Monthly Archives: October 2025

Lech Lecha – the covenants of peoplehood and land

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After giving a talk at a Muslim interfaith forum, entitled “One God, one humanity, many religions” I was asked after it by a group of interested young Muslim men – What makes the Jews Jewish?  Christianity they understood, Islam they understood, but Judaism – what makes Jews Jewish?

What gives us our special identity and our difference is the way we see our relationship with God, the understanding we have of being in a relationship of Covenant. The contract/covenant we have with God is unbreakable, however many times we don’t keep to the rules, however many times we transgress. The covenant we have with God is always there, it is inescapable, it defines us and creates the parameters of our religious identity. We know of it, we live with it day in and day out, but I don’t think that any of us can say that we really understand it.

The bible contains within its narrative many different sorts of covenant. Already there has been a covenant with Noach, and one with all of humanity – defined through the sign of the rainbow. This sidra, Lech lecha, sets the scene for some of the specifically Jewish ones. Brit milah, the covenant of circumcision and more puzzlingly the “Brit bein habetarim” the covenant of the pieces.

God appeared to Abraham seven times in his career, and put him to the test, made demands, held our promises and endowed him with the blessings of land and of descendants. The fourth appearance, the middle one of the revelations, was different from those that came before and those that followed it – it came in the form of a vision.

This vision begins with God telling Avram not to fear, that God will be his shield, that he will ultimately have a great reward – but immediately we are into a problem – what is it that God thinks that Avram fears?

Only AFTER the divine reassurance does Avram speak, asking what of worth could God possibly give him, seeing that he has no child of his own to be his heir. His question is answered – his descendants will be as numerous as the stars of heaven. God is the redeeming God who has brought him out, who will give him a new land to inherit. But Avram has another question – “how will I KNOW that I will inherit it?”

Maybe this second question is too much for God – although that statement may itself be a heresy. Whatever the reason for it, we are suddenly plunged into a difficult and obscure text. We don’t even know if the vision is the framework, or if Avram is operating in the physical world when, under divine instruction, he takes a three year old heifer, a three year old she-goat and a three year old ram, and two birds – a turtle dove and a young pigeon, and apparently slaughters all the animals, dividing each of the three animals in half, laying each half over against the other, and when the birds of prey come as they naturally would, Avram drives them away. What is the symbolism of three? Three animals, each three years old?  And of the six parts as each of the three is halved? And what of the two, the birds who are untouched?

The vision deepens into a tardema– the kind of magical sleep that happened to Adam in the Garden of Eden during which Eve was created. And for a second time Avram hears the promise that he will be a father of a great nation, and also that the nation will know suffering, although not in his own lifetime. And then the covenant is ratified as a smoking furnace and a flaming torch, symbols we can only assume of the presence of God, passed between the pieces.

We don’t see Avram wake up as we saw Adam awake and meet his companion. We don’t know how Avram interpreted his vision, who he told, how it altered him. We are left only with a description, a sense of deep symbolism, an awareness that while the human side of the covenant is still unclear, God is obligated by the event. Just as with the covenant with Noah God is obligated but nothing is demanded of humankind. The later covenants don’t work like this – the Brit is generally dependent on Israel’s faithfulness to God, but here in the early covenants with humankind the remarkable fact is that they are unconditional, they demonstrate entirely selfless love given by a God who is prepared to be faithful and unchanging when responding to humankind.

The true symbolism of the covenant of the pieces is lost in the mists of the past, although we can intuit a reasonable amount of understanding. The three sets of three – a magical number long before the existence of Christianity, denoting a special kind of wholeness. The birds of prey driven off symbolising the nations who would try to pre-empt or even destroy the covenant, being defeated by Avram. The other birds, symbols of liberation, of perfections, of the divine presence, who become invisible in the text. And the cutting into two and then passing through the pieces denotes the parties to the contract guaranteeing the wholeness of it. Dividing as a way of symbolising completion has been around for a long time – even today we cut a deal. Or cut a ribbon or smash a bottle or a glass, and circumcision too requires the action of cutting.

We have a contract with God. Unlike any other formulation of any other religion, ours is based unequivocally on this idea of covenant of mutual obligation. God is our God because we are God’s people – that is the bottom line. But just how do we understand that contract and how do we honour it?

Traditional Judaism is clear about this –the system of mitzvot which provides a framework for all we do and all we are, this is the content of the contract. By observing the mitzvot the commandments, we are honouring the metzaveh, the commander. Whether we understand or not, whether we get a spiritual feeling or not, whether we feel good about it or not, this is the way of the relationship forged with our ancestor Abraham, this is the obligation to which we are signed up

Progressive Judaism has a slightly harder time of it, for the idea of covenant remains, and the framework of acting within a system of mitzvot remains, but quite what the content is and how one squares the unconditional acceptance of the obligation with more rational and libertarian thinking is, to say the least, problematic. And as soon as one begins the questioning there is the fear that the questioning will take over, that the precious essence of the covenant will in some way be lost to us.

What one might call the covenant par excellence, Brit Mila – has been the object of much questioning recently. It seems to be as obscure in its way as the covenant of the pieces, for there is the quality of unreality about it, of vision. There is the cutting of the flesh and the exposure of vulnerability, the division symbolizing the wholeness, Brit Milah perfecting the child on whom it is done.

Why do we circumcise our baby boys, and what symbolism does it hold for us? We do so at one level because it is a mitzvah, it is commanded of us by God, it symbolises brining that child into the covenant. Of course any Jewish boy remains Jewish even if Milah doesn’t take place, but somehow the ceremony is seen as essential in denoting the identity of the male Jew. Throughout history Jews have risked death to circumcise their sons, throughout history it has remained an act of pride, sometimes of defiance, always of inner if not outer freedom. We circumcise our sons to mark their bodies indelibly with this sign of our ancient covenant. Whatever we think it to be, deep down is that sense of unconditional obligation, of God being our God if we are God’s people.

The covenant is the framework for religious identity, forming the inner core and the outer parameter of Judaism. In an increasingly rational and libertarian world we need to understand the nature of covenant, to orient ourselves within it as best we can, and to teach its meaning to our children.

When God created two different covenants with Abraham, one to do with descendants the other with land, the model was set for all time – people and land, Jewish people and Jewish land. What each was to become was left unclear, but that both are necessary and each needs the other is certain to us.

So what is the meaning of the Jewish people and of a Jewish land? We are in a time of enormous uncertainty, of wildly differing opinions.  I offer my own thoughts now – the Jewish people are neither more special nor more talented than any other, what we have is an attachment to being God’s people, by which we mean we try to bring God more closely into the world through what we do. Listening to the different voices from different traditions earlier this week, that idea is not unique to us, but what is unique is our covenantal relationship that both binds us and frees us to relate in our own way to God, safe in our chutzpadik challenges towards God that God will not ever abandon us for good.

And our land is where we are supposed to bring God’s presence most potently, a place where God’s eyes are always watching, a place close to God’s heart.  I grieve for how little we are fulfilling our role there at the moment, I despair when I see the values and teachings of our religion traduced or ignored.

Abraham is told lech lecha, to go – but where? The Hebrew is obscure. Is it to go to a different physical place or to go into himself and draw from himself his essential humanity?  He is told to be a blessing. And this is our ultimate purpose, to understand that all humanity is under the special care of God, all humanity is equal in God’s eyes; to use this understanding to bring about blessing in the world.

Right now I fear that we are not doing our job well. The two contracts of peoplehood and land are both under threat from our own actions. But the imperative to go out and be a blessing, that still feels true and possible. And that must be our task – to speak out, to go that extra distance, and create blessing in our world.

Noach – A world washed away and the consequences of our actions and inaction.

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The stories in Noah are mostly well known. That society descended into a state of anarchy and utter corruption, and only Noah remained righteous and faithful to God’s ways. God warned Noah of a flood soon to destroy all of civilization, and only he and his immediate family would survive in a ark that he was to build. Noah was commanded to take seven pairs of each species of kosher animals and birds, and one pair of all other species. They all boarded the ark and the flood began with torrential rains lasted for forty days and nights. The waters covered even the highest mountains, killing all humans and animals; everything died except the occupants of the ark. After the waters raged on the earth another 150 days, God caused the waters to subside. The ark eventually rested on Mt Ararat, and Noah opened the window and dispatched birds to see whether it was time to leave the ark. First he sent a raven, which just circled the ark. He then sent out a dove. On its second attempt the dove went and did not return, signalling that the earth was once again habitable.

Noah built an altar and offered sacrifices. God blessed Noah and his sons and told them that he is establishing a covenant to never again bring a flood to destroy the world and the rainbow was the sign of this covenant: 

What is less well known is what happened next. Noah planted a vineyard, made wine, became drunk and fell into a deep drunken slumber — while naked. Noah’s son, Ham, saw his father naked, did not cover him but informed his two brothers of their father’s state. The brothers, Shem and Japheth approached their father and covered him. When Noah awoke. he cursed Cham’s son, Canaan, and blessed Shem and Japheth. This section then names Noah’s seventy grandsons and great-grandsons, the antecedents of the “seventy nations,” and their adopted homelands.

Then we have another familiar story –that of the Tower of Babel. Noah’s descendents gathered in the Babylonian valley and started building a tower, in an attempt to reach the heavens. God disrupted them by causing them each to speak a different language, thus destroying their communications. This caused them to disperse and settle in different lands. The Torah then lists the ten generations of Shem’s descendents. The tenth generation is Abram (later to be known as Abraham), who married Sarai (later to be known as Sarah).

Utterly familiar stories which we can even see in our mind’s eye – all those nursery illustrations of arks with giraffes reaching out, and rainbows enveloping them. The crazy ziggurat tower of Babel, with people climbing up with bricks. But truthfully these are not cosy bedtime stories at all; they are terrifying narratives which attempt to give meaning to cold hard truths.

The clue is in the story that is less well known. How Noah built a vineyard, made wine and stupefied himself with it so that he exposed himself in his tent, causing one son to see and tell, the other two to carefully cover him without themselves looking at their father in such a humiliating and vulnerable state.

There is a Midrash that is telling about this post diluvian Noah.

“When Noah came out of the ark, he opened his eyes and saw the whole world completely destroyed. He began crying for the world and said, God, how could you have done this? … God replied, Oh Noah, how different you are from the way Abraham … will be. He will argue with me on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah when I tell him that I plan their destruction… But you, Noah, when I told you I would destroy the entire world, I lingered and delayed, so that you would speak on behalf of the world. But when you knew you would be safe in the ark, the evil of the world did not touch you. You thought of no one but your family. And now you complain? Then Noah knew that he had sinned” (Midrash Tanchuma, Parashat Noach).

Noah is introduced to us right at the beginning of the story as “a righteous man in his generation”, and quite rightly the rabbis do not see this as a great compliment. The qualifying phrase “in his generation” makes it clear that his righteousness is relative rather than absolute. So this just about good-enough man is enabled to survive in order to begin the world afresh. But as starts to face the future, he realises all that he had not done, that his selfishness and narrow vision had allowed the great destruction to happen, that it didn’t have to be like this.

Noah, facing the new world, cannot actually face the past and his part in it, nor really can he move on into the future. He just gets stupefyingly, paralytically drunk, and his sons are forced to deal with the consequences. The younger one does not know what to do – Midrash suggests that he actually assaults his naked father as he lies dead to the world – but at the very least he does nothing;  the older ones treat him with more respect, but reading the text one has the feeling that they simply cannot bear to see their father lying there, seeing what he has become. By covering him they are also trying to cover up everything that Noah has symbolises – his passivity, his refusal to engage with the situation God tells him of, his lack of compassion for other living beings, his lack of any timely compassion at all and his inability to deal with the consequences of his own inaction.

Upon waking, Noah curses Canaan, the child of the younger son, and blesses God on behalf of the other two, giving them an approximation of a blessing. 

Why? Why curse Canaan, the child of Ham who saw him naked? Why not Ham himself? Noah is passing the pain down the generations, to those who are neither present nor responsible for the destruction. His own drunken misery becomes a curse for some of his descendants.

The truth that Noah doesn’t want to face is that he is in a new world now. A world washed clean of the violence and horror of the past, but also washed away – its resources, its people, and its structures all gone. This is no longer the world of miraculous creation, when God walked among the people in the Garden, and oversaw the perfection of the world. We are now in a world that Nechama Leibowitz described as ‘post miraculous’ a world where suddenly there are obligations – the seven mitzvot of the b’nei Noah are given here, … “It was in this renewed world — the world destined to be our world and not in the earlier, miraculous world — that saw the opening of the gate to the conflict between the values of  tikkun olam (perfection of the world) and Humanity .Avraham, who appears at the end of Parashat Noach is the person who takes upon himself the mission of perfecting the world as Kingdom of God, rather than taking the world for granted as Noach had done”

Noach took the world for granted. When warned by God of what was to happen, he took that for granted too. And when the worst had happened and the world was washed away leaving Noah and his family to begin it once again, he failed to do what was necessary, and it took another ten generations – till that of Abraham, for the relationship between God and human beings to flower once more.

It is interesting to me that this parashah began with the phrase, “These are the descendants of Noah,” yet does not go on to list any people, but rather begins a discussion of Noah’s attributes. One commentator suggests that this teaches us that what a person “leaves behind” in the world is not only children, but also the effects of their deeds.

Noah left behind both of course – everyone in the world is a descendant of this man if the flood story is to be believed, and so everyone is obligated to the mitzvot of b’nei Noach. But he also left behind the effect of his behaviours, deeds both committed and omitted.

Noah did not help to perfect the world. He allowed it to be washed away.  He didn’t appreciate the value of the world at all, focussing only on his own family and his own needs. Only after it was gone was he able to understand what was lost, and even then he was not able to deal with this loss. He curses a part of his family into perpetuity, his descendants go on to build the Tower of Babel in order to in some way find a purpose and meaning in their continued existence, and maybe also to challenge the divine using their newly created technology. So they too are forced to confront catastrophe as they are scattered across the world and left unable to communicate with each other. It takes ten generations, with the emergence of Avraham, for the world to begin to heal itself.

Like Noah we too are facing a time when the world seems to be set on a pathway to destruction: climate change, global heating, over fishing, the rainforest which once covered 14% of the earth’s surface now covers less than 6%, with all the consequences of loss of species that involves, years long droughts and famines.  We can see the warnings of destruction, we know the consequences of what is happening now, yet somehow we walk about in a dream, neither warning each other nor challenging what is happening. We spend our time trying to ensure only that we and our families can be safe, that our houses are weatherproofed, that our pantries are stocked. We are behaving no differently than Noah. And if we give it some thought and project our ideas into the near future, we can see than those who survive this environmental tumult will not have the resources to cope.

It is our job to take the story of Noah seriously – not as a good enough man who was saved from cataclysm because he did what God said without question, but as a man who was at least righteous in his generation, someone who hadn’t completely surrendered to the corruption and destructive activities around him. And we should see the consequences of his inactions too – that the world he allowed his children to inherit was damaged and fragile and took generations to heal.

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Sermon Shacharit Kippur 2025

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“On Rosh Hashanah our judgment is written, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed.- B’rosh Hashanah yikateivun, uv’yom tzom kippur ye’ha’teimun”. On Hoshanah Rabba, the last day of Succot, the Judgement is sent our to be fulfilled.

The words of the Unetaneh Tokef prayer, where we are confronted with our own mortality. Recited at both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the prayer goes into terrible detail:

“On Rosh Hashanah will be inscribed and on Yom Kippur will be sealed how many will pass from the earth and how many will be created; who will live and who will die; who will die at his predestined time and who before his time; who by water and who by fire, who by sword, who by beast, who by famine, who by thirst, who by storm, who by plague, who by strangulation, and who by stoning. Who will rest and who will wander, who will live in harmony and who will be harried, who will enjoy tranquillity and who will suffer, who will be impoverished and who will be enriched, who will be degraded and who will be exalted.”

And then the counterpoint –  “U’teshuvah, u’tefillah, utz’dakah ma’avirin et ro’a ha’gzera” 

But repentance, prayer and charity can mitigate the severity of the decree.

The origin of the poem is unknown – there is a myth that it was dictated by Rabbi Amnon of Mainz to the French Rabbi Kalonymus ben Meshulam in the  11th Century. Amnon had been martyred for refusing to accept Christianity, and after the excruciating death he suffered, he was said to have returned to earth to transmit this terrifying text. A copy dating to the 11th century has been found in the Cairo genizah, and there is actually no record of a Rabbi Amnon of Mainz, but from wherever the text draws its painful understanding of the fragility of life, it speaks a clear and authentic warning – we none of us know when or how we will die, but we all know that this is a fate we cannot escape.

On Yom Kippur we take a day out of life and consider ourselves as if we are already dead.  It is traditional to wear the Kittel, the shroud our bodies will be wrapped in for the grave. Customs include not eating or drinking or bathing for the duration of the day. We take time out of our ordinary lives and spend the day in reflection, tucked away in our synagogues and leaving the daily concerns and worries of our working lives outside the door. 

We spend the day as if we are already dead. Rabbi David Wolpe in his book about King David notes that “ In the Bible, David is vital, alive-the most vibrant of all biblical figures. He is a warrior, a lover, a sinner, a poet, a harpist, a forerunner of the Messiah. Throughout the book of Samuel we see in David a man filled with the zest and brio of life. Yet when we open the book of Kings, David is an old man, shivering in bed, and he cannot even keep himself warm. The first verse of the book reads: “King David was now old, advanced in years.” One chapter later, the Bible reads “David was dying” (I Kings 1:1, 2:1). The Rabbis notice a significant difference in those two verses. When he is old, he is still called King David. When he is dying, he is simply David. We hide behind power and position and title in this world. But when we face our own deaths, we do not face it as a king, or a rabbi, or an employee, or a parent-we face it as David, as the essence of each individual soul. Death brings you face-to-face with who you are.”

We spend the day as if we are already dead. And this brings us face to face with who we really are.

The Unetaneh Tokef  prayer considers the fragility of the lives we are living with extraordinary poetic languages and images:  “our origin is from dust and our destiny is back to dust, we risk our lives to earn our bread; We are like a broken shard, withering grass, a fading flower, a passing shade, a dissipating cloud, a blowing wind, flying dust, and a fleeting dream.”

We are mortal, we are fragile, we will be here and then gone, we will vanish and our place will know us no more – life will continue and we will no longer be part of it.

And yet. This prayer begins with the most amazing phrase “Unetaneh Tokef kedushat Hayom” – We give power to the holiness of this day”

This day, if we use it well, will mean that our mortality is not all that we are, or all that we have. Alongside the horror of how our deaths might occur,  or the imagery of our fragility, the poem weaves in the idea that we are seen and known by God. And more than that, that our relationship with the eternal God provides a kind of eternity for us too. We have added ourselves into the divine sphere.  We will not vanish forever and completely, but our deaths are deaths only in this world, we continue in some way post mortem. 

Jewish graves contain the acronym taf nun tzadi beit hei – a reference to a biblical verse that says that our souls are bound up in the continuing lives of others.  While our days on this earth are numbered, the lasting impact of our lives long outlives our physical reality.  We leave traces of ourselves and our actions in a myriad places – in the things we create and  the things we destroy, the gardens we plant, the words we write, the love we give, the relationships we foster……  We connect the generations that came before us to the generations who come after us. We are each an essential thread in a fabric that continues to be woven.

Two themes intertwine in this poem – the theme of our fragility and shortness of time in this world, and the theme of our living in eternal time connected to our divine creator.  Generally Judaism does not focus on what may happen in the Olam Haba – the world to come, which is variously described as both an afterlife of the soul, and a messianic time for the world. Whatever the Olam Haba might be, the rabbis are careful not to describe it in any detail – it is a coming world and not a present one. And Judaism is most interested and involved in our present reality, not conjecturing about what our texts may mean when they speak of our being “gathered to our ancestors” or “entering the Olam Haba”. There is little developed eschatology when our texts use terms such as “le Atid Lavo” (the future to come” or “acharit HaYamim” – the end of days.

But there is one Rabbi who had a definite opinion, and I would like to share that with you today.

R. Jacob said: “One moment of repentance and good deeds in this world is better than the entire life of the world to come.” (Avot 4:17)

Whatever might happen to us in eternity – whether we will be at some great yeshiva shel ma’aleh or feasting on Leviatan, or reconnecting with our families or loved ones – still how we are in this world has greater power and impact than any possible eternal future.   It is how we act in the here and now, among the people with whom we live and on the planet we share with all living things that is more important than anything else.  And in the words of the Unetaneh Tokef, we give power to the holiness of this day – we are the ones who are able to create and to power the holiness of this day by the thoughts and words in our hearts, by the actions that flow from those thoughts and words. We can bring holiness about, using this day of reflection and repair to “jump start” us into a new way of being

A folk story about the Satan, comes to mind. The Satan, who is called in our tradition the “accuser” or the ”prosecuting counsel”,  gathered his assistants together one day to discuss the most effective method of destroying the meaning of people’s lives.

One said, “Tell them there is no God.”

Another suggested, “Tell them there is no judgment for sin and they need not worry about their behaviour.”

A third proposed, “Tell them their sins are so great that it is impossible that they can ever be forgiven.”

“No,” Satan replied, “none of these things will matter to them. I think we should simply tell them, ‘There is plenty of time.’”

It is human nature to always think there is plenty of time. We can do things when the children grow up, when we have more income, when we retire. I still recall with great sadness a conversation I had in the hospice I work in, when a dying patient said to me “I’ve only just stopped working, and I expected this would be the time for fun. I just want to have more fun”

The Unetaneh Tokef prayer reminds us that time will run out for each of us, and we cannot know where or when. But it also reminds us that we can live fully, have impact and agency in our lives, should we choose to empower ourselves to do so, and make the choices and take the decisions that will broaden our experiences and nourish our souls.  And in doing so, we will be part of the work of increasing holiness in our world, repairing more than our own selves but also the parts of the world around us in which we have connection.

Yes this prayer offers the solace of our connection to God in whom we will shelter for eternity, but it does not make that the prime aim of our lives. Like the Shofar, it calls our attention to here and now, to the pain of reality and the need for us all to work to make it better. 

Our liturgy reminds us that this day is short and the work is great. In the words of Rabbi Tarfon in Pirkei Avot 2:15

 רַבִּי טַרְפוֹן אוֹמֵר, הַיּוֹם קָצָר וְהַמְּלָאכָה מְרֻבָּה, וְהַפּוֹעֲלִים עֲצֵלִים, וְהַשָּׂכָר הַרְבֵּה, וּבַעַל הַבַּיִת דּוֹחֵק:

Rabbi Tarfon said: the day is short, and the work is plentiful, and the labourers are indolent, and the reward is great, and the master of the house is insistent.

He also said – it is not for us to finish the work but neither are we free to absolve ourselves from it (2:16)

We are able to give power to the holiness of this day. We can use this day to increase holiness in the world, to help to maintain and repair the things that need maintenance and repair in our lives. 

“On Rosh Hashanah our judgment is written, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed.- B’rosh Hashanah yikateivun, uv’yom tzom kippur ye’ha’teimun”. On Hoshanah Rabba, the last day of Succot, the Judgement is sent our to be fulfilled.  

Let us not hide from our mortality but face our truth, and with our prayers, repentance and acts of righteousness, play our part in mitigating the severity of the decree.

The time to do so is now.

Sermone dello Shacharit 2025

“A Rosh Hashanah il nostro giudizio viene scritto, e a Yom Kippur viene sigillato. – B’rosh Hashanah yikateivun, uv’yom tzom kippur ye’ha’teimun”. A Hoshanah Rabba, l’ultimo giorno di Succot, il Giudizio viene inviato per essere eseguito.

Le parole della preghiera Unetaneh Tokef, dove ci confrontiamo con la nostra mortalità. Recitata sia a Rosh Hashanah che a Yom Kippur, la preghiera entra in dettagli terribili:

“A Rosh Hashanah sarà scritto e a Yom Kippur sarà sigillato quanti passeranno dalla terra e quanti saranno creati; chi vivrà e chi morirà; chi morirà al momento predestinato e chi prima del tempo; chi per acqua e chi per fuoco, chi per spada, chi per bestia, chi per carestia, chi per sete, chi per tempesta, chi per pestilenza, chi per strangolamento e chi per lapidazione. Chi riposerà e chi vagherà, chi vivrà in armonia e chi sarà tormentato, chi godrà della tranquillità e chi soffrirà, chi sarà impoverito e chi sarà arricchito, chi sarà degradato e chi sarà esaltato”.

E poi il contrappunto: “U’teshuvah, u’tefillah, utz’dakah ma’avirin et ro’a ha’gzera”

Ma il pentimento, la preghiera e la carità possono mitigare la severità del decreto.

L’origine del poema è sconosciuta: secondo una leggenda, sarebbe stato dettato dal rabbino Amnon di Magonza al rabbino francese Kalonymus ben Meshulam nell’XI secolo. Amnon era stato martirizzato per aver rifiutato di accettare il cristianesimo e, dopo la morte straziante che aveva subito, si diceva che fosse tornato sulla terra per trasmettere questo testo terrificante. Una copia risalente all’XI secolo è stata trovata nella genizah del Cairo, e in realtà non esiste alcuna traccia di un rabbino Amnon di Magonza, ma da qualunque fonte il testo tragga la sua dolorosa comprensione della fragilità della vita, esso lancia un monito chiaro e autentico: nessuno di noi sa quando o come morirà, ma tutti sappiamo che questo è un destino al quale non possiamo sfuggire.

Durante lo Yom Kippur ci prendiamo un giorno di pausa dalla vita e ci consideriamo come se fossimo già morti. È tradizione indossare il Kittel, il sudario in cui saranno avvolti i nostri corpi nella tomba. Le usanze prevedono di non mangiare, bere o lavarsi per tutta la durata della giornata. Ci prendiamo una pausa dalla nostra vita quotidiana e trascorriamo la giornata in riflessione, rintanati nelle nostre sinagoghe e lasciando fuori dalla porta le preoccupazioni e le ansie della nostra vita lavorativa.

Trascorriamo la giornata come se fossimo già morti. Il rabbino David Wolpe nel suo libro sul re Davide osserva che “Nella Bibbia, Davide è vitale, vivo, il più vivace di tutti i personaggi biblici. È un guerriero, un amante, un peccatore, un poeta, un arpista, un precursore del Messia. In tutto il libro di Samuele vediamo in Davide un uomo pieno di entusiasmo e brio di vita. Eppure, quando apriamo il libro dei Re, Davide è un uomo anziano, tremante nel suo letto, incapace persino di riscaldarsi. Il primo versetto del libro recita: “Il re Davide era ormai vecchio, avanzato negli anni”. Un capitolo dopo, la Bibbia recita: “Davide stava morendo” (I Re 1:1, 2:1). I rabbini notano una differenza significativa in questi due versetti. Quando è vecchio, viene ancora chiamato re Davide. Quando sta morendo, è semplicemente Davide. In questo mondo ci nascondiamo dietro il potere, la posizione e il titolo. Ma quando affrontiamo la nostra morte, non la affrontiamo come un re, un rabbino, un dipendente o un genitore: la affrontiamo come Davide, come l’essenza di ogni singola anima. La morte ti mette faccia a faccia con chi sei veramente.

Trascorriamo la giornata come se fossimo già morti. E questo ci mette faccia a faccia con chi siamo veramente.

La preghiera Unetaneh Tokef riflette sulla fragilità delle vite che viviamo con un linguaggio e immagini straordinariamente poetici: “la nostra origine è dalla polvere e il nostro destino è tornare alla polvere, rischiamo la vita per guadagnarci il pane; siamo come un frammento rotto, erba appassita, un fiore che appassisce, un’ombra che passa, una nuvola che si dissipa, un vento che soffia, polvere che vola e un sogno fugace”.       

Siamo mortali, siamo fragili, saremo qui e poi non ci saremo più, svaniremo e il nostro posto non ci conoscerà più: la vita continuerà e noi non ne faremo più parte.

Eppure. Questa preghiera inizia con la frase più sorprendente “Unetaneh Tokef kedushat Hayom” – Diamo potere alla santità di questo giorno”.

Questo giorno, se lo usiamo bene, significherà che la nostra mortalità non è tutto ciò che siamo, o tutto ciò che abbiamo. Accanto all’orrore di come potrebbero verificarsi le nostre morti, o all’immagine della nostra fragilità, la poesia intreccia l’idea che siamo visti e conosciuti da Dio. E più di questo, che il nostro rapporto con il Dio eterno fornisce anche a noi una sorta di eternità. Ci siamo aggiunti alla sfera divina. Non scompariremo per sempre e completamente, ma la nostra morte è solo in questo mondo, in qualche modo continuiamo a esistere dopo la morte.

Le tombe ebraiche contengono l’acronimo taf nun tzadi beit hei, un riferimento a un versetto biblico che dice che le nostre anime sono legate alla vita continua degli altri. Sebbene i nostri giorni su questa terra siano contati, l’impatto duraturo delle nostre vite sopravvive alla nostra realtà fisica. . Lasciamo tracce di noi stessi e delle nostre azioni in una miriade di luoghi: nelle cose che creiamo e distruggiamo, nei giardini che piantiamo, nelle parole che scriviamo, nell’amore che doniamo, nelle relazioni che coltiviamo… Colleghiamo le generazioni che ci hanno preceduto alle generazioni che verranno dopo di noi. Ognuno di noi è un filo essenziale in un tessuto che continua a essere intessuto.

Due temi si intrecciano in questa poesia: il tema della nostra fragilità e della brevità del tempo in questo mondo, e il tema della nostra vita nel tempo eterno collegata al nostro creatore divino. In generale, l’ebraismo non si concentra su ciò che potrebbe accadere nell’Olam Haba, il mondo a venire, che viene variamente descritto sia come un aldilà dell’anima, sia come un tempo messianico per il mondo. Qualunque cosa sia l’Olam Haba, i rabbini sono attenti a non descriverlo in dettaglio: è un mondo futuro e non presente. L’ebraismo è più interessato e coinvolto nella nostra realtà presente, senza congetturare sul significato dei nostri testi quando parlano del nostro “riunirci ai nostri antenati” o del nostro “entrare nell’Olam Haba”. C’è poca escatologia sviluppata quando i nostri testi usano termini come “le Atid Lavo” (il futuro a venire) o “acharit HaYamim” (la fine dei giorni).

Ma c’è un rabbino che aveva un’opinione definita, e vorrei condividerla con voi oggi.

R. Jacob disse: “Un momento di pentimento e di buone azioni in questo mondo è meglio dell’intera vita del mondo a venire” (Avot 4:17).

Qualunque cosa ci possa accadere nell’eternità – che saremo in una grande yeshiva shel ma’aleh o banchetteremo con Leviatan, o ci ricongiungeremo con le nostre famiglie o i nostri cari – comunque sia, il modo in cui siamo in questo mondo ha un potere e un impatto maggiori di qualsiasi possibile futuro eterno. È il modo in cui agiamo qui e ora, tra le persone con cui viviamo e sul pianeta che condividiamo con tutti gli esseri viventi, che è più importante di qualsiasi altra cosa. E, secondo le parole dell’Unetaneh Tokef, siamo noi a dare potere alla santità di questo giorno: siamo noi che possiamo creare e alimentare la santità di questo giorno con i pensieri e le parole nei nostri cuori, con le azioni che scaturiscono da quei pensieri e da quelle parole. Possiamo portare la santità, usando questo giorno di riflessione e di riparazione per “dare il via” a un nuovo modo di essere.

Mi viene in mente una storia popolare su Satana. Satana, che nella nostra tradizione è chiamato “l’accusatore” o “il pubblico ministero”, un giorno riunì i suoi assistenti per discutere il metodo più efficace per distruggere il significato della vita delle persone.

Uno disse: “Dite loro che Dio non esiste”.

Un altro suggerì: “Dite loro che non c’è giudizio per il peccato e che non devono preoccuparsi del loro comportamento”.

Un terzo propose: “Dite loro che i loro peccati sono così grandi che è impossibile che possano mai essere perdonati”.

‘No’, rispose Satana, “nessuna di queste cose avrà importanza per loro. Penso che dovremmo semplicemente dire loro: ‘C’è tutto il tempo’”.

È nella natura umana pensare sempre che ci sia tutto il tempo. Possiamo fare le cose quando i figli saranno cresciuti, quando avremo un reddito maggiore, quando andremo in pensione. Ricordo ancora con grande tristezza una conversazione che ebbi nell’hospice in cui lavoro, quando un paziente in fin di vita mi disse: “Ho appena smesso di lavorare e pensavo che questo sarebbe stato il momento di divertirmi. Voglio solo divertirmi di più”.

La preghiera Unetaneh Tokef ci ricorda che il tempo a disposizione di ciascuno di noi è limitato e che non possiamo sapere dove o quando finirà. Ma ci ricorda anche che possiamo vivere pienamente, avere un impatto e un ruolo attivo nella nostra vita, se scegliamo di darci la forza di farlo, e prendere le decisioni che amplieranno le nostre esperienze e nutriranno le nostre anime. E così facendo, saremo parte del lavoro di aumentare la santità nel nostro mondo, riparando non solo noi stessi, ma anche le parti del mondo che ci circondano e con cui abbiamo un legame.

Sì, questa preghiera offre il conforto del nostro legame con Dio, nel quale troveremo rifugio per l’eternità, ma non ne fa lo scopo principale della nostra vita. Come lo Shofar, richiama la nostra attenzione sul qui e ora, sul dolore della realtà e sulla necessità che tutti noi lavoriamo per migliorarla.

La nostra liturgia ci ricorda che questo giorno è breve e il lavoro è grande. Nelle parole del rabbino Tarfon in Pirkei Avot 2:15

רַבִּי טַרְפוֹן אוֹמֵר, הַיּוֹם קָצָר וְהַמְּלָאכָה מְרֻבָּה, וְהַפּוֹעֲלִים עֲצֵלִים, וְהַשָּׂכָר הַרְבֵּה, וּבַעַל הַבַּיִת דּוֹחֵק:

Rabbi Tarfon disse: il giorno è breve, il lavoro è abbondante, gli operai sono indolenti, la ricompensa è grande e il padrone di casa è insistente.  

Egli disse anche: non spetta a noi portare a termine il lavoro, ma non siamo nemmeno liberi di assolverci da esso (2:16)

Siamo in grado di dare potere alla santità di questo giorno. Possiamo usare questo giorno per aumentare la santità nel mondo, per aiutare a mantenere e riparare le cose che necessitano di manutenzione e riparazione nella nostra vita. 

“A Rosh Hashanah il nostro giudizio viene scritto, e a Yom Kippur viene sigillato. – B’rosh Hashanah yikateivun, uv’yom tzom kippur ye’ha’teimun”. Durante Hoshanah Rabba, l’ultimo giorno di Succot, il giudizio viene inviato per essere eseguito.  Non nascondiamoci dalla nostra mortalità, ma affrontiamo la nostra verità e, con le nostre preghiere, il nostro pentimento e le nostre azioni giuste, facciamo la nostra parte per mitigare la severità del decreto.

Il momento di farlo è adesso.

Sermon Kol Nidrei Lev Chadash 2025

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In the daily Amidah and also many times during the Yamim Noraim, we recite a prayer:

Shema koleinu Adonai eloheinu, chus verachem aleinu, vekabel berachamim uvratzon et tefilateinu שמע קולינו יהוה אלוהינו, חוס ורחם עלינו, וקבל ברחמים וברצון את תפילתינו. 

Hear our voice, O Eternal our God; spare us and have mercy upon us, and accept our prayers in mercy and favour.  

It is based on a passage in the book of Psalms (65) where we call God the “shomei’ah tefillah” – the one who hears prayers.

Yet this psalm begins with a phrase that is hard to understand and so is often mistranslated:

 לְךָ֤ דֻֽמִיָּ֬ה תְהִלָּ֓ה אֱלֹ֘הִ֥ים בְּצִיּ֑וֹן וּ֝לְךָ֗ יְשֻׁלַּם־נֶֽדֶר׃

“To You, silence is praise, God in Zion, and to you vows are paid”

Followed by the verse which informs our prayer                שֹׁמֵ֥עַ תְּפִלָּ֑ה עָ֝דֶ֗יךָ כׇּל־בָּשָׂ֥ר יָבֹֽאוּ׃

“Hearer of prayer, all human beings come to you”

The psalmist begins with silent praise, and with the completion of vows made to God, and only then says that God is the one who hears prayer – the prayers of all human beings.

The Talmud tells us that “Devarim she’balev einam Devarim” – words not formed out loud are not halachically valid – in the case of promises, just having an intention is not enough. (Kiddushin 49b) – and yet the psalmist understands – the feelings in our hearts, the ideas in our minds – these too form part of our connection to God.  We do not HAVE to verbalise them for God to hear them.

We Jews are – par excellence – a people who exist within words. We have always relied on them to make sense of what is happening to us, to communicate with others, to create and to transmit meaning. We read our texts and examine every letter, every word, to draw meaning in every generation. We protect the language of those texts, turning the object that holds the narrative into a holy item, a sefer torah.  From the moment Moses tells the Children of Israel to write his words into a sefer that will travel with them for all time, we are bound to the integrity and extraordinary elasticity of the Hebrew language.

Two of the most frequent verbs in torah are  “Amar” and “Diber” – to say and to speak.   Between them they appear almost seven thousand times in Tanakh – far outstripping any other verbal root. We are the people of the book. Words are our currency. Just as God brought the universe into being through the power of speech, so do we create meaning and develop understanding through words.

Yet since 7th October 2023, we find ourselves heartbroken and lost. The phrase that is most often heard in Israel and in Jewish communities is  “Ein milim – there are no words”.

 It feels like there is no vocabulary for what we have experienced and what we continue to live through.  The medium that has sustained us and provided for us – language – has suddenly shattered and we are left feeling adrift and powerless in a hostile environment.

Unable to use words to describe or to make sense of our reality, we are like Noah – famously silent in the face of the destruction of the world by flood. Or like Aaron who was silenced by his grief when two of his sons died after having offered strange fire before God. We are overwhelmed, voiceless, unable to know what we can possibly say or do to make sense of what is happening, or to be able to act in order to change it.

In the book of Psalms there are many pleas for God to hear our prayer, to listen to us and to act.  And there are even more petitions that God not be silent but that God responds to us. It is a regular theme, the lack of words between us and God and the ensuing fear of abandonment.

But silence does not have to be a negative thing. Silence can express our feelings even beyond the ability of words to do so.

In Pirkei d’Rav Eliezer, a medieval midrashic text, we read that “The voices of five objects of creation go from one end of the world to the other, and their voices are inaudible. When people cut down the wood of a fruit tree, its cry goes from one end of the world to the other, and the voice is inaudible. When the serpent sloughs its skin, its cry goes from one end of the world to the other, and its voice is not heard. When a woman is divorced from her husband, her cry goes from one end of the world of the world to the other, but the voice is inaudible, when the infant comes out from the mother’s womb and when the soul departs from the body, the cry goes forth from one end of the world to the other, and the voice is not heard.” Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer 34:4

The midrash is describing moments of existential trauma – and the accompanying sound of the inaudible voice.  

The sound of silence reverberates through Jewish tradition. Possibly the most well known is the story of Elijah and his encounter with God.

“There was a great and mighty wind, splitting mountains and shattering rocks by the power of the Eternal; but the Eternal was not in the wind. After the wind—an earthquake; but the Eternal was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake—fire; but the Eternal was not in the fire. And after the fire—the voice of slender silence [kol d’mamah dakah].” (I Kings 19:11-12)

Kol d’mamah dakah.  When Elijah heard this, he wrapped his mantle about his face and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. And behold a voice was with him and said to him: “Why are you here, Elijah?”

God here is a sound, or paradoxically we might say that God here is the silence within the sound. And somehow the communication is complete. With this one question, Elijah is comforted and challenged and given back his life’s meaning. Having fled Jezebel in fear for his life, having begged God to take his life, having reached the depths of despair and stayed in his cave alone and paralysed with sadness – it is the sound of the silent question that returns him to life.

After the seventh of October, we have no words. Like Elijah we are fearful and we are angry and we feel ourselves to be so very alone. It is almost as if we cannot begin to imagine a future, because imagining something usually requires language and we have no words. But while language may structure imagination and help us to communicate it to others, there is another, visceral, sensory, intuitive human faculty that allows us to imagine without words.   We can dream, perceive, feel, pray – all without words.

Elijah is reminded by God that ultimately the connection between us and God does not require words.  The overarching sound of Elul and of the Yamim Noraim is not all the words spoken in prayer, but the cry of the Shofar. It is a sound that takes us back to Mt Sinai, to our first meeting with God as a people, to the creation of a covenant that cannot be broken.

The word shofar itself comes from the root shin-peh-reish which has the basic meaning of “to be hollow”, though it has a secondary meaning of “beauty”.  Again, there is the curious and paradoxical connection here – instead of silence and communication, we have emptiness and beauty.  It seems that always in our tradition the idea of there being “nothing” is challenged and juxtaposed with the idea of there being “ something” that is very special. What seems to be silent is in fact full of communication, what seems to be empty turns out to be full – nowhere more clear than the wilderness in which the Jewish people were formed – Midbar – a word which connotes empty wilderness, and yet which is formed from the root “davar” which as a noun means “a thing” or “a word” and as a verb means “to speak”.

While we may feel ourselves to be empty and hollow, with no words with which to imagine a different future or to create a new idea, our tradition comes to remind us that we are not alone, not abandoned. As the psalmist writes, even silence is praise of God, and God hears even what we do not speak or even form into words.

While we are a people of words, living in a world which our tradition tells us was created by the speaking of God – “God said…. And there was….”  We are also a people of commandment, of covenant and of action.  While the verbs for speech are the most frequent in bible, the verbs “to be” and “to do, to make” are the next numerous in our texts.   In a world where words feel inadequate or wrong, we are still able to act in order to fulfil our purpose and meaning. Our actions at this time may indeed speak much louder than words ever could.

I’d like to conclude with a story by Loren Eiseley, (The star thrower, an essay published in 1969 in The Unexpected Universe)

One day a man was walking along the beach when he noticed a child picking something up and gently throwing it into the ocean. Approaching the child, he asked, “What are you doing?” The child replied, “Throwing starfish back into the ocean. The surf is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them back, they’ll die.” “Child,” the man said, “don’t you realize there are miles and miles of beach and hundreds of starfish? You can’t make a difference!”

After listening politely, the child bent down, picked up another starfish, and threw it back into the surf. Then, smiling at the man, said…” I made a difference for that one.”

At the moment we may have few or no words. We may be hurting and filled with fear and pain and anger. We may feel less safe, and less certain of what the future will bring than ever before. But even so, we are Jews. We must bring our whole selves to living our lives. We will petition God to hear our prayers, blow the shofar to call both our attention and God’s attention. And each of us, in our own way, will find our way forward. We will find beauty in the emptiness, praise in the silence, and through our actions our voices will be heard.