Three Ways With Chanukah

Is the moral of Chanukah, is the moral of all contemporary Jewish life, 'they hate us', 'oppose assimilation' or 'spread light'?

I want to share three modes of understanding the Festival of Chanukah, both of which are very much alive in our contemporary times.

The first takes, as its core text, the Al HaNissim prayer, dropped into the Amidah and Grace After Meals

ימֵי מַתִּתְיָהו בֶּן יוֹחָנָן כֹּהֵן גָּדוֹל, חַשְׁמוֹנָאִי וּבָנָיו, כְּשֶׁעָמְדָה מַלְכוּת יָוָן הָרְשָׁעָה עַל עַמְּךָ יִשְׂרָאֵל, לְהַשְׁכִּיחָם תּוֹרָתֶךָ וּלְהַעֲבִירָם מֵחֻקֵּי רְצוֹנֶךָ,

In the days of Matityahu, the son of Yochanan the High Priest, the Hasmonean and his sons, when the wicked Hellenic government rose up against Your people Israel to make them forget Your Torah and violate the decrees of Your will.

It’s a part of the classic summation of Jewish holidays that runs,

They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat.

It’s a story of Chanukah about how much they – the big bad outside world with its big bad animus to us Jews doing the things we want to do – hate us. And wish us harm. It’s a story about the importance of standing up in the face of antisemitism and a story about the power of God, the ability of God to defeat any opposing force and the inalienable connection between God and Israel.

וְאַתָּה בְּרַחֲמֶיךָ הָרַבִּים, עָמַדְתָּ לָהֶם בְּעֵת צָרָתָם. רַבְתָּ אֶת־רִיבָם, דַּנְתָּ אֶת־דִּינָם, נָקַמְתָּ אֶת־נִקְמָתָם, מָסַרְתָּ גִבּוֹרִים בְּיַד חַלָּשִׁים, וְרַבִּים בְּיַד מְעַטִּים, וּטְמֵאִים בְּיַד טְהוֹרִים, וּרְשָׁעִים בְּיַד צַדִּיקִים, וְזֵדִים בְּיַד עוֹסְקֵי תוֹרָתֶךָ. וּלְךָ עָשִׂיתָ שֵׁם גָּדוֹל וְקָדוֹשׁ בְּעוֹלָמֶךָ,

But You, in Your abounding mercies, stood by them in the time of their distress. You waged their battles, defended their rights, and avenged the wrong done to them. You delivered the mighty into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few, the impure into the hands of the pure, the wicked into the hands of the righteous, and the wanton sinners into the hands of those who occupy themselves with Your Torah.

And there are those who see the story of Chanukah in these terms, and those for whom the place in which we find ourselves today is that place.

Here we are, us Jews, trying to do the things we want to do, and the world hates us, and masses its antisemitic forces against us and it will take a miracle to turn back the tide of hatred towards us. But, the good news is, we believe in miracles,

Al HaNisim V’al HaGevurot

That’s the first modality.

Here’s the second,

And it comes from the best, closest historical account of the Wars of the Maccabees, from the Book of the Maccabees.

I mean the Al Hanissim prayer is old, 7^th Century CE – but that’s still of course 850 years after the events it records. The Book of Maccabees is usually dated to 1^st CE before the Common Era a mere 50 years after the wars it describes – for those doing the maths and thinking about the nature of history – 850 years ago from today, the Normans invaded Ireland – you remember the great Norman invasion of Ireland, don’t you?

And fifty years ago, President Nixon resigned in the afternmath of the Watergate debacle, back I the days when American Presidents resigned when they were caught doing something wrong.

The point is, if it’s a question of which mode to trust as an accurate bearer of historical record, it’s not close.

The book of Maccbees opens, more of less, with this story;

In those days there appeared in Israel transgressors of the law who seduced many, saying: “Let us go and make a covenant with the Gentiles all around us; since we separated from them, many evils have come upon us.” The proposal was agreeable; some from among the people promptly went to the king, and he authorized them to introduce the ordinances of the Gentiles. Thereupon they built a gymnasium^* in Jerusalem according to the Gentile custom.

And the persecution of the Jews was led by a desire to make the whole of the Kingdom of Antiochus, one kingdom with one set of customs. And the Book of Macabees records the conflict between the Jews who “ delighted in [the religion of the King]; they sacrificed to idols and profaned the sabbath. [and built] pagan altars and temples and shrines, to sacrifice swine and unclean animals, and left their sons uncircumcised” and on the other hand, the puritans who fled into hiding.

And the famous story in the second chapter of Maccabees, where Matityahu is refusing to bow down to an idolatrous God when a ‘certain Jew came forward in the sight of all to offer sacrifice on the altar in Modein according to the king’s order. When Mattathias saw him, he was filled with zeal; his heart was moved and his just fury was aroused; he sprang forward and killed him upon the altar. At the same time, he also killed the messenger of the king who was forcing them to sacrifice, and he tore down the altar.”

In the Book, 2^nd Maccabees, also from the same, early, period it’s even more clear; there are Jews fighting other Jews, Jews who wish to stay pure and have nothing to do with the world of the Helenizers and Jews who felt the Jewish traditions needed, at the very least, radical updating to still be worth their time. It’s a civil war before it’s a war between nations.

This second mode is a little more complex. The small piece of grit that allowed the pearl to form, as it were is, assimilation. A willingness to be cajoled into a set of universalitistic values that is not Torah. The bit that opens the door to allow a foreign King to come in and legislate against us, and persecute us is not some deep-seated antisemitic animus, but rather the assimation of Jews, the ease with which we turned out back on the central claims on us made by our faith; avoidance of idolatry, shabbat, circumcision.

I was sent an email today by someone wanting to know if I would perform what they called a Brit Shalom, a covenantal welcome for their baby son which didn’t involved circumcision. I didn’t tell them that the original appearance of the term Brit Shalom comes in the Torah just after Pinchas runs through a couple, one Israelite, one not, fornicating with a spear. It’s not just that the person who wrote to me, it’s far more general than that – it’s all of us, all a bit, in our different ways and to different extents unwilling to accept the call that inspired our ancestors to stay firm within our own covenantal obligations. If we give up on ourselves, of course, this mode of telling the story of Chanukah seems to say, if we give up on ourselves, of course everyone else will consider us unworthy of deserving the space to be different.

So the third mode is drawn from the passage in Talmud Shabbat

For when the Greeks entered the Temple, they defiled all the oils therein, and when the Hasmonean dynasty prevailed against and defeated them, they made search and found only one cruse of oil which lay with the seal of the High Priest, but which contained sufficient for one day’s lighting only; yet a miracle was wrought therein and they lit [the lamp] therewith for eight days.

There’s no mention of a war in Talmud Shabbat, no mention of Jews killed, by Antiochus or certainly by other Jews. And instead only a warming and, frankly quite insignificant miracle. I can’t be the only person who wondered, surely someone crept into the Temple when no-one was looking and replenished the supply of oil?

It feels like a way of approaching the story of Chanukah that wants to look away from the military mythology and the violence. What is the great message of the Haftara fpr Shabbat Chanukah – coming soon to a Bimah near you,

לֹא בְחַיִל, וְלֹא בְכֹחַ--כִּי אִם-בְּרוּחִי,

Not by might – literally the word is not by soldiers - and not by power, but by spirit alone.

As if the moral of the story is, feel a spirit, a warmth, a sense of miraculous survival that exists for all of Israel, assimilated, zeolot alike, and is miraculous and worthy of retell even without a stories of antisemitic hatred, or Jews being pitted on against the other.

This is my last sermon on 2025 – I’m away the next two Shabbatot – don’t worry, you will be in great hands. But I’ve been reflecting on the three different kinds of sermons I’ve been choosing between giving, week after the week.

There is the – they are all out to get us sermon, the Al HaNissim sermon.

There’s the don’t give ‘em an opening sermon, stay committed and stay connected sermon – the sermon that is closest to the tales told in First and Second Maccabees.

And the – don’t watch that, that dark outside world that will only bring fear and close hearts, and instead celebrate the simple miracles of survival and light and warmth sermon – the Masechet Shabbat sermon.

Like all good problems, it’s not a choice between something clearly right and something clearly wrong. There is a grave challenge that rises from antisemitism both here and driven by what has been happening there. There is a grave challenge that rises from assimilation, or perhaps more explicitly a lack of care about the heart of what it means to be a Jew.

And I’ve spoken, I’ve tried to speak about both.

But I’m most comfortable speaking about the miracles of our existence. I suspect that’ spart of what the Rabbis responsible for this passage in the Talmud realised. You can’t really make a Jewish life out of only feeling the threat of anti-semitism and assimilation. You have to make a Jewish life out of the triumph of survival and the sense of warmth and the importance, as I wrote in my weekly words this week, of spreading light, allowing light to be contagious.

It’s not that the world isn’t dark. It’s the response to this sense of darkness can’t just be to fight. It needs to be to celebrate and welcome in and open out. We need to let light shine as the heart of our Jewish existence.

To do otherwise, in some ways, lets the forces that are arrayed against us, win.

Shabbat Shalom

Happy Chanukah

The Cardinal Bea Memorial Lecture 2011 - Heschel, Soloveitchik, Bayfield and the Point of Jewish - Christian Interfaith Dialogue

I was invited to give this lecture by the remarkable Sisters of Sion, way back in 2011. But with the 60th Anniversary of Nostra Aetate in the news, I'm realising I never posted it before so ... here you go.

 The Cardinal Bea Memorial Lecture 2011

 

Lord Harries, Baroness Richardson,

Friends,

Particularly the Sisters of Sion,

I am most grateful for the honour of this invitation to address you.

To know of some of your extraordinary work and the sense of openness and generosity of spirit that inspires your calling is humbling and inspirational.

Already, simply to be here, as a Rabbi, as a representative of a faith once treated as a fossil, at best, or cursed, at worst, is, in the context of the 2000+ year history of our respective faiths remarkable.

And that, unless I have desperately miscalculated, I feel under no threat of being lynched or attacked isn’t something that even now, even here, I take for granted.

I accept this invitation as an invitation to be honest, to share of my own struggles and those of my faith community – I’m not here to score points, interfaith dialogue is no longer a zero-sum game where a Jew’s success means a Christian’s failure or vice versa. We have come so far it’s almost beyond belief.

 

Indeed, it seems that much of this credit for this extra-ordinary shift in the relationships between Church, the Catholic Church in particular, and the Synagogue belongs to the man whose memory we honour tonight, Cardinal Bea.

I’m not particularly a scholar of the time, nor would consider myself an expert in Jewish-Catholic or Jewish-Christian dialogue (I will I hope justify my place here on a different basis), but I’ve been deeply touched by real warmth that seems to have existed between the Cardinal and my most important teacher, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

Heschel was the leading Jewish theologian in discussions with the Vatican in the lead up to Vatican II and Edward Kaplan, Heschel’s biographer, records how Heschel spoke highly of Bea’s critical edition of Song of Songs – Bea, of course, being fluent in Hebrew and Aramaic among other languages.

Heschel could castigate, embarrass religious leaders. In a famous speech to the American Rabbinical Assembly Heschel castigated and embarrassed Rabbis who led services devoid of spirit and guts. And in a famous speech at a 1960s conference on Race and Religion he castigated and embarrassed faith leaders of all stripes for their failure to speak out against slavery in America. But he loved, admired and respected Cardinal Bea for he saw in the Cardinal both commitment to his own faith and also a commitment to recognise the faith of others.

 

Secondly, I’ve been aware of the place in which the Cardinal stood – in the eye of the storm around Vatican II.

The American Jewish Committee made representations to the Cardinal in the run up to Vatican II. They submitted a dossier, and I quote the dossier’s author, identifying and illustrating, ‘slanderous interpretations, oversimplifications, sweeping statements, unjust or inaccurate comparisons, invidious use of language, and significant omissions in American Catholic textbooks’ of the late 1950s and early 1960s. That can’t have been easy reading. It takes a capacious soul to make their way through material like that and respond with breadth of spirit and warmth.

 

And on another side, there were tremendous pressures from within the Church, for there were many in the Church who felt that accusations of deicide were entirely correct and a perpetuation of expiatory contempt for Jews was the only correct theological response to me and members of my faith.

 

The Cardinal also had to stand firm in the face of more than just a whiff of paranoiac anti-Jewish conspiracy theories.

 

The second session of Vatican II saw the wide distribution of a document called “The Jews and the Council in the Light of Holy Scripture and Tradition.” This pseudo-anonymous piece of antisemitism insisted that efforts to alter the Church’s traditional view of Jews were the result of a conspiracy in the council by Jews and Freemasons working on behalf of Communism. These paranoiac Catholic flames were flamed by Arab leaders and clerics, both Copt and Muslim, who pushed and pulled as their own interests dictated.

 

The notion that Cardinal Bea was able to stand as firm as he did in the face of such great challenge is already a tremendous achievement.

 

Nostra Aetate transformed the relationship of the Church and the Jewish people from one of enmity and fear into one of shared commitment; shared commitments to monotheism, the pursuit of peace, justice, to recognise that every human is created in the image of the divine and most important of all a commitment to oppose genocide and speak out against hatred dressed up in the sheepskin clothes of religious terminology.

 

And while the theologians and political bigwigs negotiate over commas and precise turns of phrase, I know all too personally how relationships between Jews and Catholics have been transformed by Nostra Aetate

 

I was born six years after Vatican II. My Jewish parents made the decision to send me to a Catholic School, St Anthony’s in Hampstead, where I received an incredible education inspired by the very best sentiments of open-hearted Catholic commitments to the value of enquiry and human compassion, shared with me, as a Jew; commitments given what we in Jewish circles would call a gashbanka – a seal of approval – by the language of Nostra Aetate. Indeed I know this is an evening in honour of one great servant of the Church, Cardinal Bea, but I hope the good Cardinal, looking down on us all today, would not object if I wish also to honour, in what I share today the memory of another Catholic hero, my headmaster of that time, Tim Patton.

 

I’m honoured and touched that Tim’s successor as headmaster of St Anthony’s School, Paul Keyte is able to be here today. I’m delighted the school continues to foster the very best open-hearted approach to the education of generations to come.

 

I mentioned earlier that I don’t deserve to be here as a historian, for I am not really a historian. I’m a practioner. I practice as a Jew, I practice inter-faith dialogue. I aspire to no level of expertise higher than that of being a practioner.

 

So I want share with you the questions at the heart of my contemporary practicing of interfaith encounter.

 

How much of one’s own faith does one have to give up on to fully acknowledge the faith of another?

Is it possible to believe that the other has erred without that being necessarily disrespectful?

Is it possible to be wholly committed to one’s own faith while still being a pluralist – can you have humility as well as belief?

And if I am not looking to give up on or even alter my own faith, as a result of interfaith dialogue, what is the point of interfaith dialogue?

 

Two end points in my own personal dialectic

Joseph Soloveitchik, known as The Rav, was the leader of American Orthodoxy in the 1960s. And he was not interested in Vatican II at all.

The Rav gave an important address to the massed ranks of American Orthodox Rabbis entitled ‘Confrontation,’ in which he turned his back on anything that could be considered pluralist – especially in relationship to the Church.

 

Jews and Christians should not seek, Soloveitchik demanded, ‘common denominators’ because to do so risks, he argued, frittering away the unique destiny of both faiths engaged in a singular normative gesture.’

Soloveitchik wouldn’t express any care for what the church may or may not say about Jews. He simply insisted that Jews reject any suggestion that our covenant has been superseded. He disdained any attempt to find mutually acceptable forms of language that iron out this central difference. He rejected apologetics, revisionism or other sweet words.

 

Soloveitchik also demanded mutual non–interference. Jews should not, he insisted, ask for adjustment to Christian rituals – no alteration in the liturgical readings during Holy week for example - and the same would apply to any supposed Christian discomfort with Jewish liturgy or ritual.

 

Our goal, said Soloveitchki, is to pursue our path – the path of Halakhah, the Hebrew Bible as understood by the Rabbis, and if the cost of having any other religion or national grouping saying anything nice about us is giving up on one iota of our commitment to that path, that cost is too great to pay.

 

Soloveitchik only spoke of his concern to put an end to attempts to find middle ground in matters theological, but his impact went beyond this. It’s hard to find Orthodox rabbis, certainly mainstream orthodox Rabbis willing to do very much with members of other faiths, certainly in public, certainly away from the photo-opportunities that seem to boost the ego of participants more than fix the problems of a broken world.

 

On my other side is the recently retired leader of British Reform Judaism, Tony Bayfield who wrote of the importance of transcending the stilted and lonely interactions between Jew and Christian which results in Christians praising for Jews for our family life and chicken soup but holding back on articulating the conviction 'it's a pity you are missing out on the greatest truth of all.' While Jews grudgingly praise Christians for their 'cathedrals and self-sacrificing love' while holding back on sharing a belief that Christianity is all based on a mistake. Bayfield believes that both Christians and Jews have to moderate our respective truth claims and give up on hubristic faith claims that claim our beliefs are right while others are wrong. Bayfield claims that we will only be able to enter into genuine and respectful dialogue if we can moderate our truth claims.

 

I consider both positions half-right, though I’m closer to Soloveitchik. Like Soloveitchik I have no problem with Christians thinking I have it all wrong. As long as they don't mind my thinking that they are mistaken. I’m not prepared to sacrifice the creeds of my own faith, the parts of my own self – to become more attractive in the eyes of a sister faith whose creeds, ultimately, are not my own.

 

We live in a society where we are tempted to embrace syncretism, but syncretism is not attractive to me.

Too often it results in a sort of cherry picking of  superficially attractive elements stripped of their deeper calls on our souls and integrity.

 

But I don't accept Soloveitchik's claim that interaction and engagement risks jeopardising our own unique path. My experience of serious Christian-Jewish dialogue has been one that has sharpened my own sense of my own faith, it's forced me to find language to justify my beliefs and practice when faced by an 'other' who understands God and the quest for holiness and decency in ways close to, but ultimately other than, my own.

 

Like Bayfield I accept that much Christian/Jewish dialogue is bland, politeness transcending honesty, but I don't accept respectful dialogue demands transcending my own faith claims. Nor, frankly, do I worry about a surfeit of politesse in Jewish Christian encounters - it's only been a blink of an eye since the stakes - when Jew and Christian encountered one another - were far more deadly than being gently bored. A few centuries of gentle boredom between Jews and Christians would be no bad thing.

 

Moreover, and it’s probably my most significant point of – I hope respectful  - difference with Rabbi Bayfield, I don't accept that my Jewish belief that Jesus is not, as a religious fact, a singular son of God, is necessarily to show a lack of respect to the Church. Similarly, I would not expect a Christian to show respect for my own faith by abnegating their sense in my cardinal religious error.

 

I don’t believe that respect is predicated on the need to accept the view of the other. Rather, the reverse; a relationship predicated on the primary need to agree with one another demands politesse triumphs over honesty and that is where I consider a lack of respect. It’s a relationship where the end points of agreement are going to be determined by the fall of a lot – whose turn is it to be right this week – yesterday we ate Italian, tonight let’s do Chinese, yesterday we did Jesus, tonight let’s do Torah

 

Or, alternatively, an overriding commitment to come to agreement simply reflects the relative hierarchical standings of the debaters – I’m stronger than you so you agree with me, or vice versa.

 

Respect means agreeing to suffer the other views of the other person even if they cause one discomfort. That is certainly a Jewish position.

Debate and disagreement, the process of sharpening alternate views is integral to the Jewish faith –

Makhloket – even have the phrase, Mahloket l’shem shamayim – disagreement  for the sake of heaven - is at the centre of the Rabbinic endeavour. We understand ourselves in dispute.

 

One Rabbinic tale to illustrate.

Set in the time of the Apostles

When Reish Lakish, one half of the greatest Rabbinic double act of its time passes away, he leaves Rabbi Yohanan bereft. The Rabbis bring another Rabbi to the table who agrees with everything Rabbi Yohanan says, but this only increases the survivor's sense of despair at the death of his partner.

 

Clarity, refinement, honesty and integrity are forged in the pit of rigorous, principled, engagement.

Not dependent on agreement.

 

Judaism loves difference. The first Rabbinic text, traditionally taught to young children features two people arguing over who should own a found piece of cloth. ‘I found it and it’s all mine,’ they both claim. Talmudic study is principally the attempt to find ways for contradictory opinions to stand even in their opposition. For three years, the Talmud records, the Houses of two of the great Rabbis of the Ancient period, Hillel and Shammai disputed, eventually a Divine Voice is heard to proclaim ‘[both opinions] are the words of the living God.’ Perhaps tellingly, the substance of the disagreement is long forgotten. The point, surely, is that God’s perspective is so qualitatively beyond that of humans that points of difference visible from a human perspective melt away when viewed from the level of the cosmos itself. To claim that my finite human perspective is capable of understanding all the truth there is an act of appalling hubris.

 

In 2000 over 220 Jewish scholars published ‘Dabru Emet’ a  document on the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. It noted, ‘The humanly irreconcilable differences between Jews and Christians will not be settled until God redeems the entire world as promised in Scripture.’ Indeed.

 

A last Rabbinic text. In the Mishnah, the foundational document of Rabbinic Judaism, at least 1800 years old, the Rabbis ask why God created all humanity from a single ‘Adam’ – a single first human. My favourite answer is that this was done to increase our wonderment at the glory of God. When a King of flesh and blood mints a coin, the Rabbi offer as a parable, every coin comes out looking the same, but when the King of Kings, the Holy Blessed One, made an original mint –Adam – every human comes out differently. This text justifies the appreciation of otherness in humanity; be that people with other skin colours, nationalities and even religions. We come closer to understanding the glory of God as we appreciate the differences between us and that demands our engagement with interfaith.

 

O That my Words Were Written Down - A Sermon to be shared at the Churches of St Mary's and St James, NW6 on Remembrance Sunday 2025

  

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 'essential profession' and 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's father, Max (pictured above with his son), 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 his son, Jack, 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 2^nd January 1916. The Jews went a day early. And on the Jewish Sabbath, 1^st 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

On the Meaning of Friendship - a sermon on Lech Lecha

Right at the opening of this week’s reading God calls Abraham.

Get the sense that God has been looking for someone to be in a relationship with. Sense that been looking for a while.

God’s tried turning to Adam and Eve, and then Noah, sense that hasn’t worked, quite.

Now with Abraham it feels different, sense that it works.

What is the thing that God is looking for, and finds in the call to Abraham, that didn’t find, or didn’t work previously?

Wonder if God has the same problem many parents in the room might recognise?

God wants human beings to do exactly what God wants entirely through the act of free choice.

Feels familiar to me, as a father. I want my children who will do exactly what I think they should do, without me telling them twenty seven times, bribe them with treats or threatening to withdraw television. If that’s what God is after then I’m feeling delighted to be in such good company.

Or maybe it is a little more complicated than that. Maybe what I am really after isn’t exactly children to do precisely what I think they should be doing. Maybe it’s something more complex and, actually, much more interesting. And maybe, by thinking a little more deeply about what God is looking for in Abraham I can learn more about what this search is really about.

In the mind of the Rabbis long before there were humans on this earth God would hang out with Angels - and the wonderful thing about Angels, if you are God, is that Angels do whatever they are told. And so there’s God, surrounded by Angels who will do whatever God wishes. And it’s not quite enough. God wants more.

Naaseh Adam, says God, Let’s make a human, and - the Rabbis imagine - the Angels throw up their wings in horror. How can you do that, humans will lie, and cheat - what about us, aren’t we perfect enough for you? Apparently not - here we are.

Look at what happens a moment later. The first human is lonely, so God creates an Ezer Knegdo - a help against. That’s the relationship between Adam and Eve, the model for all paradisiacal love - help against. The model isn’t someone who simply does everything we wish - like some sci-fi avatar created only to embody our every wish. That isn’t the model. The model is someone who pushes back.

Or have a look at what goes on in any Yeshivah - any house of Jewish study. Yeshivot are full of Chavruta pairs - pairs of students arguing with and against one another trying to work out what a particular text does or does not mean. Truth comes from the encounter with others, it emerges out of argument. There’s a great story in the Talmud of a great Rabbi, Rabbi Yochanan, whose long-time Chavruta dies and the Rabbis find another person for him to study with. But the new Chavruta only finds ways to agree with the great Rabbi. And Rabbi Yochanan isn’t impressed. He wants a Chavruta with a bit of fight in ’em, someone to bounce ideas around with.

That word Chavruta - it’s as close as it could be to the Hebrew word for friend - Chaver, Chaverah. Friendship, real friendship, emerges from precisely this sort of vigorous exchange. Real friendship isn’t about a person telling you what they think and you just say, ‘Oh yes, you are so right.’ A person who only tells you how wonderful you are isn’t really a friend. They don’t help you grow. They don’t help you understand anything you don’t understand already. In fact maybe that’s the very point of friendship, the very point of a partner - an Ezer Knegdo, maybe that’s the very point of having children - the very point of life itself - to understand things that we don’t already know.

Maybe that’s exactly what God is looking for in Abraham.

It’s not the first time in the Torah that God has called on someone to do something. Just last week we read the story of God calling on Noah. God announces God is going to destroy the world, and calls on Noah to gather the animals and build an ark. And Noah gathers the animals and builds the ark. Sounds fine. But there is a wonderful criticism levelled against Noah by the great Chasidic master, the Kotzker Rebbe. The Kotzke accuses Noah of being a Tzaddik in pelts - a righteous person in a fur coat. There are, the Kotzker taught, two kinds of people who find themselves in a cold room, full of people. One puts on a fur coat - that’s the Tzaddik in pelts - the other lights a fire. Noah’s failure, in last week’s reading, was not lighting a fire for anyone else. He should have challenged the people, urged them to improve their ways. He could have challenged God not to destroy an entire world - imagine the destruction.

Abraham, of course, is the paradigm of the Tzaddik who doesn’t just pull on a fur coat when things get a little cold. We’ll read this story next week. God tells Abraham God is going to destroy Sodom and Gemorrah and Abraham pushes back. ‘Shall not the God of justice act justly?’ I debates, provokes, teases God into relenting. Perhaps he didn’t save the cities, but he tried. A true friend. A Chavruta, a partner - an Ezder Kenegdo. And ultimately the partner God is looking for.

The relationship between God and the descendants of Abraham is still going.

And the attitude is still going strong too.

Just one example, from much later in the Jewish journey. King David. The story in Second Samuel is that David is overseeing the ark of the God on its return to the Jerusalem and the ark slips on the wagon carrying it and is about to fall on the ground. Uzzah jumps forward to stop the ark falling, and God - affronted by someone touching the ark - smites Uzzah and kills him.

וַיִּֽחַר־אַ֚ף יְ-הֹוָה֙ בְּעֻזָּ֔ה וַיַּכֵּ֥הוּ שָׁ֛ם

And God was angry with Uzzah and smote him there

And how does David, the beloved of God, the one God chose to be King respond?

וַיִּ֣חַר לְדָוִ֔ד עַל֩ אֲשֶׁ֨ר פָּרַ֧ץ יְ-הֹוָ֛ה פֶּ֖רֶץ בְּעֻזָּ֑ה 

And David was angry with God’s striking, striking Uzzah!

And David refuses to take the ark back into Jerusalem until God calms down and stops smiting people for trying to help.

That’s Ezer Kenegdo, that Chavruta, that’s the thing God was looking for that God found in Abraham - but missed in Noah.

There’s a wonderful rabbinic teaching where the Rabbis pick up on the fact that God tells Abraham ‘walk before me’ - it’s as if, they say, God has asked Abraham to light the way for God - as if God needs Abraham to light up a path for God to find the way. I know - we don’t usually talk about God in these human terms - but this is the language of the Torah and the greatest of our sages. And it’s true. All of us need other people to light the path for us, to allow us to see things we cannot see, to allow us to experience that which we cannot experience if we surround ourselves with those who simply do precisely what we ask of them. Even God.

And this brings me back to my attempts to get my children to do their homework, or tidy their plates up after dinner, or all the rest of it. At a certain level I just want to be to be obeyed. I want everything I want done by everyone I come across, instantly and all the time. But that’s not really, deeply, the case. Really, deeply, I know I need to be challenged, disagreed with, objected to, criticised and ... and this is the really important piece - improved. And I can only be improved by reaching out to those who oppose me.

Sorry parents among you.

And I whisper this to the teens and the nearly teens, and even the younger kids who are here.

It might sound a lot, as if your parents only want you to do what they tell you to do, precisely as they tell you to do it. But that isn’t really the case.

What I want, what they want, is really someone to push against us. Stand up for what they feel is right, even if it’s different to what I say I want.

We are all looking for Chavruta, we are all looking for an Ezer Kenegdo. We are all looking for an Abraham.

Because as attractive as it sounds to live a life surrounded by everyone doing exactly what we want, instantly. It’s not what we need. It’s not even really what we will - quietly - admit that we need.

Shabbat Shalom

 

Walter Benjamin and the Unicorn

 If this sermon had a title – and I have a fondness for the thing you sometimes see outside Churches where the title of the sermon is posted for all to see – if this sermon had a title, the title would be ‘Walter Benjamin and the Unicorn’

The Walter Benjamin piece is inspired by a pilgrimage my wife and I made to Benjamin’s last resting place in Portbou, right on the Spanish side of the border with France.

And the Unicorn … well … one should never really need an excuse for talking about unicorns. In the Talmud, Tractate Zevachim folio 113b, the Rabbis discuss the Reima – a mythic beast of incredible size.

Rabba Bar Hanna said, I have seen a day-old-Reima and it was as large as Mount Tabor. How large is Mount Tabor, the Rabbis ask, 40 parasangs – that would be 120 miles to you or me. And its neck was three parasangs long, and its head a parasang long and – would you forgive me for being a little scatological? But this is a direct quotation from the Talmud, which isn’t as dry as you might think - רְמָא כַּבָּא וּסְכַר יַרְדְּנָא – it sprayed out feces and dammed the river Jordan.

I’m sure you are all wondering about the same thing the Rabbis, wondered about as cited on page 113b of Talmud Zevachim – how did Noah get a beast of that size into the ark.

There follows a discussion about whether you could get the whole head of the Reima into the ark, or just the tip of its nose and eventually the Rabbis settle on the notion that the Reima and a massive Giant, named Og, who the Rabbis assume was alive before the Flood and is finally defeated in battle by Moses, survived the flood tied to the Ark and were fed through a window by Noah.

Elsewhere in the Talmud (TY Shabbat 2:3) [1] there is discussion of a special pure animal, hidden since the days of the construction of the desert tabernacle – a Keresh.  And Rabbi Hoshaya taught that this animal had a singular horn.

And that was enough for the great Jewish fable-ist, Gertrude Landa, to create a tale, published in 1919 book Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends

 

 

that included this.

 Then the various creatures began to march forward into the Ark. Father Noah watched them closely. He seemed troubled. “I wonder,” he said to himself, “how I shall obtain a unicorn, and how I shall get it into the Ark.”

“I can bring thee a unicorn, Father Noah,” he heard in a voice of thunder, and turning round he saw the giant, Og. “But thou must agree to save me, too, from the flood.”

“Begone,” cried Noah. “Thou art a demon, not a human being. I can have no dealings with thee.” “Pity me,” whined the giant. “Once I was so tall that I could drink water from the clouds and toast fish at the sun. I fear not that I shall be drowned, but that all the food will be destroyed and that I shall perish of hunger.”

Noah, however, only smiled; but he grew serious again when Og brought a unicorn. It was as big as a mountain, although the giant said it was the smallest he could find. It lay down in front of the Ark and Noah saw by that action that he must save it.

For some time he was puzzled what to do, but at last a bright idea struck him. He attached the huge beast to the Ark by a rope fastened to its horn so that it could swim alongside and be fed.[2]

And here, I suppose, we should leave our unicorn and turn to Walter Benjamin.

Benjamin, 1892-1940, was one of the great Jewish minds of the last century, a close friend of Hannah Arendt, a close friend of Gershon Scholem. He’s best known for his extraordinary critique of the impact of modernity – by which he means the ability to mass produce stuff.

He’s thinking of factories and chainstores and especially art. He was deeply interested in the transformative technology of his age – the camera. The fact that art stopped being something that only a select few people could ever see, but that art could be photographed and everyone could then get to see the photo. He started to think about the difference between the thing itself and the mass reproduced version of the thing – the photo in what he called ‘the age of mechanical reproduction.’

He comes up with this word, aura.

The aura of a thing is the real quality of a thing. It’s the very painting itself. To stand infront of a painting is to appreciate the aura of a painting. A photo of a painting has less aura. There are good things, particularly if you are a Marxist – and Binyamin was a Marxist, about being able to take photographs and goodness knows what he would have thought of the digital cameras in our phones and the ability to upload to Instagram and everything else. But there is a loss of aura. Something about works of art gets lost in the ‘age of mechanical reproduction.’

Benjamin was living and working in Paris when the Nazis invaded but he managed to get a Visa to the States, and he fled south, to Spain – officially neutral in the Second World War. But at his first stopping point south of the French border, in Portbou – and it’s hard to imagine the trauma of what must have felt like, he was told his paperwork was wrong. The rules had changed and he was therefore to be deported back into the hands of the Gestapo. And for Benjamin it was too much and he took his own life rather than be deported into the hands of the Nazis.

His great friend Hannah Arendt wrote to his other great friend, Gershon Scholem,

“The report of his death took nearly four weeks to reach his sister and us. Jews are dying in Europe and are being buried like dogs.”

Benjamin has no grave, no gravestone his body was dumped, like a dog. It’s somewhere on the top of a promontory overlooking a beautiful bay and there it lay until 1994. Thirty years ago a memorial to Benjamin, by the Israeli artist Danny Karavan, was opened and last week Josephine and I went to see it.

Here’s a photo.

 

Here’s another.

Doesn’t look like much, does it. Got no aura – these photos. Let me try and explain.

The reality, the unique, unrepeatable, exquisite reality of going inside the memorial, taking time to climb down a flight of clanking metal stairs inside a dark and slightly rusting iron corridor-like tunnel, overlooking a stunning bay in which life teems and promises and looks so beguiling is extraordinary. It made me want to cry for the sheer waste of a remarkable life – Benjamin’s life, and every life brutally brought short then, and since.

The memorial to Walter Benjamin, unmistakably, brilliantly and clearly completely deliberately has aura.

And there is nothing quite like aura. No photo, no blog post, no social media viral meme can ever match the aura of the thing itself in all its reality.

And that’s why I like this. That’s why I think this is important.

What do I mean by this – this Jewish thing, this Shabbat thing, this Synagogue thing, this Bat Mitzvah thing. This thing of family members and friends and a community of fellow Jewish travelers coming together to experience the reality, the unique, unrepeatable, exquisite reality of a young girl preparing to read from the Torah, to read from a vellum scroll written in ink made from a recipe 1,500 years old, reading a tale that is thousands of years older still and in the process she becomes almost magically a woman, an adult member of the community right infront of our very eyes. This thing has aura.

No Facebook post can match that.

No Bat Mitzvah present of the latest mass produced I-don’t’-know-what matches the very reality of what, Edie, you did here, on this Bimah. Nothing ever will.

This is the thing itself. This is aura.

That’s what Shabbat is really all about – aura. The thing we only get to experience when we switch off the phones with their extraordinary lenses and apps. Shabbat is the very essence of turning round to Benjamin’s Age of Mechanical Reproduction – which is indeed amazing, and I’m not even a Marxist – and saying, thank you, and I’ll be back tomorrow, for now I want to concentrate on the reality, the unique, unrepeatable, exquisite reality of the aura of the work of art which is my life.

כִּי־שֵׁ֣שֶׁת יָמִ֗ים עָשָׂ֤ה יְ-הוָה֙ אֶת־הַשָּׁמַ֣יִם וְאֶת־הָאָ֔רֶץ וּבַיּוֹם֙ הַשְּׁבִיעִ֔י שָׁבַ֖ת וַיִּנָּפַֽשׁ׃

For across six days did God create the heavens and earth and on the Seventh Day, God rested – Shavat - and was re-ensouled - Vayinafash.

And for any of us who ever feel a bit lacking in that feeling of being rested and re-ensouled. I recommend turning off the age of mechanical reproduction, of digital reproduction for a day, even part of a day, and encountering instead the the unique, unrepeatable, exquisite reality of Shabbat, or, really anything that has aura.

I recommend coming to Shul.

I recommend being in a community where every week someone is celebrating or mourning, or hoping or fearing or some combination of all three that can never be explained or recorded, but can only be experienced.

I recommend going to see real art – like Danny Karavan’s sculptures.

I recommend going for real walks in real parks with real trees.

I feel like we need to make much more of the desperate value of aura, we need to be so much clearer about the dangers of thinking that value can be reproduced, reprinted, reposted.

Which brings me back to my friend the Keresh, or the Reima or the Unicorn. It’s gone, I’m sorry to say, the reality behind these glorious mythic tales of pooing beasts the size of mountains with single horns so strong they could be tethered to an ark in a flood that destroyed the world.

And all the memes and cute sparkly prints just don’t cut it.

And it’s not the unicorn. It’s the dodo and the wooly mammoth and the megalodon and the sabre-toothed cat.

And it’s not just the animals, it’s Walter Benjamin and all 6 million of them, and my grandparents of blessed memory and every life lost and remembered.

We have, in this fragile, unique, unrepeatable and exquisite reality that is our life, we have the opportunity to do real unique, unrepeatable, exquisite things. And if we don’t do them well, if we don’t do them carefully, those moments will be lost.

Organising our lives around mechanical or digital reproductions won’t cut it. Life cannot be lived well in reproduction. We’ll lose the very that is most special about being alive. My mind goes to a remarkable Midrash in Kohelet Raba.

When the Holy One blessed be He created Adam the first man, He took him and showed him all the trees in the Garden of Eden, and He said to him: ‘See My creations, how beautiful and exemplary they are. Everything I created, I created for you. Make certain that you do not ruin and destroy My world, as if you destroy it, there will be no one to mend it after you.[3]

Choose life

Experience aura whenever you can

Shabbat Shalom

---

[1] כֵּיוָן שֶׁעָשָׂה בָהּ מְלֶאכֶת הַמִּשְׁכָּן נִגְנְזָה. רִבִּי אָבוּן אָמַר. קֶרֶשׁ הָיָה שְׁמָהּ. תַּנֵּי רִבִּי הוֹשַׁעְיָה. דְּחָדָא קֶרֶן. וְתִיטַב לָיי מִשּׁוֹר פָּר מַקְרִין וּמַפְרִיס. מִקֶּרֶן כָתַב רַחֲמָנָא.

 

[2] https://dianabuja.wordpress.com/2015/04/04/the-unicorn-and-the-ark-a-talmudic-story/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Talmud%2C%20the,and%20growing%20a%20single%20horn.

[3] 7:13