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
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