I’ve
been reflecting on the reading from today’s service, the reading from the
Hebrew Bible[1] –
‘O that
my words were written down!
O that they were inscribed in a book!
מִי־יִתֵּ֣ן אֵ֭פוֹ
וְיִכָּתְב֣וּן מִלָּ֑י
On
a day like today, it reminds me of the last words of the great Jewish
historian, Simon Dubnow, born in 1860. Dubnow was resident of the great Jewish community
of Riga when the Nazis came - all but 150 of the 40,000 Jews of Riga were
murdered by the Nazis. He was one of the first, old and infirm at the time, as he
was being led away, he called out, “Write it down, write it down.”
If
these atrocities were not known, if those in this country and our allies had
not understood the threat the Nazis posed and the fate they felt my people deserved,
I would not be here. The debt I feel to those who served, in the Second World
War especially, is very personal.
My
own family were already in London at the outbreak of the second world war. My
grandfather, with his flat feet, spent his days, during the War as a kosher butcher
managing ration allowances and his nights manning anti-aircraft guns on top of a
blacked-out hotel on Park Avenue.
It's
my wife’s grandfather who has my family’s best claim to war-time heroism.[2]
Jack Eldridge Cowen came to these isles on a boat he thought destined for America.
The captain pulled into port, the locals spoke English with an accent, and so
he disembarked … in Dublin, where he trained as a Doctor. With the advent of
the Blitz, Dr Cowen headed to London, serving first as a civilian Doctor and
then as a commissioned officer, with the rank of Captain. He served in the
North African campaign under Montgomery, saw action in the two El Alamein
battles and was part of the invasion of Italy. The family story is that his chief
concern was supplementing the inadequate rations provided for his company –
very Jewish. That included, once they arrived in Europe, hunting for deer and raiding
cellars filled with Chianti. Captain Dr Cowan’s war ended in 1944, when
shrapnel hit his back as he pulled two injured soldiers to shelter while under
fire at the Battle of Monte Cassino. He was mentioned in dispatches and
awarded the Military Cross.
He
never talked about his heroism. If pushed, he would admit a certain regret that
King George was, by that time, too ill to present him with the medal
personally. We only know the story because it was written down.
O that my words were written down! -
מִי־יִתֵּ֣ן אֵ֭פוֹ וְיִכָּתְב֣וּן מִלָּ֑י
My
wife’s grandfather’s tale, of course, is a tale about a sort of double immigration;
from Eastern Europe to Ireland and from Ireland to this country. It’s the tale
also of a sort of doubled religious integrated co-operation; a Jew who became a
Doctor in Catholic Dublin, defended this Protestant nation and ended the war with
shrapnel pockmarks on his back and a medal of valour on his chest. It’s a story
– and there are millions and millions of them, from people of every religion
and nationality and every skin tone and accent – of decency, the sense of obligation
to serve a greater good and the kind of patriotism that knows no hatred of
another human being because they look different, or sound different or pray
differently
It's
a tale of decency, obligation and patriotism that so many of those we remember
today understood so clearly and gave their lives to uphold. It’s a tale that those
we remember today, those who gave their lives to protect the decency, obligation
and patriotism they understood so well would be horrified to see threatened by resurgent
antisemitism, racism in all its forms, anti-immigrant scapegoating and the
setting of one human against another for the sake of populist adulation.
We
forget so quickly. We need to remember these tales
O that my words were written down! -
מִי־יִתֵּ֣ן אֵ֭פוֹ וְיִכָּתְב֣וּן מִלָּ֑י
It’s
an honour for me, as a Jewish member of this parish, to pay tribute in this
church to those for whom Christianity played a vital role in their military
service and especially to those for whom their Christianity played a vital role
in their accepting the risk of the loss of their life to defend this country
and, frankly, the Jewish people of the world, from Nazi genocidal attack. For
every ounce of courage to stand in the face of evil drawn from Christian faith,
I’m moved and inspired in my own faith. Thank you.
But
I’m a rabbi – so I pray for your indulgence if I share a rabbinic articulation
of what I think it really means to be proud to be British, what I think it
really means to be a patriot, a human who understands their obligation to
humanity and a person of decency, even accepting these things comes at a
terrible cost, even if it comes at the cost of the loss of life.
In
the midst of what we now heartbreakingly call World War I – back then, of course
they called it the Great War, because who could conceive humanity would be
stupid enough to ever again return to war – King George called for a “special
day on intercession on behalf of the nation and empire in this time of war, and
for thankful recognition of the devotion
… [of] the manhood and womanhood of the country” for Sunday 2nd
January 1916. The Jews went a day early. And on the Jewish Sabbath, 1st
January 1916, then Chief Rabbi of British Jewry, Joseph Hertz, whose local
Synagogue, on Abbey Road, just up the road, is the Synagogue I now have the
privilege to serve, gave this address.[3]
We, children of the age of science,
cherishing the dream of universal peace, had come to think of the future story
of humanity as one of unbroken triumphal progress. Then in one day a cataclysm
engulfed civilization. None could have
foretold that civilized mankind would rush to savagery with such dreadful
fervour.
Nobly have also the sons of Anglo-Jewry
rallied round England in the hour of her need. And our Honour Record will be
rendered longer and more luminous now that the large number of our brethren who
are naturalized British subjects, or the children of naturalized subjects, have
been admitted to the glorious privilege of fighting for their country. Millions
have been made to feel what mankind steadily refuses to see in times of peace,
that there are certain absolute values for the vindication of which no
sacrifice, not even the life of our nearest and dearest, is too great.
With the victory of Great Britain [Rabbi
Hertz continued], the heathen ideals - the worship of brute force will be
shattered. It will be a chastened humanity that will emerge from the ruins that
this War will leave behind it. Let us prayerfully resolve that the new order be
a better order, rooted in righteousness, broad-based on the liberty of and
reverence for each and every nationality, and culminating in a harmony of
peoples.
Amen,
may it be so.
It
doesn’t always feel that way.
These
are stories we still need to tell.
O that my words were written down! -
מִי־יִתֵּ֣ן אֵ֭פוֹ וְיִכָּתְ-ב֣וּן מִלָּ֑י
These
are the stories we need to tell,
in the desperate hope, in prayer, that
someone, anyone, any of us, will listen and change,
in the desperate hope that we, as a
society and a humankind will come to realise the true value of life, in all its
plurality and difference,
that we, as a society and a humankind
will come to realise the fragility of life and the terrible cost of unnecessary
death,
that we, as a society and a humankind
will come to realise something articulated so beautifully by a nineteenth
Century Chasidic Rabbi called Nachman of Braslav,
Words
with which I finish.
May all the inhabitants of the earth
recognize and know
this great truth:
that we have not come into this world
for strife and division
nor for hatred and rage,
nor provocation and bloodshed.
We have come here only
to encounter You,
eternally blessed One.
We ask your compassion upon us;
raise up, by us, what is written:
I shall place peace upon the earth
and you shall lie down safe and undisturbed
and I shall banish evil beasts from the earth
and the sword shall not pass through your land.
but let justice come in waves like water
and righteousness flow like a river,
for the earth shall be full
of the knowledge of the Holy One
as the waters cover the sea.[4]
And
let us say,
Amen
[1]
Job 19:23
[2] https://www.quora.com/What-did-your-parent-or-grandparent-tell-you-about-what-it-was-like-to-be-in-World-War-II/answer/Michael-Mark-Ross?ch=10&share=fb71037d&srid=ndWL
[3]
Taken from M. Saperstein’s Jewish Preaching in Times of War
[4] https://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/story/rabbi-nachmans-prayer-peace
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