Jewish Values in a Time of War - Thoughts on the Strike-Back Against Midian - Mattot, Numbers 31

 

On Thursday night, I went to the London School of Jewish Studies, the central education arm of mainstream orthodoxy in this country, to listen to three Orthodox Israeli educators, in London for a major conference. They were asked to reflect on Jewish and Democratic Values in a Time of War. The event was hosted by the New Israel Fund to whom I’m grateful.

One of the speakers was Charedi – ultra-orthodox, the others Daati Leumi – national Zionist.

It was illuminating and impressive in a way, impressive that it was hosted at LSJS, impressive that the conference and this fringe event are happening at all.

But the main reflection of the Haredi speaker was that we shouldn’t blame the Haredim for all the things Haredim are getting blamed for.

The main reflection of one of the Daati Leumi speakers was that there is a big evil – the existential threat against Israel - and a smaller evil – Israel’s errors in attempting to defend itself from that threat – and we shouldn’t lose focus on the big evil.

And then the other Daati Leumi speaker – Rav Moshe Lichtenstein, the grandson of Rav Joseph Soloveitchik no less - spoke about failures of self-accountability and leadership. I think his critique was that the current political leadership of Israel haven’t taken responsibility for the way in which the attacks of 7^th October were allowed to wrek such havoc inside the borders of Israel, it wasn’t entirely clear. I’ll come back to that.

I went, because I’ll take opportunities to learn from Israelis whenever I can – that, I think, is one of the morals of the story of the tribes of Reuven and Gad in this week’s parasha – you can’t live outside the Land of Israel and not do more to acknowledge the very real challenges faced by those who in the most literal sense live or die by their decision to live in the Land of Israel.

But as I was heading there and heading back and reflecting on what to share this Shabbat from this pulpit, I felt it just wasn’t a good enough response to the question of what are Jewish values in this time of war.

Especially in a week where we read, probably, my least favourite Chapter in the Torah – Chapter 31 of the Book of Numbers.

There is plotting against Israel, deceitful, mendacious plotting with a view to our destruction in ways violent, sexually transgressive and also, to be a little anachronistic – in the world of social influence. Let’s imagine Bilaam the Midianite, is the social influencer par excellence of his generation, a deceitful, manipulative, money-grabbing purveyor of populism.

And there is a defeat of the Midianite plot by means of a strike-back, from Israel, of brutal force. I know the term is loaded, but the Israelite strike-back against the Midianites who attacked Israel is genocidal.

All the men are murdered - וַיַּֽהַרְג֖וּ כׇּל־זָכָֽר – and when Moses hears this,

וַיִּקְצֹ֣ף מֹשֶׁ֔ה עַ֖ל פְּקוּדֵ֣י הֶחָ֑יִל

וַיֹּ֥אמֶר אֲלֵיהֶ֖ם מֹשֶׁ֑ה הַֽחִיִּיתֶ֖ם כׇּל־נְקֵבָֽה׃

Moses became angry with the military officers – and said to them, ‘you’ve let the women live’!?

And so some vast number of women are killed as well.

And the strike-back against Midian, recorded in Numbers 31 becomes a sort of template for the doctrine that seems part of Israel’s contemporary Jewish values in this time of war – the doctrine that if you come for us, we’ll come for you harder and if we don’t entirely wipe you out, we’ll leave you unable to come after us again.

And so, if you are looking to understand where Israel, the current Nation State, the one that has suffered such an egregious attack, grounds its morality in turning round to those outside the borders – who can never understand the reality of life inside the borders – and says to these people – how dare you criticise us.

And if you are looking to understand where Israel, the current Nation State, the one that has suffered such an egregious attack, gets its morality in conducting a strike-back against those who even associated by nationality with an egregious attack with brutal force –

You can find answers in this week’s Torah reading.

And what of the other point of view? - the point of view that finds no comfort in the Torah mandating the genocide of the Midianites.

Is this other view, frankly the view I hold, just some kind of wishy-washy liberalism that misses the central message of Judaism – you have to kill them before they kill you?

I think not.

I think the first thing to say about the genodical strike-back launched against the Midianites is that it doesn’t work, or at least it doesn’t work for very long. The Midianites pop up again in the Torah.

In Joshua Midian is back and subjugating Israel for seven years, stripping the Israelite harvests so people were forced to live in mountain caves. Gideon strikes back against the Midianites in that time, but then come other enemies who pop up, some more and some less frequently, some can be defeated militarily, and others can’t.

The destruction of the Temple in the Year 70CE – and we are in the midst of the Three Weeks – the anniversary of that defeat - if you read Josephus, has to do with a failure of the leadership of Israel to realise that pursuing a solely military response to the Romans was doomed to fail, and that the survival of Israel at all, was due to a more sophisticated, softer form of diplomacy – Yochanan Ben Zakai went to the leader of the Romans and negotiated a way for the people of Israel to survive.

Shaul Maggid wrote in a Substack, that, “The entire framework of what we call Judaism emerged in the wake of destruction [of the Temple in Jerusalem. That framework] was a set of values and an ethos that, while not pacifist, eschewed the state violence to which the Jews were victim, and developed a way of surviving catastrophe through living in a covenantal promise of divine protection through fidelity to Torah.”

It’s not that violence never has a place, but that we, as Jews, found ways to respond to the violent threat of those who hate us without always resorting or seeking to resort to overwhelming violence. Sometimes, the softer more diplomatic efforts worked for longer periods of times, sometimes shorter periods of time and sometimes they didn’t work at all. But then the same can be said of the effectiveness of the resort to overwhelming violence.

The point is that we developed sophisticated responses to even the most egregious enemies. Judaism didn’t develop as a faith predicated on the over-ridingly violent response to violence every time we experienced violence. In fact, by and large, we eschewed violent response to egregious actions, even when the Torah mandates otherwise.

There are a slew of deeply morally and ethically awful things that Torah attempts to solve with violence; stubborn and rebellious children, adulterous wives, cities of idolatry and the like, and time and time again Judaism evolved away from the primal, literal understanding of – if you do something awful, I will do something more awful back. Even the very sharpest articulation of a violent response to someone who wishes us harm – the Din Rodef, gets contained and limited and bound into a place where it is not allowed to motivate the violent response to the threat of violence.

Let do that a bit more carefully.

Din Rodef is drawn from a line in Exodus about discovering someone breaking into your house at nighttime. The rabbis make an assumption that a day-time thief thinks there’s no-one at home, they only want your property – you can’t kill them claiming the protection of this law of Rodef, but a night-time burglar thinks you are going to be in, and that means they need to be ready to deal with you – and so you should have the protection to hashken lehorgo.

But no sooner than the Rabbis articulate that idea, they are limiting it, placing equivocation on it, warning that it’s not a carte-blanche to avail ethical responsibility for unjustifiable violence. For there can be no carte-blanche to avoid ethical responsibility for unjustifiable violence. That is the central Jewish value even in, especially in, a time of war.

And then there’s the thing that Rav Lichtenstein said about accountability and leadership. It’s not enough, I think, to expect the leaders of Israel show accountability for the failures that resulted in the atrocities of October 7^th – though goodness only knows, that would be a start.

I think the leaders of Israel should show accountability for the failure to seek and articulate anything other than hatred for Palestinians.

I follow a fascinating Chareidi Rav on Istagram – Rav Avraham Mordechai Gottlieb, a scion of The Ashlag. He recently shared this idea https://www.instagram.com/ravgotliv/

People, he suggested, are quick to hate the Rashanut – the wickedness in others, and quick to draw attention to the Tzidkaniyut – the righteousness in ourselves. But we have it backwards, he suggests. We should rush to love the Tzidkaniyut in others and hate the Rashanut in ourselves.

I think it’s a brilliant observation. We are so quick to point out others’ flaws that we don’t stop to consider ourselves as people containing – as all humans do, a balance of both righteousness and wickedness. And we don’t stop to consider even our enemies contain - as all humans do - a balance of righteousness and wickedness.

Violence might sometimes be justifiable. It might be necessary to strike back violently when we are attacked. But to justify the violence we need to do more than hate the wickedness in others. We need to hate the wickedness in ourselves, the wickedness that inflames a passion to strike back harder against anyone who strikes at us, that responds with an iota more brutality than is absolutely required.

And to show accountability for that wickedness in ourselves, we need to welcome accountability and scrutiny, and oversight. We can’t simultaneously justify our acts of violence and seek to shut down the scrutiny. If we do, we risk persuading ourselves that our acts of violence are justified when they might not be.

There’s a rabbinic tradition about anger and violence and the strike-back against the Midianites.

When soldiers come back to report they have slayed all the Midianite men

וַיִּקְצֹ֣ף מֹשֶׁ֔ה עַ֖ל פְּקוּדֵ֣י הֶחָ֑יִל

Moses was angry with the military officers

וַיֹּ֥אמֶר אֲלֵיהֶ֖ם מֹשֶׁ֑ה הַֽחִיִּיתֶ֖ם כׇּל־נְקֵבָֽה׃

And he calls for the death of the women as well.

In the Torah, this passage is followed by a passage in which a rule about ritual purity is taught to the Children of Israel not by Moses, but by his nephew, Elazar.

And the Talmud, in Pesachim 66b^[1] says Elazar is the one to pass on this teaching since Moshe just advocated for violence in anger – Moses’ anger resulted in the teaching being hidden from him

אִיעֲלַם מִינֵּיהּ.

Moshe lost the ability to be a holy leader because he advocated for violence in anger

“As Reish Lakish teaches כׇּל אָדָם שֶׁכּוֹעֵס חׇכְמָתוֹ [ונְבוּאָתוֹ]

מִסְתַּלֶּקֶת מִמֶּנּוּ,

If a person loses their temper, even a wise person or a prophet, their wisdom and their prophetic insight depart from them.”

It’s easy to be angered when someone does something atrocious and people we love are hurt – but we cannot justify striking back in anger. We have to learn to sublimate that rising up of righteous indignation for our own righteousness, for it so, so rarely will be righteous.

That’s another Jewish value in a time of war.

The angry genocidal instruction to wipe out the Midianites isn’t left to stand as a model for our time. It can’t be a model of our time. Judaism has evolved away from allowing it to be a model for our time. There are other paths, challenging yes, requiring us to force back the rush of anger that rises in us, yes, requiring us to refuse to focus on hating our foes, even if our foes hate us, yes.

But so be it.

For the other option is to be locked into cycles of violence that go back to the time of the Midianites and still, God help us all, cycle through until today.

Shabbat Shalom

The Biggest Organising Principle in the Torah

 I came across, this week, a new version – to me - of an old argument.

The old argument, between two rabbis both of whom have been dead for almost 2000 years is about the Klal Gadol BaTorah – the central organising principle of the Torah.

If you could strip the entire Jewish tradition back to just one verse – what would you go for.

 

Rabbi Akiva, says that the Klal Gadol -greatest organising principle of the Torah is Love your neighbour as yourself – Vahavta LeReicha Camocha – Lev 19:18.  It’s a popular answer. It comes in amongst the top two verses Jesus goes for in the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

But Ben Azzai has a different suggestion, and his verse from Genesis 5:1) is less well known.

Zeh sefer toledot adam beyom b’ra elohim adam bidmut elohim asa oto.

This is the book of the descendents of Adam on the day God created Adam in the image God.

It’s an odd verse. For a start it doesn’t seem to demand anything, doesn’t seem to get a person to do anything.

But I think Ben Azzai has the same problem, or maybe the same three problems with Akiva’s favourite verse, Jesus’ favourite verse as I do.

Vahavta LeReicha Camocha – Love your neighbour as yourself sounds great,

Problem One

What if you don’t love yourself? What about people experiencing a darkness in terms of how they think of themselves?

Problem Two

What if the thing you love actually causes other people pain? Should you do painful things to other people just because you like them being done to you?

And the biggest problem of them all

What if you can look at another human being and decide – they aren’t my neighbour?

What if you look at someone and because, I don’t know, of the colour of their skin, or their sexuality, or their passport, or their religion, that they aren’t your neighbour – Loving your neighbour as you love yourself isn’t going to stop a person from being sexist, racist, antisemitic or any of the rest of it.

I think it’s pretty clear that Rabbi Akivah would never countenance sexism, racism or any of the rest of it, but there are these three problems with his Klal Gadol.

That’s what I think Ben Azzai knew when he said that the greatest Klal in the Torah is

Zeh sefer toledot adam beyom b’ra elohim adam bidmut elohim asa oto.

This strange, not very famous verse that tells us that every human being is created in the Image of the Divine and that we all descend from the same Adam – the same first human being.

So even if you are feeling a darkness, courage!, you are made in the Image of God.

So when it comes to how we treat other people, the really important thing to know is that they too are created in the image of God, and therefore if we cause them pain, in their unique different never-been-seen-before ways of experience joy or pain, if we cause them pain we diminish the image of God in the world. Whoof – now that’s a reason to care about how we treat our fellow human beings.

And you, you just can’t treat another human being as worth less than you, for any reason, and certainly not based on their gender or sexuality or faith or skin colour, because they – just as you – are equally in the image of the one God who transcends all this human pettiness.

 

Well that’s the old version of the argument about the Klal Gadol B’Torah between Rabbi Akiva and Ben Azzai. It turns up in a Midrash called the Sifra which is around 1800 years old.

 

And then, this week, I came across a new version of the argument, my thanks to Rabbi Sammy Rubin. And Rabbi Sammy found it in something written by Rabbi Sacks, and Rabbi Sacks, found it in a collection of teachings of great Rabbi of C16 Prague, Yehuda Low.[1]

In this new-to-me version of the argument there’s another disputant, Shimon Ben Pazzi, who gets up and suggests a he’s got an even greater Klal than Rabbi Akiva and Ben Azzai.

That takes a lot of guts – the bar is set, already, pretty high.

But Shimon Ben Pazzi’s verse comes from the Torah reading we read today – Parshat Pinhas, so, hold on to your kippot – what’s he got?

אֶת־הַכֶּ֥בֶשׂ אֶחָ֖ד תַּעֲשֶׂ֣ה בַבֹּ֑קֶר וְאֵת֙ הַכֶּ֣בֶשׂ הַשֵּׁנִ֔י תַּעֲשֶׂ֖ה בֵּ֥ין הָֽעַרְבָּֽיִם׃

You shall offer one lamb in the morning, and the other lamb you shall offer at twilight.

You’ve got to be kidding.

With a choice of Loving your neighbour as yourself, and the creation of every human being in the image of God, Shimon Ben Pazzi goes for

אֶת־הַכֶּ֥בֶשׂ אֶחָ֖ד תַּעֲשֶׂ֣ה בַבֹּ֑קֶר וְאֵת֙ הַכֶּ֣בֶשׂ הַשֵּׁנִ֔י תַּעֲשֶׂ֖ה בֵּ֥ין הָֽעַרְבָּֽיִם׃

You shall offer one lamb in the morning, and the other lamb you shall offer at twilight.

Give him a second. He’s on to something.

This verse – Numbers 28:4 is a call to service, a call to be prepared to make a sacrifice. Interestingly the sacrifice is the daily sacrifice – the twice daily sacrifice. It’s not the weekly Shabbat special offering or the in a while special festival offering. It’s a command to show us and Lkarev – The Hebrew is usually translated as to make a sacrifice, but really it means to come close, to turn up twice a day for life.

And the more I think about it, the more I think its brilliant.

Because I don’t really care if a person do the right thing once. Anyone can be nice once. Shira, as amazingly as you’ve done today, you’ve done it once. And the real test is – what you are you going to do tomorrow?

And this thing that we are to do – this lamb offering, it’s a sort of charitable gift, it’s pitched, right about here; neither so incredibly complex that we could never hope to meet the standard of our very very best effort, but nor is it a soft-option, something that doesn’t pull in effort and attention.

It’s the sort of Jewish equivalent of trying to do a good deed every morning and every evening. It’s the sort of Jewish equivalent of getting up every morning and going to be every evening saying the Shema, or making regular charitable contributions, or decisions to keep pushing at the things we know we should be doing with our life, that can feel a little repetitive or less immediately gratifying than, I don’t know, Youtube or buying the latest plastic tat on Amazon.

What I think Shimon Ben Pazzi is asking us is to try every morning and every evening to live up to the miracle that is our life. He’s asking us to commit to try every morning and every evening to live out our values and sense of who we want to be. Or perhaps more precisely he’s saying that this level of commitment, this is the Klal Gadol BaTorah – the central organising principle of the Torah.

And that’s a big ask in a complex time.

We live in a time where the central organising principle of secular society is live your own best life – as if self-centred immediate gratification isn’t, in fact the greatest danger we humans pose to each other and the planet we live. We would be much better swapping that principle for Rabbi Akiva’s loving your neighbour as you love yourself, for Ben Azzai’s principle about the creation of every human being in the image of God and certainly Shimon Ben Pazzi’s principle drawn from this week’s Parasha of אֶת־הַכֶּ֥בֶשׂ אֶחָ֖ד תַּעֲשֶׂ֣ה בַבֹּ֑קֶר וְאֵת֙ הַכֶּ֣בֶשׂ הַשֵּׁנִ֔י תַּעֲשֶׂ֖ה בֵּ֥ין הָֽעַרְבָּֽיִם׃.

Shabbat Shalom

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[1] https://www.sefaria.org/Netivot_Olam%2C_Netiv_Ahavat_Reia.1.4?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en

Please Use AI, by Jo Atkins-Potts

I was taken by this poem;

read– so it seems - by a real human and written by a real human also.

Please use AI when your mother dies.

Ask it what grief feels like

Let it explain bereavement in 12 clear bullet points

Do not spend years finding her in the supermarket by the tomatoes she always bought.

Discovering new ways to miss her.

Please use AI the next time you fall in love.

Ask it how to know whether someone is the one.

It will give you a faster answer than watching a person become familiar

Learning how they take their tea, which floorboards will wake them, how their silence sounds when something is wrong.

Please use AI for your wedding vows, your eulogies, your apologies

Why struggle for the right words when a machine can give you beautiful ones?

I was struck, listening to Atkins-Potts’ poetry, by the religious nature of the tasks she ‘suggests’ for AI; grief, love, marriages, funerals. It’s certainly the case that I’m increasingly aware of AI ‘improved’ speeches as I accompany members from cradle to grave and how different they feel to old-school human written articulations. It’s true for example, that the AI ‘improved’ speeches are, precisely in the sense Atkins-Potts suggests, ‘better’ than their human-written counterparts. They are smoother. There is a success about their structure and length, and the ticking of all the right boxes. But these AI ‘improved’ speeches contain no grit.

I don’t mind lovers or mourners resorting to AI support when the emotions are beyond our ability to craft. But I prefer the way of our tradition, which offers the simplest, briefest ritual holder to allow a moment to be recognised before life will prove how much we remember, or mourn, or love; “you are betrothed to me with this ring,” is the only thing a lover says under the Chuppah. “I wish you a long life,” is the only thing that needs to be said at a Shiva. And then the real test is revealed as life moves forward. As Golda observes in Fiddler on the Roof, “after 25 years...”

The really important thing is not to run away from or down-value the necessary messiness of human life, not to elevate the value of “smoothness” above its more human counterpart, not to confuse successful structure, length and balance with honesty. Honesty and humanity, especially in the most important (and religious) parts of our lives, will be gritty, uneven and probably a little overlong. That, I believe – and I hope you’ve read this far – is the point.

How Goodly Are Your Tents, O Jacob. How Goodly Is Your Society, O Britain.

In this week’s double-Parasha Torah reading, the wicked Bilaam is commissioned to curse the tribes of Israel and finds himself unable to do so. Instead, he looks over the Israelite encampment and remarks Mah Tovu Ohalecha Yaacov.

What was it about our encampment, Rashi wants to know, that struck Bilaam as so good? Our greatest commentator supplies an answer drawn from Talmud Baba Metzia, “It was that the entrances of their tents weren’t directed one facing the other.” The Mishnah in Baba Metzia is concerned with how houses should be set up to ensure privacy. But I wonder if what really made the ancient society of Israel good in its sprawl of non-lined-up tents had nothing to do with privacy and everything to do with a celebration of the multi-directionality of how each of our ancestors set up their individual tent.

It’s easy to imagine that a society is at its best when everything is lined up neatly in disciplined rows. There’s a certain kind of efficiency that arises when everything and everyone is neatly arrayed. It can feel optimised. But optimisation isn’t the same as goodness. Efficiency isn’t the same as delightful and vibrant. Humans are designed to be different. I love the Mishnah in Sanhedrin which suggests that the reason all humanity began with the creation of a single Adam is to demonstrate God’s magnificence, for when a King of flesh and blood creates a coin to mint, each subsequent coin comes out the same, but when the King of Kings, the Holy Blessed One, mints a coin, each of us come out diverse and unique.

I’m just back from three days as part of the Senior Faith in Leadership Programme hosted at Windsor Castle, spending time with Christian, Muslim and even different-to-me Jewish faith leaders. I’m living in a society that is richer – both pecuniary and culturally – because of its openness to difference. Actually, I’m only tolerated here, as a Jew, because of a conception of British society that knows – even we struggle always to remember – that we are better as a society because we don’t insist everyone lines up their tents in efficient normativity. It feels a dangerous thing to claim, at a time when society seems intent in retreating away from a celebration of human difference. Indeed, I think there is something irreducibly radical about the claim. It requires a suspension of the reflex animalistic response to the outsider – fight or flight. This suspension opens up possibilities that are, perhaps, invisible in the immediate moment we are confronted by difference, but far richer not only in spite of their immediate invisibility, but precisely because of their transcending what we can immediately understand. Perhaps this is why the Mitzvah of loving the stranger sits alongside the Mitzvah of loving God and loving our fellow. We need to be reminded that goodness requires a love of that which we don’t understand in all its sprawling complexity.

Shabbat Shalom

Thoughts on a Thread of Blue

 

At the end of this week’s Torah reading comes the passage that articulates the Mitzvah of Tzitzit, fringes; a thread of blue tied into each corner of a four-cornered garment.

 

The obligation is explained this way – we are to look at the Tzitzit and remember all the Mitzvot. Tzitzit serves as a sort of physical mnemonic. It’s hard to remember everything we wish to be – so we wrap ourselves up in an aide-memoir. Tzitzit serve as a sort of CBT – cognitive behavioural therapeutic practice serving, at the very least, to inure us from, as the Torah states, “going after your heart and after your eyes which lead you astray – Zonim.”

 

That Hebrew word, Zonim, has a licentious quality picked up in a glorious – if adult-rated – moment in Talmud Menachot where a student, renowned for his particular interest in Tzitzit, is drawn to spend four hundred gold coins on a Zonah - prostitute (not recommended). As he strips off his clothes, the Talmud reports, his Tzitzit slap him in the face, and he comes to his senses. Would that all the licentious challenges of the world could be so confidently defeated.

 

But there is something very powerful in allowing Halachah – Jewish observance  - to pull us away from running after the inclinations of our heart and eyes. Observance of Shabbat should keep us aloof from an utter dependence on our phones. Observance of Kashrut should sensitise us to the values of thinking about the food we place in our bodies. Observance of prayer should remind us to be grateful for the gifts of our lives and instil in us the knowledge that our own concerns and understandings should not be confused with the greater needs and truths of the Universe. This is the ‘training’, I think, that the Talmud is offering when it comes to explaining the colour of the original thread that the Torah commands to be inserted into the Tzitzit. Techelet, a bluish ink derived from the shells of the Murex Trunculus snail,  “resembles the sea, the sea resembles the sky, and the sky resembles the Throne of Glory.” We look at the blue thread to be reminded of bigger things and the very biggest of things.

 

The point is that the individual rituals- not just Jewishly informed rituals, but I’m thinking primarily of Halachah- spill over from individual practices to shape our lives and bring our actions into line with the values we often say we want to live by – but struggle to make tangible in a world so full of distractions. Observance shapes our imagination and the impact we have in the world. Sometimes a thread of blue isn’t just a thread of blue.

 

Shabbat Shalom

Order and Chaos As We Open the Book of BeMidbar / Numbers

 

BeMidbar, or the Book of Numbers, contains two very different kinds of material.

At its opening, the Book is resplendently ordered. Each adult male member of each Tribe is counted and arranged around the central Sanctuary. Specific roles are allocated for specific sub-groups, and everything feels ready for the grand departure from the foothills of Mount Sinai.

 

Then everything goes wrong. Dispute, grumbling, faithlessness, rebellion, blame-mongering and failure mark the second part of the Book.

 

It’s a dynamic held, I think, in the relationship between the two names used to refer to the book – Numbers (or Sefer HaPikudim) – ordered, and BeMidbar (or Wilderness) – chaotic.

 

It’s a dynamic at play, also, in our own community. Last Sunday, the Board of Deputies hosted a cross-communal rally to oppose antisemitism. Everyone was invited. What could possibly go wrong? Well, actually, not quite everyone was invited; there were lines drawn that included some and excluded others. There have been reports of assaults, booing, and placards being pulled away (which, of course, I condemn, but I want to make a different point). The attempt to perfectly organise a unity of humanity – any humanity, but certainly the Jewish subsection of humanity – will always be doomed to fail.

 

“Hell,” wrote Sartre in his 1944 play No Exit, “is other people.” Sartre’s line arises from the impositions on personal freedom that arise in a ‘crowd’ of merely three characters. In our contemporary existence, as part of a world of billions of interconnected souls, it might be getting worse. We certainly seem increasingly resistant to the notion that deference should be paid to those who wish to cohere us into uniform blocks of collective identity. That, in many ways, is a good thing. But this resistance also threatens to increase atomisation, loneliness, jeering and setting ourselves against our fellows. These things are destroying the fabric of our society.

 

Saying we support tolerating ‘acceptable differences,’ while booing those differences we deem ‘unacceptable,’ is too thin a protestation. It’s too easy to set the line between ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ difference wherever we feel comfortable, and we end up accepting no difference at all. One of my particular current concerns about the Jewish community is that we are attacking both each other and those with whom we should be building alliances.

 

Washing our hands of the whole messy business of attempting to stand together, in solidarity with different human beings, similarly may feel attractive, but it is ultimately unacceptable. “It is not upon you to complete the work,” warned Rabbi Tarfon (ultimately martyred as a result of Roman persecution) “but nor are you permitted to abstain from it.”

 

We have to learn to celebrate difference, admire those who take different views from our own and applaud people who see the world differently from us. We need to imagine other people’s views from their perspective, not our own. The vision of the future we would all wish for is, of course, varied and multiple. We must support and model that desire with greater energy.

 

I have a tiny, delightful way to exercise that muscle to suggest for this Shabbat. It’s Cheder Shabbat. Our younger members will be in providing their particular brand of slightly chaotic leadership. It won’t be dreamily organised. It shouldn’t be dreamily organised. It’s a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the chaos of difference.

 

Shabbat Shalom

Sunday - Something I’m Delighted to Share and Something I Wish I Didn’t Have To

For those experiencing life as darker than we would wish, I have a recommendation. Come to Shul, Sunday evening for some glorious music. We are welcoming Sharqia, with guest artist Yoav, to share their Middle Eastern grooves. We have a hammered dulcimer, an oud, clarinets, saxophones and … Yoav is back. It will be a very special celebration of the Jewish music of the Middle East and North Africa. 

7pm, Sunday 10^th May. Advance booking is warmly appreciated - https://shulcloud.newlondon.org.uk/event/sharqiah-middle-eastern-grooves

 

This is the more painful piece.

There will be a major gathering in opposition to antisemitism also on Sunday, 1pm on Whitehall, opposite Number 10. It shouldn’t have to happen. Jews shouldn’t be being attacked for being Jews, and Jewish buildings shouldn’t be firebombed for being used by Jews. We shouldn’t be experiencing fear. Our concerns and demands must be clearly and publicly expressed before those who have the power and responsibility to ensure the safety of all the inhabitants of these isles. I’ll be there. If anyone wants to travel down and stand together as part of a New London Synagogue presence, please let me know.

The last major communal rally I attended, in October 2025, was exceptional. Powerful, united and moving. Others have been painful, complex and riven by the challenges of representing a British Jewish community that does not speak with a single voice on, frankly, anything. Speakers have been booed. Speakers have used the platforms at communal rallies to make what, to me, have felt inappropriate speeches. In general, I don’t like big rallies. But I’ll be there on Sunday. 

On Tuesday night, three local MPs, all taking the Labour whip, held a public meeting on antisemitism at St. John's Wood Synagogue. I went. There were moments of fractiousness, moments where the backdrop of national politics elbowed its way into the discussion – as was always to be expected. It wasn’t an easy space. I’m glad I was there.

The Board of Deputies and Jewish Leadership Council, who are leading the organisation of the rally on Sunday, have made decisions about who to bring into the list of sponsoring organisations. Those are hard decisions to get right. Political speakers have been invited, prompting an outpouring of disagreement about who should and shouldn’t have been invited. One of the original sponsoring organisations made a decision to pull out; again, that’s a tough call. I share many of these concerns. I don’t think the rally on Sunday will be an easy space, not in a physical sense – I’m confident the police and CST will look after our physical safety – but emotionally. There will be those on the platform and in the crowd who will take the opportunity of this rally to express views with which I disagree. But I’ll be there. I’m going to take a placard. I don’t really like placards. Mine will read, “Every Human Being is Created in the Image of the Divine.” It’s as close to a slogan as I am ever likely to feel comfortable standing behind.

The way that this mess of a societal problem gets better is that we learn to stand together when we don’t fully agree. We learn to handle the impossibility, or certainly the ineffectiveness, of only being present in places of pure comfort.

We need to remember that those who are working to bring us together are not our enemies, even if their means are misguided or even self-defeating in our own eyes. We need to put more effort into standing in uncomfortable places and hearing uncomfortable voices. And we need to wave our own placards high. As I say, I’ll be there on Sunday for the rally in Whitehall. With a placard.

Then I’m hugely looking forward to getting back home and then coming to hear Sharqia in the evening. Balance. It’s a narrow bridge, and aside from not being afraid, we need balance.

Shabbat Shalom

 

How To Be Happy in Unhappy Times - Thoughts on 'Special Needs'

 In honesty, I’m having a lousy time at the moment – too much worry, too much hate and not enough joy.

If you are anything like me, here are a couple of IG reels that have lifted my heart, both connected to special needs.

https://www.instagram.com/reels/DYA2gY2u_mY/

and

https://www.instagram.com/reels/DX-QcSePKQ9/

As I was wiping away the result of some dust clearly having got in my eye … twice!, and thinking of posting this, the fact that both these posts feature special needs somehow figures into what was making these posts so special for me.

Two thoughts

One is thank you. I owe an enormous debt to everyone who has opened my eyes to what happens when we make accommodations to the needs of each individual in each of our particularities. I’ve been reading the newly published A Different Spirit: Creating Meaningful B’nai Mitzvah for Children with Disabilities (H/T Howard Blas and Ilana Trachtman). It’s, largely, a collection of first-person narratives of those who have been on a meaningful BM journey, or loved someone who was, or wasn’t supported, or teachers, tutors, rabbis and the whole constellation. And aside from picking up some terrific tips for our own approach at New London, I’ve realised that the image of God emerges from these encounters in a way that it’s so easy to miss ‘normally.’ I’ve had the privilege of supporting special-needs journeys many times, and every time I’ve felt more lifted by what I have gained than challenged by the effort. Thank you.

The other is an obligation. There are still so many who find a single door-entry into Jewish life unfit for their needs; whether that be ramps or amplification, or patience, or the technical skill brought by a diverse range of therapeutic professionals or … The object has to be that every human being, again, for me there is no getting around the essential place of the doctrine of Tzelem Elohim in this – the image of God is vested in each of us precisely in our peculiarity and idiosyncrasy – finds a pathway through which they can enter with decency and travel with pride. More to do.

But if, in the meantime, you want to feel a little happier about the world … click on the reels.

Parshat Emor - Polarity Management after the Golders Green Attacks

 I was at a Faith in Leadership Seminar on Wednesday morning. There were fifteen of us, Jews, Muslims and Christians in the midst of studying something called polarity management when one of our group – he works closely with the orthodox Chief Rabbi – sprinted out of the room.

The other Jews and I swapped glances and, expecting exactly what turned out to have happened, quietly checked our phones. And I’m sad, I’m angry and I’m just a little bit scared that this is the sermon I have to give today, on a great day, Clea, for you and your family.

But there is something in this idea of polarity management that, I think, is relevant and helpful in the context of the awful attack in Golders Green and also this week’s portion.

A polarity, in this context, is a twin of opposing ideas. We want both, we need both. But we can’t simultaneously have both. Rabbi Shoshana Boyd Gelfand, who was presenting the model to us, began with inhaling and exhaling – something simple to get us going. Do I want to inhale, do I need to inhale, of course, I need the oxygen. But if I focus only on inhaling, and forget to exhale, I’ll … well, you get the sense.

The point is that for any good thing in a polarity, there comes a point not only of a decrease of marginal utility, but a clear negative.

Let me do one that’s a little more personal for me – the polarity between confidence and humility. Is it good for me, for any of us, to be confident – sure. It’s how we get stuff done, it’s how we feel positive about who we are and what we can achieve. But too much leaning into the direction of confidence causes its own deficits – arrogance, overestimation of our own capacity, lack of curiosity and so on. Similarly, humility is great … right up until it isn’t.

And so, the work of polarity management is learning how to pre-empt the moment when our leaning in one pole or the other begins to defeat our over-arching goal and for those of us who fail to recognise our own proclivities, building the systems around us that can boost us, or limit us, as we err.

It’s a pattern that seems to apply so clearly to our reading today.

We have a goal – serving God – and the answer to the question – is it important to serve God in the best way we can? – is clearly yes.

So, at a certain point in our tradition, we start articulating all the ways in which we want the service of God to be perfect. According to the Parasha we read today, in order to serve in the Temple, a priest can’t be blind, or lame, or have a limb too short or too long or broken or a broken arm or a curved spine or a growth in their eye, or scarred or … and by the time the Mishneh Torah gets involved, there are a list of 90 ways in which a Priest is to be excluded from serving as a Priest because of one defect or another.

And it’s a polarity. Is it good for Priests to be perfect, well yes, but you can see the problem of the lean in this direction, it starts to be exclusory, elitist and frankly rather nasty.

And if you follow the unfolding of the Rabbinic tradition there is something truly extraordinary about the way the Rabbis gently pull back the unbridled, unsustainable and ableist position taken in the Torah text itself and create something that is inclusive, celebrating the diversity in humanity and the acknowledging the essence of the divine in each human being. Just to be clear inclusivity, celebrating diversity and acknowledging the essence of the divine in each human being is also a goal, and also a pole.

 

No-one, priest or otherwise, performs Jewish sacrificial offerings anymore, but the Halachah when it comes to who gets to read from the Torah or lead the prayer services or bless the congregation by what is called Nesiyat Capaiyim – lifting up of the hands and offering the priestly blessing is the same.

 

There is an acknowledgement of the important of all these things being done perfectly, by unblemished humans without fault or failure, and then there is chipping away at the damaging unsustainable position.

To give an example – in Talmud Megillah 24b there is a teaching that a priest with dye seeped into the skin of their hands, or with rheumy eyes or with a speech defect shouldn’t lift up their hands to perform the priestly blessing but to each of these issues there is a Rabbi – Rav Huna, Rabbi Yochanan, Rabbi Yehuda – who comes to say that is the community is familiar with that priest, they are not to be excluded.

 

Or the question of who gets to lead services – that’s dealt with in Talmud Taanit, there’s a list of things that make, by the time the Shulchan Arukh and Rama have dealt with the matter includes , “being free from sin and never to have been the subject of gossip not even in their childhood. They should be humble and desired by their community. They must look nice and have a pleasant voice … they should be first into the Synagogue and last out, nor should they be foolish or frivolous.” (SA OH 53:5). Well Anthony, you are pretty terrific, but that’s a list that would preclude you, me, all of us. And then the Halachah shifts towards the other pole – “If you can’t find someone who has all these qualities, choose [as well as you can].”

 

It’s not wokeness gone mad, it’s not a giving up on the value of having someone of quality lead services, it’s management of a polarity. It’s a kind of maturity, an expression of sense, an ability to see that focussing entirely on one side of a complex issue will destroy the greater goal.

 

And so to these awful attacks of Wednesday and the weeks before. What a time.

What’s the goal -  safety. That the Jews of this country – any country and any people – should be able to live our lives free of fear and free of being subject to attack and abuse. Put like that, it’s astounding that this feels even worth the breath of expressing.

And there are two poles.

There is our physical security – the sort of things that are protected by walls and fences and security guards and the sorts of security measures we encountered on the way in today. And these are a good. And thank you so much to our security team, our professional guards and our security volunteers.

And then there is the pole of our acceptance in broader society – and to achieve that we have to engage, we have to welcome in strangers and talk to people who disagree with us and be prepared to be in spaces we will feel, as Jews, today, a little unsure, a little uneasy perhaps.

There will need to be a management of the polarity.

An over-emphasis on building higher and higher walls to surround us will lead us to be ever more isolated, closed in and embittered. An over-emphasis on openness threatens our immediate security. Pursuit of either pole, without committing to its alternate, will fail us.

The challenge is being committed to both pieces of work. Of course, the physical security is vitally necessary – and this is a time to lean more strongly towards that polarity, awful as it is to say so. But it can’t be the only way we attempt to build towards our goal of being safe and secure in this country – or any other country.

We are going to have to manage our polarities, accept that a total focus on only one response to the complexities that face us will, eventually, be our undoing.

 That’s a tough call, especially today, especially this week, when we just want to pray for the healing of the injured and call out to those who have responsibilities for our safety to do more to provide us with more funding and more policing – and those calls are reasonable. But can’t take all our attention.

May we take inspiration from the Rabbinic approach to the pursuit of perfection in our Divine Service – the unfolding of traditions that begin with these verses from Parshat Emor. May we find the security we seek with a balance so easy to us, it feels as secure as the movement from the inhale to the exhale. May we all know peace. May there soon come a time when every person will sit under their vine and fig tree with none to make them afraid.

וְיָשְׁב֗וּ אִ֣ישׁ תַּ֧חַת גַּפְנ֛וֹ וְתַ֥חַת תְּאֵנָת֖וֹ וְאֵ֣ין מַחֲרִ֑יד

 

Shabbat Shalom

And then came the Holy Blessed One and slew the Angel of Death - Reflections on the Death Penalty in Israel

I didn’t want to do a political sermon on the First Day of Pesach – I get it, we were all up late last night and everything before that. And I wasn’t – looking at the passage of this new piece of legislation in Israel – right up until I was reflecting on the last line of the Seder.

So … here we go.

 

I didn’t want to do a political sermon on the First Day of Pesach – I get it, we were all up late last night and everything before that. And I wasn’t – looking at the passage of this new piece of legislation in Israel – right up until I was reflecting on the last line of the Seder.

So … here we go.

Three days ago, a bill, championed by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir passed its third reading in the Knesset, 62-47, with Prime Minister Netanyahu voting in favour. Ben Gvir was seen jubilantly handing out champagne to those who voted in its favour.

I’m not sure how much of the detail of the Bill registered with those in this country.,

It mandates death by hanging as the default punishment for West Bank residents convicted of deadly terrorist acts committed by a person who “negates the existence of the State of Israel”. While judges can opt for life imprisonment under ill-defined “special circumstances,” the death penalty would otherwise be mandatory and be carried out within 90 days of sentencing. There is no right of appeal. And the death sentence requires only a simple majority of judges on the military court panel – there’s no jury, no need for a unanimous decision and the ‘judges’ at an Israeli Military Court of First Instance need only include one legally trained judge.

The Times of Israel reported the vote this way,

“This is a day of justice for the victims and a day of deterrence for our enemies. No more revolving door for terrorists, but a clear decision. Whoever chooses terrorism chooses death,” said a jubilant Ben Gvir, sporting the golden noose-shaped lapel pin he and other advocates of the measure have donned to symbolize their campaign for the death penalty.”

The best that can be said for the Bill is that it’s a response to the anger felt by those who have watched prisoner swaps where the release of Israelis kidnapped and taken into Gaza has forced Israel’s hand into freeing, in some cases twice, terrorists who have attacked Israelis. Over 1,000 terrorists were released by Israel in the deal to free Gilad Shalit in 2011, including Yahya Sinwar, who planned the October 7^th attack.

It remains true that decent, peace-abiding Israelis are and have been threatened by terrorist violence and that they have a right to live in the freedom we all sang about last night. And that the ensuring of this freedom requires, again, in the language of last night, a Yad Chazakah, a strong hand. Turning the other cheek is not a way to negotiate with terrorists. I know that. My mind goes to the Open Letter that Martin Buber wrote to Mahatma Gandhi in 1936, in the midst of the Nazi surge towards the Holocaust.

Ghandi had called on Jews to oppose the Nazis with Satyagraha – non-violence. Buber responded,

When a voice that he has long known and honoured, a great voice and an earnest one, pierces the vain clamour and calls him by name, he is all attention. Here is a voice, he thinks, that can but give good counsel and genuine comfort,” But ...

And the letter continues with a juddering ‘But’

But what he hears - containing though it does elements of a noble and most praiseworthy conception, such as he expects from this speaker - is yet barren of all application to his peculiar circumstances. These words are in truth not applicable to him at all. They are inspired by most praiseworthy general principles, but the listener is aware that the speaker has cast not a single glance at the situation of him whom he is addressing, that he neither sees him nor knows him and the straits under which he labours.”

I get it’s hard in Israel, I get it’s hard to oppose terror nicely.

But this Bill is a disaster.

It’s unethical – in that it focuses only on Palestinian terror. What of the terror of West Bank settler Jews, responsible for death, arson, and, yes, seeking national elimination of the Palestinian people as a people? There is a wave of violence in the West Bank that is Jewish and is all but entirely unrestrained by legal process. You can’t, ethically, target only criminals of one ethnicity or religion in the attempt to bring an end to violence. It’s in Bedmidbar 15 and Vayikra 24, and Shemot 12

תּוֹרָה אַחַת, יִהְיֶה לָאֶזְרָח, וְלַגֵּר, הַגָּר בְּתוֹכְכֶם

You shall have one law for the citizen and the stranger dwelling strangely in your midst.

It’s misguided – in the faith it puts in the taking of life, God help us all, the excitement seen on the faces of the Bill’s proponents at the prospect of the taking of life.

You should terrify witnesses in a death penalty legal case, warns the Mishnah in Sanhedrin, because it’s not like a monetary case – you can’t pay back what you have taken as a punishment. When Cain killed Abel, God responds the, ‘Bloods of your brother call out to me,” – Damei Aicha -the Hebrew is in the plural to teach us that it’s not just the person killed, but their descendants and generations until the end of the world.

Rather, the entire direction of Rabbinic engagement with the deeply challenging question of how to deal with horrific acts perpetrated by one human being against another human being has been in the opposite direction.

When the Torah says, an eye for an eye, Rabbinic Judaism insists that is to be understood in terms of financial payments, not bodily violence.

When the Mishnah discusses the protections for death penalty cases, they ratchet up the protections, the number of judges who would have to agree - for one thing, they were all expert judges, secondly, there were 24, thirdly, a majority had to be clear - by one person was not enough - and there are more and more restrictions and checks on what might outherwise be a speedy - and unreliable and revenge driven - rush to take a life. Three members constituting a panel, only one of whom is a lawyer, decided by a simple majority is inconceivably narrow-minded. The Talmud determines that any Court that passes a death penalty even once in 70 years is a bloody Beit Din. That’s not meant as a good thing.

And then there is this. In Sanhedrin 41a,

We read that forty years before the destruction of the Temple, this has nothing to do with the destruction of the Temple, the Sanhedrin exiled itself from the one place in the Temple precinct where it was held possible to judge a Death Penalty case. They moved away from the Chamber of Hewn Stone so as not to be tempted into thinking that justice and death penalties can be partners.

And the idea that you go around wearing a gold noose lapel pin, cheering on a full-on embrace of death penalties with virtually no safeguards when it could not be more clear that this is motivated by an abnegation of Palestinian rights is chilling, it’s unethical, it’s un-Jewish, and it’s not going to help.

The thing that works, as we Jews have learnt from our own experience of genocides – from Lavan to Pharaoh to … well, it’s a long list, is hope. Hope is the thing that allows us to see a world which is more than an inevitable promise of only the escalation of violence.

I understand that it can feel like we live in a world where justice might feel nothing more than, “you hit me so I will hit you, so you hit me back, so I hit you back harder.” But this is not true, it’s not true of the human soul, and it’s not a true reflection of how even the most intractable geopolitical problems of humanity have been eased and even solved.

It’s terrifying and deeply depressing to see Israeli legislators excited about an escalation of violence wielded by Jewish hands, for the angel of death does not, and can not be allowed to have the last line. The last line belongs to God, who comes and offers a solution on the other side of death.

A recommendation – follow, support and seek to amplify the message of those Israelis and lovers of Israel who are opposing this Bill – it still faces a Supreme Court challenge. I recommend Rabbi Gilad Kariv Member of the Israeli Parliament, the New Israel Fund and Yachad. Don’t let the angel of death have the last line.

Chag Sameach

What To Do in the Aftermath of the Attack on the Ambulances of Hatzolah in Golders Green

 

What To Do in the Aftermath of the Attack on the Ambulances of Hatzolah in Golders Green

The destruction of ambulances is appalling and utterly unacceptable. It’s also been predictable and predicted. It’s an attack on not only the Jewish Community of this country, but on all British citizens and the very notion of what it means to be British. There’s police work to be done, political work to be done and my mind is on what it means to help build towards the sort of society we should all want to live in.

In the aftermath of the attack on the ambulances of Hatzolah, try these.

 

Do Something Good

              Be kind, support a cause, reach out to someone alone or in pain. In the words of In the words of Rev Anders Bergquist, “Be the best friend you can be to your fellow. Bring out the best in your fellow.” Money also helps, Hatzolah are in need of new ambulances. That’s a good cause - https://hatzola.org/donate/. Don’t let a bad action get away without drawing a good action in its wake.

 

Don’t hide

              Take care, of course take care, but it won’t help to hide who we are or how we are different from others around us. If we do, we increase our sense of isolation, misery and they’ll spot us anyway. To hide is to fail ourselves, to fail those who are also different in their own differences and to give strength to those who feel terror is an appropriate way to affect change in the world. Hen Mazzig writing after the Bad Bunny Superbowl Halftime Show, argued brilliantly that we should occupy space, that we shouldn’t worry about permission or ask for pity. “Belonging,” he wrote, “Is not a debt to pay or a favour to beg for. It is a reality we need to demonstrate. Minorities [and we are all part of a minority, one way or another] are not a ‘problem’ to be solved.”

 

Be precise in the use of language.

              Quite how we have come to a place where nuance has come to be a sign of weakness is bizarre. Language has a life of its own once it leaves our lips. It might be that 99.9% of my audience are going to hear my strident language and realise that I mean no physical harm towards those I critique. It might be that only a person affected by mental illness or trauma could possibly understand my strident use of language as justifying physical harm. But that 99.9% is not enough. Not even close to being enough. Language is the greatest gift we possess as human beings. It’s the greatest responsibility. It’s capable of causing the greatest amount of damage. It’s also the best tool we have if we want to mend, to bring compassion, to offer hope.

If we disagree with a person’s actions or opinions, disagree with their actions or opinions. State their opinions as they would have it stated. Don’t extrapolate from what they have said into something that might sound more outrageous in order to create a straw-figure more easily pilloried. It might not be them, or their opinion that gets pilloried. It might be someone else.

 

Amplify those who help

              If there are people you hear or see who are trying to build the world you want to be a part in, retweet them, share their message. Don’t fall for the notion that ‘no-one cares.’ There are plenty of people who care, they just need better megaphones. Be a megaphone for good. 

Goats, Flies and Freedom in an Unsafe World - Reflections on the Shabbat Before the New Moon of Nissan

 

Pesach is coming – first night Wednesday 1^st April. It’s an odd time to be preparing to celebrate freedom. There are those sprinting back and forth to shelters, and many more for whom shelter feels a far-off dream. That’s not even merely about Iran, Lebanon, Israel and others experiencing militarised conflict. There was an attack yesterday on a Synagogue in Michigan. One of my Detroit-based colleagues posted about his close connection to the team there. And then there is this creeping sense of violence and real and perceived offence hanging in the air; locally, nationally and internationally.

We are, as ever, grateful to our professional and volunteer security team and working closely with CST, local and national police and political leadership. But also, this is a good time for faith.

My mind turns to the almost-doggerel which ends the Seder; one little goat swept into a cycle of violence – the cat, the dog, the stick and on the list goes. But there is a vast and vital difference between the spiralling song of my non-Jewish youth – There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly, and this song about One Little Goat.

The song about the Old Lady ends in death, of course. But the song about the Goat ends with God defeating death, of course. As an act of faith – and I think it is an act of faith rather than a cool-headed geo-political calculation – we are not spiralling into only ever greater cycles of violence. As an act of faith, I claim there is a force greater than violence, stronger even than death. And with that faith position, if you join me in that faith position, we enter a sort of existential Game Theory experiment. If we hold a space for something to be more powerful than spiralling violence, we make it possible for something stronger than violence to thrive in this world. If we live our lives on the basis that violence is the greatest power in the world, we equally make it so.

I’m reflecting on something I heard, shared by a Vicar at a Mosque – such is my rabbinic existence. Last week, I attended an Interfaith Iftar hosted at the Regents Park Mosque at which the Vicar of St Johns Wood Church, The Revd Dr Anders Bergquist shared an observation about friendship (perhaps poorly transcribed by me). The Iftar itself, of course, was a radical act of hospitality offered by our Muslim cousins. And speaking at the dais, reflecting on the often-reported cycles of violence and hatred in our society, the Rev Anders made this simple but exquisite call, “Be friends,” he shared, “Be the best friend you can be to your fellow. Bring out the best in your fellow.”

He is right, of course, not only to observe that this possibility exists for us, even in our fear and seeking of shelter, but also that, if we dedicate ourselves to this task, we will bring out the best in each other. While that, in itself, will not bring an instant end to war, violence and oppression, it is the best, and I think single, task that can help, in the words of Maimonides, “tilt the scale for ourselves and the whole worlds towards the side of merit, causing deliverance and success,” and, dare we say it, building a world in which we, all of us, can be free. May it soon come.

Shabbat Shalom

Jewish Reflections on War and Peace

This is something I wrote in, I think  2018. A long time ago. Long before these most recent trials. It's in my book, Spiritual Vagabondry but I haven't posted it before here.

 

Judaism believes in peace, loves peace and prays and works towards peace. The greatest visions of the Bible are of the wolf lying down with lamb (Isaiah 11) and of swords being beaten into ploughshares (Isaiah 2). Beyond the Bible the Rabbis, in their codification of Jewish life, infused every major prayer experience of the Jew with the yearning for peace. The second century sage Rav Shimon son of Halafta, says ‘a blessing is useless unless it comes with peace.’[1] The great Medieval commentator Rabbi Yom Tov Isbili, known as the Ritba (Spain d. 1330) collated a list of codified Jewish prayers that have as their conclusion the plea for peace; it includes the grace after meals, the principle doxology (Kaddish), the central prayer of evening, morning and afternoon services (Amidah), the priestly blessing (Numbers 6) and others.[2] Judaism believes in peace.

 

But the Hebrew Bible also knows violence. The commandment lo tirzah (Exodus 20:13) is inaccurately translated in the King James Bible as ‘thou shall not kill.’ The correct rendition of the original Hebrew is ‘thou shall not murder.’ The Bible justifies and even demands violence, even unto killing, on too many occasions to list. That said there is a noteworthy attitude towards violence that suffuses not only the Bible, but also the project of Rabbinic Judaism. Time and time again in the Bible and Rabbinic texts one can see the impulse to violence and war subjected to controls designed to ameliorate the destructive potential of military brutality.

 

The Bible mandates (Deut 20 & 21) that an invading army should offer peace to a city before waging war against it. It demands that fruit trees, around an ancient city, are not destroyed by siege warfare, asking rhetorically ‘is a tree a person, to be besieged by you?’ It insists that any beautiful women captured in combat is not to be treated as chattel to be ‘used’ and/or abandoned at will … and the list goes on.

 

One can see the same tendency in Rabbinic texts.  Maimonides, (d. 1204) the greatest of medieval Jewish sages, set out precise Laws of War in his code the Mishneh Torah. One mandate demands that ‘when besieging a city in order to capture it, you should not surround it on all four sides, but only on three sides, allowing an escape path for anyone who wishes to save his life.’[3] Aside from noting the seeming military lunacy of a three-sided siege there are two other points to note when considering the significance of this kind of religious engagement with war. Firstly, while Maimonides is able to produce a Biblical verse to justify his codification (Numbers 31:7), on the face of it the verse mandates no such behaviour; Maimonides need not have included this mandate, he’s willing the mandate into existence driven by a greater sense and understanding of what Judaism must stand for. Secondly this militarily self-defeating mandate has had practical impact for the contemporary Israeli army, as will be discussed below.

 

The messy business of Israel’s contemporary engagement will be treated more extensively later in this paper, but it’s important to understand that for close to two thousand years Maimonides’ demands were of no practical import whatsoever. The dominant norm governing Judaism’s engagement with violence was not that of a military power, squaring military necessity and morality, but that of a wandering, stateless, army-less people subject to the attitudes to violence of other nations and nationally enshrined faiths. In 70CE the Romans destroyed the Israelite State based around Jerusalem, in the years before and after this all the other vestiges of Jewish national and military presence were also erased. Judaism became a people with no physical border to protect, no army and no possibility of waging war. From Selucids to Romans to Christians to Muslims, across time and place Jews have been persecuted, beaten, burnt, and, in a period as dark as humanity has experienced, been subject to a level of genocidal brutality beyond decent humans’ ability to imagine. Throughout almost two millennia of Diaspora existence Jews were forbidden from bearing arms and, by and large, accepted this and other externally imposed regulations as the cost of survival, of ‘doing business,’ in a world governed by foreign might. Jews became pacifists by circumstance. Any drive to conquer territory was sublimated into mercantile endeavour or the exegetical engagement characteristic of Rabbinic Judaism. In place of soldiers Judaism valorised scholars. The Rabbis even turned the soldiers of the Bible into intellectuals. The Book of Samuel refers to David, slayer of Goliath, as ‘a brave fighter and man of war.’  The Talmud explains this means he knew how argue his point in ‘the war of Torah.’[4] Offered only the opportunity of military surrender Judaism waged war on the entire notion of military bravado and, playing by rules they themselves constructed, declared themselves victorious without recourse to sword or bullet.

 

But by the beginning of the twentieth century Jews were growing weary of this purely exegetical triumph. The pacifism was being beaten out of them. By the dark years of the ’30s and ’40s the suggestion that Jews could respond to antisemitic violence with words alone seemed more than vapid, it bordered on the offensive. The great pacifist, Mahatma Ghandi wrote, in 1938, that the Jews of Germany should protest against Hitler only using non-violent means. “I am as certain as I am dictating these words that the stoniest German heart will melt [if only the Jews], adopt active nonviolence… I do not despair of his [Hitler's] responding to human suffering even though caused by him.”[5] The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber (hardly known as a militarist!) took Ghandi to task. The Jews of Germany, as Buber knew from personal experience, were dealing with a genocidal mania that would not respond to non-violence. Non-violent resistance in the face of utter brutality was capitulation. Of course said Buber, the violent response was one that could only be employed with ‘fear and trembling’ but “[I]f there is no other way of preventing the evil destroying the good, I trust I shall use force and give myself up into God's hands.”[6] Alongside its abnegation of violence and love of peace Judaism began to place increasing weight on the value of self-defence.

 

Then the wheels of history turned and Israel found itself with an army, a state and, arrayed around and even inside its borders, armed aggressors. Now what? Certainly ethical and religious factors have always been central to the vision of the defence of the Israeli State. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have an ethics code, drafted by religious leaders, professors, lawyers and generals and drummed into soldiers during training. The code articulates the values of ‘Human Dignity,’ ‘Responsibility,’ and ‘Purity of Arms’ – ‘IDF servicemen and women will use their weapons and force only for the purpose of their mission, only to the necessary extent and will maintain their humanity even during combat. IDF soldiers will not use their weapons and force to harm human beings who are not combatants or prisoners of war, and will do all in their power to avoid causing harm to their lives, bodies, dignity and property.’ [7] When soldiers fail to live up to values espoused in the code they can expect investigation and reprimand. But the challenges faced by the Israeli State do not fit easily into categories outlined in a document written in ivory towers. Terrorist aggressors usually dressed as civilians tend to launch attacks from and/or into densely populated areas full of civilians, both Arabs and Jews are liable to suffer the consequences of terrorist actions. Writing in the aftermath of Operation Cast Lead, December 2008, philosopher and member of the team who drafted the IDF Code, Moshe Halbertal has empathy for Israeli soldiers confronted by recognisable military violence, but no recognisable army, ‘By disguising themselves as civilians and by attacking civilians with no uniforms and with no front’ writes Halbertal ‘paramilitary terrorist organizations attempt nothing less than to erase the distinction between combatants and noncombatants on both sides of the struggle.’[8] Israel faces what Halbertal calls acts of ‘assymetrical warfare.’ It’s hard to balance out risks of loss and risks of collateral damage even in moments of security, let alone in the heat of incoming mortars and katyusha rockets.

 

The aftermath of an incident now fifty years old will serve as a test case from which to consider more contemporary religious responses. In 1953 Palestinian terrorists launched attacks on Israel from Kibiya, a village on the, then, Jordanian controlled, West Bank. The Israeli military responded ferociously. The village was all-but destroyed, many villagers were killed. It was an action with uncanny echoes for our times. Some religious leaders expressed no compunction in accepting the validity of violence in the face of terrorist attack on Jewish lives. Rav Shaul Yisraeli, who went on to become one of the heads of Yeshivat Mercaz Harav Kook justified the use of force as follows, ‘There is a place for acts of retribution and revenge against the oppressors of Israel. … They are responsible for any damage that comes to them, their sympathizers, or their children. They must bear their sin.  There is no obligation to refrain from reprisal for fear that it might harm innocent people, for we did not cause it.  They are the cause and we are innocent.’[9] This is the tough uncompromising perspective of a hawkish politician, but Yisraeli justified the attack on Kibiya with reference to a classic Rabbinic concept. The community of nations, Yisraeli claimed, believed these kinds of military actions were permissible, therefore Israel could avail herself of this international consensus in an application of a classic Rabbinic principle dina d’malkhuta dina – the law of the land is the law.[10] ‘The foundation of dina d’malkhutah dina relates not only to what transpires within a state, but also to international matters as is the accepted custom,’ claimed Yisraeli. Putting aside the issue of whether the international community would have accepted the legality of actions taken in Kibiyah, Yisraeli’s claim is that Israel should be judged by the standard of the ethics of nations at large. If the British bomb Dresden and the Americans lay waste to Hiroshima (both examples cited in support of his position), the Israelis can lay waste to Kibiya not only as a matter of military expediency, but also without religious qualm.

 

More critical positions also crystallised in the aftermath of the attack on Kibiyah. The philosopher and commentator Yeshayhu Leibowitz acknowledged the attack could be defended with reference to Rabbinic tradition or the standards of other nations, ‘but let us not try to do so. Let us rather recognize its distressing nature.’ Leibowitz compared Kibiya’s destruction to the Biblical tale of Dinah.[11] Dinah, daughter of Jacob, was kidnapped, taken to Shechem and raped, an action that resulted in her brothers destroying the town and its male inhabitants. Leibowitz claimed the brothers ‘had a decisive justification [for launching the all-out raid]. Nevertheless, because of this action, their father Jacob cursed the two tribes for generations…Let us not establish [the modern State of Israel] on the foundation of the curse of our father Jacob!’[12]

 

Both these responses – the hawkish and the cursing – can be observed in contemporary Jewish and Israeli discourse responding to contemporary acts of Israeli military violence, but there is a third way which, I argue is truer to Jewish discourse and analysis. Rav Shlomo Goren (d. 1994) founded the Israel Defence Forces Rabbinate and served as its first Chief Rabbi for about two decades, subsequently serving as Chief Rabbi of Israel. Much of his vast scholarly output concerned military matters. His formally collected Responsa on Matters of the Military, War, and Security[13] alone run to four volumes and cover a vast range of issues, theoretical and practical, as applies to Generals and to Privates. Goren was no apologist. In a radical and broad application of principles learnt from an obscure law in Deuteronomy[14] he deems Israelis responsible for any death that occurs anywhere in the occupied territories.[15] In 1982 Goren was Chief Rabbi of Israel and used his position to insist that an escape path be left open during the siege of Beirut, (in accordance with Maimonides’ demand as discussed above).[16] Responsa literature is technical, there are many competing factors to be balanced as religious aspiration and ugly brutality come into conflict, it is also requires deep scholarship understanding of religious sensitivity and of military necessity. Goren’s approach is untidy, often unpopular and even occasionally unsafe. But it is, I argue, the truest reflection of a Jewish tradition torn between dreams of peace and harsh political and historical realities. Those who wish to speak on the validity, or otherwise, of various acts of military violence need to study much, speak carefully and know that the safety of certainty is not given to human beings. ‘Who knows if your blood is redder,’ asks the Talmud, ‘perhaps their blood is redder.’[17]

 

Ethics and war make for uncomfortable bed-fellows. Military ethicists, particularly those who speak in the name of a religious tradition, should be troubled sleepers, uneasy and unsure, afraid that their pronouncements could condone the spillage of a single drop of blood. No matter whose blood may be shed, every drop is sacred, ‘for the soul of all flesh is in its blood.’[18] At the heart of Judaism lies an extraordinary articulation of the value of human life. All humans, the book of Genesis tells us, are created from one original template – Adam. This is so, state the Rabbis, in order to teach us that ‘whoever destroys a single soul, is considered as though they had destroyed an entire world; and whoever saves a single soul is considered as though they had saved an entire world.’[19] It is, of course, an articulation that Muslim scholars will recognise from their own scriptures.[20] The demand of the One God shared by both Jews and Muslims is that this message be taught and taught again and again until the day when swords can indeed be turned into ploughshares, nations and individuals will cease lifting up swords against one another and none shall learn war any more. And then every person, Jew and Palestinian, shall be able to sit under their vine and under their fig tree and none shall make them afraid.[21]

 

Rabbi Jeremy Gordon is Rabbi of New London Synagogue. He studied at Cambridge University and the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and is associated with the British Masorti, and American Conservative denominations. His blog can be found at http://www.rabbionanarrowbridge.blogspot.com/

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[1] BMidbar Rabba 11.

[2] Ritba Megilla 18a d.v. U-Mah C14.

[3] Hil Melakhim 6:11. See Sifrei Bmidbar Mattot 157 beshem Rebbi Natan.

[4] Talmud Bavli Sanhedrin 93b.

[5] The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India) v. 68, p. 189, Cf loc cit, pp. 191-92 & 205. 

[6] Published in The Letters of Martin Buber: A Life of Dialogue By Martin Buber, Nahum N. Glatzer, Paul Mendes-Flohr (Syracuse University Press, 1996). The full exchange may be found in A Land of Two Peoples: Martin Buber on Jews and Arabs ed. P. Mendes-Flohr (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1983) pp. 106-126.

[7] Available at http://dover.idf.il/IDF/English/about/doctrine/ethics.htm.

[8] Writing in the New Republic November 6^th, 2009, available at http://www.tnr.com/article/world/the-goldstone-illusion.

[9] See Edrei, Arye (2006) "Divine Spirit and Physical Power: Rabbi Shlomo Goren and the Military Ethic of the Israel Defense Forces," Theoretical Inquiries in Law: Vol. 7 : No. 1, Article 11.
Available at: http://www.bepress.com/til/default/vol7/iss1/art11 at p. 70. I am indebted to Prof Edrei for his original research.

[10] Talmud Bavli, Ned. 28a; Git. 10b; BK 113a; BB 54b and 55a. There is an irony, of course, in the notion that dina d’malkhuta, by its very nation a diasporic invention, is turned here into a staging post for bullish nationalism.

[11] Genesis 34.

[12] Y. Leibowitz, “After Kibiyeh,” in Judaism, Human Values and the Jewish State (Eliezer

Goldman ed., Eliezer Goldman et al. trans., 1992).

[13] Meshiv Milhama: She’elot U-teshuvot Be-inyene Tsava Milhamah U-vitahon (1983-1992).

[14] Deuteronomy 21:1-9, if a dead body is found between two Israelite towns the Priests of the town nearest must accept responsibility for the blood shed and seek forgiveness.

[15] See Edrie A. loc cit at p. 286.

[16] Rav Goren’s letter on the subject appeared in Hatzofeh 6th August 1982.

[17] Sanhedrin 74a.

[18] Leviticus 17:14.

[19] Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5, dated to the second century. The text has been cited according to the Kauffman manuscript, acknowledged as bearing the correct original version of this text. See Eprhaim Elimelech Urbach, "Kol Hamekayem Nefesh Achat ..." Gilgulav Shel Nusach [Whoever Saves One Soul ... The Evolution of a Text], 40 Tarbitz 268 (1971).

[20] Kuran 5:32.

[21] Micah 4:4.