Tag Archives: Book of Life

Sermon Kol Nidrei 2022

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Kol HaNedarim Sermon 2022 Lev Chadash

The 25 hours of Yom haKippurim are traditionally to be lived from the perspective of as if we are already dead – without food or drink, washing or any social entertainment. While Judaism has no definitive teaching as to what happens after death, there are many rabbinic drashot – sermons or literary constructions – which seek to understand the nature of the soul and its journey from before we arrive in this world to what happens after we leave it

One midrash (Tanchuma : Pekudei 3) has a series of stories about the journey of every soul. It begins by reminding us that every human soul is a world in miniature. It tells us that every soul, from Adam to the end of the world, was formed during the six days of creation, and that all of them were present in the Garden of Eden and at the time of the giving of the Torah.

With every potential new person, God informs the angel in charge of conception, whose name is Lailah and says to her: Know that on this night a person will be formed…. She would take [the potential embryo] into her hand, bring it before God and say: …” I have done all that You have commanded. Here is the drop [of liquid that will become the embryo], what have You decreed concerning it?” And God would decree concerning the embryo – what its end would be, whether male or female, weak or strong, poor or rich, short or tall, ugly or handsome, heavy or thin, humble or haughty. God decreed concerning everything that would happen to it except whether it would be righteous or wicked. That choice alone God left to the individual, as it is said: See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil (Deut. 30:15).

The midrash continues – while in the mother’s womb the angel would take the soul and show it everything – where it would live and where it would be buried after death; the merit of the righteous souls after death who would live in a beautiful place in the world-to-come, and the distress of the souls assigned to the netherworld because they had not lived righteous lives. The angel would teach the soul the whole of Torah, would warn them about the events that would happen in its sojourn on earth. “And when at last the time arrives for its entrance into the world, the angel comes to them and says: “At a certain hour your time will come to enter the light of the world.” The soul pleads with the angel, saying: “Why do you wish me to go out into the light of the world?” The angel replies: “You know, my child, that you were formed against your will; against your will you will be born; against your will you will die; and against your will you are destined to give an accounting before the King of Kings, the Holy One, blessed be God”. Nevertheless, the soul remained unwilling to leave, and so the angel struck them with the candle that was burning at their head. Thereupon the soul went out into the light of the world, though against their will. Upon going out the infant forgot everything they had witnessed and everything they knew. Why does the child cry out on leaving their mother’s womb? Because the place wherein they had been at rest and at ease was irretrievable and because of the condition of the world into which they must enter. “

I think that we have probably all wondered at some point if, what and where we were before we were born, and more frequently we imagine what might happen after we die. This midrash assumes that we each of us existed always – and will exist always – and that the period that we inhabit the earth is an interlude in which our future will be decided. I am uneasy with the notion that up until birth everything is “bashert” – foretold and “meant to be”. Predestination sits uncomfortably with the notion of free will, and so the rabbinic tradition nuances the idea, declaring that we may be subject to the will of God in our material life, but we are completely free in our spiritual life. This view is most famously found in the teaching of R. Akiva (Avot 3:15): “All is foreseen, yet freedom is granted”; and in the even more powerful dictum of R. Ḥanina, “Everything is in the power of God, except the fear of God” (Ber. 33b; Niddah 16b), and which Midrash Tanchuma (thought to be composed in Babylon, Italy and Israel between 500 and 800 CE) underlines in the passage I quoted earlier.

The Talmud teaches “Everything is in the hands of God except the fear of God” and Midrash Tanchuma tells us that “God decrees concerning everything that would happen to the newly born person except whether they would be righteous or wicked. That choice alone God left to the individual, as it is said: See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil (Deut. 30:15).

The tradition is trying to address the age-old questions –

Is God interested in us?

Does God have a plan for us?

Does God intervene in history at all?

What is our life about?

Is our life transient or eternal in some way?

Why is life unfair?

 It was a controversy that divided the various sects in ancient Judaism around the first century BCE and the first century CE– the Pharisees – forerunners of Rabbinic Judaism – accepted the idea of the immortality of the soul and they also had some notion – deliberately vague – of reward and punishment after death, while the Sadducees who opposed much of Pharisaic Judaism, did not. The Pharisees developed the role of malachim – what we would call angels – whose activities allowed God to play a role in human affairs, whereas the Sadducees completely rejected both angels and the idea of any divine interference in human affairs, teaching that free will was absolute and unchallengeable. And the Essenes and the Dead Sea Scrolls sect appear to have believed in predestination with no room for any freewill whatsoever.  This, I think, puts into context the rabbinic teachings in Talmud and Midrash – they attempt to steer a middle way between two extremes, a technique the ancient rabbis were well practised at but which sadly seems to have attenuated in modern times.

Their middle way – that everything is foreseen yet free will is given, that everything is in God’s hands except for our own relationship with God, that it is up to each of us to decide to behave righteously or not – firmly point to the rabbinic understanding that in all ethical and spiritual matters we are the authors of our own lives. No one else is responsible for these life choices, no one else is responsible for the people we choose to become, or for the decisions we make about how we live our lives.

The word “author”, “authority” and “authenticity” are linked semantically and ideologically at the deepest levels. The author is one who creates, who brings something about, the only one who has the authority to create and to be themselves, their true authentic selves.

The liturgy of this time references the Talmud which tells us that  “Three books are opened in heaven on Rosh Ha-Shanah, one for the thoroughly wicked, one for the thoroughly righteous, and one for the intermediate. The thoroughly righteous are forthwith inscribed in the Book of Life, the thoroughly wicked in the Book of Death, while the fate of the intermediate is suspended until the Day of Atonement” (RH 16b).  The Book of Life in particular has resonance in the service. Three of the four insertions into the Amidah prayer reference us asking to be written into the Book of Life.

The Sefer HaHayim – usually translated as “The Book of Life” should really be understood as “The Book of Living”. Not an absolute inscription to avoid punishment for this year, but really a request for us to live our true authentic lives in the coming year. To take responsibility, to become the authors of our own story, not pallid replicas or what might matter, or living in the way we think others think we should be living, but to take our authority seriously and to make something special and individual in our lives, allowing ourselves to unfold and to give voice to our deepest and truest selves.

The stories in midrash Tanchuma remind us that each of us is as valuable, as important, as cherished as anyone else. Our souls were all present in the Garden of Eden,  our souls were all present at Sinai, our souls each encompass a whole unique world. We dwell in eternity, and we have a few passing years while on this earth to understand and to express ourselves, to let our complexity and our uniqueness blossom, to become our true and unafraid selves. God gives this gift to us and asks us to live, to be the authors of our lives, to fulfil our purpose in creation.

This night of Kol HaNedarim and the hours that will follow it are an invitation to us. Leaf through the pages of our personal Sefer HaHayim and ask ourselves – is this the way we want to be living our lives? Is this the story of our true authentic selves?

We are the authors of the book our lives. And a new page is ready to be written. What will you write?

Kol HaNedarim – Sermone 2022 Lev Chadash

Di rav Sylvia Rothschild

          Le venticinque ore di Yom HaKippurim, tradizionalmente, devono essere vissute in una prospettiva che richiami l’idea di essere come già morti, senza cibo o bevande, senza lavarsi e senza qualsiasi intrattenimento sociale. Sebbene l’ebraismo non abbia un insegnamento definitivo su ciò che accade dopo la morte, ci sono molte derashot rabbiniche – sermoni o costruzioni letterarie – che cercano di comprendere la natura dell’anima e il suo viaggio, da prima dell’arrivo in questo mondo a ciò che accade dopo averlo lasciato.

          Un midrash (Tanchuma: Pekudei 3) ha una serie di storie sul viaggio di ogni anima. Inizia ricordandoci che ogni anima umana è un mondo in miniatura. Ci dice che ogni anima, da Adamo alla fine del mondo, si è formata durante i sei giorni della creazione, e che tutte erano presenti nel Giardino dell’Eden e al momento del dono della Torà.

          Per ogni nuova potenziale persona, Dio informa Laila, l’angelo incaricato del concepimento, dicendo: “sappi che in questa notte si formerà una persona…” [l’angelo] prende [l’embrione potenziale] nella sua mano, lo porta davanti a Dio e dice: … ”Ho fatto tutto ciò che hai comandato. Ecco la goccia [di liquido che diventerà l’embrione], cosa hai decretato a riguardo?” E Dio decreta sull’embrione, quale sarà la sua fine, se maschio o femmina, debole o forte, povero o ricco, basso o alto, brutto o bello, pesante o magro, umile o altezzoso. Dio decreta tutto ciò che gli accadrà, tranne l’essere giusto o malvagio. Quella scelta soltanto è lasciata da Dio all’individuo, come è detto: Vedi, io ho posto davanti a te oggi la vita e il bene, e la morte e il male. (Dt 30,15).

          Il midrash continua: mentre sta nel grembo materno l’angelo prende l’anima e le mostra tutto. Dove andrà a vivere e dove sarà sepolta dopo la morte; il merito delle anime rette che dopo la morte vivranno in un posto bellissimo, nel mondo a venire, e l’angoscia delle anime assegnate agli inferi perché non hanno vissuto vite rette. L’angelo insegna all’anima l’intera Torà, avvertendola degli eventi che accadranno durante il suo soggiorno sulla terra. “E quando finalmente giunge l’ora della sua entrata nel mondo, l’angelo si avvicina e dice: ‘A una certa ora verrà la tua ora per entrare nella luce del mondo’. L’anima supplica l’angelo dicendo: ‘Perché vuoi che esca alla luce del mondo?’ L’angelo risponde: ‘Tu sai, figlia mia, che sei stata formata contro la tua volontà; contro la tua volontà nascerai; contro la tua volontà morirai; e contro la tua volontà sei destinato a rendere conto davanti al Re dei Re, il Santo, benedetto sia Dio’. Tuttavia, l’anima non vuole andarsene, e così l’angelo la colpisce con la candela che arde sul suo capo. Allora l’anima esce alla luce del mondo, sebbene contro la sua volontà. Uscendo, il bambino dimentica tutto ciò a cui ha assistito e tutto ciò che sa. Perché il bambino piange quando lascia il grembo materno? Perché il luogo in cui è stato tranquillo e a suo agio è irrecuperabile e per la condizione del mondo in cui deve entrare.”

          Penso che, probabilmente, a un certo punto tutti ci siamo chiesti se, cosa e dove fossimo prima di nascere, e ancora più spesso immaginiamo cosa potrebbe succedere dopo la nostra morte. Questo midrash presuppone che ognuno di noi sia sempre esistito, che sempre esisteremo e che il periodo in cui abitiamo la terra sia un intermezzo in cui si deciderà il nostro futuro. Sono a disagio con l’idea che fino alla nascita tutto è “bashert” – “predetto” e “destinato ad essere”. La predestinazione stride con la nozione di libero arbitrio, quindi la tradizione rabbinica sfuma l’idea, dichiarando che possiamo essere soggetti alla volontà di Dio nella nostra vita materiale, ma siamo completamente liberi nella nostra vita spirituale. Questo punto di vista è più notoriamente presente nell’insegnamento di R. Akiva (Avot 3:15): “Tutto è previsto, ma la libertà è concessa”; e nell’ancor più potente detto di R. Ḥanina, “Tutto è in potere di Dio, tranne il timore di Dio” (Ber. 33b; Niddà 16b). Il Midrash Tanchuma (si pensa sia stato composto a Babilonia, in Italia e Israele tra il 500 e l’800 d.C.)  lo sottolinea nel passaggio che ho citato in precedenza.

          Il Talmud insegna: “Tutto è nelle mani di Dio tranne il timore di Dio” e Midrash Tanchuma ci dice che: “Dio decreta tutto ciò che accadrà alla persona appena nata, tranne se sarà giusto o malvagio. Dio ha lasciato solo quella scelta all’individuo, come è detto: “Vedi, io ho posto davanti a te oggi la vita e il bene, e la morte e il male.” (Dt 30,15).

          La tradizione sta cercando di affrontare le domande secolari:

          Dio è interessato a noi?

          Dio ha un piano per noi?

          Dio non interviene affatto nella storia?

          Di cosa tratta la nostra vita?

          La nostra vita è transitoria o in qualche modo eterna?

          Perché la vita è ingiusta?

          A tale proposito ci fu una polemica che divise le varie sette dell’ebraismo antico intorno al I secolo a.C. e al I secolo d.C.: i farisei, precursori dell’ebraismo rabbinico, accettarono l’idea dell’immortalità dell’anima e ebbero inoltre qualche nozione, volutamente vaga, di ricompensa e punizione dopo la morte, i sadducei invece, che si opponevano a gran parte del giudaismo farisaico, no. I farisei svilupparono il ruolo dei malachim, quelli che chiameremmo angeli, le cui attività consentirebbero a Dio di svolgere un ruolo negli affari umani, mentre i sadducei rifiutarono completamente sia gli angeli che l’idea di qualsiasi interferenza divina negli affari umani, insegnando che il libero arbitrio è assoluto e incontestabile. E sembra che la setta degli Esseni e dei Rotoli del Mar Morto credesse nella predestinazione senza spazio per alcun libero arbitrio. Questo, penso, contestualizza gli insegnamenti rabbinici nel Talmud e nel Midrash: essi tentano di orientarsi su una via di mezzo tra due estremi, una tecnica in cui gli antichi rabbini erano ben rodati ma che purtroppo sembra essersi attenuata nei tempi moderni.

          La loro via di mezzo, in cui tutto è previsto ma esiste il libero arbitrio, in cui tutto è nelle mani di Dio tranne che il nostro rapporto con Dio, in cui spetta a ciascuno di noi decidere di comportarsi rettamente o meno, punta fermamente all’idea rabbinica che in tutte le questioni etiche e spirituali siamo noi gli autori della nostra stessa vita. Nessun altro è responsabile di queste scelte di vita, nessun altro è responsabile delle persone che scegliamo di diventare, o delle decisioni che prendiamo su come viviamo le nostre vite.

          Le parole “autore”, “autorità” e “autenticità” sono legate semanticamente e ideologicamente ai livelli più profondi. L’autore è colui che crea, che realizza qualcosa, l’unico che ha l’autorità di creare e di essere se stesso, il proprio vero sé autentico.

          La liturgia di questo tempo fa riferimento al Talmud, che ci dice che: “Tre libri sono aperti in cielo a Rosh Ha-Shanà, uno per il completamente malvagio, uno per il completamente giusto e uno per l’intermedio. I completamente giusti sono immediatamente iscritti nel Libro della Vita, i del tutto malvagi nel Libro della Morte, mentre il destino degli intermedi è sospeso fino al Giorno dell’Espiazione” (RH 16b). Il Libro della Vita, in particolare, ha risonanza nella funzione. Tre dei quattro inserimenti nella preghiera dell’Amidà fanno riferimento a noi che chiediamo di essere scritti nel Libro della Vita.

          Il Sefer HaHayim, di solito tradotto come “Il libro della vita”, dovrebbe in realtà essere inteso come “Il libro del vivere”. Non un’iscrizione assoluta per evitare la punizione per quest’anno, ma una reale richiesta a noi stessi di vivere la nostra vera vita autentica nell’anno a venire. Assumerci la responsabilità, diventare gli autori della nostra stessa storia, non pallide repliche di cose che potrebbero importare, o vivere nel modo in cui pensiamo che gli altri pensino che dovremmo vivere, ma prendere sul serio la nostra autorità e creare qualcosa di speciale e individuale nella nostra vita, permettendo a noi stessi di realizzarci e di dare voce al nostro io più profondo e vero.

          Le storie nel Midrash Tanchuma ci ricordano che ognuno di noi è prezioso, importante e amato come chiunque altro. Le nostre anime erano tutte presenti nel Giardino dell’Eden, le nostre anime erano tutte presenti nel Sinai, ciascuna delle nostre anime racchiude un intero mondo unico. Viviamo nell’eternità e abbiamo pochi anni che passano mentre siamo su questa terra per capire ed esprimerci, per far fiorire la nostra complessità e la nostra unicità, per diventare il nostro sé vero e senza paura. Dio ci fa questo dono e ci chiede di vivere, di essere gli autori della nostra vita, di realizzare il nostro scopo nella creazione.

          Questa notte di Kol HaNedarim e le ore che la seguiranno sono un invito per noi. Sfogliamo le pagine del nostro personale Sefer HaHayim e chiediamoci: è questo il modo in cui vogliamo vivere le nostre vite? È questa la storia del nostro vero sé autentico?

          Siamo gli autori del libro delle nostre vite. E una nuova pagina è pronta per essere scritta. Cosa scriveremo?

Traduzione dall’inglese di Eva Mangialajo Rantzer

13th Elul – purpose and meaning structured into our lives

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Purpose and meaning, that which gives shape and direction to our lives, does not come out of nowhere. It is shaped by the stories we tell of ourselves and our forebears, by the writings of our historians and our prophets; It is taught to us in our homes and a variety of schools; That which comes to us through our faith tradition is rehearsed in prayer; symbolically enacted in rituals; and recalled periodically in a variety of services and liturgies. Our memories are strengthened by their being recalled and recounted, freshened and sharpened by how we use them.

Without a structure and a system for remembering and teaching, for measuring ourselves against who and what we should be, we ultimately cut ourselves loose from purpose and meaning and have to find roots wherever we can. Each of us must root ourselves in a sense of meaning and purpose if we are to live full lives, and our senses of meaning and purpose must themselves be rooted in something of value and credibility – our family hist­­­ory and its stories, our connection to religious tradition, to a system of values and morals, to our reasons for being – our own humanity.

So when we pray – B’sefer Hayyim nizakeir v’nikateiv lefanecha.Anachnu v’chol amm’cha beit yisrael, le’hayyim tovim v’shalom.

May we and all Your people the family of Israel be remembered and recorded in the Book of Life for a good life and for peace.

We are asking not for a simple accounting exercise in order to creep into heaven, not a weighing up of good and bad in the hope that we have been rather better than not, but that our lives are recorded and our memory maintained and refreshed so that we are better able to observe and take hold of the purpose and meaning of our individual and group existence, that our behavior will align more closely to who we know we could become – articulating the values of human dignity and social justice, of enacting good in the world.

11th Elul – The Book of Life is Open

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The main theme of the days of awe is that of judgement, with one of the most powerful images being that used by R.Yochanan to prompt us into reflecting on how we are living our lives – that of the three books opened on this day, one for the utterly wicked, one for the wholly good, and one for everyone else. While the two extremes find themselves immediately “written in the book”, the rest of us have ten days to make a decision where our names will go.

I love this image, all the more so in a digital age when books are freighted with the symbolism of permanence that screens cannot provide. And to me the image is not frightening, not about a pre-ordained fate we will be unable to avoid, not in fact to do with God’s sentencing us, but everything to do with our being able to make a judgement and a record about how we are living our lives. To quote Bachya ibn Pakuda –“ days are scrolls, write on them what you want to be remembered.” The idea of our past experience not just vanishing into history but having a real impact on our present leads us to a number of different thoughts. Firstly, that memory matters. Memory is what roots us, gives us identity, shapes how we think and act. To have a book where Life is recorded and can be examined is to hold memory.  Second, that even if we choose to forget something, it doesn’t fully go.  I can choose to forget what I did, to hope that my denial will win the day. But the record in my “book” doesn’t forget. Which brings me to the third idea – that our actions do have consequences.  What we have done matters, and where it requires resolution the “book” is available to remind us.

I like the book of life precisely because it is a book. It is a permanent record but it is constructed in such a way that while we might carry it around with us it does not impede our progress. In a book we can turn over a new leaf, and begin again on a fresh clean page. The past still exists, it is not erased, but it does not have to be brought to mind. We can be shaped by our past without having to be distorted by it. It is, if you like, a symbol of having finished some business when we write on the new page – having made the reconciliation or the resolution, the past can be consigned to the past, visited when necessary without intruding too much into the present.

As a child I used to be afraid of the Talmudic prompt – would I make it? Would everyone I loved be written in the right book? Would they not pay proper attention and be punished by God for it in the coming year? How could God write the name and allow a terrible death to await an unsuspecting person?   And then I began to understand the powerful impetus to life that exists in Judaism – “choose life!” Says God, and I saw that we write our own books of life, they are quite literally aides memoires for us to read and see – am I choosing life? Am I behaving in an ethical and moral way? Am I trying to be a good person? Am I able to let go of negative aspects in myself and embrace more life enhancing ones? Am I learning?

The Book of Life isn’t there to scare us, it is there to remind us to get on with it. Every book has a final page and when the time comes we want it to be a book worth reading.

A choice each year to be inscribed into one of the two books isn’t a final choice, just as our book of life isn’t a new book each time. But some years we choose to hold on to our anger or grief or denial and stick there, not moving on, effectively dead, and other years we take the risk, let go, admit failure and  acknowledge fault and move on. And when we let go of the burden, record it and then turn the page, we are firmly inscribed in the book of life.

 

 

 

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Rosh Hashanah Sermon  : unetaneh tokef prayer and the day for judgement.

 “B’rosh Hashanah yikateyvun, uv’yom tzom kippur yea’ha’teymun -On Rosh Hashanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed”

One of the most powerful themes in the liturgy for the Yamim Noraim is this one:- the idea that in heaven on this day there are opened three different books – one for the totally righteous, one for the totally wicked, and one – the largest one by far – for the people who have both good and bad deeds on our record, who must be weighed up and judged on a case by case basis.

The unetaneh tokef prayer – which came into use in Ashkenazi tradition in the Amidah since the 11th century (and is used in some Sephardi traditions just before the Mussaf service) but which is built on a much older poem from the Byzantine Period in Israel (circa 330–638) is a powerful liturgical poem for the Yamim Noraim, from which the quotation above is taken. It goes on to tell us what is also decided on this day: : How many shall leave this world and how many shall be born into it, who shall live and who shall die, who shall perish by fire and who by water, who by sword and who by beast, who by hunger and who by thirst, who by earthquake and who by plague, who shall rest and who shall wander, who shall be at peace and who shall be tormented, etc”  but goes on to remind us that” But Penitence, Prayer and Good Deeds can annul the Severity of the Decree.”

 The Book of Life:  Its earliest Jewish appearance is in the book of Exodus just months after the exodus from Egypt, when the Ten Commandments are given on Sinai and Moses returns to see people having despaired of his return and created a golden calf to worship. Moses returned to God, and said: ‘Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them a god of gold. Yet now, if You will forgive their sin–; and if not, blot me, I pray You, out of Your book which You have written.’  And God said to Moses: ‘whoever has sinned against Me, that one will I blot out of My book. Ex 32:32-35

We tend to see the Book of Life in terms of the unetaneh tokef prayer – a document that records everything, collecting the evidence determining who shall live and who shall die in the coming year, rewarding or punishing according to the life already lived. Yet the two ideas – that there is a Book written about our Life, and that reference to such a book enables the heavenly sentencing on Judgment Day (that is Rosh Hashanah), do not have to be so entwined.

The idea of a heavenly Book of Life seems to have originated in Babylon, with Babylonian legend speaking of the Tablets of Destiny, lists of sins and wrongdoings of people, who should be blotted out of existence. Scholars believe it probably referred to some kind of Eternal life, an end of time Judgment. Our Rosh Hashanah liturgy however sees the document differently, causing us to pray for a better and longer earthly life.

While the Mishnah tells us (Avot 2:1) “Consider three things that you may not come within the power of sin. Know what is above you—a seeing eye, and a hearing ear, and all your deeds are written in a book”, it also tells us “All Israel have a portion in the world to come”. Eternal life is, in effect, a given – the Book of Life is not so much about our eternity as about the actual record we each create as we live and go about our lives. The Sefer Hasidim pointedly adds that God is in no need of a book of records; saying “the Torah speaks the language of human beings”; that is, “this is a metaphorical statement to remind us that everything we do is a matter of record, and this record builds to describe and create testimony about each human life – its actions, its meaning, its impact on the world, its memory and memorial”.

The Book of our Life is not, in reality, simply a record of good and bad deeds, to be weighed up each Rosh Hashanah Judgment day when the book is opened.  It is the ultimate repository of who we are. We are, in effect, the sum of our actions and our memories. When our lives are stripped of memory they are stripped of meaning and of purpose. Purpose and meaning ultimately rely on a context and an awareness that is provided for us by our use and recording of memory.

In the last few weeks of Torah readings we have been reading about Moses’ rehearsing to and reminding the people of Israel about their history, their purpose, their connection with the Divine Being and its purpose, and the ethical and religious principles they agreed to when they entered the Covenant with God at Sinai, – an Eternal covenant, and one into which we bring our children. The whole of the book of Deuteronomy is in effect a Memory Book, a Book of Life, a record and proof text for who we are and what we are about. It is Moses’ last effort to implant within us a sense of our history and our purpose, a text to take with us into our future.

In just the same way as Torah gives meaning and purpose to the wider Jewish identity, our very personal existence depends on our own memory, mission and morality – remembering where we came from, what we are called on to do, and how we are called on to do it. And  this information is what creates each of our books of life, which we are invited to open and to read during Ellul, and then from Rosh Hashanah till Yom Kippur.

Our continued existence as thoughtful and purposeful human beings depends upon what is written in our own Book of Life. Who we really are will form who we will become. If we pay no attention to our own historical reality, to the memories of ourselves and of our people which we rehearse regularly in religious ritual both at home and in the synagogue, then slowly but surely we will lose touch with our root meaning – that which in religious terms would be called Covenant.

If we no longer tell the stories of our past, and find meaning within them that can speak to the modern world, then we will lose our particular purpose, and our lives will indeed become simple accountancy columns – so much fun versus so much pain, so many good deeds versus so many mean ones.  If we distance ourselves from the moral teaching of our tradition, and create a morality based instead on convenience or on what feels right in some unsubstantiated way, then we are in danger of losing our way, of making decisions not using our inherited system of values but on what suits us or fits in with our limited world view.

Memory, Purpose  and Morality – these bring the awareness of where we are the and the connection to where we come from; they create the understanding that our life must be lived with a purpose that is connected to our peoplehood, our roots – however we want to define memory; and a set of overarching values that are not about our own gratification or benefit but about a world view that takes in more than our own selves or our narrow context. This is what Moses was trying to explain in his last speeches recorded so clearly in the book of Deuteronomy – distilling both the history and the learning of the earlier books of Torah.  It is what we must try to do now, as we open our personal Book of Life and read it in order to understand something deep and vital about how we are living our own lives. Not just to reflect on things that are pricking our conscience a little or on the irritations and anxieties of other’s behaviour towards us. But to consider our memory, our  purpose in the world and the morality that both feeds and drives us.

Purpose and meaning, that which gives shape and direction to our lives, does not come out of nowhere. It is shaped by the stories we tell of ourselves and our forebears, by the writings of our historians and our prophets; It is taught to us in our homes and a variety of schools; That which comes to us through our faith tradition is rehearsed in prayer; symbolically enacted in rituals; and recalled periodically in a variety of services and liturgies. Our memories are strengthened by their being recalled and recounted, freshened and sharpened by how we use them.

Without a structure and a system for remembering and teaching, for measuring ourselves against who and what we should be, we ultimately cut ourselves loose from purpose and meaning and have to find roots wherever we can. This is as true of a nation state as it is of a religious identity as it is of an individual person. Each of us must root ourselves in a sense of meaning and purpose if we are to live full lives, and our senses of meaning and purpose must themselves be rooted in something of value and credibility – our family hist­­­ory and its stories, our connection to religious tradition, to a system of values and morals, to our reasons for being – our own humanity.

So when we pray – B’sefer Hayyim nizakeir v’nikateiv lefanecha.Anachnu v’chol amm’cha beit yisrael, le’hayyim tovim v’shalom.

May we and all Your people the family of Israel be remembered and recorded in the Book of Life for a good life and for peace. We are asking not for a simple accounting exercise in order to creep into heaven, not a weighing up of good and bad in the hope that we have been rather better than not, but that our lives are recorded and our memory maintained and refreshed so that we are better able to observe and take hold of the purpose and meaning of our individual and group existence, that our behavior will align more closely to who we know we could become – articulating the values of human dignity and social justice, of enacting good in the world.

It is important that we ask both for ourselves and also for all the people Israel to be able to critically understand the purpose and meaning of existence. For we are not alone here, not individuals on a journey to personal enlightenment so much as a group who are bound – since Sinai – in Covenant with God. We are a people, responsible each for the other, created to support each other and the values we share in the world.

We are a people, responsible each for the other, seeing ourselves as partners in co-creating with God the world in which we live, responsible for the enactment of the divine message of shleima – wholeness and integrity, in our world.

Torah tells us the world is not finished and perfect, it is up to people to complete and to perfect it.

We work on ourselves. That may be more or less difficult, more or less possible, and ultimately it is between ourselves and God just how well we manage.

For most of us our personal Book of Life is readable, at least in solitude, with a modicum of privacy to protect our dignity. We remember our childhoods, at least enough to draw from them the lessons we need as adults. We mostly have at least a sketchy knowledge of our family history over the previous generations – the name of a town or shtetl, the name of an ancestor recalled in our own, the stories that emerge when the family get together for a lifecycle event or festival. We can reconstruct enough of our past to gain a sense of our purpose and, as the bible says, the apple does not fall far from the tree – our family history is often surprisingly circular, and we maintain the values and traditions of our past in some way.

But when we become a group, then it is harder to examine our actions, to take joint responsibility for things we either know nothing about or maybe feel angry about.    We all belong to many different groups and we have responsibility for them– to hold each to account, to remind each of their past and their purpose. In particular at this time we think about the group we belong to called “Jewish Peoplehood” and “Israel”, and remind each other that Israel’s very existence depends on its memory, on its mission, and its morality.

Our memories are held in a book – the Book of Life for the Jewish people is Torah and its descendant the Rabbinic tradition of responsa and innovation. If we forget the values that are given to us there then we forget who we are and what we are about, we will ultimately fall apart, unnourished, unrooted, unconnected.

So when we think about the Book of Life this year, consider it a Book that actively maintains us and our purpose, defines our identities and our values so that we can work in the world in a consistent and meaningful way. And think too about the greater Book, the one that records the behaviour of our whole people. And with both of these volumes open and read lets think about what we want to be written in the coming year, so that when we leave here today we can begin to take up our meaning and our purpose, rooted in our values and our morality, and review and record the memories we want to be acted upon and remembered.

 

The work of the yamim noraim – our teshuvah and the teshuvah of God

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The ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur always have such a strange quality about them.  On the one hand there is the imperative for active introspection – to search, to think, to pray, to critically examine our behaviour over the past year. There is the knowledge that we should be going out of our way to make things better – and at the same time the slight embarrassment about our trying to do exactly that.  Then there is the  awareness that whatever is going on in our heads and our private worlds,  out there in the world people are continuing exactly as normal, indulging in office politics say, or scheming and manoeuvring to be the first or get the most. Salesmen still offer their inflated claims for their products, school bullies continue to rule the playground – whatever our good intentions, the world isn’t going to change because of what we Jews are doing.

We even know that – after all, what is the kol nidrei prayer except an exercise in apologetics, in effect we are saying – “dear God, we are only frail human beings, please don’t hold us to all those good intentions, those promises that we were really going to change this year.”

It is such disjointed time, during which our minds are holding such incongruous ideas, that it is a wonder we don’t simply explode with the effort required to make sense of things; that or give up. Each of us has had our own pain over the past year – whether it was the fracturing of our lives through the deaths of family or friends, illness or lost relationships or work – our worlds can change abruptly and apparently randomly and it surely makes us question the whole point of what we are doing, this uniquely Jewish process of setting aside time for spiritual catharsis and divine forgiveness.   What is the point if we can’t change much, if we can’t protect our loved ones from a seemingly capricious power, if we can’t persuade God that we deserve a measure of guardianship from suffering, if we can’t see a reward for all our hard work?  What kind of God are we returning to when we make Teshuvah? What kind of religion are we affirming as we join together and recite texts which include the apparent attempted murder of a son by a father desperate to show loyalty to God, which include the images of the book of life and the book of death, which include a graphic martyrology section.

We may be uncomfortable with the welter of different ideas all living and growing in our minds.  We may be questioning our reason for being here today, drawn by an atavistic need to be with Jews as the dread day of Yom Kippur begins.  We may be confused or angry with God, we might even be embarrassed by our presence here today, viewing it as a superstitious ritual with no real relevance to our own lives, yet here we all are, and it is our very presence together that matters – it means that we haven’t quite given up, whatever the pressures and the temptations to do so.

Ever since I was quite small I used to wonder, what does God do on Yom Kippur? I used to try to imagine for myself – ‘Is God sitting like some ancient law lord, presiding over the panelled celestial courtroom as each life is weighed in the balance?  Is God enthroned in majestic glory, watching the sad grey souls parade in front of him like sheep?  Will God really know what I am thinking, will God know all the little cheats and lies that I have been party to, and if so what will happen to me?’

It took me years to move behind some of the imagery of the machzor, to stop focussing exclusively on my own petty guilts and to dare to attempt a little dialogue.  But when I did that I began to understand something different about this day, began to forgive a little more.

What does God do on Yom Kippur?

The clue to answering this question is found in the timing of the festival, and is also reflected in the choice of our Torah reading which includes some verses which echo through and through the liturgy.  Yom Kippur is biblically given as a date, the tenth of Tishri, described as a time designated as a day for atonement, for afflicting our souls.  In Temple times it became the focus of a major priestly ritual connecting the people of Israel with their creator.  Since rabbinic times we have used it more personally as a time for reflecting with humility on our lives, upon the fractured nature of our relationship with God – broken, we begin to understand, because of our own behaviour, our own pride and refusal to engage with God.  But this practise of introspection and of trying to make good isn’t an explicitly biblical command – in fact it isn’t all that clear in the bible what Yom Kippur is really for.  Unlike the other biblical festivals it isn’t an agricultural date celebrating the safe ingathering of a harvest, nor does it commemorate an historical or even an obvious theological event.  But there is one tradition – a very early one, (Seder Olam Rabba – 2nd century),  which tells us that the tenth day of Tishri  is the date on which Moses brought down from Sinai the second set of the tablets of the law.

This then is understood to be the date when, after the Children of Israel had sinned with the Golden Calf having feared that Moses had died, and after Moses had returned and angrily thrown down and destroyed the first set of the Ten Commandments, God gave us another chance – and we gave God another chance too.

So what does God do on Yom Kippur? Just like us, God makes Teshuvah – God forgives us for the mistakes we have made, and God creates the opportunity for us to add our pardon to that of the divine creator.

God making Teshuvah – it is a strange, almost frightening concept, yet it is also a vital one if we are to maintain a relationship with God. We do not live in the cosy world of childhood which tells us that if we are good nothing bad can happen to us, that if our parents are present no evil thing can frighten us.  We live in an imperfect world, where disease and accidents can happen, where we do our best to make sense and order but still have to live with the nonsense and disorder that are part of real life.  We live in a world of imperfectly understood mechanisms, of sudden floods or terrible droughts, of bad things happening to good people, of innocent people caught up in situations not of their own making.  We live in such a world because it is an inevitable concomitant of our functioning as full human beings.  If we did not, we would still be in the Garden of Eden and God would still be protecting us by not allowing us to experience our world fully, or take decisions, or be responsible or adult.

In the tradition of the mystic literature, the analogy is made that God has withdrawn or shrunk Godself from our world to make space for us to be in it without being overwhelmed by and subsumed into the presence of God.  And with that lessening of the total presence of God there come the inevitable consequences.

But while it might be said that God is slightly apart from our world, we also know that God has given us abilities and understanding – texts which teach us how to increase the presence of God in the world through our own efforts, souls which contain the spark of God within them, the ability to communicate, to feel, to make relationships with each other, to support and comfort each other, self awareness, moral discrimination, the ability to choose how we are in the world – all these things are gifts from God, and all of them are double edged – we can choose not to use our gifts, or we can choose to distort them or be distorted by them.

We live in an imperfect world because we live in a human one, and that is painful for us as I believe it is for God.  God, having created us and having given us independence of spirit waits for us to seek God.  And at Yom Kippur as we feel the urge to somehow come back, to make Teshuvah, to understand a little of our what our lives  may be about, God too feels the need to turn to us, to help us as we go through the process of self examination, to make the journey that is too hard for us, to make Teshuvah as well.

God forgives us for the mistakes we have made in the past year, allows us the opportunity to acknowledge them, to make amends, to put them behind us. Our scripture tells us about what happened immediately after the episode of the Golden Calf. It would have been so easy for God to give up on us then, to start again with another group, to allow the pain and anger and frustration to dictate the end of the relationship, but that is not what God did.  And it is not something that we can do either.  Confused or angry,  doubtful or deeply hurt – Yom Kippur calls us back to God and demands that whatever our feelings we must engage, must enter the dialogue, must enter the presence of God and struggle with what that means.  As we begin the 25 hours of Yom Kippur, acknowledging that all of us have failed, acknowledging too that we will make mistakes again in the future, wondering what the point might therefore be, it is important for us to simply take the time to consider that the point might reside simply in our actively being here, might be found in our refusal to accept all that the machzor sets out for us, might inhabit our doubts and our negative feelings as much as any sense of spiritual satisfaction.  On this day we turn to God and find that God is already turned towards us, waiting for our engagement with the fundamental issues of our identity, willing us to forgive and to be forgiven, comforting us as well as challenging us, demanding that we live our lives the best way we can, reflecting our creator and bringing about much needed repairs to ourselves and to our fundamentally damaged world.

 

Sermon for Rosh Hashanah at the Pinkas Synagogue in Prague

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My father was the son of Walter, the son of Alice, the daughter of Leah, the daughter of Rosalie, the daughter of Abraham, the son of Gitel, the daughter of Isaac, the son of Jacob, the son of Meir the son of Shmuel, the son of Yehoshua, the son of Rabbi Pinchas Halevy Horowitz, for whom this synagogue is named and grandson of Aharon Meshulam Horowitz it’s founder: my eleventh great grandfather.

So in a strange sort of way, I feel this Rosh Hashanah that I am coming home.

pinkus synagogue pinkus synagogue4

This family link got me to thinking about the roots and connections, and about the nature of Jewish history which in bible is framed within the structure of ‘toledot’ – generations. Judaism has traditionally passed on its defining ideas and ways of being within the family home and within the extended family we call community. The teaching goes from one generation to the next, the identity formed by watching and doing as much as by any formal learning.

( That said, from earliest times the idea of Judaism being a family tradition alone doesn’t really have traction. Abraham and Sarah famously “made souls” in Haran before leaving on God’s instructions ‘Lech Lecha’ – go, leave your ancestral land and go to the land I will show you” (Genesis 12:5). These souls are understood to be people they had converted to their faith; in other words, birth is only one doorway into Judaism, and the formation of Jews happens in a wider context than family alone.)

So I was thinking about the genealogical line between me and Pinchas Halevy Horowitz, the 13 generations between us, eight of whom were rabbinic families whose history I know only sketchily, and I wondered about what this relationship might mean, how his life fed ultimately into mine. I wondered too about how Judaism had developed in the almost 400 years since his death, what had changed, what had endured. For the truth about Judaism and about families is that they are not monolithic, they do not stay the same and their natural state is of flux and of change.

So if my ur-ancestor Pinchas was sitting here today in the synagogue that bears his name, what would be familiar to him? What would be radically changed? And what would be the golden thread, the Shalshelet haKabbalah, that ties his community to us, the latest in the toledot line?

There is a famous story in the Talmud (Menachot 29b) “Rabbi Yehudah said, “Rav said, “When Moses ascended to the heavens, he found the Holy One, sitting and attaching crowns to the letters. He said to God “Sovereign of the Universe! What are you doing? God said to him, “There is one man who will exist after many generations, and Akiva the son of Yosef is his name, he will in the future expound on every crown and crown piles and piles of laws.” Moses said “Sovereign of the Universe! Show him to me.” He said to him, “Turn around.” He went and sat behind the students in Rabbi Akiva’s Beit Midrash, and he did not know what they were talking [about]. He became upset but when he heard the students ask “Our teacher, from where do you learn this?” And heard Akiva answer “It is a law [that was taught] to Moses at Sinai” he calmed down.”

This very early Talmudic story sets the rabbinic principle that Judaism evolves, and that what was understood or necessary in one generation was not written in stone. Just as Moses would not understand the teachings of Akiva, so would Pinchas Halevy Horowitz not recognise much of the Judaism of the 21st century.  Yet there is a great deal he would recognise. The great themes of this service have remained the same since the Rosh Hashanah liturgy was instituted and the mussaf service in particular is explicit about the leitmotifs of the festival – Malchuyot, Zichronot and Shofarot – the Coronation of God, the time for both we and God to Remember each other, and the blowing of the Shofar. Essentially, the service we have today stays true to the ancient themes of Rosh Hashanah.

Rosh Hashanah has a number of different names: it is Yom Teruah, the day of blowing of the shofar; Yom haZikaron, the day for remembrance; Yom haDin, the day for judgement; and less well known it is also Yom haKesseh, the day of concealment. The first three are clear to us, we hear the shofar calling us to attention, and speak of standing before God (and also in our own eyes) in order to judge ourselves. We think back over our lives and our actions in order to be able to put things right where possible. But what is the concealment of which our liturgy speaks when we recite “Tiku ba’chodesh shofar, ba’kesseh l’yom chageinu. Ki chok l’yisrael hu, Mishpat lelohei Yaakov. (Psalm 81:4-5) Sound the shofar at the new moon, at the [Kesseh] concealed time for our feast day. For this is a statute for Israel, an ordinance of the God of Jacob.”

It would make sense in the poetic structure for Kesseh to be the parallel of Chodesh and mean the new moon, and so the psalmist would be speaking of blowing the shofar when the moon is so new it could barely be seen, Rosh Hashanah is the only festival to be celebrated at the beginning of a month rather than at the full moon or later. But Kesseh is an unusual word to use and so it draws our attention. And suddenly the work of this season becomes clearer, though ironically the clarity we gain shows that the work of the Yamim Noraim is to both make transparent and then to obscure some of our past behaviour.

The core meaning of the word Kesseh is to cover or to conceal; the meaning of Kapparah is also to cover over, to hide or even obliterate. We are in the season of concealment – but who is doing the hiding, what is being concealed, where does it go and to what purpose?

One of my favourite teachings of how Jews do teshuvah, the work of this penitential period is that we do not expect to wash clean all our past actions as if they never existed, and start again as if we were newly born souls. Instead we have time to reflect on our past, to face all the things we did that we wish we had not, and all the things we did not do that we wish we had done, and to own up to them, to accept our own actions. We admit to ourselves under the watchful gaze of God, and we repent – an active behaviour in Jewish law that requires us to try to make good the damage we have done, to ask for forgiveness from those we have hurt, to resolve to change how we will act in the future when faced with the choices again. And then, when we have done all we can to repair our past, we are able to let go of it – not to deny it or to disown it, but to cover it (kapparah) to conceal from view (Kesseh) all the things of which we are ashamed and of which we have repented. We know that if we do this, God too will forgive us, the page will turn on our heavenly record so that a clean sheet shows going forward, although the previous pages of the book remains written, just hidden from view and not holding us back in hopelessness. We are shaped by our past but our future is not distorted because of it.

Reading recently about transitional justice I came across an interview with Vaclav Havel and was struck by the similarities in his views. Speaking of dealing with the political past and its effects, he said “It is important to find the right balance, the right approach, one that would be humane and civilized but would not try to escape from the past. We have to try to face our own past, to name it, to draw conclusions from it, and to bring it before the bar of justice. Yet we must do this honestly and with caution, generosity and imagination. There should be a place for forgiveness wherever there is confession of guilt and repentance.” Transitional Justice: Country Studies v.2: How Emerging Democracies Reckon with Former Regimes: Country Studies…Dec 1996 by Neil J. Kritz

Jewish tradition holds that the work of this season – teshuvah – requires us to bring to mind the harsh realities of our failings, to go through a process that ends with us no longer held back by the pain or the shame or the fear of what we have done, and to move forward in our lives. We leave behind, concealed from view but not forgotten or denied, the actions and inaction that stained our souls, that had imprisoned us. This is what we are doing here today, it is what the Jews of this community were doing when this synagogue was built. While some of the language may have altered and some of the prayers been edited, Rabbi Pinchas Halevy Horowitz would recognise what we are doing were he to join us today. As would those whose names are inscribed on the walls, and all the Jews of the generations between the two. We are joined to them by the liturgy of this day, by the shared understanding of the meaning and work of this season, by the timelessness of the tradition that speaks of repentance and return to God, of forgiveness and of moving on, of not denying the past but not being held captive to its power.

The Jews who came before us are held with us in a chain of tradition, their wisdom and experience passed on through the generations and through the communities which welcome people into Judaism We in modernity will one day pass into history, leaving behind a name, some family stories, some wisdom and some love, maybe some descendants, and hopefully a physical memorial of some kind. On that memorial will no doubt be the acronym also found on the walls of this synagogue over the names of those Prague Jews taken and murdered in the camps  ת’נ’צ’ב’ה  It is taken from a verse in Samuel via the memorial prayer and which speaks of the soul being bound up in the bundle of life, an image rather like an unending piece of fabric or carpet, in which the souls of those who came before are part of the weave, necessary to anchor and to hold the structure which will go on being woven as new souls come into the mix. In this image, the lives of those who came before are an integral part of the fabric of our lives, as our lives will help shape the world of those to come. And this knowledge brings both a sense of rootedness and of responsibility to those who came before and to those who will come after.

For the fabric to be strong, the lives must be connected, and even when one thread physically ends, its existence provides the anchor for the later ones. For that anchor to be solid, there must be regular teshuvah, the reflection and balance, the bringing to mind and naming of what went wrong in order to face it, to learn and understand, to apply compassionate and proper justice, and to bring about a conclusion, an end to the pain or bitterness or anger in order to let go, to cover over and to move on with the weave. Whether that image is about each of our individual lives, or scaled up to the life of a family or of the Jewish people as a whole, the lesson and the work remains the same. We reflect and remember, we admit and repent, we try to repair, we do our best to make good, and then we let go and go out into life ready to write on a new page of our Book of Life.

Our Rosh Hashanah Liturgy quotes not only the psalmist but also Isaiah (65:16-17) who describes God as saying “So that the one who blesses in the earth shall bless by the God of truth; and the one that swears in the earth shall swear by the God of truth; because the former troubles are forgotten, and because they are hid from Mine eyes. For now I create new heavens and a new earth, and the past need not be remembered, nor ever brought to mind. Be glad and rejoice in what I can create.”

The work of remembering, of making transparent, of repenting and repairing and of letting go in order to go move on is holy work. The Kesseh or Kapparah of this season mirrors the divine work of creation. This season is the season of penitence in which we wear white; Yom Kippur a joyful fast rather than a time of misery and gloom. The sound of the shofar reminds us of the work we do alongside God, the concealment and covering of a reasonably resolved past nudges us forward to do the work God expects from us. We are tied into the past and we honour from where we came. We are tied into the future, and in order to help bring about the best one we can, we are here together. As links in the shalshelet haKabbalah, the chain of tradition, the golden thread that brings us close to all who prayed the Rosh Hashanah liturgy, it is our turn to Remember, to Repair, to Repent, and to Return. May all who came before us bless us, and may we in turn be a blessing to those who journey with us and those who come after.