Science and Religion – On the Eve of Shavuot

On Wednesday’s Radio 4 PM programme, former Cabinet minister Michael Portillo gave a critique of the Prime Minister’s appearance before the House of Commons Liaison Committee.

“For a long time, the government has been saying the government is being guided by the science. I hope we all know by now there is no such thing as “The Science.” It’s open to the Prime Minister to say, “I’m not going to accept your advice on 2 metres if the World Health Organisation says 1 metre, I’ll go with that.” The point the former politician was making is that decision-taking requires more than science, science presents options.

I was reminded of a moment on Radio 3’s Sunday Feature, ‘Writing Across Distance.’ Writer Dava Sobel shared her fear that “at the end of the lockdown, when immunologists have vanquished the coronavirus, we’ll relapse into disregard of the far larger [ecological]disaster in store.” Sobel read from Jane Hirschfield’s poem;

On the fifth day, the scientists who study the rivers were forbidden to study the rivers or to speak.

The scientists who study the air were forbidden to speak of the air.

And the ones who worked for the farmers and the one who spoke for the bees.

The facts were told not to speak and were taken away.

The facts, surprised to be taken were silent,

And now it was only the rivers that spoke of the rivers and the winds that spoke of the bees.

There’s a lot of science around, and it’s saving lives, and it will save more lives. But at the heart of the decisions that face us … none of us is purely guided by the science. For one thing, science isn’t designed to guide us. For another, a lot of science is complex and doesn’t translate well into guidance. But most importantly, and this is something scientists who hope to save our battered planet understand perfectly well, we make decisions based on psychology, social mores, ethics and a bunch of other invisible and unprogrammable parts of our psyche. And when scientific clarity comes up against these parts of our psyche – the invisible unscientific parts of our psyche prove dominant time and time again.

That’s where religion comes in. Religion is designed to guide. It’s designed to help us understand why chasing after immediate pleasure is not in our best interests. Religion helps us to care for things that are more important than self-interest. Religion is capable of moving us more powerfully than scientific papers or front-page journalism. For sure religion can guide in wrong directions, but it can also help humanity direct itself towards the decent and the good. I would claim religion have been the greatest force of turning towards the good in human history.

It’s this turn to a value beyond the immediate that is at the heart of religion. And for us, as Jews, it is revelation that is this moment. Revelation is the response to our lifting our hearts in search of something that means more than self-interest. Revelation contains our attempt to use the gifts of science for good, for peace and for security. It’s a battered world and a precarious one. But the path out of darkness is one we know to treat. It’s a path guided by the insights of science, but requiring also the illuminated of revelation.

Tonight, Shavuot begins. This is our moment to celebrate revelation. Join us for a Zoom Tikkun Leyl. I’ll be teaching, together with Rabbi Natasha, Chazan Stephen and Lester. 6:30pm in our normal Zoom service room. There is plenty of material on our FB page including my son’s leyning the Ten Commandments, Rabbi Natasha and I offering introductions to the Ten Commandments, liturgy from Chazan Stephen and tales and packs for youth to use.

Chag Sameach,

Rabbi Jeremy

On the 75th Anniversary of VE Day

I’ve been spending a lot of time, recently, on the phone to our older members. “What memories do you have of VE day?” I asked a sprightly (and doing quite nicely in splendid isolation) nonagenarian in the Shul.

“Oh it was great,” he replied, “we did all sorts of things you’re not allowed to do today.” I didn’t press the matter. I mean there are all sorts of things that aren’t allowed today.

Another shared, “I went to Trafalgar Square, by myself, I was only 14. I remember a lot of people and getting crushed in the crowd.” Ahh crowds.

Other members were celebrating, “But only in Hendon, my father wouldn’t let me leave Hendon for the celebration.”

“We were on a boat,” shared another member. She and her family had spent the war in Canada, and her mother, homesick and desperate to return, arranged berths on a cargo ship leaving North America on 30th April I a convoy, surrounded by smaller Canadian ships. “On the morning of 8th May, I remember all these little ships hooting and hooting. And then they all headed back home. At that point our rudder broke. The journey should have taken 10 days, we were at sea for a month.”

And other members weren’t really celebrating at all. One of our oldest members spent VE day on a military engineering course. For him, VE Day marked only the end of the war in one theatre. He was off to Benghazi, the North African front, after this ‘great day’ passed. Others, also, were not celebrating - at this point, no longer quite sure why. Was it exhaustion from the conflict or the sense the war was not yet over? "Perhaps the latter," one said.

The line, in my mind, was Churchill’s, from November 1942, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

The symbol of this time is the rainbow. We are waiting for the good news that we can come out of our claustrophobic arks, and back into the world we miss. But this epidemic isn’t going to end with a rainbow. There may come a little loosening of restrictions, heavily laden with counter-warnings. There will still, rightly, be much nervousness and tentative baby-steps, even after we are allowed out.

Our emergence from this time of darkness – when and as it will come - will not come like Noah and his sons emerging into a new world. Instead, it will come like VE Day for those who knew that the war was not yet won. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pause to acknowledge the heroic steps forward as they are taken. That was the best reason to head for Trafalgar Sq 75 years ago, and to celebrate this anniversary today. Indeeed pausing to celebrate the moments of joy as they come is perhaps the single best way to make it through this time - day by day - keeping our attention on the present. The sun is shining today. That's a good place to start.

In contrast to the utter horrors of the Holocaust and the Second World War, this lockdown is strange, rather than atrocious, even for those of us who have suffered, and I know many have and others will.

But for the mere gift of our survival, as a Jewish community on the other side of the Holocaust, I am deeply grateful and in awe of the courage and sacrifices of those who fought on the side of the Allies, on the European Front and further abroad. Their heroism inspires me today, as it inspires all of us. It is good to be alive. It is good to live in a democracy that despite its faults, values all human life. It is a blessing to be able to celebrate 75 years since the end of that awful tyranny. May we never again know its like.