An Open Letter on Settler Violence and British Sanctions

I’ve witnessed and experienced settler violence first-hand. On a 2024 visit to the West Bank, a group of rabbis, including myself and Rabbi Natasha, were stoned and repeatedly threatened with being rammed by a pick-up truck in the ruins of the Palestinian village of Zanuta. The picture above, taken at that time, is of the school destroyed by settlers – the Israeli High Court ordered the settlers to vacate to allow the village to be rebuilt. Israel requested a delay in the implementation of the decision and, in the meantime, 90% of what remained of the village was torn down, including the last remaining 40 olive trees. We witnessed direct physical violence directed against Palestinians in the area. We met with Awdah Hathleen who in 2025, was shot dead by the Israeli settler Yinon Levi (the first Israeli to be prosecuted for violence in the West Bank since October 7th).

I find this behaviour repugnant and contrary to every understanding I have of what it means to be a Jew and what it means to be an ethical person. I condemn, obviously, Palestinian violence against Israelis, but I do not accept the levels and nature of Israeli settlement violence is, in any way, justifiable on that basis. So far so straightforward. Those opposing the clearly unacceptable actions of settler extremists include leading politicians in Israel’s government as well as in the British Jewish community. But there is, in Israel and this country, a divergence that emerges at that point – how broad is the blame for these extremist actions to be ascribed, what should be done?

Last week, I attended a meeting of Jewish leaders in the Cities of London and Westminster constituency, hosted by our MP, Rachel Blake. Several of my local colleagues shared their utter opposition to any sanction-based British governmental response. Caution was urged, as was the ‘use of carrots rather than sticks.’ Allegations were made that Israel is held to an unfair double standard and fears of affecting innocent Israelis and British Jews were articulated. In statements following the announcement of sanctions, many British Jewish organisations have protested the British Government statements in similar language, and I do understand these concerns, but these oppositional statements have almost invariable failed to make any reference to the violence and explicit ethnic-cleansing language used by both settler extremists and those politicians who support and create the atmosphere in which this violence is happening. I take a different view.

In verses connected to the ritual of the Eglah Arufah (Deut 21:1-4)– heifer with a broken neck - the Torah articulates a two-tier approach to responsibility for atrocity. There are those who are directly responsible – those whose “hands spill blood.” And then there are “elders,” those in positions of societal responsibility who are implicated for the “bloodguilt” that seeps into the land because an atrocity was allowed to be perpetrated in an area for which they bear responsibility. Violent perpetrators, of course, bear direct responsibility for their criminality, but the tiers of responsibility don’t end there. Settler violence is directly connected to a sophisticated political movement dedicated to the elimination of any degree of Palestinian autonomy and the removal of Palestinian populations from an ever-increasing swathe of the West Bank. The violence and the threats of violence are tactics encouraged by political leadership in a combination of dog-whistles and outright racist public positions and articulations. There are political parties closer and more willing to support these tactics explicitly and parties and leadership who remain a step further back, but nonetheless implicitly support these racist extremists in a broad range of ways. This is not a case of “merely a few bad apples,” or rather, it is a case of “apples” actively seeking and being supported in rotting the barrel.

With deep sadness, I find it impossible to apply the principle of Dan L’Chaf Zchut – considering favourably – Israeli government leadership when it protests the challenges of policing and prosecuting those directly responsible for this violence. The Minister for National Security, with responsibility for Border Policing, is, after all one of the most articulate voices inflaming settler aggression towards Palestinians. In the language of Parshat Eglah Arufah, all these elders are responsible for a bloodguilt in the land.

This analysis of tiers of responsibility does not, of course, condone antisemitism and certainly does not condone a violent response to Jews in any country, but it does, I think, raise the necessity for a clear acknowledgement of the dangers posed by settlers and those who support them by Jewish communal leaders both in Israel and here.

As for the role of governments, in this or any other international country, it is clearly complex. Proportion, an acceptance of national sovereignty and efficacy are necessary balances, but the need for balance should not be confused with a call for inaction. Clearly, effort must be taken to ensure that antipathy towards the policies that result in settler violence is not confused with a notion that Israel has no right to exist – of course Israel has a right to exist, and in safety. Similarly, effort must be taken to ensure that any sanctions are not able to be used as a justification for antisemitism in this country. The statement of the Foreign Secretary on Tuesday clearly attempted to do that. There will undoubtably be those who ignore this attempt. We, as a Jewish community, need to be alert and respond to that.

But it is wrong to argue for silence, inaction or “the use of carrots” – appeasement - before the settler movement and those who support it. The playbook of these settlers is predicated on the notion that they will be appeased or ignored, and that well-meaning Jews the world over overlook their illegal and criminal actions.It is wrong to address the sanctions raised by the British government without addressing the terrible ethical stain of settler violence.

It is the actions of these settlers, and the politicians who support them, that are responsible for the British government's response on Tuesday. It is the actions of these settlers, and those who support them, that should be more of a focus for those who work so tirelessly to oppose antisemitism however and wherever it emerges. It is the actions of these settlers which make it harder for anyone, Jew or non-Jew, to empathise with the undoubted challenges Israel does face and for which it should be able to call on international support. It is the actions of these extremists that make it harder for me, and for many Jews like me, to feel a love for Israel and I know it drives many Jews away not only from a commitment towards Israel, but towards Judaism more generally.

I believe the failure to condemn and articulate the relationship of responsibility outlined above has and will lead to many British Jews feeling their religious and institutional leaders are failing to respond to the ethical urgency of this moment. There is a great deal of urgency. Not only are the settlers committed to the destruction of Palestinian property in order to create ‘facts on the ground,’ they are also keen to escalate tensions in the West Bank to strengthen the extreme right in the upcoming Israeli General Election.

Of course, any overspill from the sanctions articulated by the Government that suggests Israel has no right to exist should be rejected. Of course, antisemitism should be fought back wherever and however it emerges. But I take this opportunity to clearly oppose both settler violence and the explicit and implicit condoning of such behaviour.

I do not share with those who feel that lovers of Israel, and supporters of Jewish life in this country must oppose, as a matter of course, sanctions designed to limit and draw attention to the damage caused by settler extremists. The British Government is saying they are not prepared to legitimise terrorism, settlements and policies that eliminate the possibility of a political resolution. That should be a cause we should support.

Rabbi Jeremy

Who By Water - Reflections on the Floods in Nepal, Dolly Parton and Rosh Hashanah

 Footage and reports of the floods in Nepal have been heartbreaking. I’m proud to recommend and support personally World Jewish Relief‘s emergency appeal in response to this awful news. WJR partner with the Disasters Emergency Committee and I recommend them fully. My thoughts and prayers - and some money - are with all those needing emergency assistance as well as those mourning and in pain.

I’ve spent the last two week’s away, in Morocco my family drove past what looked like a hundred-year-old wreckage, only to be told the building was wiped out by a flash flood in 2024, 18 people were killed. A couple of days later, we wandered through the ancient Jewish quarter of Marrakech and witnessed the still present wreckage of the 2023 earthquake. There are single walls behind which lie rubble mounds.

“Who by fire and who by water” indeed. I’ve returned to work to reconnect with some of the pressing pastoral challenges in our community – there are many in need of comfort. Rosh Hashanah is coming and the religious mood is in keeping with my news feed, holiday memories and in-tray. Life feels fragile and insecure. But not, I think, Hobbesian. It’s not, at least not merely, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutal and short.”

There was an odd moment when my news feed flitted between the utter devastation in Nepal and a clip of Dolly Parton, of blessed memory, resplendent in rhinestones and silicon, yeehawing across a crowd of Glastonbury festival-goers. “I wrote a song a few years back and it’s going to be a perfect song to dedicate to you personally today” she shared intimately with a crowd of 300,000, “because I just want to know, I appreciate each and every one of you and ‘I will always love you.’”

And despite the fake hair and fake everything else, I believed her and I believed in love. Love works like that, even in the face of death, even in the face of earthquakes and floods.

The line, from the Rosh Hashanah liturgy, is that living well – Teshuvah, Tefillah and Tzedakah – strips away evil from the decree we face in our lives. It doesn’t promise an altered decree. To take every opportunity to share love, to live more carefully, to show an appreciation for our life in prayer and acts of justice, including financial justice, make us worthy of the blessing of our existence. These are worthy goals despite the fire and the water and the mortality that is coming for us all. That’s the essential message of the Rosh Hashanah season to come.

If a warm-up would help – and warming up definitely helps – please consider joining us at New London NEXT Saturday evening, 9:30pm in building and on the stream, for our annual Slichot curtain raiser with Yoav, Shir and others. Booking (no charge) here is warmly encouraged. It will be a service shared with love.

It’s good to be back.

Shabbat Shalom

Every Brother Has a Heel Like Me

Preparing this phrase from Jeremiah for the Tisha B’Av Haftarah, I stumbled at its discomforting brilliance. כָל-אָח עָקוֹב יַעְקֹב – khol ach akov yaacov - is an impossible phrase to translate – “every brother has a heel like me” doesn’t quite get there. As a name, the letters Ayin Kuf Vet, make up the name Yaacov – us. As a noun, they mean “heel” and as a verb they suggest “deceit” (We have similar etymological plurality in English; a ‘heel’ is ‘crooked’ or ‘bent’). The locus classicus comes when Esau, having traded away his birthright for a pot of soup and been deceived out of a blessing from his father, says of his brother, “Rightly is he called Yaacov, he has heeled/tricked me twice over.”

When Jeremiah says,כָל-אָח עָקוֹב יַעְקֹב, JPS suggests the translation, “every brother acteth subtly,” but the Hebrew, in the language of the playground, turns the finger around to point at ourselves. We, children of Jacob, are summoned to acknowledge our crookedness. When the Rabbis include, for the Haftarah on a day focused on self-pity, this phrase, they shove us outside our experience of victimhood and into acknowledging our agency as perpetrators.

I had an email from a member last week, responding to a comparison I made between the breach of the wall of the Temple in 70CE and the breach of the fence separating Gaza from the Southern Kibbutzim in 2023. What about, they asked, the things that have been done by ‘us’ since; the destruction of Gaza, the treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and beyond? It’s uncomfortable to be challenged to identify as the “heel.” But it’s important to acknowledge recent incidents like these. 1,000 Jewish ‘worshippers’ entered the Temple Mount compound on the 9^th Av, breaking every regulation designed to protect peaceable separation at such a sensitive area. There were 16 arrests of Jews suspected of damaging the Muslim cemetery at Lions Gate and attacks by Jews on Palestinian passersby. A raid by Jewish settlers on the Palestinian village of Jit, near Nablus, resulted in the death of one Israeli settler and four Palestinians – resulting in Israel’s Security Minister saying Palestinian homes and villages in the West Bank should share the “same fate” as Bet Hanoun in Gaza, largely destroyed. On the subject of Gaza, twelve were killed in Gaza City on Tuesday as Israel targeted a Hamas operative, bringing the total of Palestinians killed since the ceasefire was declared to 1,168 – according to the Hamas-led health ministry.

It’s not that Jews haven’t suffered extreme levels of hatred through history – and there was a knife attack on an identifiably Jewish worshipper leaving Shul on the 9^th Av on the Upper West Side of New York! But there is something deeper that demands address, as uncomfortable as that may feel.

My wife recently took part in a discussion on antisemitism with Arts Council England. In a room full of Jewish artists, many shared their experience of feeling unsafe as British Jewish artists in the current climate. It is, of course, vital that these reflections are properly acknowledged. But, as my wife noted, everyone’s feeling unsafe at the moment; every colour, every nationality, every political view, every everything. Privilege exists – of course it does – but in a world where everyone feels part of a threatened minority, we cannot get out of the holes in which we are currently located by insisting that “our” experience of unsafety is greater than “theirs.” We must stop competing to be the only people whose suffering is to be acknowledged by everyone else. It is both untrue - כָל-אָח עָקוֹב יַעְקֹב – and it won’t help.

We move, in the Hebrew calendar, from the week of the 9^th Av – Tisha B’Av – to the week of 15^th Av – Tu B’Av, marking the date in ancient times when “daughters of Jerusalem would dance in the vineyards and whoever did not have a partner would go there” to seek love. We are all seeking love. And finding love requires an opening of the heart to risk, to another, to rejection. So be it. The other option, closing our hearts, insisting on only our own victimhood, rejecting our complicity in being a heel, is worse.

Shabbat Shalom

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

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[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