When This Passes, What Happens Next

Here’s an extract from the 1927 Yiddish book, Gedoylin Fun Unzer Tsayt about an earlier Yom Kippur in a time of pandemic – in 1848 it was cholera; a disease marked by symptoms that made fasting dangerous. One the eve of Yom Kippur, with the permission of the leading rabbis of the great city of Vilna, Rabbi Yisrael Salanter posted announcements in all the shuls that, because of the cholera epidemic, no-one should say additional parts of the prayers, and that, instead, people should spend time outdoors breathing fresh air. In the courtyard of all the shuls they set up tables with pieces of cake that contained less than the prohibited amount of food that may be eaten. The food was there for those who needed to eat. Reb Yisroel got up on at Shacharit on Yom Kippur and announced that if a person felt weak there was no need to consult with a doctor, but instead they may go into the courtyard and eat. In another account, the Rabbi makes use of words from the Kol Nidrei prayer itself- With the consent of the All-Present and with the consent of this congregation, we give permission to eat and drink on the Day of Atonement.” Al daat hamakom ve al daat hakahal anu matirim – Of course the good rabbi was attacked for his supposedly radical stance, but it takes courage to be a Rabbi. Pandemics call on us all to be courageous. Or, and surely enough on pandemics already!, what about Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in 1939? War was declared nine days before Rosh Hashanah in 1939. This remarkable letter, from the Minister of Highgate Synagogue was sent to his congregants apologising that the included schedule of service times was going to have to change – what with the existential threat to civilisation; “all evening services for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are to be scheduled so as to finish one hour before dark,” he writes. “The shofar is not be sounded at the end of Yom Kippur lest it be confused for an air-raid siren. Top hats are not to be worn ‘for the duration of the war.’ And please bring your gas mask.” But what struck me, in amongst the technical necessities of a transformed run of prayer services, was the Rabbi’s spiritual courage. Amid all the woe of the present time, [wrote Rabbi Lew] let us not for one moment forget our faith in God. My appeal to you is to gather regularly in the Synagogue that we may pray to Almighty to save us and our dear ones, our King and country, from the horrible devastation of war which is raging in our midst. May our New Year bring victory and peace to our nation which is the bulwark of justice liberty and freedom. May it bring prosperity to the needy, health for the sick, safety and security for us all. May God preserve the children who have been taken from our midst [he means drafted into military service] and restore them to us in peace. GOD BLESS YOU ALL” Wrote the Rabbi of Highgate Synagogue, in 1939. This miserable virus, it’s nothing new. But we’ve been here before – dark days, plague-afflicted days. And we have had to dig deep to find the courage and the optimism that brighter days are waiting for us. And the models and the inspirations that we can do this and that it’s worth doing this are there right through our faith and our history and our sense of who we are. Way, way back, in the face of the existential threat presented by that Pharaoh, way back then, when Pharaoh came and decreed that every male child should be thrown in the rivers, it was the Meyaldot HaIvriyot the Hebrew midwives who modelled this sense of courage and optimism. They stood up against oppression and darkness and midwived the generation who travelled from bondage to freedom, from darkness to light. Courage and optimism, a willingness to commit and care and midwife a brighter future, even in the darkest of times is the very marker of faith, certainly of this faith. This miserable virus, it’s nothing new. But we’ve been here before. It will take courage and the optimism, but the models are here for us – not far away at all. As I’ve been winding my way through these past months, I’ve kept one of my favourite stories close to my heart. It’s the story of King Solomon and his brave and faithful servant, Benaiah who is sent by the King to find a ring with magic powers. I’m sharing the language of Judith Ish-Kishor. Said the King. “If a happy man looks at the ring he at once becomes downcast and gloomy. But if the person in misery or morning beholds it, hope rises their heart, and they are comforted.” And Benaia searches for the ring from Babylon to Damascus, and from Tyre, to Beer Sheva and from Egypt to Yemen, And no-one has even heard of such a ring. It is only when Benaia returns to Jerusalem, and he is walking along a poor street with small shabby houses that he sees a man, with a mat spread before him with baskets of trinkets and beads, such as people without much money could afford. “Shall I ask here?” Thought Benaia, “What use! Still, it will only mean another no.” But here, of course, there is such a ring. Carved inside are the three Hebrew letters; Gimel Zion, Yud – Gam Zo Yaavor - This too shall pass. This too shall pass. Gam Zo Yaavor Gam Zo Yaavor is a training in seeing our lives from beyond our immediacy. That’s very fitting for today. We arrive at Yom Kippur all weighed down by our present situations and our present preoccupations. And all this is fine. But there is a grander time scale, and broader perspective into which our temporary concerns, as pressing as we feel them to be, are not ultimate concerns for the world, for the Universe, from the perspective of its Creator. And it’s no bad thing to be reminded that our pressing concerns, viewed from a grander perspective, will be less dramatic than they feel in this very moment. We shouldn’t disappear into our own private cocoons of self-absorption. Gam Zo Yaavor. And also this Gam Zo Yaavor, especially in a time of pandemic, is a reminder to live forwards. It’s miserable now. I know, but it will pass. There will be something on the other side, and it’s worth living in that direction. Yes we have to live our lives in the moment, and in the moment bad things are just … well bad. But we don’t have to live our lives in the direction of where we are. Gam Zo Yaavor. We need to live our lives in the direction of our future. We can live with our spirit on the other side of where we are now. That’s a leap of faith. It’s also an acknowledgement of the change that comes to us all for Gam Zo Yaavor – this too shall pass. And there will come a time when we, and our descendants, and our descendants’ descendants will tell stories of this time, and our adaptation and our resilience, and our acts of kindness and our attempts to hold together when we are being dragged apart. This will pass. And the way these stories will reflect to our credit is if we live in the direction of the future we seek. I know it’s dark right now. But I know we have been here before, and this shall pass. And I know it’s hard to hold onto an optimism that things will get better. Well, here’s the bad news. Trying to hold onto an optimism that things will get better isn’t going to cut it. Holding on and hoping isn’t going to be enough this time. In fact, I’m not sure holding on and hoping has ever been enough. We get through these times with courage and with optimism. That’s the message. Don’t stop with trying to hold on, push through. Be part of building beyond. I think this is the message of all faith, don’t just hope. We are called to live our lives with courage and optimism. I think this is the very nature and the very role of religious community. We exist to pool this sense of courage and optimism, these energies of care and a willingness to believe in futures that are brighter. We take all our stories and all our histories and we use them to inspire us through the times when we are tender, and bruised and nervous. At our best, that’s us, this religious community, an incubator for courage and optimism in a time of fear. And tonight, that’s you, In some ways the very act of coming to a Zoomed Kol Nidrei on this very day, when the fast of Yom Kippur hasn’t even started yet, is an incubation of this sense of courage and optimism that is so desperately needed. I’m doing my best to nurture these previous sparks in me, by standing here with you. And I know, and I feel, despite the distance-thing, you are doing the same. It’s an honour and a privilege. Together we deepen our communal reservoirs of courage. Together we lift each of us towards the future we not only hope for, but actively build. There is inspiration in our own faith journey, certainly, but let me conclude by stepping beyond our own faith, and even beyond my own gender, to share the words of American Sikh activist, Valerie Kaur. Kaur spoke of the brokenness of this time this way. “What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb. What if our society is not dead, but waiting to be born. What if we just need to listen to the midwife whispering in our ears, You are brave, breath, then push.” Well I’ve never had to breath and push like a birthing mother. But I know so many of you have, and that as crazy as it sounds it’s worth believing in that possibilities of newness, even when it feels so impossible to breath and push. I believe. I hope you do to. After all this, all this will pass. And in its place will come a future we will build together. All of us. We can build that future with heart and our hands, even behind our locked doors. We can pour out enough kindness into this battered world, that the forces of anger and distrust are pushed back. We can create communities of decency and compassion that are so strong, it will be clear to all, that human beings thrive this way, in community, and not as individuals. That’s our task at New London, to be part of that, to foster those redemptive sparks in each of us; I’m up for the challenge, I hope you are too. May we build it well, Gemar Chatimah Tovah