The Hand and the Window - A Sermon for Yizkor

Reaching Out of Windows The LORD hurled a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken. And the mariners were afraid, and cried every person unto their god; and they cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it unto them. But Jonah was gone down into the innermost parts of the ship; and he lay, and was fast asleep. I feel like Jonah, fairly often, at the moment. With the storm breaking around me and threatening to break me, fairly often, I just want to pull the duvet over my head. Jonah, in this moment, isn’t an embodiment of the triumph of human possibility in the face of challenge. I’ll get back to that. Here’s a Talmudic tale, imagining the experience of Adam after expulsion from the Garden of Eden “Eat the fruit in the garden, God tells Adam, Mot Tamut. You will surely die.” But instead of death, Adam is exiled. And also this. Let’s suppose the world was indeed created on Rosh Hashanah, that would have exile starting just around about now, in the calendar-year, as the leaves begin to turn And it was as Adam saw the days getting shorter and shorter he said, woe, maybe the world is getting darker and darker because of my sin, and this is headed back to the chaos and disorder of the universe before creation. And this is the sentence that was decreed by heaven. But, of course, the world eventually stops getting darker and darker, and the days start to get longer and longer. And that’s when Adam holds an eight-day festival of lighting candles – a sort of precursor of not only Chanukah but the mid-winter celebrations of so many peoples around the world. Better than Jonah, facing up to the despair and eager to mark its passing, but unable to transform the ever encroaching darkness. One more story; Noah is on the ark, in the midst of a devastation that has wiped out kol hayakum – humans, cattle, insect and fowl of the heavens; really, Covid pales in comparison. And as Genesis Chapter 7 comes to an end, Noah is sealed in, the ark is lined with pitch inside and out with only one window for light and the waters rage for 150 days. This of course is pre-Zoom, or Netflix and the rest of it. And when Genesis Chapter 8 opens, it opens with the words ‘And God remembered Noah.’ Did God forget about his hero? Or is it just that Noah felt forgotten, lost, alone. And this is Noah’s response. Vayiftach Noach et HaChalon Vayishlach et HaArev Noah opens the widow and sends out the raven. He sticks his arm out of the ark and begins the process of re-establishing human possibility in this world. It’s possible, of course, to look at these tales, of Jonah of Adam and of Noah from a psychological perspective. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, in her book, On Death and Dying, set out five stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. That’s a good place to start. And for our Covid-addled times you can add to the list this nagging ennui, maybe a bit of despair and well – there is one other thing. The one thing that perhaps above all might help us get through this time with our souls intact – for that surely has to be the task. What about the moment when Noah opens the window and reaches out his hand? My friend Rabbi Marc Wolf asks the question – what strength must it have taken; to reach out of the darkness and take – what should we call it – a leap of faith, a stretching out a hand from the darkness into the light, an act of spiritual heroism? I want to share the work of Professor Melissa Raphael. She writes, in The Female Face of God in Auschwitz of a desire to try and find something to say to her daughter about the bleakness of the Holocaust. She wants to “wring from her own unease, a respite which conviction and hope moves them to transmit to others.” Raphael collects, from the wreckage of the Holocaust, moments of love and care demonstrated and shared even in times far darker than we – in our rather middling pandemic – have any right to compare to our own existential concerns this year. During roll-call – often lasting a day and a night without interruption – Lucie Adelsberger remembers how the women stood still, in rags, in all weathers, beaten whipped and lashed with pistols if they fell, with empty stomachs, often with diarrhoea and unable to move. And yet here too; ‘furtively and inconspicuously they pressed up against one another to keep warm, and thus they began to support their comrades when they began to reel.’ Charlotte Delbo too remembers how, at roll-call, each woman would both support and be warmed by another by placing her hands in the armpits of the woman in front of her. And when the legs of women in her work detail became too swollen for them to walk the other would try to carry them, terminally weak as they themselves were. One girl,” Raphael continues, “Adele, fling into the trucks turns to help those behind her … She is not afraid. Her arm encircles a weaker girl whose knees are failing her.” Raphael’s point is theological. Not the sort of theology most of us think of when we think of theology – if we think of theology at all. She writes, “The father God, the Monarchal Man of War was of little or no consolation or relevance to these women.” Rather, she writes, these women are embodying a godliness which is made manifest in acts of comfort and care of others. Raphael cites the Talmudic passage where we are called upon to behave like God and the examples of what it means, to behave like God, are examples of simple, yet powerful, acts of Hesed – kindness; clothe the naked, visit the sick, offer comfort to the bereaved. The godliness Raphael is interested in is neither the theoretical postulates of Maimonides or the sectarian claims that demarcate on denomination from the other, but actions that simultaneously bind all humanity towards the existential possibilities of what is greater than all humanity. In our treatment of what is other than us, writes Raphael, we are sustained by a godliness that is more profound than the prototypically masculine models of classic theology that lie broken and wrecked by the Holocaust. Etty Hillesum was a young Dutch Jew, murdered in Auschwitz. Her last recorded words were scribbled on a postcard which she threw out the window of the train that took her to her death. I know what will happen to us next (…) [Hillesum wrote on this remarkable artefact from the midst of that awful terror] The latest news is that all the Jews will be deported from Holland to Poland, through camps in the province of Drenthe, and the English radio said that since last year 700,000 Jews have perished in Germany and the occupied territories. If we do survive than we will have that many wounds to carry for the rest of our lives. And still life makes sense to me, my God, I cannot help it. I have already died a thousand deaths in a thousand camps. I know it all and I do no longer get upset over new information. And still I find this life beautiful and full of meaning, every minute of it. I get Jonah, I know sometimes all I want to do is run away, and pull the duvet over my head. I get Adam, I know it can feel desperately dark and helpless. But more than that, I know I am called, by Noah, and by Hillesum, and those countless myriads of women, and men, who have reached their hands out of the prisons of arks and carriages and lock-downed homes in compassion and love. Reading Hillesum’s postcard both, heart-breaking and heart affirming, is so powerful. It’s about a resistance that survives even death, it’s about holiness, courage and the very nature of life. We’re all doing. This is our spiritual inheritance. This is what has been handed down to us today. This is the job – to keep reaching out the windows, in compassion and love, despite our ennui, and despite the gloom. For what it’s worth, it’s always been the job, the very role of humanity, the very expression of what it means to be human; to keep reaching out the windows. May we always be so emboldened. One last thing. I want to share. A bit of a vision. In my mind, in this strange tangled web of our contemporary Covid-ed existence, our awful history and our very humanity, the hand of Ettie Hillesum reaching out the window of that train meets the hand of Noah, reaching out the window of that ark. And those fingers, in some echo of Michelangelo, touch. Maybe that’s my deepest dream this holy evening. That as we reach out, in these glorious acts of humanity, we touch, and we find someone else reaching out towards us. Chatimah Tovah, May it come to us all in sweetness and in health.

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

BRCA - Bracha - Reflections on Breast Cancer

In a few moments, we’ll begin our Yizkor service, and I know that many of us who are here today have memories of beloved relatives so close to our hearts and minds at this time. But I want to take this time to talk, not about those who are no longer with us, but us, who are here, and our relationship with our own mortality. Specifically, I want to talk about breast cancer.

I have a remote, but still nasty, relationship with breast cancer; in my life, my work, and my faith.

I never met my mother-in-law. She would have been 70 this year, but died of the disease before I met her.

A BRCA1 mutation - the single most significant important predictor of breast cancer - wanders through my wife’s extended family. As, of course, it wanders through other families in this special community, and others.

Thinking about this sermon, I’ve spoken with several BRCA mutation carriers, I’ve heard them called previvors – I like that term. I’ve spoken to cancer survivors and previvors who’ve chosen to remove breast and ovarian tissue, women who’ve chosen to remove breast tissue, but not ovaries, and ovaries, but not breasts.  I’ve spoken to a previvor who had a ‘bye-bye-boobs’ party featuring pink-frosted cupcakes with nipples. And I’m sharing this sermon in honour of all these remarkable women – and men – who’ve fought the cruel irony – that the ovaries and the breast – the source of human life - can become lethal if a microscopic chain of amino-acids don’t behave the way they should.

Let me back-track. Somewhere in our vast genome – on the long arm of chromosome 17 – we carry a gene that regulates the repair of broken threads of DNA. It’s called BRCA1. And there’s another gene on Chromosome 13 – BRCA2 – that does much the same thing. And if these BRCA genes are doing what they should do, broken threads of DNA get repaired perfectly. But certain kinds of mutations in these genes can result in mis-repairs and these mis-repairs, can result in tumours, tumours in breast tissue  -for both women and men - and ovarian tissue especially.

And then there is this; certain BRCA mutations have a particularly high incidence among Ashkenazi Jews. In the general population 1 in 400 people carry one of the over 60 different kinds of BRCA mutations that have been charted. Among Ashkenazi Jews, 1 in 40 of us carry one of three BRCA mutations, all of which are dangerous.

Earlier this year I was flown to Brazil to officiate at a wedding of two of our members here – perk of the job. At the reception I was talking to one of the guests, Renee, who told me she carried a BRCA mutation and had not only taken some serious decisions about how to respond herself, but she had also set up an organisation in Brazil to support Jews getting screened and giving support.[1]

Renee told me that until she set up her organisation there was very little information available in Portuguese and very little support available in Brazil. I told her there was a terrific organisation doing similar work in this country – Jnetics. I’m a fan. There’s some information on their work in the foyer. Their founder is the daughter of long-term members here.

And then Renee told me the thing has been gnawing at my mind ever since, ‘JNetics,’ she said, ‘nice name, I called my organisation Brachah’ It was late in the evening, the music was playing, she had great English, but a heavy Portuguese accent and I had to ask her to say it again, ‘Brachah – like BRCA. They sound the same’

And this is the thing I’ve been thinking about, ever since – where, in all the nastiness, pain, and sheer mortal threat of breast and ovarian cancer – does a person find Brachah – blessing?

The thing about Renee, and many of the women I’ve spoken to, who have responded to news that they carry a BRCA mutation by choosing to undergo surgery and the like is that, when they talk about their lot, they tend to use words like ‘blessing,’ and ‘being grateful’ more often than you would imagine.

The keyword, for so many of these women, is agency – the ability to exercise control over that which threatens to control you. Susan Sontag, who had just been diagnosed with cancer herself, wrote in 1978 about the way we talk, or at least talked, about cancer.  Cancer, she wrote, was depicted as “an evil, invincible predator, not just a disease.”[2] Cancer was seen as an automatic death-sentence which could be delayed, perhaps, but no more than that. Cancer, back then, seemed to enable no decisions, no agency. That is, if one even knew what was going on. Sontag records a conversation with a French oncologist who told her that a fewer than a tenth of his patients even knew they had the disease, it was considered too distressing to tell anyone who was not ‘exceptionally mature.’

And now comes, among so much extraordinary scientific and medical progress, the discovery of these BRCA mutations and a world of questions and decisions that are, I know they are, scary and complex and we would wish nothing more than not to have to face them. But cancer is not invincible, it’s not even inevitable, not even for previvors who carry BRCA mutations.

Nowadays, previvors step into a world of percentages; the likelihood of contracting this cancer, or that, before or after this age; the degree risk can be reduced by electing to have prophylactic surgery – the counsellors you need to see before you can go under the scalpel don’t call it preventative surgery because, like so much else in this murky uneasy world, not even surgery comes with a guarantee. It’s knowledge, but it’s not certain. The cancer previvor and the cancer survivor inhabit a world between thinking they can live forever and feeling they are the inevitable victims of Sontag’s ‘invincible predator.’

Perhaps, seen like this, these previvors aren’t so different from the rest of us, those of us with perfectly functioning BRCA genes, but nonetheless destined otherwise to mortality. Perhaps you, or I, carry a genetic marker that predisposes us to one illness or another, by some percentage or another, or perhaps we don’t carry a marker, it’s just that mortality will visit us for some other reason. Maybe the thing that will get us is spectacularly unlikely, but even the tiniest of percentages will manifest somewhere, on someone.

As science does that thing that science does, we will find out more and more about our predispositions to mortality in its different forms. And we will be given more choice about how to balance the desire to live in ignorance of what is coming, and the desire to know – to manage our choices.

Back in the late 1970s, Sontag wrote that we are born with dual citizenship; membership of a kingdom of the well and a kingdom of the sick. We all wish to use only the passport of the kingdom of the well, she wrote, but ‘sooner or later we have to identify as citizens of that other place.’ But surely, we are all in the same kingdom, the kingdom of life which is both astounding and glorious, and fragile and mortal. We are all sliding up and down a scale of confidence in our strength and awareness of our fragility.

And we are all juggling bits and pieces of knowledge as we slide up and down the scale. Sometimes the knowledge comes delivered by a professional genetic counsellor who’s looked into the very depths of our chromosomes and can give us statistics backed up by peer-reviewed research. And sometimes the knowledge is chaotic and second-hand and quite possibly nonsense. What’s that about turmeric, and is red-wine good or bad for you this week? It’s hard enough just avoiding the things we know are bad for us when there are so many more complexities being revealed by science.

Well, here’s the bad news for anyone who finds this mass of options and knowledge and confusion frustrating or intolerably morbid; the future is going to present us with more of this; more complex knowledge, less certainty, more uneasy squirming in the face of increasing understanding of exactly how you or I are most likely to die. We would do well to be ready for this brave new world – more ready than we are.

Let me share three lessons I’ve learnt from the previvors and survivors I’ve met.

The first is; get knowledge.

None of the previvors I have spoken with regrets getting screened. Not that they advocate everyone getting screened regardless of their age and stage of life, but get the knowledge about the right age and stage of life to be screened and get the knowledge. It doesn’t make things easy, but the knowledge is worth it.

In some ways the Ashkenaz Jew in the screening room is back in the Garden of Eden, standing before a tree which will allow us to understand things we will never be able to un-learn. The tree promises understanding but that could come at the cost of the myth of our immortality. But here, there is no command to avoid the fruit. Rather, in a post-Eden-world, perhaps the best guiding principle is this verse from Deuteronomy. ‘See I have placed before you blessing and curse, choose life so that you shall live.’ Again, there is information about JNetics in the foyer if you want to know more about screening.

Without understanding, our life choices are no better than random guesses. With knowledge we gain the ability to make meaningful choices. Knowledge is the gateway to the second great lesson I’ve learnt in these conversations.

And the second lesson is; claim agency.

Make meaningful choices. None of us can direct the totality of our existence – that’s the great religious truth of our day, but we do have some power over some elements of our fate – so we should claim the right to make these choices.

It once happened, the rabbis teach in Midrash Tanhuma,[3] that the Roman Emperor Turnus Rufus and Rabbi Akiva were debating. ‘Which is greater’ the Emperor asks, ‘the works of God, or the works of humans?’ ‘The works of humans,’ the Rabbi responds.’ ‘But how can you match the heavens and the earth?’ the Emperor asks. So Akiva brings out some stalks of wheat and some loaves of bread and says, ‘These are the work of God, and these are the work of humans. Isn’t the bread better than the stalks of wheat?’ The Emperor acknowledges he is defeated by the Rabbi who believes in the greatness of human agency.

In our claiming agency over our lives, we justify and celebrate our existence. Exerting agency over our lives stops us from being nothing other than a sufferer, a victim, it allows us to become the actor – the star, the hero of our own story. I mean we talk about a book of life and a book of death on this holy day, but we are all going to die eventually – that’s the one shared decree we all face – so the question is rather – what do we do with the life we are given. What difference can we make, over our own life and the lives of others while we have the chance?

There are always decisions of agency to make, certainly in the case of BRCA mutations and even at the end of life.

Get knowledge, claim agency.

And thirdly, find the Brachah – find the blessing, if at all possible.

Maybe blessing – Brachah - is too provocative a word. I know this is a tricky one. Maybe a better Hebrew word would be Todah or Modeh. Modeh is usually translated as ‘Thanks’ but it actually means something that doesn’t really translate into English. To be Modeh is to acknowledge the gift of existence as a whole, even if the momentary experience is painful and challenging. Being Modeh is not about being grateful to carry a gene mutation or being thankful to have cancer – God forbid. But there is something about finding gratitude in our encounters with life, even with its pain and inevitable mortality, that can lift us and attune us to what it means to be alive – and it is beautiful and wonderful to be alive, even in pain and mortality.

I know this is difficult. And I don’t want to judge anyone who experiences pain and simply wants to say – stuff this, this is awful. Pain is never good. But I’ve seen, and I know many of us have, people who can experience pain and still find this quality of being Modeh.

Judaism doesn’t want us only to bless, only to express this quality of being Modeh, just when things go well. The Mishnah states Hayav levarech al harah cshem shehu mevarech al hatovah – a person should bless equally when things go well, as we when things don’t.[4] It’s a challenge, but cultivating that sense of being Modeh allows us to feel empowered by our acts of agency. We might not change the outcome, but we can change the way we experience our pain. That’s not insignificant. In fact, it might be the very greatest act of our humanity.

Let me share one example. Judaism has, of course, if does, a blessing to be said when you go to the toilet.

It's a blessing that thanks God for creating in our human bodies, holes and pipes and pipes and holes. Galui va’Yadua lifnei kise kevodecha – it is revealed and known by You – God – that if one of the holes that should be opened should close, or one of the pipes that should be closed would open, it would be impossible exist, for even a moment. Blessed are you God – the blessing ends – who does wonderous things.

It’s a great blessing to be said when everything is going well with our bodies and we feel capable and powerful. It’s also a great blessing to be said when … it’s not and we become assailed by a sense that we are nothing more than fragile physical entities guaranteed only to decay.

I’m not trying, necessarily, to advocate the formal words in the siddur. I think you can express this idea in so many, many ways. I’m also not suggesting that a person shouldn’t feel angry, even express anger and bitterness and all the rest of the emotions that come up when we experience our own mortality in this way. Cultivating this sense of Modeh, while being angry at being ill and fighting with every ounce of our strength to get better, that can all fit together as part of a commitment to finding the very best in the lives we can make for ourselves. But somewhere, somehow, it's helpful to cultivate a sense of being blessed, a sense of being Modeh.

Judaism at its best doesn't lie. It doesn't offer panaceas to the inevitable human condition of mortality. But it does tell us to get knowledge, to claim agency and to find blessings. I think that’s because getting knowledge, claiming agency and finding blessings transforms us from being the victims of a sick irony like cancer and into human beings in the very fullest sense of the term. Getting knowledge, claiming agency and finding blessings makes us the heroes of our lives, it frees us from suffering, even if we do experience pain.

May we all be spared from any experience of pain in this year to come, but should it come, may we play these roles – of seeking knowledge, claiming agency and finding blessing with distinction and courage, both in this year, and in many years to come.

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[1] https://brachabrasil.org for the British organisation see https://www.jnetics.org/

[2] Illness as a Metaphor, p.7

[3] Tazria 5

[4] Mishnah Brachot 9:5

Yizkor - Philip Roth, Fleshy Existence and Life Everlasting

There are some wonderful people I miss. It’s been a hard year of accompanying members mourning in this community. And to those who have lost loved ones this past year, I offer, again, my wishes for consolation and comfort.

And then there’s Philip Roth. I never met Philip Roth. I don’t know if I would have liked him if I did. But he was - still is - one of the most powerful writers I’ve ever encountered.

Everyman isn’t one of his best-known works, but it’s the one that speaks most clearly today.

Everyman, is the name of a shop owned by the book’s protagonist. It sells diamonds.

We are told the shop’s founder, our hero’s father, chose the name ‘Everyman’ because he wants every man to feel they can buy a diamond, the father believes in diamonds.

‘It’s a big deal for working people to buy a diamond,’ the father tells his son, ‘no matter how small. When the wife wears it, this guy is not just a plumber – he’s a man with a wife with a diamond. Because, beyond the beauty, the diamond is imperishable. A piece of the earth that is imperishable’

Buy a diamond and become imperishable. Buy a diamond and live forever.

Everyone, says the shop-sign, Everyman, can do it.

Roth is, of course, playing with us.

None of us lives forever.

And the real truth of ‘Everyman’ is rather our inevitable mortality.

Just as the contents of the book chart not immortality but the journey of a man into death.

Mortality is the reality of ‘Everyman,’ diamonds or no diamonds.

So on this day, at this time when we stand remembering those who have gone before us, who have passed away.

We bump up against our mortality.

And I ask this question -

Of what purpose is life?

I want to offer two models.

The first is Roth’s prescription for the ‘best of life.’

The second is a more religious, Jewish way of approaching our own inevitable Everyman moment.

Roth is not a man of faith.

He might write like an angel, but when he looks to understand the question, ‘what purpose is life?’ he has nowhere, other than life itself, to go.

Roth’s Everyman thinks that the best that life gets to offer is the memories of the glories of our own temporary existence.

And in the most important moment in the book, Roth’s Everyman looks back on his own youth and speculates that the memories of youthful pleasures are ‘as good as it gets.’

This burst of memory is ultimate for Roth’s Everyman.

I want to share an extended extract from the book, a pivotal extract which expresses what is, for Roth, the very heart of existence.

‘Maybe the best of old age was … the longing for the best of boyhood, for the tubular sprout that was then his body and that rode the waves from way out where they began to build,

rode them with his arms pointed like an arrowhead and the skinny rest of him following behind like the arrow’s shaft,

rode them all the way into where his rib cage scraped against the tiny sharp pebbles and jagged clamshells and pulverized seashells at the edge of the shore

and he hustled to his feet and hurriedly turned and went lurching through the low surf until it was knee high and deep enough for him to plunge in and begin swimming madly out to the rising breakers

– into the advancing green Atlantic, rolling unstoppably toward him like the obstinate face of the future – and,

if he was lucky, make it there in time to catch the next big wave and then the next and the next and the next until, from the low slant of inland sunlight glittering across the water he knew it was time to go.

He ran home barefoot and wet and salty, remembering the mightiness of that immense sea boiling in his own two ears and licking his forearm to taste his skin fresh from the ocean and baked by the sun.

Along with the ecstasy of a whole day being battered silly by the sea, the taste and the smell intoxicated him so that he was driven to the brink of biting down with his teeth to tear out a chunk of himself and savour his fleshy existence.'[1]

The best of life, says Roth, is remembering the times we threw ourselves at the breakers, intoxicated with the ‘ecstasy of a whole day being battered silly by the sea.’ The purpose of life is its own ‘fleshy existence,’

It’s a sensational piece of writing.

But I don’t share the outlook on the best that life can be.

It’s too shallow, too selfish, ultimately too lonely.

I wish I could write even half as well, but I want no part in the theology.

Because I know there is more than this.

For Roth, savouring fleshy existence is ultimate.

And I claim he is wrong.

There is something more.

As many of you know, I practice Yoga.

I enjoy it, it’s good for me. It’s good for my Rabbinate.

But every now and again, I get a little jealous of my Yoga teachers.

Much of Yoga, like much of Roth, brings our consciousness to the ‘this world,’ to the now, to the moment.

And while I am twisted deep into one asana or another and while my teachers are busy instructing me to bring my consciousness to this moment and this world, I keep getting weighed down by all the Jewish stuff.

I reach my hands out towards the sun and feel weighed down by all the mitzvot, and the books, God help me, the books.

And Jewish books are heavy.

And the memories, they weigh even more heavily than the books; memories of ’73 and ’67 and ’39 -’45. And older than those memories, memories of ’92 - 1492 Colombus sailed the ocean blue and the Jews were expelled from Spain, and 70 – not 1970, not 1870, the year seventy – when the temple was destroyed.

And memories of Sinai and Egypt and the binding of Isaac.

My memories are heavier than my books.

And the mitzvot – the obligations – the whole fabric of thou shalts and thou shalt nots.

The more uniquely Jewish obligations of tefilin and kashrut and Shabbat and

The more universal obligations to my family and friends –

You shall honour your father and mother,

I am my beloved and my beloved is mine,

You shall repeat these words to your children,

- And the obligations to the stranger

You shall not wrong the stranger.

The obligations, the mitzvot – weigh heavily.

I’m a Jew.

I don’t travel light; I schlep with me my stories, my memories, my obligations and values.

It gets a little heavy, every now and again.

So after one Yoga class, I was feeling particularly weighed down and my teacher mentioned that their guru was coming into town. He was hosting an evening, would I like to come?

I Googled the guru.

The video clip twinkled into life on my computer screen and a white bearded cheery looking man spoke out

‘Live life moment to moment,’ opined the guru,

‘You need to let go of everything you think you know,’

‘The only way you will be happy and have fun is if you stay in the moment. One tiny thought about the past or future and you are lost.’

It was Roth speak.

I had been invited to an evening dedicated to ‘savouring our fleshy existence.’

And I was tempted.

It was, after all, going to be lighter than another evening with my books, my memories and my obligations.

I was going to go,

I wasn’t planning on giving up the Judaism thing, I just wanted to ease off on all this weight and ‘savour my fleshy existence.’

And then someone died.

A member of this community.

And instead of going to an evening with the Guru of ‘fleshy existence’ I picked up the phone and went to visit, to comfort – just like so many other members of the community – and, being the Rabbi, I prepared for the funeral and the shiva and all the weighty rituals that accompany the end of a life.

But they didn’t feel heavy any more.

They felt desperately valuable. For the family, but also for me.

For there we stood.

At the Cemetery at Cheshunt, this family – of relatives and friends, members of this community and other communities.

And we were joined, standing around the coffin, by all the memories.

And all the obligations; the Jewish obligations and the simple obligations.

There was an ancient Exodus, and a new-born grandchild.

And a husband whose love had stood firm through horrible illness.

And colleagues and friends and members of this Shul, and other shuls, and no shul.

And we stood around the coffin.

We stood around the life that had gone as if we were part of a mould, a cast.

A cast of a life – forming a structure, around the hollow where their life should have been

And together we carried the weight, a little unevenly, it must be admitted, those closest to coffin carrying most - but we carried the weight together.

The life had ended, but the weight was still very present.

As it is today.

And the weight doesn’t feel heavy anymore.

It dances a little, at least sometimes.

It tutt-tutts as we fall short of the values that we should be living up to.

And it smiles when we show each other the sort of kindness that our friend would have wanted.

And it makes me know that life has meaning beyond savouring our fleshy existence.

Reminding me that there is more to life than running after waves.

Reminding me that I am part of a narrative that will outlive me.

For long after the fleshy existence is over, the weight; the responsibilities and values, the stories will live on.

Defying mortality.

Defeating mortality.

And this is the Jewish way.

Our teacher Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote powerfully about death.

‘Our hope for eternity,’ he said, ‘presupposes there is something about [us] that is worthy of eternity.’

I want to put it more strongly.

We get to live forever, we get to transcend death, if we live suitably weighty lives.

When we transcend selfishness, when we allow the needs of others to become our responsibilities.

When we live well in the shadow of responsibilities we inherit from our parents – to whom we owe our lives – and their parents and their parents.

When we fold our stories into the great cosmic journey of our people we get to live beyond our finite fleshy existence.

The way we live with our obligations lifts us beyond mortality.

The way we approach our obligations is our key to eternity.

We don’t need a leap of faith to reject Roth’s case for the supremacy of ‘fleshy existence.’

We need only to turn to the weight we carry with us, today, to this service of loss and memory.

We each arrive here today carrying the weight of memory of parents, friends, family, loved ones. And we are all heartbroken by their loss.

We are saddened, but we are also lifted.

The fleshy existence is no more – and we miss it – of course we do.

But the values live on.

We need only to turn to our own memories of those we have loved and lost to know this to be true. These responsibilities remain alive, in us, for as long we let them dance still.

As long as we live up to their challenge to do better, to care more, to love more deeply.

Our beloved dead live on.

And they challenge us too to live beyond our time on this fragile planet.

They challenge us too, to a life beyond our fleshy existence.

May that time not come for us for many years, but come it will, as it comes for Everyman.

And on that day, when our friends and families stand around our own coffin they will carry the cast of our fleshy existence, the mould made out of the values and responsibilities by which we are to be judged.

And, if we merit it, this weightiness will triumph over mortality.

If we merit it, this weightiness will teach yet again, of that which we know when we think of our own departed loved ones,

It will teach that while fleshy existence rots in the earth, our values and responsibilities will live forever.

And indeed this is the answer to the question of what purpose is there to our lives.

For the memory of our beloved departed is more than a blessing.

It is such stuff as immortality is made on.

---

[1] Pp 126-7

Kol Nidrei - Shabbat

Trying to become a better person, is a good thing.

Most of the time.

There was once a man, a stonecutter, and he wasn’t happy being a stonecutter. Every time the foreman would shout and harangue him and he felt this jealousness, so he closed his eyes, for just a moment and says to himself, ‘I wish, I just wish I could be a foreman.’

Poof – just like that, he becomes the foreman, and this is great. Now he is doing the bossing around, not for him the hard graft of cutting the stones.

But then the King arrives and demands the profits from the quarry and now our foreman is feeling miserable again, ‘Oh this is terrible, all my hard work, for nothing. And so he closes eyes, ‘I wish, I wish I could be a King,’ and poof, again. The King.

And this really is terrific, robes, jewels, a crown; servants to carry me through the streets of the city.

But it is hot under this crown. Goodness, I’m really starting to sweat. If only I were the sun, then I could solve all these problems.’ And so he shuts his eyes, ‘I wish, I wish’ and poof, again. Now he is the sun.

And that is great until the cloud comes and blocks out the sun. So he wishes to be a cloud, which is wonderful floaty fun until the wind blows the cloud.

So he wishes to be the wind, whistling through the trees, and that is fantastic until he comes up against a mountain, blocking the way of the wind.

‘I wish, I just wish I could be a mountain.’

Poof – and now, here he stands, a mountain, been here forever will be here forever, strong and sturdy and immovable.

Until, down in a quarry at the foothills he hears the chip, chip chip of stonecutter, cutting away at the mountain.[1]

Over Rosh Hashanah I shared, in my sermons, an idea and tried to unpack how it influences both our internal psychological, or spiritual state, our relationship with Judaism and, taking a broader perspective, should be influencing the world.

On first day RH I spoke about alterity.

On second day RH I spoke about truth.

Today I want to speak about an idea that is, perhaps, more important than either.

Here’s the problem;

We don’t know how to stop.

Going after more things seems to be the wiring of our souls.

Or maybe it’s not our souls’ fault.

Maybe it’s that we all live in a society where we are continually told acquiring more stuff will make us a better person, or a happier person, or a person of more value.

And those voices call us to gauge our success by the extent to which we hunger for more.

And, unless we police the borders of our soul we can get swept up in chasing after vanity.

Or maybe it’s the fault of the other voice that seems to crow ever more incessant in contemporary society; the voice of fear; fear of missing out, or fear of not measuring up to standards that are simply unreasonable.

24/7 no longer seems sufficient to detail the extent to which so many of us are expected to be ‘on,’ to be reactive.

I’m part of a FB group of Conservative Rabbis. One of my colleagues queried as to whether it was appropriate for a Rabbi to have an auto-response on their emails apologizing for not responding rapidly to emails at this time of year or whether that just looks like we are wasting time that could otherwise be productive.

And I’m more than aware that if that’s true for Rabbis, for those of you with jobs in the real world, the insistence that you are available and responsive 24/7 are even more demanding.

There are many things to blame for our working ourselves into spirals of dis-satisfaction and fear.

But this is Yom Kippur - it’s a day for us to take responsibility for our own decisions, no matter how much others might have enticed us.

It’s as if we think that at the end of our lives we are to be judged by the amount of stuff we have accumulated or the amount of busy-ness we affect.

Actually the Talmud[2] tells us how we are to be judged in the heavenly tribunal when our time does indeed come.

We can expect to be asked if we had fear of heaven, if we pursued wisdom - those sorts of things. But we aren’t going to be asked if we accumulated enough stuff. We aren’t going to be asked if we were busy enough.

Actually you don’t even need to know the Talmud’s lack of interest in the amount of stuff we accumulate to know the amount of stuff we accumulate is only so very rarely important at the end of a person’s life.

You don’t need to know that the Talmud has nothing to say about how much we accumulate or how many hours we work to know that these issues matter only very rarely at the end of a life.

You just need to spend time with people at the end of their lives.

People regret spending time with their family.

People regret not being able to do more with the people they love.

Those who have lived really great lives - and I’ve had the sad blessing of burying too many this past year - don’t regret anything, they just wish they could be around to spend more time doing the things they know are truly important.

The grander perspective on this relentlessness is the ecological disaster we are bequeathing on generations to come. March was so cold the army were called into help. The summer broke all records for heat.

There are two tales of creation at the beginning of the Torah. One tells us we are placed on this earth to impose ourselves on it, it tells us that the world and everything in it is our plaything - here for us.

But we’ve forgotten the other tale. The other tale tells our life’s work is to work and protect the earth - lovdah ulshomrah.

At the time that God created Adam, God led him past every tree in Gan Eden and said to him, “See how beautiful and praiseworthy are My creations. Everything that I created, I created for you. Be careful not to damage or destroy My world, for if you damage it, there will be no one to fix it up after you.”[3]

So much for working and protecting the earth - we are sucking out its resources and destabilizing the carefully balanced ecology that protects life on earth.

But we are, you and I, extraordinarily blessed to have a way out of this cycle of danger.

Because, as Jews, we have a gift that has kept our people for thousands of years.

It has allowed us to rise higher than being ever more busy.

It is called Shabbat.

This is a sermon about Shabbat.

On Shabbat we free ourselves from the tasks of subsistence, we become free.

We step back from the day-to-day tasks of the week and instead get to become, in the words of Bible, a little less than angels.

In the Creation Narrative we find that on the seventh day, God vayinafash. It is usually translated as God rested. It is a poor translation.

Vayinafash – can mean ‘breath’ and on the seventh Day, God put the breath into the world. Now that is a more radical notion than rest, as we would normally understand the word.

But Nefesh means something else as well as ‘rest’ and ‘breath.’ Nefesh is a soul.

Vayinafash – And God put the soul in the world on that first Shabbat and we can still hear that echo,

Or at least we would be able to if only we could still our lives, still the ever-spinning hamster wheels.

Shabbat can even help up find that stillness.

The radical notion of the laws around Shabbat is that our lives become more special when we abstain from stuff.

Shabbat serves as correction to the human search for that which is beyond what we really need to celebrate our humanity, and our Jewish identities.

Shabbat is the antidote to our addiction to getting more and more.

It can teach us that it’s not only possible to step back from always chasing after more. It’s actually vital.

We humans need a sabbatical day – a day in seven to be ourselves, to recover our own resources, a time to be with our families, with God, and to celebrate the joys of a simpler kind of life; a life of friendship, of community, of holiness.

As a Rabbi I feel that the Shabbat is the single greatest weapon in our arsenal as Jews, as human beings that will allow us to become better, stronger and more compassionate people.

How is it possible to make change in our lives– Keep Shabbat

How is it possible to respond adequately to the incredible gift of simply being alive – Keep Shabbat

How is it possible to keep things in perspective when life gets so cluttered and stressed and busy – Keep Shabbat

How is it possible to keep a balance between work life and home life – Keep Shabbat

It is difficult to explain how these glorious collections of rules and rituals carry so much power. In fact I guess that their mystery is part of the efficacy.

Shabbat can’t really be explained, it has to be lived.

So I want to offer two very concrete tools, techniques and approaches to Shabbat.

One for Friday night, one for Saturday during the day. Both radically simple.

On the Friday night I want to suggest to us all that we become bolder in claiming the sanctity of Erev Shabbat.

I want to suggest, to us all, that we feel more confident in declining the invitations to shows and parties and the like.

Let them go. I know we are all so well connected and so many of us get so many invitations to attend so many wonderful and interesting places.

But there will be enough invitations even if we decline ones on a Friday night.

Friday nights are for protecting a Jewish time.

Come to shul - our Friday night services are lovely - short!, shorter than this journey, you can sing, we’d love you to sing. You can connect to being part of a Jewish journey. And you can leave the rest of the world to get on with its lunacy.

And you should eat - of course you should eat. At its heart Shabbat is about meals, made unique in the week by the ritual that accompanies them. If you are blessed with a family - eat with your family. Invite others to share a Jewish meal with you. If you don’t have regular invites - make a point of booking for our dinners at New London - next one is on 9^th November.

Just protect Friday nights from a slow slide away into just another weekend evening.

For Saturday during the day I want to commend to you all the observance of an issur d’oraita – a prohibition straight out of the Bible. We are commanded not to carry, on Shabbat, in a public place.

I spend my week laid down. Even if I am not shlepping computer around, my pockets are always full of wallet and phone and jangling keys and scraps of paper reminding me of who knows what.

For one day a week they can all be left at home.

Especially the wallet.

Especially the phone.

If you really need to carry – take the one key, not the whole bunch.

Do you really need that handbag? If you really do, what can you empty out, what can you let go of?

What can you leave behind today?

It is a wonderful way to realise how little stuff we actually need to get through our days.

On Saturday day, don’t carry, Keep Shabbat.

I know there is plenty to do.

I know there is plenty to campaign for and campaign against.

And I know that we are all worried about the financial and corporate pressures of this world in which we live.

But it doesn’t help to chase after more forever.

It’s so easy to lose track of what we are actually searching for.

Keep Shabbat and we may soon start to find it.

May we do that, and in so doing find a wonderful, peaceful and healthy year to come.

Gemar Chatimah Tovah

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stonecutter

[2] Shabbat 21a

[3] Kohelet Rabbah 7:3