How To Break Out of Impasse

The story is told that the rabbis were arguing. Nothing unusual about that, of course, but this argument spirals out of control. Rabbi Eliezer is on one side, producing claim after claim while everyone else opposes him.

Rabbi Eliezer calls forth miraculous demonstrations of his positions, but these too fail to persuade. Eventually, Rabbi Eliezer calls for the walls of the very Bet Midrash to cave in to prove his point. And the walls begin to cave in.

And Rabbi Yehoshua rises to rebuke the very walls. ‘If scholars are arguing, mah tivchem, what’s in it for you to get involved?’ So the walls fall no further, out of respect for Rabbi Yehoshua, and refuse to rise, out of respect for Rabbi Eliezer - ועדיין מטין ועומדין  - and they still lean and stand to this day.

The last time I taught this famous Talmudic text was at the House of Lords at a reception for parliamentarians at the height of the impasse on Brexit. His excellency, the Israeli Ambassador, was there. Mr Ambassador, a pleasure to welcome you here tonight. We share our deepest wishes for a year of sweetness and peace to the country you represent on these shores.

For you, and for anyone else who wasn’t here on the first day of RH, I spoke then, of the danger of arguments in these strange times. I spoke about how easy it is for arguments to spiral to places where they damage the very structures of the society that we would most wish to protect. A look at either Brexit or indeed this Talmudic passage serves to illustrate how quickly society can be damaged if we can’t learn better how to disagree. Let me take the case of the Talmudic passage. I’m not sure you came here to listen to me profess expertise about Brexit.

In the aftermath of this stalemate of the walls, the majority take their frustration out on Rabbi Eliezer.

His legal decisions are deemed void – things he thought useful were burnt. And he is excommunicated. And Rabbi Eliezer cries and as his tears hit the ground a third of the harvests of the world are destroyed. Even dough in the hands of the bakers, we are told, becomes spoiled. The world spirals to the brink of collapse.

On Rosh Hashanah I suggested a new way of testing the quality of our arguments. I suggested that instead of focussing on whether we won or lost any particular debate we should, instead, focus on the quality of the relationship that emerges on the other side of disagreement. Any disagreement, even one in which we lost, which resulted in us feeling closer to our fellow disputant, we should count a success. And any dispute, even one we won – or at least thought we won – which resulted in us feeling further away from our disputants – we should count as a failure.

Go with me here. Let’s suppose that somehow that sermon touched some deep nerve within out broken society and right across every spectrum in our land, arguments began to shift, and we all started to take more care over relationships than winning arguments

(And, you know, I would take that. As a rabbi, that would make for a pretty good outcome for a sermon.)

Even if all of that happened, there would still be a problem.

Even supposing the Rabbis who so disagreed with Rabbi Eliezer did so gently and carefully, the walls would ועדיין מטין ועומדין – still be leaning and standing.

Even, and forgive me for sliding back onto the front pages, if the Brexiters and the Remainers and the Prime Minister and the EU and everyone else started listening to one another carefully and responding with decency and humanity, we would still be stuck with this problem of how to get a non-border border across the island of Ireland. And there’s another impasse in the aftermath of this second election in Israel. And it’s not just the front pages.

We are all living with impasses in our lives. There are certain blockages I can’t shift interpersonally – in my relationship with other people, and even impasses I can’t shift intra-personally – inside my own self. We are stuck, a lot.

And my first day Rosh Hashanah sermon isn’t going to solve any that. So tonight, I want to think about how we get beyond these points of impasse.

Let me start with the greatest impasse threatening the planet …. the very fabric of our planet.

Gus Speth is a veteran ecological activist. As an appointee of US President Jimmy Carter in the late 70s, he served as Chairman of the American Council on Environmental Quality. And this is his reading of the impasse facing us when it comes to the future of our very planet.

“I used to think,” Speth wrote, “the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought,” he continued, “that with 30 years of good science we could address those problems. But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy and to deal with those we need a spiritual and a cultural transformation and we scientists don’t know how to do that.”[1]

Speth’s point is that the things that prevent our moving forwards when we get bogged down aren’t really factual disagreements. I know there are factual disagreements about exactly how well or how badly we are doing, or might be doing if we pursued one path or another. But the thing that bogs us down isn’t that. I don’t think the reason we are not taking more action to save our planet is that we can’t agree about the science. I think the same probably goes for any other area of our lives when we are at impasse. The problem is, to use Speth’s terminology, ‘spiritual and cultural.’

Our impasses have more to do with our faith than our scientific prowess or powers of logic.

I wonder if a little spiritual cultural history might help. For three hundred years or so, since the time of Immanuel Kant, we have become increasingly interested in the importance of human beings. Kant’s demanded, ‘that every human being should be considered an end in themselves, never to be treated as a means to another end.’ And as the Enlightenment went on we began to invest ultimate value in human beings. Simultaneously, we began to down-grade our fascination in God. Spinoza died less than 50 years before Kant as born. And that literal kind of theology that Spinoza attacked, has been on the wane ever since.

Certainly, treating every human being as deeply worthy is a good thing. But there’s a problem in trusting too completely in the wonderful thing that is the human being.

As romanticism has died away we’ve learnt, from Freud and others, of our unconscious predilections towards violence. In the last century, we’ve narrowly survived the genocidal destruction of our people. And right now, we might be living through human-caused destruction of our planet. It’s hard to champion human beings as the ultimate locus of ethical value when we are proving ourselves so unworthy of this crown. Maybe, rather than placing all our efforts in the inalienable rights of individuals, it would be wiser to develop critical concern regarding the human – particularly the human with any kind of power.

Actually, that’s exactly what we are doing. Jonathan Boyd, of the Jewish Policy Research Institute, recently surveyed[2] how trust in more or less every authority figure is in decline. We don’t trust politicians, doctors, teachers, police officers, academics, journalists … on the list goes.

No wonder we tend to get stuck in impasses. “We stopped believing in God long ago.” Boyd writes, “But now we’re struggling to believe in the one thing with which we replaced God. Ourselves. Modernity compelled us to throw God out. But now” he continues, “we find ourselves adrift, unable to rely on ourselves, unable to turn [anywhere else.]” I think that’s right. As a society, we gave up on faith in the Divine and now find ourselves without faith in humanity. No wonder we don’t trust one another very much. No wonder we are wary of the sorts of concessions that offer a way out of impasses.

If we are going to find ways to move forward, we are going to have to find something in which to believe. Let me suggest this – religion.

I know religion has picked up its fair share of knocks in this don’t-trust-anyone-in-power world. But I don’t mean that kind of religion. Go with me. There is a notion of religion, let me take the case of Judaism, that is deeply concerned with revelation – Sinai; Kashrut and Tefilin and the like.

I don’t mean that side of religion. I love Kashrut and Tefilin and the like, but that’s not what I am talking about today. I’m almost talking about a very different kind of religion; the kind of religion we talk about on Yom Kippur; “who will live and who will die, who by fire and who by water.” In our greatest prayer of this season, the Unataneh Tokef we acknowledge ourselves;

“Forged from dust and destined to dust, like a shard of pottery, withering grass, a fading flower, a passing cloud, a fleeting dream.”

I know that religion, even Judaism, has overplayed its hand in the past. But somewhere in our great faith, somewhere, I think, in every great faith, are these these central conceptions of who we are and how we come to be. To religion teaches that there is a power that is above us, that we exist as a result of an unjustified gift of creation, that our wisdom and power aren’t something to rely upon, but rather a mystery. Great religions teach humility, not hubris, they teach us to doubt our own inerrancy.

Great religions teach that our own point of view isn’t going to be the most important thing in the universe.

This kind of view on the world creates a space in which creativity, in the face of an impasse, can grow. It creates a possibility for finding in the opposite view something which could indeed improve our own self-centred sense of what right must be. In its deepest place, faith is the opening which can free us from the prisons of the present to encounter different futures.

It’s the thing that I think can break an impasse – the humility that comes with knowing that we are not the most important thing in our own worlds. If we think we are each the masters of our own worlds we’ll back ourselves into intransigence at every opportunity. On the other hand accepting that we don’t know everything, that there is knowledge beyond our reach might just open up the possibility of finding new ways to encounter old problems. You can’t learn anything new if you think you already know everything there is to know.

And the spiritual approach of a great religion is a great immunisation against the notion that I, or you, or any of us can know all there is to know.

So that’s my message to any political leaders out there, trying to work a way out of an impasse – the less you claim for your own inerrancy, the greater the chance you have of finding new solutions unseen and unknowable when we are committed only to our own power. What about the rest of us? What about our personal impasses? Here’s a way to access the sort of spiritual solution to the impasses of the world personally. Pray.

Prayer is the experience of standing before something greater than yourself. It’s a training in absolutely the kind of humility I’m describing. To pray is to open up in one’s self the possibility of a path towards the future that reason cannot find.

Again, when I’m talking about faith or prayer, tonight, I don’t mean the specifics of the words of our Machzor, as much as I love the specifics of the words of our Machzor.

I mean the kind of prayer that involves standing before one’s sense of how we come to be here; aware of how little we know, and seeking to become worthy of the gift of our existence. How do we become the people we dare dream we might become? The night is still young.

We’ve a long way to go.

So try this, with me, with Chazan Stephen.

Try prayer, try faith. Let your mind settle on a problem, an impasse, and turn towards something greater than yourself with humility. Just in case it’s not completely clear, I’ve no interest in whether you say you believe, or you don’t believe in God as you do this.

Try to stand this way, sensitize the heart and allow yourself to reach for something new. Yom Kippur is a great day to turn towards the new. This service began with a prayer Kol Nidrei that allows us to take a risk with our promises about tomorrow. Take that risk.

I mean, if you feel you’ve got all the possibilities for your life ready to go, if you feel you need to assistance turning your today into the tomorrow you would wish for yourself, go for it.

But if you are feeling trapped or stuck. And I know I am, try having a little faith. Try, even, prayer.

For there is something beyond our reach. And I have faith that it can help. And I hope it can help us all.

May this year come with new possibility, health and happiness for us all.

Chatimah Tovah

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[1] It’s hard to trace the origin of this quote. It’s on this Wikipedia page, but the link no longer functions. This says the quote came in a ‘BBC Radio interview in 2013’

[2] https://www.thejc.com/comment/comment/taking-back-control-from-god-has-not-worked-1.489704

Building the Good Place - Rosh Hashanah 5780

You might have seen the TV show, The Good Place. It’s a sitcom set in the afterlife – I recommend it.

The premise of the show is that our heroes have died and, as good people in life, they wake up, in death, in The Good Place -  a place where everything is really very, very good. Actually, that’s not what the show is about at all, but the premise is good enough to get me thinking. What would The Good Place really be like? What makes a society ‘good’? What I want to do today is sketch out a rabbinic vision of a good place, I want to ask some questions about how we get from here, to there. And I want to suggest some answers.

Let’s start at the top – who should be in charge? As Jews we’ve a bunch of models to draw on. The Torah features God trying out a singular human – but neither Adam or Noah cope. The model of a family too frequently descends into fraternal bickering, if not fratricide. We have prophets, a hereditary priesthood and a monarchy. But the prophets are too unpopular and priests and Kings become corrupted. Eventually, Judaism settles on … rabbis. Now, don’t worry, I’m not planning world-domination myself. The real clue is in the last letter of the word – rabbis. All the greatest rabbinic leaders of the classical rabbinic period come in pairs; you get Hillel and Shammai, Rav and Shmuel, Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Yishmael. And these pairs – or Zugim – argue. They argue about everything from Kashrut to theology to what it means to be kind and compassionate. Chavrtuta o Metuta the Rabbis teach – passionate argument or death. In our Good Place there will be passionate argument.

Here’s the other thing about Rabbis – their leadership isn’t purely dependent on what they know, rather they – we – are expected to be decent, ethical and compassionate. I mean, I know I mess up all over the place, but you can’t be a good rabbi and a bad person.

There’s a famous story about the renowned professor of ethics in some secular university, who was an utterly appalling person. And one day a student finally plucked up the courage to ask their teacher how it was possible for them to be such an expert on ethics and such a vile human being. ‘What’ the professor responds, ‘if I taught geometry, would you want me to be a triangle?’ It doesn’t work for teachers of religion.

On the other hand, here’s one of the greatest Rabbinic leaders, Maimonides;

Assur leadam lehiyot achzari - We are forbidden to be cruel, forbidden to be slow to forgive. Rather we should be gentle, willing and slow to anger. And when one who has sinned against us requests our forgiveness, we should forgive with a levav shalem – a full heart a willing spirit. And even if the person has distressed us greatly, or many times, don’t be vengeful, don’t bear a grudge.

Rabbis are supposed to listen hard to even those with whom they disagree and treat everyone with courtesy and dignity. In our Good Place, leaders – and we would need a plurality of leaders – would be wise, and decent and they would argue out the best way to run society.

It won’t just be the leaders arguing. My vision of a Good Place rejects the seductive appeal of mono-culture at every level. Certainly, a Jewish Good Place will have what the Bible calls gerim, outsiders, refugees, resident aliens – you can pick your contemporary term for the people who are different; probably less privileged, possibly less eloquent in our language, less sure of our customs. Loving the stranger is the most frequently repeated idea in the Bible not, I think, just because it’s a nice thing to do, but because Good Places value difference and diversity as a source of creativity and productivity.

And what kind of society would emerge from all this plurality and wisdom and decency?

Here are three laws which appear in a run of seven verses in the three-thousand-year-old book of Deuteronomy.[1]

1.       If you loan someone some money, and they pledge their millstone to secure the loan, and they default, you can’t take the mill-stone away from them ki nefesh hu choveil – it’s their life-blood – you take the millstone, they won’t be able to mill their flour and they will slide into destitution, and that can’t be good.

2.       If you loan them some money with a pledge to repay and they default, you don’t go into their house to take their pledge – you wait outside for them to bring it to you. It’s better to be sensitive to their sense of security in their own home.

3.       And if they pledged their coat – don’t take their coat overnight – they’ll need it to sleep in. If a person pledges a coat, it’s the only thing they’ve got.

There’s a vision of a Good Place in these ancient verses. I don’t suppose anyone here is reliant on a mill-stone today, and I know we’ve learnt a whole lot about astral physics and evolution and the rest of it in the last 3,000 years, but the values of our sacred texts, the checks and balances and the approach to a good place are, surely, exactly what we need in contemporary society. Is credit necessary for economic advancement? Of course it is. Do lenders and their capital need to be protected by the rule of law? Of course they do.

But not all the time, not to take all pledges from all debtors and not in any way creditors might deem suitable.

The vision of society that emerges, time and time again through the Bible and Talmud is a society that demonstrates compassion alongside a commitment to justice. I’ll take that balance of compassion and justice as a model for my Good Place

And then there will be Shabbat. We’ll have the chance, in our Good Place, for six days of the week, to get on, to make, to create, to seek for more and better. And then we’ll all pause, turn off the phones and the emails and turn our attention towards celebrating what we have. We’ll eat meals with friends and family. We’ll converse without the distractions of screens or headphones. Shabbat, in The Good Place, will help us realise that ‘better’ doesn’t always mean ‘more.’ That should help us find better ways to protect the environment in our Good Place. In my little thought experiment, basic rules of physics will still apply, as God said to first human beings as they guided around the Garden of Eden, “Look at my works! See how beautiful they are—how excellent! For your sake, I created them all. See to it that you do not spoil and destroy My world; for if you do, there will be no one else to repair it.”[2] That one will still apply, but we’ll be ready for it and we’ll take due care.

Well, that’s the vision. Do you like it? It could do with a tweak, here or there, I’m sure. But it would do, no? Creativity, decency, a space to celebrate the gift of our humanity?

Here’s the question. How far away are we? How impossible, how fairy-tale, how beyond the reach of possibility is this Good Place?

I mean, working out how we get the right kind of political leadership is a tricky one, but the really radical thing about this vision of a Good Place is how simple it is.

We could all get on with creating this Good Places even if without the political leadership problem entirely sorted – in fact it’s probably much better if don’t wait on the politicians – they seem to have their hands full for the time being. Certainly, those of us who lend, could lend with the sort of empathy and humanity that the Bible calls for. Many of you, I know, do exactly that. The rest of us can get on with, I don’t know; making sure that the blind aren’t confronted with stumbling blocks, or that if, even our enemy is stumbling we don’t gloat. We could get on with not coveting things that belong to others and we could all benefit from taking Shabbat more seriously and we don’t really need anyone’s permission to do that.

Two other verses from Deuteronomy;

It’s not in heavens that have to ask, who will go up to the heavens and bring it down for us. It’s not beyond the sea that you have to ask, who will cross the sea to bring it back for us.

We all have the possibility of creating better places, for ourselves, for our loved ones, for all of society. In fact, we had better get on with it sooner rather than later.

It will some gumption and well, there’s really no other words I can use, it will take religion and it will take faith.

Here’s the thing that puzzles me. If, I could get a bum-on-a-seat for every time someone told me this past year that they weren’t really into Judaism as a religion, this place would be rammed full. And I wold love to see this place rammed-full on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, but that’s not really the point. The point is, if you want to live in a Good Place, in a better place – where do you find the pointers towards the way that society will function? How do you puzzle your way towards making that vision a reality when your desires come up against the desires of others? How do you protect yourself and your society from the forces that will weaken us and strip our values from us. I’ve an answer – be more Jewish. Do more Jewish stuff, read more about Jewish stuff. Speak up and take more pride in the Jewish stuff. I’ve nothing against other religions, I’m sure other religions can help, and if you’ve another faith tradition that speaks more clearly to you – gei gezunte heit – go for it. But if you are here today, do more of this. Be prouder of this. If you find yourselves in environments where self-declared atheists or lapsed-Jews or any of the like are taking opportunities to explain how much smarter they are now they don’t do Judaism, raise the eyebrow. Ask how they intend to get to a Good Place, suggest that they could do with paying more attention to some very old, very holy and, frankly, very Good suggestions in the pages of the Good Book. Creating the Good Place will take religion. Do more religion.

And it will take faith. Faith is the thing that allows a person to do something they know is right even if the rest of the world thinks you are crazy. Faith is the thing the justifies the sorts of actions that we know are good, even if society doesn’t value their performance – things like being nice or charitable or gentle. These tend to be things society doesn’t seem set up to value, sometimes they are even things society seems ready to mock. But have faith. They will make the world a better place. We know that; we have faith in that. Faith is good. Faith doesn’t require us to use the ‘God word.’ It just requires us to believe there is justification for goodness, even if it’s not immediately apparent. We’ll need some faith to build this Good Place.

We are, quite remarkably blessed to have this heritage. It’s an astounding gift in a world that desperately needs our active, faithful and religious engagement, if it is to become a better place, let alone a Good Place.

Don’t give up on this journey.

It’s the best shot we have at turning this world into a Good Place

It could even come in this new year.

May it come to us all in health, peace and joy, Shannah Tovah

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[1] 24:6-13

[2] Midrash Kohelet Rabbah, 1 on Ecclesiastes 7:13