Jewish Values in a Time of War - Thoughts on the Strike-Back Against Midian - Mattot, Numbers 31

 

On Thursday night, I went to the London School of Jewish Studies, the central education arm of mainstream orthodoxy in this country, to listen to three Orthodox Israeli educators, in London for a major conference. They were asked to reflect on Jewish and Democratic Values in a Time of War. The event was hosted by the New Israel Fund to whom I’m grateful.

One of the speakers was Charedi – ultra-orthodox, the others Daati Leumi – national Zionist.

It was illuminating and impressive in a way, impressive that it was hosted at LSJS, impressive that the conference and this fringe event are happening at all.

But the main reflection of the Haredi speaker was that we shouldn’t blame the Haredim for all the things Haredim are getting blamed for.

The main reflection of one of the Daati Leumi speakers was that there is a big evil – the existential threat against Israel - and a smaller evil – Israel’s errors in attempting to defend itself from that threat – and we shouldn’t lose focus on the big evil.

And then the other Daati Leumi speaker – Rav Moshe Lichtenstein, the grandson of Rav Joseph Soloveitchik no less - spoke about failures of self-accountability and leadership. I think his critique was that the current political leadership of Israel haven’t taken responsibility for the way in which the attacks of 7^th October were allowed to wrek such havoc inside the borders of Israel, it wasn’t entirely clear. I’ll come back to that.

I went, because I’ll take opportunities to learn from Israelis whenever I can – that, I think, is one of the morals of the story of the tribes of Reuven and Gad in this week’s parasha – you can’t live outside the Land of Israel and not do more to acknowledge the very real challenges faced by those who in the most literal sense live or die by their decision to live in the Land of Israel.

But as I was heading there and heading back and reflecting on what to share this Shabbat from this pulpit, I felt it just wasn’t a good enough response to the question of what are Jewish values in this time of war.

Especially in a week where we read, probably, my least favourite Chapter in the Torah – Chapter 31 of the Book of Numbers.

There is plotting against Israel, deceitful, mendacious plotting with a view to our destruction in ways violent, sexually transgressive and also, to be a little anachronistic – in the world of social influence. Let’s imagine Bilaam the Midianite, is the social influencer par excellence of his generation, a deceitful, manipulative, money-grabbing purveyor of populism.

And there is a defeat of the Midianite plot by means of a strike-back, from Israel, of brutal force. I know the term is loaded, but the Israelite strike-back against the Midianites who attacked Israel is genocidal.

All the men are murdered - וַיַּֽהַרְג֖וּ כׇּל־זָכָֽר – and when Moses hears this,

וַיִּקְצֹ֣ף מֹשֶׁ֔ה עַ֖ל פְּקוּדֵ֣י הֶחָ֑יִל

וַיֹּ֥אמֶר אֲלֵיהֶ֖ם מֹשֶׁ֑ה הַֽחִיִּיתֶ֖ם כׇּל־נְקֵבָֽה׃

Moses became angry with the military officers – and said to them, ‘you’ve let the women live’!?

And so some vast number of women are killed as well.

And the strike-back against Midian, recorded in Numbers 31 becomes a sort of template for the doctrine that seems part of Israel’s contemporary Jewish values in this time of war – the doctrine that if you come for us, we’ll come for you harder and if we don’t entirely wipe you out, we’ll leave you unable to come after us again.

And so, if you are looking to understand where Israel, the current Nation State, the one that has suffered such an egregious attack, grounds its morality in turning round to those outside the borders – who can never understand the reality of life inside the borders – and says to these people – how dare you criticise us.

And if you are looking to understand where Israel, the current Nation State, the one that has suffered such an egregious attack, gets its morality in conducting a strike-back against those who even associated by nationality with an egregious attack with brutal force –

You can find answers in this week’s Torah reading.

And what of the other point of view? - the point of view that finds no comfort in the Torah mandating the genocide of the Midianites.

Is this other view, frankly the view I hold, just some kind of wishy-washy liberalism that misses the central message of Judaism – you have to kill them before they kill you?

I think not.

I think the first thing to say about the genodical strike-back launched against the Midianites is that it doesn’t work, or at least it doesn’t work for very long. The Midianites pop up again in the Torah.

In Joshua Midian is back and subjugating Israel for seven years, stripping the Israelite harvests so people were forced to live in mountain caves. Gideon strikes back against the Midianites in that time, but then come other enemies who pop up, some more and some less frequently, some can be defeated militarily, and others can’t.

The destruction of the Temple in the Year 70CE – and we are in the midst of the Three Weeks – the anniversary of that defeat - if you read Josephus, has to do with a failure of the leadership of Israel to realise that pursuing a solely military response to the Romans was doomed to fail, and that the survival of Israel at all, was due to a more sophisticated, softer form of diplomacy – Yochanan Ben Zakai went to the leader of the Romans and negotiated a way for the people of Israel to survive.

Shaul Maggid wrote in a Substack, that, “The entire framework of what we call Judaism emerged in the wake of destruction [of the Temple in Jerusalem. That framework] was a set of values and an ethos that, while not pacifist, eschewed the state violence to which the Jews were victim, and developed a way of surviving catastrophe through living in a covenantal promise of divine protection through fidelity to Torah.”

It’s not that violence never has a place, but that we, as Jews, found ways to respond to the violent threat of those who hate us without always resorting or seeking to resort to overwhelming violence. Sometimes, the softer more diplomatic efforts worked for longer periods of times, sometimes shorter periods of time and sometimes they didn’t work at all. But then the same can be said of the effectiveness of the resort to overwhelming violence.

The point is that we developed sophisticated responses to even the most egregious enemies. Judaism didn’t develop as a faith predicated on the over-ridingly violent response to violence every time we experienced violence. In fact, by and large, we eschewed violent response to egregious actions, even when the Torah mandates otherwise.

There are a slew of deeply morally and ethically awful things that Torah attempts to solve with violence; stubborn and rebellious children, adulterous wives, cities of idolatry and the like, and time and time again Judaism evolved away from the primal, literal understanding of – if you do something awful, I will do something more awful back. Even the very sharpest articulation of a violent response to someone who wishes us harm – the Din Rodef, gets contained and limited and bound into a place where it is not allowed to motivate the violent response to the threat of violence.

Let do that a bit more carefully.

Din Rodef is drawn from a line in Exodus about discovering someone breaking into your house at nighttime. The rabbis make an assumption that a day-time thief thinks there’s no-one at home, they only want your property – you can’t kill them claiming the protection of this law of Rodef, but a night-time burglar thinks you are going to be in, and that means they need to be ready to deal with you – and so you should have the protection to hashken lehorgo.

But no sooner than the Rabbis articulate that idea, they are limiting it, placing equivocation on it, warning that it’s not a carte-blanche to avail ethical responsibility for unjustifiable violence. For there can be no carte-blanche to avoid ethical responsibility for unjustifiable violence. That is the central Jewish value even in, especially in, a time of war.

And then there’s the thing that Rav Lichtenstein said about accountability and leadership. It’s not enough, I think, to expect the leaders of Israel show accountability for the failures that resulted in the atrocities of October 7^th – though goodness only knows, that would be a start.

I think the leaders of Israel should show accountability for the failure to seek and articulate anything other than hatred for Palestinians.

I follow a fascinating Chareidi Rav on Istagram – Rav Avraham Mordechai Gottlieb, a scion of The Ashlag. He recently shared this idea https://www.instagram.com/ravgotliv/

People, he suggested, are quick to hate the Rashanut – the wickedness in others, and quick to draw attention to the Tzidkaniyut – the righteousness in ourselves. But we have it backwards, he suggests. We should rush to love the Tzidkaniyut in others and hate the Rashanut in ourselves.

I think it’s a brilliant observation. We are so quick to point out others’ flaws that we don’t stop to consider ourselves as people containing – as all humans do, a balance of both righteousness and wickedness. And we don’t stop to consider even our enemies contain - as all humans do - a balance of righteousness and wickedness.

Violence might sometimes be justifiable. It might be necessary to strike back violently when we are attacked. But to justify the violence we need to do more than hate the wickedness in others. We need to hate the wickedness in ourselves, the wickedness that inflames a passion to strike back harder against anyone who strikes at us, that responds with an iota more brutality than is absolutely required.

And to show accountability for that wickedness in ourselves, we need to welcome accountability and scrutiny, and oversight. We can’t simultaneously justify our acts of violence and seek to shut down the scrutiny. If we do, we risk persuading ourselves that our acts of violence are justified when they might not be.

There’s a rabbinic tradition about anger and violence and the strike-back against the Midianites.

When soldiers come back to report they have slayed all the Midianite men

וַיִּקְצֹ֣ף מֹשֶׁ֔ה עַ֖ל פְּקוּדֵ֣י הֶחָ֑יִל

Moses was angry with the military officers

וַיֹּ֥אמֶר אֲלֵיהֶ֖ם מֹשֶׁ֑ה הַֽחִיִּיתֶ֖ם כׇּל־נְקֵבָֽה׃

And he calls for the death of the women as well.

In the Torah, this passage is followed by a passage in which a rule about ritual purity is taught to the Children of Israel not by Moses, but by his nephew, Elazar.

And the Talmud, in Pesachim 66b^[1] says Elazar is the one to pass on this teaching since Moshe just advocated for violence in anger – Moses’ anger resulted in the teaching being hidden from him

אִיעֲלַם מִינֵּיהּ.

Moshe lost the ability to be a holy leader because he advocated for violence in anger

“As Reish Lakish teaches כׇּל אָדָם שֶׁכּוֹעֵס חׇכְמָתוֹ [ונְבוּאָתוֹ]

מִסְתַּלֶּקֶת מִמֶּנּוּ,

If a person loses their temper, even a wise person or a prophet, their wisdom and their prophetic insight depart from them.”

It’s easy to be angered when someone does something atrocious and people we love are hurt – but we cannot justify striking back in anger. We have to learn to sublimate that rising up of righteous indignation for our own righteousness, for it so, so rarely will be righteous.

That’s another Jewish value in a time of war.

The angry genocidal instruction to wipe out the Midianites isn’t left to stand as a model for our time. It can’t be a model of our time. Judaism has evolved away from allowing it to be a model for our time. There are other paths, challenging yes, requiring us to force back the rush of anger that rises in us, yes, requiring us to refuse to focus on hating our foes, even if our foes hate us, yes.

But so be it.

For the other option is to be locked into cycles of violence that go back to the time of the Midianites and still, God help us all, cycle through until today.

Shabbat Shalom

The Biggest Organising Principle in the Torah

 I came across, this week, a new version – to me - of an old argument.

The old argument, between two rabbis both of whom have been dead for almost 2000 years is about the Klal Gadol BaTorah – the central organising principle of the Torah.

If you could strip the entire Jewish tradition back to just one verse – what would you go for.

 

Rabbi Akiva, says that the Klal Gadol -greatest organising principle of the Torah is Love your neighbour as yourself – Vahavta LeReicha Camocha – Lev 19:18.  It’s a popular answer. It comes in amongst the top two verses Jesus goes for in the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

But Ben Azzai has a different suggestion, and his verse from Genesis 5:1) is less well known.

Zeh sefer toledot adam beyom b’ra elohim adam bidmut elohim asa oto.

This is the book of the descendents of Adam on the day God created Adam in the image God.

It’s an odd verse. For a start it doesn’t seem to demand anything, doesn’t seem to get a person to do anything.

But I think Ben Azzai has the same problem, or maybe the same three problems with Akiva’s favourite verse, Jesus’ favourite verse as I do.

Vahavta LeReicha Camocha – Love your neighbour as yourself sounds great,

Problem One

What if you don’t love yourself? What about people experiencing a darkness in terms of how they think of themselves?

Problem Two

What if the thing you love actually causes other people pain? Should you do painful things to other people just because you like them being done to you?

And the biggest problem of them all

What if you can look at another human being and decide – they aren’t my neighbour?

What if you look at someone and because, I don’t know, of the colour of their skin, or their sexuality, or their passport, or their religion, that they aren’t your neighbour – Loving your neighbour as you love yourself isn’t going to stop a person from being sexist, racist, antisemitic or any of the rest of it.

I think it’s pretty clear that Rabbi Akivah would never countenance sexism, racism or any of the rest of it, but there are these three problems with his Klal Gadol.

That’s what I think Ben Azzai knew when he said that the greatest Klal in the Torah is

Zeh sefer toledot adam beyom b’ra elohim adam bidmut elohim asa oto.

This strange, not very famous verse that tells us that every human being is created in the Image of the Divine and that we all descend from the same Adam – the same first human being.

So even if you are feeling a darkness, courage!, you are made in the Image of God.

So when it comes to how we treat other people, the really important thing to know is that they too are created in the image of God, and therefore if we cause them pain, in their unique different never-been-seen-before ways of experience joy or pain, if we cause them pain we diminish the image of God in the world. Whoof – now that’s a reason to care about how we treat our fellow human beings.

And you, you just can’t treat another human being as worth less than you, for any reason, and certainly not based on their gender or sexuality or faith or skin colour, because they – just as you – are equally in the image of the one God who transcends all this human pettiness.

 

Well that’s the old version of the argument about the Klal Gadol B’Torah between Rabbi Akiva and Ben Azzai. It turns up in a Midrash called the Sifra which is around 1800 years old.

 

And then, this week, I came across a new version of the argument, my thanks to Rabbi Sammy Rubin. And Rabbi Sammy found it in something written by Rabbi Sacks, and Rabbi Sacks, found it in a collection of teachings of great Rabbi of C16 Prague, Yehuda Low.[1]

In this new-to-me version of the argument there’s another disputant, Shimon Ben Pazzi, who gets up and suggests a he’s got an even greater Klal than Rabbi Akiva and Ben Azzai.

That takes a lot of guts – the bar is set, already, pretty high.

But Shimon Ben Pazzi’s verse comes from the Torah reading we read today – Parshat Pinhas, so, hold on to your kippot – what’s he got?

אֶת־הַכֶּ֥בֶשׂ אֶחָ֖ד תַּעֲשֶׂ֣ה בַבֹּ֑קֶר וְאֵת֙ הַכֶּ֣בֶשׂ הַשֵּׁנִ֔י תַּעֲשֶׂ֖ה בֵּ֥ין הָֽעַרְבָּֽיִם׃

You shall offer one lamb in the morning, and the other lamb you shall offer at twilight.

You’ve got to be kidding.

With a choice of Loving your neighbour as yourself, and the creation of every human being in the image of God, Shimon Ben Pazzi goes for

אֶת־הַכֶּ֥בֶשׂ אֶחָ֖ד תַּעֲשֶׂ֣ה בַבֹּ֑קֶר וְאֵת֙ הַכֶּ֣בֶשׂ הַשֵּׁנִ֔י תַּעֲשֶׂ֖ה בֵּ֥ין הָֽעַרְבָּֽיִם׃

You shall offer one lamb in the morning, and the other lamb you shall offer at twilight.

Give him a second. He’s on to something.

This verse – Numbers 28:4 is a call to service, a call to be prepared to make a sacrifice. Interestingly the sacrifice is the daily sacrifice – the twice daily sacrifice. It’s not the weekly Shabbat special offering or the in a while special festival offering. It’s a command to show us and Lkarev – The Hebrew is usually translated as to make a sacrifice, but really it means to come close, to turn up twice a day for life.

And the more I think about it, the more I think its brilliant.

Because I don’t really care if a person do the right thing once. Anyone can be nice once. Shira, as amazingly as you’ve done today, you’ve done it once. And the real test is – what you are you going to do tomorrow?

And this thing that we are to do – this lamb offering, it’s a sort of charitable gift, it’s pitched, right about here; neither so incredibly complex that we could never hope to meet the standard of our very very best effort, but nor is it a soft-option, something that doesn’t pull in effort and attention.

It’s the sort of Jewish equivalent of trying to do a good deed every morning and every evening. It’s the sort of Jewish equivalent of getting up every morning and going to be every evening saying the Shema, or making regular charitable contributions, or decisions to keep pushing at the things we know we should be doing with our life, that can feel a little repetitive or less immediately gratifying than, I don’t know, Youtube or buying the latest plastic tat on Amazon.

What I think Shimon Ben Pazzi is asking us is to try every morning and every evening to live up to the miracle that is our life. He’s asking us to commit to try every morning and every evening to live out our values and sense of who we want to be. Or perhaps more precisely he’s saying that this level of commitment, this is the Klal Gadol BaTorah – the central organising principle of the Torah.

And that’s a big ask in a complex time.

We live in a time where the central organising principle of secular society is live your own best life – as if self-centred immediate gratification isn’t, in fact the greatest danger we humans pose to each other and the planet we live. We would be much better swapping that principle for Rabbi Akiva’s loving your neighbour as you love yourself, for Ben Azzai’s principle about the creation of every human being in the image of God and certainly Shimon Ben Pazzi’s principle drawn from this week’s Parasha of אֶת־הַכֶּ֥בֶשׂ אֶחָ֖ד תַּעֲשֶׂ֣ה בַבֹּ֑קֶר וְאֵת֙ הַכֶּ֣בֶשׂ הַשֵּׁנִ֔י תַּעֲשֶׂ֖ה בֵּ֥ין הָֽעַרְבָּֽיִם׃.

Shabbat Shalom

---

[1] https://www.sefaria.org/Netivot_Olam%2C_Netiv_Ahavat_Reia.1.4?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en

Please Use AI, by Jo Atkins-Potts

I was taken by this poem;

read– so it seems - by a real human and written by a real human also.

Please use AI when your mother dies.

Ask it what grief feels like

Let it explain bereavement in 12 clear bullet points

Do not spend years finding her in the supermarket by the tomatoes she always bought.

Discovering new ways to miss her.

Please use AI the next time you fall in love.

Ask it how to know whether someone is the one.

It will give you a faster answer than watching a person become familiar

Learning how they take their tea, which floorboards will wake them, how their silence sounds when something is wrong.

Please use AI for your wedding vows, your eulogies, your apologies

Why struggle for the right words when a machine can give you beautiful ones?

I was struck, listening to Atkins-Potts’ poetry, by the religious nature of the tasks she ‘suggests’ for AI; grief, love, marriages, funerals. It’s certainly the case that I’m increasingly aware of AI ‘improved’ speeches as I accompany members from cradle to grave and how different they feel to old-school human written articulations. It’s true for example, that the AI ‘improved’ speeches are, precisely in the sense Atkins-Potts suggests, ‘better’ than their human-written counterparts. They are smoother. There is a success about their structure and length, and the ticking of all the right boxes. But these AI ‘improved’ speeches contain no grit.

I don’t mind lovers or mourners resorting to AI support when the emotions are beyond our ability to craft. But I prefer the way of our tradition, which offers the simplest, briefest ritual holder to allow a moment to be recognised before life will prove how much we remember, or mourn, or love; “you are betrothed to me with this ring,” is the only thing a lover says under the Chuppah. “I wish you a long life,” is the only thing that needs to be said at a Shiva. And then the real test is revealed as life moves forward. As Golda observes in Fiddler on the Roof, “after 25 years...”

The really important thing is not to run away from or down-value the necessary messiness of human life, not to elevate the value of “smoothness” above its more human counterpart, not to confuse successful structure, length and balance with honesty. Honesty and humanity, especially in the most important (and religious) parts of our lives, will be gritty, uneven and probably a little overlong. That, I believe – and I hope you’ve read this far – is the point.

How Goodly Are Your Tents, O Jacob. How Goodly Is Your Society, O Britain.

In this week’s double-Parasha Torah reading, the wicked Bilaam is commissioned to curse the tribes of Israel and finds himself unable to do so. Instead, he looks over the Israelite encampment and remarks Mah Tovu Ohalecha Yaacov.

What was it about our encampment, Rashi wants to know, that struck Bilaam as so good? Our greatest commentator supplies an answer drawn from Talmud Baba Metzia, “It was that the entrances of their tents weren’t directed one facing the other.” The Mishnah in Baba Metzia is concerned with how houses should be set up to ensure privacy. But I wonder if what really made the ancient society of Israel good in its sprawl of non-lined-up tents had nothing to do with privacy and everything to do with a celebration of the multi-directionality of how each of our ancestors set up their individual tent.

It’s easy to imagine that a society is at its best when everything is lined up neatly in disciplined rows. There’s a certain kind of efficiency that arises when everything and everyone is neatly arrayed. It can feel optimised. But optimisation isn’t the same as goodness. Efficiency isn’t the same as delightful and vibrant. Humans are designed to be different. I love the Mishnah in Sanhedrin which suggests that the reason all humanity began with the creation of a single Adam is to demonstrate God’s magnificence, for when a King of flesh and blood creates a coin to mint, each subsequent coin comes out the same, but when the King of Kings, the Holy Blessed One, mints a coin, each of us come out diverse and unique.

I’m just back from three days as part of the Senior Faith in Leadership Programme hosted at Windsor Castle, spending time with Christian, Muslim and even different-to-me Jewish faith leaders. I’m living in a society that is richer – both pecuniary and culturally – because of its openness to difference. Actually, I’m only tolerated here, as a Jew, because of a conception of British society that knows – even we struggle always to remember – that we are better as a society because we don’t insist everyone lines up their tents in efficient normativity. It feels a dangerous thing to claim, at a time when society seems intent in retreating away from a celebration of human difference. Indeed, I think there is something irreducibly radical about the claim. It requires a suspension of the reflex animalistic response to the outsider – fight or flight. This suspension opens up possibilities that are, perhaps, invisible in the immediate moment we are confronted by difference, but far richer not only in spite of their immediate invisibility, but precisely because of their transcending what we can immediately understand. Perhaps this is why the Mitzvah of loving the stranger sits alongside the Mitzvah of loving God and loving our fellow. We need to be reminded that goodness requires a love of that which we don’t understand in all its sprawling complexity.

Shabbat Shalom

Thoughts on a Thread of Blue

 

At the end of this week’s Torah reading comes the passage that articulates the Mitzvah of Tzitzit, fringes; a thread of blue tied into each corner of a four-cornered garment.

 

The obligation is explained this way – we are to look at the Tzitzit and remember all the Mitzvot. Tzitzit serves as a sort of physical mnemonic. It’s hard to remember everything we wish to be – so we wrap ourselves up in an aide-memoir. Tzitzit serve as a sort of CBT – cognitive behavioural therapeutic practice serving, at the very least, to inure us from, as the Torah states, “going after your heart and after your eyes which lead you astray – Zonim.”

 

That Hebrew word, Zonim, has a licentious quality picked up in a glorious – if adult-rated – moment in Talmud Menachot where a student, renowned for his particular interest in Tzitzit, is drawn to spend four hundred gold coins on a Zonah - prostitute (not recommended). As he strips off his clothes, the Talmud reports, his Tzitzit slap him in the face, and he comes to his senses. Would that all the licentious challenges of the world could be so confidently defeated.

 

But there is something very powerful in allowing Halachah – Jewish observance  - to pull us away from running after the inclinations of our heart and eyes. Observance of Shabbat should keep us aloof from an utter dependence on our phones. Observance of Kashrut should sensitise us to the values of thinking about the food we place in our bodies. Observance of prayer should remind us to be grateful for the gifts of our lives and instil in us the knowledge that our own concerns and understandings should not be confused with the greater needs and truths of the Universe. This is the ‘training’, I think, that the Talmud is offering when it comes to explaining the colour of the original thread that the Torah commands to be inserted into the Tzitzit. Techelet, a bluish ink derived from the shells of the Murex Trunculus snail,  “resembles the sea, the sea resembles the sky, and the sky resembles the Throne of Glory.” We look at the blue thread to be reminded of bigger things and the very biggest of things.

 

The point is that the individual rituals- not just Jewishly informed rituals, but I’m thinking primarily of Halachah- spill over from individual practices to shape our lives and bring our actions into line with the values we often say we want to live by – but struggle to make tangible in a world so full of distractions. Observance shapes our imagination and the impact we have in the world. Sometimes a thread of blue isn’t just a thread of blue.

 

Shabbat Shalom

Order and Chaos As We Open the Book of BeMidbar / Numbers

 

BeMidbar, or the Book of Numbers, contains two very different kinds of material.

At its opening, the Book is resplendently ordered. Each adult male member of each Tribe is counted and arranged around the central Sanctuary. Specific roles are allocated for specific sub-groups, and everything feels ready for the grand departure from the foothills of Mount Sinai.

 

Then everything goes wrong. Dispute, grumbling, faithlessness, rebellion, blame-mongering and failure mark the second part of the Book.

 

It’s a dynamic held, I think, in the relationship between the two names used to refer to the book – Numbers (or Sefer HaPikudim) – ordered, and BeMidbar (or Wilderness) – chaotic.

 

It’s a dynamic at play, also, in our own community. Last Sunday, the Board of Deputies hosted a cross-communal rally to oppose antisemitism. Everyone was invited. What could possibly go wrong? Well, actually, not quite everyone was invited; there were lines drawn that included some and excluded others. There have been reports of assaults, booing, and placards being pulled away (which, of course, I condemn, but I want to make a different point). The attempt to perfectly organise a unity of humanity – any humanity, but certainly the Jewish subsection of humanity – will always be doomed to fail.

 

“Hell,” wrote Sartre in his 1944 play No Exit, “is other people.” Sartre’s line arises from the impositions on personal freedom that arise in a ‘crowd’ of merely three characters. In our contemporary existence, as part of a world of billions of interconnected souls, it might be getting worse. We certainly seem increasingly resistant to the notion that deference should be paid to those who wish to cohere us into uniform blocks of collective identity. That, in many ways, is a good thing. But this resistance also threatens to increase atomisation, loneliness, jeering and setting ourselves against our fellows. These things are destroying the fabric of our society.

 

Saying we support tolerating ‘acceptable differences,’ while booing those differences we deem ‘unacceptable,’ is too thin a protestation. It’s too easy to set the line between ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ difference wherever we feel comfortable, and we end up accepting no difference at all. One of my particular current concerns about the Jewish community is that we are attacking both each other and those with whom we should be building alliances.

 

Washing our hands of the whole messy business of attempting to stand together, in solidarity with different human beings, similarly may feel attractive, but it is ultimately unacceptable. “It is not upon you to complete the work,” warned Rabbi Tarfon (ultimately martyred as a result of Roman persecution) “but nor are you permitted to abstain from it.”

 

We have to learn to celebrate difference, admire those who take different views from our own and applaud people who see the world differently from us. We need to imagine other people’s views from their perspective, not our own. The vision of the future we would all wish for is, of course, varied and multiple. We must support and model that desire with greater energy.

 

I have a tiny, delightful way to exercise that muscle to suggest for this Shabbat. It’s Cheder Shabbat. Our younger members will be in providing their particular brand of slightly chaotic leadership. It won’t be dreamily organised. It shouldn’t be dreamily organised. It’s a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the chaos of difference.

 

Shabbat Shalom

Sunday - Something I’m Delighted to Share and Something I Wish I Didn’t Have To

For those experiencing life as darker than we would wish, I have a recommendation. Come to Shul, Sunday evening for some glorious music. We are welcoming Sharqia, with guest artist Yoav, to share their Middle Eastern grooves. We have a hammered dulcimer, an oud, clarinets, saxophones and … Yoav is back. It will be a very special celebration of the Jewish music of the Middle East and North Africa. 

7pm, Sunday 10^th May. Advance booking is warmly appreciated - https://shulcloud.newlondon.org.uk/event/sharqiah-middle-eastern-grooves

 

This is the more painful piece.

There will be a major gathering in opposition to antisemitism also on Sunday, 1pm on Whitehall, opposite Number 10. It shouldn’t have to happen. Jews shouldn’t be being attacked for being Jews, and Jewish buildings shouldn’t be firebombed for being used by Jews. We shouldn’t be experiencing fear. Our concerns and demands must be clearly and publicly expressed before those who have the power and responsibility to ensure the safety of all the inhabitants of these isles. I’ll be there. If anyone wants to travel down and stand together as part of a New London Synagogue presence, please let me know.

The last major communal rally I attended, in October 2025, was exceptional. Powerful, united and moving. Others have been painful, complex and riven by the challenges of representing a British Jewish community that does not speak with a single voice on, frankly, anything. Speakers have been booed. Speakers have used the platforms at communal rallies to make what, to me, have felt inappropriate speeches. In general, I don’t like big rallies. But I’ll be there on Sunday. 

On Tuesday night, three local MPs, all taking the Labour whip, held a public meeting on antisemitism at St. John's Wood Synagogue. I went. There were moments of fractiousness, moments where the backdrop of national politics elbowed its way into the discussion – as was always to be expected. It wasn’t an easy space. I’m glad I was there.

The Board of Deputies and Jewish Leadership Council, who are leading the organisation of the rally on Sunday, have made decisions about who to bring into the list of sponsoring organisations. Those are hard decisions to get right. Political speakers have been invited, prompting an outpouring of disagreement about who should and shouldn’t have been invited. One of the original sponsoring organisations made a decision to pull out; again, that’s a tough call. I share many of these concerns. I don’t think the rally on Sunday will be an easy space, not in a physical sense – I’m confident the police and CST will look after our physical safety – but emotionally. There will be those on the platform and in the crowd who will take the opportunity of this rally to express views with which I disagree. But I’ll be there. I’m going to take a placard. I don’t really like placards. Mine will read, “Every Human Being is Created in the Image of the Divine.” It’s as close to a slogan as I am ever likely to feel comfortable standing behind.

The way that this mess of a societal problem gets better is that we learn to stand together when we don’t fully agree. We learn to handle the impossibility, or certainly the ineffectiveness, of only being present in places of pure comfort.

We need to remember that those who are working to bring us together are not our enemies, even if their means are misguided or even self-defeating in our own eyes. We need to put more effort into standing in uncomfortable places and hearing uncomfortable voices. And we need to wave our own placards high. As I say, I’ll be there on Sunday for the rally in Whitehall. With a placard.

Then I’m hugely looking forward to getting back home and then coming to hear Sharqia in the evening. Balance. It’s a narrow bridge, and aside from not being afraid, we need balance.

Shabbat Shalom