Masorti - Or Not - Second Day Rosh Hashanah 5778

It’s not the same today, as it was yesterday.

Yesterday there were a bunch of people here who haven’t been here since Yom Kippur last year. They were most welcome. I hope they had a serious and positive encounter with what we do and I look forward to seeing them on Yom Kippur. But I want to address this sermon to Mishpochah - the family. This is for those of you who love this community enough to come, if not every week, then frequently enough to be insiders.

And, as you do with the Mishpochah, I want to share the sort of story you don’t easily share with outsiders. I want to take you inside a meeting of the Masorti Rabbinic team. We were discussing who should be able to serve as a Dayan on our Bet Din - a judge on our religious court. We have, as a Movement, traditionally only had male Rabbis sit on the Bet Din. And the question was being put should we, and in what circumstances, have women Rabbis also judge?

Of course we’ve had female Masorti Rabbinic colleagues for some time.

We all agree that women judges, as a matter of Jewish law, could serve as judges on the Rabbinic court, but they, up to now, they haven’t. The issue is that our Orthodox colleagues don’t accept women judges. They rely on a classically tenuous Talmudic semi-proofs[1] and a two thousand year tradition that didn’t imagine women could have anything of value to say from, as it were, the bench.

The conversation was dividing us - that’s OK, we’ve learnt to disagree and still get on. On the one hand some of us felt that only having men sitting on the Bet Din would give our conversion candidates the best chance of being recognised as Jews by the widest number of people - and that that is a core goal. On the other hand some of us felt that a Movement who believes woman could sit as judges, shouldn’t be precluding women from this role because of Orthodox sensitivities.

I have a lot of sympathy with conversion candidates. It’s not easy to go through life fearing someone could at any time turn up their nose at your faith and rejecting your Jewish identity - and those of your children. It would be great to make that problem go away. But let me put aside the question of whether only having male Dayanim on the Bet Din does make our conversions any more acceptable to anyone - I’m not sure that it’s the case. Let me even put aside questions of whether being Masorti definitely means you have to be a supporter of egalitarian roles in Jewish religious leadership for men and women.

I want to focus on, instead, these questions - what should our role be, as members of a broader Jewish community. Should we be looking to accentuate the specific ways in which we are Masorti, or should we fold into the prevailing majorities of Jewish practice, should we be ... in the language of that tick box ...  ‘just Jewish.’ To put it another way; it might be as much as we can handle, this Masorti Jewish thing, but should we be more explicit that there is a gold-standard out there - that would be Orthodoxy - and that our inability to rise to its intense demands is our failure, failure of will and failure of effort?

These are my ‘does it matter’ questions of the day.

It’s a question that’s been rehearsed for some time, here, at New London. When I arrived here as Rabbi - and this is my tenth Rosh Hashanah here as your Rabbi - there was a welcome note on the foyer which read, ‘New London Synagogue is an independent Orthodox synagogue affiliated to the Assembly of Masorti Synagogues’ - good luck to anyone trying to work that one out. I think it means that we wished to self-define as Orthodox, but the United Synagogue wouldn’t stand for it. So we found some similar thinking people to spend some time with while still believing in an Orthodox gold-standard. Actually, I know that’s exactly what the note meant. I knew the man who wrote the note well enough. And I also know what Rabbi Louis Jacobs, of blessed memory meant when he wrote it. He meant that orthodoxy represents Jewish authenticity, and that label - authentic - was one we, as a community, wanted for ourselves.

The first problem is that orthodoxy doesn’t mean the thing we believe in. It doesn’t mean an open-hearted, open-minded engagement with a pursuit for truth and a way to live well as a human, as a member of the Jewish community and ultimately, before God. Orthodoxy is intimately bound up in a theological claim that no-one in this community believes, and it uses that theological claim to justify a range of behaviours that are out of keeping with an open-hearted, open-minded engagement with a pursuit for truth.

As some of you know, my son started in a school under Modern Orthodox auspices this Year. He’s having a great time - thanks for asking. But I was nervous about how these Orthodox auspices would impact on his education. I took up the opportunity to speak with the School’s head of Jewish Studies. What happened, I wanted to ask, if a student’s understanding of Jewish history, indeed world history, led them to believe in a relationship with Judaism other than Orthodoxy? “Well,” said the charming and genuinely engaged Head of Studies, “We would try and explain the Orthodox understanding of these issues.” Fair enough, but what if those explanations failed to persuade a student of Orthodoxy’s validity? “Well,” said the still charming Head of Studies, “then we would have to explain that the school was being run the way the school was being run and the student would just have to accept that.” In other words, there are places a serious quest into the meaning of being Jewish wouldn’t be welcomed. At least I knew where I stood. But I don’t like it. I don’t value dogma above intellectual and spiritual enquiry. And I don’t say that because I don’t care about Judaism, or what God wants of us. I say that precisely because I care so much about Judaism and what God wants of us. I say that because placing dogma above enquiry is, I believe, profoundly un-Jewish and categorically not what God wants of us.

Here’s one of my all time favourite Talmudic passages, from Yoma[2]. In the Amidah we praise God - HaEl Hagadol Hagibur veHanorah. - God the great, mighty and awesome. That’s a phrase taken from the book of Deuteronomy - it appears in Moses’ name. A similar phrase appears in Jeremiah, but here it’s shorter - HaEl Hagadol veHagibur - God the great and mighty. And then there is a yet another abbreviation of the phrase, this time in the Book of Daniel, where Daniel calls God - HaEl HaGadol. How, Rav Mattena asks, could Jeremiah and then Daniel edit down the authentic full version used by Moses? He must be, Rav Mattena reports, that ‘Jeremiah - [prophet of the time of the destruction of the First Temple] said: “Invaders have destroyed God’s Temple. Where are God’s awesome deeds? So he omitted [the word he could not say] - HaNorah - awesome.’ And he continues, ‘[It must be that] Daniel [prophet of the exile of the Jews in the time of Nebucanezzer] came and said, ‘Invaders have enslaved God’s children. Where are God’s mighty deeds? So he omitted [the word he could not, in honesty, say] HaGibbur ‘mighty.’ How, Rav Mattena asks, could Jeremiah and Daniel change a form of words vouchsafed by no less than Moses? It must be that since they knew that the Holy Blessed One insists on truth, they could not pray to God deceitfully.

The point is that you shouldn’t try to ape Moses just because what Moses did what Moses did. The point is that you have to be true to what you believe. You can’t pray to God in deceit. You can’t do Judaism in deceit. If your mind, your soul and your heart tell you something isn’t true, you shouldn’t give it validation and you shouldn’t kowtow to any powerbase held by a movement you don’t believe in, either for yourself, or even for anyone else.

If you believe that the Torah really did come down in one perfect rendition on Sinai, all those years ago, and that the will of God is perfectly expressed in an understanding of Judaism that turned its back on the truths of the modern world at some point in the late 1800s, then you should be Orthodox. Really, with every blessing. Similarly if you believe that the Torah and the Rabbinic tradition is worth studying, but can be, if I decide it should be, reformed based on my own sense of what is right and wrong, then you really should be Reform. Really, with every blessing. But if you believe that the Torah, though imperfect, is the best path we have of understanding how we should stand before God, and as a member of the Jewish people - and if you believe that this spiritual inheritance is a chain, unfolding through the centuries, from our ancestors, through us and towards our descendents then, this is the Shul for you. And please don’t go giving strength and credence to a form of Judaism you don’t believe in.

Because this is what happens if you do.

There’s a tour company in Israel who will take you on a Ultra-Orthodox Neighbourhoods and Bakery Tour. You pay your money and “watch men in black hats and women in long skirts buying challah bread from a kosher bakery while a guide narrates the scene.”[3] Apparently the tours do well. Yosef Spiezer, the manager of company comments, “People [and I guess by ‘people’ he means Jewish people] want to experience [this kind of Jewish life] because it’s authentic.”

In an article published in The Atlantic, the writer, Sara Toth Stub, suggests that the problem with tours like this is that they lead to a commodification of Judaism. These tours are not about a Judaism that is about us; what we do and how we live our lives. They are about a Judaism we can peer into from time to time - from the outside. We’ve turned Judaism away from being what it wants to be, in the words of the Parasha we read last week, “so close to you that it’s in your heart and in your mouth.”

Instead these kinds of tours turn a Jewish person’s Judaism into the same thing as a Jewish person’s trip to Rome’s St Peters Basilica or Istanbul’s Blue Mosque - tourism cum anthropology. We are in danger of becoming consumers of the very thing that shouldn’t be treated as an object of consumption - the journey of our souls.

Despite what the ultra-Orthodox would have us believe, tt’s not true that Moses wore a streimel. It’s not true that men and women never stood together at the Kottel. It’s not true that conversions have always taken three years of being at the mercy of a Bet Din who never tell you whether or not you are actually making progress. The truth emerges when you read history seriously.

If you want a glimpse into authentic Judaism, don’t look in the ersatz world of 21^st century Ultra-Orthodox enclaves. Instead peer into the rubble of the Cairo Genizah. A hundred years ago 300,000 documents, every kind of document, emerged after lying in the dust for a thousand years of the attic of Cairo’s Ben Ezra Synagogue. It’s the single the greatest source of information we have about any single Jewish society throughout time. From the Genizah emerges a picture of Jews struggling to make ends meet, some more observant, some less. There are bankers and shopkeepers and poets and accountants and school-kids who doodle in the corners of their work books. There’s the relationship with the surrounding society who sometimes like Jews more, and sometimes less. There are Charitable organisations with too many calls on their funds, and not enough money. And even a Rabbi, trying to work out how to respond to a community who, perish the thought, talk through the repetition of the Amidah on Rosh Hashanah.

And if that sounds familiar, it is because it is. It’s because authentic Judaism is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heave for us and fetch it for us. It is not beyond the sea that you should say, ‘Who will cross to the other side of the sea and fetch it for us.’ Rather is it very close by, in your mouth and in your heart.’

Authenticity comes from aligning one’s actions with one’s beliefs. It can’t be commoditised or franchised out, or performed vicariously by others. The more we pretend it can, the further we get from experiencing Judaism ourselves, as we understand it. The more we locate our personal gold-standard as the right approach to Judaism for ourselves the more authenticity and integrity we have. That’s not to say that our approach is the only approach for everyone. But that we can’t and shouldn’t give up on any element of our own claim to what is right for us.

There is no form of Judaism ‘out there,’ that is right for me ‘in here.’ There is nowhere to go to find a truth that lives in our hearts. We have no other option other than to do this ourselves.

Shannah Tovah

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[1] Shevuot 30a

[2] BT Yoma 69b

[3] Much of this section is inspired by https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/07/commodification-orthodox-judaism/532668/

When the Fly Flew Into a Train - First Day Rosh Hashannah 5778

Four rabbis are in a coffee bar discussing Rosh Hashanah sermon topics.

Oy, says one.

Oy vey, says the other.

Oy vez mir, says the third.

Listen, says the fourth. If you don’t stop talking politics, I’m going to take my coffee elsewhere.

It’s an old joke, apparently dates back to Berlin in the early days of the Third Reich, back then the punch-line was ‘if you don’t stop talking about the Nazis.’

In these strange times, alternate punchlines are easier than they should be, ‘if you don’t stop talking about terror attacks on the underground,’ or ‘if you don’t stop talking about Myanmar, or Syria, or Yemen, or North Korea, or Trump, or storms in the Caribbean or refugees on the Mediterranean...

You could also substitute a punchline from any of the great subjects of particular Jewish concern. Did you catch the survey on declining Synagogue affiliation numbers and the future of the Jewish people? Or, prospects for peace in the Middle East or, or ...

Oy vez mir.

Sermons on big topics seem doomed to crash into walls of Oy vez mir.

But I’m not sure the sermons on small interpersonal topics - sermons about the inner workings of my soul - fare much better. ‘ve been doing this Rosh Hashanah thing for a while now. I’ve heard, indeed I’ve given a bunch of sermons persuading me to change, an it’s still the same me. I’ve the same tendencies to fall and fail and snap and bark I’ve had for years by now. Sermons encouraging me to throw myself against walls of my entrenched behaviours and rigidities feel doomed to provoke the same run of Oy, Oy vez and Oy vez mir.

If in doubt, try humour.

What did the fish say as it swam into a wall?

Dam.

I’ve been thinking a lot about colliding into seemingly unyieldingly powerful objects. In fact, it’s the journey I want to welcome you to share with me through these sacred days.

Here’s one of those of conundrums I remember from my school days: Suppose a fly collides with a train travelling in the opposite direction. At a certain point, the fly instead of going from left to right is turned round and begins to travel from right to left. Laws of physics suggest that between moving in one direction and moving in the other there has to be a moment of non-travel, a moment when the fly is moving at zero miles per hour.

At that moment, the fly and the train are in contact, and if, at that moment, the fly is stationary and attached to the train, the laws physics, surely, suggest that the train must also be travelling at zero miles per hour.

At that moment, surely, the fly has the ability to stop a train.

An early Rosh Hashanah apology to the physicists among you. I know just enough physics to be dangerously wrong. I know. I’ve checked. Apparently, as a matter of physics, the fly doesn’t stop the train. There’s something about the way the fly gets sequentially squished and also something about the insignificance of the moment in time under examination. But my conversations with physicists about flies and trains haven’t deadened my fascination with this image for religious, if not scientific, reasons.

What happens if we do pitch ourselves in the face of seemingly insuperable opposition? The anthropologist Margaret Mead famously said, ‘never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can’t change the world; indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.’ I was thinking about Mead’s quote on a recent visit to a homebound nonagenarian member. I was sharing something about the ‘Oy vez mir-ness of these times, and found myself realising that the man I was visiting had lived through the Blitz and his German born wife had been interred as an enemy alien. ‘How did it feel at that time?’ ‘Ah well,’ he replied, ‘we used to go up Primrose Hill and watch the Spitfires take on the German planes.’ A few brave, committed citizens changed the world. Never have so many owed so much to so few, and all that. As scary all these new scenarios feel. We’ve been here before and it was the flies who flew at the trains who made a difference.

Of course a tiny group can’t change the world alone, nor can a single fly stop a train, all by itself. But if enough people get behind an idea, stand alongside a leader, are prepared to follow a lead - then our individual actions are more powerful than we could possibly imagine.

In Rabbinic idiom, it’s called being a Nachshon Ben Aminadav. The story is told that when the Children arrived at the Sea - Egyptians behind them, wall of water in-front of them, the waters refused to part. It took one person - Nachshon Ben Aminadav - to walk into the water, before the waters parted.[1] Before the impossible happened, someone had to take the first step. Someone had to launch themselves at the train. A new good futures only unfold before the courageous.

I think this is the best way to understand one of Maimonides most captivating teachings on Teshuvah. ‘A person,’ wrote the greatest of all Jewish Medieval sages, ‘should see themselves, and indeed the whole world, narrowly balanced between good and bad, success and failure, power and impotence. Take one action and the entire world is tipped over onto the scale of good.’[2] The idea is that you take one step and someone sees you and is drawn forward by your courage, your willingness to take on the train. And then another and then another.

But the most religiously interesting reason to launch ourselves at trains has something to do with the question of significance. My physicist friends point out that the moment when the fly and the train are stationary is insignificant. If we are talking about the human view of trains and flies, I’m sure that’s the case. But what if we look at this fly and this train, not from our own perspective?

From God’s perspective, the Talmud teaches, a thousand years is but a blink of the eye.[3] The notion that anything any of us do is makes any real kind of difference on scale of time by which God measures the millennia seems ridiculous. If you watch history from the perspective of, say a Yuval Noah Harari, then the train of metahistory is indeed unstoppable, and every individual action does indeed pass into insignificance. Even a Mozart, even a Caesar, even a Ghandi - all meaningless.

But what if we view this story from the perspective of the fly?

I love a story told, first, by a remarkable Jewish paediatrician, David Baum.

As an old man walked along a beach at dawn he noticed a young boy picking up starfish and putting them in the sea. He asked him why he was doing this. His answer was that the stranded starfish would die if left until the morning sun. ‘But the beach goes on for miles, and there are thousands of starfish,’ countered the old man. ‘How can your effort make any difference?’ The young boy looked at the starfish in his hand and placed it safely in the waves. ‘It makes a difference to this one.’[4]

The point, I think, is this. Viewed from too grand a perspective my physicist friends are right, it’s all insignificant. Nothing matters. But if viewed from a sufficiently immediate place even the most tiny moments in time can prove to be truly awesome.

There was the story of members  who managed to gather to say goodbye to their soon-to-pass loved one. And the story of members who missed that moment, by minutes. That was significant. There was the story of member who took the opportunity to propose to a woman who was to become his wife for over 50 years in the days before he was due to leave the country. And the countless love affairs that never were because we’ve lacked the ability to seize the moment. That’s significant. There’s a moment in the aftermath of a row when there’s a possibility of saying sorry and making good. And there’s the way that moment passes and it becomes increasingly difficult to heal the brokenness. That’s significant. I’ve known families ripped asunder for less.

Here’s the difference between the significant and the insignificant - how much attention do we give to tiny individual moments? You pay attention to a moment and it is significant. You deem a moment insignificant and, for you, it is indeed insignificant - though it might be desperately important for others. It’s a circular logic, I know, but that’s not a fault in the logic. It’s a pathway to making a difference.

The more we view our lives from the grand scale, the less significant we become. But that doesn’t mean it’s right to view our lives from the grandest of scale. When we view our lives from the grandest of scales, we defeat the point of being alive at all. But when we shorten the sense of how big a moment needs to be to count the more powerful we become. The more we view our lives from the perspective of those we might help, or hurt, the more significant our actions seem to become. And the ability to choose how to view our actions lies in our hands.

So here’s the option - do we want to live our lives as if they are significant, or insignificant? Will you join me in an attempt to live treating the perspectives of others as really important? Will you join me in an attempt to consider that every moment has the potential to radiate significance and possibility?

It’s a very Jewish way to live a life. There are a web of practices, known as Kavvanot, designed to bring our intention in performing whatever we are doing, to the very moment in which we are acting. “Behold I am ready and accept the obligation to hear the Shofar;” We bring our attention to right this very moment. Here and now is important. We locate potential and significance right now, not thinking about the next thing I need to do, the next place I need to be, the next list item I need to get to. Because, religiously speaking the important thing, for me right now, is to invest as much possibility and significance into this very moment, and not be rushing off anywhere - either spiritually or emotionally.

Here’s a tiny example, I made a note a year ago. On first day Rosh Hashanah a year ago, we got to the Adon Olam and while Cantor Jason was leading Adon Olam, a wave of tallitot removal swept the sanctuary. We had an epidemic of people treating the moment of Adon Olam as if it didn’t matter. And as a result it didn’t. Let’s try it the other way this year. Be here. Let the last moment of prayerful song we will enjoy together this morning be invested with possibility - sing up, sing strong, and then head off to lunch. See if it makes a difference. I believe it will.

Here’s a bigger example, when you next get a call to action - a call to throw yourself in the path of an oncoming train, to make the world, or even yourself better, go for it. If you get a call to protest against the unconscionable, protest. If you get a call to  support the impoverished and the destitute, support. If you get a call to play a part - even if your part can only be tiny, believe in the value of the moment, have faith that if you heed the call to be brave and bold, others will follow. And know that in accepting our obligations to be forces for good in the world we are in some way worthy of the life we have been given.

A lot of flies have flown into a lot of trains without turning them around. But I still think it’s worth flying into a train.

Being prepared to step before the seemingly immoveable object is an act of faith in a future we help create. It’s the origin of the possibility of change. It’s the origin of hope.

We are all so much more powerful than we know.

In this year to come, may we use that power well,

Shannah Tovah - a good, powerful, year to us all.

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[1] Sotah 37a

[2] MT Hil Teshuvah xx

[3]

[4] https://www.asi-mag.com/the-parable-of-the-starfish/