There are reports from Stamford Hill of ultra-orthodox Jewish weddings which are taking place illegally, stupidly and frankly murderously. The reports fill me with shame and anger. As one of the millions, no billions, of us struggling to hold life and soul gently in these pandemic-riddled times, I'm appalled. The notion that, today, these weddings are taking place is stunning.
Except, I suppose, it isn't.
Somehow, these weddings connect to a web of related tendencies, less criminal and less dangerous, but nonetheless connected. Theodor Zeldin, in his remarkable book, The Hidden Pleasures of Life, writes that the clash of civilisations can be attributed to the difference between those who wish to live in forts, and those who wish to live in ports. Says Zeldin 'fort dwellers see that which is beyond their immediate control as a threat, they turn inwards and seek to erect ever greater barricades to repulse a world beyond. On the other hand, port dwellers look to that which is beyond as the origin of hope, creativity and growth'.
We, at New London, are a true community of Port Jews; inheritors of the attitude of our founder Rabbi who was excited by the possibility of new knowledge even if it felt dangerous. In turn, Rabbi Jacobs was an inheritor of an attitude towards the Enlightenment that drew Jews out of ghettos self-imposed and otherwise. But ultra-orthodoxy built its remarkable strength on a rejection of new knowledge and its leaders have ploughed rejectionist furrows with ever greater fervour for the past hundred and fifty years. This is the attitude that resulted in ultra-orthodox leadership pillorying university education in the late 1800s, bullying Rabbi Jacobs in the 1960s, and treating Israeli society as a pork-barrel. It is, of course, vital to understand that so many of those who are swept up by the fervour and passion of these positions are simply naïve, but at a leadership level there is venality. And it hurts.
I'm still feeling raw - two weeks and 5,000km away - as a result of the 'Washington Insurrection.' That deathly attack on democracy is also part of a similar pathology that refuses to countenance sacred cows being threatened and calls for higher and thicker walls as if forts are the best way to face a world that is always changing.
It's so easy to feel fort-longing, particularly as we retreat behind closed doors to keep this virus at bay. But ports are stronger than forts. The walls of Jericho fell, as all walls do. The survival of humanity is not due to exoskeletons or claws or fangs. Rather we have survived to this point in our history through adaptability and the ability to assimilate the new.
From behind our doors, in this necessary quarantine, we must hold fast to our belief in the values of living as port Jews. We must keep our hearts and minds open. We must challenge the appeal of a lapse into insularity when we find it ourself, and in others. As Rav Kook said, the new must be rendered holy, and there is certainly much holy rendering of the new to be done. But it cannot be beaten back. Onwards, onwards,
Shabbat Shalom
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment