On Squirrel Hill and Kristallnacht - Memory and Plurality

Shabbat Shalom

Partic warm welcome to guests; family and friends of Felix in particular.

Usually, if there is a BM, I like to give a sermon that is a little warm and fuzzy and can have everyone going on their way with a spring in their step.

But this isn’t a normal weekend.

And I’m too angry, and too sacred and too in pain to give a warm and fuzzy sermon.

I’m still angry and scared and in pain from the news now two weeks old about the attack on the Synagogue in Squirrel Hill Pittsburgh - no longer the most recent atrocity perpetrated in the United States.
And, frankly, I’m still angry and scared and in pain on this Shabbat marking the 80^th Anniversary of Kristallnacht - a night of destruction of Jewish life and property from the darkest ages of our people - 1938 Germany.

I think I would be less angry and less scared about the attacks from two weeks ago and 80 years ago if I didn’t feel what I do about the world of politics.

There would still be pain. Of course, there would still be pain, about the lives lost, and the simple barbarity of destruction.

But I can deal with pain. The pain thing is somehow assimilatable.

It’s the fact that the destruction of 80 years ago and the destruction of two weeks ago resonate off one another, like some wave of energy bouncing between the past and present and threatening to bounce off again into the future.

That’s the thing that makes me so scared, and so angry.

How come we are here?

How come 80 years after we thought we would never again slide into a world of fascist intolerance, a fascism that stirs up and explicitly or implicitly gives a Heter to racist violence and offence, how come we seem to be back here?

How come instead of having reasoned debate and disagreement about the facts that before us we have - country after country - society after society - adopted as argumentative strategies personal abuse and humiliation, dehumanisation and deceit.

How come it’s acceptable to attack a person for their very existence when the thing they say makes us feel uncomfortable.

Yes, of course, I’m talking about President Trump, and Putin in Russia and Orban in Hungary and ah this list is too long.

And, forgive me, but somewhere on this list of political leaders who are prepared to inflame or permit societal hate to secure their own approval and treat opposition as something to be crushed, not something with which to engage, belongs politicians in this country also. And even politicians in the State of Israel.

And here’s the really bad news - imagine you are a political consultant looking to advise someone on how to get power in these febrile times what advice are you going to give? Actually, these wannabe-politicians don’t need consultants to tell them which way to go. They’ve got the message already.

And if it looked, in those hopeful days of the aftermath of Holocaust as if the UN with it Human Rights’ convention and the whole apparatus of international commitments to “never again” were going to work. It doesn’t feel that way today.

And if it looked, in those 8 years in which Obama served as President of the United States, and I don’t care if you are Democrat or a Republican, if it looked for those eight years as though the most powerful country the world has ever seen, had embraced Hope not Hate, it doesn’t feel that way now.

This week I’ve been reading and listening to Sarah Churchwell, author of a new book, Behold America. She points out how triumphalist nationalism, don’t mess with us patriotism and a racism that lurks only just below the surface has never really gone away in America.
American has always thought of itself as the land of the free and home of the brave, and it’s always behaved as a bully taking the lives and the land of whoever came in the way of those who had the might to enforce their sense of right.

I did warn that this was going to be a political sermon.

But the thing that really struck me about America - and America is Ground Zero for this international horror - is how surprised it gets at the same thing happening again. I lived in New York for the five years surrounding 9/11. I saw the stunned amazement of Americans at 9/11. They couldn’t believe they would be attacked. But what was Pearl Harbour? They couldn’t believe it would be so hard to destroy what George Bush called the Axis of Evil. But what was Vietnam?

And the same thing goes for my dear friends in the Jewish community. They couldn’t believe that a Synagogue could be the target of a raging wicked act of antisemitic murder. American Jews feel so at home in America, they can’t imagine themselves as victims of anti-Jewish hatred. They’ve forgotten that General Grant expelled the Jews from the States in 1862. They’ve forgotten the Klu Klux Klan’s invidious Jew-hatred - they should go and watch Spike Lee’s new movie - BlackkKlansman, we all should. I warmly recommend Philip Roth’s Plot Against the Jews. It’s a fiction only a hairs breath away from an entirely plausible past. And today it feels less like some apocalyptic horror show and more like reportage.

Back when I was at Seminary, in New York, we had a class on Mediaeval Jewish History, and the first class of semester was the expulsion of the Jews from England, and the second was the expulsion of the Jews from France, and the third was the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and one of my nice Americal fellow students said something witty about how great it was to be American. And the professor, Dr Benjy Gampel, with the withering scorn of someone who actually knows about history looked down on my colleague and said, ‘If you really think you are so safe in America, you have no understanding of the nature of history.’   

But it’s not just the Americans and not just the Jews.

Anyone else here remembers Gordon Brown announcing the end of the boom-bust cycle?

There is, in us all, a kind of willful amnesia. We don’t want to live in a world where hatred exists, so we imagine we don’t. We don’t want to imagine that it could get worse, so we suppress the knowledge that it ever did.

So what to do?

I want to share two things, two thing I commit myself to, and two things I need your assistance with.

The first thing is we must never forget, we must always memorialise, even as the names are too many and the eyewitnesses too few.

Last week I recited the 11 names of those murdered in the Tree of Life Synagogue. This week I want to recite the names of the 2,000 who were murdered, and the 1,000 synagogues destroyed.

I want to count aloud every Mark’s worth of damage that Nazi acolytes caused and Jews had to pay for, on that awful night 80 years ago.

I want to hold up and hand around photos of this destruction from 80 years ago this very weekend,

Together with photos of what German Jewry used to look like, back in the days when German Jews couldn’t imagine anyone othering them - so at home did they feel as full and equal members of German society.

I want to that term, ‘Never Again’ to sound like a question, a fearful and un-easy gnawing in the gut. Because for the term ‘never again’ to sound confident and secure shows, in that phrase of my Jewish history professor, no understanding of the nature of history.

That’s the first thing.

We need to remember and recount and retell so we don’t fall into selective amnesia.

The second thing we all need to do is make the case for the principle of decent society most under threat in this unstable world.

We need to make a much better case for the principle of plurality; the plurality of people and the plurality of ideas.

Too much of the proto-facism of contemporary society is based on an erroneous idea that there are proper members of society and then there are others. And the others don’t really count as full human beings and we would do well to make their life as tough as possible.

And that idea turns my stomach.

It should turn all our stomachs even if we aren’t Jewish ourselves, even if we can trace our ancestry on these isles back to the days of Angles and Saxons and Celts, because if we allow ourselves to drift into becoming a society which doesn’t respect otherness - the plurality of people,  if we allow ourselves to drift into becoming a society which doesn’t recognise that all human beings are equally made in the image of God, and all human beings deserve the same opportunities and chance for a decent life they will eventually come for us.

Eventually, we will all fall foul of being too dark-haired, or too blond or too tall or too short, or too fat or too thin, for we are all too much one thing or not enough another.

Pastor Niemoller wrote in the 1930s

First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

It’s that time already.

If we allow ourselves to slide into a society where difference is not celebrated and protected and promoted, they’ll come for us all.

That’s we plurality of people is so important.

The same thing goes for how we talk, how we debate, how we disagree. Debate, disagreement is good.

It’s how we learn, it’s how we discover things we don’t know. Disagreement isn’t to be disparaged. We need a plurality of ideas. People who take positions that are outside the mainstream are the people who most deserve our respect - they are the most important people in society. They aren’t to be threatened, abused, locked up. They certainly aren’t to be strangled, chopped up and boiled in acid in an Embassy in some foreign land. In what kind of world are we living?

So, do something to promote difference. Give some money to our Drop In Centre for Asylum Seekers, talk to me about getting involved in Citizens UK. Do something.

Promote disagreement, listen harder to those who disagree with you in the hope of learning something you don’t already know. Tell others also to see debate as a good thing.

A belief in plurality isn’t just being nice. It isn’t just a belief in human rights, it’s self-interest - it’s the thing that might, just, save us.

Just don’t forget, and don’t just watch on as decency slides away.

Here’s another thing we learnt 80 years ago.

It’s the bystanders who were, in the end, the people who made the difference.

Don’t be a victim, wrote the great Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer, Don’t be a perpetrator, but, above all, Don’t be a bystander.” — Yehuda Bauer

For as Simon Wiesenthal, camp survivor and Nazi hunter put it

“For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing.”

Shabbat Shalom

Why Don't They Like the Jews? - On Passover and Refugees by Brian Bilston

I was invited to share the ‘Story of Passover’ at a local school. It had been fun; we’d done the frogs, the Matzah on the back and, ‘Let my people go,’ and I was taking questions as I was handing out the Matzah. First question, ‘Why did the Egyptians not like the Israelites?’ It was one of those kinds of schools. I pondered the question into the evening when I was honoured to play a part in the Taste of Refuge Seder, hosted at New London in partnership with the Separated Child Foundation. In a room full of New London members, volunteers from the foundation and refugees from the broadest range of battle-beaten countries we hid the Matzah and hit one another over the head with spring onions. I want to thank all the volunteers who made the evening such a success and acknowledge, pre-eminent among us, Angela Gluck. And then there was this exception piece of poetry from Brian Bilston;

Refugees

They have no need of our help
So do not tell me
These haggard faces could belong to you or me
Should life have dealt a different hand
We need to see them for who they really are
Chancers and scroungers
Layabouts and loungers
With bombs up their sleeves
Cut-throats and thieves
They are not
Welcome here
We should make them
Go back to where they came from
They cannot
Share our food
Share our homes
Share our countries
Instead let us
Build a wall to keep them out
It is not okay to say
These are people just like us
A place should only belong to those who are born there
Do not be so stupid to think that
The world can be looked at another way
(now read from bottom to top)

Perhaps that’s the thing about our experience of otherness - both our own and that of others. We can read it top to bottom and bottom to top. The messages of Pesach are perhaps ultimately twofold. Firstly that freedom is possible, potential exists, no matter how dark our experience of the present. Secondly no human should be enslaved, treated as a slave or even treated as any less worthy than any other human. We are not there yet.

Inside the Knesset

I am just back from an exceptional trip to Israel as part of the European Masorti Rabbinic Assembly. Aside from the chance to reconnect with colleagues from across Europe (France, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Sweden, Czech Republic ...), our trip was timed to coincide with the 40^th Anniversary Celebrations of the Masorti Movement in Israel. And so we, and a bunch of other international Masorti types, found ourselves at the Knesset.

Over the course of several hours we met with Yesh Atid Chairman, and poll-leading candidate to be the next Prime Minister, Yair Lapid MK, head of the opposition Boojy Herzog MK, Chair of HaTnuah Tzipi Livni MK and Speaker of the Knesset, and senior Likkud politician, Yuli Edelstein MK. It was a tremendous privilege to be able to put matters of Masorti concern to such high ranking Israeli politicians.

Whether the presenting question was conversion recognition, government funding of ultra-orthodoxy to the exclusion of other branches of our faith or access to the Kottel, the real issue underlying so many of our questions was the relationship between Israel and her Diaspora. Leaders of the American Masorti Foundation - also represented - shared that it was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain traditionally hugely supportive Jews for Israel - indeed the same issue arose in the context of a question on the deportation of ‘infiltrators’ or ‘refugees’ from war-torn African States.

Yair Lapid talked about the importance of fighting religious coercion without fighting religion. He talked of the importance of not handing religion over to the ultraorthodox (“defrosting it for the holidays”). Boojy Herzog talked about the absence of values in a political world driven by the need for power to achieve anything and insisted that there is no conflict between being worldly and religious. Tzipi Livni talked about the importance of a Jewish State that allowed “each of us to express our Judaism in different ways.” Yuli Edelstein rejected any notion of a split between the Diaspora and Israel - citing data drawn from Birthright returnees - and the atmosphere in the room grew heated.

But the highlight was a meeting with newly elected MK Yael Cohen-Paran, a woman who came into politics through environmental activism and was invited onto Tzipi Livni’s HaTnuah list. Cohen-Paran is a proud Masorti Jew, a founder member of the Masorti Kehillah of Pardes Hannah. She came into our meeting room directly from a testy meeting of parliament on the deportation of refugees furious at the proposal tabled, ‘this isn’t the Israel I want to be part of, this isn’t the Israel I want for my children. What about “And you shall love the stranger”? It’s not moral, it’s not Jewish to forget our past.’

It was an extraordinary insight into the Israeli democratic process. There is so much more I could share, and will on another occasion. Anyone interested in these issues is warmly encouraged to sign up to a monthly bulletin from the Masorti Movement’s Pluralism Rights Watch - mail jpw@masorti.org.il to go on their mailing list.

What I would like to share, on Shabbat, after the service is a look at some of the signs I saw around Jerusalem on my short trip. There are stories and insights I hope will prove interesting. I take a Rabbi’s version of holiday snaps, you are welcome to view them, during Kiddush.

Good to be back, Shabbat Shalom

Neilah Yom Kippur - Embarrassment & Refugees

The LBC DJ James O’Brian pulled a stunt in his show the other day.

He said he was going to cite an extract from a speech from in the recent conference season and read this out;

The State must drawn a sharp line of distinction between those who are members of the nation are the foundation of its existence and greatness and those who are domiciled in the State simply as earners of their livelihood there.

Then he revealed that the extract came, not from a contemporary British politician, but Hitler’s Mein Kampf - Chapter 2. And the worrying thing is that the extract did indeed sound as if it could have come from a contemporary British politician, because - too much of the time - it sounds as if we are about to embark on a national programme of erecting sharp lines of distinction between those who properly belong here and those painted as interlopers. It’s not that I think anyone in contemporary British politics is a Nazi, but this rhetoric and these calls for action make me squirm.

Here’s a conversation I get into fairly regularly, I suspect many of us are the same. “Where are you from,” someone asks, “London,” I say. “Where before that?” they don’t say it harshly, just interested, “Been here a while,” I say, “My great-grandfather had a pub in the East End,” I say. But no-one’s fooled. Not even me. My family arrived on these shores as economic migrants from points East. And even if there was the occasional pogrom or unsavoury violence back in the Veld, the notion that my ancestors would have crossed a contemporary threshold for a successful asylum application is ... well they wouldn’t.

I squirm reading reports from Calais or Greece or any of these places where human lives get piled up waiting. The largesse I experience as a British Jew whose ancestors arrived on these shores before the doors swung closed - certainly subject to antisemitism and the rest - but nonetheless able to get on, earn a living and give me such opportunities as Jews have but rarely known in our history - makes me feel embarrassed it’s easier to just turn the page and skip those particular articles. But my goodness, there are so many articles to skip.

And while there are so many problems facing us in the world, as Jews, as Londoners, as human beings it’s this refugee thing that haunts me more than any other. I get haunted because I keep getting pulled back by my faith to the central ethical and central narrative challenge of my people.

Some verses from our Torah, drawn from across the Five Books;

Love the Ger, don’t oppress the Ger, let the Ger rest on the Sabbath, the Ger who dwells with you shall be as one born amongst you.

Ger - it’s one of the most significant words in the Torah. In my Lexicon of Biblical Hebrew; Ger is defined as “a temporary dweller, new-comer (no inherited rights). Kindness to Ger,” it notes, “frequently enjoined.”

It turns out the word may be connected with the verb GaRaH ‘to stir up,’ ‘engage in strife with.’

Maybe that’s the heart of it. The Ger is the person who sticks out because they are new and don’t really know how to behave properly confound them, and what are they doing here anyway taking our jobs and clogging  up the waiting rooms and the waiting lists... Economically powerless and culturally awkward the “new-comer (no inherited rights)” stir us up and draw out the puss.

Hopefully, as I’m getting stirred up, the Torah kicks in; Don’t oppress the Ger, Love the Ger. As if the Bible somehow knew that the new-comer would serve as a lightning rod for whatever gripes and grievances might distract us taking responsibility for our own futures. Plus ca change.

Actually the way the Torah warns us off oppression of the Ger is even more tightly bound to my psyche than simply understanding the nature of my relationship with those who arrived on these shores more recently than my own ancestors.

Love the Ger for you were Gerim, ki gerim haitem b’eretz mitzrayim - you were Gerim in the Land of Egypt.

Ah the Torah sticking its fingers into my ribs jabbing away at my desire to shut the door and kick ‘em out, insisting I should behave well to the Ger because I was once a Ger. Actually not just once. Abraham was the first Ger. Then there was Joseph, and his brothers, and Joseph. Moses was not only a Ger, he even used the word in the name for his son Gershon. All of Israel temporarily dwelled in Egypt, and then in Babylon, and then again, and again, from century to century and from continent to continent.

We are commanded to love the Ger because it’s the very heart of who we are - the original Fiddler on the Roof, unstable, not knowing how confidently to tread in a society where we are “new-comers (no inherited rights).”It’s been only a blink of an eye since we began to feel more cosy in this society and we are already in danger of forgetting our historical, emotion and religious obligation to care for the unsettled newcomer we once were.

Where does it leave us, when facing the news, the reports from Aleppo or Greece or Calais?

There are a number of you here who are and have long been proudly involved in this work. In particular I want to salute members who are supporters of JCoRE, the Jewish Council on Racial Equality, and those involved in a new plan to host a group therapy programme for refugees here at New London, and members who are involved in the work of CARA - the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics and there are others, I know there are others. To all of you, I salute you. You’ve plenty to be getting on with.

But for the rest of us.

I want to suggest a couple of things.

Do one, do both. Do something.

I’m hugely proud of our community’s connection with the Separated Child Foundation, founded in memory of New London member, Ester, who passed away almost exactly ten years ago. The Foundation offers emotional, social, financial and physical support to separated children and young people, refugees, in Britain. It also engages in educational activities that raise awareness of their needs. It’s particular experitse is providing packs - good bags that provide physical assistance, but also offer an emotional recognition and validation of the humanity of those who are, perhaps, most on the edges of our society. The Foundation has an appeal for goods. There are fliers outside listing the sorts of goods they are looking for and what to do about them. On your way home tonight, take a flier. Make a donation.

Some members at our sister Synagogue, New North London, started a drop-in for asylum seekers in 2006. It meets monthly, on a Sunday afternoon. Just one asylum seeker arrived for a meal, some clothes, a travel voucher and a shopping voucher. The Centre has grown these past ten years. Those of you who were at the Q&A in the Hall just now will already have heard about it. Actually the stuff handed out is only part of the story. What the Drop-In offers is human to human contact. It’s a place where seeking asylum isn’t a ugly word. It’s a place where there is welcome and the acknowledgement that behind the headlines and the poisonous rhetoric are real human lives and real human suffering.

This last month over 500 came. The New North London Drop-In has become the largest centre of its kind in the country. And it’s far too large. Several months ago the leadership of the New North Drop-In asked for our help. Could we take some of the strain? Our member Sam Leifer - a long-time volunteer at the NNLS programme is helping us bring together a team. And we have a plan. On Sunday 6^th November we are looking to host 70 asylum carefully vetted asylum seekers at a school in Finchley. We are piggy backing on the skills and experiences of the team at New North London, and we have plans and a crack team of volunteers in place. But we need more person-power and we need funds.

And that’s where we all come in. Do you have a few hours on the first Sunday in the month to volunteer? It’s not a particularly skilled job. The most important thing is to smile, and there is some sorting and cooking and the like. We also need some money. The venue is a small cost and the idea is that the asylum seekers get a travel voucher and a food voucher worth a total of £20. We are looking for people to sign up to give £20 a month to cover those expenses. We’ll even take £10 a month, or £5.

Will supporting the Seperated Child Foundation or the Drop-In Centre bring an end to the suffering of those who have arrived in this country in search of something more than “a temporary dweller, new-comer (no inherited rights)?” No.

Will it put an end to the violence and persecution that has driven so many to this country? Also no.

But it will do this.

It will demonstrate that we care. That we remember. That we still love the Ger ki gerim hayitem.

For we were once Gerim too.

And it will help the few individuals we touch. And there is very little more than helping a human who is suffering.

Lo Alecha HaMlachah Ligmor teaches our tradition - you don’t have to complete the work, v’lo atah ben horin lehivatel mimena. - But neither are you free to desist from it.

I also belief that this kind of support will help up be less stricken by embarrassment in the face of the onslaught of tales told about refugees in this and other countries.

In a few moments we will be back to our regular Yom Kippur business of prayer and self examination.

But in an hour’s time, when we blow the shofar and just before you pile off home, please take one of the fliers in the lobby.

Consider a gift of goods or money or your time. They are all most valuable commodities.

I could make a point about the size of the experience of hunger of asylum seekers for whom days without food are not a voluntary once a year interruption in an otherwise replete diet.

I could share some gut wrenching story from some broken life.

But I believe no-one in this community, at this time, needs that.

I believe that this community only needs to be given an opportunity to rise to do the decent thing.

And we will.

Because we do remember, and we do care.

And we know that this can make a difference.

Chatimah Tovah,

A good last chance saloon daven.

And a good year to us all,

Rosh Hashanah I Sermon - Keep the Door Open

Keep the Door Open

I gave a sermon earlier this year.

It was after the death of one of my heroes, Sir Nicholas Winton, may his memory be a blessing.

I told the story of the bespectacled stockbroker, born Jewish, but never identifying as a Jew, who gave up on a skiing holiday in Switzerland in 1938 to go to the, then, Czechoslovakia to work with Jewish refugees. He gave up a skiing holiday in Switzerland to try and better the life of some dirty, under-nourished strangers. Those of you familiar with Sir Nicholas' story will know he brought 700 Jewish children back to this country, saving these lives from the horrors of the Holocaust. Sir Nicholas raised the money to pay for the train journeys across Europe and the boats across the Channel. He found hosts in both Jewish and non-Jewish homes and he even forged a slew of necessary paperwork to get his charges into this country - he needed to; the civil servants were dragging their feet and his criminality saved lives.

It wasn't a bad sermon, it was about the things that lead some people to sacrifice so much to do something extraordinary.

But then, in the kiddush hall, a member came up to me and asked me this question - what would did I think people would say today about someone, let's say someone Muslim born, who smuggled 700 dirty under-nourished children into Britain from war-torn Syria, forging the paperwork no less. It was one of those rhetorical questions. There may indeed be a change in the political climate these past weeks, but I don't imagine someone bringing 700 undocumented Syrians into England today is going to get a stamp designed their honour any time soon.

It's not that the doors were ever opened particularly wide to Jews  when we arrived - whether that be the 'proper' asylum seekers among us - or those whose ancestors are merely, in the phrase that suggests wrongdoing, economic migrants. But I can't help wondering what my life would have been like if I'd been born a Christian in Eritrea and Mimi, the theology student who leads services in the Church in the Calais Jungle refugee camp  had been born here as a Jew. Would I now be facing probing questions from journalists as to why I wanted to move to Britain against a backdrop of plastic sheeting and rubbish bags while he would be being paid a decent wage to do God's work in this holy community?

Oh I know this whole refugee thing is complicated and we don't have enough school places, or hospital wards and all that. But here's the religious point. Here's the Rosh Hashanah point.

You are not allowed, as a religious principle, to deny to someone else the treatment you would wish for yourself.

Let me try to leave politics and this whole distressing question of Syrians and the Afghanis and the rest of them, and teach some traditions from the Talmud on the subject of Teshuvah.

Our tradition teaches that if one person, let me call him Reuven wrongs another - I'll call him Shimon, then Reuven has to go to Shimon to say sorry. Makes sense. And our tradition teaches that if Shimon refuses to accept the apology Reuven has to try again and again. Makes sense. But then, Maimonides turns to address Shimon - the man who has been wronged - and says this,

It is forbidden for a person to be - achzaray - to be cruel and not grant pardon. One should rather easily forgive  and when the offender requests forgiveness he should forgive with a full heart and a generous spirit. (MT Hil Tesh 2:10)

Was Shimon wronged? Of course he was wronged. But he can't stay there - or rather he deserves to be called cruel if he does. Shimon can't retreat behind his previous experience of being a victim and close the door on Reuven's attempt to leave his past behind. It's the very essence of what it means to go through this Rosh Hashanah process. You can't pass through a door and shut it on anyone who wishes to come behind you into this new world, this new year.

We can't approach Rosh Hashanah as if our journey is the only one that counts. We are forbidden from viewing other people as a distraction from our own private Teshuvah work. The whole point is other people.

This has to apply even if the distraction is someone I have never, and may never meet. This has to apply even if I don't quite trust this other person, this Reuven or Mohammed or Zafira, and the problem isn't that they once did me wrong, but rather I'm not convinced my share of the GDP is going to go up if they are given leave to remain having crawled their way to this country without having been persecuted so horrifically that they win some Kosher asylum seeker competition. Sorry - I'm doing politics again, back to Rambam.

            Lo yikom vyitor - says Rambam - don't be the sort of person who exacts revenge, or bears a grudge.

I have to share with you the Talmudic teaching behind this - it's as close to being humorous as I'm going to get today. What's the difference, the Talmud wants to know, between being vengeful and bearing a grudge. Suppose Reuven wants to borrow Shimon's axe, and Shimon says no. And then Shimon, the very next day asks Reuven to borrow their axe, and the Reuven says, 'no, you didn't lend it to me' - that's vengeful.

But if Reuven's request is refused and when Shimon goes back to ask the next day Reuven says, 'sure I'll lend you my axe, because I'm not like you who didn't lend it to me' - that's bearing a grudge.

The point is you have to let go a little, and open your heart to a future that might feel a little scary. We are called upon to act kindly even if we aren't quite sure that others deserve it. After all that's precisely how we would want to be treated if we were the ones on shaky ground.

But bearing grudges isn't our problem when it comes to thinking about refugees. The problem, today is directly the reverse. The problem is not that we remember too well, it's that we've forgotten too quickly - we are in danger of undergoing some kind of national amnesia.

We are in danger of forgetting who we are and where we came from - and I don't just mean those of us who fled Nazi Germany, or fled pogroms here or there or any of the other wanderings over time and space in the past century, I mean we've forgotten the single foundational event of our national memory. We've forgotten Egypt.

'Love the ger' the Torah teaches, 'Don't oppress the ger' again and again - umpteen times in varying phraseologies. And the ger? The word refers to someone who wants to live among our people, accepting our laws, but not becoming entirely one of us. It couldn't more perfectly define the migrant who wants to come to live here and make a better life for themselves. And the most powerful, the most passionate and compassionate of all these verses commanding us to love and not oppress the stranger end in this way, 'for you were gerim in the land of Egypt.' We know - or at least we once knew - what it meant to be a stranger in a strange land. Once we were fully in support of the arrival of religiously-obscure, strangely-dressed, ill-educated, non-English speakers in this country, because, once upon a time, it was us arriving.

We are in danger of forgetting that we are the people who are supposed to have the deepest understanding of the life of a Fiddler on the Roof; understanding the way in which people flee the country of their birth because staying is just too horrible a fate to wish upon our children is the deepest insight of our Jewish national memory. Loving the stranger is our central ethic. This is what it means to be a Jew. There may well be less Jews keeping Kosher than was the case a hundred years ago, and there may be less Jews here on Second Day Rosh Hashanah than was the case even thirty years ago, and I can live with all that. But I can't live with this. I can't live with the notion that the Jewish people have forgotten what it means to be Jews.

And here's the irony. Where is the beacon, today, refusing to respond to the migrants with barbed wire and barbed language? God bless Germany for getting it. God bless the Germans for remembering in the best possible way an awful history. God bless Angela Merkel for standing up infront of protesters accusing her of being a traitor to her people and laying it out there - “There can be no tolerance of those who question the dignity of other people,” said Merkel. Amen. Merkel remembers. The Germans who are doing what they can to support incoming refugees remember what happens when you don't pay sufficient regard to the dignity of the dispossessed and the right to self-determination of stranger in your midst. And how could we be the ones forgetting?

Of course not all of us are forgetting. There are actually plenty of Jews who haven't forgotten the obligation to care for the ger. I want to briefly mention two heroic ventures and commend them to  you. And then I want to make one more plea.

Our member Angela Gluck, as many will know, has spent the past month living on £2 a day in attempt to understand more about the lot of refugees, barred from working and expected to subsist for a day on less than many of us pay for a coffee. She's been blogging and raising money for the charity she helped found, the Separated Child Foundation, it's a charity that does wonderful work supporting refugees. I commend the organisation to you.

Our sister Synagogue, New North London, hosts a monthly drop-in for destitute asylum seekers where those without, from countries across the globe and faiths similar and radically different from our own, can get a few basic life-necessities, distributed by Jewish volunteers who still remember. In the past months we've been developing a group of New London Synagogue members who are volunteering at the Drop-In, spending one Sunday a month helping out, handing out and raising funds. That's a project led by our member Sam Leifer.  If you are interested in joining our band of volunteers, or supporting the Drop-In with gifts, that would be a great act of ethical memory.

For more information, drop me an email and I'll connect you. And there are, of course, many other noble organisations, and opportunities to give of your time, your money and even to open your own homes to host a refugee. There are many ways to remember.

But my plea today is this. Talk about this.

We are all part of conversations. I plea that we never allow a conversation to go past where people who have crawled from the wreckage of Syrian civil war are smeared in that disingenuous way as mere economic migrants. We need to share with others, both inside and beyond the Jewish community, that from refugee beginnings come proud citizens, contributing to the life of this society in so many ways. We need to share that being welcoming to refugees is how good countries become greater still.

We are all connected to the internet, get on-line and write a note to your local MP and tell them your story, your Jewish and British story, you can congratulate them on the steps that have been taken, but also insist we do more to show that this is a great country whose greatness is demonstrated particularly from our moral response to moral tragedy. Talk about this.

It's a plea I make for two reasons.

One is, I believe it will help. I believe we can help create a climate in which political hearts will open and political morality will become firmer.

It's also that in talking about this, in placing ourselves clearly on the side of the ger, the stranger, the Fiddlers on the Roof, that we open our own hearts to understand our Jewish ethic. For the more we convince ourselves of the justice of opening our heart and border to the refugees the more we will become more open hearted in our relationship with all of those around. The more we talk about this, the better Jews, and the better human beings we will become. I believe that the more we do about this, and talk about this, more we will come to understand Teshuvah. And I believe that in doing so we will come to deserve the year of sweetness, health and happiness we all, so dearly seek.

L'Shannah Tovah

Mitzvah Day is Coming

 

Four weeks ago I used these weekly words to offer a view of a series of New London events that I hoped would light up this dark time of year. From the Friday night dinner jointly hosted with Tzedek, to the Interfaith panel on Prayer, to last week’s talk with Reb Zalman I have been honoured and delighted to feel and share the sheer quality of our engagement, as a community, in such vibrant and important programming.

 

In the last week we started our major series of evening classes on Prayer. This Monday evening at 8pm, Stephen Cotsen will be teaching on the Kedushah. It is the highpoint of our prayers, both spiritually and musically and I know we have a treat in store. All are most welcome.

 

And then on Sunday we have Mitzvah Day. New London is joining well over 100 other Jewish communities and organisations volunteering and engaging in projects to improve the lot of those less fortunate. New London’s project grows out of our ancient commitment to the refugees – the stranger in our midst – for we were once strangers in a strange land. In more recent years our project has been influenced by our relationship with the Separated Child Foundation, founded to honour the memory of our member Ester Gluck z’tl.

 

We are asking for stuff; anything non-electrical or non-perishable that a refugee could use; clothes, tins, rice and pulses, nappies, phone cards …

You can bring donations in the morning or early afternoon.

And then be part of the packing and sorting from 12:30pm onwards.

 

I’m delighted we are involved in Mitzvah Day. I’m delighted we are supporting refugees communities. I just hope that we, as a community will take this opportunity to come, to bring and to volunteer.

 

Shabbat shalom,

 

Rabbi Jeremy