God forms the mountains and the hills; covers the mounts with grass, the heavens with clouds, God brings down the rain and the dew and gets the plants to grow and the fruits to ripen. God afflicts the beasts and forms the embryo in the womb of the mother and brings it forth into the light of the world.’

Moses is trying to explain a God that cannot be seen, that is more important than all things that can be seen. And Pharaoh, blinded by the idolatrous world he lives in doesn’t get it. It’s a difficult thing to persuade someone; that the things you can’t see are more important than the things you can.

We even have, in English, the idiom – ‘do see what I mean?’ which is absolutely understood to refer to understanding. So tempting to think that if you can’t see something that it’s not going to be important. Tempting to place all our faith, our hope and our work into those things we can see.

And put like that you can understand why there were Israelites who weren’t ready to leave, you weren’t able to get it.

It was a problem back then and over there, and it remains a problem over here and today.

We live in a world that loves the things that can be seen.  And we all spend our lives chasing around after the things that can be seen, and collected and stored up, or maybe not collected, just admired from afar.

And here’s the thing. None of the things we chase after last forever. None of the things we chase after make us a better person. None of the things we chase after unlock, for us, the reason for our existence. Why are we here. What should we do with this extraordinary thing called our life?

To work that stuff out you have to head off into the wilderness, with no-thing. You have to believe that the things that can’t be seen will support us in our wandering.

Ben – you’ve done brilliantly today. I hope you get a whole bunch of presents and things – stuff. But in 20 years time, I guarantee you, you won’t remember the presents and things. If you remember anything about today, you’ll remember things that can’t be seen – how you feel. How you feel connected to your place in this world, as a son – a firstborn, as a Jew.

The word spiritual is much overused, and little understood. To be spiritual means to value the things that can’t be seen more highly than the things that can be seen. It means to value the invisible truths of faith, of love, of feeling, more than the material things, the idols, the gold and the silver. It’s a tough challenge, to be spiritual.

It’s what Moses demanded Pharaoh understand when he attended Pharaoh’s coronation. And Pharaoh didn’t get it.

It’s what Moses tried to inspire in the Hebrews as they were so weary as slaves in Egypt. And only one in five, or one in fifty got it.

And it’s my call today.

Believe in the things that can’t be seen.

Don’t be misled by the things that can be seen.

The story of Exodus survives as a marker of the power of the unseeable. We’ve been telling it and celebrating it for three millennia at this point and it’s going strong, still inspiring generations yet to make their mark on this planet. 

And if I am to venture a view on Brexit it would be this - Brexit will boil down to a bunch of complex trading agreements about … things. And we won’t be reading about it three thousand years.

Shabbat Shalom

---

[1] Midrash Tanhumah, V’era 5

[2] (Psalms 29:7)

[3] (I Kings 19:11)

The Angel of Last Week and the View from Above The Stars - Rosh Hashanah 5780

Two moments from the vast Rabbinic canon, one taught by a son and one taught by his father.

Let me start with the son, Rabbi Yossi son of Rabbi Yehuda.

Rabbi Yossi taught a person has two angels who accompany them home from the Synagogue on a Friday night; one good, one wicked. And if the person gets home and the candles are lit and the table is laid and the bed is made, the good angel says to the bad angel, “May it be this way next week,” and, against their will, the wicked angel is forced to reply, “Amen.” But if this isn’t the case, then the wicked angel says, “may it be this way next Shabbat,” and against their will the good angel is forced to respond, “Amen.”[1]

And here’s the moment taught by Rabbi Yossi’s father, Rabbi Yehudah

It comes in a commentary on a verse in Genesis just before we began our Torah reading today. Abraham is old, childless and worried he will have no-one to take on the mantle of the promise God made to him.

(ה) וַיּוֹצֵ֨א אֹת֜וֹ הַח֗וּצָה וַיֹּ֙אמֶר֙ הַבֶּט־נָ֣א הַשָּׁמַ֗יְמָה וּסְפֹר֙ הַכּ֣וֹכָבִ֔ים אִם־תּוּכַ֖ל לִסְפֹּ֣ר אֹתָ֑ם וַיֹּ֣אמֶר ל֔וֹ כֹּ֥ה יִהְיֶ֖ה זַרְעֶֽךָ׃

And God took Abraham out of his tent and said to him – Habeit Nah Hshamayah – look at the heavens, count the stars – if you can count them, so shall you have offspring.

On this verse the Rabbi Yehudah, [2] points out that the word Habeit isn’t really the Hebrew word for looking up at stars, in the sense that you or I might look up at the stars. Habeit is the Hebrew word for looking down from a high place to a low place. [3] So, says Rabbi Yehudah, it must be that when God took Abraham out of the tent, God lifted Abraham lemala mikpat harakia – above the dome of the heavens- so Abraham could look down on the stars spread below him. Look down on these stars, Rabbi Yehudah imagines God telling Abraham – you are not to be controlled by these stars. Yes, I know, you are old and childless, and it seems to you that it is written in the stars that you shall have no children, but you look down on the stars. They don’t control you. You, Abraham, have a future no mazalot – no astrological destiny – can determine. The possibilities of your future, Abraham, expand before you with the fecundity of the stars in the heavens.

In my first story the past controls the future – as last week, so next week.

In my second story we are to be lifted above the present to look down on its puny attempt to control our tomorrows.

This isn’t, in case anyone is worried, a sermon about angels and miraculous interstellar space-travel.

It’s a sermon about you and me, our faith and this world in which we live.

Because we don’t need angels or miracles to help us understand these two stories – the one in which the past controls our tomorrow, and the one in which we rise above the present to futures unknown.

I recently had a conversation with a member who wanted to chat about the future of the Synagogue. They were worried about the women thing – they said they came to Synagogue to feel comfortable and they were comfortable with the roles for men and women they knew and loved from their childhood. And as much as they knew that women are capable and powerful in so many ways, they just felt distracted by seeing women and men sitting together or women leading services.

I have a sympathy for anyone who feels the same. I’ve also felt the same at some points in my own religious journey. I’m not interested in labelling the response good or wicked, but rather I’m interested in the way in which it’s a case of last week’s angel exerting power over tomorrow. ‘May it be this way next Shabbat’ says one angel and the other angel is forced to say ‘Amen.’

The only answer I can give to such a person is Heschel’s answer. Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the greatest rabbis of the last century, suggested that religion has to comfort us in our afflictions, and also afflict us in our comfort. We need to be held by the blessing of last week’s angel, but also we need to fly above the stars.

Ester Perel, the New Yok based therapist, once shared that we all need both the sense of being comforted by our surroundings, and the experience of change, provocation and challenge. And we are all continually modulating the way we embrace the new or surround ourselves with the known, as we go through our lives. Perel is a couples’ therapist. Her work is to help her clients balance their own desires for the same and their own desires for the different as they struggle to get on with each other. She would probably make an excellent congregational rabbi.

We are in a process of change, at New London. And we are all determined by the angels of last week, and we all wish for a tomorrow of possibility.

Here’s the process of change.

18 years ago today, while I was still a Rabbinic student, I led the first services at New London where women were called to read from the Torah. 15 years ago, the day before I got married, I celebrated my aufruf here in the first fully egalitarian service in our history – both those services took place next door, in the Hall. Twelve years ago, in my first week as your Rabbi, there was meeting to decide whether to make any changes in the services in this room – the meeting split 71-70.  Several years later there was a decision to allow certain Bar or Bat Mitzvah celebrations to take place in this space as egalitarian services. And then, several years after that, we went egalitarian on alternate weeks.

We are out of sync with that commitment to alternate egal services here today. We’ve been exclusively male led on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur ever since that decision. One of the things I was always going to say, today, is that the services in here next Rosh Hashanah will be egalitarian – with an option for mixed seating. But our most recent AGM and a more recent Council meeting have gone further, with my fullest support. We’ve announced an EGM that will vote on us becoming fully egalitarian every week of the year. That’s new.

This journey towards the new is a response to all kinds of issues; both Halachic and social, both rabbinically led and reflective of the mood of our members. The process has involved hearing the whisper of the angel of last week and saying instead of ‘Amen’, ‘No – we’re heading towards a different tomorrow.’ And for some it’s long overdue. And for some it’s deeply uncomfortable. And we all want to claim we are the afflicted person religion should be comforting rather than the comfortable person who should be afflicted.

And the strange thing about being the Rabbi of a community balancing the angel of last week and a trip beyond the stars in this way, is the relationship between these discussions in our own community and the discussions going on in the world out there.

One of the great problems in contemporary political life, Professor David Runciman said recently, is that we’ve forgotten how to lose. In the political realm, we’ve drawn our battle lines forcibly. We are so committed to winning our political arguments that we threaten the protections and balances that hold the space for our civil society. That can lead to the counter-indicative result of creating a more divisive and fractured society, even as we do win, and that’s bad for all of us.

I mean I care about Brexit, of course I do, but we’ll either leave soon, or later or never and more important than winning in one direction or another is the quality of the society we create together. And judged by that metric, we are all losing.

We have to get better at modulating our competing desires for continuing with the same or soaring above the past if we want to be able to get on. After all there is so much we agree upon. Even the most committed Remainer knows there are democratic deficits and inefficiencies in the EU. Even the most committed Brexiter knows the value of the freedoms membership of the EU ensures. Even the most committed egalitarian advocate knows the value of ensuring long-term members feel at home in a community they helped build. And even the most committed non-egalitarian advocate knows their attitude towards women in prayer is an outlier when compared to every other part of their lives.

Maybe we all need a good session with Ester Perel, the couples’ therapist who would help us, surely, find new possibilities hidden behind the high fences of our battle lines. We need to learn to lose better.

Let me lighten the tone.

Goldstein was driving erratically at two in the morning and was pulled over by the police. “And where are you headed at this time of the night?” the officer asked. “I am on my way to a lecture about the abuses of alcohol, its toxic impact on the human body, and the harmful effects of smoking.” The officer responded, “Really? And who exactly is giving that lecture at two o’clock in the morning?” To which Goldstein replied, “my spouse.”[4]

The point is that Goldstein is heading home. He, or she, knows they are going to lose any argument about their behaviour and they are accepting losing because they know there is something more important at stake. Goldstein has found there is something more important than being right – it’s being part of a unit that grows and protects. And if we are all to heal some of the fissures in a society where my desires will inevitably conflict with the desires of others, we are all going to have to learn to lose better. Or to put it a slightly different way, we need to learn how to find victories without winning arguments. This is a little counter-cultural. It might be that when we focus all our energies on winning arguments, we actually break the very things we are most keen to protect. And if we find creative ways to cede being on the winning side, we can find greater futures even as we lose arguments

It’s Rosh Hashanah, it’s a great time to be open to the possibilities of not having everything on our own terms. Rosh Hashanah is when we are judged not on whether we win or lose arguments, but on the quality of the relationships we maintain. Debate and disagreement is all well and holy and certainly very Jewish, but perhaps try this for a test of whether or not we have won at a debate or a disagreement – does our relationship with those with whom we disagree get stronger or weaker when we debate?

What would our world be like if we judged the quality of our disagreement by whether we emerged from the disagreement closer to those with whom we disagree, as opposed to whether we came up with the supposedly crushing bon mot?

It would be a better society, surely. And we would be better members of that society.

I opened this sermon with two apparently contradictory stories; one about the power of the angel of last week, and one about the possibility of tomorrow. But the two stories are told in the name of members of the same family; Rabbi Yehudah and his son, Rabbi Yossi. Both stories can exist at the same time in the same family. Both stories exist, at the same time in this community, in this society also. Actually, both stories exist within me simultaneously, and maybe you also.

Our internal peace, and the peace of the communities and societies in which we live will come only when we can watch these competing narratives in our own soul and treat them with compassion, the same compassion we should show those around us, in our family lives, in our religious communities and in our broader societies. We have so much more in common with one another than any win-or-lose argument should fracture. And the bright, generous future we wish for ourselves in all the worlds in which we live, can only come if we learn to find moments of conciliation and possibility that will strengthen us all.

May it come to us, in this year to come, in good, in health and in blessing,

Shannah Tovah

---

[1] Shabbat 119b

[2] Bereishit Rabba 44:12

[3] Used to describe looking from a mountain down towards a valley I Kings 18:43, and the view of God looking down from the heavens Ps 33:13

[4] Based on a more gendered version of this joke I learned from Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove

Politics and Vows Parashat Mattot

It’s hard to get away from the front pages, even when reading this week’s Torah portion.

We read, this week, the laws of Nedarim – vows. Vows are a serious business. Even when a vow undertaken is successfully completed, one has to bring a sacrifice. Why, the Rabbis ask, must a person act in a way as if they have done something wrong, when they have successfully completed the very thing they vowed to do? It must be, they answer, that the attempt to wrestle control over one’s future self is not to be encouraged. Ideally, we are to be free to respond as we see fit in the moment. Nishtaneh HaZman, Nishtaneh HaTevaim – times change, nature changes. Grand operatic gestures are not, religiously, welcomed. Two examples spring to mind.

In a mere 10 weeks we will sing together the Kol Nidrei, entering the most sacred day of our calendar by giving ourselves permission to transcend vows that should no longer bind us; previously uttered limitations we have placed on our future-self cannot have total dominion over who we become.

Jephta's Daughter, By Cabanel

A few weeks ago, we read, in the Haftarah, the tale of Jeptha, the great Israelite General who vows that if he is to defeat the Ammonites he will offer as a sacrifice the first thing he sees on his return - only to be greeted as a returning military hero by his daughter. Jephta goes through with his vow, much to the disapproving amazement of the Rabbis of later centuries. “How could Jephta not realise the mechanism of Hatarat Nedarim?” They ask. If you make a vow not realising issues that only become apparent later, it is possible to have the vow officially annulled. If someone would have said to Jephta, at the moment of his making the vow, “But what if it was to be your daughter?” and if Jephta would have responded, “Goodness, how could I possibly do such a thing, I will desist from that vow, or make the vow less overwhelming in its potential to go beyond my intention,” then the vow can be, indeed should be annulled.

Religion is often pilloried for placing too-tight binds on the obligation of a person to live a life freely, responding in the moment with a wisdom that can only be understood in that moment. But here we see something else. Here Judaism teaches that we can all be too quick to seek to command our tomorrows. We shouldn’t. We can only understand our tomorrow … tomorrow. And even that might be too early.

Shabbat Shalom