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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

Vayelech: the time for us to grow up and take responsibility for our choices is upon us. or: the bnei mitzvah of the people of Israel

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Eight years ago one of my dearest friends was about to be seventy years old, and she decided to celebrate this momentous and biblical age by having her batmitzvah. I had tried to persuade her to do this for years and she had brushed me off; it is typical of her that she made her choice by herself on a date that had such resonance, and then throw herself into study and thinking for herself.  We talked a little about the date and the sidra, and then she chose to direct her own study and do her own research. Luckily she sent me a near final draft. I say luckily because she never read this drasha or celebrated that long awaited day, for with everything planned and organised and ready to go, she suffered a cataclysmic and sudden bereavement and the weekend was taken over instead with grief and shock and the arrangements to honour the dead.

We spoke a while afterwards about her celebrating her batmitzvah on a different date but we both knew that was not really going to happen. The anticipated joy would never be the same, the shadow of grief never quite left her, and she too would depart this world suddenly and unexpectedly and quite dramatically, leaving the rest of us a small flavour of the shock she had experienced on the day of her birthday batmitzvah, to grieve and to question, and to process the reality of what happens when a life is torn from the world without warning.

Checking my computer recently, and thinking also of her as I do at this time of year, I came across an email where she had sent me this draft of the drasha she was to give to the community she had been at the heart of for so many years. With the permission of her children, I want to share it here.

“Vayelech is the shortest parsha in the Torah. It is 30 verses long, and I don’t recall ever hearing it read. In non-leap years like this one it is linked with Nitzavim. When I read Nitzavim-Vayelech they held together. They are followed next week by Ha’azinu which, when I looked it up I discovered is one the 10 Shirot [songs] conceived or written as part of the Almighty’s pre-Creation preparations. The only one still to be written is the song we will sing when the Messiah comes. 

We are coming to the end of the Torah. This name, given to the first of the three sections of the Hebrew Bible, is better translated as Teaching. We are coming to the end of the month of Elul the month in which we begin to prepare for the approaching High Holy Days, and in the coming week we will celebrate Rosh Hashanah which in turn is followed by the 10 days of penitence and Yom Kippur. Then in roughly a month’s time on Simchat Torah we will finish reading the Teaching, the end of Deuteronomy, and seamlessly begin Bereishit – Genesis – again. 

Vayelech must contain the most important rite of passage in the whole history of our planet. But we will come to that.  

Israel is camped in its tribal groups on the banks of the Jordan, waiting to cross. The preceding parsha, Nitzavim, tells of Moses addressing the whole of Israel, in preparation for entering the land God has promised them. He reminds them they are standing before God, and is clear that every person is included in this relationship.

 [my son] tells me I can tell one joke… a clear example of don’t do as I do, do as I say …but I have two, and we will come to the second soon. A very good friend sent me a card, writing in it “I saw this, and thought of you.” The cartoon was a line drawing of 2 dogs, the larger one saying: “I understand more commands than I obey.” I hope you agree with me, that this is arguable!

Moses and God know from experience that the Children of Israel will fail to follow God’s Teaching. 

Moses warns those listening to him that the consequences of disobedience will be that the land will become desolate, but mitigates this by prophesying they will make t’shuvah, return to the right way, and God will reconcile with them and bring them back.

 And he says something that has always troubled me:  that the commandment he is giving to them and so to us “is not beyond you, or too remote. Not in Heaven, or across the sea. It is very close to you… in your mouth and in your heart, so you can do it.”

 What I have never been sure of is what this is, what it is that is in my heart, and in my mouth?  Not the 10 Commandments – too many!    And not the 613 mitzvot buried in the text. And then the man who is not my chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks said quite plainly on radio 4, no less, what it is, even quoting where I should find it. It is found in Genesis chapter 18, vv 17 – 19, where God is choosing Abraham because he deals with his household with Tzedakah and Mishpat:  two words which together give the meaning of justice tempered with mercy. This is how we hope God will deal with us on Yom Hakippurim.

 And finally Moses said that we have a choice, God has given us the choice of life and death – blessing and curse. We should choose to love God and walk in God’s path and keep God’s commandments. And just as the penalties for not doing so have been listed, the rewards of obeying are explained. 

What we have been told is that all Israel is equally bound by this covenant, regardless of social position or occupation. And that even if we disobey God’s Laws there can be future redemption.

Further, we know that obedience to God’s Laws is within our scope. 

And also that we are to have that freedom to choose that sets us apart from the animals.

 And then we come to today’s portion, .Vayelech “And he went” which is the beginning of the rite of passage for the Children of Israel.

 There is to be a change of “Top Management”. This is the day of Moses’s 120th birthday, and Moses has finally accepted that it is also his death day. It’s been hard for Moses to come to terms with his mortality, and he has behaved a little like a child trying to justify not going to bed, not just yet. There’s no time to discuss this today, try reading Louis Ginsberg’s Legends of the Jews. God has been forbearing with this servant with whom God has been in conversation for the last 40 years.

 In this time the generations born into slavery have died, and the people who are born into freedom have known no other Leader. Moses has taught them, settled disputes, referred knotty halachic problems directly to God, and brought back the answers. It is explained that God will go with them, and lead them across the Jordan. Further, that although Moses may not go, they will have Joshua.

 Moses has been frightened of dying, and the Almighty has shown him Aaron’s painless death. God is giving him the signal honour of dying on the anniversary of his birthday, and although Moses is not to be allowed to cross the Jordan God has taken him to look down upon the land.

 Moses is kept busy on this day – there are the tribes to address, and writing enough copies of the Teaching to give one to each tribe, and lodge one in the Ark of the Covenant. This is talked of as a witness against the people, but I suppose it’s the master copy, and proof of God’s promises and provisions. Moses writes The Scroll to the very end, until it is finished, which is taken to mean that it is prophetic, containing as it does an account of his death. Further, the Almighty gives him a message to deliver, and a song of 43 verses, one of the 10 Shirot, to teach to the people.

  How many people do you think there were, camped by the river? How many going into the Promised Land?

 Jacob went to Egypt with 72 souls in his household. A rabble of 600,000 freed slaves left Egypt – and these were the men of fighting age. Add their relatives – minimally a wife each, one child. – Not parents and siblings – this could cause doubtful accounting – a conservative estimate would be 1,800,000 people. No wonder manna was needed!

Nor was it just Jews who escaped Egypt, plenty of escapee opportunists would have taken the chance, and been the “strangers within your gates” who are to have equality under the covenant with Jacob’s descendants.

 The instruction was given for this to be read every seven years in the shemittah year. All Israel is commanded to gather at Succot in the place God has appointed (eventually the Temple in Jerusalem) and the King read to the people from the Scroll.

 And the chapter ends with the prediction that Israel with turn away from God, and that God’s reaction would be to turn God’s face away from them – but also with the promise that their descendants will not forget the words which will remain in their mouths.

 So what is happening?

 It seems that with the completion of the Torah and our entry into the Promised Land, our Creator considers we are grown up. We have the Torah; we have the record in it of discussions and decisions. We are aware that we can judge matters between human beings – but not matters between human beings and God. We cannot deal with these because it is not our business to govern or over-rule another’s conscience.

 God will not appoint another Moses – there is to be no dynastical continuity. No further theophanies. Israel has become a nation of priests with everyone having access to the Almighty and to God’s mercy.

 And when we begin Genesis all over again, we go back to Creation and the dysfunctional families of Adam and Noah. When we come to Abraham, look out for the Teaching and how it is built on chapter by chapter.

 And where’s the second joke? – listen to the translation.”

Sadly, we never heard the second joke. And the poignancy of some of the comments in the drasha make for difficult reading for those who knew her and knew her later story, though the mischief of her personality comes through this text for me, as does her clear and certain faith in God. This was a woman who, as administrator in the synagogue, would regularly leave open the door to the sanctuary in her office hours “because God likes to go for a walk”, but actually so that visitors would feel able to enter and sit and offer their prayers or order their thoughts. She would tidy up the siddurim and make sure they were properly shelved, saying that upside down books “gave God a headache”, to cover her need to honour God by keeping the synagogue neat. She spent hundreds of hours talking to the lonely, reassuring the frightened, supporting the vulnerable. She spent hundreds of hours creating the databases and systems to ensure that the synagogue ran as effectively as it could. And the roots of all this voluntary caring for the synagogue community was her own life’s struggles and her awareness that if God considers we are grown up now, with equal access to the Almighty and no “top management” to direct us, then we had better get on with it, with the work of creating and sustaining the world with tzedakah and mishpat, with righteousness and justice.

In this period of the Ten Days, as we reflect on the lives we are leading, the choices we are making, and the mortality that will come for us all, either with or without warning, I read her drasha as a modern ”unetaneh tokef”, and, as I was for so many years when I was her rabbi and she my congregant, I am grateful for the learning I had from her.

 

In memoriam Jackie Alfred. September 1940 – January 2017

 

 

 

 

Purim: by telling ourselves stories we can open up a world of choices, or “is it bashert or is it what I do”

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The book of Esther, the foundational text for the minor post biblical festival of Purim, is riddled with ambiguities and ambivalences, allusions and opacities, and we are uncomfortably aware that the text is a constant tease of hidden and revealed, covered and discovered, secret and known. Even the name of the eponymous heroine, Esther, comes from a Hebrew root that means concealment. Yet Esther is also related to the word for a star, which shines brightly under the right conditions.

The themes of concealment and revelation are constantly played with – God is never mentioned in the book, yet clearly God is at work here – and there are many other examples. Mordechai overhears a plot to kill the king from his hidden place and brings it to official attention;  Esther is constrained in the harem yet is able to influence the royal policy;  Vashti chooses to remain enclosed when ordered to reveal her beauty in public; , Mordechai’s act is recorded at the time but not revealed and rewarded till much later, the almost playful peek-a-boo of now you see it now you don’t is a thread that runs through the story,  our peripheral vision catching it momentarily as it disappears when we try to look straight at it.

Perhaps the most extraordinary “now you see it now you don’t” moment is in the interchange between Mordechai and Esther, carried on through the medium of Hatach, one of the king’s eunuchs. Mordechai sends word of everything that has happened with regard to the decree against the Jews, and tells Esther she must go to the king to make supplications on behalf of her people. Esther’s response via Hatach is that everyone knows that to approach the king in the innermost (hidden) courtyard without being invited is to risk certain death, and she has not been called to the king in thirty days.

We are right at the centre of the book – almost exactly at the centre in terms of the number of verses – as Mordechai answer’s Esther’s anxious justification for her inability to help. His answer is three fold. First he reminds her that she will not be safe either, even though she is in the harem. Secondly he tells her that the Jewish people will not be destroyed as help will most certainly come from another source if she continues to be inactive, and finally he asks a rhetorical question of her – could it be that this moment is the moment of destiny her life has been leading up to?

“Then Mordecai asked them to return his answer to Esther: ‘ Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape.  For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?” (4:13-14)

It is an extraordinary speech and it raises many questions for us too. The first is a reminder that should we try to keep our heads down and not resist injustice on the grounds that we may survive a toxic political climate by keeping our presence shadowy and not attracting attention to ourselves is a folly and a false position. One need only think of the words of Pastor Martin Niemoller castigating the German intellectuals for their silence in the face of rising Nazi power:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Or the quotation famously attributed to the political philosopher Edmund Burke that “all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing”, reframed by Albert Einstein as “The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it.”

The second assertion is a classical theological position that God will never abandon the Jewish people, even though at times it may appear that God is silent, uncaring, absent, or even chas v’chalila apparently allowing Jewish suffering at this time for some particular purpose. This is a deeply problematic area in theology, not least because of the deep suffering during the Shoah, and while the idea of ‘hester panim, the face of God is concealed from us”  may be rooted in the words of such books as the prophet Isaiah, so that the act of God concealing God’s face is understood as a way of God punishing disobedient subjects, by far the prevailing Jewish sentiment is that of Job:  God may appear to be distant and God’s face hidden from us, but as Martin Buber writes, “a hiding God is also a God who can be found”.

So while the Jews were facing a terrible crisis throughout the empire, Mordechai knew and asserted that relief would come, that God would turn towards them and help them, that even if Esther failed to deliver the liberation, the Jewish people would still prevail.  “Relief and deliverance will arise from a different place”.

The third statement is probably the most challenging for us, the question Mordechai asks Esther “And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?” This is a formulation of the idea of having a destiny, a preordained role in life, something which can be found in expressions of folk religions, but which comes dangerously close to encroaching on our freedom of will, freedom of choice.

The Talmud tells us that “everything is in the hands of heaven except the fear of heaven” reminding us of our absolute freedom of will and our own absolute responsibility for our actions. We are entirely free to make our own choices, God has no power over this.

So Mordechai questioning Esther with the veiled suggestion that her destiny has led her to be in such a position, able to make a difference to the experience of the Jewish people, is problematic and in need of our attention. Can she have been destined for this moment?

Many of us like to think that there is a plan in the world, that the universe is not random and our existence in it not merely incidental and accidental.  We like to locate ourselves in something that has meaning; we like to tell ourselves stories to make sense of our life and our choices.

Judaism is predicated on the freedom of will, but still our narratives contain hints of ways to try to understand the mind of God. Decision-making involving the casting of lots (goralim) is mentioned 77 times in the biblical narrative:- in the story of the scapegoat, in the allocation of tribal territories  once the people enter the land of Israel, described both before in the book of Numbers and after in the book of Joshua. Lots are cast in the books of Chronicles to divide the priestly work, in Jonah to decide who is responsible for God sending the storm, and are mentioned in both Psalms and Proverbs as well of course of the famous ‘purim’ cast in the book of Esther to decide a favourable date.  One might also argue that the Urim and Thumim found in the breastplate of the High Priest in the book of Exodus were artefacts of divination to understand the will of God (Exodus 28:30), though they did not always seem to give a certainty, as King Saul found (Sam 28:6) and their use seems to have ended by the early days of the monarchy and the advent of the prophetic tradition.

One of the things that makes us human is our need for storytelling. We are generally uncomfortable with an entirely random context, with the idea that only arbitrary luck brought us into being, of there being no framework of meaning supporting our existence. So we tell ourselves stories to support our choices and those stories in turn become our inner dialogue and shape what we think is possible or justifiable.

Whether we frame our stories in quasi-religious or in historical or political language, we hold these narratives dear because they explain us to ourselves.  In the words of the less than conventionally religious Jewish thinker Karl Marx “[people] make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honoured disguise and borrowed language”

We make our choices in life, but these choices are shaped by our context, by how we understand ourselves and our history and how we got to be in the place we are. Whether it is because we believe in something to be ‘bashert’ – (our destiny somehow gifted from God), or whether we consider that the decision making is ours alone, we still tell stories around how we come to our choices, we allow our internal narratives to shape us, to help form what we think and to give us the courage to act. Whether because we believe God is guiding us or we believe that history and context have privileged us;  whether we can tell ourselves it will all be alright because somewhere there is a plan, or we can tell ourselves that if we fail it is because of the randomness of luck, each of us holds to the thread of meaning we tell ourselves is our truth.

One of the questions that arises from Mordechai’s question to Esther is one we  might sometimes ask of ourselves. “Do we feel that our lives have been organised to bring us to a moment of critical action or decision making?”  And if so, what are the things we feel ourselves put on the earth to do? Or maybe to change the perspective slightly – do we feel, looking back on our lives so far, that our existence has impacted positively on the world around us in any way, that we have done things of which we are proud, that are something uniquely ours to have achieved?

Mordechai tells Esther that her not acting will not save her, nor will her inaction change the thrust of history into the future – the Jews will be saved by some means or other, and he introduces to her then that the choice of whether she acts or does not act is in the context of a story she can tell herself – that maybe God has put her in this place where she can risk a meeting with the King in order to try to save her people. This is a powerful pivot in the story that speaks also to us. Our choices cannot be made on the basis of trying to survive a hostile power by keeping a low profile. We need to make choices actively, and there will be consequences that are contingent on our choices. Knowing that, what is important is the story we tell ourselves to confirm or justify the choices we make.

What are the stories that we tell ourselves? The narrative of Jewish persecution and survival is a strong one in our tradition, embodied in many of our festivals with the rather tongue in cheek “they tried to kill us off, they failed, let’s eat”.  Yet alongside this celebration is the remembrance of the  pain and the fear of our history – we look around us to see from where an attack may come, worry about our own likely responses.  We see ourselves as modern, western, education, integrated citizens of our countries, at the same time as identifying with an ancient and particular tradition that encourages a different set of perspectives.  We understand that history rolls on, that our actions may affect its particular course but not its ultimate progression. Our internal story telling may give us the courage to act in a particular way, it may allow us to justify ex post facto the choices we made and our actions or inactions, our beliefs shape how we see the world and help us to imagine a different one.  We toy with the dynamic interface between free-will and destiny, and nowhere in bible is that so clear as in Mordechai’s threefold response to Esther. We must act in the world, we must understand that our actions are neither  ultimate or irrevocable, but we are not free to hide away from making those choices.

Our tradition has always given us a helping set of stories so that we can construct a narrative that will support our choices. Be it Hillel haZakein who told us “If I am not for myself, who is for me? And when I am for myself, what am ‘I’? And if not now, when?” or Rabbi Tarfon who taught “It is not upon you to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it” we know the imperative is to act to make the world a better place for our being in it.  In the words again of Hillel haZakein, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. go and learn.”

 

 

 

 

 

Kedoshim: increasing kiddush hashem and diminishing hillul hashem.

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It has long been the habit to refer to all the Jews who historically were killed for adhering to their faith in times of persecution as having died “al Kiddush Hashem” and this idea has also become attached to the six million Jews murdered in the Shoah – they have become kedoshim through their deaths and are  elevated to the status of martyrdom.  I understand the comfort that may be derived by those who mourn their murdered family and friends to see their status as that of kedoshim, but I have always found this slide of the terminology to be problematic. To me martyrdom should be a conscious choice. To me their murder is a Hillul Hashem, and no holiness can be found within it, only in the responses both at the time and afterwards to protest, to remember, to mourn, to live on.

I am uncomfortable also in the loss of the full name of Yom haShoah, which is actually “Yom Hashoah Ve-Hagevurah”— literally the “Day of (remembrance of) the Holocaust and the Heroism.” All choice has been removed from our remembering – both the lack of choice of those who were rounded up and unable to protest, and the powerful choices made by those who did protest, or who were partisans or who hid themselves or others from the evil around them.  By diminishing the heroism, by diminishing the choices people made from their own humanity and their ethical imperatives, it seems to be we lose out on Kiddush Hashem as people are able to bring it about. Instead we focus on the Hillul Hashem of those who mindlessly or not destroyed the hopes and lives of so many and we coat the victims in martyrdom as if to bring honour to their destinies.

Yom HaShoah was created to remember those we have defined as kedoshim either through martyrdom or through protecting God’s creation when others were trying to destroy it, and the date was chosen by the Government of Israel to remember them. It is no coincidence that the date chosen by the politicians was out of sync from the date that would have been chosen by rabbinic tradition, and instead of being placed on a traditional day of mourning such as tenth Tevet or Tisha b’Av it was placed a week before the celebration of the Israel Independence Day – Yom ha’Atzma’ut. This placing has led to a connection in the minds of many, that the outcome of the murder of the 6 million is the creation of the modern State of Israel.

For me this is deeply problematic. Not only does it submerge the many prior years of political Zionism that worked to create a Jewish state, but it builds the state on the martyrdom of the ‘kedoshim’, many of whom were not natural Zionists in life.  In so doing, it changes the nature of the contract with the land we have had since this Torah text was given – that we have the land of Israel because God has given it to us, and we have a responsibility to live on it in a way that promotes Kiddush Hashem. Sidra Kedoshim makes clear that our continued living on the land of Israel depends on our living lives of kedoshim, ethical lives where the vulnerable are protected, the land is cared for, and where a lived awareness of the focussed attention of God and the desire to behave as God would wish us to do should always be part of our daily routines. By making the idea of ‘kedoshim’ the historical foundation of the State rather than the aspiration of the contemporary society we reduce the imperative to behave in holiness. And that is dangerous, for if we are not acting to promote Kiddush Hashem we run the risk of sliding into its shadow, of Hillul Hashem. If we believe we have an entitlement not given to us by Torah but by the deaths of innocents then we can easily act from that sense of entitlement, and we forget the conditions given here in Leviticus that the land will not tolerate our bad behaviour.

The rabbis of the Talmud spoke of being kedoshim as living in such a way as to imitate the divine qualities of mercy and kindness.  They specifically ruled out imitating the parallel divine attribute of strict justice often seen as working in balance with divine mercy and which may impose conditions for the way the mercy might be applied. They are advocating undiscriminating kindness to others in order both to achieve kedoshim and to increase the presence of God in the world. I am reminded of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel who wrote “when I was young I used to admire clever people, now I am older I admire kind people” and I hope that beyond admiration, we remember the vulnerable and the powerless and those who sought to help and protect them, and in remembering our own experience of helplessness and oppression we too strive to increase kindness in our world.

 

Parashat Vayelech, Shabbat Shuvah and thoughts for the asseret y’mei teshuvah

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The Mishnah tells us that “Everything is foreseen, nonetheless free will is given”. How can we come to terms with a God who knows what tragedies will happen, yet who does nothing to prevent it, and who will, in the words of this sidra, “Hide the divine countenance from us”, allowing us to be ready prey for our enemies?

And If God anticipates and even knows what the future might bring, of what significance is our own free will?

The problem arises again and again in bible, beginning in the book of Genesis with the eating of the fruit in the Garden of Eden, and mirrored here at the end of Deuteronomy with God’s disclosure to Moses about what will happen after his death.

The contradiction is addressed in traditional Judaism with the mishnah I began with, the idea that God’s omniscience includes a complete awareness of human nature and of how people will behave, yet God also allows us to make our own choices from the full spectrum of possible actions. And the mishnah takes the idea further by telling us that “Everything is in the hands of God, except the fear of God” – in other words, from the rabbis’ perspective, God has chosen to limit Godself in one important aspect so as to allow human beings to do that which makes us so special to God and makes us in God’s image – we are able to exercise choice.

The idea of limiting God – even of God choosing to limit Godself – is one which comes close to blasphemy, and yet that is the boundary with which we have to work, for it is the area in which we exist.

The mystical tradition tells us that when God decided to create the world, God first had to draw back, to create some space in which God was not, so that God could create a distinct entity that was not-God. Having created the world in this space-that-was-not-God, God then breathed something of Godself in the form of divine light, or holy sparks. These holy sparks are said to be the manifestation of God with which we work and struggle, the immanence of God in the place where God has chosen to limit Godself.

Our tradition tells us that God has chosen, for the sake of the existence of humanity, to limit God’s active presence in our world, and has given us the choice to either accept or to ignore God’s presence; to either attempt to meet God’s requirements or to turn our backs on God. God’s wish is clearly that we search for relationship, that we obey the mitzvot and in so doing partner God in completing the work of the creation of the world – but in no way will God push us into having to accept that position, nor will God intervene in history to change what we do, or to alter the consequences that will arise from how we choose to behave.

If we turn our back on God, if we choose to be alienated from God, then the consequence will be that God is hidden from us. God is limited by our human freedom to engage – or not to engage. As the writer of Deuteronomy wrote: ‘Lo bashamayim hi” – it is not in heaven that you need to say ‘who will go there for us…” And as the psalmist echoed “The heavens are the domain of God, but the earth has been given to human kind”. We have this world in which to exercise our choice, and our choice must be informed by having Torah, by being able, as Rabbi Dr Louis Jacobs once said, to think God’s thoughts after Him.

In this world of extremist teachings and of secular explanations it becomes easy to either blame God for terrible and tragic events, or else to find other places to lay blame – a government’s foreign policy maybe, the anonymised disaffection or alienation of a mass of people, capitalism. What seems to get lost is the actual and personal decisions made by individual people, the choices to act or not to act, the thoughtfulness and stage by stage process of decision making. Individual autonomy and responsibility gets submerged in the rhetoric of blame and anger, glib reasoning and political analysis tries to explain away real and personal choices.

“Everything is foreseen and yet free will is given. Everything is in the hands of heaven except the fear of heaven…” We have a God who has deliberately limited Godself in our world to allow us to express unhindered our essential humanity and our freedom to choose. Our tradition shows us again and again that God took a chance when God created human beings to be free – every narrative in bible demonstrates that God, like us, must therefore bear the consequence of our freely chosen actions. God’s knowledge of what could be and what will be remains – what Nachmanides calls ‘knowledge in potential’ – yet God’s action can only be done through human channels. The responsibility for how the world will be is ours alone, for the choices are ours alone – millions of individual and personal choices continually being made.

During these ten days of Teshuvah, of our returning to our root of Being, we have the opportunity to read and to reflect, to study, to think and to pray. We have the opportunity to put right what we can put right, to apologise for what we can no longer amend, to act choicefully to make our world a better place. We have the choice and we have the responsibility. We can begin to seek God’s presence, to confront God’s hidden face. As God said to Joshua at the beginning of his journey – hazak v’ematz… be strong and resolute, v’anochi ehyeh imach – for I will be with you.