The Haggadah is a Book of Hope

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The bible commands: “Explain to your child on that day, “It is because of what God did for me when I went free from Egypt…” (Exodus 13:8).

On this verse stands the edifice that is the Pesach seder. The Haggadah fulfils the Mishnaic obligation (Pesachim 10:5) by including the phrase “B’chol dor vador chayav adam lir’ot et atzmo k’ilu hu yatza mimitzrayim. “In every generation everyone must consider themselves as if they came forth from Egypt.”

The phrase “in every generation” also appears in “vehi she’amda” – “in every generation there are those who rise up against us to destroy us” which is placed immediately after “Blessed is the One who keeps their promise to Israel”, and concludes that God redeems us.

The Haggadah expects complete and unquestioning faith in God’s redemption, even while reminding us of the continuing threats to our existence.

It’s easy to see the seder as an historical artefact, connecting us to our foundational story of the exodus and the beginnings of peoplehood, but a story nonetheless. Easy to gloss over the terror of the Hebrew slaves, the pain of the plagued Egyptians. We try to connect by adding modern glosses – oranges or olives on the seder plate, empty chairs for those prevented from joining a seder, reminders that the world has not radically changed. But how does one process the events of 7th October or indeed last weekend?  The continuing agony that shows no sign of redemption, the sense that we are all in metaphorical Mitzrayim?

How to express the multiplicity of feelings we are experiencing? Our own existential dread and the pain of so many innocent deaths on both sides? Our texts teach that God stopped the angels singing at the death of the pursuing Egyptians asking “My creatures are dying and you want to rejoice?” We take out drops of wine while reciting the plagues, to remember the suffering of others. But none of this feels to be enough in today’s world – the story has broken through into our reality and the current rituals need renewing.

We can repurpose some – an empty chair for a hostage; spilling drops of wine for the destroyed kibbutzim and for the destroyed cities in Gaza; we might write four more questions, describe four more questioners; for the invitation “all who are hungry come and eat” we could donate to services feeding the displaced. And we could create others – give blood, break matza (or two) into many pieces to recreate a different whole, rewrite shfoch hamatcha, instead asking God to pour love into our world.

Despite the texts of terror within it, the Haggadah is a book of hope. We have to find that hope.

(written for Leap of Faith, Jewish News, April 2024)

Whoever destroys a single life is considered to have destroyed a world

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Judaism teaches that the value of every human life is infinite, and the Mishnaic statement that “Whoever destroys a single life is considered to have destroyed a world. Whoever saves a single life is considered to have saved a world” has become a popular text for activists everywhere, most recently seen in the film depicting the work of Nicholas Winton.

This statement is found in tractate Sanhedrin, in the context of judicial procedures, to remind witnesses that their testimony could cause the death of the defendant. It is an anti-capital punishment device.

Derived from the idea that the first human was the progenitor of all human beings, this shared ancestry is developed immediately afterwards. We are told that the first human was created alone so as to maintain peace among peoples, none of whom could claim a more ancient or noble bloodline.  Which makes a controversy about our statement all the more interesting. The Mishnah was redacted by the second century CE, but the earliest surviving written texts we have are medieval. And some of these have an added word “miYisrael” implying that the text refers only to Jewish lives. Scholars debate which is the earliest version, but I am convinced that it is the universalist text that is the earliest formulation. Besides extant ancient texts without the qualifier, Rashi’s commentary and even the Quranic version which retains a universal meaning, it is the context of maintaining equity and equality among peoples with a single shared root that is so powerful for me. Instead of valuing “our own” more, it teaches that we have a common humanity that overrides any particular identity.

The film “One Life” rightly gives Nicholas Winton great credit for saving nearly 700 children and their future descendants – entire worlds indeed. But I cannot help feeling that in the glow of this telling we gloss over the many worlds that are lost. Winton himself keenly felt the loss of the final train carrying 251 children which was stopped from leaving on the day war was declared. Records of the Council for German Jewry meeting the Prime Minister show Jewish leaders desperately trying to save Jews already endangered in Germany. Keen not to embarrass the British Government, they limited their request to saving children, took all financial responsibility, and assured that most would emigrate . The result was the Kindertransport – separating families whose descendants were physically  safe but often psychologically traumatised.  It is heartbreaking to read how political and economic imperatives trumped human life then. And nothing has changed.

Saving one human life saves a potential world, but we should never forget that destroying one human life destroys a potential world. And the responsibility for that destruction weighs on us all.

Lo yit’pached clal. Be afraid, but do not allow fear to overwhelm you.

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In the song “a very narrow bridge”, we sing that the world is a very narrow bridge, and the important thing is not to be afraid.

It is based on the writing of Rabbi Nachman of Bratislav, but there is one crucial difference in wording – because Nachman did not suggest we should not be afraid. He wrote that we should not make ourselves afraid – we should not paralyse ourselves with the fear that can arise from our own creative imaginations.

Fear is a reasonable human response to situations that might be dangerous, or unknown, or unpredictable, or threatening. It is an ancient response that resides in the amygdala, deep within our brain,  which processes memory, decision making and emotional responses. When the amygdala triggers a fear response, it also sends messages to prepare our bodies to respond, to choose either fight or flight. Our stress levels, our breathing, heart rate and blood pressure increase, we become hyper vigilant.

Fear is what may keep us safe, remove us from dangerous situations even before our conscious brain can assess and decide what to do. Some fear appears to be inborn – babies will “startle” at a loud noise for example.

But fear can also be damaging to our wellbeing if we allow it to take us over. It can stop us from enjoying normal life. It can limit us and imprison us, distort our perceptions and our ability to engage with others.

Right now the Jewish community around the world is living in a state of hypervigilance, of heartbreak, of rage, of stress. We cannot begin to process the reality of the pogrom that took place on the 7th October within the land of Israel. We cannot yet comprehend the human cruelty that took place, the violence wreaked on the bodies of babies and children, young people who a few minutes earlier had been dancing at a peace festival, older people shot or burned alive in their homes, whole families obliterated.

Of course, one of our responses is going to be fear. The world has tilted on its axis. Things we thought were true and safe turn out not to be so. Friends may not have reached out to us, or maybe they reached out with statements that seem to deny the reality of the events, being  equivocal or “both -sides”, condemning Israel’s response while ignoring Hamas’ violence towards peaceful civilians. We see the media blithely reporting Hamas’ press releases as if they were certifiably true, and only afterwards, sotto voce, admitting they were not. We see the reality of the maxim that “lies can go right round the world before truth gets its boots on.” We see people we thought were critical thinkers speak up with the words of propaganda. We wonder at the interfaith organisations who choose not to say anything about the murder of Israelis and the violation of their corpses by terrorists. We see the news organisations that will not call Hamas terrorists, for “policy reasons”,  but who will talk of terror attacks in other, similar situations outside of the middle east.

Of course we will feel fear. But let us return to Rabbi Nachman who wrote:

ודע, שהאדם צריך לעבר על גשר צר מאד מאד, והכלל והעקר שלא יתפחד כלל

And know that human beings must travel on a very narrow bridge, and the rule, the important thing, is that one should not make oneself afraid at all.  (Likutei Tinyana 48)

               He used the reflexive form of the verb “to fear”.  Not “we must not fear”, but “we must not make ourselves afraid”, “we must not let fear overwhelm us or paralyze us” 

Rabbi Nachman is reminding us that we have choice. We do not have to give in to an ancient reflexive terror that we cannot control, but we can indeed take control of our fear, and we can mitigate it with reasoning, with thoughtfulness, with checking out our situation and analysing our risk.

It will take time for us to learn to function in our new reality post the simchat torah pogrom. It will take time for us to let our stress levels settle, to lower the physical and mental tensions leading to fight or flight. It will take time for us to learn to trust as we trusted before. We will have to mourn our dead, learn to live with the tragedy of lives so brutally ended, go through the many processes of adjusting to our new reality. But one thing we can do now, and we must do now. We must not make ourselves any more afraid than the situation requires. We must not give in to despair. We must continue to affirm life. We must continue to live fully, openly, Jewishly, humanly. In this way, we can control our own narrative and hold on to our own values. We will not be erased or diverted from the gift of our own lives.

The birth of Reform Judaism – two hundred years and a barmitzvah…

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Reform Judaism has its roots in the eighteenth century Enlightenment.  Around the time of the French Revolution the Jewish world opened up to the outside, European Jews were recognized for the first time as citizens of the countries in which they lived, and with the requirement to live in ghettos gone, the people could finally settle where they pleased, dress how they liked and follow the occupations that they wanted. Suddenly the freedom to think rather than to accept unquestioningly what one was told became a powerful force for change. As Gunther Plaut wrote “the Western Jew left his ghetto and tried to find his place in the larger society…could one continue to be a Jew and still enjoy the benefits of the great revolutions?..one would have to study Western culture, language and history, [learn about] the world one hoped to enter… Some chose this moment to  escape altogether and for a time it appeared as if the flight might assume epidemic proportions. The need to find modern forms for the ancient faith was a significant stimulus for the rise of Reform”(The Rise of Reform Judaism).

Where Reform Judaism focused to address this new thinking and need for modern relevance was on the message of the Hebrew Prophets. While traditional Judaism oriented itself to Halacha, the Reformers were directed by the prophetic tradition, its ideals and its values resonating with their belief that the world could and must be shaped by people’s ideas and their actions.  Leopold Zunz championed the modern study of Jewish history to see what could be learned from it to develop modern understanding.  Abraham Geiger also used history to show that Jewish life had always been one of continual change, with old practices abandoned and new ones introduced, all in order to keep Judaism alive and relevant. He suggested that observance and synagogue worship might be changed to appeal to modern people.

In 1810, in Seesen, Israel Jacobson, who had already created a school built on the Enlightenment values of egalitarianism and pluralism, built a synagogue where the services were accompanied by organ music, where men and women studied and worshipped together, where the liturgy stressed the congregational unity and was not only in Hebrew, and ethics were taught and discussed. The first service in the Seesen Temple was on 17th July. While we may not recognise – or like – some of the Seesen innovations, Reform Judaism has continued to evolve and grow, seeing itself as part of the millennial Jewish journey, with Torah as our foundation document, and we are dedicated to continuing to learn and study our sources. Reform Judaism has continued to see that serving God is something done not only through prayer or ritual behaviour, but also through ethical action to make the world a better place. It has continued to understand that the individual has choices, and that while many different people have many different truths, absolute Truth belongs only to God. Any answers we may have are  fragmentary, provisional, and can act only as pointers towards the bigger Truth. We have a dialogue between tradition and modernity, supported by a number of guiding principles that include valuing personal choice and authenticity, egalitarianism, inclusivity, engaging deeply with Jewish texts and traditions.  It isn’t easy to be a Reform Jew, and we are not practising Judaism lite – instead we are engaging in the age old practice of trying to understand God’s voice in our world, of bringing about a better world by our own efforts and so bringing God’s presence into our world. Each of us has a responsibility, an ethical imperative to act, to make our choices well. We cannot rely on just doing as was done before, instead we have to think, enrich our tradition with modern learning, engage actively with modern life and thought as well as root ourselves in our source texts and traditions. As a religious philosophy Reform Judaism contains all the uncertainty of any living and evolving thinking. We are constantly living the tension between our  eternal truths and values while at the same time holding an open and positive attitudes to new insights and experiences. More than two hundred years after Israel Jacobson began his experimental service in Seesen we can be proud of our history and our dynamism, both of which continue to affect our evolving relationship with our world. And it is our task to be part of the development. As Rabbi Tarphon said in the first century CE – a time of great reforming of Judaism after the destruction of the second Temple in Jerusalem – “It is not our duty to complete the work, but neither are we free to desist from doing it” (Mishnah Pirkei Avot).

What is Reform Judaism? An ongoing conversation…..

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paper written for a rabbinic conference on reforming religion

One of the questions we ask ourselves and repeatedly try to answer, albeit not with great success or satisfaction is:   – what is Reform Judaism? Rabbi Morris Joseph in his sermon at WLS asks the very same question at the turn of the 20th Century, saying “It may not be superfluous to point out that Reform does mean something. Not all of us, I am afraid, are very clear as to this point…Reform means a great deal more than the organ and no second day festival…Reform stands for a great, a sacred principle, of which these things are but symbols…it is an affirmation of a desire, an intention, to cling faster than ever to all that is true and beautiful in Judaism. ..Reform has, first and chiefly, to convert those who have ranged themselves under its banner to nobler ideals of living. This is the great truth which nearly all of us miss. Reform is not a movement merely; it is a religion, a life. …it is not merely the expression of a creed, negative or positive, but a pledge binding those who identify themselves with it to the highest ideal of conduct, to a higher ideal even than that which contents the non-Reformer.. “One might say that the emergence of Reform Judaism in the late 18th Century was a not a religious development at all, but a European lay initiative, arising from the effects of the Enlightenment. It began by ‘modern Jews’ challenging prevailing traditional religious beliefs and designing a form of Judaism that would enable Jews to be accepted both as individuals and as a group into European society.  [Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86), father of the Jewish enlightenment (Haskalah), more than any other forged a way of holding the two worlds together in a way that Spinoza(1632-77) had not been able or willing to do a century earlier ]

Rabbis only got involved much later in the mid 19th century, and by using academic study (Wissenschaft des Judentums) tried to formulate ideological and theological positions and to support the emerging Reform innovations.  It seems to me that that pattern has continued in European Reform Judaism – the continuing communal challenge to traditional ideas, the continuing desire to be part of the mainstream modern world, coupled with the rabbinic task of creating the bridges which allow for modernity to impact on Judaism without causing it to lose its particular flavour and perspective. 

As rabbis, ours has become the task of formulating the ideology and of co-creating the overarching principles that contain and maintain our Reform Jewish values. We take for ourselves the shaping and determining of the boundaries that retain our particular identity, while allowing for the diverse expressions of these principles that will emerge in different communities at different times.

There is a prevalent myth behind many of the challenges to the legitimacy of Reform Judaism that somewhere there must be an objectively authenticated Judaism, (orthodoxy). 

But any survey of the history of Judaism will instantly reveal that each generation responds to the needs of its time, adapting to their contemporary political, geographical and historical exigencies.  While it may take great pains to profess otherwise, classical Rabbinic Judaism is one long process of change, reformation and adaptation – even now.  The rabbinic dictum that Revelation took place only once and for all time, in the form of an Oral Law given simultaneously with the Written Torah at Sinai, and which is to be mined from the text only by the initiated who possess a set of carefully hewn hermeneutical principles, was a device that gave Jews, for many generations, the permission to read the text both exegetically and eisogetically, and thus to keep it alive and relevant.  It was a brilliant device, but somewhere along the line a distortion has appeared so that the notion of one given Revelation which is unfolded by the knowledgeable and trained elite seems to have become frozen, and with it congealed the ongoing and dynamic process of Jewish response to the world.  Scholars began to argue over minutiae rather than focus on the Reality the minutiae were designed to remind them of.   The purpose of lively debate became to prove right or wrong, rather than to increase the richness of the understanding.  And suddenly authenticity became something everyone sought uniquely for themselves, while denying it to others.                     

Progressive Judaism emerged as a reaction to this congealing of responsive Judaism.  Its innovative and brilliant insight was that of progressive revelation. Instead of there having been one total disclosure at the theophany which we are still unpeeling, it reframed the rabbinic teaching to produce the same effect with a different instrument. Progressive Judaism taught about Progressive Revelation – as each new person reads the text, there is a possibility of new understanding of the divine purpose.

Unlike classical rabbinic Judaism, this new thing was not considered to have been discovered or uncovered, as having an independent existence.  Instead we are clear that it is  the interaction between reader and text that brings it into being.  By bringing our own experience, our own values into our reading of the text, we bring forth a particular reading which did not pre-exist.  We emulate our Creator in this continuing act of creation. By language we cause new things to exist – we call forth new worlds and populate them.In the preamble to the Statement of Principles adopted in 1999 by the Pittsburgh Convention of the CCAR, is the comment “Throughout our history we Jews have remained firmly rooted in Jewish tradition, even as we have learned much from our encounters with other cultures. 

The great contribution of Reform Judaism is that it has enabled the Jewish people to introduce innovation while preserving tradition, to embrace diversity while asserting commonality, to affirm beliefs without rejecting those who doubt, and to bring faith to sacred texts without sacrificing critical scholarship”We like to use the language of tradition with modernity, continuity with change – we present ourselves as an evolving expression of the Judaism of the ages, so that in the language of Pirkei Avot, Moses may have received (kibel) Torah at Sinai (whatever that means); handed it on (m’sarah) to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, the elders to the prophets, and the prophets passed it on to the men of the great assembly – and we see ourselves in that chain of tradition, receiving something all the way from Sinai, taking charge of it in our own times.

The website for the Reform Movement tells us “It is a religious philosophy rooted in nearly four millennia of Jewish tradition, whilst actively engaged with modern life and thought. This means both an uncompromising assertion of eternal truths and values and an open, positive attitude to new insights and changing circumstances. It is a living evolving faith that Jews of today and tomorrow can live by”. The front page of the annual report for the Reform Movement makes much of the words “Renewing, Revitalising, Rethinking, Representing – Reform”.  The prefix re- meaning “again, back” is only added to verb bases  The Movement website presents five core principles: “welcoming and inclusive; rooted in Jewish tradition; committed to personal choice; men and women have an equal place; Jewish values inspiring social change and repair of the world”  Reform Judaism calls itself ‘Living Judaism’.  We see ourselves being in the continuous present – we were not the subject of a Reformation, once and for all, but are always in the process of reforming our theological understanding and its practical expression.  And we keep re-forming ourselves. Thus it is important that we have as healthy an interest in the process of how reforming takes place as we have in the content of our Judaism. So we have to ask ourselves – on what basis are we challenging the present and changing the status quo?  What are the ways in which we do this? Who is the ‘we’ who is deciding? How is reform happening?

The phrase ‘Living Judaism’ brings us to some interesting places. We recognise Judaism as a living system.  And let’s have some definitions here: Living systems are open self-organizing systems (meaning a set of interacting or interdependent entities forming an integrated whole) that have the special characteristics of life, in that they are self sustaining and interact with their environment. They are by nature chaotic. As Meg Wheatley says  “If you start looking at the processes by which living systems grow and thrive, one of those is a periodic plunge into the darker forces of chaos. Chaos seems to be a critical part of the process by which living systems constantly re-create themselves in their environment.” ….Living systems, when confronted with change, have the capacity to fall apart so that they can reorganize themselves to be better adapted to their current environment. She goes on to say “We always knew that things fell apart, we didn’t know that organisms have the capacity to reorganize, to self-organize. We didn’t know this until the Noble-Prize-winning work of Ilya Prigogine in the late 1970’s.  But you can’t self-organize, you can’t transform, you can’t get to bold new answers unless you are willing to move into that place of confusion and not-knowing which I call chaos.” (Meg Wheatley)

I would like to introduce to you some learning not from the traditional sources, but from the modern world of biology and complexity:

The first is the notion of a self organising system: Self-organization is the process where a structure or pattern appears in a system without a central authority or external element imposing it. This globally coherent pattern appears from the local interaction of the elements that makes up the system, thus the organization is achieved in a way that is parallel (all the elements act at the same time) and distributed (no element is a coordinator). In a self organising system the collective following of a few simple principles can lead to extraordinarily complex, diverse and unpredictable outcomes. 

One example is the way that birds flock in the sky. It can be predicated on just three simple rules:

Always Fly in the same direction as the birds around you

Keep up with the others     

Follow your local centre of gravity (i.e. if there are more birds to your left, move left. If right, move right)

The second is the idea of punctuated equilibrium: This is a theory that comes from evolutionary biology, which suggests that evolution is not a slowly progressive and continuously ongoing event, but that instead species will experience little evolutionary change for most of their history, existing in a form of stasis. When evolution does occur,  it is not smooth, but it is localised in rare, rapid events of change. Instead of a slow, continuous movement, evolution tends to be characterized by long periods of virtual standstill (“equilibrium”), “punctuated” by episodes of very fast development of new forms. Punctuated equilibria is a model for discontinuous tempos of change. According to those who study such things, “Self organised living systems are a conjunction of a stable organisation with chaotic fluctuations.” (Philosophy Transactactions A Math Phys Eng Sci. 2003 Jun 15;361(1807):1125-39.  Auffray C, Imbeaud S, Roux-Rouquié M, Hood L.)

Doesn’t it just define Judaism through the ages, and Reform Judaism in our world – A conjunction of a stable organisation with chaotic fluctuations. And these chaotic fluctuations that punctuate our history are the drivers of very fast development and change.I’m sure we can all think of the events – Abram living with his family in Ur Casdim until God says “Lech lecha”. Exodus from Egypt. Sinai. Entering the land; Destruction of first and then second temple, Exile and Return; loss of Northern Kingdom….coming closer to home the development of oral law, of synagogue communities, rabbis taking over from priests in the religious leadership, Karaites; Mishneh Torah, Shulchan Aruch, Expulsion from Spain and Portugal, Moses Mendelssohn and the Haskalah, large scale Aliyah from Russian empire; Salanter and the mussar movement; Hasidim and the lubavitcher dynasty; Israel Jacobson and the Seesen school experiment to name just a few.

The question I have now is – if we truly are a living self organising system, then we are not so much driven by our ideology or our tradition as we are a people whose structure develops without a central authority or external element imposing it. Instead what we become develops from the local interaction of the elements that makes up the system, – that is the people within Judaism. With enough impetus and enough individuals wanting it – or doing it -we become who we are in a way that is parallel (all the elements act at the same time) and distributed (no element is a coordinator). 

An example – Pesachim 66a – Hillel could not remember how to carry the knife for the pesach sacrifice on Shabbat. His response was “But,” he added, “things will work out, because even if Jews are not prophets themselves, they are the sons of prophets.” The next day, Shabbat Erev Pesach, these semi-prophetic Jews arrived at the Temple with their animals for the Pesach sacrifice. From the wool of the lamb protruded a knife, and between the horns of the goat a knife was to be found. Upon seeing this Hillel proclaimed: “Now I recall the law I learned from Shemaya and Avtalyon. This is the procedure which they taught me!So how do we hold on to the continuity / tradition we assert is integral to the change /modernity we bring.

Second question – If we do truly function along the lines of punctuated equilibrium, then what are the next things to punctuate our equilibrium? What will bring about the rapid development after our periods of stasis? Should we be looking out for them and encouraging them?

Third question – complex systems emerge from the utilisation of a few very simple rules. Morris Joseph knew what the rules were in Reform Judaism even if, according to his sermon, his congregation on the whole didn’t.  Firstly that it was “religious, and that its religious life must be expressed in public worship”. Reform Jews may be “less bound ritually and ceremonially, but are therefore more bound religiously and morally”Secondly that” in order to live, Religion has to adapt itself to the shifting ideas of successive ages”Thirdly, that while progressive Religion is a great idea, progressive goodness is a far greater one. Reform has, first and chiefly, to convert those who have ranged themselves under its banner to nobler ideals of living. Reform is a religion and a life”

What is Reform Judaism? An ongoing conversation…

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How do we know that we are Reform Jews?                                                                                

 I’d like to begin with what for me are two ‘given’ assumptions:                                                        

One is that Reform Judaism is religious Judaism.                                                                                         

The second that Reform Judaism is multi-dimensional. 

So:-

Reform Judaism is Communal as well as Individual.                                                                              

Reform Judaism is Universal as well as Particularistic.                                                                      

Reform Judaism is Traditional as well as radically Transformational.                                                 

Reform Judaism is Political as well as Spiritual. 

Reform Judaism has essential core meanings which we create and share, and at the same time there is no central system of control – modern Reform Judaism emerges from the relationships between the meanings we agree and share. This multi-dimensional view gives us both a direction in which to grow, and also a boundary.  We cannot make our decisions based only on one morality or ethic but always have to find a balance for the moment.  We always have to search for the meaning, rather than mechanistically to follow one fixed ideology.  In Reform Judaism every generation must challenge, must connect and re-connect perpetually.  Every generation must recreate tradition for itself.

Chukkat – Sermon for Lev Chadash 2023

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Sermon  – Chukkat Lev Chadash 2023

וּמִשָּׁ֖ם בְּאֵ֑רָה הִ֣וא הַבְּאֵ֗ר אֲשֶׁ֨ר אָמַ֤ר ה’ לְמֹשֶׁ֔ה אֱסֹף֙ אֶת־הָעָ֔ם וְאֶתְּנָ֥ה לָהֶ֖ם מָֽיִם׃ {ס}

 אָ֚ז יָשִׁ֣יר יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל אֶת־הַשִּׁירָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את עֲלִ֥י בְאֵ֖ר עֱנוּ־לָֽהּ׃ בְּאֵ֞ר חֲפָר֣וּהָ שָׂרִ֗ים כָּר֙וּהָ֙ נְדִיבֵ֣י הָעָ֔ם בִּמְחֹקֵ֖ק בְּמִשְׁעֲנֹתָ֑ם

And from there to Be’er, which is the well where the Eternal said to Moses, “Assemble the people that I may give them water.” Then Israel sang this song: Spring up, O well—sing to it—  The well which the chieftains dug, Which the nobles of the people started, With maces, with their own staffs.

Here in Parashat Chukkat, forty years after leaving the slavery of Egypt, we are preparing for the transition of leadership from the generation who led the people of Israel on their long sojourn in the desert and beginning to look towards the reality of being a people living in their own land.   The deaths of Moses’ siblings and fellow leaders – Miriam and Aaron – are recorded. After the mourning rites are concluded, and Elazar the son of Aaron takes his place as High Priest, The  people once more “ spoke against God, and against Moses: ‘Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? for there is no bread, and there is no water; and our soul loathes this light bread.’”  God’s response was to send fiery serpents which bit the people and caused a terrible plague, and the people recognised they had sinned against God and begged  Moses to  pray for the plague to stop. There follows a very strange episode where God tells Moses to create the image of a serpent from brass, set it on a pole, and that anyone who looks at it will be cured – the image still used as an international symbol for healing, having come into the pagan world through the Greeks as the “Rod of Asclepius.” (Asclepius, the Greek god of healing, is mentioned by Homer in the Iliad (circa eighth century bce) who may well have encountered it being worshipped by the Israelite and Philistine tribes living by the sea, who had promoted it into a religious cult which the King Hezekiah destroyed along with other idolatrous practises that had crept into Israel in the more than seven hundred years since the re-entry of the people with Joshua.

But lets leave aside this curious story in favour of another intriguing snippet of biblical text – the brief verses which are known as “the song of the well” I quoted at the beginning.

At the beginning of the exodus, Moses, Miriam and the people sang a song having crossed the Sea of Reeds and evaded the Egyptian pursuers – Shirat Hayam, the song of the sea. Later, in the book of Deuteronomy we will be treated to the final testimony of Moses to the people, written in the form of a song – Ha’azinu.    But here we are almost at the end of the journey and close to the borders of the land the people will shortly enter and settle, and here we have reference to another song. A song that is not the song of Moses, but the song of Israel.

In the Talmud we read that (Ta’anit 9a):  “Rabbi Yosei, son of Rabbi Yehuda, says: Three good sustainers rose up for the Jewish people during the exodus from Egypt, and they are: Moses, Aaron and Miriam. And three good gifts were given from Heaven through their agency, and these are they: The well of water, the pillar of cloud, and the manna. He elaborates: The well was given to the Jewish people in the merit of Miriam; the pillar of cloud was in the merit of Aaron; and the manna in the merit of Moses. When Miriam died the well disappeared, as it is stated: “And Miriam died there” (Numbers 20:1), and it says immediately in the next verse: “And there was no water for the congregation” (Numbers 20:2). But the well returned in the merit of both Moses and Aaron.”

Now both Miriam and Aaron are dead, and there is a question about who and what will sustain the Jewish people in the future. And this is the moment of change, the pivot from strong and almost parental leadership to something quite different – communal activity and responsibility.

Look at the introduction of this song: –   אָ֚ז יָשִׁ֣יר יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל אֶת־הַשִּׁירָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את

“Then the children of Israel sang this song”

The midrash (Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 764:26) notices the unique nature of this verse. “Rabbi Avin the Levite said: When Israel stood up to chant the song at the sea, Moses did not let them chant it by themselves, but like a teacher who recites a portion in Scripture with a student when s/he is young, so did Moses recite it with Israel: “then sang Moses and the children of Israel,” like a student who repeats after the teacher. But after forty years [in the wilderness], Israel matured and on their own proceeded to chant the Song of the Well, as is said, “then sang Israel” (Num. 21:17).

In other words, at the beginning of the 40 year sojourn in the desert, the people were childlike, in need of guidance and leadership, unable to take the agency for their own lives and their own choices. But now as we come to the end of the Book of Numbers, the people have matured, and are not only able but also willing to take responsibility for their lives.

The Book of Numbers – Bemidbar – has a clear narrative arc and trajectory that is quite different from the books that precede it. It begins with a census, (hence its more usual name of Numbers or its rabbinic name of Pekudim, of counting) but while the census is made in order to plan for military operations, it has very specific language –  

שאו את־ראש כל־עדת בני־ישראל למשפחתם לבית אבתם במספר שמות

“raise the head of everyone of the congregation of the children of Israel according to the families of their ancestral houses, count according to their names….

Each person is counted “bemispar Shemot” – named as they are counted. Each person is an individual and is known by name. The census is conducted not by Moses and Aaron directly but by tribal representatives, one from each tribe, each one a leader within the tribe.

So from the very first verses of the book, the leadership is being extended out into the tribes.  When the tabernacle is dedicated it is the chiefs of the tribes who bring the sacrifices, leading the midrash to infer that Aaron was distressed that he was not part of the ritual (Tanchuma Beha’alotecha 5 on Num. 8:2)and that his role was no longer central and unique but available to individuals.

Throughout the book there are stories of the primacy of individual agency rather than the supine following of a charismatic leader. There are of course stories of this going wrong – Eldad and Medad prophesying strangely in the camp for example, or Korach determined to say that everyone of the people of Israel is a leader and therefore Moses and Aaron have taken on too much leadership and should withdraw – but the point remains, the people are learning to take responsibility, to think and to act for themselves. They may continue to have leaders and clearly this is important – but the leadership is constrained in a particular way, not any more the charismatic demanders of followers, but people who have responsibility for the people they are chosen to lead. The trajectory will of course continue – through to the demand for a monarchy and the choice of handsome Saul who failed to enact God’s will for the people, and of course we sometimes continue to choose inept or self-aggrandising leaders and we continue to pay the price. The populist “strong men” chosen by many nations and peoples – not only our own – are inevitably infantilisers and limiters of the freedoms and choices of people who choose them.

But back to the song of the well, this short recorded text hinting at a much longer poem. We are almost at the borders of the land of Israel, the long wait is about to be over, the next phase is on the horizon. And the people sing their song without permission or mention of any leader. We are reminded – quite deliberately so – that the relationship of the people with God is not contingent on its leadership. There is no mediator between the two parties. God is supporting the people and the people know this. They are ready to take this relationship further on their own terms and for themselves, no matter how charismatic or forceful the leadership may be. There are some things a leader is necessary for, and others that are – and that have to be – the choices of adult human beings.

The people sing to the well, they call forth the life giving water for themselves. They remind themselves that this well has been created by the history of their own people, the hard work of their ancestors. This well belongs to them, not as a miracle, but as the product of the relationship they have forged over time, and for themselves with God.

Now when they are poised to take the land they have yearned for for so long, they are ready and able to do so. Unlike the beginning of their journey when they saw themselves as weak and vulnerable and unable to take their destiny in their own hands, now they are fully able to take the next steps.

They have learned that the well can be dug by themselves. That the resources they need are available if they search them out and claim them. That the living waters that Miriam had provided for them miraculously are in fact living waters that they themselves can create.

The book of Numbers is sometimes understood to have originally been the final book of Moses – the story stops with Joshua taking on the mantle of leadership and the people poised to take the final steps of the journey.

In order to do this they need to have confidence not only in God and their mission, but also – crucially-  in themselves and their own agency and responsibility. The song of the well tells us that they have transformed themselves over the generation in the desert and they are ready.

The future awaits…

Sermone – Chukkat Lev Chadash 2023

וּמִשָּׁ֖ם בְּאֵ֑רָה הִ֣וא הַבְּאֵ֗ר אֲשֶׁ֨ר אָמַ֤ר ה’ לְמֹשֶׁ֔ה אֱסֹף֙ אֶת-הָעָ֔ם וְאֶתְּנָ֥ה לָהֶ֖ם מָֽיִם׃ {ס}

 אָ֚ז יָשִׁ֣יר יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל אֶת-הַשִּׁירָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את עֲלִ֥י בְאֵ֖ר עֱנוּ-לָֽהּ׃ בְּאֵ֞ר חֲפָר֣וּהָ שָׂרִ֗ים כָּר֙וּהָ֙ נְדִיבֵ֣י הָעָ֔ם בִּמְחֹקֵ֖ק בְּמִשְׁעֲנֹתָ֑ם

E da lì a Be’er, che è il pozzo dove l’Eterno disse a Mosè: “Raduna il popolo perché io dia loro dell’acqua”. Allora Israele intonò questo canto: Sorgete, o pozzo – cantate ad esso – il pozzo che i capi hanno scavato, che i nobili del popolo hanno avviato, con le mazze, con i loro bastoni”.

Qui, in Parashat Chukkat, quarant’anni dopo aver lasciato la schiavitù dell’Egitto, ci prepariamo al passaggio di consegne dalla generazione che ha guidato il popolo d’Israele nel lungo soggiorno nel deserto e iniziamo a guardare alla realtà di essere un popolo che vive nella propria terra.   Vengono registrate le morti dei fratelli di Mosè e dei loro compagni di guida, Miriam e Aronne. Dopo che i riti di lutto sono stati conclusi e Elazar, figlio di Aronne, ha preso il suo posto come Sommo Sacerdote, il popolo ancora una volta “parlò contro Dio e contro Mosè: “Perché ci hai fatto uscire dall’Egitto per farci morire nel deserto? Perché non c’è pane e non c’è acqua; e la nostra anima detesta questo pane leggero””.  La risposta di Dio fu l’invio di serpenti di fuoco che mordevano il popolo e causavano una terribile piaga; il popolo riconobbe di aver peccato contro Dio e pregò Mosè di pregare affinché la piaga cessasse. Segue un episodio molto strano in cui Dio dice a Mosè di creare l’immagine di un serpente di ottone, di metterla su un’asta e che chiunque la guardi sarà guarito – l’immagine è ancora usata come simbolo internazionale di guarigione, essendo entrata nel mondo pagano attraverso i greci come “verga di Asclepio”. (Asclepio, il dio greco della guarigione, è citato da Omero nell’Iliade (circa ottavo secolo a.C.), che potrebbe averla incontrata adorata dalle tribù israelite e filistee che vivevano in riva al mare, che l’avevano promossa in un culto religioso che il re Ezechia distrusse insieme ad altre pratiche idolatriche che si erano insinuate in Israele negli oltre settecento anni trascorsi dal rientro del popolo con Giosuè.

Ma lasciamo da parte questa curiosa storia a favore di un altro intrigante frammento di testo biblico: i brevi versetti noti come “il canto del pozzo” che ho citato all’inizio.

All’inizio dell’esodo, Mosè, Miriam e il popolo intonarono un canto dopo aver attraversato il Mare dei Giunchi e aver eluso gli inseguitori egiziani: Shirat Hayam, il canto del mare. Più tardi, nel libro del Deuteronomio, ci sarà la testimonianza finale di Mosè al popolo, scritta sotto forma di canto – Ha’azinu.    Ma qui siamo quasi alla fine del viaggio e vicini ai confini della terra in cui il popolo entrerà e si stabilirà tra poco, e qui abbiamo un riferimento a un altro canto. Un canto che non è il canto di Mosè, ma il canto di Israele.

Nel Talmud leggiamo che (Ta’anit 9a):  “Rabbi Yosei, figlio di Rabbi Yehuda, dice: Tre buoni sostenitori sorsero per il popolo ebraico durante l’esodo dall’Egitto, e sono: Mosè, Aronne e Miriam. E tre buoni doni furono dati dal Cielo attraverso la loro agenzia, e questi sono: Il pozzo d’acqua, la colonna di nuvola e la manna. E approfondisce: Il pozzo fu dato al popolo ebraico per merito di Miriam; la colonna di nuvola per merito di Aronne e la manna per merito di Mosè. Quando Miriam morì, il pozzo scomparve, come si legge: “E Miriam vi morì” (Numeri 20:1), e subito dopo si legge: “E non c’era acqua per la comunità” (Numeri 20:2). Ma il pozzo tornò per merito di Mosè e di Aronne”.

Ora sia Miriam che Aronne sono morti e ci si chiede chi e cosa sosterrà il popolo ebraico in futuro. Questo è il momento del cambiamento, il passaggio da una leadership forte e quasi parentale a qualcosa di molto diverso: l’attività e la responsabilità comunitaria.

Guardate l’introduzione di questa canzone: – אָ֚ז יָשִׁ֣יר יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל אֶת-הַשִּׁירָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את

“Allora i figli di Israele intonarono questo canto”.

Il midrash (Yalkut Shimoni su Torah 764:26) nota la natura unica di questo versetto. “Rabbi Avin il levita disse: Quando Israele si alzò per cantare il canto sul mare, Mosè non lo lasciò cantare da solo, ma come un insegnante che recita una parte della Scrittura con un allievo quando è giovane, così Mosè lo recitò con Israele”: “allora cantarono Mosè e i figli d’Israele”, come un allievo che ripete dopo l’insegnante. Ma dopo quarant’anni [nel deserto], Israele maturò e procedette da solo a cantare il Canto del Pozzo, come si dice: “allora cantò Israele” (Num. 21:17).

In altre parole, all’inizio dei 40 anni di permanenza nel deserto, il popolo era infantile, bisognoso di una guida e di un comando, incapace di assumersi la responsabilità della propria vita e delle proprie scelte. Ma ora, alla fine del Libro dei Numeri, il popolo è maturato e non solo è in grado, ma anche disposto ad assumersi la responsabilità della propria vita.

Il Libro dei Numeri – Bemidbar – ha un chiaro arco narrativo e una traiettoria molto diversa dai libri che lo precedono. Inizia con un censimento (da cui il nome più usuale di Numeri o il nome rabbinico di Pekudim, di conteggio), ma mentre il censimento è fatto per pianificare le operazioni militari, ha un linguaggio molto specifico – . 

שאו את-ראש כל-עדת בני-ישראל למשפחתם לבית אבתם במספר שמות

“alza la testa di tutti i membri della comunità dei figli d’Israele secondo le famiglie delle loro case d’origine, conta secondo i loro nomi….

Ogni persona viene contata “bemispar Shemot”, cioè viene chiamata per nome mentre viene contata. Ogni persona è un individuo ed è conosciuta per nome. Il censimento non è condotto direttamente da Mosè e Aronne, ma dai rappresentanti delle tribù, uno per ogni tribù, ognuno dei quali è un leader all’interno della tribù.

Quindi, fin dai primi versetti del libro, la leadership viene estesa alle tribù.  Quando il tabernacolo viene dedicato, sono i capi delle tribù a portare i sacrifici, il che porta il midrash a dedurre che Aronne era angosciato dal fatto di non far parte del rituale (Tanchuma Beha’alotecha 5 su Num. 8,2) e che il suo ruolo non era più centrale e unico ma a disposizione dei singoli.

In tutto il libro ci sono storie che mostrano il primato dell’iniziativa individuale piuttosto che il seguire supinamente un leader carismatico. Naturalmente ci sono storie in cui ciò va storto – Eldad e Medad che profetizzano in modo strano nell’accampamento, per esempio, o Korach deciso a dire che ogni membro del popolo d’Israele è un leader e quindi Mosè e Aronne hanno assunto troppa leadership e dovrebbero ritirarsi – ma il punto rimane, il popolo sta imparando ad assumersi la responsabilità, a pensare e ad agire per se stesso. Potranno continuare ad avere dei leader, e chiaramente questo è importante, ma la leadership è limitata in un modo particolare: non più carismatici che chiedono seguaci, ma persone che hanno la responsabilità del popolo che sono state scelte per guidare. La traiettoria continuerà, naturalmente, fino alla richiesta di una monarchia e alla scelta del bel Saul, che non riuscì a mettere in atto la volontà di Dio per il popolo, e naturalmente continuiamo a scegliere leader inetti o autocelebrativi e continuiamo a pagarne il prezzo. Gli “uomini forti” populisti scelti da molte nazioni e popoli – non solo il nostro – sono inevitabilmente infantilizzatori e limitatori delle libertà e delle scelte delle persone che li scelgono.

Ma torniamo al canto del pozzo, questo breve testo registrato che allude a una poesia molto più lunga. Siamo quasi ai confini della terra d’Israele, la lunga attesa sta per finire, la fase successiva è all’orizzonte. E il popolo intona il suo canto senza il permesso o la menzione di un leader. Ci viene ricordato – volutamente – che il rapporto del popolo con Dio non dipende dalla sua guida. Non c’è nessun mediatore tra le due parti. Dio sostiene il popolo e il popolo lo sa. È pronto a portare avanti questa relazione alle proprie condizioni e per se stesso, a prescindere da quanto carismatica o forte possa essere la leadership. Ci sono cose per cui un leader è necessario, e altre che sono – e devono essere – scelte di esseri umani adulti.

Il popolo canta al pozzo, invoca per sé l’acqua che dà la vita. Ricordano a se stessi che questo pozzo è stato creato dalla storia del loro popolo, dal duro lavoro dei loro antenati. Questo pozzo appartiene a loro, non come un miracolo, ma come il prodotto del rapporto che hanno instaurato nel tempo e per se stessi con Dio.

Ora, quando sono pronti a conquistare la terra che hanno desiderato per tanto tempo, sono pronti e in grado di farlo. A differenza dell’inizio del loro viaggio, quando si vedevano deboli e vulnerabili e incapaci di prendere in mano il proprio destino, ora sono pienamente in grado di compiere i passi successivi.

Hanno imparato che il pozzo può essere scavato da soli. Che le risorse di cui hanno bisogno sono disponibili se le cercano e le reclamano. Che le acque vive che Miriam aveva miracolosamente fornito loro sono in realtà acque vive che essi stessi possono creare.

Il libro dei Numeri è talvolta inteso come il libro finale di Mosè: la storia si ferma con Giosuè che assume il mantello della guida e il popolo pronto a compiere gli ultimi passi del viaggio.

Per farlo, deve avere fiducia non solo in Dio e nella sua missione, ma anche – cosa fondamentale – in se stesso e nella propria agenzia e responsabilità. Il canto del pozzo ci dice che si sono trasformati nel corso della generazione nel deserto e sono pronti.

Il futuro li attende…

Sermon at Lev Chadash: parashat bemidbar and hachnasat sefer torah May 2023

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Bemidbar Lev Chadash May 2023

Sefer Bemidbar begins with a strangely precise location in time and place:

  וַיְדַבֵּר יְהוָה אֶל-מֹשֶׁה בְּמִדְבַּר סִינַי, בְּאֹהֶל מוֹעֵד:  בְּאֶחָד לַחֹדֶשׁ הַשֵּׁנִי בַּשָּׁנָה הַשֵּׁנִית, לְצֵאתָם מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם–לֵאמֹר.

1 And the Eternal spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the tent of meeting, on the first day of the second month, in the second year after they were come out of the land of Egypt, saying:

The effect is rather like the first lines of a ketubah, a marriage contract, which details the date and the place of marriage very precisely, before going on to record the terms of the agreement between the two parties, something which the mystical tradition develops, seeing Shavuot as the wedding between God and Israel, where the Torah is the ketubah – the covenantal document.

And yet this precision masks something else – we simply don’t know where the conversation took place exactly – Midbar Sinai, the wilderness of Sinai – is by definition uncharted land.

The book is called  the book of Numbers – to reflect the two censuses of men of military age that take place within it, a title given in the Greek translation (Septuagint) and carried over into other biblical translations, but its Hebrew name gives us a different perspective which Jewish tradition finds to be the most important way of seeing the narrative – BaMidbar – in the wilderness.

Wilderness – it conjures images of deserted wasteland, a place of emptiness and of silence. And yet the word Midbar conjures the opposite. Derived from the verbal root “Daled, Veit, Reish” , its “sister” words from the same root include “diber”– to speak, tell, or promise,  Davar – a matter or a thing, and also – though less frequently – to arrange, to command, to appoint, to commune, to guide….

Lots goes on in the Midbar, it is a multi-vocal sort of place, brimming with possibilities and with material realities – not really a wilderness at all.

There is much rabbinic material that speaks to the Torah being given in midbar – in territory that belongs to no one and to everyone. Midbar is universal space, so the giving of Torah within it is a reminder that God’s word is universal.

Why was the Torah not given in the land of Israel?  In order that the nations of the world shall not say: “Because it was given in Israel’s land, we do not accept it.”  And lest others say: “In my territory, the Torah was given and so only belongs to me.”  ….“Therefore, the Torah was given in the desert, publicly and openly, in a place belonging to no one.

To three things the Torah is likened: to the desert, to fire, and to water. This is to tell you that just as these three things are free to all who come into the world, so also are the words of the Torah free to all who come into the world” (Mekhilta B’Chodesh 5).

We were formed as a people in the desert. The torah documents the process from Egypt to the borders of Israel: the sloughing off of slavery, the evolving of structures such as the priesthood to give us focus and religious leadership, the development of social codes enabling us to form a coherent community with shared values and shared focus.  And most importantly our desert formation gave us a particular framework through which to live – in the desert there is no need for the accumulation of material goods, “it is the place of nomads who have that which they need, and all they need is the essentials and not the extra belongings…life in the desert is preparation for a life of freedom” (Erich Fromm). And instead of attending to the acquisition of material goods, something else becomes our treasured possession – the Torah. 

The midrash gives us the reason that God led us in the desert for forty years “Said the Blessed Holy One, “if I lead them directly, then every person will take possession of their field and their vineyard and will work in them, and not engage in Torah. Instead I will lead them through the midbar, where they will eat the manna, and drink the water of the wells (of Miriam) and the Torah will embed into their bodies” (Midrash Tanchuma, Beshallach)

In the Midbar we were given Torah, we received Torah, we absorbed Torah. We became a people of Torah. The name of this book reminds us of our desert formation, nomadic and without possessions, we created ourselves through Torah.

Later in the book we read about part of the journey the people went on to take

וּמִשָּׁ֖ם בְּאֵ֑רָה הִ֣וא הַבְּאֵ֗ר אֲשֶׁ֨ר אָמַ֤ר יְהֹוָה֙ לְמֹשֶׁ֔ה אֱסֹף֙ אֶת־הָעָ֔ם וְאֶתְּנָ֥ה לָהֶ֖ם מָֽיִם׃ {ס}         אָ֚ז יָשִׁ֣יר יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל אֶת־הַשִּׁירָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את עֲלִ֥י בְאֵ֖ר עֱנוּ־לָֽהּ׃

…….וּמִמִּדְבָּ֖ר מַתָּנָֽה׃    וּמִמַּתָּנָ֖ה נַחֲלִיאֵ֑ל וּמִנַּחֲלִיאֵ֖ל בָּמֽוֹת׃

And from there [they went ] to Be er, which is the well where God said to Moses, “Assemble the people that I may give them water.” Then Israel sang this song: Spring up, O well—sing to it— …..And from Midbar to Mattanah, and from Mattanah to Nahaliel, and from Nahaliel to Bamot…. (Num 21)

This text frames our relationship with Torah. Mattanah is a place name, but it also means “a gift”. Nahaliel means a “wadi of God” – a valley through which water flows, but the root of the word can also mean an inheritance;  and Bamot means high places.

In Talmud we read a homily using this sequencing:

“Rava said: Once a person renders himself like a wilderness, deserted before all, the Torah is given to him as a gift [Mattanah], as it is stated: “And from the wilderness Mattanah.” And once it is given to him as a gift, God bequeaths [naḥalo] it to him, as it is stated: “And from Mattanah [to] Nahaliel.” And once God bequeaths it to him, he rises to greatness, as it is stated: And from Nahaliel, Bamot, which are elevated places. And if he elevates himself and is arrogant about his Torah, the Holy One, Blessed be God, degrades him, as it is stated: “And from Bamot the valley” (Numbers 21:20). And not only that, but one lowers him into the ground, as it is stated: “And looking over [nishkafa] the face of the wasteland” (Numbers 21:20), like a threshold [iskopa] that is sunken into the ground. But if he reverses his arrogance and becomes humble, the Holy One, Blessed be God, elevates him,  (BT Nedarim 55a)

Unpacking the text is a joy – Rava, a fourth generation Babylonian teacher (amora) is one of the most frequent of teachers in the Talmud. Here he is using these verses to remind his audience of how Torah impacts us and develops and grows us both as individuals and as a people. To be able to absorb Torah deeply we have to make ourselves ready, to be open to everyone and everything, and to have no preconceptions or prejudices. Once we have made ourselves “like a wilderness”, then Torah is given to us like a gift. A gift moreover that comes from God as an inheritance, a family treasure. And this gift, if received in a state of humility and openness, will enable us to become greater, will develop and evolve our understanding of our world. But if we should become arrogant, then the opposite will happen and we will be forced into humility, alone in an abandoned wasteland. Yet there is always the possibility of redemption – should we recognise that we have become removed from others, arrogant and self-important, and make an effort to cast off that unwarranted superiority, once more the offer of Torah and its “living waters” is available to us.

One of my favourite ideas about the encounter with God in the wilderness of Sinai is that “the people only heard the first letter of the word “Anochi” “I am”. That letter, an alef, is a silent letter.  But that silent letter in that Midbar place was all that was necessary for God and the Jewish people to have a conversation (R.Menachem Mendel Torum of Rymanov, quoted in  Zera Kodesh (2.40) by his student Naftali Horowitz)

Why a silent letter in a place belonging to no-one? The Alef, being the first letter of the alphabet stands for the number ONE – the unity and uniqueness of God.

But there is more. The Alef is written in Torah as a vav surrounded by two yods – whose gematria adds up to 26 – the same as the gematria for the tetragrammaton yod heh vav heh. So what the people perceived in hearing that silent letter was the absolute presence of God.

And there is more. The Alef can be read as being a face, with two eyes (the yods) and a nose (the vav). So when we see another human being, we can see an Alef – we can see the image of God within them.  When Torah was given to us, the most important gift was to see God in ourselves and others.

All of which is a long way of saying that we encounter God when we truly see and engage with each other. We truly belong to Torah – and it to us – when we make ourselves open and without prejudice, when we exercise our curiosity without judgment – when we become Midbar and celebrate the potential within us.

The Midbar formed us as a people and it is as a people that we have sustained ourselves and thrived where so many other peoples have passed into history. And the Torah gave our peoplehood meaning – as Leo Baeck wrote “

The Torah, which is, as a whole, roughhewn, unfinished, and unsystematic leaves many things open. It is full of questions. [And so]…The Torah is the most stable element of Judaism and at the same time its most dynamic force”

 It is as a people of Torah that we are meeting today – from Pittsburgh to Milan, and with roots that go back to Israel, to north Africa, to Ashkenazi, Sefardi, Italkit and Mizrachi ancestors. We were all at Sinai says our tradition, we all heard that alef, we all experienced Midbar.

And just like at Sinai, we are enacting the giving of Torah – maybe not exactly as Moses experienced it, but giving and receiving just the same, and it is surely no accident that you have come to us from Temple Sinai so that we are indeed receiving Torah miSinai!

It is a singular mitzvah to be part of hachnasat Sefer Torah – the welcoming of a sefer torah into its new community. Today’s welcoming is the end of a long process of planning, and I hope the beginning – or at least the Sinaitic staging post – of a longer journey together.

We stand together and see in each other’s faces the Alef that reminds us that God is in each one of us; we hear together the silent Alef of God’s presence that is symbolised by the Torah – the ketubah text of our symbolic marriage that will we will celebrate again next week at Shavuot.

I think all of us present today will remember this moment – this echo of Sinai, this enactment of peoplehood, this generous gift from another part of the Jewish world that will help Italian Progressive Judaism to continue to grow, and that will remind us that we are not only a people – Am Yisrael – but also a large and extended family –  Mishpacha. 

We are at our best when we are Midbar. When we are open and free from material desires and preconceptions, when we are humble and curious about each other. Abraham’s tent was famously open on all sides – the paradigm of Midbar.  As Abraham shows, the outstanding mitzvah in Midbar is hospitality to the passing stranger who is reliant on the care of the more established residents.  When we are Midbar we see the Alef on every face – the image of God in every human being and we understand the importance of sustaining each other.

This weekend we are all Midbar, welcoming of each other, sharing our stories, eating together, travelling together, praying together, giving and receiving Torah. The distance from Pittsburgh to Milan may be nearly seven thousand kilometres but does not need a 40 year journey – we stand together once more as at Sinai, we confirm our peoplehood and our commitment to Torah.

May our journey continue together and may we build ever closer links.

Of Kings and Priests of Politicians and Prophets

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The Book of Deuteronomy sets out the exemplar of how a king should behave:  We read that a king should be one of their own people, not a stranger. They should not keep many horses, should not send people back to Egypt, should not have many wives nor amass material possessions to excess. And the king should have a copy of the Torah written for him, which will stay with him at all times and which he will read throughout his life, “so that he may learn to revere God, to observe faithfully every word of this Teaching as well as these laws. Thus he will not act haughtily toward his fellows or deviate from the Instruction to the right or to the left..” (Deut 17:14-20) 

The Torah recognises the possibilities of abuse of power and sets limits to the monarchy, making clear that while the king may be the leader of the people, they are still the subject of God. The directive to “not send the people back to Egypt” can be understood as not putting the people back into the servitude from which God had freed them, or maybe that Egyptian sovereigns perceived themselves to be divine, whereas Hebrew kings were categorically human, with their flaws documented. 

Biblical kings often behaved as if they – not God – were the most important. So even King David’s self-centredness is recorded, his callous behaviour around Batsheva, his illegal census taking, designed to show his own military power. There is no such thing as a completely trustable sovereign, bible seems to be telling us. 

Yet the kings of Israel did have an important role in history, evolving a different kind of leadership from that of the Judges who preceded them.  Each of the Judges were individuals whose personality drove them. Each represented not the whole people, but themselves and their tribes. With monarchy something different was established – the unity of the people in a nation state. The sovereign was the leader of the whole, and the existence of a separate priesthood meant that the sovereign’s power was limited to the political arena, the priests regulating the religious one.  With the added phenomenon of prophets arising to speak truth to power, the biblical world balanced communal leadership between three distinct roles. 

What can a modern king learn from bible? Besides the many examples of what not to do, Torah reminds us of the ideal.  Someone of the people who understands them, who does not set themselves apart or amass wealth or power, who allows the people their freedoms. A person who reviews God’s word and follows God’s will. Monarch, Priest or Politician, it remains the ideal for all.  

Shabbat Parah : the red heifer ritual and our own mortality

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The temple system of ritual purity and impurity continues to have an effect on Jews even though the Jerusalem Temple itself is long gone, replaced by synagogues, and prayers have taken the place of sacrifices.

Rooted in biblical texts, and greatly expanded in rabbinic ones, Jewish daily life continues to play out the concepts of tahor and tamei, of ritual cleanness and ritual uncleanness, of our appropriateness or not to enter the Temple courtyards to bring sacrifices – a paradigm of supreme practical futility given that we have lived in diaspora for over two thousand years and have had no Temple in which to take such offerings.

Be it the kashrut system and our attitudes to the food we eat, of blessing God before eating or drinking, be it the use of mikveh after menstruation or giving birth, or before the festivals, or be it the practice of Cohanim not to enter the Ohel of a cemetery or come too close to either the dead or their graves, everyone washing hands after leaving a cemetery, the system of tahor and tamei continues to be quietly yet powerfully expressed.

While there is an enormous and complex rabbinic explication of the system – almost entirely long after it has ceased to be of use in the Temple, there is relatively little actual explanation about its purpose beyond being fit or unfit for Temple activities. Yet the concepts are critical to understanding Jewish life across the millennia.

To begin, the words tahor and tamei, usually translated as to do with purity or cleanliness, express ideas that do not exist in other languages or cultures. Samson Raphael Hirsch suggests they are words expressing a blockage of (tamei) or a freedom for (tahor) the transmission of holiness. Someone who is tahor is able to be a conduit for God’s will in the world, someone who is tamei is not. The words are certainly nothing to do with physical cleanliness, even though one way to remove most states of “tumah” is mikveh – immersion in living waters. 

Essentially when we talk about these states, we are in the world of moral concepts, in particular the world of kedushah, of holiness, and of the efforts we make to express God’s will in the world by our mundane and quotidian actions.

The Parah Adamah, the second reading torah reading that is read on the shabbat before shabbat haChodesh, the shabbat before Pesach, and which gives this shabbat its name (Shabbat Parah) is placed here in our liturgical calendar in order to remind the people to make themselves ready to offer the Pesach sacrifice. The “impurity” caused by contact with the dead is unlike any other impurity – it cannot be solved by time, washing and mikveh alone, but only by this arcane and opaque ritual of the ashes of a red heifer. Since the impurity can be passed on to others who did not have contact with a dead body, the chances are high that at any one time we are all in this state of tumah -of ritual impurity. While we cannot resolve this state without the ritual of the ashes which no longer exist, and in any case will not be offering the Korban Pesach, it seems at first glance odd that the tradition has insisted that it be read. There must be another reason for us to keep it so prominently in our liturgical calendar.

One reason is a may be a reminder that death is a disrupter of the importance of bringing holiness into the world. Judaism is a religion of life, we can only perform mitzvot in our lifetime (the reason why a Jew who is buried in tallit will have the symbolic knotted threads on each corner cut before burial), the dead do not praise God says the psalmist. While death is normal and natural, we do not look forward to it as the gateway to heaven. Our focus is on living a life that allows us to bring God and holiness into the world, not on a life whose meaning is particular only to ourselves or one that is a precursor to some “real life” in the afterlife.

Yet death is always around us, it can create fear in us and the deaths of others can destabilise us. The death of one we love can cause us to reject life, or to reject God. Death rarely comes at the right time, we all want more life if we can.

So the idea of death causing this highest form of tumah, of impurity, a form that requires a special and esoteric ritual, is a reminder that while we recognise our own mortality in theory, we find ourselves blocked or in denial about what this might really mean for us – our lives and our selves too will end.

Yet there is a way to resolve this that is held out to us on shabbat Parah – we have the almost fantastical ritual of the Parah Adamah – and some way in some time this ritual will be available to us once more, the conduit between us and the divine caused by our own mortality and the mortality of those we love, can become cleared. Death will not be the end.

Another reason we read of the Parah Adamah is that the rabbis who mandated it and who built the complex and enormous system of theoretical ritual purity and impurity were focused not on any physical state but on our spiritual state. The second torah reading this shabbat is paired with a special haftarah. In the book of Ezekiel we read that “I will sprinkle “mayim tehorim” – ( pure water) on you and you shall be tahor (pure). From all your tumah (impurities) I will purify you.” (Ezekiel 36:25). It is an echo of the ritual of the red heifer, but it takes the ideas of purification further and explicitly moves the arena to the spiritual rather than the physical and ritual purification.

Ezekiel continues

 “נָתַתִּ֤י לָכֶם֙ לֵ֣ב חָדָ֔שׁ וְר֥וּחַ חֲדָשָׁ֖ה אֶתֵּ֣ן בְּקִרְבְּכֶ֑ם וַהֲסִ֨רֹתִ֜י אֶת־לֵ֤ב הָאֶ֙בֶן֙ מִבְּשַׂרְכֶ֔ם וְנָתַתִּ֥י לָכֶ֖ם לֵ֥ב בָּשָֽׂר׃

And I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit into you: I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh;

וְאֶת־רוּחִ֖י אֶתֵּ֣ן בְּקִרְבְּכֶ֑ם וְעָשִׂ֗יתִי אֵ֤ת אֲשֶׁר־בְּחֻקַּי֙ תֵּלֵ֔כוּ וּמִשְׁפָּטַ֥י תִּשְׁמְר֖וּ וַעֲשִׂיתֶֽם׃

and I will put My spirit into you. Thus I will cause you to follow My laws and faithfully to observe My rules.

God says “I will give you a new heart (Lev Chadash) and a new spirit (Ruach Chadasha)… and cause you to follow my laws etc

The purification here is one of a moral flaw – the heart of stone we have demonstrated in our lives so far, a heart that has been unable to hear the needs of others, unwilling to respond with compassion and thoughtfulness, that heart will be replaced by God with one of flesh – a heart of humanity, of openness to others, a heart that sustains life.

Rabbi Jacob Milgrom teaches that the ritual of the red heifer is a ceremony of ethical cleansing for the self and for the community.  He writes “Ancient Jews believed that acts of immorality affected more than just those involved in them. There are consequences of wrongdoing that infect and pollute the entire community. … [the sins] have a contaminating effect, not only upon the guilty individuals but also upon the community and sanctuary. Asking forgiveness through sacrifices and prayers, even repairing the wrong through apology or restitution, is not enough to purify what is soiled by wrongdoing.

“For the ancients, the ritual of the parah adumah alone has the power to remove or exorcise such sinfulness. ‘By daubing the altar with blood or by bringing it inside the sanctuary, the priest purges the most sacred objects and areas of the sanctuary on behalf of the person who caused their contamination by physical impurity or inadvertent offense.’ The person and the community corrupted by wrongdoing are restored to a state of purity and can then go on without the burden of guilt.” Jacob Milgrom, JPS Torah Commentary ad loc)

Reading this extra piece of torah within days of celebrating Pesach functions not only as a prompt for us to examine ourselves and our lives half a year after the period of teshuvah of Elul and Kippur, it also reminds us that our lives have value and meaning, that we must live them the best way we can, renewing ourselves and behaving with greater humanity and renewed spirit in the world. It reminds us that lives are finite, that each one of us is a conduit for holiness, that the world is mysterious and while we cannot understand everything, we can understand the importance of a life searching for the divine.

And finally, why did the rabbis spend so much time and thought on a system that no longer existed? It is I think an act of hope, a belief in redemption and the forging of an identity that would be clearly and powerfully based on the activities of everyone’s daily life. The majority of the Jewish world were no longer living in Eretz Yisrael. There was no temple extant. But what better way to keep a people and a religious and cultural system alive and connected than the system of ritual purity they created. Every moment of this system is a reminder of our covenant relationship with God. Every tiny detail ensured that the Jewish world stayed focused on that, on the Land, on God, and on our peoplehood we would not be lost while in exile, the fate of so many peoples displaced at the whim of great empires.

It was, I  think, a religious act and a political one too. The Jews, wherever they find themselves, are part of a system designed to bring us closer to God in a specific and unique way. The system kept us from merging with the cultures surrounding us, yet allowed permeability so that we could absorb enough to live and survive in them. It gave us the flexibility to live in diaspora yet with our eyes towards Jerusalem, and the structure to retain our particularity and act out and understand our covenant relationship with God.

The ritual of the red heifer may continue to be mysterious and inexplicable, a law of God with no obvious rationale, but the system within which it sits is the air that we breathe. It is an imperative towards life, an imperative towards holiness, a reminder to check ourselves and repair what we can in timely fashion. A reminder of our mortality, and of the life we want to live.