I’m blogging 1,000 intros to different aspects of Jewish law.
Newly published
An introduction to Talmud and Gemarah
http://alephguidetojudaism.wordpress.com/2014/02/03/gemarah-talmud/
An introduction to the Mishneh Torah
http://alephguidetojudaism.wordpress.com/2014/02/03/mishneh-torah/
Hope you enjoy them,
Went to see 12 years a slave, last weekend.
Actually – seem to have been spotted at the cinema by a significant proportion of the Synagogue – and appropriately so.
From a Jewish perspective a deeply important one.
From a human perspective a deeply humbling one.
In America they are commemorating Martin Luther King this week
Abraham Joshua Heschel, the Rabbi who marched to Selma on King’s right, spoke at a conference on Religion and Race in 1963 – he introduced Martin Luther King with these words
At the first conference on religion and race, the main participants were Pharaoh and Moses. Moses’ words were: “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, let My people go that they may celebrate a feast to Me.” While Pharaoh retorted: “Who is the Lord, that I should heed this voice and let Israel go?
The outcome of that summit meeting has not come to an end. Pharaoh is not ready to capitulate. The exodus began, but is far from having been completed. In fact, it was easier for the children of Israel to cross the Red Sea than for a Negro to cross certain university campuses.
Few of us [Heschel continued] seem to realize how insidious, how radical, how universal an evil racism is. Few of us realize that racism is man’s gravest threat to man, the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason, the maximum of cruelty for a minimum of thinking. You cannot worship God and at the same time look at man as if he were a horse.
I don’t want to suggest that no Jew ever partook in the American slave trade – to my shame as a Jew I know I can’t make that claim.
I don’t want to suggest that Jews have always looked at slavery as the horror it truly is.
But Judaism – as a religion – as a call on our hearts and on our actions, has always been clear – slavery is an abomination.
Indeed the clarity of Judaism’s approach to slavery is rendered perfectly clear in the opening of this week’s parasha.
There is a passage about servitude – the eved ivri at the opening of this week’s parasha
An eved ivri is not a human, created in the image of God, who by dint of skin colour or some other peripheral aesthetic mark is different from the surrounding society.
The eved ivri is a person who falls on hard economic times and is forced to sell themselves into servitude to pay off their debts, or someone caught thieving, or similarly – and has to pay off their criminality.
The Torah commands that they can work up to the Sabbatical year – then they go free hinam – devoid of any debt.
Don’t accustom yourself to the notion of commanding another human being, commands the Torah.
Know that even if you are in the fortunate business of having servants to look after your every need, these are human beings, and human beings should be free and must ultimately always come into freedom.
Don’t get too used to being in control of other humans.
And then comes the line in the Torah that perhaps, even more than any part of the Exodus narrative, carries the sense of Judaism’s absolute rejection of slavery.
And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free; Then his master shall bring him to the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or to the door post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall serve him forever.
The Talmud insightfully explains the symbolism this strange command embodies;
Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai said ‘Ozen zot sheshama al har Sinai ki li bnei yisrael avadim - for the Children of Israel shall serve me – says God’ and you go off and become attached to another master – let that ear be pierced.
And Rabbi Shimon said,
And that door or doorpost behind which the Children of Israel crouched in Egypt when I passed over the door to bring you freedom ...
And you chose another master’s door to crouch behind – let the ear be pierced into that door.
The point isn’t that this should happen.
The point is that the nature of the piercing should ensure no human being should ever turn to slavery – no human being should prefer the simplicity of a life enslaved above the hardship of a life lived free with the responsibilities and burdens freedom entails.
It’s a powerful insight – the insight that a person might prefer to shelter behind another door, rather than walk through to freedom
Every movement which has sought to free some oppressed people has been hampered by those slaves who would rather remain enslaved.
But a Jewish slavery would demand something more than simply feeling slavery is a bad things and how good it is we no longer have the sort of persecution of humanity that was a marker of slavery in nineteenth Century America,
An article by the Times’ Ben Macintyre drew my attention to an extraordinary letter written by a former slave to his former master.
In 1865 Colonel PH Anderson wrote to his former slave, Jourdon asking if he would come back to serve for him in Big Spring Tenessee.
Anderson offered to treat his former slave ‘better than anyone else.’
But Jourdan’s letter in response shows how profoundly he understood the warning not to halash after slaver. Had Jourdan been a Hebrew slave, he would never have offered his ear up for piercing.
Sir: [the letter opens] I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable.
Jourdan goes on to suggest that he wants to check that the offer to treat him and his family well is genuine. He continues
we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to.
It’s a terrific document, well worth reading in full. One more extract;
We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.
[that, by the way, is a reference to another Biblical verse – Leviticus 19:13
Lo talin p’ulat s’chir ]
Say howdy to George Carter, [Jourdan concludes] and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.
From your old servant,
Jourdan
What’s the point of sharing this long story?
Economics.
Slavery isn’t just about freedom and the right to work for whoever and however one wants.
Slavery leaves a terrible economic ruin in lives for generations beyond emancipation.
End of 12 years a slave, and this isn’t to spoil the ending – get the true story of what happened to Solmon Northup after his 12 years – receives not a penny in reparations or for any of the wrongs did to him.
Remains a painful issue in contemporary American politics, certainly among those who trace their ancestors back to slaves, and I suppose slave owners.
In America average inheritance for whites - $90,000, for blacks - $18,000.
To be horrified by slavery.
To have a Jewish attitude to slavery isn’t simply to believe that everyone should be released from whatever injustice enslaves them.
It’s an economic imperative, to understand that the wages of work should be fairly handed over.
It’s a commercial imperative to purchase, as much as possible goods produced fairly.
It’s a commercial imperative to turn away, as much as possible, from those economic producers who do not sufficiently care for their staff and ensure they are employed at a level that allows them to earn a living wage.
Ah, these are complex and challenging economic arguments, but arguments, I absolutely believe that are connected to these issues of slavery and freedom.
Perhaps to end with the same piece of Torah I ended my words at the 50th year celebrations of New London at the Civic Service last week.
Lo Alecha Hamlecha ligmor, v’lo atah ben horin lhivatel mimena
You don’t have to finish the work, but neither are you a free person to desist from it
Lo atah ben horin
You are not free person until you have ensured the freedom of others.
Shabbat shalom
I’ve been reflecting on the Hebrew verb – nachat – probably more familiar as the Yiddish term – nachas. The archetypal experience of shepping nachas (incidentally one scheps nachas and schlepps a heavy weight) is the delight a parent feels when experiencing the successes of one’s children. Despite our instinctive sense of what nachas is, and how it operates, it’s a complex entity, folded in on itself as it reaches in entirely contradictory directions.
On the one hand nachas is vicarious. I did not schlep, as it were, myself. But my disconnect from the true hero of the moment is not complete. I retain a connection; in the case of the nachas shepping mother umbilically - even many years after my initial disentanglement from primary responsibility. Nachas requires both a step back and a continued sense of accountability; in some limited sense I retain a sense I am somehow, at least partially, responsible. This explains why the realm of those who shep nachas extends far beyond parents, any level of a partial sense of accountability works to drive the nachas engine. I’m reminded of the lovely epigram, ‘success has many parents, it’s only failure that is an orphan.’
Nachas contains a further internally contradictory dynamic. The happier I am for the other, the more pleasure I take. Nachas, perhaps like adult love, requires something to be given before it can be received. And the more one gives away, the more nachas one receives. Nachas is indeed a holy and most archetypically human emotion.
The prompt for all this reflection is the Civic Service and Induction of Cantor Jason that took place at New London last Sunday. I didn’t do the schlepping – and thanks are due to those who worked so hard to make the event a success (I want particularly to acknowledge the efforts or David Futterman, Jo Velleman and the professional team), but I feel a certain pride that I am, somehow, at least partially responsible, as indeed we all are.
The more applause I offered Cantor Jason and the contributions of, among others, Julian Dawes, the New London Singers and the Cheder – wonderfully led by Angela Gluck and Ezra Burke, the more delight I felt in the whole event.
If money makes the world go round, nachas is the driving force of a good Synagogue. The closer we feel to the heart of the community, the more nachas we experience in its successes even as those successes are not, strictly speaking, our own. Actually, forget about money making the world go round – at least for this Shabbat – and see if we can make nachas turn the entire globe. It celebrates and encourages growth beyond the direct impact of our own hands and the more we give away, the more of it there is to go round.
Thank you to everyone who played parts large or small in the success of last Sunday – and the fifty years of hard work that resulted in us having something so special to celebrate.
From ‘We Have Reason to Believe’
Retrospective written for the 2004 Fifth Edition (40th Year of New London Synagogue, aged 84)
The thesis of the book, for which it was attacked from left and right, is that modern knowledge and scholarship have made it impossible to accept the traditional view that God ‘dictated’ to Moses, word for word and letter by letter, the whole of the Pentateuch. My argument runs that, while such a doctrine of verbal inspiration is now untenable, the traditional doctrine that Torah is from Heaven can and should still be maintained. To put this in different words, God is the author of the Torah (conceived of as the sum total not of the Pentateuch alone, but of religious thought through the ages). He cooperated with His creatures in producing the Torah, through human beings reaching out to Him. There is thus a human element, as well as a divine element, in what we call the Torah.
That the notion of direct divine communication, for all its hallowed history, has to be abandoned is demanded by our present-day knowledge. The findings of geology, astronomy, archaeology, biblical criticism and modern research into the sources of Judaism all go to show that Judaism (‘the Torah’) has undergone development as Jews came into contact with and were influenced by societies and cultures different from their own.
Reform and Liberal theologians have been largely puzzled that all this is in any way a source of offence. ‘So what else is new?’ they exclaim. Human beings have known that for centuries, as Galileo said after his recantation, ‘The earth still moves.’ My reply has been that I have never tried to present as new the findings of science. I have only tried to put forward the view that Jewish practice, the Halakhah, is still binding because this is the will of God, provided, of course that the Torah is seen, as it often is in the tradition itself, in dynamic terms of trial and error, falsehood gradually yielding to truth. Nor do I claim any originality for such a view, which has been held by Jewish traditionalists from the early nineteenth century. But I now admit that I was wrong in imagining that such views are compatible with Orthodoxy as this is now understood in fundamentalist terms (I use ‘fundamentalism’ not in a pejorative sense but only to denote the attitude of those who are either indifferent of antagonistic to all modern critical scholarship).
So much for theory. On practical note my views may have been considered to be heretical, but I know from personal contact through the years that many of the Modern Orthodox and even a few of the Charedim have shown sufficient interest in my view to whisper in my ear ‘There is something in what you are saying.’ In Anglo-Jewry however the Orthodox establishment and the Chief Rabbi have dubbed me a heretic. The Chief Rabbi has never responded to my critique ... More than once I have urged that Chief Rabbi to declare that basically his views differ only slightly from mine, but he has not bothered to reply. And there is the odd matter of the London Beth Din issuing a ruling to the effect that while I am welcome to any United Synagogue I cannot be called up to the Torah because, granted my beliefs I cannot honestly recite the benediction ‘Who has given us His Torah.’ If, as a result of the above, I find myself over forty years after the publication of We Have Reason To Believe, in something of a limbo, belonging neither to the Orthodox, nor to the Reform, nor, in a sense, fully to the Masorti. I do not complain. I suppose I asked for it. I have consoled myself by quoting a Hasidic saying which runs, ‘One who has no place anywhere has a place everywhere.’
For going over old ground I must apologise by repeating a story I have often told. An old Jew was observed in a railway carriage muttering to himself and waving his hands in dismissive gestures from time to time. ‘What are you doing?’ he was asked. I was bored with the long journey and was telling myself Jewish jokes to while away the time.’ ‘And why did you wave your hands?’ ‘I have heard them all before.’
New London Synagogue was well represented at the Masorti Dinner, held last Sunday at New North London Synagogue. In total over 260 members of the movement – supporters of the movement – were part of the evening which was in part good fun and in part an opportunity to celebrate what we are becoming and what we might become.
We read, this Shabbat of the death of Jacob, Israel himself. His deathbed scene is one of passing on blessings, prophecies and charges to his children – and grandchildren. Jacob’s concerned for a future that will survive his own death. He understands that the things that matter to him – as the father of all Israel – need to be carried on beyond his own individual reach. It’s a lesson that should strike us, at New London, in two ways. We have struggled with the mortality of a single dominant, powerful leader and if the community is strong today – and I believe we are strong – it is because the leadership and vision of this community is owned and shared by many. It cannot live solely with a single person if the community is to be about more than a one person’s dream. Secondly we should understand that New London Synagogue, even as a busy and virbat community, is rendered all but meaningless if it is only about meeting our own private Jewish needs and desires. If we stand for a Judaism that is open-minded and committed to our tradition, that is something we have to make meaningful for others. We need a youth movement to inspire and engage our children, we need a Bet Din, to welcome in converts and ensure we don’t always need to run to the Reform or the Orthodox to provide for our religious needs. We also need numbers. Of course Jews have never placed ultimate value in sheer numbers, but we are, as a movement, too small to engage publically and even within the Jewish community at a level that could transform Jewish life in this country.
So here is the advert.
On Sunday 9th February my colleagues, Cantor Green and I will be among the teachers at Yom Masorti. It’s a day of learning and sharing for members of Masorti synagogues across the movement, from Leeds to Bournemouth and from the founding community – that would be us – to the newest member of the team – Stoke Newington. It’s always an extraordinary gathering and the programme for the day will offer something for everyone.
There is more information at
http://www.masorti.org.uk/pdf%20files/Yom%20Masorti%202014.pdf
And I will be taking opportunities both on Shabbat and in the early part of 2014 to encourage members of New London to attend.
It’s how we live on after our time has passed.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Jeremy
This isn’t a eulogy.
That would be inappropriate, and besides there are many far better placed than I.
Want to give a sermon in honour of the passing of a giant in my life, and that of the world.
And I’ll have a word of two to share about Joseph, another leader who knew darkness and imprisonment and came through that experience of oppression to provide great leadership.
He was in a category of one, an elder to the world and his life touched mine.
I believe he provided a leadership unmatched in our times.
Three insights into his life and death.
Mandela had great faith.
When I suggest he had faith, it’s not the classic relationship with God I have in mind.
Mandela’s religious convictions were complex. Clearly great love for Desmond Tutu in particular.
But not talking about religious dogma and belief in a particular kind of deity.
True faith is that which exists when the physical corporeal environment gives nothing to rely on.
When all that goes, what is left, what inspires a person to believe in the possibility of a future and human possibility when left to rot in a prison cell for more than 20 years?
The thing that is irresolute in the face of such physical depravity is faith.
It’s the thing that makes no sense to hang on to, it’s the thing that cannot be taken away by oppressors whether the oppression comes dressed as prison wardens, or cancer cells or P45s or anything else.
Faith is that thing we should all pray never to have tested.
But it’s the thing that keeps us believing even in the darkest of times.
Mentioned Joseph – in fact spoke about this last week.
In the darkness of the pit, in the experience of being sold into slavery, in the experience of being imprisoned because of the false accusation of Potifar’s wife, Joseph demonstrated faith.
And through his experiences on Robben Island, even through the death of his own son, it’s clear that Mandela also demonstrated faith.
And that faith is the source of hope and of love and that faith is the source of what makes us human.
And the greater the faith, the greater the human.
And Mandela’s faith was great.
The second thing is this.
Mandela worked out how to look at a human being and see a creation in the image of God.
Again I don’t want to co-opt Mandela religiously – he had his own stunningly poetic way of explaining his life and work – but this is the way I have to talk about the outstanding moral contribution of his life.
Exactly what he did and believed as a young man, I make no claim.
In his
But from the time he walked out of those prison gates he looked at the face of the hated Afrikaner opponents to everything he, Mandela, believed in, and saw humanity.
Maybe that’s a little over-romantic.
In his autobiography Mandela records how he and those who followed him even in prison worked to befriend the prison wardens, ‘hostility’ wrote Mandela was self-defeating. There was no point in having a permanent enemy among the wardens.’
But he goes on to say, ‘It was ANC policy to try to educate all people, even our enemies; we believed that all men, even prison service wardens, were capable of change.’
It’s this commitment to the possibility of ‘all men, even prison wardens’ that, surely, explains some of the great acts of leadership in Mandela’s earliest days as President of a truly democratic South Africa – I wrote last night of his wearing the Springbok jersey to the World Rugby Finals. I read today of the invitations to his inauguration sent to his jailors, his prosecutors and his interrogators.
That’s the truly remarkable moral strength, the strength to live through oppression and refuse to come out hating.
The strength to live through the experience of having your humanity stripped from you and still to believe in the inherent decency and goodness of all humanity.
It takes great strength to refuse to fight violence not with violence but love.
And were it not for that strength, God help us, God help Africa.
There is, perhaps, an equivalence in the story of Joseph.
Joseph has, of course, had a difficult relationship with his brothers who were prepared to leave him to die, only to decide to sell him into slavery.
In this week’s parasha we get the moment Joseph reveals himself to his long-lost family as his brother.
And his first words.
He seeks to reassure his brothers, don’t be angry that you sold me into this, for this is all God’s doing.
He’s able to open his heart and not carry the hate.
It’s an extraordinary achievement. And one that, thank goodness, we read of from any number of people who have experienced oppression and rise beyond it.
They talk of not wanting to carry the hatred as an additional burden.
I’m sure that’s right.
But I don’t know how you open a person’s heart that there is another way beyond the playground battles of he hit me, so I’ll hit him back.
Or rather I know of only one way.
It takes a witness.
It takes someone you trust and respect who finds a way to respond to hatred with an open heart. And all of a sudden a different way opens up.
It takes a combination of that person’s experience of oppression and their standing and that witnessing can change – well in the case of Mandela it changes a country, it might even have changed a world.
So where now.
Mandela was no saint – his own life was – of course just like any other life – sprinkled with foibles and failures.
And South Africa remains a country still struggling with its share of strife, inequity and violence
But maybe that is the point.
Jonathan Freedland, writing earlier in the year, warned off seeing Mandela as a saint in that that suggests something ‘beyond’ about what he achieved. Freedland’s point was that Mandela’s achievements were human achievements, achieved by a human being, just like you or me.
There is no-one to wait for to make the changes needed in our own post-Mandela world. There is only us, simple human beings, just as Mandela was ultimately human.
Mandela himself, I suspect understood this perfectly.
Tony Blair was on Radio 4 this morning recording how Mandela came to a Labour Party conference after his retirement an introduced himself as an ‘out of work pensioner with a criminal record.’
I understand that when asked what he wanted his tombstone to read, Mandela replied, "I would like it to be said 'Here lies a man who has done his duty on Earth.' That is all."
I suspect he said it with a smile on his lips, but he said it knowing his own humanity.
There are rabbinic teachings that make the same point. From Pirkei Avot we learn
Lo Hamlecha Ligmor, aval lo atah Ben Horin L’Hivtel mimena
It is not up to you to desist from the work, but you are not free to desist from it.
Mandela certainly did that and much much more.
Uvmakom she ain anashim, hishtadel lihiyot ish
In a place where there is no humanity, be a human – an ish – a Mentsch
Mandela was certainly a man in world desperately bereft of men of true faith, morality and courage.
This is the conclusion of Mandela’s massive autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. I took the well thumbed book back off the shelf this morning.
When I walked out of prison, that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed and oppressor both. Some say that has now been achieved, but I know that is not the case. The truth is that we are not yet free. We have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. We have not taken the final step of our journety. For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but t live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. The true test of our devotion to freedom is just the beginning.
I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter. I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.
Mandela’s death should remind us of the importance of faith, as the source of hope and the source of humanity.
His death should remind us of the importance of seeing every human as being a creation in the image of God, even our enemies. It should serve as a witness to the power of fighting hatred with an open heart and an embrace.
And Mandela’s death should remind us that he was only a man, just like you and I, and in his absence, the responsibility to complete his legacy, now falls on us all.
May he rest in peace, his memory will surely always be for a blessing.
I want to share three brief thoughts in the aftermath of the death of one of the defining figures of my life, Nelson Mandela, who has passed away this, Thursday, evening.
Mandela believed, as a young man, in the power of violence and was prepared to walk the thin line that demarcates between one man’s terrorist and another’s freedom fighter. But he changed and embraced a way of peace. The change was genuine and the power of his commitment to peaceful transformation allowed an entire nation to change with him.
I remember watching the Rugby World Cup Final in 1995, on the first occasion the defiantly Afrikaner Springboks were allowed back into international sporting competition. South Africa made the final at a time of tremendous fear in the nation. Many feared a bloodbath with fierce opposition to the end of apartheid among some in the white community and fierce anger against the whites from some in the black community. Mandela took to the field, to greet the finalists, wearing the Springbok jersey, for so many the very symbol of apartheid. It eliminated in a stroke the sense of ‘them’ and ‘us’. It was an extraordinary act of leadership and bravery.
And perhaps above all, this is a time to remember something that President Mandela taught me as I grew up in the midst of the anti-apartheid struggle. Freedom is only one long walk away.
The world has lost an icon whose life illuminated the possibility of change, the power of peaceful protest, bravery and leadership and the hope for freedom and unity of all humans. It was a remarkable life.
May he rest in peace.
Shabbat shalom
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