A Prayer of Rebbe Nachman - Sermon for Rosh Hashanah

This is a prayer of Rebbe Nahman, adapted by Jules Harlow, first printed in a 1972 edition of the Rosh Hashanah prayerbook.

May we see the day when war and bloodshed cease, when a great peace will embrace the whole world.

Then nation will not threaten nation and mankind will not again know war.

For all who live on earth shall realise we have not come into being to hate or destroy. We have come into being to praise, to labour and to love.

Compassionate God, bless the leaders of all nations with the power of compassion.

Fulfill the promise conveyed in scripture: I will bring peace to the land and you shall lie down and no one shall terrify you.

I will rid the land of vicious beasts and it shall not be ravaged by way.

Let love and justice flow like a might stream. Let peace fill the earth and waters fill the sea.

And let us say Amen.

I’m on my third complete redraft of this sermon. The first was written when the concern at the heart of how I would address you all, my dear friends, today, was merely the border between Israel and Gaza, and the hostages, the raw memories of that day just under a year ago and the destruction that’s happened since. The second was written during the recent escalation on the borders between Israel and Lebanon. And yesterday I was writing again, in the aftermath of over 180 missiles being sent into Israel from Iran.

Like all of us, I’m reeling.

And on this day when we should be trying to act like angels, I’m feeling like a fool attempting to rush in. Having the temerity to say, really anything beyond ‘ow.’ Because everything every word – every line of our Machzor and every word I might share from his holy Bimah - feels both overloaded and oversimplified.

How awful it is that there are still over 100 hostages held in Gaza, held for an entire year, and this is only one, maybe not even the heaviest weight with which I enter this Rosh Hashanah Year.

How ridiculous it is that I, stood here in my diasporic splendour so far from the reach of Hamas tunnels and Hezbollah missiles, but also, let it be admitted so far from the devastation wrecked on Gaza and Lebanon, complain about how hard it is to write a sermon.

I want to make suggest two things, with humility and with the request for gentle hearing from you, my dear friends, the treasured members of this community.

The first is about responsibility.

Rosh Hashanah is a good day to talk about responsibility. We sing of the sins for which we are responsible - She’Anu Hayavim Lifnecha.

Rabbi Sharon Brous put the case for the responsibility for the 7^th October well, Hamas are she said recently a, “deranged enemy that manipulates a just cause, the need for a just future for the Palestinian people, into a perverse sadistic death cult that abducts and rapes and massacres innocents and then hides and executes in tunnels beneath day care centres.” And then there is that other clear responsibility in all this; the responsibility that emerges from the Supreme Leadership of Iran, a responsibility for building a nuclear threat and emboldening proxies and, in the last days, firing missiles. Bravo to those marshalling Israel’s air defenses and the allied countries of the civilized world who have stood up to affirm Israel’s right to defend itself.

The fact that Israel, even in the very first days after the attack, found herself blamed for provoking supposedly decent peace-loving people into a fit of murderous attack is more than stupidity. It reveals the ways some people who profess decency, strip from Israel, and Jews more generally, the same security and the same right to determination any group of humans deserves. You can spot a racist and you can spot an antisemite by how they allocate responsibility.

But allocating responsibility in one direction doesn’t mean other responsibilities don’t co-exist.

There’s a passage of Torah we read just a couple of weeks ago about the aftermath of murder in Biblical times. When there’s been a murder, the elders of the settlement local to the place where the body was found stand over the body and say this.

“Our hands did not shed this blood, nor were we witnesses to it, but, dear God, forgive us – the word is Kaper, as in Yom Kippur -  forgive us our responsibility. Do not let guilt of innocent blood remain in our midst.”

It’s a remarkable command – that we accept guilt and plea for forgiveness for a blood which our hands did not shed.

What exactly did the elders do so wrong? The Talmud tells us the people of the village closed their eyes to a stranger passing through, missed the opportunity to provide a safe escort. Other responsibilities still pertain, even having taken account of the responsibility of the murderer.

And the complex part of all of this is not in allocating clear, primary and appalling responsibility on the leadership of Hamas and Hizbollah and the Iranian Supreme Leadership. That piece is utterly straightforward. The complex part of all of this is that there are other responsibilities that fall on, for want of a better term, us.

She’Anu Chayavim Alehem.

For the sin of failing to keep safe the residents of the Gaza envelope and those happy hippy trippy ravers of the Nova Dance Festival, there is a weighty responsibility.

And then it gets harder, and as a Rabbi in the Diaspora I watch and read and care and feel tremendous pain and also feel a humility and a sense of trepidation and I hate it when inside I feel a call to criticize the State and its leaders. But I can’t get to today, understanding what I understand about why the Gaza envelope was left so little protected, and understanding what I understand about the prioritization of releasing the captives and understanding what I understand about the destruction wrecked on Gaza and feel there is nothing to be accountable for.

I’m no expert in military geo-strategy, I don’t understand how much responsibility vests precisely on whom, but I do know that none of these responsibilities disappears just because we hate the actions of Hamas so deeply.

There was an extraordinary lesson in the bearing responsibility provided by the President of the State of Israel, Itzhak Herzog just a few weeks ago. President Herzog, spoke at the funeral of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, one of the captives found murdered at the end of August. He said this;

“I stand here today as the President of the State of Israel, asking for your forgiveness, from you and Carmel and Eden and Alex and Almog and Ori and from all of your loved ones, I apologise on behalf of the State of Israel, because we failed to protect you in the terrible disaster of October 7^th and we failed to bring you home safely.”[1]

That’s a kind of Teshuvah, a bearing of responsibility that, I think, helps and mends and builds towards a different and a better tomorrow. I think it helps to think and talk about responsibilities – rather than a singular responsibility - even if it’s painful. To get to that place, the place, “where war and bloodshed cease, and a great peace will embrace the whole world,” we’ll need a level of honesty and acceptance of plural responsibilities. And, despite the way in which our world today threatens to welcome only simplicity, we each need to play our part in welcoming complexity even if it is painful.

 

I don’t have a single English word for the next thing. It’s got something to do with hope, with faith and with belief. The Hebrew word is Emunah, connected, of course to the Hebrew word, Amen. It’s the same etymology as a Hebrew word for pillars, Omnot – things you can lean on when you need something to prop you up.

At the heart of my belief lies the notion of the sacred nature of humanity. In religious terms, that we each contain Tzelem Elohim–the image of the Divine.

It’s the thing that makes what has happened to the hostages so horrendous. There’s a photo of a table outside one of the homes on Kibbutz Nir Oz of Eli and Yifar sitting alone at a table set for 6. Across from them are four empty chairs for Yarden, Shiri, Ariel and little Kfir. Yossi and Margit, Shiri's parents, were murdered on that terrible Saturday. Eli, Yarden’s father, and Yifat, Shiri's cousin, sit alone, waiting. Each one a distillation of divinity in human form. As we said on 9^th Av – Al Eleh Ani Bochiach – for this I weep.

And then comes the hard part – that I have to look for the Image of God, even in those who hate me. And that means, I think, two things.

One is I need to desperately careful with all life, even the life of my enemies, and certainly the life of those who have the misfortunate to be too adjacent to enemies. There is no doctrine of acceptable collateral damage in Judaism, just a dreadful warning that taking the life of an innocent person results in a blood cry that destroys an entire world - ק֚וֹל דְּמֵ֣י אָחִ֔יךָ צֹעֲקִ֥ים אֵלַ֖י. I know that makes it incredibly hard to defend a nation surrounded by enemies. So be it. It is indeed hard. There is no good easy option, not even when I or the ones I love are attacked or displaced or taken captive. There is no good easy option.

The second thing is; I need to treat, even my enemies with the desire to get to a place where our commonality – as fellow human beings – can be of power. I know we are not there today. But the prayer, in Rebbe Nachman’s language, is to get to the place where all who live realise we have not come into being to hate or destroy.

Here’s a verse from Exodus, and it’s worth reminding ourselves that the Bible is not wishy-washy, it can be brutal and tough, but here’s the verse in Exodus

כִּֽי־תִרְאֶ֞ה חֲמ֣וֹר שֹׂנַאֲךָ֗ רֹבֵץ֙ תַּ֣חַת מַשָּׂא֔וֹ וְחָדַלְתָּ֖ מֵעֲזֹ֣ב ל֑וֹ עָזֹ֥ב תַּעֲזֹ֖ב עִמּֽוֹ׃ 

When you see the donkey of your enemy fallen under its burden, and you are tempted to refrain from helping him, help him, help him.

It’s an amazing image, the Torah verse knows what is going through my mind as I see the beast of my enemy struggling, the Torah knows that I want to walk away and it pulls me back and forces me to assist.

So what is this? Is this a sort of wishy-washy Kumbaya empathy? You can find classic Rabbinic commentators who suggest the verse only applies when it’s a Jewish enemy’s donkey and the verse doesn’t apply to those non-Jews. But this is Rabeinu Bachya, the great Spanish Biblical commentator.

The promise contained in our verse is that if you assist your enemy with their falling donkey, they will eventually appreciate you and become אחיך, “your brother.” When you assist them, they will forget the “hatred” between you and only remember the bond of love that unites brothers. (on Deut 22.4)

 

I know it sounds so very, very far away. But Od Lo Avdah Tikvateinu – I still haven’t lost hope, certainly not on the day of Rosh Hashanah where hope and hope for something new and different is at the very heart of our prayers.

Again, I don’t make the claim this is easy, or even that I know how I would approach any of the complex geo-political military-strategic challenges that face those in positions more complex than being a congregational rabbi in London. But Steven Covey has to be right to suggest we need, always, keep the end in mind.

We must train ourselves to be more comfortable talking of plural responsibilities and we must sustain an Emunah and always be orientated towards the end we have in mind.

The end must be, it cannot be anything other than the great prayer of Rebbe Nachman

May we see the day when war and bloodshed cease, when a great peace will embrace the whole world.

Then nation will not threaten nation and mankind will not again know war.

Fulfill the promise conveyed in scripture: I will bring peace to the land and you shall lie down and no one shall terrify you.

Let love and justice flow like a might stream. Let peace fill the earth and waters fill the sea.

And let us say Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/02/world/video/israeli-president-herzog-apology-hersh-goldberg-polin-funeral-bts-nr-digvid

Preparing for Rosh Hashanah - A Message Shared With Masorti Europe

The year has been dominated by the attacks of 7^th October and their aftermath. My deepest prayers are for the immediate release of the remaining hostages and turn from violence. For so many of us across Europe, the attacks of 7^th October also resulted in an immediate spike in our experience of antisemitism arriving at a time when we were already, in the language of Deuteronomy, Ayef v’Yagaya – weary and pained.

It's the great Chasidic teacher, Rebbe Nachman of Braslav, who taught, “אָסוּר לְיָאֵשׁ עַצְמוֹ כִּי אֵין שׁוּם יֵאוּשׁ בָּעוֹלָם כְּלָל” - it is forbidden for a person to despair for there is no despair in the world at all. I looked up the original teaching in his work of collected sermons Likkeutei Mehoran (2:78).

Likkuetei Mehoran, is a Hebrew book, based on oral teachings originally shared in Yiddish.  But at this point the editor (Reb Noson) breaks away from relaying the teaching of his master in Hebrew translation to say this;

וְאָמַר אָז בְּזֶה הַלָּשׁוֹן: קַיין יִאוּשׁ אִיז גָאר נִיט פַאר הַאנְדִין, וּמָשַׁךְ מְאֹד אֵלּוּ הַתֵּבוֹת " קַיין יִאוּשׁ אִיז גָאר נִיט פַאר הַאנְדִין " וַאֲמָרָם בְּכֹחַ גָּדוֹל וּבְעַמְקוּת נִפְלָא וְנוֹרָא מְאֹד, כְּדֵי לְהוֹרוֹת וּלְרַמֵּז לְכָל אֶחָד וְאֶחָד לְדוֹרוֹת, שֶׁלֹּא יִתְיָאֵשׁ בְּשׁוּם אֹפֶן בָּעוֹלָם, אֲפִלּוּ אִם יַעֲבֹר עָלָיו מָה

And he said this in this exact language: Kein yiush iz gor nit fahrhandin! He drew out these words, said them with great power and wondrous depth and awe, in order to teach to each and every person throughout the generations not to despair under any circumstances, no matter what happens to them.

Kein yiush iz gor nit fahrhandin! – There is nothing to this thing of despair at all. Who is he trying to fool? Despair lurks all around. The point, I think, is that withstanding the call of despair takes effort. It can’t be taken for granted. But there are many ways to steel ourselves in the fight against it.

The extraordinary journey of so many of our communities across Europe is a source of excitement, as is the incredible quality of my European colleagues. We have an approach to our faith that is thriving in this complex modern world even this year, even after everything European Jews have experienced. I urge us all to connect to our local Masorti communities at this time.

Acts of Hesed or Tzedakah – kindness and justice - are incredible ways to dispel any gnawing sense of despair. Just sitting with our concerns risks making us feel worse. Doomscrolling will guarantee our misery. Taking agency to mend the world with acts of kindness and justice will lift your hearts, I’m sure. It always lifts mine.

And finally, take a moment to appreciate the turning of the seasons. This is a remarkably beautiful world which will connect us to hope and awe. Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote of his battle against despair walking the streets of Berlin in the 1930s. “I felt very much alone with my own problems and anxieties.” He recalled, “Suddenly I noticed the sun had gone down, evening had arrived. From what time may one recite the Shema in the evening? I had forgotten God — I had forgotten Sinai — I had forgotten that sunset is my business.”

May we all, in this year to come, banish despair and be greeted with a year of sweetness health and peace,

Shannah Tovah 

When You Go Out To War – Deuteronomy 21:10

The opening of this week’s Torah portion knows war. The first commands speak to the way a dangerous sexuality can instil itself in fighters – the Torah mandates its control. Then comes an instruction on what we have come to call ‘collateral damage’ or perhaps wilful damage of the means of production that will be needed for a decent society to return even after the passing of a time of war.

It all feels horribly current.

I’ve spent years fascinated by the work of Rav Shlomo Goren, the first Chief Rabbi of the Israeli Defence Forces. Rather than seeing his role as one of providing Chizuk v’Nechamah – inspiration and comfort, Rav Goren took it upon himself to return to Israel, in a contemporary manner, a military Halachik ethic that had not existed, in any meaningful way, for two thousand years.

Not since the time of Bar Kochba, Goren wrote in the introduction to his major collection Meishiv Milchamah, has Judaism had any reason to consider the contemporary implications of having citizens and a land to save and having a military to command. The Jewish people need, he wrote, an entirely new section of the Shulchan Arukh – the central code of Jewish law and life.

Meishiv Milchamah has much Halachah directed at the soldier facing their own ethical and Halachic decisions, in a time of war. There is a heartbreaking analysis of whether a soldier is obligated ‘to enter into a place of possible danger in order to save their fellow from certain danger.’ There’s a huge section on Shabbat – what, for example, are the implications of Jewish law for the soldier setting out in a vehicle to inspect a border on the Sabbath.

But the most remarkable sections are those which seek to recover and impose frameworks on generals and politicians – ‘Musar HaLechmia B’Or HaHalachah’ – the ethics of war in the light of Jewish Law. What is the ethical way to treat an enemy? Who has responsibility for deaths in war? And most famously, how is a war-time siege to be conducted according to Halachah. Rav Goren argued fiercely, based on a line in Maimonides’ Halachic masterwork, that an escape route – ‘Ruach Patuach’ - should be maintained for the people of Beirut during the siege of their city in 1982.

The sense I have reading his teachings is of a man trying to do what is right and good in the face of very real, existential, threats. It’s clear that he believed the only way to address this question, as a Jew, lay in the verses and teachings of our faith. But that didn’t render any of his conclusions simple, certainly, there is nothing in his writing that is simplistic or reductive. The sense I have is that he didn’t sleep well. No military ethicist, Jewish or otherwise, should sleep well at a time when human beings, creations in the image of God, go out to war.

Shabbat Shalom

Israel and Rosh Hashanah at New London

(Piccie drawn from Daniel Sokatch's book, which has a great title - but I haven't read)

Oh, that my head were water
My eyes a fount of tears!
Then would I weep day and night
For the slain of my poor people.
Jeremiah 8:23

New London has always been proud to support Israel, but we have never faced a challenge like this last year. There are three parts to the challenges I, and I know so many members of the community feel. There are the awful attacks of 7th October still felt deeply and feeling, this week particularly, like an unhealed scab continually pulled away. There is the surge in the experience of antisemitism in this, and other, countries. And there is the concern felt by many in the community that the some of the policies pursued by Israel’s political leaders have led to tremendous suffering for the Palestinians of the West Bank as well as Gaza without bringing increased safety for Israel or the release or rescue of substantial numbers of captives.

 

Commemoration and Engagement
Our relationship with Israel will be a principal focus of the sermon on the First Day of Rosh Hashanah, 3^rd October. On Shabbat Shuvah, 5^th October, we will have the opportunity to engage with the newly published collection of contemporary Israeli reflection on this last year, Shiva, edited by Rachel Korazim.

On Sunday 6th October, between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we encourage support of the cross-communal Weekend of Reflection organised by the Board of Deputies, JLC, UJIA, Hostages and Missing Families Forum and many others. A major, central London communal event is planned. Fuller information will only be released much nearer the time, and you can register interest here - https://bod.org.uk/october-7-commemorative-weekend/.

On the night of 7th October itself, we will commemorate this past year as a community, in person at New London. There will be readings and prayer and it will be a quieter opportunity for us to come together in pain, in confusion and in hope. We will share more about this evening shortly.

 

In the Jewish calendar, the 7^th October 2023, was Shmini Atzeret – a Yom Tov featuring Yizkor and a day which, I fear, will now forever be associated with the attacks of last year. We will certainly acknowledge the anniversary on Shimini Atzeret.

 

Tefilah

We have, since October, been praying for the immediate release of the captives with this remarkable prayer written by my colleagues Rabbis Ofer and Rachel Sabath Beit-Halachmi. We are, as of this week, adding new language; calling for leaders of the State to redeem the captives with fortitude and compassion as our traditions calls. The calculus that faces the Israel’s political leaders is, of course, desperately complex, but it has felt increasingly important for us to include this element in our prayers for freedom for the captives.

 

Tzedakah

For sixty years, New London Synagogue has partnered with the UJIA (and formerly the JIA).  We’ve supported communities across the country with pride and tremendous generosity. This year are calling, in our Kol Nidrei Appeal, for support which will allow the UJIA to support Israel in this time of great need. More information will be in the mailing members will receive nearer to Rosh Hashanah. Or see www.ujia.org.

 

Religion and Politics

There are two reasonable cases to be made for New London, and I as its religious leader, to limit our engagement with these desperately complex, and often divisive issues. It’s reasonable to claim that New London, especially over the High Holydays, should be a place of sanctuary from the sirens and shrieks that have so often accompanied this past year. It’s also reasonable to claim that religion should keep its nose out of politics, and diaspora religious leaders especially should be humble before the decisions of Israelis. But Israel is more than ‘mere’ politics for us as British Jews. And New London has never closed its heart or its mind to the world in which we live. As your Rabbi I will, as ever, be attempting to balance on a narrow bridge. I hope for your compassion even as – for I am sure it will be ‘as’ rather than ‘if’ - I fail to articulate the perfect balanced response to these unprecedented pressures.

 

May the captives be released. May peace come.

Shannah Tovah

 

Praying for the Captives - September 2024

My thoughts and prayers, throughout this week, have been with the families of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Carmel Gat, Almog Sarusi, Alexander Lobanov and Ori Danino, may their memories be a blessing, found murdered in a tunnel in Gaza last Shabbat.

As regular attendees will know, we have offered at all services this year a prayer written by my colleagues, Rabbis Ofer and Rachel Sabath Beit Halachmi. The prayer calls for the captives’ strength, protection, rescue and redemption. It calls for understanding to be placed even in the heart of the enemy that they may return the captives. It calls for peace between all the sons and daughters of Abraham, Sarah – the archetypal mother of all Jews – and Hagar – as mother of Ishmael, a spiritual mother of Palestine. And it prays for the Israeli soldiers who, last Shabbat perhaps most painfully, are tasked to make their way into these tunnels of unimaginable danger.

The prayer has given my yearning and pain a place of tethering. It has allowed me a vehicle for a faith sustained not by certainty but in hope. I’ve been grateful for it. Following the rescue of  Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrei Kozlov, and Shlomi Zivin June, a member wrote to me in delight that the news that broke following that morning’s recitation and urging its increased use. I don’t think either of us believe in a theology quite that literal, but the prayer, I believe, has helped.

The original prayer, written I think in late October last year, addressed the ‘enemy,’ but didn’t address the political leadership of Israel, tasked with a balance of unspeakable complexity – securing Israel while fighting for and also negotiating for the release of captives. The demand to rescue captives through negotiation – Pidyon Shevuim – is a tragically well-known Mitzvah – core obligation of our faith.

Rambam (Hilchot Matanot Evyonim 8:10) codifies this obligation as follows.

“Redeeming captives receives priority over providing the poor with food and clothing. There is no mitzvah greater than redeeming captives, because a captive is included among those who are starving, those who are thirsty, those who are without clothing, and they are in life-threatening danger. One who hides from redeeming them violates the following Torah prohibitions…” And here the Mishneh Torah cites eight verses from Chumash followed by this heartbreaking  verse from Proverbs, “Release those who have been taken from death (Mishlei 24:11). “There is,” Rambam states, “No greater command than the redemption of captives.”

This utterly compelling call does not, of course, imagine there is no calculus – Halachah makes clear that there is a limit to the price payable for the release of a captive since paying too high a price could simply drive more hostage-taking. But the horror of captivity and the vital importance of a negotiated release is so central to our faith, and our needs at this time, that we have added a new paragraph to our prayer. My thanks, particularly, to David for his assistance drafting the following.

פְּקוֹד נָא בְּחֹסֶן וּבְחֶמְלָה אֶת מַנְהִיגֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, רָאשֶׁיהָ וְיוֹעֲצֶיהָ, לְקַיֵּם מָה שֶׁכָּתוּב "לֹא תְאַמֵּץ אֶת לְבָבְךָ וְלֹא תִקְפֹּץ אֶת יָדְךָ", וּמָה שֶׁכָּתוּב "לֹא תַעֲמֹד עַל דַּם רֵעֶךָ", וְלִפְדּוֹת אֶת הַשְּׁבוּיִים הַמְּחַכִּים לִישׁוּעָתֶךָ.

Evoke fortitude and compassion in the leaders of Israel, its rulers and advisers, to uphold what is written, “Do not harden your heart and shut your hand against your needy kin” (Deut 15:7)  and what is written, “Do not stand on the blood of your fellow” (Levi 19:16), and redeem the captives who are awaiting your salvation.

May it come speedily.

Shabbat Shalom

Thoughts on No Longer Being the Parent of Children - Shelach Lecha

On this auspicious occasion – the Bat Mitzvah of my youngest child. Mazal Tov Eliana. I thought I could compare myself to God.

Spoiler alert, that might not mean what you think it means.

But here’s a way to retell the story of the spies, in fact it might be the simplest and most straightforward way to tell the story.

God says to Moses, appoint spies – let them to scout out the land.

And Moses sends spies – to scout out the land.

And the spies come back and say, “It’s a good land,” and then most of them say, “But we don’t think we can take it.”

And God is furious, that God decrees none of the generation of the spies deserves to make it into the Promised Land.

And if we were to construct a parable – a Mashal – LeMah HaDavar Domeh, as the Rabbis are so keen to say, what is this thing like?

One might suggest a suitable parable would be a parent who says to a teenage child just before they go out for the evening, “Sure, go out, stay out as late as you like.” And when the child comes back with a phone that ran out of battery hours ago at two in the morning, the parent is there, sitting on the stairs looking furious, so furious that the child gets grounded for the rest of the summer.

Any resemblance to the life of any parent and any child here, in Shul today, is of course, entirely co-incidental.

Or perhaps, it we are looking to make our parable a little less unfair on the parent maybe this.

Mashal, Lemah HaDavar Domeh – what is this like, but the child says, “but you told me it was OK to stay out as late as I wanted.” And the parent responds, “what I meant was for you to take a mature and sensible decision as to the right time to come home.”

As I say, any resemblance to the life of any parent and any child here, in Shul today, is of course, entirely co-incidental.

It’s not the first time I, as a parent and a lover of the Torah, I’ve been troubled about the way instructions are set forth by God. After all, I’m not only a parent, I’ve been a child as well.

Way, way back in the Book of Genesis, God put the first human being in the Garden of Eden and says to them, eat anything you like, just not the fruit from this one tree, right here in the middle of the garden.

And when Eve and Adam eat from the fruit …

Mashal LeMah Hadavar Domeh – what parable could this be compared to?

A parent who says to a small child, you can play with any of the toys in the room, just don’t play with the computer that’s plugged in, switched on and sitting in the corner of the room.

And when the child is found to have been playing on the computer …

And, of course, Adam and Eve shouldn’t have eaten the fruit, and of course the child shouldn’t play on the computer, but what would say about the parenting of a parent who puts a child in a room with a computer and walks away having told the child not to.

Of course these two examples aren’t really the same; in one case the parent told the kid what to do and the kid did it and got in trouble. In the other, the parent told the kid what not to do and the kid did it and got in trouble.

But I wonder the extent to which any of the children here – any of us who have ever been children, might be struck by the way in which being parented can sometimes feel like that.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Any resemblance to the life of any maturing adult here, in Shul today, is of course, entirely co-incidental.

But there is something deeper, I think, about this comparison between being a parent and – forgive the hubris and possibly even the heresy – God, creator of heavens and earth and everything in it.

There is the classic Rabbinic idea that God felt somehow desperately alone in God’s absolute perfect power and so sought to create this world so God would have something with which to relate – something to point to as an achievement in life. And the thing that God decides to create – you, me, all us humans – is not some kind of blind automaton, that robotically does exactly what God wants, precisely as God wants it. The thing that God decides to create – you, me, all us humans – is a creature endowed with a certain freedom of choice, a certain jumble of competing instincts and inclinations, a being that grows from immaturity towards maturity, but sometimes – let it be admitted – not always perfectly moving from one to the other in a uniform straight line.

The thing that God decides to create – you, me, all us humans – is a being who is not minutely controlled by God – not a computer game avatar toggling left or right depending on which key is pressed, but somehow makes up our own mind to love God, and follow in all the paths that God sets out for us without being moved about pixel by pixel.

And yet there is this paradox at the heart of the creation of the first human being and every human being since. You can’t have a human being with freedom of choice who does exactly the thing we want them to do.

That’s just not how it works.

And the thing that God has to learn to do, and it takes some of the greatest leaders of our tradition to help God into this relationship with us, all of human creation, …

The thing God has to learn to do is find a way to allow us space to explore a bit, fail a bit, fail badly sometimes, maybe even many times. The thing God needs to learn to do is not bring Mot TaMut – thou shalt surely die – retribution on God’s creation every time they – we – trip up and eat of the fruit or bottle it and fail to realise of course we can take the land, or pass the exam or succeed in any journey to which we apply ourselves seriously. There’s even a Pulitzer-winning book, God: A Biography, by the former Jesuit seminarian, Jack Miles, in which the author suggests that God finds it so difficult to be in a relationship with human beings who trip up, fail, fail badly even sometimes, that God goes into a sort of withdrawal – what the Rabbis call Hester Panim – hiding of the Divine presence is a consequence of God finding the way in which live out our freedom of choice NOT to do the thing that God wants us to do too difficult.

And as a parent, thinking back to that time, dear Eli, when you and your brothers weren’t even a twinkle in our eyes when I think back to those romantic days so many years ago, I have an empathy with God’s frustrations at me as a failing human. I feel a certain level of empathy with God finding it impossible to have a creation of God’s own efforts who of their own free volition chooses to have precisely the same aspirations and goals and sensitivities as a parent would wish for a child.

But that’s not the only thing I feel, and on a day like today, it’s the least of my emotions. The overwhelming emotion that just floods out everything else is the intense sense of pride in seeing the different decisions you make, even as you make decisions I would never have made. Yes, you still drive me occasionally to the point of distraction, but if forced to choose between some automaton that would perform precisely as programmed and the reality of a real human being who makes their own exploratory way in the world. I would take you. Every time.

There’s that wonderful Yiddish phrase – to Shepp Nachas. Shepp means derive, or something like that. And Nachas is the thing you feel when your daughter has her Bat Mitzvah. Other examples are available, but this is the one I’m going with this weekend. It’s wonderful and quite untranslatable, but it requires two things – on the one hand, you only feel Nachas when there is something you have put into this extraordinary creation. But on the other hand you only feel Nachas when your child has found their own way and their way is different from your way, or even from your wife’s way, it’s her own way.

And now, with, certainly your brothers, and even increasingly you – my newly Bat Mitzva’ed adult – and don’t you know it – capable of making your own decisions and controlling your own future in your own increasingly independent way, I wonder if God isn’t merely in retreat having given up on us as useless, but rather is up there Shepping Nachas. God deserves to Shep Nachas, even if we fail, and goodness we fail.

And this thing called parenting, that we experience, it becomes a different thing, at this point, from this point.

Parenting can no longer be the categorical announcement of instruction. It can’t even be the half-opened-up suggestion that, sometimes, is followed and sometimes isn’t and when it isn’t is followed up with the grouchy face of the parent who told their kids to choose their own time to come home and finds the kids arriving at 2am. It has to be a willed desire to Shepp Nachas in the ways in which our creations are not like us. It has to be a willed desire to empower choices even when we don’t understand the choices, or would never make those choices ourselves.

Arik Einstein, the great Israeli singer and lyricist, perhaps put it best.

Hagozalim sheli azvu et haken
parsu knafayim ve'afu
Va'ani tzipor zkena nisharti baken
mekave me'od shehakol yihe beseder

My chicks have left the nest
spread their wings and flew away
I am an old bird left in the nest
I hope that all will be well

Tamid yadati sheyavo hayom
shebo tzarich lehipared
Aval achsahv ze ba li kacha pit'om
az ma hapele she'ani ktzat do'eg

I always knew the day will come
to say good bye
But now when it is here
no wonder I’m a little tender

Ani yode'a shekacha ze bateva
vegam ani azavti ken
Aval achshav ksheba harega az
machnik ktzat bagron

I know it is the way of nature
I left the nest as well
But now when the time comes
I feel a lump in my throat.

 

The time comes to hold this gift of being a parent with such fierce love, that we let go, and send a blessing on your future flight. And prepare still to nudge and boss around and insist and hold to account, but knowing that the pathway leads only towards the option of seeking Nachas.

And feeling deep love.

We should all be so blessed.

Even God.

 

Thoughts on Love and Marriage

Somewhat nervous. Want to try and share some observations based on 20 years of married life and connect that to some of the themes of this new book of the Torah – the book of B’Midbar – we began to read today, this book titled ‘In the Desert.’

Nervous because I don’t really like to suggest expertise at the really important stuff in life – being a parent or a partner. Too early to tell and we are all blind to our own failings. And also know how fortunate love is, sliding doors abound. I know some people do all the good stuff right and never feel they find love, and some people do all the good stuff wrong and … well I might be one of them.

But twenty years seems at least a relevant moment to reflect on something that is so at the heart of what I try to be in my life, and at a time when I feel it’s worth standing up for marriage and married love. Because not so many people seem to spend time doing that these days.

One of the great transformations of my lifetime has been what I call a loss of stickiness in society. When I was 13, my parents opened a bank account for me to pay the cheques I received for my BM into the Midland Bank. I got a free bag and a Griffin Saver pocket dictionary on the basis that the Midland Bank – and all the three other banks around at the time – all felt that if you got ‘em at the age 13 you would have their banking attention for ever.

And that’s gone, the Midland Bank, but also the idea that relationships last forever, any kind of relationship. And I can feel an increase in a belief that, on the basis that no relationship lasts forever, it might be best to hold tight on the love we feel we could give, it might not get met, or it might not get met forever and, in this less and less sticky world, it might be better never to have loved at all than to have loved and lost. It’s not that I feel that that explains people who haven’t found great love in their life, it’s not that simple, I know. But it’s there and it’s connected to another piece of this, that I see at this point, now some 250 weddings into my rabbinate.

I see the marriages that have come to an end. ½ of all marriages come to an end through divorce. And again, it’s not that simple. I know that divorce can sometimes be the best thing to do in a bad situation, but I feel, when I sit with couples coming up their marriage and looking so hopeful and full of delight, there’s a sadness in divorce – the line in the Talmud is that God’s tears fall on the ark in the desert sanctuary. And sometimes I feel this lack of stickiness in society is a piece of the problem. I hear from some couples as they, in that disentangle their lives together, “We don’t love each other anymore, we’ve grown apart.” And, again, I know that sometimes divorce is exactly what these couples should do, but we don’t think in terms of that great line in Christian liturgy – “till death do us part,” about almost anything any more. Not even marriage.

And that’s a shame, I think, because perhaps the single most important I’ve realised about love and marriage is that, commitment is at the heart of it.

That’s part of the dynamic of the Jewish marriage ceremony – that we start with the commitment piece – the blessings of Kiddushin that seal off other pathways in our life, before we get to the blessings of Nesuin, future good things. The future good things can only come off the back of commitment.

It’s part of the central dynamic of the Children of Israel’s relationship with God. The relationship is often understood by the Rabbis in marital terms – betrothal, or Kiddushin, is mapped to the moment where God makes us Holy, Kedoshim Tiheyhu Ki Kadosh Ani – you shall be holy, apart from other possible relationships with other possible gods in order to be in a committed relationship with Adonai Eloheinu, our God, Adonai Echad – our one God. Monotheism and monogamy are mapped time and time again in the Torah.

“I will betroth you to Me for ever, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness, and in justice, and in lovingkindness, and in compassion. And I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness, and thou shalt know the Lord”

And then there is the Torah – understood, again and again as a kind of Ketubah in this marriage. The great Safed mystic and poet, Yisrael Naraja wrote a version of the Ketubah traditionally read in Sefardi Synagogues directly before the Torah reading,  of Shavuot – coming this week, always the week after we begin to read this book of BeMidbar.

And the relationship we have with God is one of commitment, we accept upon ourselves a covenantal relationship which binds before we worry about whether we still fancy one another. I think it’s only a select marriage that can survive a test of do I love you enough today to get through another ten years of being faithfully committed to you? There are too many distractions, we are too restless, to afraid of missing out on greener grass on the other side of the fence.

And in so doing, we miss what happens when there is true commitment and a deep acceptance that I’m in, I’m not going anywhere, and I’ll be here for you and I want you to know that and feel that at every turn. I think this sense of trust is necessary for us to grow re-become ourselves as life moves from the infatuation of first encounters through a journey that has lead, for Josephine and I, from dating to engagement to marriage and kids and changing jobs and continents and all of that. The commitment is the rock on which the change and the sense of freedom is built.

But even that isn’t quite right. It’s not as if marriage is worth it because in marriage we get certain things out of it. Marriage isn’t supposed to be a transactional relationship – in Buberian terms, an I-It relationship, a what am I going to get out of this relationship. It’s supposed to be a wholehearted willingness to go on a journey of care and compassion together, come whatever may come. Marriage is an opportunity to love without limit so that we can be people who love without limit. It’s a permission – that, again, is language from the wedding ceremony – VeHitir Lanu et HaNesuot, we say a blessing for a God who permits us into this relationship.

Here’s one tip I can offer, if you want to be in a place where the commitments of youth still drive and light up the relationships of our today in such a way that we actually pull of wanting to be in these relationships tomorrow not just because we think we probably ought to stick together for some reason or another – but because we actually love being inside this place of commitment and possible growth.

It's drawn from one of the most remarkable Biblical verses I know, one that makes it into the Rosh Hashanah liturgy.

The issue is this, this new book – Bemidbar, the one we started today, it’s a catalogue of disaster. There are rebellions about eating meet, failures of faith around spies and rebellions and temper losses and in that way, it’s a book that chronicles how hard it is to be in this committed relationship, called to love a God who cannot be seen of touched. And God too gets tetchy and irascible in this book, wiping out thousands, angry and cross with all the failings of the Children of Israel God witnesses.

But yet there is this verse in Jeremiah where God looks back on our time in the wilderness BeMidbar and says this.

הֲבֵן יַקִּיר לִי אֶפְרַיִם, אִם יֶלֶד שַׁעֲשֻׁעִים--כִּי-מִדֵּי דַבְּרִי בּוֹ, זָכֹר אֶזְכְּרֶנּוּ עוֹד

Ephraim – that’s us, as it were – is my dear child, a child that is dandled, for when I speak of him I remember him and my heart yearns for him.

But hang on, it wasn’t really like that was it, there were these arguments and rebellions and failings.

But yet, but yet, God still looks back fondly. Sure God knew it was tough, at times. It can’t be that God didn’t know, exactly what was going on.

It’s almost as if God is wilfully presenting Godself as someone who celebrates the good in a relationship, even in its difficult times. It’s as if God is looking back at something chequered at best and making a decision to acknowledge the good. A sort of wilful self-deceiving blindness to the failings. A commitment to see the delightful times as the very essence of the relationship, and as for the failings, so be it, let ‘em go. They become the peripheral, the inconsequential moments. I, says God, shall focus on the moments of delight.

That’s the best wedding advice I have, I hope it goes for all the important relationships in our lives, marital or otherwise.

We should train ourselves in the seeing only of the good and the delightful in our partners, our children, our parents, friends and colleagues. We should look back at the events of a day, a week, a year, twenty years even, if we are so blessed, and see only the things that brought delight.

That glance, that touch, that moment of care. We should focus on the things that are Yakar – precious. These are the things to Zacor Ezkerienu Od, still remember, remember.

Love isn’t, at least it isn’t for me, a thing that is either there or not, like one of those scratch-away lottery tickets that reveals failure or success in ways beyond our control.

Love is closer, at least for me it’s closer, to a practice, a spiritual practice of commitment and seeking ongoing delight.

And it definitely takes luck and it can definitely go wrong even for the most committed and wilful of us.

But it is wonderful and I would wish it for us all.

Shabbat Shalom