This is a sermon that began, in my mind, at a funeral. The parent of a member had passed away in the depths of lockdown. They had two children – roughly my age. And between them, the children made a decision as to which would be with their parent at their death, exposing themselves to Covid, and which would attend the funeral.
And when it came to the funeral there were just the two of us
at the cemetery together with the exhausted cemetery staff, streaming a ceremony
to everyone else.
Covid, dratted Covid, took from us – as it has taken from so
many of us – the ability to be properly together at times when we have most
needed company. I mean I’m proud of the technical wizardry we’ve put to use,
I’ve been moved at so many Zoom Shiva services that have a remarkable
spirituality. But it’s not the same.
It's one of the things I love most about Judaism, love, or
loved? – I’m not ready to use the past tense yet, that when there’s a loss
everyone just turns up. I’ve been to funerals in Waltham Cross, at six hours
notice with hundreds of people. Because there is something wired into the
Jewish gut that when someone passes away – you turn up, in person.
It’s one of the great gifts of my own strange career. I feel
incredibly blessed to have job which allows me to drop everything and go.
It's not just the funerals and the Shiva services that have
been transformed into private affairs. It’s not even the B.Mitvah celebrations
in an empty sanctuary, or the Britot Milah celebrations with only a Mohel
present. Every element of our lives, religious and otherwise. And now, as we
turn our gaze beyond the lockdowns of the past, I’m worried for what habits,
and ingrained expectations of our own behaviour, we might have lost as Jews and
as humans.
Covid, dratted Covid, threatens to have accelerated a path
into individuation that has been in play for some time. Robert Puttnam, the
sociologist, wrote the book, Bowling Alone, some twenty years ago. In it, he
recorded the decline of the Bowling Leagues of his own youth. It wasn’t that
less people were bowling in 2001, it was just that people went bowling by
themselves and not in groups. We’ve been drifting in this direction for some
time.
Covid has broken us out of rhythms of turning up to be part of
the interweave of human existence that is necessarily communal. And as Covid
recedes, what will it leave in its wake?
It’s something I can feel in Shul, even today, even making
allowances for the limited numbers we’re allowing into the building.
My nervousness, can you hear my nervousness?, isn’t just about
what this means for Judaism, it’s about what it means for humanity. But let me
concentrate on the Jewish piece for a moment.
Jews pray in the plural –
Baruch Eloheinu
Blessed is our God.
Ashamnu, Bagadnu, Gazalnu
We are guilty, we have
stolen.
Our prayers have particular power in the plural – without a
minyan there are prayers we have to skip. Unless - as it were - we can be
bothered to turn up ourselves we aren’t permitted to request God to turn up for
us. And more than that, there’s something that happens when we all pray
together. Last night, for the first time since all this began, there was
communal song, really song, filling this space, and you could feel a force
present in a way that not even Chazan Stephen – and I love Stephen –can pull
off if he has to Bowl Alone.
Physical closeness is an extraordinary unmatchable gift to
another person, particularly another person in pain. And loneliness, in these
painful times, can be an extra heartbreak.
There’s a stunning moment in one of my favourite Chasidic
texts, the Eish Kodesh of the Reb Kalonymous Kalman Shapira, better known as
the Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto. In the depths of struggles unimaginable, Reb
Kalonymous taught week in, week out trying to give comfort and strength to his
community as the ghetto was ground out of existence. And right before the end, as,
surely, he knows the end is coming he teaches this passage.
“How is it possible to go on,” he
asks, “when I am always on the verge of tears.” Really, it’s impossible to
imagine the pain and the stress of the time. He suggests that even in those
most intense moments of loneliness and suffering it’s still possible “to push
in and come close to God in God’s most inner chambers. A person,” Reb
Kalonymous taught, “weeps together with God, and studies Torah with God. Just
this makes the difference: the weeping, the pain which a person undergoes alone,
may have the effect of breaking them, of bringing them down, so that they
become incapable of doing anything. But the weeping which a person does
together with God – that strengthens a person. They weep – and are strengthened;
They are broken – but find courage.” [1]
To those of you here today who have had to mourn alone, I’m
sorry. I’m sorry for our own failures to support sufficiently, and I’m sorry
for the way Covid has interrupted – or is it broken, no I’m not ready to say
broken yet – our desire to come together.
I know grief is ultimately private. But I know that coming
together helps. Coming together always helps; it helps light up darker times,
as it helps set in context our celebrations.
I know that Teshuvah, repentance is ultimately private. But I
know that it must be communal also. For we live lives that are inescapably
communal, even if we never cross our thresholds – we consume and interact in
ways that are new, but none the less inescapably part of a broader narrative.
John Donne was right,
No man is an island
entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the
continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away
by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as
if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of
thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's
death diminishes me,
because I am involved in
mankind.
Certainly, we are, as humans and as Jews, so much stronger when
we stand together.
I want to invite us to spend more time together, particularly
to support one another. I want to invite us to take more opportunities to reach
beyond our own bubbles – safely, of course, and for some that reaching will
have to be very safely. But we are in danger of slipping into a nation bowling
alone, as Jews and as citizens of our time.
And the memories of those we love and commemorate on this day
would be weakened if that were to be the case. Memories serve as blessings
through a process not unlike pebbles being dropped in still waters. Let me tell
you a story about my grandfather of blessed memory and as I do, he will live
on.
Ah, my grandfather. I remember accompanying my Grandpa Monte on
his last walk to Shul. He was old and unsteady on his feet. And I remember following
behind him as he made his slow way down the aisle in Muswell Hill Shul,
clanking his Zimmer frame as he went. I remember how everyone rose to greet him
along the aisle, my grandpa. His father wanted him to become a butcher, you see.
He wanted to be an opera singer, so he became a butcher who sang in Shul. And
he took me with him before it was too late to show me how much he was loved, in
the Shul he helped found. I don’t think my grandfather ever imagined I would be
a rabbi. But memories of him inspire me to this day.
That’s a 40-year-old-memory I am passing on to you, because
you’re here and we can do that – keep alive those memories. Passing them on to
the next generation and the next enriching, lifting and inspiring in ways we
can never really imagine.
So, that’s my memory. Come back soon, and pass on your
memories to me. I like good memories. Or pass them on to someone else, or
better still lots of people. Be an evangelist for the cause of passing on good
memories from one person to another. Be an evangelist for the cause of passing
on the contagious excitement of being amongst people – safely of course.
I want to invite us to spend more time together, particularly
to support one another. I want to invite us to take more opportunities to reach
beyond our own bubbles – safely, of course, and for some that reaching will
have to be very safely. But we are in danger of slipping into a nation bowling
alone, as Jews and as citizens of our time. And I’m not ready for that. I don’t
think any of us should be.
Chatimah Tovah
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