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

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

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 Bereishit 2024

Posted on by
Reply

Il testo italiano segue il testo inglese

Torah begins with a famous phrase “Bereishit bara Elohim”, which we usually mistranslate as  “In the beginning God created…” 

Why “mistranslate”? – Because the very first word is does not lend itself to being easily understood.

If Torah had wanted to begin at the very beginning, it would have used the Hebrew word “behat’chila  “ בהתחלה  -which we can translate as “in the beginning”.  Or maybe “בראשונה ברא

Which would at least keep within it the idea of “rosh” – a root more commonly understood as a “head” – both literally and figuratively – it can mean a leader, or something of importance in a hierarchy, the top of something, a direction upwards….

So it is not impossible to translate this opaque word to be – in the beginning – except-

Except we have to ask ourselves – the beginning of what?

God is already present, in existence beyond this “beginning”, already creating what is to become our world, and there is “tohu va’vo’hu” – another opaque phrase, but  one which implies not emptiness but its opposite – a chaos of disorganised matter.

Many commentators note that the Torah does not begin with the first letter of the alphabet as might be expected, but with the second letter.  The Hebrew letter Alef is used to denote the first number (one);  A letter without sound it is written in Torah as a combination of three Hebrew letters (the letter yud both above and below the letter vav written on a diagonal whereby the upper yud represents the unknowable aspects of God, and the lower one represents God’s presence in our world. The vav ( which means a “hook”) connects the two realms. It should be the perfect letter to begin a text about the creation of a new realm of existence.

A clue might come in the fact that the Hebrew letter “Beit” which does begin the text of Torah has the shape of a parenthesis, closing off whatever might have come before from view – not only to the side but above and below also. We can move only away and onwards from that shape; So a beginning of sorts, but with the definite implication that this is not in any way “THE beginning”.

Targum Yerushalmi doesn’t see a “beginning” at all, but reads this text using the idea of “reishit” as “Chochma” – wisdom “בראשית בחוכמא ברא יי:

The Zohar picks this us and tells us that Torah begins with the phrase “With Wisdom God created….” Whereas the Italian rabbi Ovadiah Sforno (died Bologna 1549) comments : “ [it refers to] the beginning of time; this is the first moment which is divisible into shorter periods. There had not been a concept “time” previous to this, there had only been unbroken continuity.”

               We are invited to ask ourselves, “What was created in this first sentence of Torah? And what was subsequently created?”      

We are invited to reflect upon the nature of Time, seeing not a linear progression but rather an “event”, a dislocation of continuity while at the same time a new pattern is forming which can create both time and space, the possibility of something new. 

               We are reminded that before one beginning lies another beginning – indeed rabbinic tradition speaks of God creating and destroying many worlds before this one.  [“Rabbi Judah bar Simon said: it does not say, ‘It was evening,’ but ‘And it was evening.’ Hence we derive that there was a time-system prior to this. Rabbi Abbahu said: This teaches us that God created worlds and destroyed them, saying, ‘This one pleases me; those did not please me.’ Rabbi Pinhas said, Rabbi Abbahu derives this from the verse, ‘And God saw all that God had made, and behold it was very good,’ as if to say, ‘This one pleases me, those others did not please me.’  (Ber Rabbbah 3:7)

               This is not a text bringing a scientific perspective to our understanding of creation, nor is it speaking literally. It’s value lies in the challenge to us to make sense of our living on this world.  Unlike the King in Alice in Wonderland, who advises the white rabbit to “Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end. Then stop”, the text is saying to us – there is no fixed uni-directional pathway, our existence is complex, there are always possibilities, always choices to be made, always the possibility of starting again, always new ways for us to find as we live out our time on this world.

               While every act we choose to do will, of course, have consequences, there is no fixed or pre-ordained destiny. Every morning we thank God for the return of our soul after sleep, with a line that references the book of Lamentations (3:22-23) speaking of God’s mercy and compassion renewed every morning – from which the rabbis deduced that every morning God renews every person as a new creation – every morning we have the opportunity to start again.

               On the list the rabbis compiled of seven things that were made before the Creation, one of the items is “teshuvah” – turning or returning to God/ to the right way of being. (Pesachim 54a). It is a way of saying that foundational to the creation of human beings is the possibility of change, of reviewing and amending our behaviour, of learning and of applying that learning for the betterment of the world. It is, so to speak, built into our human-ness. We are created with the ability to make changes, to decide ourselves how we will live, to understand the effects and consequences of our behaviours and to act upon that understanding.

               In the liturgy of Kippur, that great day of teshuvah, of repentance and return we have just celebrated, we read the words of Isaiah:

(יז) כִּֽי־הִנְנִ֥י בוֹרֵ֛א שָׁמַ֥יִם חֲדָשִׁ֖ים וָאָ֣רֶץ חֲדָשָׁ֑ה וְלֹ֤א תִזָּכַ֙רְנָה֙ הָרִ֣אשֹׁנ֔וֹת וְלֹ֥א תַעֲלֶ֖ינָה עַל־לֵֽב׃

 For behold! I am creating A new heaven and a new earth; The former things shall not be remembered, They shall never come to mind. (6:17)   We remind each other that our mistakes may not be erased, but they can pass into history, we can do better going forward, we need not be hampered by our past actions if we truly repent them.

               The Irish poet Seamus Heaney wrote “History says, don’t hope /On this side of the grave/

But then, once in a lifetime/The longed-for tidal wave/Of justice can rise up/ And hope and history rhyme.”

               I love what Seamus Heaney describes as the moment “hope and history rhyme”, the moment where what has already happened is met by what we human beings choose to make of it. The pivotal time where our humanity can change the future, where we can hope for something different, and then make that hope real. Where, as he writes, “a tidal wave of justice can rise up” echoing the prophet Amos (5:24) But let justice well up like water / Righteousness like an unfailing stream.  ויגל כמים משפט וצדקה כנחל איתן

               The first words of Torah – whether referencing wisdom or new beginnings – points us to the existence of hope. Hope, not as an aspect of divinity, but of humanity. Hope not as some kind of future messianic expectation, but as here-and-now action. Hope – something we can use in order to create a better world. 

In this shabbat which comes immediately after the Tishri festivals, from the changing of a year to the changing of ourselves, when we have just marked Simchat Torah, with its powerful symbolism of the continuity of Torah at the same time as the new beginning of the reading of Torah, we are most definitely at the point where hope and history meet.  

The past year has felt to many to be one of especial hopelessness. And yet we know, in the words of Rav Nachman of Bratslav:  “Lo tit’ya-esh – Assur l’hit’ya-esh – ‘It is forbidden to despair”.

He also said :  “If you belief it is possible to destroy, then believe it is also possible to repair.”

תַּאַמִיןֹ שֶיְכוֹלִין לְתַּקֵן אִם אַתָּה מֲאַמִין שֶיְכוֹלִין לְקַלְקֵל   

Im Attah ma ’amin she-yekholin lekalkeil ta’amin she-yekholim letakein

He is speaking about hope. Not an abstract or theological hope, but a practical one. Not optimism or wishful thinking, not a fantasy that does not take into account our reality, but a very concrete behaviour.

               The Hebrew word for hope – Tikvah – comes from a root k’v’h kavah meaning to gather together (used in this sidra for the waters that are gathered together in order to reveal the dry land), to bind together by twisting or stretching – from which we also get the image of a cord made of many strands, to expect and to look for a thing which we can focus upon which is not yet here.   The word is designed to demonstrate a collective, who share meaning and who will share action for change.  

               We have been in situations of existential despair many times. In truth the history of the Jewish people is filled with tragedy and violence, fear and instability, bad leadership and a directionless people. The Jerusalem Talmud speaks of the hours after the exodus from Egypt, when Pharoah and his army were riding up behind the people and the waters of the reed sea lay in front of them. The people did not know what to do. They divided into four different groups. One said  “Let’s go into the sea!”  Another said, “Let’s return to Egypt!”  Another said, “Let’s make war on [the Egyptians],” and the fourth said, “Let’s cry out against them!”.  To the group that said, “Let’s go into the sea,” Moses said to them, “Stand and see the liberation that God will work for you today.”  To those who said, “Let’s return to Egypt,” he said, “The Egyptians you see today you will never see again…”  To those who said “Let’s make war with them,” Moses said, “God will fight for you,” and to those who said, “let’s cry out….” he said,  “Hold your peace (be quiet)”  (Jer Talmud on Ex 14:13-14). It is a reminder to us that not only have we experienced such times of terror and trauma before, but also that there are many responses to such times. In the biblical text the next verse has God say to Moses  “Why do you cry out to Me? Tell the Israelites to go forward. And you, lift up your rod and hold out your arm over the sea and split it, so that the Israelites may march into the sea on dry ground.” . While the text appears to recount a miracle, look too at the instructions – Go forward, hold out your arm..  We cannot wait for God to act – it is our job to go forward in hope, to take action in hope, to make choices for a better future.

As the theologian Eugene Borowitz wrote, “To hope is to close the gap between our present condition and a more desirable one in the future.”  We come together as a people, bind ourselves to each other and offer each other a possible future that we can work towards creating. And in the words of Elie Wiesel: “Hope is like peace. It is not a gift from God. It is a gift only we can give one another.”             

               This shabbat is also the yahrzeit of Rabbi Regina Jonas, the first woman to be ordained a rabbi in modern times, who challenged the accepted worldview and opened doors into new worlds for the women (and men) who came after her.  I hope that you too will continue to challenge received wisdom, will follow your own heart and your own thoughts in order to best create a community and a world that is better for your being in it.  I have quoted Rav Nachman a lot in this sermon, and I want to end with one more of his sayings. ““The day you were born is the day God decided that the world could not exist without you.” It was a day where multiple new possibilities were born with you, and where each day of your life new possibilities emerge for you. I hope as you go forward in life you can celebrate those possibilities and choose for yourself things that bring you pleasure and meaning, that contribute to the world and make changes as yet undreamed of.

La Torah inizia con una famosa frase “Bereishit bara Elohim”, che di solito traduciamo erroneamente come “In principio Dio creò…”. 

Perché “traduciamo male”? – Perché la prima parola non si presta a essere facilmente compresa.

Se la Torah avesse voluto iniziare dal principio, avrebbe usato la parola ebraica “behat’chila” בהתחלה – che possiamo tradurre come “in principio”.  O forse “בראשונה ברא”.

Che almeno manterrebbe al suo interno l’idea di “rosh” – una radice più comunemente intesa come “testa” – sia in senso letterale che figurato – può significare un leader, o qualcosa di importante in una gerarchia, la cima di qualcosa, una direzione verso l’alto….

Quindi non è impossibile tradurre questa parola opaca con essere – all’inizio – eccetto-.

Ma dobbiamo chiederci: l’inizio di cosa?

Dio è già presente, in esistenza al di là di questo “inizio”, sta già creando quello che diventerà il nostro mondo, e c’è “tohu va’vo’hu” – un’altra frase opaca, ma che implica non il vuoto ma il suo opposto – un caos di materia disorganizzata.

Molti commentatori notano che la Torah non inizia con la prima lettera dell’alfabeto, come ci si potrebbe aspettare, ma con la seconda.  La lettera ebraica Alef è usata per indicare il primo numero (uno); una lettera senza suono che nella Torah è scritta come una combinazione di tre lettere ebraiche (la lettera yud sia sopra che sotto la lettera vav scritta in diagonale, dove la yud superiore rappresenta gli aspetti inconoscibili di Dio e quella inferiore la presenza di Dio nel nostro mondo. La vav (che significa “gancio”) collega i due regni. Dovrebbe essere la lettera perfetta per iniziare un testo sulla creazione di un nuovo regno di esistenza.

Un indizio potrebbe venire dal fatto che la lettera ebraica “Beit”, che inizia il testo della Torah, ha la forma di una parentesi, che chiude alla vista tutto ciò che è venuto prima, non solo di lato, ma anche sopra e sotto. Possiamo muoverci solo lontano e in avanti da quella forma; quindi una sorta di inizio, ma con la precisa implicazione che questo non è in alcun modo “L’inizio”.

Il Targum Yerushalmi non vede affatto un “inizio”, ma legge questo testo usando l’idea di “reishit” come “Chochma” – saggezza “בראשית בחוכמא ברא יי”:

Lo Zohar riprende questa frase e ci dice che la Torah inizia con la frase “Con saggezza Dio creò….”. Mentre il rabbino italiano Ovadiah Sforno (morto a Bologna nel 1549) commenta: “ [si riferisce] all’inizio del tempo; questo è il primo momento che è divisibile in periodi più brevi. Prima di questo non esisteva il concetto di “tempo”, ma solo una continuità ininterrotta”.

               Siamo invitati a chiederci: “Che cosa è stato creato in questa prima frase della Torah? E cosa è stato creato successivamente?”.     

Siamo invitati a riflettere sulla natura del tempo, vedendo non una progressione lineare ma piuttosto un “evento”, una dislocazione della continuità, mentre allo stesso tempo si sta formando un nuovo modello che può creare sia il tempo che lo spazio, la possibilità di qualcosa di nuovo. 

               Ci viene ricordato che prima di un inizio c’è un altro inizio – infatti la tradizione rabbinica parla di Dio che crea e distrugge molti mondi prima di questo.  [Rabbi Judah bar Simon disse: “Non si dice: ‘Era sera’, ma ‘E fu sera’. Da ciò si deduce che c’era un sistema temporale precedente a questo. Rabbi Abbahu disse: Questo ci insegna che Dio ha creato i mondi e li ha distrutti, dicendo: “Questo mi piace; quelli non mi sono piaciuti”. Rabbi Pinhas disse: “Rabbi Abbahu deriva questo dal versetto: ‘E Dio vide tutto ciò che Dio aveva fatto, ed ecco che era molto buono’, come a dire: ‘Questo mi piace, gli altri non mi sono piaciuti’” (Ber Rabbbah 3:7).

               Questo non è un testo che porta una prospettiva scientifica alla nostra comprensione della creazione, né parla in senso letterale. Il suo valore risiede nella sfida a dare un senso al nostro vivere su questo mondo.  A differenza del re di Alice nel Paese delle Meraviglie, che consiglia al coniglio bianco di “Cominciare dall’inizio e andare avanti finché non si arriva alla fine. Allora fermati”, il testo ci sta dicendo che non esiste un percorso fisso e unidirezionale, che la nostra esistenza è complessa, che ci sono sempre possibilità, sempre scelte da fare, sempre la possibilità di ricominciare, sempre nuove strade da trovare mentre viviamo il nostro tempo su questo mondo.

               Sebbene ogni atto che scegliamo di compiere avrà, ovviamente, delle conseguenze, non esiste un destino fisso o preordinato. Ogni mattina ringraziamo Dio per il ritorno della nostra anima dopo il sonno, con un verso che fa riferimento al libro delle Lamentazioni (3:22-23) che parla della misericordia e della compassione di Dio che si rinnovano ogni mattina – da cui i rabbini hanno dedotto che ogni mattina Dio rinnova ogni persona come una nuova creazione – ogni mattina abbiamo l’opportunità di ricominciare.

                              Nell’elenco che i rabbini hanno compilato delle sette cose che sono state fatte prima della Creazione, una delle voci è la “teshuvah”, cioè il ritorno a Dio/al giusto modo di essere. (Pesachim 54a). È un modo per dire che alla base della creazione degli esseri umani c’è la possibilità di cambiare, di rivedere e modificare il nostro comportamento, di imparare e di applicare tale apprendimento per migliorare il mondo. È, per così dire, incorporata nella nostra umanità. Siamo stati creati con la capacità di apportare cambiamenti, di decidere noi stessi come vivere, di comprendere gli effetti e le conseguenze dei nostri comportamenti e di agire in base a tale comprensione.

               Nella liturgia del Kippur, il grande giorno di teshuvah, di pentimento e di ritorno che abbiamo appena celebrato, leggiamo le parole di Isaia:

(יז) כִּֽי-הִנְנִ֥י בוֹרֵ֛א שָׁמַ֥יִם חֲדָשִׁ֖ים וָאָ֣רֶץ חֲדָשָׁ֑ה וְלֹ֤א תִזָּכַ֙רְנָה֙ הָרִ֣אשֹׁנ֔וֹת וְלֹ֥א תַעֲלֶ֖ינָה עַל-לֵֽב׃

 Perché ecco! Io creo un cielo nuovo e una terra nuova; le cose di prima non saranno ricordate, non torneranno mai più alla mente. (6:17) Ci ricordiamo l’un l’altro che i nostri errori non possono essere cancellati, ma possono passare alla storia, possiamo fare meglio in futuro, non dobbiamo essere ostacolati dalle nostre azioni passate se ci pentiamo veramente.

               Il poeta irlandese Seamus Heaney ha scritto: “La storia dice: non sperare, da questa parte della tomba…”.

Ma poi, una volta nella vita/ L’agognata onda anomala/ Della giustizia può sollevarsi/ E speranza e storia fanno rima”.

               Mi piace ciò che Seamus Heaney descrive come il momento in cui “speranza e storia fanno rima”, il momento in cui ciò che è già accaduto si incontra con ciò che noi esseri umani scegliamo di farne. Il momento cruciale in cui la nostra umanità può cambiare il futuro, in cui possiamo sperare in qualcosa di diverso e poi rendere reale quella speranza. Dove, come scrive l’autore, “può sorgere un’onda anomala di giustizia”, riecheggiando il profeta Amos (5,24) Ma la giustizia salga come l’acqua / la giustizia come un torrente ininterrotto.  ויגל כמים משפט וצדקה כנחל איתן

               Le prime parole della Torah – che si riferiscano alla saggezza o a nuovi inizi – ci indicano l’esistenza della speranza. La speranza, non come aspetto della divinità, ma dell’umanità. La speranza non come una sorta di aspettativa messianica futura, ma come azione qui e ora. La speranza – qualcosa che possiamo usare per creare un mondo migliore. 

In questo shabbat che viene subito dopo le feste di Tishri, dal cambiamento di un anno al cambiamento di noi stessi, quando abbiamo appena segnato Simchat Torah, con il suo potente simbolismo della continuità della Torah allo stesso tempo del nuovo inizio della lettura della Torah, siamo sicuramente al punto in cui speranza e storia si incontrano. 

L’anno passato è sembrato a molti particolarmente disperato. Eppure sappiamo, con le parole di Rav Nachman di Bratslav: “Lo tit’ya-esh – Assur l’hit’ya-esh – ‘È vietato disperare’”.

Egli disse anche: “Se credi che sia possibile distruggere, allora credi che sia anche possibile riparare”.    אִם אַתָּה מֲאַמִין שֶיְכוֹלִין לְקַלְקֵל תַּאַמִיןֹ שֶיְכוֹלִין לְתַּקֵן    Im Attah ma ‘amin she-yekholin lekalkeil ta’amin she-yekholim letakein

Parla di speranza. Non una speranza astratta o teologica, ma pratica. Non un ottimismo o un pio desiderio, non una fantasia che non tiene conto della nostra realtà, ma un comportamento molto concreto.

               La parola ebraica che indica la speranza – Tikvah – deriva da una radice k’v’h kavah che significa raccogliere (usata in questa sidra per le acque che si raccolgono per rivelare la terra asciutta), legare insieme attorcigliando o tendendo – da cui si ricava anche l’immagine di una corda fatta di molti fili -, aspettarsi e cercare una cosa su cui concentrarsi che ancora non c’è.   La parola è pensata per indicare un collettivo che condivide un significato e che condividerà l’azione per il cambiamento.  

               Ci siamo trovati molte volte in situazioni di disperazione esistenziale. In verità la storia del popolo ebraico è costellata di tragedie e violenze, paura e instabilità, leadership sbagliata e un popolo senza direzione. Il Talmud di Gerusalemme parla delle ore successive all’esodo dall’Egitto, quando il Faraone e il suo esercito cavalcavano alle spalle del popolo e le acque del canneto si stendevano davanti a loro. Il popolo non sapeva cosa fare. Si divisero in quattro gruppi diversi. Uno disse: “Andiamo in mare!”.  Un altro disse: “Torniamo in Egitto!”.  Un altro disse: “Facciamo guerra [agli Egiziani]”, e il quarto disse: “Gridiamo contro di loro!”.  Al gruppo che disse: “Andiamo nel mare”, Mosè disse: “Restate in piedi e vedrete la liberazione che Dio opererà per voi oggi”.  A quelli che dissero: “Torniamo in Egitto”, disse: “Gli egiziani che vedete oggi non li vedrete mai più…”.  A quelli che dicevano: “Facciamo la guerra con loro”, Mosè disse: “Dio combatterà per voi”, e a quelli che dicevano: “Gridiamo ….”, disse: “State tranquilli” (Jer Talmud su Es 14,13-14). Ci ricorda che non solo abbiamo già vissuto momenti di terrore e trauma, ma anche che ci sono molte risposte a questi momenti. Nel testo biblico, il versetto successivo dice a Mosè: “Perché gridi verso di me? Di’ agli Israeliti di andare avanti. E tu, alza la tua verga e stendi il tuo braccio sul mare e dividilo, così che gli Israeliti possano marciare nel mare su terra asciutta”. . Sebbene il testo sembri raccontare un miracolo, guardate anche le istruzioni: “Vai avanti, tendi il tuo braccio”.  Non possiamo aspettare che Dio agisca: è nostro compito andare avanti nella speranza, agire nella speranza, fare scelte per un futuro migliore.

Come ha scritto il teologo Eugene Borowitz, “sperare è colmare il divario tra la nostra condizione attuale e una più desiderabile in futuro”.  Ci riuniamo come popolo, ci leghiamo gli uni agli altri e ci offriamo un futuro possibile che possiamo lavorare per creare. Per dirla con le parole di Elie Wiesel: “La speranza è come la pace. Non è un dono di Dio. È un dono che solo noi possiamo farci l’un l’altro”.

                              Questo shabbat è anche lo yahrzeit di Rabbi Regina Jonas, la prima donna a essere ordinata rabbino nei tempi moderni, che ha sfidato la visione del mondo accettata e ha aperto le porte di nuovi mondi alle donne (e agli uomini) che sono venuti dopo di lei.  Spero che anche voi continuiate a sfidare la saggezza ricevuta, che seguiate il vostro cuore e i vostri pensieri per creare al meglio una comunità e un mondo migliori per il fatto di esserci.  Ho citato spesso Rav Nachman in questo sermone e voglio concludere con un altro dei suoi detti. “Il giorno in cui sei nato è il giorno in cui Dio ha deciso che il mondo non poteva esistere senza di te”. È stato un giorno in cui con voi sono nate molteplici nuove possibilità e in cui ogni giorno della vostra vita emergono nuove possibilità per voi. Spero che, andando avanti nella vita, possiate celebrare queste possibilità e scegliere per voi stessi cose che vi portino piacere e significato, che contribuiscano al mondo e apportino cambiamenti non ancora sognati.

Sermon Shofetim 2024

Posted on by
Reply

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.

             

Naso – a sermon about counting and about what counts.

Posted on by
Reply

Naso Sermon Milan 2024

There is a long standing minhag that we never count Jews.  When checking for a minyan, the tradition is to say “not one, not two, not three.. etc”.  Or else to use a verse with ten words in it, most usually:

 Hoshiah et amecha u’varech et nachalatecha ur’em venas’em ad ha’olam.”   Save Your people, and bless Your inheritan​ce; tend them, and carry them for ever.  (Ps28:9   Kitzur Shulchan Aruch 15:3).

Yet the fourth book of Moses, known to us as “Bemidbar” – “In the Wilderness”, may originally have been called “Humash Hapikudim” – the book of counting (Mishnah Menachot 4:3), and only later did Jewish tradition prioritise the story of travelling from Mt Sinai to the very edge of the promised land and name the book for the place where the people lived for 40 years till the generation of slaves had died out.

 Sefer Bemidbar opens not long after the exodus from Egypt. The Book of Leviticus is in the nature of an excursus – a manual for the establishment and practises of the Aaronide priesthood – so just a year or so after escaping from slavery Moses is told to count the number of fighting-aged men, from every tribe except the Levites. As well as counting for army service, the various tribes were given detailed instructions as to where they would be placed each time the people set up camp.   Following this census for military purposes, here in Parashat Naso there is the counting and detailing of the various different groups within the Levitical tribe, in order to organise the priestly duties and the ongoing work of the Tabernacle.

With two censuses in quick succession, it is no wonder that the Book is known outside the Jewish world either from its Greek translation “Arithmoi”, or its Latin name “Liber Numeri” – “the Book of Numbers”. The sheer amount of numbers and calculation in the first few chapters alone feels overwhelming.

Among the plethora of numbers, and the organisation of the people into numbers who might fight and numbers who might perform the ritual service,  there is a very odd phrase in the text that call out for our attention.

While the counting that is going on in such detail and with such care, we are alerted to the notion that this enumeration is not “normal” counting, in that none of the words we would ordinarily use for such an activity are used – God could have suggested for Moses to limnot, lifkod, lispor,  – all of them common words in bible for the act of calculating amounts.

Instead, What God instructs Moses to do is “Naso et rosh” – “lift up the head of…..”

Clearly, in the practical acts of calculating the population for particular roles, there is more than merely counting that is going on. The text describes the people who are being counted as being  counted in their groups – tribal groups, ancestral sub-groups. Yet at the same time, each one must be individually considered. Each one’s head must be lifted, their individual faces seen. They must be noticed.

The words “Lifting the head “ are used a few times in the census taking in the books of Exodus and Numbers, but it is also used in the bible for a number of different reasons – it is used to denote a restoration or recognition of status, as in its earliest use when Joseph tells Pharaoh’s cup bearer that his dream means that Pharoah will reinstate him.

 Other passages use the absence of lifting of the head as describing a form of submission  or that the lifting of their heads by enemies is an act of war (See psalm 83:3; Job 10:15; 1 Chron 10:8)

What ties these various passages throughout Tanach together is that lifting the head is about asserting oneself, about being seen. Those being counted might be part of a larger group – a small cog in a larger machine – but the words make clear that this does not stop the person also being an individual human being.

So in a census to assess the military capability of the people, or to assign the various roles of the priesthood – given that both activities need to maintain clear hierarchies and boundaries, and both operate on the margins of life and death – it seems particularly out of place to use the language of individuality.  Yet here is the biblical text calling out to us  as if to say– “each one of you that I am counting is a particular and unique human being”.

We are also aware that God has already warned Moses that counting the people is dangerous and could bring about a plague. So in the earlier census, each man of fighting age was told to bring a half-shekel coin as “an atonement offering for his life”. A half shekel, no more and no less, so that the object of the counting  was the coin, and not the human being. (ki tissa Ex 30:12)

When King David will carry out a census for military purposes – against the advice of Yoav – a plague does indeed break out with the loss of seventy thousand lives. (2Sam 24)

 Counting Jews is dangerous-  it may take away their lives.

Why should there be such a strong taboo against counting Jews? Right from the early promises to Abraham God has said his descendants would be more than the stars in the sky and the sand in the desert – too numerous to count.   And why should counting be done at one extreme by the proxy of a coin, and at the other by lifting the head of each and every individual and noticing them?

Tradition gives us many answers, always a clue to the reality that we have no certain answer.

The Talmud (Yoma 22a) The Gemara  cites the opinion of R’ Elazar that whoever counts the people of Israel transgresses a negative commandment, as it is stated: “The Number of the Children of Israel will be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted”. And Rav Nachman Bar Yitzchak writes, that he transgresses two negative commandments, for it is stated in that verse “which cannot be (1) measured or (2) counted”. – two different (and more normal) verbs.

The fourteenth century Spanish Rabbi Bachya ben Asher ibn Halawa (Rabbenu Bachya) had an interesting insight into this question. He points out that each person, while being individually counted, is separated from the community. This very separation is dangerous, making them vulnerable and alone. For him it was only as an integral part of the community that a Jew could be safe.

Ovadia Sforno, the fifteenth century Italian commentator also had a view – that the lifting of each head for the purpose of counting for either military or other obligation would mean that we would be noticing not only the individuals, but also by default becoming aware of those who could no longer be counted – those who had died in battle for example. By being counted “in” attention would inevitably be drawn to those not present – something dangerous for morale in wartime.

Using the phrase “lift up the heads of each person” when counting the numbers for communal purposes sets up a sort of paradox.  Counting people means both absorbing them into the greater whole and therefore losing their individuality,  while lifting their heads to count them means the precise opposite – valuing the uniqueness of each human being who is being counted.  But it is a paradox that shapes our understanding of being in community.  We are each of us valuable and unique individuals who have a particular and necessary role in the world:  in the words of Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav “The day we are born was the day God decided the universe could no longer exist without us”. At the same time, we must never separate ourselves from the community, for in doing so we lose our purpose and we diminish not only our own selves but also the power and safety of our community. 

We, the Jewish people, have been in a period of counting the omer, the 50 days between Pesach and Shavuot, which have just ended. We do not really know the purpose – is it days from Pesach and leaving slavery, or days towards Shavuot and accepting Torah?   But every night we have faithfully recited the blessing and counted off another day, another week.  And this counting has culminated in a festival where once again we replay the formation of our people, the relationship with God that is documented by the giving of Torah.

But in recent days there has been another counting going on, the days since the seventh of September have been days of counting without end. Counting the dead, counting the missing, counting the hostages and waiting for them to come home. We are lifting the heads and seeing the individuals, noting who is present and who is not present. Grimly aware of the void in our communities.

Pictures of the kidnapped and the murdered are being “lifted up” in public,  we have seen empty chairs around seder tables, the very public electronic markers of the increasing number of days of the hostages not coming home.  The images of those who have been forcibly separated from the community are seared into our consciousness. We count the days, we count the deaths, we count the people we cannot see and cannot know their fates. And indeed we are in a time of terrible tragedy.

Every individual caught up in this maelstrom of horror matters. Each of them must be noticed, their individual absolute value observed. No one should become irrelevant, or seen as cannon fodder, or collateral damage for a greater purpose.  Even while people are being counted for going to war, they are deliberately seen not as a number, but as a human being of intrinsic absolute worth. When a community no longer notices the humanity of all its component peoples, then it devalues itself and places itself in danger, just as much as it devalues and endangers the individuals within it.

For many people in Israel and beyond, our calendar is not showing us to be in the month of June, but trapped in the month of September, for many today is the 289th day of September. Trapped in the horror of a pogrom in the Land of Israel and trapped in the horror of a retaliatory war that is endangering the lives of so many people on both sides of the conflict. Both sides are trapped with a leadership that does not seem to recognise the value either of community or of individual human beings.

The bible understands the need for people of fighting age to be identified, and it understands that those same people must be identified not as an anonymous number but as full human beings with gifts and talents, hopes and dreams, relationships and emotions. It is no paradox in truth to see both the community and the individual while assessing strengths. It is the reality of communal responsibility at work.

After all these days of counting, of watching and waiting and reading and heartbreak, I have no words except to know that we must continue to lift up the humanity of everyone involved in this tragedy, to remain connected to them as we count the days, the people, the events. We are living in a human tragedy not a divinely ordained one, and the way through it is to remember the humanity of everyone involved.

Esiste un minhag di lunga data secondo il quale non si contano mai gli ebrei.  Quando si verifica la presenza di un minyan, la tradizione vuole che si dica “non uno, non due, non tre… ecc”.  Oppure di usare un versetto con dieci parole, di solito       

וּרְעֵם וְנַשְּׂאֵם עַד הָעוֹלָם בָרֵךְ אֶת נַחֲלָתֶךָ.  הושִׁיעָה אֶת עַמֶּךָ      Hoshiah et amecha u’varech et nachalatecha ur’em venas’em ad ha’olam”.   Salva il tuo popolo e benedici la tua eredità; curalo e portalo in eterno”.  (Sal 28,9 Kitzur Sh Ar15,3).

Tuttavia, il quarto libro di Mosè, noto come “Bemidbar” – “Nel deserto”, potrebbe essere stato originariamente chiamato “Humash Hapikudim” – il libro del conteggio (Mishnah Menachot 4:3), e solo in seguito la tradizione ebraica ha dato priorità alla storia del viaggio dal Monte Sinai fino ai confini della terra promessa e ha dato al libro il nome del luogo in cui il popolo visse per 40 anni fino all’estinzione della generazione degli schiavi.

 Sefer Bemidbar si apre non molto tempo dopo l’esodo dall’Egitto. Il Libro del Levitico ha la natura di un excursus – un manuale per l’istituzione e le pratiche del sacerdozio aronide – e così, appena un anno dopo la fuga dalla schiavitù, a Mosè viene detto di contare il numero di uomini in età da combattimento, di ogni tribù tranne i Leviti. Oltre al conteggio per il servizio militare, alle varie tribù furono date istruzioni dettagliate su dove sarebbero state collocate ogni volta che il popolo si fosse accampato.   Dopo il censimento a fini militari, in Parashat Naso si procede al conteggio e al dettaglio dei vari gruppi all’interno della tribù levitica, per organizzare i compiti sacerdotali e il lavoro continuo del Tabernacolo.

Con due censimenti in rapida successione, non c’è da stupirsi che il Libro sia conosciuto al di fuori del mondo ebraico con la traduzione greca “Arithmoi” o con il nome latino “Liber Numeri”. L’enorme quantità di numeri e di calcoli nei primi capitoli è già di per sé schiacciante.

Tra la pletora di numeri e l’organizzazione del popolo in numeri che possono combattere e numeri che possono svolgere il servizio rituale, c’è una frase molto strana nel testo che richiama la nostra attenzione.

Mentre il conteggio avviene in modo così dettagliato e accurato, siamo avvertiti del fatto che questo conteggio non è un conteggio “normale”, in quanto non viene usata nessuna delle parole che normalmente utilizzeremmo per un’attività del genere – Dio avrebbe potuto suggerire a Mosè di fare limnot, lifkod, lispor, tutte parole comuni nella Bibbia per l’atto di calcolare le quantità.    Invece, ciò che Dio ordina a Mosè di fare è “Naso et rosh” – “alza la testa di…..”.

È chiaro che negli atti pratici di calcolo della popolazione per determinati ruoli, non si tratta solo di contare. Il testo descrive le persone che vengono contate come se fossero contate nei loro gruppi – gruppi tribali, sottogruppi ancestrali. Allo stesso tempo, però, ognuno deve essere considerato individualmente. Bisogna sollevare la testa di ognuno, vedere i loro volti individuali. Devono essere notati.

Le parole “alzare la testa” sono usate alcune volte nel censimento nei libri dell’Esodo e dei Numeri, ma sono usate anche nella Bibbia per una serie di motivi diversi: sono usate per indicare un ripristino o un riconoscimento di status, come nel suo primo uso quando Giuseppe dice al portatore di coppa del Faraone che il suo sogno significa che il Faraone lo reintegrerà.

 Altri passaggi usano l’assenza di sollevamento della testa per descrivere una forma di sottomissione o che il sollevamento della testa da parte dei nemici è un atto di guerra (cfr. Salmo 83:3; Giobbe 10:15; 1 Cron 10:8).

Ciò che lega questi vari passaggi in tutta Tanach è che alzare la testa significa affermare se stessi, essere visti. Chi viene contato potrebbe far parte di un gruppo più ampio, un piccolo ingranaggio di una macchina più grande, ma le parole chiariscono che questo non impedisce alla persona di essere anche un essere umano individuale.

Quindi, in un censimento per valutare la capacità militare del popolo, o per assegnare i vari ruoli del sacerdozio – dato che entrambe le attività devono mantenere chiare gerarchie e confini, ed entrambe operano ai margini della vita e della morte – sembra particolarmente fuori luogo usare il linguaggio dell’individualità.  Eppure, il testo biblico ci chiama come a dire: “Ciascuno di voi che io conto è un essere umano particolare e unico”.

Sappiamo anche che Dio ha già avvertito Mosè che contare il popolo è pericoloso e potrebbe provocare una pestilenza. Così, nel censimento precedente, a ogni uomo in età da combattimento fu detto di portare una moneta da mezzo siclo come “offerta espiatoria per la sua vita”. Mezzo siclo, né più né meno, in modo che l’oggetto del conteggio fosse la moneta e non l’uomo. (ki tissa Es 30,12)

Quando il re Davide vuole effettuare un censimento a fini militari – contro il consiglio di Yoav – scoppia una pestilenza che provoca la perdita di settantamila vite. (2Sam 24)

               Contare gli ebrei è pericoloso: potrebbe togliere loro la vita.

Perché c’è un tabù così forte contro il conteggio degli ebrei? Fin dalle prime promesse ad Abramo, Dio ha detto che la sua discendenza sarebbe stata più numerosa delle stelle del cielo e della sabbia del deserto: troppo numerosa per essere contata.   E perché il conteggio dovrebbe essere fatto da un lato con la delega di una moneta e dall’altro sollevando la testa di ogni singolo individuo e notandolo?

La tradizione ci dà molte risposte, sempre un indizio della realtà che non abbiamo una risposta certa.      Il Talmud (Yoma 22a) La Gemara cita l’opinione di R’ Elazar secondo cui chi conta il popolo d’Israele trasgredisce un comandamento negativo, come si legge: “Il numero dei figli di Israele sarà come la sabbia del mare, che non si può contare”. E Rav Nachman Bar Yitzchak scrive che egli trasgredisce due comandamenti negativi, poiché in quel versetto si dice “che non può essere (1) misurato o (2) contato”. – due verbi diversi (e più normali).

Il rabbino spagnolo del XIV secolo Bachya ben Asher ibn Halawa (Rabbenu Bachya) ha avuto un’interessante intuizione su questa questione. Egli sottolinea che ogni persona, pur essendo contata individualmente, è separata dalla comunità. Questa stessa separazione è pericolosa e li rende vulnerabili e soli. Per lui un ebreo può essere al sicuro solo in quanto parte integrante della comunità.

Anche Ovadia Sforno, il commentatore italiano del XV secolo, aveva un’opinione: sollevare ogni testa allo scopo di contare per obblighi militari o di altro tipo significava notare non solo i singoli individui, ma anche diventare consapevoli di coloro che non potevano più essere contati, ad esempio coloro che erano morti in battaglia. Essendo contati “in”, l’attenzione verrebbe inevitabilmente attirata da coloro che non sono presenti, cosa pericolosa per il morale in tempo di guerra.

L’uso della frase “alzate le teste di ogni persona” quando si contano i numeri per scopi comunitari crea una sorta di paradosso.  Contare le persone significa assorbirle in un insieme più grande e quindi perdere la loro individualità, mentre alzare le teste per contarle significa esattamente il contrario: valorizzare l’unicità di ogni essere umano che viene contato.  È un paradosso che dà forma alla nostra comprensione dell’essere in comunità.  Ognuno di noi è un individuo prezioso e unico che ha un ruolo particolare e necessario nel mondo: nelle parole di Rabbi Nachman di Bratzlav “Il giorno in cui siamo nati è stato il giorno in cui Dio ha deciso che l’universo non poteva più esistere senza di noi”. Allo stesso tempo, non dobbiamo mai separarci dalla comunità, perché così facendo perdiamo il nostro scopo e diminuiamo non solo il nostro io, ma anche il potere e la sicurezza della nostra comunità. 

Noi, il popolo ebraico, siamo stati in un periodo di conteggio dell’omer, i 50 giorni tra Pesach e Shavuot, che si sono appena conclusi. Non ne conosciamo bene lo scopo: sono i giorni che ci separano da Pesach e dall’abbandono della schiavitù, o i giorni che ci separano da Shavuot e dall’accettazione della Torah?   Ma ogni sera abbiamo recitato fedelmente la benedizione e contato un altro giorno, un’altra settimana.  E questo conteggio è culminato in una festa in cui ancora una volta riviviamo la formazione del nostro popolo, il rapporto con Dio documentato dalla consegna della Torah.

Ma negli ultimi giorni c’è stato un altro conteggio, i giorni dal 7 settembre sono stati giorni di conteggio senza fine. Contare i morti, contare i dispersi, contare gli ostaggi e aspettare che tornino a casa. Alziamo le teste e vediamo gli individui, notando chi è presente e chi no. Siamo tristemente consapevoli del vuoto nelle nostre comunità.

Le immagini dei rapiti e degli assassinati vengono “sollevate” in pubblico, abbiamo visto sedie vuote intorno ai tavoli del seder, i marcatori elettronici molto pubblici del numero crescente di giorni in cui gli ostaggi non tornano a casa.  Le immagini di coloro che sono stati separati con la forza dalla comunità sono impresse nella nostra coscienza. Contiamo i giorni, contiamo i morti, contiamo le persone che non possiamo vedere e non possiamo conoscere il loro destino. E in effetti ci troviamo in un momento di terribile tragedia.

Ogni individuo coinvolto in questo vortice di orrore è importante. Ognuno di loro deve essere notato, il suo valore assoluto individuale deve essere osservato. Nessuno deve diventare irrilevante, o essere visto come carne da cannone, o danno collaterale per uno scopo più grande.  Anche quando le persone vengono contate per andare in guerra, vengono deliberatamente viste non come un numero, ma come un essere umano di valore assoluto intrinseco. Quando una comunità non si accorge più dell’umanità di tutti i popoli che la compongono, allora svaluta se stessa e si mette in pericolo, così come svaluta e mette in pericolo gli individui al suo interno.

Per molte persone in Israele e non solo, il nostro calendario non ci mostra nel mese di giugno, ma intrappolati nel mese di settembre, per molti oggi è il 289° giorno di settembre. Intrappolati nell’orrore di un pogrom in Terra d’Israele e nell’orrore di una guerra di rappresaglia che sta mettendo in pericolo la vita di tante persone da entrambe le parti del conflitto. Entrambe le parti sono intrappolate da una leadership che non sembra riconoscere il valore della comunità o dei singoli esseri umani.

La Bibbia comprende la necessità di identificare le persone in età da combattimento, e comprende che quelle stesse persone devono essere identificate non come un numero anonimo, ma come esseri umani a pieno titolo, con doni e talenti, speranze e sogni, relazioni ed emozioni. Non è un paradosso in verità vedere sia la comunità che l’individuo mentre si valutano i punti di forza. È la realtà della responsabilità comunitaria al lavoro.

Dopo tutti questi giorni di conteggio, di osservazione, di attesa, di lettura e di strazio, non ho parole se non quelle di sapere che dobbiamo continuare a sollevare l’umanità di tutti coloro che sono coinvolti in questa tragedia, a rimanere in contatto con loro mentre contiamo i giorni, le persone, gli eventi. Stiamo vivendo una tragedia umana, non divinamente ordinata, e il modo per superarla è ricordare l’umanità di tutte le persone coinvolte.

The Haggadah is a Book of Hope

Posted on by
1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on by
Reply

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on by
Reply

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…

Posted on by
Reply

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

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

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

What is Reform Judaism? An ongoing conversation…..

Posted on by
Reply

paper written for a rabbinic conference on reforming religion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Always Fly in the same direction as the birds around you

Keep up with the others     

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

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

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

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

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

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

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