Here’s a good pub quiz question, for this Shabbat, and the coming week.
What
connects Sudan, Malaysia, Cyprus, Kuwait and Jamaica?
Well, they
all celebrated independence between 1952 and 1962, in the first ten years of
the reign of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
The list of
all the countries who have taken that step towards independence in the 70 years
of our Queen’s reign is 50 long – from Belize and Botswana to Vanuatu and
Zambia.
And it
struck me as an interesting thing on which to speak, on this week, Freddie, of
your BM,
Because the
English word Jubilee, in Hebrew Yovel, is one of the themes of today’s Torah
reading.
You
shall make the fiftieth year holy, and proclaim liberty – ukratem dror
- throughout the land to all its
inhabitants. It shall be a Yovel – a jubilee to you; and each of you shall
return to their own property, and each of you shall return to their family.
And then, just a few verses
later, again,
In
this Year of Jubilee – Shanat HaYovel - each of you shall return to their property.
There are two things that
happen, in the Yovel, that don’t happen at any other time.
Firstly all indentured
servants go free. If I fell into poverty, and the only way I could see to get
out was to indenture myself, I would have the right to go free in the
sabbatical year, and there are seven sabbatical years between one Yovel and the
next. But what if I didn’t want to go free, what – asks the Torah – if I quite
liked living working for someone else, letting them take the risks of the ebbs and
flows of fortune. Well, if I wanted to, I could stay an indentured servant, but
only until the Yovel. At the Jubilee – I have to proclaim my own liberty – I need
to take the scary steps into freedom, whether I feel ready to or not.
Rashi asks the question –
what is this strange Hebrew word – Dror? Usually translated as liberty. He
answers with a reference from the Talmud – it means that a person dwells – shedar
bechol makom sherotzeh – in any place they wish, vaino breishut acherim – they
aren’t under the dominion of others.
And then, secondly, all land
transactions reset. Land ownership in the ancient world is a big deal – it’s a
big deal still today. But if you were unable to afford to stay on your land,
you could sell it to someone else, but they would only have it until the Yovel.
At which point, it would go back to the original owner. As if all all land
transactions were leases with the same termination date – every lease would run
out on the same day, and the original freeholders – people who were forced to
sell their land – would get it back.
The great Italian Biblical
commentator, Ovadiah Sforno, put it even more strongly –
שתהיו
גם אתם בני חורין משעבוד האומות
That you will be free of the oppression of the nations of the world.
The Yovel, the Biblical Jubilee,
therefore becomes about two things – a political independence and a personal
independence.
Let me start with the
politics.
Underlying this sense of a Yovel,
a day of jubilation, is the sense that a people should not be ruled by others.
שתהיו
גם אתם בני חורין משעבוד האומות
In my Anglo Jewish mind, when I come across these verses I hear,
still, the echoes of a very ancient slavery unto the Egyptians, but I wonder
how these Biblical verses would have played out in countries such as Ghana, or
as it was prior to the independence granted by her Majesty, the Gold Coas, or
those Caribbean countries where this book, our Hebrew Bible, plays such a role.
I wonder how a verse about the political necessity to be free and independent
landed in Jamaica, Trinidad, Tobago, Barbados, Bahamas?
But here’s a more timely question – I wonder how these
verses hold a place in the heart of the Head of the Church of England, Her
Majesty. How do you feel, as the ruler of the British Empire, when nation after
nation after nation wants independence from your dominion?
Machiavelli, of course, would have none of it. For Niccolo
Machiavelli, the whole point of ruling was to keep hold of power and disrupt
and tear apart any threat to the perpetuation of the status quo. It takes a
very special kind of leadership to let go, to do the thing the Queen seems to
have done again and again and again in her extraordinary 70 year rule. She
seems to have found a greater power than the grasping-for-power that is the
marker of those who follow the teachings of Machiavelli. She seems to have been
able to let go. I know, it hasn’t always been easy, it has sometimes been bloody
– and that’s a huge stain on this country, but, I think it’s still remarkable
that so many of these countries have sought independence, been granted
independence and then, as independent nations, wanted to be part of the
Commonwealth.
How can you, as a person of power, allow that power to
leave, to trust that it’s better to be loved than feared, to trust the people
who were once ruled by you, when they make the claim that they want to go their
own way?
And what of the other side of this – the personal piece –
the indentured servant who decided, on a sabbatical long past that they didn’t
want to go free? That they are, come the Jubilee, propelled into a freedom they
might not understand, or quite feel ready for, that they are given the courage
to know that they / we are better forging our own path as free to choose where
we dwell, aino breishut acherim – not under the dominion of others.
I wonder Freddie, if that’s you, today. On the cusp of
adulthood. Celebrating your Bar Mitzvah, your coming of age in religious terms,
not quite able to stand on your own. Your parents aren’t quite yet, planning on
kicking you out of the house to seek your own fortune, just yet, I’m reliably
informed. But it’s coming – the Jubilee is always coming, the time when a
person has to strive to make their own life … their own life, aino breishut
acherim.
And in this personal understanding of the Yovel – the Jubilee,
the people of power who have to realise that deep passion for freedom that
lives in all humanity, even if it doesn’t always seem as if it does, even if
once freed, people make terrible mistakes, the people who have to realise they
have to let go – like the Queen.
I wonder if those people are the parents.
It’s possible to read the Yovel as a series of instructions
for the young adults in our midst – to encourage them to take control of their
own lives, and head off, wheresoever they may choose. And simultaneously a
series of instructions for the parents in our midst – to encourage us to let go.
To find strength in the thing that the Queen has done, letting people turn back
to us in love, not ruling in fear.
Ukratem Dror BaAretz – And you shall proclaim a freedom,
a liberty in the land, we read today.
Freedom is scary.
There are the powerful of today who have to be scared to let
go, to place trust in a bunch of upstarts who don’t know how to run their own
lives, because they never have
And there are the powerless of today who have to be scared
to take the step up into dominion over their own.
And for us all there comes a Yovel, a time to proclaim our
independence and a time to release claims over others. And for those of us who
are feeling a little scared, the advice Moses gave to Joshua – I mean talk
about having big shoes to step into – is perhaps the greatest advice we could
ever receive – Hazak v’Amatz, usually translated as be strong and of courage.
But that word Amatz – it really means independent.
Mazal Tov, your majesty, and thank you for modelling a
leadership that places compassion and understanding above the pursuit of power
by any means necessary.
Mazal Tov Morris, Louise, Freddie, both in that you’ve done well so far,
Freddie, particular you’ve done brilliantly today, but also Mazal Tov in that
you should have good luck into the future – to let go and to claim your own Atzmaut
– independence
And Mazal Tov to us all,
Happy Jubilee celebrations and Shabbat Shalom
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