Amalek, Intergenerational Hatred and the Possibility of Peace

 

It’s Shabbat Zachor,

And we have read verses from Deuteronomy that remember an event recorded, originally in Exodus

There is an attack, of the Amalekites against the Children of Israel, tired and weary from their servitude in Egypt and their desert wandering. And then comes the bit that makes the tale of Amalek unique in Biblical narratives.

“God will be at war against the Amalekites from generation to generation.”

Or, as we read today,

^“When God gives you rest from all the enemies around you in the land he is giving you, you shall blot out the name of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!”

Amalek is set to function as an intergenerational enemy. That’s the reason for the Haftarah we read on this Shabbat – the story of Agag the Amalekite, enemy of Israel. And connects to the Megillah we will read on Thursday night and Friday morning, featuring Haman the Agagite – enemy of Israel.

And then two things happen. As a matter of Jewish law, there is no such person as a descendent of Amalek. As a matter of Jewish law, you can’t point at someone and say – you are an Amalek, and therefore my dread enemy who I must wipe out even to this day, for you bear such animus towards me.

But then there is the second thing; when there is an enemy of Israel, particularly one who cowardly attacks the weak and weary in the rear, there are places, where such people are called Amalek. Leaders of the Spanish Inquisition were often called Amalekites, and Cossack leaders of horrific pogroms launched against the Jews in the 19^th and 20^th Century. And of course was Hitler referred to as Amalek. Here’s something published in 1933, Paris.

And the idea, I think, of these comparisons is twofold.

On the one hand, this association of one generation’s hatred for Jews with the tale of Amalek is a reminder that there really is such a thing as an inter-generational hatred for Jews. There are those who will hate us and attack us regardless of anything we say or do. And we would do good to remember that.

And on the other hand, this association reminds us not to get soft in the face of hatred. Despite the inducement offered by other religious, sometimes, if someone slaps you in the face and just turn the other cheek, you get slapped on the other cheek. And if you come at the world from a religious place where you believe in the image of God in all humanity and you believe in Dan LChaf Zhcut – judging people meritoriously, it can become too easy to overlook evil. It can become possible to find oneself sliding into a collaboration with those who don’t recognise the image of God in us. And that gets dangerous. We know that as Jews.

And that, of course, brings us to the aftermath of October 7^th.

It’s 518 days since Hamas terrorists attacked the weak and the weary at the crack of dawn along Kibbutzim and settlements and Festival sites in the South of Israel. It was as cowardly an attack of unprovoked murderous hatred as the Jewish people have ever experienced. And the question is – is this Amalek?

Is this an attack launched by a people whose undying intergenerational hatred of Israel, of Jews, or me is so absolute as to blot out any possibility of creating not only a future shared society, but even a future safe border between two people living side-by-side?

It’s the question underpinning so much of what has happened since that awful day; the question underpinning what should be done now.

There was coverage of a leading American Reform Rabbi giving up on the possibilities of a two State Solution in the press this week. Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, a one-time proud peacenik, gave a sermon where he said this, “This was the week that finally ended the hope, at least in my lifetime, for a Palestinian state and a Jewish state existing side by side," Hirsch said. “The Palestinians themselves strangled this fragile hope in its crib.”

The Israeli and Palestinian leadership of the shared-society organisation A Land for All are in London this week. I’m hosting a meeting of rabbis to hear their plan for a way out of this that preserves both Israeli and Palestinian self-determination and freedom. I invited four of local Orthodox colleagues. Three didn’t reply, and the fourth said this; “since October 7^th 2023 I am totally opposed to a two-state solution.  Previously I had supported it.  The best way for British Jews to contribute to a solution is to make aliya.”

A little over a week ago, Rabbi Natasha and I, among other Rabbis visiting from Britain and colleagues from Israel, wandered through the wreckage of the Nova Festival site and stood at the memorials of those slain and asked this question. Is this Amalek, is this people next to whom Israelis live, alongside whom Israelis live, a people who perpetrate the evil of Amalek, an undying hatred that must be uprooted before it can harm yet again?

And my heart breaks that the question is indeed a good question.

For what it’s worth, my answer is no. Od Lo Avdah Tikvateinu – I still haven’t lost hope. I know, easy for me to say, I’m not living along a border across which terrorists can invade. I haven’t served. My children aren’t due to serve. But still, no. This is awful, it needs to be called out as awful and it needs to be addressed with grave seriousness. But this isn’t Amalek.

Two sets of thoughts. There are partners for peace. We met with representatives of Standing Together: Jews and Arabs who haven’t given up and won’t give up because neither think the other is going anywhere and neither can bring themselves to such a level of hatred as to justify ethnic cleansing of worse. We met with mayors of regional councils in the northern West Bank, Area A. The two memories most pushing on my heart was when they took us to look over the 100 dunams behind their village and pointing out the tiny illegal Jewish settlement on a hill – We don’t mind the two or three dunams they have taken, said the mayor. But why all this, and he swept his hand across the Palestinian fields of olive trees that cannot be accessed and the quarry that cannot be run, they are creating the circumstances for another October 7^th, he said. They aren’t perfect peace partners, these Palestinian elected leaders, but George R.R. Martin had it rights when he put these words in the mouth of his character Lord Baelish, “We only make peace with our enemies. That's why it's called making peace.”

If that is hard to hear.

This one is harder still.

There are Jews who are actively fanning flames of hatred between Jew and Palestinian because they sincerely believe with a messianic faith I find abhorrent, that the entire Land, from River to Sea, should be for Jews only. And they know that if they can threaten and lock up and bottle up all Palestinian pretensions to self-determination it will indeed overspill into more violence and that advances their cause. There is a terrible problem in Israel with a far-right extreme political movement that has power and is wielding that power to inflame and set Jew ever further against Palestinian. A wise member here suggested October 7^th is a bit like the end of the David Fincher movie Seven where a despicable murdered decides to commit a series of murders matching each of the Seven Deadly Sins while being pursued by the policeman played by Brad Pitt. The last murder, forgive the spoiler, is to match the sin of Wrath – anger. And the murder is not to be the true source of the evil, but the policeman. The true source of evil is planning to get Pitt’s character to be so full of wrath that he will sin. Israel, being deliberately goaded into committing acts of violence by the wickedness of those responsible for October 7^th, I think, makes more sense of why Hamas did what they did than almost any other thing I’ve heard since that awful day. And I feel that partly since I recognise the same tactic wielded by the extreme settlers and their allies who seem to take pride in their whipping up hatred between Jew and Palestinian.

These are desperate, complex, painful times. 

We must be capable of holding two opposing forces with equal commitment.

On one side, we cannot afford to lose our humanity. 

On the other we cannot afford to fail to call out evil when we see it. 

And in between these two poles, we must struggle. 

For me, the call to see even in those who hate us, Amalek must be pushed back. Yes there is anger and yes there is hatred, but I do not believe there is no partner for shared society, or even strangers living in self-determination on either side of a border. Od Lo Avdah Tikvateinu

 

Shabbat Shalom

Draft - Report on a Yachad Rabbinic and Cantorial Mission to Israel

 Rabbi Natasha and I are just back from an extraordinary mission to Israel with Yachad – the charity seeking to empower British Jews to support a political resolution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

 

On a trip to the South, we saw the awful destruction wrecked by Hamas at the Nova site and also in Sderot – only a kilometer from the border with Gaza. We looked over the fields through which the terrorists entered Israel and  beyond to the wreckage of the Northern Gaza Strip. We met with residents of Kibbutz Nirim forced to hide in shelters designed for bombs, not invasion and planted an olive tree with several Kibbutz members now looking to return to their home. I was particularly moved to meet with Dani Miran, who has been campaigning with dignity and insistence for the return of his son, Omir taken from Kibbutz Nahal Oz. The family have, just days ago, received a video of Omri alive from a released hostage. In Jerusalem, we attended a memorial and balloon launch for Shiri, Kfir and Ariel Bibas at Kikar HaHatufim – hostage square. May all the hostages be released immediately.

 

We also met with those, as one activist put it, “actively creating a truth to counteract the claim that there is no partner for peace.” That’s a sentence. We met with a Jewish and a Palestinian representative of Standing Together. They talked of providing protective presence to trucks with food aid on the road to Gaza, and being amazed by how many people were committed to enable compassion to be felt for all humanity, even for those in a society governed by the wicked. “Nobody here is their government,” MK Rabbi Gilad Kariv explained to us in the Kennesset, in between popping in and out of the Chamber to give a speech about the allocation of ministerial portfolios. The MK urged an attempt to build a “covenant of moderation - ברית המתינות,” both in land controlled by Israel and beyond. “We have wasted the opportunities to create an alternative to Hamas in the Gaza strip. We could have brought a coalition of moderate Arab countries and the Palestinian Authority into Northern Gaza. This is one among many opportunities. Instead they [the Netanyahu government] are weakening the PA in the West Bank encouraging Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Occupied Territories.”

 

We travelled to the West Bank and met Mayors of two Regional Councils and a representative of the Governor of Nablus. They were weary from experiences of road closures, checkpoints, land and resource grabs and settler violence. But they too spoke of a desire to find a way to live alongside Israeli Jews. “We don’t mind those two dunams,” spoke one mayor pointing at a small illegal hilltop settlement erected since October 7^th, but “why do they take all this?” He waved his hand across a hundred-dunam stretch of Palestinian farm land and the local quarry.

 

We travelled too to the South Hebron Hills and Hebron itself where the strange dance between Prime Minister Netanyahu and his extreme right-wing coalition partners was brutally illustrated. We stood among the wreckage of the Palestinian town of Zanuta, abandoned and was immediately bulldozered by settlers following a daily series of violent incursions in the aftermath of October 7^th. The Palestinians were threatened with death unless they left – the leader of the settlement most responsible is under sanction from the British Government. Our guide explained the pattern of settler violence, left to go unchecked by police, municipal authorities, army and quasi-army units following the leadership of Minister for National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir. And then a settler drove up to us, bouncing over the rocky path getting closer and closer to group reversing and swinging his car around like a weapon. It was designed to threaten and intimidate. It was violent and dangerous. As we hastily drove away, the settler swerved into the car of another member of our group causing damage. Will he be prosecuted? Our group leaders, who see this behaviour daily, suspect not.

 

The people of both Israel and Palestinian need a vision of security which brings hope and dignity. Speaking out against the appalling terror of October 7^th, seeking to understand how we got to that place, and advocating for those building towards a, “willingness to live alongside one another,” as one peace activist put it, is the only way forward. I’m immensely grateful to Yachad for making this trip possible. 

Comity or Isolation

 

My Future Does Not Lie in Isolation

These are strange times. Drawbridges are being hauled up, across the world and in so many ways; political, military, but also emotionally and even religiously. We are being offered the classic test of Game Theory. There is a large sum of money in the middle of a table surrounded by people. If no-one presses the big red button for a minute everyone gets a share of the large sum, but if one person presses the button, they get a smaller fraction, but no one else gets anything.

 

Can we, should we, restrain ourselves from leaping towards the button? We all, surely, have that fear that, if we don’t move first, someone else will and we’ll be left– in the Israeli idiom – as a “Friar” or sucker. The Game Theory challenge is a good one. It’s not a test of selflessness or a willingness to place the rights of the other above mine, it’s a test of the ability to have faith in the collective and the notion of a greater good if we can find a way forward by behaving as a community as opposed to a collection of individuals.

 

And so to Yitro.

 

This week’s Torah portion contains the Ten Commandments; the single most specific, intimate moment of election of our people. The Rabbis, and much of later Biblical text, see it as a moment of isolation from the other nations of the world. “You,” says God, “are the one I want.” And we respond, “Our God is One God.” There is much in Jewish life that can feel isolated; we don’t eat the same food, pray in the same language, hold the same things dear as so many others. And there is so much in Jewish history that has scarred, again and again, our willingness to have faith in a broader vision. It’s been hard to believe in, in that phrase from Israel’s Declaration of Independence, the value of a “comity of nations.”

 

But the week’s Torah portion opens with a reminder of the dangers of the isolationist position. Moses is visited by his father-in-law, the Priest of Midian. An outsider.  He looks at how Moses is providing leadership and shares, “This thing you are doing – your way of running this society – is not good.” Moses has taken too much on his own shoulders and, Yitro warns, “Navol Tibol, you will be surely worn away.” Yitro, the outsider, helps Moses see that his own best interests lie in sharing a burden, having and more importantly instilling faith and those around him.

The purpose of fighting against the scarred game theory urge to press the big red button as fast as possible, is because my self-interest demands it. If I pursue only my own interests, isolated from cultivating a sense of “comity” – a belief that nations and individuals can do more by acting with courtesy and in community – I will surely be worn away.

Shabbat Shalom

Can You Have Coloured Threads on a Tallit?

  

I was asked about the suitability of coloured threads in a Tallit (not Techelet, but specifically colours to match the colours of the materials used in the Mishkan).

 

There is a clear prohibition in the Talmud against using an ‘indigo’ dye.

If you are using kosher Techelet, that’s fine, but you can’t use anything that could be confused with the colour of Techelet.

 

There are statements in Halacha that the threads, other than Techelet, should be white. Rambam says that and even the Ravad – who famously disagrees with Rambam about almost everything only disagrees about how much Techelet should be used, and agrees that the rest of the threads should be white.

 

However there is a clear instruction, again, in the Talmud that “the threads should be like the garment.” That’s clearly understood to mean that if you have a woolen garment you need woolen Tzitzit etc. i.e. the thing that needs to agree is the MATERIAL. But the Shulchan Arukh says that “some people understand that the COLOUR of the threads has to match the COLOUR of the garment. That was news for me.

The Shulchan Arukh is a Sefardi legal authority and the leading Ashkenazi authority, the Rema, writing right on that comment in the Shulchan Arukh says this;

והאשכנזים אין נוהגים לעשות הציציות רק לבנים אף בבגדים צבועים ואין לשנות

Ashkenazim only make Tziitzit with white [threads] even on coloured garments and this should not be altered.

 

The Mishneh Brurah, also Ashkenaz, has no problem with a coloured garment, but suggests that ‘careful’ people should use white since that is definitely OK and also matches a verse in Daniel (the book, not the father!) that describes God’s clothes as white as snow -  ולבושיה כתלג

The Bach (the legal authority not the composer) and the Magen Avraham also make a point about white threads matching God’s white garment.

 

So …

It’s not ideal.

There is a possibility of relying on it, according to the Sephardi Shulchan Arukh.

There is certainly fulsome support for a coloured garment, and also a nice idea about white threads.

But on the basis that the Shulchan Arukh notes that some say the threads on a coloured garment should be coloured, it’s definitely not forbidden.

 

I’ve put all the sources referred to in this document

https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/625023?editor=1

 

Responding to President Trump's 'Plan' on Gaza - Feb 2025

 

There are several reasons NOT to respond to President Trump's recent attempt to solve the problem of Gaza.

Good reasons NOT to respond include ...

I'm not an expert in geopolitics. I'm not a citizen of Gaza, Israel or the United States.

Bad reasons NOT to respond include ...

I'm busy. There is a piece of me that respects the fact that Trump played a role in managing to get some hostages out. There is a piece of me that is so scarred by October 7th that I'm sneakily excited at the idea of making the problem go away with the ease President Trump promises.

An insufficient reason TO respond is that the so-called plan is stupid, illegal and immoral verging on advocating for ethnic cleansing. The ‘plan’ is all of these things, but if it was only this, I wouldn’t be posting. But …

One.

There are people who are excited about this 'plan.' They include Israelis, self-described friends of Israel and (for my church is a broad church) I suspect even members of my own community. To these people I want to scream, "be careful what you wish for." Israel must be secure, but Israel's security will not come by ethnically cleansing Gaza of two million Gazans and creating a Riviera on the Gazan coast. No wall is high enough. Hatred will not dissipate by the transfer of Gazans away from Gaza. And the idea that somehow this President is a reliable ally for Israel is tenuous in the extreme. The ‘plan,’ like so many ‘plans’ currently being aired in his new Presidential term, is not thought through. It’s not funded. And it won’t be, no matter how many times President Trump says he’s spoken with a bunch of people who agree with him. In a recent podcast, Rabbi Donniel Hartman suggested that Israel has a new Prime Minister, Donald Trump. Speaking of this ‘plan’ as supportive of Israel’s security is to outsource self-determination to a demagogic criminal who doesn’t really care about anything other than himself. Long-term meaningful security can only come by doing the hard work, building towards peace and respect. I know it doesn’t feel that that is possible now, but falling in line with Prime Minister Trump will only make that worse, and pushes the prospect of long-term security further away.

Two

People watch who speaks out against 'plans' which are stupid, illegal, immoral and verge on advocating for ethnic cleansing. I've been one of those people. When 'plans' were hatched against Jews, I've watched, waiting for people to speak out with the conviction and clarity I expect of any decent human being. In the aftermath of October 7th, I was desperate to hear from any Palestinian, Arab or Muslim a rejection of the awful plans of Hamas and (with notable exceptions - I recommend following Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib ) I've largely waited in vain. And now this.

Gazans, and those who feel an affinity for the people of Gaza, are not wrong to watch out. So I, a mainstream rabbi who supports Israel, leading a mainstream shul which supports Israel, speak out.

To anyone listening, I do not accept President Trump’s ‘plan’ for Gaza. It’s stupid, illegal and immoral verging on advocating ethnic cleansing. Can we please focus on trying to find a different way?

Thank you Jeremy Assous for the prompt below. I've signed, and am proud to sign this https://secure.yachad.org.uk/page/165571/data/1... from Yachad. Also proud to support עומדים ביחד نقف معًا and recommend checking out A Land for All ארץ לכולם بلاد للجميع among other organisations who are working to advocate other ways.

Impact Assessment of Weekly Anti-Israel Protests in Swiss Cottage on the Local Synagogue Community

(Photo from https://www.instagram.com/combatantisemitism/p/C-2zw0moH6X/) 

February 6, 2025

I write as Rabbi of New London Synagogue, a Jewish faith community of 1500 members. The Synagogue is located less than a mile away from the location of these protests on Abbey Road, NW8 0AT. Many of our members live locally on the far side of the Swiss Cottage and would pass these protests on the way to Synagogue. I also write as a local resident living very locally to my community.

Introduction

As you will be aware, since early 2024, Swiss Cottage in London has been the site of weekly anti-Israel protests held Friday early evenings. These demonstrations have been timed to coincide with the onset of the Jewish Sabbath, a sacred time dedicated to rest, prayer, and community gatherings. The timing of these protests raises significant concerns regarding their impact on the local synagogue community's ability to practice their religion peacefully. The reports I receive of these protests are that they are boisterous, combative and aggressive in their chants and affect. While I support the right to protest, I don’t support any so-called right to intimidate or scare, and the culture of these protests, now well-set over many months, seems to be designed to do that.

Evidence

I have members who have shared they feel uncomfortable coming to the Synagogue through these protests which they perceive as being, too often, angry, aggressive and featuring antisemitic and otherwise offensive chanting.

A 13 year old girl in the community, faces this challenge on a weekly basis. She walks – and, again, being the Jewish Sabbath, walking is the only religiously acceptable method of transport for her -  from her home to the other side of Swiss Cottage every Friday evening. She shares, on a weekly basis, her unease and nervousness. Her parents have looked at circuitous pathways that avoid the area, but the site of the protests is chosen to make avoiding it especially difficult. She feels she needs to gee herself up in an act of bravery to walk along the road. She’s thirteen. That shouldn’t be necessary.

As you will be aware, in September 2024, a 27-year-old man was arrested in Swiss Cottage for allegedly chanting support for Hamas, including phrases like "I love the 7th October" and "I love an organisation that starts with H," referencing the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023.[1] Our community is grateful that Police responded after this alleged event, but this incident is neither uncommon nor unexpected. The protests seemed geared towards fermenting this kind of anger. Again, arresting someone suspected of a crime  sends an important message, but when incidents like this happen and stories of this and similar incidents are reported on a weekly basis, the damage to the local Jewish community, and I would argue the broader community of decent-minded local residents, is magnified.

Many in my community complain tell me they hear language like this on a weekly basis. There is a perception in the community that, despite multiple complaints to the police, there has been a failure to take adequate action to address these issues by moving these protests away either in location or time, or otherwise ensuring the culture of barracking aggressive language and chanting changes.

There have, clearly, been attempts to police these protests more effectively, but this has largely been through ensuring large numbers of uniformed officers are sent to the area. Sadly, and I do have sympathy for the Police in their attempts to balance competing rights, a large police presence at these protests seems similarly both correct and further-damaging. As a Jew living in London, I don’t want to feel my right to pass through a major thoroughfare less than a mile from my home, depends on the presence of scores of officers. Different preventative strategies are necessary.

Conclusion

The weekly anti-Israel protests Swiss Cottage have a tangible and adverse impact on my synagogue community and members of my family's ability to observe the Sabbath peacefully. The documented antisemitic incidents and the general atmosphere of tension during these demonstrations contribute to a sense of insecurity among community members. It is imperative for local authorities to recognise these challenges and take appropriate measures to ensure that the rights of the Jewish community to practice their religion without fear or disruption are upheld.

 

---

[1] https://www.thejc.com/community/pro-israel-activist-demands-action-against-antisemitic-marches-in-swiss-cottage-is2lh6ni?utm_source=chatgpt.com

How Demagogic Political Leaders Fail

It’s a good week to be talking about demagogic political leaders, who think they are god-empowered to rule in ways oppressive and cruel, come to fail.

In fact, for me anyway, it’s been impossible to think about anything else.

There’s the Parasha – with Pharoah refusing to let my people go. Actually, even that phrase doesn’t cut it. Pharoah who plotted, wilfully, the genocidal murder of every boy born to the Israelites in Egypt. Pharoah fails, even if there was pain and destruction that came before that eventuality.

There’s the echoes of 80 years ago – Monday marks an extraordinary anniversary – the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau and the images of skeletal survival and mass death that flood my mind are intercut with flashes of footage from the Nuremberg rallies and invective filled speeches of Hitler, Yemach Shemo v’Zichro. And Hitler failed, even if there was pain and destruction that came before that eventuality.

Then there’s this last week and the news from across the pond; when a day that was supposed to be about the conventions of the democratic transition of power of the greatest democracy in the World, were marred by a Nazi salute and a President who didn’t seem to care at all for the conventions of the democratic transition of power; a leader who suggested he was selected by God to provide his particular brand of leadership.

My mind has darted back to 2016 review in the New York Times that caused quite a stir at the time. Michiko Kakutani, the Pulitzer Prize lead book critic for the NYT, wrote about a biography of Hitler by Volker Ulhrich. I’d already read the Ulhrich book before I heard about the review. It’s chilling, as you would expect. But Kakutani didn’t seem to be reviewing the book when she wrote, this

“How did Adolf Hitler—described by one eminent magazine editor in 1930 as a “half-insane rascal,” a “pathetic dunderhead,” a “nowhere fool,” a “big mouth”—rise to power in the land of Goethe and Beethoven? What persuaded millions of ordinary Germans to embrace him and his doctrine of hatred? How did this “most unlikely pretender to high state office” achieve absolute power in a once democratic country and set it on a course of monstrous horror?”

Some have focused on the social and political conditions in post-World War I Germany, which Hitler expertly exploited — bitterness over the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles and a yearning for a return to German greatness; unemployment and economic distress amid the worldwide Depression of the early 1930s; and longstanding ethnic prejudices and fears of "foreignization."

Mr. Ullrich, like other biographers, provides vivid insight into some factors that helped turn a "Munich rabble-rouser" — regarded by many as a self-obsessed "clown" with a strangely "scattershot, impulsive style" — into "the lord and master of the German Reich."

Everyone felt Kakutani was reviewing the Republican Presidential Candidate at the election three weeks after her review was published, the eventual winner of that, and now again, election President Donald Trump.

To be clear, I don’t think Trump is a genocidal mass-murderer-in-waiting. But I am terrified. Uhlirch’s biography of Hitler shows brilliantly how a rabble-rousing self-obsessed clown who can tap into longstanding ethnic prejudices, fears of "foreignization" and the experience of economic distress can build power from people at every level in society; from the poorest who feel such a leader is on their side despite all evidence to the contrary, to the industrialists willing to kowtow, or looking to turn a quick buck or thinking they will escape being tarred by the association with a demagogue.

Pharoah, of course, is resolutely afraid of, in Kakutani’s phrase, “foreignization,”

Hinei Am Bnei Yisrael Rav V’Atzum Mimeinu

“Behold the Israelite people are too numerous and mighty for us. Let us deal shrewdly with them, otherwise in the event of way, they may join our enemies in fighting against us and rise from the ground.”

Not that there was any evidence of our ancestors plotting against their host nation. Joseph, of course, was the person who led Egypt through its time of famine. But let’s facts get in the way of an opportunity to milk longstanding ethnic prejudice.

I always find the opening of the Book of Exodus chilling in its evil, particularly the deliberation of the evil. It’s always made me reflect on the Holocaust and the antisemitism that has greeted out people before and since, and the hatreds vested against so many other minorities and divergencies and differences.

Perhaps the way in which we Jews are most responsible for the ills that have befallen our people is that we introduced the idea of a scapegoat to Western Civilization – a goat onto which the sins of the people could be transferred, a goat which could be sent away over a cliff and out of mind out of our care – that’s a Biblical idea too. I’m not sure it worked then, I’m totally sure it won’t work now.

So what helps, what brings demagogic leaders down?

Courage, Shifra/Puah (Edith last week), Moses – even despite his aral sefataim, even though he didn’t want to, was prepared to face down Pharoah. The good news is  that courage breeds courage. The first time you stand up to power feels harder, the second time easier. The reverse is also true; the more one kowtows and performs obeisance to the corrupt and dishonestly powerful, the harder it becomes to ever say, ‘no.’

Don’t accept the unacceptable Lo Lhitragel, when Moses goes to the Children of Israel, they are unable to hear the call to freedom, mipnei avodah kasher v’kotzer ruach. Have to keep teaching ourselves not to accept what is popular as what is right. I think that’s the point of coming to Shul – to prick our tendencies to become habituated to the unacceptable. Had the priv of teaching a passage from our founder Rabbi, Louis Jacobs’ book on Jewish Values. Talking about the relationship between what is popularly seen as acceptable and what is truly holy, Rabbi Jacobs wrote this, in 1960;

            One of the besetting faults of our age is the cult of personality glorification, ignoring the character which personality conceals. A charming manner [is] sufficient to veil inner depravity. This can hardly be the Jewish ideal.

 

Hope & Faith – the world is not, I think, doomed. Nor has it ever been. The collection of good is greater than the collection of evil. Very easy to become pessimistic, faith should buttress us against miserablism. Science too. Prof Steven Pinker, enlightenment now,  “For all the problems we have today, the problems of yesterday usually were worse,” “Things really have gotten better [and] not by themselves; it’s taken human effort and human ingenuity and human commitment.” But we can do that.

Dark sermon, sorry. With the exception of this magnificent BM, been a bit of a dark week.

Humour – Rudolph Herzog, the cabaret artists, some Jewish, many queer who were prepared to mock and strip away the pretensions of almost divine power Hitler was prepared to welcome. Tough to do, but incredibly powerful. How do you take away from someone who seems so powerful their power, mock them. Something in the Rabbinic tradition of this. Something in the great tradition of Jewish humour of all ages.

There’s a piece of this visible in this week’s parasha.

The plague of blood opens with God telling Moses to go to the river Nile in the morning when Pharoah is coming out of the water. What, the rabbis ask, is Pharoah doing in the Nile in the morning?

  לִנְקָבָיו; שֶׁהָיָה עוֹשֶׂה עַצְמוֹ אֱלוֹהַּ וְאוֹמֵר שֶׁאֵינוֹ צָרִיךְ לִנְקָבָיו, וּמַשְׁכִּים וְיוֹצֵא לַנִּילוּס וְעוֹשֶׂה שָׁם צְרָכָיו (תנחומא):

to pee, for he had made himself godlike saying he did not need to go to the toilet, so when he woke, he would go out to the Nile to perform his needs. — [from Mid. Tanchuma, Va’era 14; Exod. Rabbah 9:8]

And that’s when God strikes back, when Pharoah is trying to get in a quick, unseen, pee, turning the water of the Nile red with blood. That’s a way to strike back at a bully with pretensions of godly grandeur. Take from ‘em the dignity of being able to cruise around in their chariots as if they transcend the rules of a normal human. We need the brave clowns, even, dare it be said, the slightly cruel humourists who push their fingers into the ribs of genteel society in ways that feel awkward. Clowns reveal truths more dainty souls fail to expose. It has always been thus.

And it will take all of this,

Humour, faith, courage and that eleventh commandment – lo lhitragel to lead us from these dark times into freedom.

Shabbat Shalom