Monthly Archives: October 2017

Vayera – how does God appear in the world – and how do we manage God’s appearance in the world?

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At the end of last week’s sidra, Abraham, Ishmael and all of the men in his household were circumcised as a sign of the covenant between God and Abraham. Abraham’s implicit trust in God has led him to leave his homeland, together with his wife and household. He has made covenants with God, each time with the promise/blessing that he will have descendants and land.

They left Haran and arrived in Canaan and within six verses we have another divine encounter: “Abram passed through the land to the place of Shechem, untilעַ֖ד אֵל֣וֹן מוֹרֶ֑ה – the oak trees of Moreh, while the Canaanite was still in the land.     

And God appeared to Abram  וַיֵּרָ֤א יְהוָֹה֙ אֶל־   אַבְרָ֔ם   and said “to your seed I will give this land” and he built there an altar to God who had appeared to him  הַנִּרְאֶ֥ה אֵלָֽיו

After this Abram went to the mountain to the east of Beit El and encamped there, and built an altar to God and called on God’s name, before moving onwards to the south.

The nature of Abraham’s “call”, his acceptance of God and his willingness to do as commanded has sometimes meant that Abraham is seen as the ultimate “man of faith”. After all he is willing to remove himself from homeland and family, to travel to an unknown destination, to offer both his sons to God’s desires and his existential aloneness is mitigated by the covenant with God. Yet Abraham is also held up to us as a role model – he is the first Ivri, one who crosses boundaries; he is Avraham Avinu – our father and founder; he is the embodiment of the mitzvah of hachnasat orchim, modelling openness and welcoming hospitality to all.

We are not privy to the origins of Abraham’s extraordinary faith – the first we know is that God tells him to go and he goes. But early in parashat Lech Lecha God appears to Abram by some oak trees, and now here in parashat Vayera we have the same thing.  Sitting at the opening of his tent in the heat of the day, Abraham is sheltering and looking outwards. He is, once again, by some oak trees וַיֵּרָ֤א אֵלָיו֙ יְהֹוָ֔ה בְּאֵֽלֹנֵ֖י מַמְרֵ֑א this time those of Mamre, when God appears to him. The same language, the same setting, with only minor differences. Abraham has a revelation, once more seeing God amongst the trees.

There is debate among the traditional commentators whether Abraham has one or two revelations at this point. Is the introductory verse telling us that God appears to Abraham just that, a sort of headline for what is to follow, as Maimonides posited? Or is it a revelation in and of itself as Rashi and others thought, and in that case, just what can be learned from it? For Abraham sees not God, but three ‘men’, and his response is not to build an altar or set out a ritual covenant, but to rush out to welcome them in, and to provide a meal for them. And the next verse gives us even more room for ambiguity, for when Abraham speaks he says:

וַיֹּאמַ֑ר אֲדֹנָ֗י אִם־נָ֨א מָצָ֤אתִי חֵן֙ בְּעֵינֶ֔יךָ אַל־נָ֥א תַֽעֲבֹ֖ר מֵעַ֥ל עַבְדֶּֽךָ

“Adonai (either “God” or “My lords”) If I have found favour in your sight, please do not pass by your servant”

Is he speaking to the men to invite them in for a rest, a wash and a meal? Or is he speaking to God and saying “wait please, while I offer hospitality to these men, and then I will have time to pay attention to you”?

I must say, I used to love the first interpretation the most: – the idea that we know that God was in these men but Abraham did not, yet still he responded to their needs with honour and dignity. From this it is easy to understand the importance of seeing past the surface of the people we meet, to draw the lesson that everyone has a spark of God within them, everyone is made b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God, and so we have a duty to relate to them, to care for them. The three men, hot and dusty and hungry and thirsty would have been a drain on the resources of their host, but Abraham did not hesitate to give them food and drink and comfort.

I still love that interpretation of the text, but I have come to appreciate the second one more. What if God reveals himself to Abraham, but immediately after this there is a pressing need to care for human beings, and Abraham finds himself saying to God – “can you wait please, there is something more important to do than listen to you right now?”

The something more important is, of course, the hachnasat orchim, the welcoming of the stranger and carer for the traveller that Abraham is so famous for. And the spiritual high, the encounter with the divine is of  lesser importance than the practical obligation to behave well towards others.

I like the idea that Abraham is less the paradigmatic man of perfect faith in the sense of his doing everything God tells him almost entirely without protest, and more the practical human being who responds viscerally to visceral need. I wonder if this instinctive act to help the travellers in the desert is the same instinct that causes him to later challenge God when the second revelation happens – the information that the whole of the city of Sdom will be destroyed, the righteous alongside the corrupt.  And I wonder what happened to that instinct after this episode.

For it seems to me that Abraham somehow loses his religious edge as he becomes a more patriarchal figure, and he becomes institutionally religious rather than instinctively so. No longer does he tell God to wait, nor does he argue with God when God asks the unaskable. He concurs. It is a terrible and repeated mistake, and by accepting God’s decrees he appears to lose his relationships with both his sons, with Hagar and with Sarah.

Abraham is indeed a role model for us, but maybe that should be modelling not uncritical religious faith and practise, but challenging it and inserting ourselves into the narratives. It would, I recognise, take some faith to ask God to wait while we do more important things in the world, but I have the feeling it would not be unwelcome.

Whenever I read the narratives of Abraham and Sarah, I am frustrated and made uncomfortable both by what is explicit in the text – the treatment of Hagar and Ishmael excluded from the family, the treatment of Sarah when she is bargained for Abraham’s freedom and of Isaac bound as a sacrifice to a demanding and testing God etc; and also by what is not explicit in the text – how does God talk to Abraham, what does Abraham see and experience…. I mistrust the certainty that seems built in to the narratives, the pain that is ignored – and I wonder how these stories can be a model for us – how can we recognise God’s presence in the world?

Abraham meets God twice by oak trees – large trees that cast shadows with canopies that play with the light coming through them. In each case the appearance of God could be understood to be just that – an appearance, or a vision, or a revelation. Abraham’s response in the first instance is to build an altar to mark the spot, but then to move some distance away and build a second altar from which to call on God. In the second instance no altar is necessary, no calling on God’s name and hoping for encounter – Abraham knows now what is important, he has his priorities straight – taking care of people in need trumps any vision or revelation, it outranks a personal encounter with divinity, all of that can wait – the work we do in the world to make it better is the critical work of being human and in the image of God.

I am not suggesting that prayer or contemplation or listening out for God’s voice in the world are not important – far from it. Any way in which we can ground ourselves in the relationship we have with the creator is important, it will nourish us and develop us and challenge us to be our best selves. But to make that the goal is to miss the point. Religion and ritual exist in order to keep us aware of what is important, though often they appear to exists only in order to perpetuate their own structures. Once a religion becomes an institution its focus changes to survival and regular challenges and reformations are needed to stop it crystallising.  The institutions may talk the talk but they walk the walk less readily.

So the idea of Abraham, the patriarch and founder of monotheistic religion, asking God to please wait while he gets on with caring for travellers is an important idea to keep hold of. We serve God best when we serve God’s creation, we cannot do God’s work if we turn our backs on God’s creatures in order to have a more spiritual focus.

 

 

Lech Lecha: the covenant of Abraham and Sarah

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The idea of covenant with God was already present with the narratives of Noah. In Genesis Chapter 6 we find “And God said to Noah: ‘The end of all flesh is come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make an ark of gopher wood…. I will establish My covenant with you; and you shall come into the ark, you, and your sons, and your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort you will bring into the ark to keep them alive with you….So did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he.”

After the flood comes another covenant – (Genesis Ch.9) “And God spoke to Noah, and to his sons with him, saying: ‘As for Me, behold, I establish My covenant with you, and with your seed after you; and with every living creature that is with you… never shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of the flood; nor shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.’ And God said: ‘This is the token of the covenant which I make between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I have set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between Me and the earth. …And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.’ And God said to Noah: ‘This is the token of the covenant which I have established between Me and all flesh that is upon the earth.”

So when God makes the covenant of the pieces with Abram in Genesis 15 “And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and there was thick darkness, behold a smoking furnace, and a flaming torch that passed between these pieces. In that day the Eternal made a covenant with Abram, saying: ‘To your seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates…” while we may find the description opaque, the idea of the divine promise given to one individual but extending into the future is familiar.

Parashat Lech Lecha introduces the covenant that is central to Jews and Judaism – brit milah – circumcision.  In Genesis 17 we read “God appeared to Abram, and said to him: ‘I am God Almighty; walk before Me, and be wholehearted. And I will make My covenant between Me and you, and will multiply thee exceedingly.’ … ‘ My covenant is with you and you will be the father of a multitude of nations. Your name shall not anymore be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham…And I will make you exceeding fruitful, I will make nations of you, and kings shall come out of you And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your seed after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant….. This is My covenant, which you shall keep, between Me and you and your seed after you: every male among you shall be circumcised. …and it shall be a token of a covenant betwixt Me and you. He that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every male throughout your generations, he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any foreigner, that is not of thy seed…must be circumcised; and My covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. …..And God said to Abraham: ‘As for Sarai thy wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be.  And I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son of her; yea, I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of peoples shall be of her.”

Judaism is based on the particular covenant relationship between God and the Jewish people. And this relationship begins with Abraham and Sarah, travelling down the generations through their son Isaac. This covenant relationship is unbreakable, however much we let God down or God lets us down. God has other covenantal relationships with humanity, but the specific Jewish relationship of responsibility and purpose is the one that underpins all Jewish teaching.

Pretty much every Jewish family circumcises their 8 day old baby boy in the ceremony of brit milah as bible requires. The child is brought in ceremonially to the mohel and blessings said, which include the blessing “who has commanded us con­cerning circumcision” and   “who has commanded us to  enter [him] into  the covenant of Abraham our father.”

Bible is clear on this – all baby boys, whether born into the Jewish family or adopted into the household, are to be given this sign in their flesh that they too are part of the Abrahamic covenant.  It is a patriarchal society into which they are born, the brit is their male right – but what exactly is the position of women in this covenant so central to Jewish self-understanding?

A closer reading of our texts reveals something interesting. The covenant of the pieces, opaque and full of dark magical symbolism, is deeply patriarchal and refers to the continuity of possession and power of the Abrahamic line. There is a prefiguring of the terrifying experience at Sinai, with smoke and fire and a God who overawes. Yes the childless Abram will have heirs, countless descendants, but their fate will be difficult and painful as slaves and exiles,  until they finally inherit the land, displacing the nations living upon it. Abram himself will die peacefully in old age encountering nothing of the complex future.  The second covenant is different – here it is personal and intimate. While land and descendants are still the critical core of the covenant, here the land is an ahuzah, a family holding, rather than a nation state as in the earlier covenant. Here  Abram’s line is described in terms of family, it is described positively as being fruitful, a multitude of nations including king. There is no mention of a terrible period of time in exile and slavery, instead the focus is on the mutuality of the covenant – Abram and his line must keep the covenant as well as God, and his name is changed to show the personal transformation. And in parallel we are told that Sarai too is part of this promise, she will bear a son, and through that son nations and kings will be born, and the covenant will be held within this familial line. She too has her name changed; she too is radically altered by the encounter. This is a covenant with real people who are active in the creation and expression of the covenant, and who are transformed by the event – both have the letter ה added to their names, a letter used to signify God and both will shortly by transformed by the birth of their child.

While the sign of the covenant is to be embedded in the flesh of the male member, the covenant itself is not limited to those who carry the sign – it is enshrined in the peoplehood that descends from Abraham and Sarah, in their activity and participation.

Looking at the biblical texts we can see that each covenant apparently made with one individual is in reality made with an extension from that individual – be it the covenants with Noah that are in reality made also with his extended family or secondly with the whole of humanity, or the covenants with Abraham which extend to his descendants through Sarah, the notion of the individual limited covenant is a mistake. When we get to Sinai it is clear that while the discussion is with Moses, the covenant is actually with all the people both present and yet to be born or to choose Judaism. Moses’ speech in Deuteronomy in parashat Nitzavim make this clear – everyone, male, female, adult, child, high status or low – is in the covenant.

So how come we only seem to celebrate or mark the entry into the covenant of male children? How are women supposed to see themselves as integral to the covenant too?  Traditional texts assume simply that women need no such entry point. In the Talmud (avodah zarah 87a) we read a debate about who can perform circumcision. The focus is on the repeated words “himol yimol” in the passage from Genesis 17 – this can be translated as the individual must be circumcised to enter the covenant, or it can be understood as ‘the circumciser needs to be circumcised’. Following this second reading, one would imagine that only a man can act as mohel (circumcisor) and yet we know that Zipporah herself circumcised her child. From this the Talmud decides that women are classed as ‘among the circumcised’ – in other words, women are already born with the sign of the covenant in their bodies, and need no extra marking in their flesh.

What this natural state is is subject to debate – it seems to have something to do with the blood released- could it be menstruation or the ability to give birth, both of which involved natural bleeding?  Is it to do with the ability to procreate – certainly the idea of circumcision is also seen in the treatment of fruit trees whose fruit cannot be eaten for three years – they are ‘orlah’, literally ‘uncircumcised’. So possibly the act of milah is an act to make the male ‘fruitful’, something a woman is seen as being ab initio?

But while our texts understand women to be part of the covenant even without ceremony, and the traditional debate is only to clarify the reason for this, it seems to me that a real issue is being overlooked. We bring a boy child into the covenant surrounded by family and community, with great joy and love, a week after his birth. But a girl child is simply noted, a mi sheberach (blessing) recited in her father’s synagogue when neither she nor her mother are present, end of story.

It is not enough. It is not enough to say that women are on a spiritually higher level than men and therefore need not be obligated to do mitzvot. It is not enough to teach that a woman’s glory is internal, that she should be shielded from the outside world, protected from public space. It is not enough to recite platitudes to try to flatter or distract women from living full and public lives, from actively taking their place in the covenant, from operating openly in public space, their voices and ideas heard in study and in action.

By denying women a public recognition of our place in the covenant, we have slid into the position where women’s roles have become seen as lesser than those of men, where women are somehow not counted in the legal or spiritual community of Jews.  It begins to be taught that women are only in the covenant by virtue of their relationship with men – fathers or husbands or sons. It begins to be understood that women’s rights and women’s voices are contingent on their relationship with men. And then we slide into a deeply dangerous place, where women are not only removed from the public space, their voices silenced to protect male ‘sensibilities’, but women’s reality is eroded, women’s experience downplayed, and the covenant is deprived of what was clearly there at the beginning – the particular contribution of women.

Judaism is not only a religion, not only a set of beliefs, not only a genetic inheritance, not only a set of shared values and stories and way of seeing the world – it is a peoplehood in covenant with God. And that peoplehood contains a complex variety of souls. Like the lulav and etrog which are seen as symbolising the Jewish people – some with learning but no mitzvot, others with mitzvot but no learning, yet others with both learning and mitzvot and still others with no learning and no mitzvot – we encompass the full range of what is possible in a people, and we need each other to fulfil ourselves.

So the ceremonies that bring daughters into the covenant – simchat bat, zeved habat, brit bat, – these are important ceremonies and while some date to the 17th century, they are not yet in common usage across the community, nor always recognised as being more than a nice way to celebrate having a new baby in the family or to welcome a daughter into the world.

Women are, and always have been, part of the covenant. Abraham may have had to circumcise himself, but Sarah too was physically altered, bringing her child into world long past the age of childbearing. Both were named, both were transformed, both were necessary

It is time we took more seriously the rite of passage to bring a daughter into the covenant. Time to bring the creative ceremonials out of the shadows and into the mainstream liturgy and life of the synagogue community. Respect for women begins with treating the births of female children with the same communal enthusiasm and joy as the birth of male children is celebrated. From publicly entering a girl child into the covenant may come a greater understanding that women have our own part in the covenant, must explore it and explain it and be creative with it as the men have over the centuries.

Merle Feld’s poem “We all stood together at Sinai” is a salutary reminder of what happens when we don’t give equal value time and space to women’s covenant experience.

We All Stood Together   By Merle Feld   (for Rachel Adler)

My brother and I were at Sinai
He kept a journal
of what he saw
of what he heard
of what it all meant to him

I wish I had such a record
of what happened to me there

It seems like every time I want to write
I can’t
I’m always holding a baby
one of my own
or one for a friend
always holding a baby
so my hands are never free
to write things down

And then
As time passes
The particulars
The hard data
The who what when where why
Slip away from me
And all I’m left with is
The feeling

But feelings are just sounds
The vowel barking of a mute

My brother is so sure of what he heard
After all he’s got a record of it
Consonant after consonant after consonant

If we remembered it together
We could recreate holy time
Sparks flying

 

 

 

 

 

Parashat Noach and Rosh Chodesh MarCheshvan: – time to break the silence and speak out #metoo

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Rosh Chodesh Marcheshvan is a special day for me – specifically it is the date on our Ketubah recording our chuppah (Jewish wedding)– and in my eagerness to be observant on that day and  I remember being slightly disappointed that the traditional wedding day fast in order to be cleansed of all ‘sin’ was overridden by the nature of the day.

I remember too the debate about the name of the month – would one write Cheshvan or Marcheshvan on the wedding document? The month may be free from festivals, but it was the beginning of our marriage – surely we couldn’t call the month “bitter Cheshvan” on that basis?

The eighth month in our calendar,  it may have come to us through the Akkadian/Babylonian language, and simply be a description of its place in the year, with  m’rach sh’van corresponding to “eighth month”.  Certainly the longer name of Marcheshvan is the one used in the Mishnah and in Talmudic texts, and the great rabbinic commentators Rashi, Ibn Ezra and Maimonides all give it this name, rather than the shorter Cheshvan.  And yet somewhere we lost that certainty and all sorts of traditions have grown up to explain why the month Cheshvan apparently has the prefix Mar. As I referred to earlier, the word can mean ‘bitter’ – leading to the idea that since this is a month with no celebrations at all, it is a bitter month. Others take the idea that Mar means a drop of water, and so see it as the word reminding us that in Cheshvan the rains must fall if we are to have good harvests and fill the aquifers, rivers and lakes in Israel. Yet others see it as a prefix denoting respect – we respect the beginning of our new lives post the festival marathon of Rosh Hashanah – Yom Kippur –Sukkot – Shemini Atzeret –Simchat Torah. Just as we want to live lives where we gain respect from others for our good actions, so we respect the month where we begin in earnest to live our ordinary lives as best we can.  There are many midrashim on the subject of MarCheshvan, and also about its other biblical name ‘Bul’, but this year something else struck me. The name Cheshvan written

חשון

Could come from the Hebrew root  חוש meaning “to make haste” or more likely from    חשה meaning “to be silent, or inactive”.

I have been thinking a lot about prayer recently, and about how we speak prayer and how we listen, how we actively seek connection with God and how we sometimes allow ourselves just to be, waiting through all the busyness and distractions of our lives for what in the First Book of Kings (19:12) is called  ק֖וֹל דְּמָמָ֥ה דַקָּֽה:

“The still small voice” or rather better – “the voice of slender silence”

Silence and contemplation can give great rewards in a prayer life. Time to reflect, to quieten the activity in our minds, to let go of all the “shoulds” and “musts” and imperatives of getting things done fast, no time wasted, hurry hurry hurry…..

The naming of Cheshvan seems to be a dissonance – the haste implied in one possible verbal root, the quietness and inaction in the other.

Add to that the water – bitter or otherwise – drip drip dripping into our consciousness, both life giving and life destroying – particularly when read in conjunction with parashat Noach, and Chesvan seems to be a deliberate puzzle. Are we to be still and hear the voice of God, are we to be active in God’s work? Are we to make haste or to make space and time?

Noah himself is a puzzle – he never speaks to God, he never speaks to the population whom he knows will be destroyed. He never argues for the living, nor warns them, nor engages with them in any way. Instead he makes haste to do what God has asked him. He is both silent and hasty, actively  creating the Ark, but entirely passive in the ethical or societal aspects of the narrative.

I have never felt comfortable with Noah. Even though this was my batmitzvah portion, I found the man himself unpleasant, I could not bring myself to identify with his story and this used to bother me a great deal.

Until this year when, like many other women across the world I found myself writing #metoo on my social media.

The idea was that “If everyone who has been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote “Me too.” as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem. Please copy/paste. #metoo”

The idea came about after the Harvey Weinstein exposure, to help provide support for victims, so they would know that they were not suffering alone in this, to try to prevent the backlash of victim blaming that rapidly appeared.

#metoo appeared all over the timelines of me and my friends and of men and women all over the world, and indeed the magnitude of the problem became clear for all to see. Many debates began – what counts as sexual assault? What counts as harassment? Were women being hypersensitive? Where were the men who didn’t seem to notice what was the everyday experience of so many women? Who were the men who were harassing women? How come the women had not spoken out before? What was the conspiracy of silence that allowed men to abuse their power over women, the open secrets that were simply not discussed?

And it hit me – the silence, the inactivity, which I often experience as a positive in my spiritual life suddenly had a different force – it became the silencing of the voices of victims, the inactivity surrounding the open secrets, the weapon of choice to enable the rich, powerful and protected to continue in their self-serving behaviour. It is the silence surrounding modern slavery and human trafficking when we buy clothes unrealistically cheaply, the real price paid by the factory workers who toil for long hours for very little reward. It is the silence surrounding the lack of a living wage for many people in this country, the silence surrounding the need for food banks and people who have to choose to be warm or to be fed – or even more stark choices around keeping a roof over their heads. It is the silence around domestic abuse and the routine and everyday harassment of women.  I could go on and on about what we keep silent about, not because we don’t know but because we don’t want to know and talking about it will make it more real to us.

Cheshvan is the eighth month of the year – symbolically seven plus one, completion plus one – it is the beginning again. In so many ways we are at the start of something where we can change the world if only we stopped our silence and made haste for justice. Noah is a salutary example – he kept his silence and the world drowned. Yes there was a new beginning, but that beginning was steeped in regret for a past that had not been resolved, merely suppressed and hidden in the depths.

Our voices do not have to be loud but they have to be heard. We need to speak out and we need to listen to the voices of those who have hidden their voices or whose voices have been suppressed by people more powerful than them.

Cheshvan is the time for us to challenge ourselves on when we are silent positively in order to hear the voice of God in the world, and when we stop being silent in order for God’s voice to speak out in the world. It is, we discover, the same voice. Beginning again doesn’t have to mean washing away the past as if it never existed; it means acknowledging the faults of the past and confronting them, working for change, creating a world which is better for our living in it. Last week we read of God asking Cain “where is your brother” and saying “the bloods of your brother are crying out to me from the ground”. Now as we reach Cheshvan and read the story of the generation of Noah it is time to hear the cries of those unjustly paying the price for the corruption of others more powerful than they, time to give the answer to Cain’s disingenuous response “am I my brother’s keeper?”

We are human beings, responsible for each other, responsible to care for each other, responsible for whistle-blowing improper behaviour, for calling out the power plays that make so many miserable.

As #metoo swept across social media, many protested that they did not know. We know now. And it is time to make haste, time  break the silence. A new beginning as we read about a new creation after the cleansing out of the corruption and abuses of power that had been tolerated for far too long.

 

 

 

 

Cain and Hevel: Am I my brother’s keeper?

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The first murder happens in bible in the first generation to be born – Cain and Hevel, two of the sons of Adam and Eve, bring death into the world.  It is unclear really what the relationship between them was – indeed the more we read the biblical account the more questions we have.

In the fourth chapter of Genesis we are told that “the man knew his wife; and she conceived and bore Cain, and said: ‘I have acquired a man with the help of the Eternal.’

א וְהָ֣אָדָ֔ם יָדַ֖ע אֶת־חַוָּ֣ה אִשְׁתּ֑וֹ וַתַּ֨הַר֙ וַתֵּ֣לֶד אֶת־קַ֔יִן וַתֹּ֕אמֶר קָנִ֥יתִי אִ֖ישׁ אֶת־יְהוָֹֽה:

Already the conception of Cain is problematic. Eve is named, her husband is not. She conceives and bears a son who is apparently already named and maybe even already grown, and then she says something that appears to be designed to remove her partner from the narrative.  The name Cain comes from the root to acquire, to have material ownership. Eve says she has acquired a man with God.  The role of her husband, the man to her woman, the father of the child – is diminished in the text. I remember years ago studying this with a family therapist who pointed out that many a family goes through difficulties when a new baby is born, and that often the relationship between mother and child can freeze out the father who feels to be of little use in those early chaotic days .  If this is not addressed and worked on, it can cause serious dysfunction in the family in later years.

And then comes the second child – is it a different conception or is Hevel the twin of Cain? There is no mention of Adam at all here, not the act of procreation nor the pregnancy. Instead we are told “and again she bore his brother, Hevel, and Hevel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain was a worker of the ground

ב וַתֹּ֣סֶף לָלֶ֔דֶת אֶת־אָחִ֖יו אֶת־הָ֑בֶל וַֽיְהִי־הֶ֨בֶל֙ רֹ֣עֵה צֹ֔אן וְקַ֕יִן הָיָ֖ה עֹבֵ֥ד אֲדָמָֽה

Havel comes into the world without any reference to Adam, but clearly in relationship to Cain – she bears ‘his brother’ and his name too is ready made. While Cain, the acquirer, the one who is in deep relationship with the land appears as a material figure, Hevel’s name has quite a different resonance. Hevel means breath; implicit in it is the idea of transience, even pointlessness. The preacher Kohelet in his book (read at Succot) begins by lamenting

הֲבֵ֤ל הֲבָלִים֙ אָמַ֣ר קֹהֶ֔לֶת הֲבֵ֥ל הֲבָלִ֖ים הַכֹּ֥ל הָֽבֶל  Vanity of vanities, says Kohelet; vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

The brothers, one too firmly grounded, one apparently totally transient, choose work that suits their natures – Cain tills the ground, Hevel shepherds his flock. And when they bring their thanksgiving offerings to God – another curiosity since this is the first we know of such a practise – the fruits of the ground brought by Cain are rejected, while the firstborn of the flocks brought by Hevel are accepted by God.

Why? Why would God accept the offerings of one brother and not the other? Is there a suggestion that Cain does not bring of the best, of the first? Are we to believe that God is a carnivore and not a vegetarian? Is this a moment that comes to every parent and child when the child complains that something is not fair, only to be told “who ever said that life was fair?”

Cain is angry and depressed, and God asks the first of the questions in the text – “Why are you angry? And why has your face fallen?” And then God continues with a slightly sinister statement – “If you do well/make it good – you will be lifted/accepted, but if you do not do well/make it good, then sin lies at the doorway, and its desire is to you, but you may rule over it”

What on earth does God mean? And how is this a response to a dejected Cain who has presumably never been thwarted, who was the clear favourite of his mother, the man who provides and has acquisitions and wealth? The last part of the phrase echoes the words God spoke to Eve when she and Adam are sent away from the garden – she will desire her husband yet he will have power over her. Is this a reference to the dislocation within the family? The more one looks the less one understands.

But we know that Cain spoke to Hevel, though the content of the conversation is not recorded. Then both Cain and Hevel were in the field, Cain rose up against Hevel his brother and killed him. And in the very next verse God asks the next question

וַיֹּ֤אמֶר יְהוָֹה֙ אֶל־קַ֔יִן אֵ֖י הֶ֣בֶל אָחִ֑יךָ וַיֹּ֨אמֶר֙ לֹ֣א יָדַ֔עְתִּי הֲשֹׁמֵ֥ר אָחִ֖י אָנֹֽכִי:

Where is Hevel your brother? And he answered “I don’t know, am I my brother’s keeper?”

Finally a conversation between the two of them, finally we hear clear voices in the text. And the voices resonate down the generations until now.

God asks a question to which God already knows the answer – a question similar to the one asked in Eden – “where are you?” The reply – sullen, angry, also a question – does not admit to the truth – Cain most certainly knows where his brother is. And then comes the climax –“What have you done? The bloods of your brother are crying out to Me from the ground”

The story then quickly spirals to its conclusion. Cain is cursed from the ground he has worked, it will no longer produce for him. He is no longer the one who owns the land but is destined to become a transient, one who wanders. With some compassion at Cain’s horror at what his future will be, at the mercy of anyone who comes across him, God provides him with a token to protect him. Just as Adam and Eve were provided with clothing by God when they were driven out of Eden, Cain too is provided with some protection as he is sent away – and then bible turns its focus on to the children of Cain who become powerful figures, and onto the birth of Seth to replace the lost Hevel.

The story is rich in metaphor, in parallels with which to read the stories of Cain and Hevel’s parents, with mythic understanding of the first human beings and human family, in lacunae in the text which we might fill with our creative understandings and midrash.

But I think the most powerful piece in the story is the rhetorical question asked by Cain and the divine response – “Am I my brother’s keeper?” and “the bloods of your brother are crying out to me from the ground”

This question – “am I my brother’s keeper” is asked throughout the book of Genesis – from the relationship of Abraham to Lot, the son of his dead brother, through the complicated relationship of Isaac and Ishmael, the painful rivalry between Jacob and Esau, the violence and toxic competition between Jacobs twelve sons that ends only after a lifetime of separation and agony for the brothers and their father. The book of Genesis ends with one brother (Joseph) financially supporting the others who had wronged him, and reconciliation between brothers occurs when Judah shows that he is prepared to take the place of Benjamin as hostage in Egypt, so that Joseph sees that Judah has indeed learned the lesson of “Am I my brother’s protector?”

But the question does not end with the book of Genesis, even though the dénouement closes the narrative of the founding families. For bible continues to record how careless we can be of the other, how little we understand about our role in community, how ambition and self-indulgence and habit of categorising the ‘other’ as less than our own is embedded in our psyche. We too sullenly ask of the world “am I my brother’s keeper? – Do I have to care what happens to other people?”

The answer of course to Cain’s question is “yes – you are indeed responsible for the care and protection of your brother” God’s response, that the bloods of his brother are crying out from the land into which they seeped is an absolute imperative that reminds us that our actions have consequences, that we are all interconnected, and that we have a responsibility to ensure that everyone is acknowledged and their needs fulfilled.

Indeed, the word “brother” is to be understood in biblical tradition not simply in terms of genetics or of closeness of family or geographic proximity or ethnic tie – here we are talking about the foundation of the human race – the brother of Cain at this point is every other human being in the world. We are each other’s guarantors, supporters, protectors. If we fail in that duty and their blood is spilled or their lives diminished, then God will hear of our failure and will demand justice from us.

While the biblical story of the first sibling rivalry leading to fratricide is one that raises more questions in us the more we read it, a narrative filled with difficulties and complications, there are some lessons that we can understand easily, even though we may not really like them or find them comforting.

One is about our privilege and what it leads us to expect. Cain was the eldest son, well beloved, a man connected intimately to the land which he worked and which provided wealth and sustenance. He never noticed his privilege just as we don’t notice the privilege with which we live in a first world country as a settled people. He expected his sacrifice to be accepted and welcomed, gratitude from God in response to his thanksgiving offerings. His face fell, he was distressed when this did not happen, and he felt cheated and angry. God challenges his privilege asking him why he is so upset – and God goes further, reminding him that if he works hard and does well then he will feel good, but that sometimes working hard doesn’t lead to doing well – “sin crouches at the door” in the words of the bible, chata’at, is a word from archery meaning missing the mark, not doing all we could, not fulfilling what is required from us. God goes on to tell us – we can control that behaviour of chata’at, but it takes will, mindfulness and effort. We have to acknowledge our disappointment when our privilege doesn’t benefit us, recognise that when someone else gains it does not have to mean that we lose – even if it can feel like that. We must confront our own unacknowledged privilege when we work to recognise the humanity of others and understand that the luck of living in 21st century Europe, with enough money to buy food and shelter and entertainment and education, to feel secure and rooted in a community – it really is random.

Another lesson we learn from this narrative is that we often repeat the mistakes of our parents, and add a few more mistakes for good measure. We are connected to our pasts and they have influence on us – often more than we might notice. And unless we become aware of the influences we are destined to act them out. It is not for nothing that the most repeated commandment in bible is to remember that we were slaves in Egypt in order not to treat people lower down the socio-economic scale than we now are as we were once treated.

And another lesson is that life is not fair. God – or the universe – can appear to us to be random. There is no causal or mechanistic relationship between good people having good lives and vice versa. So we must not judge those who are unfortunate in their lives, and we must work to remedy the unfairness. When their bloods cry out, not only God listens, we must too.

Where does this lead us? The bloods of our brothers and sisters call out to us – the word is in the plural in bible to tell us, say the rabbis, that everyone is connected to many others – no life is in isolation, not even Hevel who is almost vapour, who never married or had children – even Hevel has bloods – he is connected to the rest of humanity.

In today’s world of increasing unrest, of wars and political uprisings and hurricanes and storms, of terrorism and uncertainty there are huge movements of people who are severed from their ancestral lands, refugees from their villages and cities. There were 31.1 million new internal displacements by conflict, violence and disasters in 2016. (1) This is the equivalent of one person forced to flee every second. Be they the Rohynga Muslims fleeing Myanmar or the people escaping civil war in Syria, be they the people desperately crossing the Mediterranean sea in flimsy boats and arriving destitute at the foot of Italy, or the more than five thousand who drowned in that sea in 2016 meaning that on average, 14 people died every single day last year in the Mediterranean trying to find safety or a better life in Europe.

Their bloods call out to us – what are we going to do?  Life is not fair but it is not for us to accept our privilege and ignore what others suffer. Jewish tradition reminds us that only one human being was created originally so that no one can say, ‘my father was greater than your father.’ In other words, every human being is unique and inherently precious (Mishna Sanhedrin 4:5).

We have a responsibility to each other. As Jews, as human beings, we have to check our privilege and work for justice for the people who need it. As we begin this new year having reminded ourselves with the succah of the fragility of our lives and transience of material possessions, we are reminded too that other people’s lives are even more fragile right now, their material possessions lost or even never existing. And we must apply ourselves to the tikkun, to being the support of our fellow human beings, and to helping God create a better world for us all to live in.

(1) http://www.internal-displacement.org/global-report/grid2017/

 

Sukkot: Our plans make God laugh but we hope and trust anyway – what else can we do but rejoice in the life we have?

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Putting up the succah in our autumnal garden some of last year’s birch leaves fall out of the folds of the s’chach and I am transported back to memories of the year gone by, aware suddenly of the passing of time, of what has changed and what is changing.

Autumn brings a special kind of melancholy. Some flowers and fruits are at their peak, the pears plumply falling on the lawn; the apples – those that have not been enjoyed by the birds – full and round. Many plants are still flowering profusely and as I look at them I know with sadness that soon  I will have to disrupt this joyful performance in order to dig them up and save them for next year, or cut them back to prevent the frost damaging their tender stems.

In the garden it feels a bit like a last hurrah. The squirrels are busily collecting acorns and conkers to bury against a hard winter; the birds are gorging on berries, the bees checking each bloom for the last sweet drops they may give up. The air has a chill, leaves are already creating an unwanted blanket over the flower beds, my gardener’s instincts are warning me not to leave the tidying up – what my mother calls ‘putting the garden to bed’ –  too  late. If I do, the price will be the slimy stems of frost damaged annuals, happy slugs and other pests doing their damage in comfort, and the bone chilling experience of wrestling with dead or dying vegetation fixed into the unyielding soil.

Autumn brings with it a sense of dying even while life is climaxing.  We have more than a shiver of recognition of our own mortality. And the Jewish festivals have been resonating with the season – We begin a new year with reflection and awe as we undergo Judgment Day – Yom HaDin; we follow through the Ten Days of Repentance (the Aseret Y’mei Teshuvah) as we acknowledge our shortcomings and mistakes, until Yom Kippur enables us to, so to speak, slough off the burden of guilt that has been weighing on us, having done all we can to remedy what we have done.  We tidy up the garden even as we are enjoying its beauty; we cover over and put to bed the nagging thoughts about things we can no longer do anything about. We prepare for the future by cleansing the landscape of our lives.

And because all work like this takes longer than the original plan, and indeed is an ongoing act throughout the year, Jewish tradition reminds us that the Gates of Repentance stay open until the end of the Succot festival.

With all the intimations of death within life, with all the resonance of mortality and melancholy the season brings, we are commanded in bible to treat the festival of Succot with joyfulness. It is Z’man Simchateinu, the time of our joy. We must rejoice before God with the products of the land, the pri etz hadar (fruit of the beautiful tree), the palm, the myrtle, the willow of the brook.

As a gardener I notice that these plants all grow in Israel in different parts of the country – for such a tiny piece of land the different micro-climates are extraordinary.  The lulav, coming from the palm tree, fruits most happily where it is hot and dry – while it grows in the coastal areas, in truth it is a tree that disdains humidity and far prefers the semi –desert conditions. The myrtle (hadas) prefers the cooler mountainous areas. The aravah (willow) needs to be close to a consistent water supply (hence “willows of the brook”) and the etrog grows best in the lower coastal areas and the valleys.  These four symbols of Succot encompass all the growing conditions a gardener could work in, and it is a rarely lucky horticulturist who finds themselves able to work them all in one garden.  I would love more acid soils and less shade in my garden, but such is life, one works with what one has.

We bring together vegetation from all areas of Israel, symbolising not only geographical or horticultural diversity but also different times in our lives- the hot semi desert when growth and change seem impossible, the cool perspective when we can see, if not always reach, our next stage, the times when life flows fast around us and the times when the horizon is very distant and unimaginable.

On Succot we telescope the year with its possibilities into this composite symbol; indeed we telescope our lives with its many experiences both good and bad into the celebration of the festival, and we rejoice before God for our very selves. We know that no life is untouched by sorrow, that no-one escapes from living without experiencing problems and pain, but we know too that our lives are something to be thankful for, to celebrate and enjoy.  The autumnal adumbral presentiments of change – of life and death and rebirth – make us pause for a moment to notice the change, the growing and the dying back, the fruiting and the flowering.

Why are we commanded to rejoice at the very time we are facing the bleakness of the  winter? I think it is an assertion of hope, of trust that the world will once again flourish and flower, that life, even as it is in the process of completing one cycle, is readying and preparing the next. We are facing a dormancy but not an ending. We rejoice because we have confidence that we are not alone, that our lives are not isolated, but that a thread of something beyond us will connect us in time and space. The very succot we build and live in, fragile and uncomfortable and with little protection from the elements, remind us that when all the physical defences and supports we take for granted are gone, we are still together, still in community, still under the protection of God.  When we tie together the arba’a minim, we not only become aware of the larger world, shaking it East, South, West, North, Upwards and Downwards in petition for the water our land needs at this time, we also become aware of the composite peoplehood we are a part of. The midrashim that link the parts to the parts of the body, the “types “ that make up community, the geography of the Land of Israel – all of them have one thing in common. If we care for each other and live in community, sharing what we have, comforting those in pain or distress, recognising the humanity of the other, then we are stronger, we can face the Autumn and the Winter, we can depend on the thread of life that may seem impossible to see, that may lie dormant under unpromising conditions.

We rejoice on Succot because with all of the fears, all of the uncertainty, all of the sudden awareness of the transience of our materiality, we remember that we are part of a greater whole, and God, even if not obvious to us, underpins us and supports us and keeps us alive to say the she’he’cheyanu prayer at this season. We none of us know what our future holds for us and while we might make plans for it these are at the most provisional. As the Yiddish saying goes: Der mentsh tracht und Gott lacht – Human Beings make plans and (this is why) God laughs

דער מענטש טראַכט און גאָט לאַכט

All we can do is live in the moment, aware of the fragilities of life and aware too that life goes on – and hope that we will see the next season and the next.

 

Sermon for Yom Kippur Shacharit: ki vayom hazeh – on this day

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“Ki vayom hazeh y’chaper aley’hem, le’taher et’chem; mikol hatotey’chem lifnei adonai tit’haru. (For on this day atonement will be made for you to cleanse you, of all your sins before God, you shall be cleansed”  (Lev 16:30)

On Yom Kippur, when the High Priest entered the inner Temple, dressed in special robes and breastplate, the priestly garments including the frontlets on his head, the vestments of fine white linen, he would repeat this biblical verse in each of the three confessions he made.  And the people would crowd around outside in the temple courtyard, listening hard, and when they heard the the glorious and awesome four letter name of God we write as yod hey vav hey, the name which would be uttered only by the High Priest, only within the Holy of Holies, only on Yom Kippur, only as part of the confession ritual, then they would bow down with their faces to the ground and respond with the blessing of God’s name. This annual ritual of confession and sacrifice was a dangerous one, surrounded by mystery, perfumed by the incense, veiled from the community.  Tension mounted as the confessions grew, as the animals were sacrificed and the hopes pinned upon them being favourably received reached some form of expression.

My sympathies have always been with the high priest, upon whose shoulders rested the burden of so much expectation.  The fate of the whole people seems to have been given over to this one man on this one day – so he had better get it right.   The ritual was complicated, the choreography of washing and changing clothes, of sacrifice and prayer awesomely elaborate,  the consequences of making a mistake unthinkable.  We don’t know much from either biblical sources or first temple texts, but by the time of the Second Temple the Day for Atonement was focussed on the actions and intentions of the High Priest, and the role of the people was to listen, to be awe-struck, and to hope that he got it right.

That was then, but since the Temple days Yom Kippur has developed a different set of rituals, and while we re-enact part of the Avodah, the temple service of Yom Kippur, during the mussaf service, experiencing just the echo of the thrilling gravity and overwhelming power of that ceremony, our own liturgy and imagery takes us to a different  religious place.  Yom Kippur is no longer the Day for Atonement for the people Israel, it is by far a more personal and individual experience for we children of modern times.  The High Priest has long gone, the sacrificial system consigned to a stage post in history that no longer speaks to us of religious action, and the corporate nature of the people Israel has been changed as we have become a different category altogether – Jews, and while we consistently create community we see ourselves in the main as individuals, individual Jews.

The structure of the ritual and the philosophical underpinnings of the day have undergone a radical transformation, and so, I would posit, has the meaning of what Yom haKippurim means to us.  While we still translate this obscure name using the invented composite word ‘at-one’, we have changed both meaning and purpose of the day for our own spiritual needs.  I would even go so far as to say that the day is not really about sin and atonement any more – how would we even define those terms today? – but that Yom Kippur for us is about something quite other –  Time. Yom Kippur is about our use of time, about our location in time – it is in particular a day for us to focus on our own mortality.

Interspersed in our machzor with the major themes of sin and repentance, of forgiveness and atonement, we hear the insistently repeated motif of life and death. We talk for example about the Book of Life, we read the Martyrology, we recite a service of Yizkor, our traditional clothing for this day is to wear shrouds and we are called to abstain from the physical  pleasures of living, eating, drinking or washing.  We take a day right out of time and act as if the world outside is irrelevant to us, as if we are, for the moment, temporarily dead.

What message do we take from the prayers and texts as we sit through Yom Kippur.  It is probably true that we examine our lives and find our behaviour wanting.  It is probably the case that we make our stumbling attempts towards recognising and harnessing our own spirituality, yearning as we do for a sense of meaning, for a firm belief in a greater being.  It may well be that we feel momentarily inspired to change some part of our lives, or that we experience the satisfying of a need for connectedness which tends to be submerged during the busy weeks of the rest of our lives.  As the day rolls on, the ancient formulae about sin and loss swirl around us, as do the equally ancient phrases about return and forgiveness.  We know that we are less than perfect and we look for ways to deal with both the knowledge and the reality.   But we cannot retreat into the Yom Kippur of the Temple period and leave the whole religious business to someone else.  The Yom Kippur of our time looks us in the face and says – you are mortal, you only have a limited time on this earth – and you do not even know how limited it may be – so what are you going to do about your life?

Yom Kippur is no longer a day simply of general and ritual atonement. It is a day for us to restructure our lives, to reconcile our realities with our requirements.  Loud and clear through the prayers comes the reminder – we are mortal, we, and those around us do not have all the time in the world, and so if there are things we want to do, we should be planning to do them now, if there are things we need to change, we should be arranging to change them now, if there are things we want to say, we should be saying them now.

Nothing is so precious as time, nothing is so consistently abused. We waste time, we kill time, we fill in time – rarely do we actually use time appropriately.  Yet our tradition has been able to transform a day of communal awe and professional ritual activity, and give it to us in a new form – personal time for us to spend reconciling and reconstructing the lives we are living with the lives we already know we could be living.

As a community rabbi I have sat and listened so many times to the laments which begin ‘if only’, I have witnessed the rapprochements which have sometimes come too late, I have heard the stories of fractured relationships which have entailed years of lost possibilities;  I have met broygas individuals (note for translater – people who have taken offence)  who are determined that the other person should make the first move towards reconciliation – sometimes about an argument the reason for which is lost in history.  We don’t tend to use the word ‘sin’ for such behaviours, but surely to fail to make or maintain relationships in this way is one of the biggest sins we currently commit.   We all live within the constraints of time, we all know what is truly important to do in that time, yet most if not all of us regularly fail to acknowledge that we should be making our priorities so that when the time runs out – be it our own time in this world or the time of a loved one – we have done what was important and responded appropriately, addressing the most meaningful issues of our lives rather than reacting to what is presented as the most urgent.

On the tenth of Tishri the bible tells us to come together as a holy assembly for Yom haKippurim.   It is clearly to be a day of repentance, of hard thinking, of reconciliation and reconstruction of relationship.  We are used to the imagery that reminds us that we are to reconcile and reconstruct our relationship with God, and parts of us are able to do so. And we manage it without the intermediary of the stylised actions of the high priest.  We sit and think and pray, hear the voices inside us as they speak of loss and pain, of comfort and of peace.

But today isn’t only about our working on our relationship with God, it is about using that work and the understanding brought about by such a relationship so that we make substantial changes to our relationships with others.  As Morris Adler wrote:

‘Our prayers are answered not when we are given what we ask, but when we are challenged to be what we can be’ .

Yom Kippur has been many things for we Jews during our history.  The most solemn day of our calendar it is described as ‘shabbat shabbaton’ – the Sabbath of Sabbaths.  There is a tradition that when God had finished creating the world, God created the Sabbath, and scripture tells us “uvayom hash’vee’ee shavat va’yinafash” (Exod. 31:16-17) And on the seventh day God stopped all work and restored his soul.  This word va’yinafash is a strange one – often translated as “God rested” it really means something to do with restoring the soul.  From it comes the idea that on Shabbat we are given an extra soul or measure of soul, with which we can discern and taste the world that is more usually hidden from us, we can experience something outside of normal sensation.  If we have an extra dimension of soul on Shabbat, how much more so on shabbat shabbaton – today, Yom haKippurim?  On shabbat we use it to experience a taste of the world to come, but today we can use it for something else entirely – we can use it to understand more about this world and our place within it.  The liturgy of today reminds us about time, about the fleeting nature of our life in this world, about the end which all of us will face.  Yom Kippur gives us the time and the space to consider our part in our world, gives us the extra measure of soul we need to really consider and construct our lives as we mean to live them.  We have about another seven hours today, and the real world will begin to crowd in once more and drown out the world of prayer and thought we have created.  We do not know how much time we will have after that.  So today let’s face the time and let’s spend it wisely, rather than profligately allowing it to run away.   Who knows how many tomorrows there will be?

“Ki vayom hazeh y’chaper aley’hem, le’taher et’chem; mikol hatotey’chem lifnei adonai tit’haru. (For on this day atonement will be made for you to cleanse you, of all your sins before the lord, you shall be cleansed” says our machzor, quoting the book of Leviticus.  There is no High Priest to do the cleansing, only ourselves and our dedication and our desire, and of course this very special and holy block of time – today.