Category Archives: Jewish Values

Vayechi: the deathbed blessing that bequeaths the certainty that the people and the land have an indissoluble bond.

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Twice in this sidra, Jacob issues instructions about his burial.  The first time he speaks to Joseph alone, and the conversation is brief –“Don’t bury me in Egypt, bury me in the family tomb”

“And the time drew near that Israel must die; and he called his son Joseph, and said to him: ‘If now I have found favour in thy sight, put, I pray thee, your hand under my thigh, and deal kindly and truly with me; bury me not, I pray thee, in Egypt.  But when I sleep with my fathers, carry me out of Egypt, and bury me in their burying-place.’ And he said: ‘I will do as you ask.’  And he said: ‘Swear to me.’ And he swore it. And Israel bowed down upon the bed’s head. (Genesis 47:29-31)

But when the instruction is repeated shortly before his death, it is done in front of the whole family, and is much more detailed. Nothing is superfluous in biblical text, so what can we learn from this comprehensive deathbed request? Firstly, this final instruction is given to all of his sons, rather than just to Joseph. The language used with Joseph is framed as a request “If I have found favour with you, then please…..” and he then makes a formal ceremony of Joseph’s agreement with the swearing of an oath. With the other sons we have the firmer language of instruction that will – must – be obeyed. But possibly the most important difference is the framing of the two countries, Egypt and Canaan.  When Jacob requests Joseph it is to ensure he will not be left in Egypt. When Jacob instructs the brothers about his final journey it is to describe the place in Canaan where he will be brought – given in greater detail than when Abraham bought the land – not only the location of Machpela near Mamre, bought from Ephron the Hittite – but also the clarity of who is buried there – Abraham and Sarah his wife, Isaac and Rebekah his wife. Leah (sadly not described as a wife).

“And he commanded them, and said to them: ‘I am to be gathered to my people; bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite, in the cave that is in the field of Machpela, which is before Mamre, in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field from Ephron the Hittite for a possession of a burying-place.  There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife; and there I buried Leah. The field and the cave that is therein, which was purchased from the children of Heth.’  And when Jacob made an end of charging his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and expired, and was gathered unto his people.” (Genesis 49:29-33)

When talking with Joseph, his father treats him carefully – the burial in Canaan is requested briefly, the desire not to be buried in Egypt rather more forceful, but even so the language is that of asking for a kindness from someone who may or may not grant it. What stands out however is the swearing of the oath and the choreography of this event – the placing of the hand under the thigh, the act of swearing that he would fulfil the request. It is reminiscent of the conversation between Abraham and the unnamed elder servant of his household who ruled over his estate: “Abraham was old, advanced in years … and Abraham said to the senior servant of his household, who had charge of his entire estate, ‘Put your hand under my thigh and I will make you swear by the Lord … that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites amongst who I live..” (24:1-4)

The two oaths – one to ensure that Isaac did not marry a local Canaanite girl nor leave the land himself, the other to ensure that Jacob would not be buried in the local Egyptian way, but would be returned to the land of his ancestors, resonate with each other. They build into the narrative the primacy of the land that has been promised, the land that will become known as Israel. And at the same time they reject the “other” culture, the local culture of Canaanites or of Egyptians, in favour of the covenantal culture being formed between the people of Israel and God.

Isaac is perceived as being too easily swayed – either by the local pagan tribes should he marry one of their daughters, or that in leaving the land he might never return. Jacob now is concerned that his own children should not themselves be swayed – either into adopting Egyptian traditions or to remain in exile from the land of their ancestors. Joseph, who had left the land as a very young lad, has already married an Egyptian, taken an Egyptian name, and brought two children into the world who might easily become fully identified with Egyptian peoplehood and lose their patrimony. Jacob deals with that by blessing and essentially adopting the boys as his own. The other brothers are in a way more complex – their identity may flow in any direction – and Jacob is determined they will retain their Hebrew identity and connection to the land of Israel. So he describes in detail not only the place for his burial, but echoes the narrative of who bought it and why, who of their forebears is buried there, pressing home the reality that this is their real place, the place to which they must return, and the covenant with God that they must retain.

As Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch comments: (on Genesis 47: 27-29)

“Jacob who had lived seventeen years in Egypt, must have noticed what a powerful influence the “being gripped by the land” (47:27) was beginning to have on his descendants. How they had already begun to see the Jordan in the Nile, and to find in their stay in Egypt no sad exile. This must have made him decide with such ceremonious solemnity the command that they should not bury him in Egypt, but that they should carry him to the land of their old true homeland. It was motive enough for him to say to them: You hope and wish to live in Egypt. I do not wish even to be buried there. This is also why he did not express this wish as Jacob, from his individual personal standpoint, but as “Israel” as bearer of the national mission, as a warning of the national future of his children.”  

The metanarrative here is about the identity of the descendants of Jacob – the “Children of Israel”. We take our patronymic not from Abraham or from Isaac, but from this flawed patriarch who struggled with God and with humanity and who prevails. Indeed the very first time the phrase “Children of Israel” is used in bible is within this very narrative at the Ford of Jabok – (Genesis 32:33) explaining the origin of not eating the sinew of the thigh vein because it was there that Jacob was wounded in his night-time struggle.

On his deathbed, Jacob is quite clearly doing all he can to infuse his sons with what we might now call a Jewish identity, to mitigate their Egyptian experience. He both refuses the siren call of Egypt and causes them to look towards the Land of Israel – specifically that land bought by Abraham to bury his wife, land to be part of the family holding in perpetuity. At this point the “Jewish identity” is a national identity – the earliest and deepest forms of our collective identity are not “religious” per se, but connected to land and to peoplehood. We are first and foremost a tribe and have tribal identity and behaviours. A tribe bound together in covenantal relationship with each other and with God, in shared stories and myths, in kinship with a sense of a shared lineage.

It is no accident that the children of Jacob become the exemplar for the twelve tribes of Israel. The first usage where the tribe is named as a tribe is in this sidra, (Genesis 49:16) when Jacob blesses Dan with the words

Dan shall judge his people, as one of the tribes of Israel.

 דָּ֖ן יָדִ֣ין עַמּ֑וֹ כְּאַחַ֖ד שִׁבְטֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל:

With the death of Jacob we come to a pivot in history. The covenant between the patriarchs and God must now be reframed into that between the people and God. The endpoint of the process will be at Sinai, when the formal relationship is sealed with the giving of Torah. And with the last demands of the dying Jacob, the process is set in motion.

The sons of Jacob are a complicated bunch. Born of four different mothers – two full wives whose own sibling rivalry echoes in the text, one deeply loved, the other merely tolerated; and two lesser wives, the servants and surrogates for the sisters. It is a recipe for jealous competition among the offspring of Jacob, who are quarrelsome, violent and antagonistic men. It is clear from the story of the only daughter, Dina, that Jacob has no control over his sons, whose pride and anger are barely contained.  

Now here they are in Egypt – having stayed for seventeen years already – dependent on the goodwill of Joseph, the brother so hated that they had plotted fratricide. Yet for all the imbalance of power among the brothers, life was clearly good in a material sense, and there was a clear danger that the brothers were accommodated to the situation and would forget their homeland, and the destiny of the covenantal promise Jacob had betrayed both his own father and twin brother to attain.

The tradition of a deathbed blessing is a powerful one. It is less an act of blessing than a statement of searing honesty, intended to hold the “blessed” to account and to shape their future in the light of their past. As Jacob says “gather yourselves together, that I may tell you what will happen to you in the later days….hear sons of Jacob, listen to Israel your father”

Jacob is manipulating time. He is holding both the past and the future together, setting his sons in both past behaviour and future destiny. He calls them the children of Jacob, and himself Israel their father. As time becomes increasingly fluid and unstructured, what becomes clear is that these men are to be the bridge between what was and what will be, they become less individuals and more exemplars, the covenant will not be passed to a single person but be shared and embodied in the peoplehood, divided into families, households and tribes. Whatever it was he did, it worked. As the book of Exodus opens some four hundred years later, we will find that the Jewish people identify themselves by their tribe as well as by their family name.

Jacob will bequeath the certainty that the people and the land have an indissoluble bond. By rejecting Egyptian burial in favour of being buried with his forebears, he recalibrates the mindset not only of his sons, but of the generations who will follow. They will never forget throughout centuries of slavery that they have a land to which they must return. They will never forget the names of their Hebrew tribe; they will not allow their identities to dissolve or to assimilate into the people among whom they live. Identity politics has been created and sustained. Joseph too will ask for his bones to be taken back home, and hundreds of years later those who rebelled against their slavery in the name of a never forgotten God and with the aim of return to a never forgotten land, will take his remains home with them.

We Jews have retained not only our tribal habits but also our attachment – often without being able to convey exactly why this attachment – to the land of Israel.  Sometimes that attachment is expressed in life, sometimes in death. The Talmud already records the traffic in dead bodies being brought for burial in Israel, noting with some irritation that it is better late than never. Religious Judaism as we understand it is a post-biblical phenomenon. The deeper identity we share is a tribal one – we are a people with a shared story that is formed in us and accepted without conscious activity. And our identity shapes how we see the world and how we behave within it.

The deaths of Jacob and Joseph bring to an end the narratives of sibling rivalry that has plagued us since the fratricide of the children of Adam and Eve. And it sets up a different model – not individuals but tribes, no longer patriarchs but people.

The identity politics begun at Jacob’s deathbed are with us still, as are the internal rivalries that fracture but never break the collective. Jacob reminds his sons, and us too, that wherever life takes us and however we live there is an older and deeper identity that is rooted in us and that we must pass on down the generations.

We read in Talmud (Shevuot 39a) “Shekol Yisrael areivim zeh ba’zeh” – the whole Jewish people are considered responsible for each other”. This principle is actually found in two different forms, one “zeh ba’zeh” and one “zeh la’zeh”, leading to interpretations about what else may be understood. We generally accept the rabbinic idea that every individual Jew has responsibility for the moral behaviour of others, but there is another perspective open to us – areivim can mean “to be responsible for” but it also mean “to mix together”. The Jewish people, kol or Klal Yisrael, is a diverse and heterogeneous tribe, with different customs and differing appearances, organised in different families and groupings, the sub-groups mixed sometimes uneasily together. But in spite of our disparate and varied ways we all remain authentic members of the tribe “b’nei Yisrael” – and this is the legacy of Jacob, to whose tribe we all belong.

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.

rosh hashanah sermon – spiral recurring time or “we’ve been here before, what can we do differently with what we have learned”

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Rosh Hashana Morning Lev Chadash 2025

We usually think of time as  the ancient Greeks first described it – that time is a linear progression –  that one moment leads to the next in an uninterrupted sequence. We live with this model in mind,  planning for the hours and days, the months and years ahead, measuring our progress in life as the years pass. Linear time is generally what we use to make sense of the world around us. The past is always behind us, unchangeable and fixed, the future is in front of us, unknown and unknowable. We live in an eternal present.

But the Jewish view of time is different.

For us time  is not linear.  We do not progress through our days in a straight line from the past, through the present, to the future. Even how we characterise time is different – the past is in front of us, because we can see it, the future is behind us, not yet revealing itself, and so, when Moses see’s God’s back we understand that he is seeing something about the relationship between the Jewish people and God that goes into the future.  It is not a denial of seeing the face of God, so much as the promise that God will stay with us.

Judaism also recognises an element of circularity, although unlike the Babylonians and Egyptians, Judaism does not see this as being only the repeated cycles of birth, death and renewal. Instead, Judaism does something that takes from both of these interpretations  of time. Judaism understands and creates time as a spiral. We may come back again and again to particular experiences, but each time we come back we are different. We have progressed within the circularity.

 This is the reason our prayerbooks for the festivals are known as machzorim – the name reminds us that we return to these festivals over and over again in our lives, the seasons pass and return. The festivals are the same – it is we who are different each time.  The very word “shanah”  has layers of meaning – “a year”,  “a repetition”, “a change”.

 As we travel through our days we see patterns repeat, as we replay the past.  At Pesach we – yet again – leave slavery in Egypt for an unknown future, travelling towards our ancestral land. At Shavuot we – yet again – encounter God and become a people of God at Sinai.  At Succot we relive the fragility of our temporal security, knowing that if there has not been rain and sunshine in their right seasons, we may not have the food we need to survive.

During the Yamim Noraim we put aside time to look at how we are living our lives. We examine ourselves to see whether we are living up to our values and the expectations for who we want to be. Each festival in this cycle is a milestone, a marker on our journey through life. Each is an opportunity. The secular world may have birthdays or new year resolutions, dates where we reflect on how we have lived so far and propose new or different behaviours, but the Jewish year has formalised these, bringing us back again and again to remember and inhabit our past, and to inform and impact our present.

Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler wrote that  “As we travel through time we return to key moments of the past and recapture the inherent spiritual energy. This is why Jewish holidays are referred to in Hebrew as “moadim” (meeting places).

And Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz wrote “Time is a process, in which past, present, and future are bound to each other, not only by cause and effect but also as a harmonization of two motions:  progress forward and a countermotion backward, encircling and returning.  It is more like a spiral, or a helix, rising up from Creation.  (From The Thirteen Petalled Rose).

Spiral time is not the same as circular time.  We don’t repeat the past.  At least we don’t repeat it exactly. Just as the root of the word “Shanah” means both to repeat and to change, we revisit it, but we are different, and so our experience is also different. Just as we spend a year reading the same Torah scroll, only to repeat it again in the following years, we find we read that text differently each time because we ourselves are different, so words or ideas or whole stories may jump out at us one year that never did before, because now we have something within us to resonate with them.

 I am perhaps overfond of the phrase “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”- the more that things change the more that they stay the same.  But I know too that it doesn’t exactly speak to the Jewish experience of change. Because while it feels like we find ourselves in situations  of vulnerability that our forebears would recognise,  Judaism adds in an extra ingredient to the repetition– that of hope, and of the human ability to create meaning. We never stop hoping that we might bring about real change in the world, continuing the perfection of creation.

The cynical may repeat Kohelet the preacher, said to be written by the great and wise King Solomon – מַה־שֶּׁהָיָה הוּא שֶׁיִּהְיֶה וּמַה־שֶּׁנַּעֲשָׂה הוּא שֶׁיֵּעָשֶׂה וְאֵין כׇּל־חָדָשׁ תַּחַת הַשָּׁמֶשׁ׃

Only that has happened can happen, only that which has been done can be done. There is nothing new beneath the sun!  But this somewhat pessimistic view of life is not the view of Rabbinic Judaism – for we have the idea of repair built into our very fabric, we yearn towards redemption. As Nachman of Bratzlav wrote – “if you believe you can damage, you must believe you can rebuild”. – and he went on to say “the whole world is a narrow bridge, the important thing is that you must not make yourself afraid”   In other words we have the power to create positive and meaningful change – just as long as we don’t despair and allow ourselves to give up the hope and the imagination to do so.

Right now we are at a point in the spiral that echoes some of the most painfilled and terrifying elements of Jewish history. All the values of the enlightenment and of modernity seem to have come crashing down, antisemitism is rising, Jews are fearful of being seen as such in the public space, and we are as divided a people as we have ever been, polarised in a way I fear may be davar chadash – a new thing – or certainly something not seen since the days of the second temple.   Never has the phrase “am k’shei oref” – a stiff necked and stubborn people – been more appropriate.  

We are in a world of sinat hinam –hatred without a cause. We have been here before and we know how dangerous it is. But precisely because of this knowledge we can learn to do things differently.  We have the tools we need to bring about change. In the words of Rav Kook the antidote to causeless hatred – sinat hinam, is causeless love – ahavat hinam.

In this age of social media we can see how easy it is to manipulate people to hate others. One only has to look at the comments beneath any article or photograph to see people who are willing to denigrate and dehumanise people they do not even know. We can see and hear the populist politicians, the rhetoric of patriotism, the racism and misogyny and nationalism and xenophobia.  We have been here before, and we can try to ensure that the pattern does not play out again as it did before.

Liliane Segre spoke of the indifference of others when Nazism and fascism arose:   “L’indifferenza racchiude la chiave per comprendere la ragione del male, perché quando credi che una cosa non ti tocchi, non ti riguardi, allora non c’è limite all’orrore.   L’indifferente è complice.   

“Indifference holds the key to understanding the reason for evil, because when you believe that something does not affect you, does not concern you, then there is no limit to the horror.  The indifferent are accomplices

 And she said that the opposite of the indifference is caring, ensuring that we pay attention, that the things that we can see happening around us should engage us – we cannot look away and say that we are not involved – neutrality is not an option.

Her call is echoed by Elie Wiesel in his speech of acceptance of the Nobel peace prize.

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented…. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the centre of the universe.”

We live in Jewish time, in a history that is ever present, with an unextinguishable hope for the future.  Past, present and future are bound together for us.  Moses Chaim Luzzatto (RaMCHaL) calls this “recurring time” and offers us hope – “in recurring time, the light of holiness that illuminated us then, will shine on us and refine and renew us”.. (Derech HaShem composed1735 Padua)

Jewish time gives us repeated opportunities to act well, reminds us not only to care for the vulnerable of our own people but to care for and about all people – whether they look like us or not, whether we agree with them or not, whether we know them personally or they are strangers to us. In a passage recorded in many places in our tradition we are told that Shimon ben Azzai teaches “the greatest principle of Torah is “ This is the book of the generations of Adam [origin of human beings]. When God created  human beings God created us in the divine likeness” (Gen. v. 1; Sifra, Ḳedoshim, iv.; Yer. Ned. ix. 41c; Gen. R. xxiv.). 

In other words – we are all one human people, we are all God’s creation. We live together on one small planet, and how we treat the earth impacts on us all. How we treat each other impacts on us all.   And it reminds us to stand up for our values when they – and we – are under attack.

The antidote to causeless hatred is not to logically explain why it is wrong. There is no logic to such anger and odium.  The antidote is to live with causeless love, to see humanity as one people living together on a small and fragile planet, our futures bound up together,

The antidote is to pay attention, to notice, to care, to stand up against false narratives of hate.

We live in recurring and spiral time – and each time we confront a situation we can choose how to respond. Let us hope that as Luzzatto taught, that the light of holiness that shone on us before, will shine on us now and in the future, refining us and renewing us and helping us to create a future of peace.

Shanah Tovah

Rosh Hashana Mattina Lev Chadash 2025

Di solito pensiamo al tempo come lo descrivevano gli antichi greci: il tempo è una progressione lineare, un momento conduce al successivo in una sequenza ininterrotta. Viviamo con questo modello in mente, pianificando le ore e i giorni, i mesi e gli anni a venire, misurando i nostri progressi nella vita con il passare degli anni. Il tempo lineare è generalmente ciò che usiamo per dare un senso al mondo che ci circonda. Il passato è sempre dietro di noi, immutabile e fisso, il futuro è davanti a noi, sconosciuto e inconoscibile. Viviamo in un eterno presente.

Ma la visione ebraica del tempo è diversa.

Per noi il tempo non è lineare. Non progrediamo attraverso i nostri giorni in linea retta dal passato, attraverso il presente, verso il futuro. Anche il modo in cui caratterizziamo il tempo è diverso: il passato è davanti a noi, perché possiamo vederlo, il futuro è dietro di noi, non ancora rivelato, e così, quando Mosè vede la schiena di Dio, capiamo che sta vedendo qualcosa della relazione tra il popolo ebraico e Dio che va verso il futuro. Non è una negazione del vedere il volto di Dio, quanto piuttosto la promessa che Dio rimarrà con noi.

L’ebraismo riconosce anche un elemento di circolarità, anche se, a differenza dei babilonesi e degli egizi, non lo vede solo come il ripetersi dei cicli di nascita, morte e rinnovamento. L’ebraismo fa invece qualcosa che prende da entrambe queste interpretazioni del tempo. L’ebraismo comprende e crea il tempo come una spirale. Possiamo tornare più e più volte a particolari esperienze, ma ogni volta che torniamo siamo diversi. Abbiamo progredito all’interno della circolarità.

Questo è il motivo per cui i nostri libri di preghiere per le festività sono conosciuti come machzorim: il nome ci ricorda che torniamo a queste festività più e più volte nella nostra vita, le stagioni passano e ritornano. Le festività sono le stesse, siamo noi che siamo diversi ogni volta. La stessa parola “shanah” ha diversi significati: “un anno”, “una ripetizione”, “un cambiamento”.

Mentre attraversiamo i nostri giorni, vediamo ripetersi gli schemi, mentre riviviamo il passato. A Pesach lasciamo – ancora una volta – la schiavitù in Egitto per un futuro sconosciuto, viaggiando verso la terra dei nostri antenati. A Shavuot incontriamo – ancora una volta – Dio e diventiamo il popolo di Dio sul Sinai. A Succot riviviamo la fragilità della nostra sicurezza temporale, sapendo che se non ci sono state pioggia e sole nelle stagioni giuste, potremmo non avere il cibo necessario per sopravvivere.

Durante lo Yamim Noraim dedichiamo del tempo a riflettere su come stiamo vivendo la nostra vita. Esaminiamo noi stessi per vedere se stiamo vivendo secondo i nostri valori e le aspettative di chi vogliamo essere. Ogni festa di questo ciclo è una pietra miliare, un punto di riferimento nel nostro viaggio attraverso la vita. Ognuna è un’opportunità. Il mondo secolare può avere compleanni o propositi per l’anno nuovo, date in cui riflettiamo su come abbiamo vissuto finora e proponiamo comportamenti nuovi o diversi, ma l’anno ebraico ha formalizzato tutto questo, riportandoci continuamente a ricordare e a rivivere il nostro passato, per informare e influenzare il nostro presente.

Il rabbino Eliyahu Dessler ha scritto che “Mentre viaggiamo nel tempo, torniamo ai momenti chiave del passato e recuperiamo l’energia spirituale intrinseca. Questo è il motivo per cui le festività ebraiche sono chiamate in ebraico ”moadim” (luoghi di incontro).

E il rabbino Adin Steinsaltz ha scritto: “Il tempo è un processo in cui passato, presente e futuro sono legati tra loro, non solo da causa ed effetto, ma anche come armonizzazione di due movimenti: il progresso in avanti e il contro-movimento all’indietro, che circonda e ritorna. È più simile a una spirale, o a un’elica, che si eleva dalla Creazione. (Da La rosa a tredici petali).

Il tempo a spirale non è uguale al tempo circolare. Non ripetiamo il passato. Almeno non lo ripetiamo esattamente. Proprio come la radice della parola “Shanah” significa sia ripetere che cambiare, lo rivisitiamo, ma siamo diversi, e quindi anche la nostra esperienza è diversa. Proprio come passiamo un anno a leggere lo stesso rotolo della Torah, solo per ripeterlo di nuovo negli anni successivi, scopriamo che leggiamo quel testo in modo diverso ogni volta perché noi stessi siamo diversi, quindi parole, idee o intere storie possono saltarci agli occhi un anno come mai prima d’ora, perché ora abbiamo qualcosa dentro di noi che risuona con esse.

Forse amo troppo la frase “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” – più le cose cambiano, più rimangono uguali. Ma so anche che non rispecchia esattamente l’esperienza ebraica del cambiamento. Perché anche se ci sembra di trovarci in situazioni di vulnerabilità che i nostri antenati riconoscerebbero, l’ebraismo aggiunge un ingrediente in più alla ripetizione: quello della speranza e della capacità umana di creare significato. Non smettiamo mai di sperare di poter portare un vero cambiamento nel mondo, continuando la perfezione della creazione.

I cinici potrebbero ripetere le parole del predicatore Kohelet, che si dice siano state scritte dal grande e saggio re Salomone – מַה־שֶּׁהָיָה הוּא שֶׁיִּהְיֶה וּמַה־שֶּׁנַּעֲשָׂה הוּא שֶׁיֵּעָשֶׂה וְאֵין כׇּל־חָדָשׁ תַּחַת הַשָּׁמֶשׁ׃

Solo ciò che è accaduto può accadere, solo ciò che è stato fatto può essere fatto. Non c’è nulla di nuovo sotto il sole! Ma questa visione piuttosto pessimistica della vita non è quella del giudaismo rabbinico, poiché noi abbiamo l’idea di riparazione insita nella nostra stessa essenza, desideriamo ardentemente la redenzione. Come scrisse Nachman di Bratzlav: “Se credi di poter danneggiare, devi credere di poter ricostruire”. E continuò dicendo: “Il mondo intero è un ponte stretto, l’importante è non lasciarsi prendere dalla paura”. In altre parole, abbiamo il potere di creare un cambiamento positivo e significativo, purché non ci disperiamo e non rinunciamo alla speranza e all’immaginazione per farlo.

In questo momento ci troviamo in un punto della spirale che riecheggia alcuni degli elementi più dolorosi e terrificanti della storia ebraica. Tutti i valori dell’Illuminismo e della modernità sembrano essere crollati, l’antisemitismo è in aumento, gli ebrei hanno paura di essere visti come tali negli spazi pubblici e siamo un popolo più diviso che mai, polarizzato in un modo che temo possa essere davar chadash – una cosa nuova – o certamente qualcosa che non si vedeva dai tempi del secondo tempio. Mai come ora l’espressione “am k’shei oref” – un popolo dal collo rigido e testardo – è stata più appropriata.

Viviamo in un mondo di sinat hinam, odio senza motivo. Ci siamo già trovati in questa situazione e sappiamo quanto sia pericolosa. Ma proprio grazie a questa consapevolezza possiamo imparare a fare le cose in modo diverso. Abbiamo gli strumenti necessari per apportare il cambiamento. Nelle parole di Rav Kook, l’antidoto all’odio senza causa – sinat hinam – è l’amore senza causa – ahavat hinam.

In questa era dei social media possiamo vedere quanto sia facile manipolare le persone affinché odino gli altri. Basta guardare i commenti sotto qualsiasi articolo o fotografia per vedere persone disposte a denigrare e disumanizzare persone che non conoscono nemmeno. Possiamo vedere e sentire i politici populisti, la retorica del patriottismo, il razzismo, la misoginia, il nazionalismo e la xenofobia. Ci siamo già passati e possiamo cercare di garantire che lo stesso schema non si ripeta come in passato.

Liliane Segre ha parlato dell’indifferenza degli altri quando sono sorti il nazismo e il fascismo: “L’indifferenza racchiude la chiave per comprendere la ragione del male, perché quando credi che una cosa non ti tocchi, non ti riguardi, allora non c’è limite all’orrore. L’indifferente è complice.

“L’indifferenza racchiude la chiave per comprendere la ragione del male, perché quando credi che una cosa non ti tocchi, non ti riguardi, allora non c’è limite all’orrore. L’indifferente è complice

E lei ha detto che il contrario dell’indifferenza è la cura, assicurarsi che prestiamo attenzione, che le cose che vediamo accadere intorno a noi ci coinvolgano – non possiamo distogliere lo sguardo e dire che non siamo coinvolti – la neutralità non è un’opzione.

La sua richiesta trova eco nelle parole di Elie Wiesel nel suo discorso di accettazione del premio Nobel per la pace.

“Dobbiamo schierarci. La neutralità aiuta l’oppressore, mai la vittima. Il silenzio incoraggia il carnefice, mai il tormentato… Quando le vite umane sono in pericolo, quando la dignità umana è in pericolo, i confini nazionali e le sensibilità diventano irrilevanti. Ovunque uomini e donne siano perseguitati a causa della loro razza, religione o opinioni politiche, quel luogo deve – in quel momento – diventare il centro dell’universo”.

Viviamo nel tempo ebraico, in una storia sempre presente, con una speranza inestinguibile per il futuro. Passato, presente e futuro sono legati insieme per noi. Moses Chaim Luzzatto (RaMCHaL) chiama questo “tempo ricorrente” e ci offre speranza: “nel tempo ricorrente, la luce della santità che ci illuminava allora, risplenderà su di noi e ci raffinerà e rinnoverà”. (Derech HaShem composto nel 1735 a Padova)

Il tempo ebraico ci offre ripetute opportunità di agire bene, ci ricorda non solo di prenderci cura dei più vulnerabili del nostro popolo, ma anche di prenderci cura di tutte le persone, che ci assomiglino o meno, che siamo d’accordo con loro o meno, che le conosciamo personalmente o che siano estranee per noi. In un passaggio riportato in molti luoghi della nostra tradizione, ci viene detto che Shimon ben Azzai insegna che “il principio più grande della Torah è: Questo è il libro delle generazioni di Adamo [origine degli esseri umani]. Quando Dio creò gli esseri umani, Dio ci creò a sua immagine e somiglianza” (Genesi v. 1; Sifra, Ḳedoshim, iv.; Yer. Ned. ix. 41c; Gen. R. xxiv.).

In altre parole, siamo tutti un unico popolo umano, siamo tutti creature di Dio. Viviamo insieme su un piccolo pianeta e il modo in cui trattiamo la terra ha un impatto su tutti noi. Il modo in cui ci trattiamo l’un l’altro ha un impatto su tutti noi. E questo ci ricorda di difendere i nostri valori quando essi, e noi stessi, siamo sotto attacco.

L’antidoto all’odio immotivato non è spiegare logicamente perché è sbagliato. Non c’è logica in tale rabbia e odio. L’antidoto è vivere con amore immotivato, vedere l’umanità come un unico popolo che vive insieme su un pianeta piccolo e fragile, con un futuro legato insieme.

L’antidoto è prestare attenzione, notare, preoccuparsi, opporsi alle false narrazioni dell’odio.

Viviamo in un tempo ricorrente e a spirale, e ogni volta che affrontiamo una situazione possiamo scegliere come reagire. Speriamo che, come insegnava Luzzatto, la luce della santità che brillava su di noi prima, brilli su di noi ora e in futuro, raffinandoci, rinnovandoci e aiutandoci a creare un futuro di pace.

Shanah Tovah

Love Your Neighbour

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Perhaps the most quoted verse in the bible – Leviticus 19:18 – says “

לֹֽא־תִקֹּ֤ם וְלֹֽא־תִטֹּר֙ אֶת־בְּנֵ֣י עַמֶּ֔ךָ וְאָֽהַבְתָּ֥ לְרֵעֲךָ֖ כָּמ֑וֹךָ אֲנִ֖י יְהֹוָֽה׃

You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against members of your people. Love your neighbour as yourself: I am GOD.

Ve’ahavta le’re’echa kamocha. Rabbi Akiva said that this is the fundamental commandment of Torah. It is both a powerfully immediate text and one that causes us to question. Can one be commanded to love, and in which case (as we are also commanded to love God in the Shema prayer, what does that love look like? It cannot be a feeling for these are never under our control, so it must be an action.

How should we behave in order to show that we are following this commandment?

Rabbi Ovadia Sforno tells us that this is a general and all inclusive rule dictating how we should behave towards other human beings – not that we should do for them things that we might want done for ourselves, but that we should apply the same concern for our fellow human being that we would want applied to ourselves were we in their situation. So we need to practise empathy – putting ourselves in the place of another and considering what that would feel like.  This rule is wonderful, but it has its limitations. How can we know for sure that what we would want for ourselves would really be what another person would want and need for themselves?

Ibn Ezra has a slightly different view. Because there is what appears to be a superfluous letter – a lamed – he translates the verse not as to love, but to act lovingly – we should love that which is good for our neighbour, just as we want that which is good for ourselves.

There is a famous story in the Babylonian Talmud (Shabbat 31a).

Once there was a gentile who came before Shammai, and said to him: “Convert me on the condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot. Shammai pushed him aside with the measuring stick he was holding. The same fellow came before Hillel the elder   (110BCE-10CE) and Hillel converted him, saying: That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow, this is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary, go and learn it.”

I love the fact that Hillel, who clearly knew the verse in Leviticus, chose to frame this golden rule differently. It is, I think, typical of his teaching which tries to open up Jewish life rather than to close it down, to interpret the spirit of a law rather than to create a plethora of regulations to follow.

Rather than to require us to know something that ultimately we cannot always know – what another person wants and needs beyond those needs we all have for survival – Hillel asks us to empathise in a different way. That which is abhorrent to us we must not do to others.  We know what we find abhorrent. We don’t have to be scholars of texts or of human psychology in order to fulfil this commandment.

Love your neighbour as yourself. While Hillel and Akiva both describe this as being (almost) the whole of torah, a foundational principle from which everything else springs, I cannot help but notice that the midrash twice quotes a debate between Akiva and Ben Azzai who says that there is an even deeper and more critical principle in Torah: “Ben Azzai says; ‘This is the book of the generations of Adam’ (Genesis 5:1) is a greater principle” – Why? Because it reminds us that all of us human beings are related and connected. We don’t have to ask what does it mean to love, nor do we ask whether our neighbour is in some way different from people more distant from us. Instead, if we truly understand we are one creation, with one God who made and loves us all, then everything else will follow and we will live lives of meaning and of love.

Forse il versetto più citato della Bibbia – Levitico 19:18 – recita: «  לֹֽא־תִקֹּ֤ם וְלֹֽא־תִטֹּר֙ אֶת־בְּנֵ֣י עַמֶּ֔ךָ וְאָֽהַבְתָּ֥ לְרֵעֲךָ֖ כָּמ֑וֹךָ אֲנִ֖י יְהֹוָֽה׃

Non ti vendicherai né serberai rancore contro i membri del tuo popolo. Ama il tuo prossimo come te stesso: Io sono DIO.

Ve’ahavta le’re’echa kamocha. Rabbi Akiva disse che questo è il comandamento fondamentale della Torah. È un testo dal significato immediato e potente, che ci induce a porci delle domande. Si può comandare di amare, e in tal caso (poiché ci viene anche comandato di amare Dio nella preghiera dello Shema), che tipo di amore è questo? Non può essere un sentimento, poiché i sentimenti non sono mai sotto il nostro controllo, quindi deve trattarsi di un’azione.

Come dovremmo comportarci per dimostrare che stiamo seguendo questo comandamento?

Rabbi Ovadia Sforno ci dice che questa è una regola generale e onnicomprensiva che detta come dovremmo comportarci nei confronti degli altri esseri umani: non che dovremmo fare per loro ciò che vorremmo fosse fatto per noi stessi, ma che dovremmo applicare ai nostri simili la stessa attenzione che vorremmo fosse applicata a noi stessi se fossimo nella loro situazione. Quindi dobbiamo praticare l’empatia, mettendoci al posto dell’altro e considerando come ci sentireste. Questa regola è meravigliosa, ma ha i suoi limiti. Come possiamo sapere con certezza che ciò che vorremmo per noi stessi sarebbe davvero ciò che un’altra persona vorrebbe e avrebbe bisogno per sé?

Ibn Ezra ha un punto di vista leggermente diverso. Poiché c’è una lettera che sembra superflua, una lamed, egli traduce il versetto non come amare, ma come agire con amore: dovremmo amare ciò che è buono per il nostro prossimo, proprio come desideriamo ciò che è buono per noi stessi.

C’è una famosa storia nel Talmud babilonese (Shabbat 31a).

Una volta un gentile si presentò davanti a Shammai e gli disse: “Convertimi a condizione che tu mi insegni tutta la Torah mentre sto su un piede solo”. Shammai lo spinse via con il bastone che aveva in mano. Lo stesso uomo si presentò davanti a Hillel il Vecchio (110 a.C.-10 d.C.) e Hillel lo convertì, dicendo: “Non fare al tuo prossimo ciò che è spregevole per te, questa è tutta la Torah, il resto è commento, vai e imparalo”.

Mi piace il fatto che Hillel, che chiaramente conosceva il versetto del Levitico, abbia scelto di formulare questa regola d’oro in modo diverso. È, credo, tipico del suo insegnamento che cerca di aprire la vita ebraica piuttosto che chiuderla, di interpretare lo spirito di una legge piuttosto che creare una pletora di regole da seguire.

Piuttosto che esigere da noi di conoscere qualcosa che in definitiva non possiamo sempre conoscere – ciò che un’altra persona vuole e di cui ha bisogno al di là dei bisogni che tutti abbiamo per sopravvivere – Hillel ci chiede di entrare in empatia in un modo diverso. Non dobbiamo fare agli altri ciò che è ripugnante per noi. Sappiamo cosa troviamo ripugnante. Non dobbiamo essere studiosi di testi o di psicologia umana per adempiere a questo comandamento.

Ama il tuo prossimo come te stesso. Mentre Hillel e Akiva descrivono entrambi questo come (quasi) l’intera Torah, un principio fondamentale da cui tutto il resto deriva, non posso fare a meno di notare che il midrash cita due volte un dibattito tra Akiva e Ben Azzai, il quale afferma che nella Torah esiste un principio ancora più profondo e fondamentale: «Ben Azzai dice: ‘Questo è il libro delle generazioni di Adamo’ (Genesi 5:1) è un principio più grande” – Perché? Perché ci ricorda che tutti noi esseri umani siamo imparentati e collegati. Non dobbiamo chiederci cosa significhi amare, né chiederci se il nostro prossimo sia in qualche modo diverso dalle persone più lontane da noi. Invece, se comprendiamo veramente che siamo un’unica creazione, con un unico Dio che ci ha creati e ci ama tutti, allora tutto il resto seguirà e vivremo una vita piena di significato e di amore.

Vayetzei – transformational journeying. Also – Vatetzei if you look harder

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Parashat vayetzei begins with Jacob leaving home in fear for his life, having tricked his father and older brother in order to gain the birthright blessing of the firstborn. We follow him to the edge of his homeland, where he sleeps and dreams of a ladder, and meets God who promises him divine protection in his journeying, that he will return to the land and that he will have many descendants. We see him fall in love with Rachel, go to live with her father – his uncle Laban – and work for him as a shepherd for seven years as the price for her hand in marriage. We see him tricked by Laban (as he had tricked his own father), and the wrong sibling – Leah – married to him instead, with the fantastically ironic reasoning that here in Haran they don’t privilege the younger over the older sibling. For the price of another seven years of work Jacob marries Rachel too. We watch as the two sisters become rivals, Leah desperate for his love, producing six sons, with each birth expressing the hope that her husband might love and value her, Rachel desperate for a child of her own, her longing causing such friction in their relationship that she uses her maidservant as a surrogate to birth children she can adopt – a ploy that Leah copies – before finally producing Joseph.
We see Jacob negotiating again with Laban, wanting now to return home. Laban has become very wealthy on account of Jacob, but when Jacob responds to his enquiry about payment he cannot resist trying to trick him once again. Jacob outwits him and builds a substantial flock for himself from the animals he has been shepherding for Laban. Jacob attributes this successful selective breeding to the protection of God, and in speaking to his wives, he references a dream he had to this effect.
The three of them plan to leave Laban and journey to Jacob’s home land. The sisters join together in accusing their father of ill treatment, that he has sold them into marriage and used their brideprice for himself – so there will be no inheritance for them. They tell Jacob that wealth he has accrued at the expense of Laban belongs to them and their children and God has simply dispensed financial justice. Without informing Laban, the family begin their journey back to Canaan. Now it is the furious Laban who has a dream, in which God warns him against harming Jacob in any way. He pursues the family, there are some dynamics, then the two men make a pact of peace, with Laban belatedly adding protective clauses for his daughters’ future. Laban returns home and the sidra ends with Jacob once again encountering angels, once again recognising that the place he is in belongs to God.
So many dreams, so many repeated motifs of trickery and manipulation, of angels and encounters with the divine. So it is so easy to read the text and focus on the journey that Jacob makes, one which echoes the classic hero narrative – of a man who journeys into the unknown, overcomes difficulties, and returns home powerful and transformed.

But other lives and other transformations are detailed in the sidra. Two of our matriarchs, Leah and Rachel find themselves sold into marriage, their value – even in their own eyes – bound up in their bodies and in their fertility, yet each have a spiritual journey of their own.

After the heartbreaking births of her first three sons, Leah gives up naming her children for the unrequited hopes that Jacob will care about her, and begins to name them for her own feelings. She names her fourth son “Judah” because she thanks God for his birth. The fifth and sixth she names “Issachar” – “reward”, and Zebulun – “gift” or “honour”. These children are for her, not for Jacob and the children born by her surrogate Zilpah she names for her good fortune.

Rachel’s desperation for a child shows great mental anguish, and her husband’s angry response to her that it is God’s will that she does not have children must have been excruciating for her to hear. We see her behaviour change after that – she first uses a surrogate to achieve her aims, naming the first child Dan declaring that God has vindicated and heard her, and the second one Naftali – a contest with God and her sister that she has, in her own mind at least, won – though when she finally gives birth herself the name she chooses for her son “Joseph” shows that the words Jacob so cruelly flung at her still stung. In naming him almost as a challenge to God “he will add another son”, she shows that she is determined to write her own history, refusing to accept her infertility as any kind of divine decree. And she goes further, literally selling a night with Jacob to Leah in return for some mandrakes, a plant believed to increase fertility.
When Jacob proposes his plan to leave Laban and take wealth with him, it is Rachel whose response is recorded first. She reminds him that Laban has cheated the sisters from what should rightfully be theirs, she has no compunction about getting the wealth back.
And finally – her most extraordinary act of rebellion and initiative – she steals and hides Laban’s household gods and uses the condition of her female body to ensure they are not found.

What we see is both sisters responding to their situation by taking what matters to them most for themselves. Leah learns she has intrinsic value beyond what her husband and father give her, Rachel that she can resist the roles given her by her husband and her father, selling one and stealing from the other.

The root of the word “vayetzei” is yatza – to go forth. It has already appeared many times right from the beginning of creation when the earth puts forth vegetation and living animals, when Noah and his wife leave the ark, When Terach, Abram and Sarai leave Ur to go to Canaan, and later of course the exodus from Egypt that will set the family on the road to peoplehood is “yetziat mitzraim”. On multiple occasions this verbal root is used to denote important changes towards growth. So it is no surprise that this sidra is named for the beginning of Jacob’s growing up. Yet the verb is also used in the sidra for an action of Leah’s. Having borne four sons she is no longer having children – the implication is that Jacob is no longer sleeping with her. So when Rachel asks her for the mandrakes she has, she barters them for a night with Jacob. We read “When Jacob came home from the field in the evening, “va’tetzei Leah” -Leah went out to meet him and said, “You are to sleep with me, for I have hired you with my son’s mandrakes.”” . Calmly and with purpose, she takes control of Jacob. It is the night Issachar is conceived.

And in next week’s sidra we will read of her daughter Dina, who also goes out “Va’tetzei Dina”, though her adventure with Shechem takes a dark turn when her brothers become involved. The plain biblical text shows both these women as confident and outgoing, no blame colours the text. Yet neither sister nor Dina become role models for women – instead their presumption and initiative-taking become something to be discouraged, they are judged for being too forward. So in liturgy we see Leah placed second to the more beloved Rachel, even though she is the ancestress of both the monarchical and the priestly tribes through Judah and Levi. While her pain and the rivalry with her sister is recorded in bible with some empathy, the development of her own relationship with God is never explored, even though she is the first person in bible to praise God. Instead, commentors focus on her name, which could mean “weary” or “bovine”, and focus on the ambiguous description of her having “soft eyes”. It is hard to get to know Leah, her reputation as a “yatzanit” – a woman who goes out from the home – by implication for nefarious sexual purposes, chills any searching for the woman behind the utilitarian producer of babies.

Her daughter Dina is silenced even more aggressively. Noting that she doesn’t appear in the story of Jacob meeting Esau on his way home, when Jacob is described as dividing his camp including eleven children, the midrash suggests this is because he has locked her in a box for her own protection. What a strange idea – it presents Dina as sexually available who cannot be seen in case the man cannot control himself. And then the worst happens Dina too goes out – in her case we are explicitly told that she does so in order to meet the women of the land. She is not going out to seduce as her mother had done, yet midrash tells us “like mother like daughter” – they are both “yatzanit” – women who wrongly leave the protection of home and menfolk in order to follow their own wishes.
And this is clearly unacceptable to our commentators.
Dina does have sexual relations with the prince of Shechem who we are told loves her and speaks tenderly to her, wishing to marry her. Her brothers response is that he has treated her like a whore. Vengeance is bloody. The whole family have to leave the area. And we don’t hear of her again beyond her name being listed in the seventy souls who moved to Egypt with Jacob.

Why is it such a heroic thing for a man to “go out”, but a terrible thing if a woman does so. Bible offers us matriarchs who are just as flawed as patriarchs, yet we rarely celebrate the transformative journeys of the women. We continue to focus instead on women’s bodies. Women’s fertility or sexual attractiveness or availability. The news overflows with stories of sexual abuse by wealthy men, of “banter” or inappropriate comments aimed at women’s physical appearance, of campaigns for abortion rights to be limited further, of sexual violence and domestic abuse. Look closer and the idea of the yatzanit emerges – the woman who “deserves all she gets” because she took something for herself, she left the house and went into public places, she is no better than she should be.
Maybe if we were to read “va’teitzei” as we read “vayetzei” – the story of a heroic narrative, where the individual goes on a journey to an unknown place, has adventures and returns transformed into something more than they were – maybe then the world would be a happier and a safer place.

Managing our money according to Jewish Values

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In September 2024, 52% adults reported an increase in their cost of living compared with the previous month. Of those whose cost of living increased, 92% said it was because food shopping had increased in price, while 68% said it was because gas and electricity bills had increased in price .
As providing for basic needs becomes ever more expensive, we become more aware of the necessity of managing our finances well.
Maybe Jewish tradition isn’t the first place we might look, but it is rich in models of financial prudence. Take Joseph, who manages in the seven good years to save enough to provide for the seven years of famine in Egypt. Or the Eshet Chayil , who among her many qualities is the economic force in her household, buying wool and linen to turn into garments she will then sell, considering a field before buying it, planting vineyards, bringing food from afar…”
Or Moses who makes a public accounting of all the donations used to build the Mishkan, proving that no money was used inappropriately or wastefully.
Rabbinic tradition too is replete with ideas about how we should approach our finances. Well aware of the deep relationship between material and spiritual wellbeing, the rabbis taught “Im ein kemach, ein Torah.. ” – without flour there is no Torah, without Torah there is no sustenance”
But once our needs are met, we must make financial decisions based on our values. Moses teaches “when you have eaten and been satisfied, beware lest you grow arrogant and say “my own activities made me wealthy”. and you forget God” . After death, the soul is asked several questions, including “were you honest in your business dealings? When we give tzedakah, we must give enough that the recipient can themselves give tzedakah.
Risk management is also considered – emulating Jacob who divided his camp before meeting Esau so as not to lose everything. Talmud quotes Rabbi Yitzchak: “A person should always divide money into three – a third each in land, commerce and cash”
How we manage our money speaks to our values. Talmud records Rav Elai “In three matters one’s true character is seen – in drink, in pocket (financial dealings) and in anger” But maybe it is the word for a coin “zuz” which gives the most important insight. Coming from a root meaning “to move”, we understand that acquiring and storing much money is not helpful to society. Money moves around from one person to another, and this helps each person to have enough, rather than wealth being an end in itself.
Written for “Leap of Faith” in the Jewish News

Sermon Shofetim 2024

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l’italiano segue l’inglese

On the first shabbat of the month of Elul – the month when we Jews traditionally focus on an examination of or lives in order to intensify the journey of teshuvah – of returning to God – in preparation for the Yamim Noraim – the Days of Awe, we always read Parashat Shofetim.  This parasha, which forms part of Moses’ last speeches to the people of Israel, his ethical legacy to accompany them into the land into which he cannot go, includes important guidance for future leadership of the people –  the creation of a justice system for the Israelites; the limits of material power for future kings, priests and Levites; and a review of the laws of warfare.

Probably its most  famous line is

צדק צדק תרדף למען תחיה וירשת את־הארץ אשר־יהוה אלהיך נתן לך {ס}         “

Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may thrive and occupy the land that the ETERNAL your God is giving you”

And this commandment has been a cornerstone of Rabbinic Judaism, which created a wealth of detail on the pursuit and maintenance of a judicial system for everyone to use.

The rabbis were also focused on what appears to be an extra word in the text. Tzedek is usually paired in biblical text with Mishpat – Righteousness with Law or Justice, but here we have a repetition – within the context of establishing a legal system – not of a judicial term per se, but of an ethical one.  One explanation is that the repeated word emphasises that the  pursuit of righteousness is one that has to be carried out with righteousness – in English there is  a phrase that “the end justifies the means”, but here the exact opposite is the case – no matter the rightness of your cause, how you accomplish it matters. And Ibn Ezra (12th century Spain) clarified further – the duplication of “Tzedek” refers to Justice without reference to the circumstances – whether it is to your own profit or your own loss, whether it is in word or deed, for Jew or non-Jew, friend or enemy – Justice must be pursued for its own sake. 

Our tradition teaches that this repetition of “Tzedek” is also an oblique reference to compromise. When in moral philosophy there are two positions that each hold true, each are “good”, and yet these positions clash, there has to be a balancing of the “goods”. All true ethical decisions involve balancing and weighing competing needs and benefits – for the individual and for society for example, and so rabbinic teaching uses this verse to mandate a compromise that is just. When there are two competing “goods”, one must work to find an acceptable compromise between them.

The third word of this verse, the imperative verb “tirdof”, that we must pursue Justice, is also taken up by our tradition. Justice is never to be taken for granted, but must be actively and continually created. In a human world driven by self-interest, it is easy to give in to  the temptation to bend rules, to benefit from the disbenefit of others, to skew our actions. Whether it be buying an item priced so cheaply that in no way could the worker have been paid a fair amount for their labour, or using our position to privilege ourselves or our family, all of us can fall prey to temptation. The pursuit of justice is an ongoing struggle. Rav Yonatan Chipman wrote “no person is “righteous” as a fixed quality of their being as a person.  Justice, truth, righteousness, integrity, are all the results of a daily struggle to do good and not to be influenced or tempted to depart from the straight and narrow.” We live our lives in aspiration to be better people, an aspiration that can end only with our death.

               Parashat Shofetim, named for the establishment of a series of law courts and judges, is actually more widely concerned with the whole of Israelite society and in particular with its leadership.  Bible has a way of being relevant to every society and every epoch, and the issues Moses addresses in this portion remain pertinent and significant for us today. Indeed, the behaviour of those who are put in positions of leadership in our day concerns us all. As in the famous curse, we are “living in interesting times”, where the leaders of many countries seem to be choosing dangerous pathways, ratcheting up anger and fear and hatred of the other.

               Here in Shofetim we have the rules not only for a legal system, but for the political leader – the King.  We are told:   “ If, after you have entered the land that your God יהוה has assigned to you, and taken possession of it and settled in it, and you decide, “I will set a king over me, as do all the nations about me,” then you shall be free to set a king over yourself” (vv14-15)

               The Hebrew is potentially ambiguous. Is it a commandment? or is it simply a recognition that people may want to have such a form of leadership even if it is not what God would prefer?

In part because of the histories recounted in the books of Samuel and Kings, and the weight of tradition that ties monarchy to messianism, many medieval commentators decided to include kingship into the 613 mitzvot of bible – a commandment to the Jewish people from God.

But there was one important medieval dissenter to this idea, one whose argument and whose writings on political theory have  become even more powerful in modernity. I refer of course, to Don Yitzchak Abravanel.

Maybe it was because he had held high-level positions in three different royal courts: Portugal, Spain, and the Kingdom of Naples, that his views on monarchy differed from many of his contemporaries. He saw at close quarters the dangers of unbridled power that was invested in monarchy. And as a grammarian he believed that any divine mandate for monarchy was at best a misunderstanding of the spirit of the texts.  For what it is worth, I agree with him on this.

Don Yitzchak insisted that the Israelites were not commanded by God to select a king and he made a linguistic as well as anthropological case for his point. And he took the idea further, from theological into political discourse.

He asked a question no-one was asking. Is a king (that is a leadership figure with absolute power) at all necessary for a State to run well?  He first offers, then disposes of the prevalent idea that the position of the Monarch is analogous to the position of God in the world, a figure who will unify the people, who provides continuity, whose role is to focus and underpin power, even if not to actually use that power.

He writes that a monarchy is unnecessary. While the biblical text shows God recognising that the people may want to have a monarch just like all the other people around them, God doesn’t seem particularly enamoured of the idea, instead it seems that God is allowing it to happen ONLY as a kind of bridge to a future society that would function quite differently, with every person responsible for the community. For Abravanel, the monarchy begins as a sop to public anxieties about leadership. And part of his argument is based right here in Parashat Shofetim. Because the text emphasises interesting limits set to the what the monarch will be able to do and to have. We read:  “[The King]  shall not keep many horses or send people back to Egypt to add to his horses, since יהוה has warned you, “You must not go back that way again.” And he shall not have many wives, lest his heart go astray; nor shall he amass silver and gold to excess.  When he is seated on his royal throne, he shall have a copy of this Teaching written for him on a scroll by the Levitical priests. Let it remain with him and let him read in it all his life, so that he may learn to revere his God יהוה, to observe faithfully every word of this Teaching as well as these laws. Thus he will not act haughtily toward his fellows or deviate from the Instruction to the right or to the left, to the end that he and his descendants may reign long in the midst of Israel. (Deut. 17:16-20)

It is clear that Moses, in his final days trying to inculcate values to both build and hold the Israelite society together, also has a somewhat jaundiced view of monarchy. And he tries hard to limit the power and the hedonism and self-interest that may easily develop in the role.

Don Yitzchak Abravanel not only argues persuasively against any biblical mandate for a monarchy, he argues against any mandate for that type of life-time leadership, either inherited or acquired by other means. He maintains that not only is a monarch unnecessary, but that they are potentially a damaging form of leadership. And in his powerful commentary he offers another model of leadership that he believes would be much better – a government formed by a group of people, chosen for a brief period of time, who would come together to make the decisions required for the well-being of the society and the State. He wrote “It is not impossible that a nation should have many leaders who convene, unite, and reach a consensus and can thus govern and administer justice. . . . Reason suggests that . . . between the one and the many, the many should be heeded.”

               Now Don Yitzchak had seen absolute monarchy close up and understood its dangerous flaws. He also, on arriving in Italy, saw the republics of Florence and Venice, which operated outside the all-powerful Papal control, and which he saw had a series of checks and balances that allowed for good governance. So maybe it is no surprise that he had strong views on how leadership should be formed and how there needed to be an ongoing understanding of the needs of the community in order to provide appropriate governance.

               In the Nevi’im, the second section of the Hebrew Bible, there is developed a further model of leadership. There is, at the behest of the people, (and with a false start with the kingship of Saul), a hereditary monarchy that descends from David. From the time of Moses we already have an hereditary priesthood, of the tribe of Levi, with the High Priests descending from the line of Aaron. By the end of Deuteronomy, as we read today, there is a system that is not hereditary, but seems to be based on the knowledge, judgment and ethical reputation of its participants – the Judges. This system has roots right back to Moses’ father in law, Jethro, who advises Moses to set up a arrangement of courts so that Justice is never delayed. And of course we also have the individuals who challenge everything and everyone – the prophets – called to speak their truth to power. The prophets are each individuals, arising from no system or class or family, and who have no common background. Their role is to call for moral and ethical imperatives when these are being ignored; reminding the people of God’s continuing watchfulness for the people of Israel, even when God may seem to be very distant.

               From very early on Judaism teaches that good  leadership must come from all aspects of the society working together, each bringing their differing viewpoints and differing priorities.  There would be some stability and some interruption embedded in the model, some continuity and some evolution or even revolution. Leadership is not an absolute attribute – as even Moses found out –  there will always be people who challenge those in power.

The Talmud (Shevuot 39a) tells us that “Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh”, meaning “all of  Israel are responsible each for the other”. The idea of communal responsibility, and of each of us being in relationship with each other, is fundamental to our society.  The passage goes on to remind us that if we see another person about to commit a sin we must intervene to warn and if necessary to stop them. We are not permitted to keep silent when we see injustice. The point being always that responsibility for our society does not rest with a small number of officials -even if they have been elected or appointed to roles with the oversight or status to govern. Responsibility for our society rests with us all. Each of us must step up to leadership.

Shortly we will be celebrating the Yamim Noraim, the festivals of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, traditionally the great days of Judgement when we take the time to look into our souls and examine how we are living our lives, and hopefully return to the ways of righteousness – Tzedek.  The language of the liturgy reminds us that God notices us, notices how we live our lives, notices both the good and the bad that we do. The fact that we pray in community, confess together in the first person plural to a list of alphabetical misdeeds, helps us to face up to our own behaviour and encourages others to do the same. We are reminded – repeatedly – of the fragility of our lives, of our impermanence, of our own mortality. And we are reminded – repeatedly – that we are not alone.

It sometimes feels – indeed in these last weeks and months it has felt most dreadfully strongly – that God has not noticed our pain, that our leaderships have failed us, that there is no righteousness nor justice in the world.

               I write this sermon on the day that the bodies of six hostages – young people who were so recently alive in Gaza – have been brought back to Israel for burial. The day when the pain within the Jewish world is so extreme one can scarcely breathe. Where is God? Where are our leaders? Where is righteousness?

               And I am reminded by a colleague that God still sees, that God notices and holds firm to the values of life and of peace and of human beings living together. And that our role is to manifest those values and bring them into the world. “Tzedek Tzedek tirdof “– Never stop pursuing righteousness, whatever the circumstances, however difficult the context.

              

Il primo shabbat del mese di Elul – il mese in cui noi ebrei tradizionalmente ci concentriamo sull’esame della nostra vita per intensificare il cammino di teshuvah – il ritorno a Dio – in preparazione agli Yamim Noraim – i giorni di soggezione – leggiamo sempre la Parashat Shofetim.  Questa parashà, che fa parte degli ultimi discorsi di Mosè al popolo d’Israele, il suo lascito etico per accompagnarlo nella terra in cui non può andare, include importanti indicazioni per la futura guida del popolo – la creazione di un sistema di giustizia per gli israeliti; i limiti del potere materiale per i futuri re, sacerdoti e leviti; e una revisione delle leggi di guerra.

Probabilmente il suo verso più famoso è

צדק צדק תרדף למען תחיה וירשת-הארץ אשר-יהוה אלהיך נתן {ס}         ”

Giustizia, giustizia perseguirete, affinché possiate prosperare e occupare la terra che l’Eterno, il vostro Dio, vi sta dando”.

Questo comandamento è stato una pietra miliare dell’ebraismo rabbinico, che ha creato una ricchezza di dettagli sul perseguimento e il mantenimento di un sistema giudiziario a disposizione di tutti.

I rabbini si sono anche concentrati su quella che sembra essere una parola in più nel testo. Nel testo biblico, Tzedek è di solito abbinato a Mishpat – Rettitudine con Legge o Giustizia, ma qui abbiamo una ripetizione – nel contesto dell’istituzione di un sistema legale – non di un termine giudiziario in sé, ma di un termine etico.  Una spiegazione è che la parola ripetuta enfatizza il fatto che la ricerca della rettitudine è una ricerca che deve essere portata avanti con rettitudine – in inglese c’è una frase che dice “il fine giustifica i mezzi”, ma qui è l’esatto contrario – non importa la giustezza della vostra causa, conta il modo in cui la realizzate. E Ibn Ezra (Spagna, XII secolo) ha chiarito ulteriormente: la duplicazione di “Tzedek” si riferisce alla giustizia senza riferimento alle circostanze, sia che si tratti di un profitto o di una perdita, sia che si tratti di parole o di azioni, per un ebreo o un non ebreo, un amico o un nemico, la giustizia deve essere perseguita per se stessa. 

La nostra tradizione insegna che questa ripetizione di “Tzedek” è anche un riferimento obliquo al compromesso. Quando nella filosofia morale ci sono due posizioni che sono ciascuna vera, ciascuna “buona”, eppure queste posizioni si scontrano, ci deve essere un bilanciamento dei “beni”. Tutte le vere decisioni etiche implicano un bilanciamento e una ponderazione di bisogni e benefici in competizione, per esempio per l’individuo e per la società, e quindi l’insegnamento rabbinico usa questo versetto per imporre un compromesso che sia giusto. Quando ci sono due “beni” in competizione, bisogna lavorare per trovare un compromesso accettabile tra di essi.

La terza parola di questo versetto, il verbo imperativo “tirdof”, secondo cui dobbiamo perseguire la giustizia, è ripresa anche dalla nostra tradizione. La giustizia non va mai data per scontata, ma va creata attivamente e continuamente. In un mondo umano guidato dall’interesse personale, è facile cedere alla tentazione di piegare le regole, di trarre vantaggio dai disagi altrui, di distorcere le nostre azioni. Che si tratti di acquistare un articolo a un prezzo così basso che in nessun modo il lavoratore avrebbe potuto essere pagato in modo equo per il suo lavoro, o di usare la nostra posizione per privilegiare noi stessi o la nostra famiglia, tutti noi possiamo cadere in tentazione. La ricerca della giustizia è una lotta continua. Rav Yonatan Chipman ha scritto: “Nessuna persona è ‘giusta’ come qualità fissa del suo essere persona.  La giustizia, la verità, la rettitudine, l’integrità sono tutti risultati di una lotta quotidiana per fare il bene e non essere influenzati o tentati di allontanarsi dalla retta via”. Viviamo la nostra vita aspirando a essere persone migliori, un’aspirazione che può terminare solo con la nostra morte.

               Parashat Shofetim, che prende il nome dall’istituzione di una serie di tribunali e giudici, in realtà riguarda più ampiamente l’intera società israelita e in particolare la sua leadership.  La Bibbia ha un modo di essere rilevante per ogni società e ogni epoca, e le questioni che Mosè affronta in questa parte rimangono pertinenti e significative per noi oggi. Infatti, il comportamento di coloro che occupano posizioni di comando ai nostri giorni ci riguarda tutti. Come nella famosa maledizione, “viviamo in tempi interessanti”, dove i leader di molti Paesi sembrano scegliere strade pericolose, facendo crescere la rabbia, la paura e l’odio verso l’altro.

               Qui in Shofetim abbiamo le regole non solo per un sistema legale, ma anche per il leader politico – il re.  Ci viene detto:   “Se, dopo che sarai entrato nel paese che il tuo Dio ti ha assegnato, ne avrai preso possesso e ti sarai stabilito in esso, e deciderai: “Voglio mettere un re su di me, come fanno tutte le nazioni che mi circondano”, allora sarai libero di mettere un re su di te” (vv. 14-15).

               L’ebraico è potenzialmente ambiguo. Si tratta di un comandamento o semplicemente di un riconoscimento del fatto che le persone possono desiderare di avere una tale forma di leadership anche se non è ciò che Dio preferirebbe?

In parte a causa delle storie raccontate nei libri di Samuele e dei Re, e del peso della tradizione che lega la monarchia al messianismo, molti commentatori medievali decisero di includere la regalità nelle 613 mitzvot della Bibbia – un comandamento di Dio al popolo ebraico.

Ma c’era un importante dissenziente medievale a questa idea, le cui argomentazioni e i cui scritti di teoria politica sono diventati ancora più potenti nella modernità. Mi riferisco, ovviamente, a don Yitzchak Abravanel.

Forse perché aveva ricoperto posizioni di alto livello in tre diverse corti reali: Portogallo, Spagna e Regno di Napoli, il suo punto di vista sulla monarchia era diverso da quello di molti suoi contemporanei. Vide da vicino i pericoli del potere sfrenato di cui era investita la monarchia. E come grammatico riteneva che qualsiasi mandato divino per la monarchia fosse, nel migliore dei casi, un fraintendimento dello spirito dei testi.  Per quanto possa valere, sono d’accordo con lui su questo punto.

Don Yitzchak insisteva sul fatto che agli israeliti non era stato comandato da Dio di scegliere un re, e ne sosteneva la tesi sia dal punto di vista linguistico che antropologico. E ha portato l’idea oltre, dal discorso teologico a quello politico.

Ha posto una domanda che nessuno si poneva. Un re (cioè una figura di comando con potere assoluto) è necessario per il buon funzionamento di uno Stato?  Prima offre, poi elimina l’idea prevalente che la posizione del monarca sia analoga alla posizione di Dio nel mondo, una figura che unifica il popolo, che fornisce continuità, il cui ruolo è quello di concentrare e sostenere il potere, anche se non di usarlo effettivamente.

Scrive che la monarchia non è necessaria. Sebbene il testo biblico mostri che Dio riconosce che il popolo potrebbe desiderare di avere un monarca come tutte le altre persone che lo circondano, Dio non sembra particolarmente entusiasta dell’idea, anzi sembra che Dio permetta che ciò avvenga SOLO come una sorta di ponte verso una società futura che funzionerà in modo molto diverso, con ogni persona responsabile della comunità. Per Abravanel, la monarchia nasce come una risposta alle ansie dell’opinione pubblica riguardo alla leadership. E parte della sua argomentazione si basa proprio su Parashat Shofetim. Il testo, infatti, sottolinea gli interessanti limiti posti a ciò che il monarca potrà fare e avere. Leggiamo:  “[Il re] non terrà molti cavalli e non rimanderà gente in Egitto per aumentare i suoi cavalli, poiché יהוה ti ha avvertito: “Non devi più tornare per quella strada”. Non avrà molte mogli, perché il suo cuore non si smarrisca, e non accumulerà argento e oro a dismisura.  Quando sarà seduto sul suo trono reale, farà scrivere per lui una copia di questo Insegnamento su un rotolo dai sacerdoti levitici. Che rimanga con lui e che lo legga per tutta la vita, affinché impari a riverire il suo Dio יהוה, a osservare fedelmente ogni parola di questo Insegnamento e queste leggi. Così non si comporterà in modo altezzoso con i suoi simili e non devierà dall’Insegnamento a destra o a sinistra, affinché egli e la sua discendenza possano regnare a lungo in mezzo a Israele. (Deut. 17:16-20)

È chiaro che Mosè, nei suoi ultimi giorni di vita, nel tentativo di inculcare valori per costruire e tenere insieme la società israelita, ha anche una visione un po’ strana della monarchia. E cerca di limitare il potere, l’edonismo e l’interesse personale che possono facilmente svilupparsi in questo ruolo.

Don Yitzchak Abravanel non solo argomenta in modo persuasivo contro qualsiasi mandato biblico per una monarchia, ma anche contro qualsiasi mandato per questo tipo di leadership a vita, ereditata o acquisita con altri mezzi. Sostiene che non solo un monarca non è necessario, ma che è una forma di leadership potenzialmente dannosa. E nel suo potente commento offre un altro modello di leadership che, a suo avviso, sarebbe molto migliore: un governo formato da un gruppo di persone, scelte per un breve periodo di tempo, che si riuniscano per prendere le decisioni necessarie al benessere della società e dello Stato. Scrive: “Non è impossibile che una nazione abbia molti leader che si riuniscono, si uniscono e raggiungono un consenso e possono così governare e amministrare la giustizia. . . . La ragione suggerisce che … tra l’uno e i molti, i molti dovrebbero essere ascoltati”.

               Ora don Yitzchak aveva visto da vicino la monarchia assoluta e ne comprendeva i pericolosi difetti. Arrivando in Italia, vide anche le repubbliche di Firenze e Venezia, che operavano al di fuori dell’onnipotente controllo papale e che, secondo lui, avevano una serie di pesi e contrappesi che consentivano un buon governo. Non c’è quindi da stupirsi che egli avesse una forte opinione su come si dovesse formare la leadership e su come fosse necessario comprendere costantemente le esigenze della comunità per fornire un governo appropriato.

               Nei Nevi’im, la seconda sezione della Bibbia ebraica, viene sviluppato un ulteriore modello di leadership. C’è, per volere del popolo (e con una falsa partenza con la regalità di Saul), una monarchia ereditaria che discende da Davide. Già dai tempi di Mosè abbiamo un sacerdozio ereditario, della tribù di Levi, con i sommi sacerdoti che discendono dalla linea di Aronne. Alla fine del Deuteronomio, come leggiamo oggi, c’è un sistema che non è ereditario, ma sembra essere basato sulla conoscenza, sul giudizio e sulla reputazione etica dei suoi partecipanti – i Giudici. Questo sistema affonda le sue radici nel suocero di Mosè, Jethro, che consiglia a Mosè di istituire un sistema di tribunali in modo che la giustizia non venga mai ritardata. E naturalmente abbiamo anche gli individui che sfidano tutto e tutti – i profeti – chiamati a dire la loro verità al potere. I profeti sono individui che non provengono da nessun sistema, classe o famiglia e che non hanno un background comune. Il loro ruolo è quello di richiamare gli imperativi morali ed etici quando questi vengono ignorati, ricordando al popolo la continua vigilanza di Dio sul popolo d’Israele, anche quando Dio può sembrare molto distante.

               Fin dall’inizio l’ebraismo insegna che una buona leadership deve provenire da tutti gli aspetti della società che lavorano insieme, ciascuno portando i propri punti di vista e le proprie priorità.  Il modello prevede una certa stabilità e una certa interruzione, una certa continuità e un’evoluzione o addirittura una rivoluzione. La leadership non è un attributo assoluto – come scoprì anche Mosè – e ci saranno sempre persone che sfideranno la società.

Il Talmud (Shevuot 39a) ci dice che “Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh”, cioè “tutto Israele è responsabile l’uno dell’altro”. L’idea della responsabilità comunitaria e del fatto che ognuno di noi sia in relazione con gli altri è fondamentale per la nostra società.  Il brano prosegue ricordandoci che se vediamo un’altra persona che sta per commettere un peccato dobbiamo intervenire per avvertirla e, se necessario, per fermarla. Non ci è permesso tacere quando vediamo un’ingiustizia. Il punto è sempre che la responsabilità della nostra società non ricade su un piccolo numero di funzionari – anche se sono stati eletti o nominati per ricoprire ruoli con la supervisione o lo status di governare. La responsabilità della nostra società è di tutti noi. Ognuno di noi deve fare un passo avanti verso la leadership.

A breve celebreremo gli Yamim Noraim, le feste di Rosh Hashanah e Yom Kippur, tradizionalmente i grandi giorni del Giudizio in cui ci prendiamo il tempo per guardare nelle nostre anime ed esaminare come stiamo vivendo le nostre vite, e speriamo di tornare alle vie della rettitudine – Tzedek.  Il linguaggio della liturgia ci ricorda che Dio si accorge di noi, si accorge di come viviamo la nostra vita, si accorge del bene e del male che facciamo. Il fatto di pregare in comunità, di confessare insieme in prima persona plurale un elenco di misfatti in ordine alfabetico, ci aiuta ad affrontare il nostro comportamento e incoraggia gli altri a fare lo stesso. Ci viene ricordata – ripetutamente – la fragilità delle nostre vite, la nostra impermanenza, la nostra mortalità. E ci viene ricordato – ripetutamente – che non siamo soli.

A volte si ha l’impressione – e in queste ultime settimane e mesi l’impressione è stata fortissima – che Dio non si sia accorto del nostro dolore, che le nostre leadership ci abbiano deluso, che non ci sia rettitudine né giustizia nel mondo.

               Scrivo questo sermone nel giorno in cui i corpi di sei ostaggi – giovani che erano vivi a Gaza – sono stati riportati in Israele per la sepoltura. Il giorno in cui il dolore all’interno del mondo ebraico è così estremo che si riesce a malapena a respirare. Dov’è Dio? Dove sono i nostri leader? Dov’è la rettitudine?

               Un collega mi ricorda che Dio vede ancora, che Dio si accorge e mantiene saldi i valori della vita, della pace e della convivenza tra gli esseri umani. E che il nostro ruolo è quello di manifestare questi valori e di portarli nel mondo. “Tzedek Tzedek tirdof” – Non smettere mai di perseguire la rettitudine, qualunque siano le circostanze, qualunque sia il contesto difficile.

             

The Haggadah is a Book of Hope

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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