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Reflecting on our behaviour between Rosh Hashanah and Kippur should not stop us Reflecting on our behaviour between Kippur and Rosh Hashanah – the year ahead…

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Ne’ilah Sermon Lev Chadash 2022

l’italiano segue l’inglese

At the very end of the service of Ne’ilah, standing before the open Ark with the shofar in attendance ready to blow the tekiah gedolah that will mark the final moment of Yom Kippur, the community enact one final ritual. We proclaim the first line of the Shema, followed by three renditions of “Baruch shem k’vod” (Blessed be the name of God’s glorious kingdom for ever and ever), and then a final profession of faith “Adonai Hu HaElohim” – Adonai is God – seven times.

This final sevenfold declaration dates back to the thirteenth century. The other two are slightly later. They provide a choreographed bookend to the first words of the Kol HaNedarim service where we brought together an earthly and a heavenly  Beit Din to permit us all to pray with each other who have sinned.

The first two lines of the shema, later additions to the liturgy here, bring to mind the recitation of the shema at the deathbed. Time is running out, we make our last commitment and supplication to our Creator.

But what of the formula “Adonai Hu HaElohim” – which builds to a crescendo that segues into the shofar blast?

And why the sevenfold repetition?

The phrase comes from Deuteronomy 4:35 and is later found in the first Book of Kings (18:37-39) and it is in this latter text that this powerful affirmation is rooted.

It tells the story of the prophet Elijah who comes to King Ahab to bring the Northern Kingdom of Israel away from the idolatrous practises it has chosen. In a series of wicked Kings of Israel, the bible tells us that “Ahab did more to anger the God of Israel, than all the kings of Israel who had preceded him.” married to Queen Jezebel they had persecuted the prophets of God and encouraged the worship of the Canaanite deity Baal and his wife Ashtoreth.  After some tense encounters where Elijah had called for a drought which has now lasted for three years, he has hidden from his enemies amid fears for his life at the hands of this evil couple. Now Elijah comes to ask Ahab to gather the people of Israel, with along the 450 priests of the cult of Baal and the 400 prophets of the cult of Ashtarot on Mount Carmel to prove once and for all who is the true God of Israel, and which a fake and idolatrous cult.

Once everyone is there, he asks the people the famous question – “how long will you  hover between two opinions” (meaning how long will you be undecided whether to worship Baal or Adonai?” The people do not respond. Elijah then offers a contest between the two “divinities”. He suggests both he and the prophets of Baal should each create an altar and offer a sacrifice on it. The god who would send fire down to consume the offering would be accepted as the true God. The prophets of Baal tried all day to get Baal to consume the sacrifice. They prayed loudly and  they danced till exhaustion set in, they whipped themselves into a frenzy – all the while calling out to Baal “Baal answer us”! But nothing happened.

Meanwhile Elijah taunted them – “perhaps he is asleep – shout louder, maybe he is out pursuing enemies – make more noise and movement to attract his attention”.  Still nothing happened, the sacrifice lay on the altar unconsumed.

 Then, in the evening, came Elijah’s turn, he took 12 stones for each of the 12 tribes, he sacrificed his bull, and to make his point that nothing would be too difficult for God, he even poured water over his sacrifice and altar. Then he prayed -and immediately “the fire of Adonai fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench” (v38).

Seeing this miracle, all the people of Israel bow down and declare “Adonai hu HaElohim! Adonai hu HaElohim” – Adonai is the true God, Adonai is the true God. The story ends rather gorily – the priests of Baal are slain by the Brook of Kishon (v40) and Jezebel is determined to wreak her revenge on this troublesome prophet, and once more Elijah has to flee for his life.

Once more in bible, we see that miracles never really change anything….

However the people have unequivocally denied Baal and the worship of idols, they have affirmed the one and only God of Israel, – the moment is one of teshuva, of leaving behind  vain and useless behaviours and attachments and affirming the one-ness and the true-ness of Adonai, the God of Israel. This is the climactic moment of the story – the people call out “Adonai hu HaElohim” – Adonai is the true God. And it is the climactic moment of the neilah service, as seven times (some say this is one for every day of the week, or a way to make a complete and sealed vow – we declare to each other and to ourselves at the end of Kippur – Adonai is the true God. We have returned. We have journeyed to this moment of true teshuvah.

With the sounding of the shofar the moment of perfect teshuvah is sealed. And it will be time to go home, to eat and to drink, to return to life.

But liturgists always have layers of meaning. Choosing this phrase with which to end Kippur is a way of saying – it is truly the end, we are focused only on God and not attached to any idolatrous feelings.  And that is lovely.

But note, Jezebel is about to take her revenge, and the people who have so recently declared for Elijah and for God don’t seem prepared to stop her. They might have proclaimed that only Adonai is the one and true God, but very quickly they revert to their previous behaviours, and they tolerate the machinations of the evil King Ahab and Queen Jezebel – indeed we are soon to learn of the fate of Naboth and his vineyard which the King and Queen wanted for themselves.

So there is an extra lesson the liturgist is asking us to learn. We may have had a deep spiritual experience today. We may feel we have journeyed and we have interrogated ourselves, that we have seen a route to change and decided to commit to it. We may feel exhilarated and cleansed and ready to move on into the world as new-born souls. But we have to remember that old habits are hard to break, that the real world demands real compromises from us, that this feeling of a spiritual high will not and cannot last. We have to face the coming days and we are warned – the miracle at Mount Carmel did not really change anything long term, and the spiritual high we may feel will also not change us long term. What matters now is not what happens in this day for atonement, what matters is what we choose to do differently after we leave the building, after we wake tomorrow morning, after we enter ordinary life.

The shofar blast will alert us not only to the end of Kippur, but to the temptations and bad habits of ordinary life. We need to have it ringing in our ears as they weeks and months take us further from this moment – because change is hard and slow and incremental and requires us to make choices and to actively do things differently.

The sun will soon set. We may reach the moment of catharsis and declare Adonai Hu HaElohim. We may leave this building exhausted but exhilarated. But what really counts is what happens when the sun rises tomorrow, and the day after, and the days after that.

Sermone per Ne’illà – Lev Chadash 2022

Di rav Sylvia Rothschild

          Alla fine del servizio di Ne’illà, in piedi davanti all’Arca aperta e con lo shofar pronto per essere suonato per la tekià gedolà, che segnerà il momento finale dello Yom Kippur, la comunità mette in atto un rituale conclusivo. Proclamiamo la prima riga dello Shemà, seguita da tre interpretazioni di “Baruch shem k’vod” (Sia benedetto il nome del glorioso regno di Dio nei secoli dei secoli), infine per sette volte la professione di fede “Adonai Hu HaElohim” – Adonai è Dio.

          Questa ultima dichiarazione in sette parti risale al XIII secolo, mentre le altre due sono leggermente più tarde. Forniscono una cornice coreografata alle prime parole del servizio Kol HaNedarim in cui abbiamo riunito un Beit Din terrestre e uno celeste per permettere a tutti noi che abbiamo peccato di pregare gli uni con gli altri.

          I primi due versi dello Shemà, che qui sono delle aggiunte successive alla liturgia, ricordano la recita dello Shemà sul letto di morte. Il tempo sta finendo, proclamiamo l’ultimo impegno e l’ultima supplica al nostro Creatore.

          Ma cosa possiamo dire della formula “Adonai Hu HaElohim”, che si sviluppa in un crescendo al suono dello shofar?

          E perché la ripetizione sette volte?

          La frase deriva da Deuteronomio 4,35 e si ritrova anche nel primo Libro dei Re (18,37-39), ed è in quest’ultimo testo che la potente affermazione si radica.

          Vi si racconta la storia del profeta Elia, che giunge dal re Achab per condurre il Regno del Nord d’Israele lontano dalle pratiche idolatriche che quest’ultimo aveva scelto. Nell’ambito di una serie di malvagi re d’Israele, la Bibbia ci dice che “Achab fece più per adirare il Dio d’Israele, di tutti i re d’Israele che lo avevano preceduto”. Sposato con la regina Jezebel, insieme perseguitano i profeti di Dio e incoraggiano il culto della divinità cananea Baal e di sua moglie Astarte. In seguito ad alcuni incontri tesi, dopo che Elia ha invocato una siccità che dura ormai da tre anni, quest’ultimo si nasconde da questa coppia malvagia, temendo per la propria vita. Infine Elia chiede ad Achab di radunare il popolo d’Israele sul monte Carmelo, insieme ai quattrocentocinquanta sacerdoti del culto di Baal e ai quattrocento profeti del culto di Astarte, per provare una volta per tutte chi sia il vero Dio d’Israele, e quale sia invece il culto falso e idolatra.

          Una volta che tutti sono presenti, Elia pone al popolo la famosa domanda: “per quanto tempo rimarrete sospesi tra due opinioni?” (nel senso di “per quanto tempo sarete indecisi se adorare Baal o Adonai?”). Il popolo non risponde. Elia indice quindi una disputa tra le due “divinità”. Suggerisce che sia lui che i profeti di Baal debbano creare ciascuno un altare e offrire su di esso un sacrificio. Il dio che avrebbe fatto scendere il fuoco per consumare l’offerta sarebbe stato accettato come il vero Dio. I profeti di Baal cercano tutto il giorno di convincere Baal a consumare il sacrificio. Pregano ad alta voce e ballano fino a cadere esausti, si scatenano freneticamente, il tutto mentre gridano a Baal: “Baal rispondici”! Ma non accade nulla.

          Intanto Elia li schernisce: “forse sta dormendo, gridate più forte, forse è fuori a inseguire i nemici: fate più rumore e movimento per attirare la sua attenzione”. Ancora non accade nulla, il sacrificio non consumato giace sull’altare.

          Poi, la sera, viene il turno di Elia: egli prende dodici pietre, una per ciascuna delle dodici tribù, sacrifica il suo toro e, per sottolineare che nulla sarebbe stato troppo difficile per Dio, versa persino dell’acqua sul suo sacrificio e sull’altare. Poi prega, e subito “il fuoco ad Adonai cadde e bruciò il sacrificio, la legna, le pietre e la terra, e prosciugò anche l’acqua dell canale” (v38).

          Vedendo questo miracolo, tutto il popolo d’Israele si inchina e dichiara: “Adonai hu HaElohim! Adonai hu HaElohim” – Adonai è il vero Dio, Adonai è il vero Dio. La storia si conclude in modo piuttosto cruento: i sacerdoti di Baal sono uccisi presso il ruscello di Kishon (v40), Jezebel è determinata a vendicarsi di questo fastidioso profeta, e nuovamente Elia deve fuggire per salvarsi la vita.

          Ancora una volta, nella Bibbia, vediamo che i miracoli non cambiano mai davvero nulla…Tuttavia il popolo ha inequivocabilmente negato Baal e il culto degli idoli, ha affermato l’unico e solo Dio d’Israele: è il momento della teshuvà, di lasciarsi alle spalle comportamenti e attaccamenti vani e inutili e affermare l’unicità e l’autenticità di Adonai, il Dio di Israele. Questo è il momento culminante della storia: le persone gridano “Adonai hu HaElohim” – Adonai è il vero Dio. Ed è il momento culminante del servizio di neillà, poiché sette volte (alcuni dicono che sia una volta per ogni giorno della settimana, oppure un modo per fare un voto completo e sigillato) dichiariamo a vicenda e a noi stessi alla fine del Kippur che Adonai è il vero Dio. Siamo tornati. Abbiamo viaggiato fino a questo momento di autentica teshuvà.

          Con il suono dello shofar il momento della perfetta teshuvà è sigillato. E sarà ora di tornare a casa, di mangiare e di bere, di tornare alla vita.

          Ma i liturgisti trovano sempre altri livelli di significato. Scegliere questa frase con cui concludere Kippur è un modo per dire che è davvero la fine, siamo concentrati solo su Dio e non attaccati a sentimenti idolatrici. E ciò è bello.

          Ma è da notare che Jezebel sta per vendicarsi, e le persone che si sono dichiarate di recente per Elia e per Dio non sembrano disposte a fermarla. Avrebbero potuto proclamare che solo Adonai è l’unico e vero Dio, ma molto rapidamente tornano ai loro comportamenti precedenti e tollerano le macchinazioni del malvagio re Achab e della regina Jezebel. Anzi, presto scopriremo il destino di Nabot e della sua vigna, che il Re e la Regina volevano per sé.

          Quindi c’è una lezione in più che il liturgista ci chiede di imparare. Potremmo aver avuto una profonda esperienza spirituale oggi, potremmo sentire di aver viaggiato e di esserci interrogati, di aver trovato un percorso di cambiamento e di aver deciso di impegnarci in esso. Potremmo sentirci euforici, purificati e pronti ad andare avanti nel mondo come anime appena nate. Ma dobbiamo ricordare che le vecchie abitudini sono difficili da rompere, che il mondo reale richiede da noi veri compromessi, che questa sensazione di euforia spirituale non può durare e non durerà. Dobbiamo affrontare i prossimi giorni e siamo avvertiti: il miracolo del Monte Carmelo non ha davvero cambiato nulla a lungo termine, e anche l’acme spirituale che potremmo sentire non ci cambierà a lungo termine. Ciò che conta ora non è ciò che accade in questo giorno per l’espiazione, ciò che conta è ciò che scegliamo di compiere in modo diverso dopo aver lasciato l’edificio, dopo che ci saremo svegliati domani mattina, dopo essere rientrati nella vita ordinaria.

          Il suono dello shofar ci avviserà non solo della fine di Kippur, ma anche delle tentazioni e delle cattive abitudini della vita quotidiana. Abbiamo bisogno di sentirlo risuonare nelle nostre orecchie poiché le settimane e i mesi a venire ci allontaneranno da questo momento, perché il cambiamento è duro, lento e graduale e ci richiede di fare delle scelte e di fare attivamente le cose in modo diverso.

          Il sole tramonterà presto. Possiamo raggiungere il momento della catarsi e dichiarare “Adonai Hu HaElohim”. Possiamo lasciare questo edificio esausti ma euforici. Ma ciò che conta davvero è cosa succede quando il sole sorgerà domani, e il giorno dopo, e i giorni successivi.

Traduzione dall’inglese di Eva Mangialajo Rantzer

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.

 

 

 

Ha’azinu – what might we say and write when we confront our own mortality?

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Moses knows he is going to die.  Not in the way we all ‘know’ we are going to die, the coldly logical knowledge that doesn’t impact on our emotions in any way, but in the way that some people who are very close to death know with a certainty that no longer expresses itself as fear or self-pity but with a clarity and sense of purpose.

I have sat at many deathbeds. I have seen denial and also acceptance, whimpering pain and alert peacefulness, sudden startling requests – for toast, for touch, for people long gone, for non-existent sounds or lights to be turned off or up.  What I have learned is that we none of us know how we shall die, how our last days and hours will be, but that at many, if not most of the deathbeds I have observed where there is some time for the process to be worked through, there is an opportunity to express what is most important to the dying person, to project themselves one last time into the world.

It is human to want to survive. Life wants to continue despite pain or confusion or fear. Even when a person seems prepared and ready for death there is often a moment where there is a struggle to continue in this world. Even Hezekiah who famously “turned his face to the wall” having been told that he must set his house in order for he would die and not live, then prays to remind God that he has done God’s will with his whole heart, and weeps sorely.   His prayer (found in Isaiah 38) resonates today “In the noontide of my days I shall go to the gates of the nether world, I am deprived of the residue of my years…. O God, by these things we live, and altogether therein is the life of my spirit; so recover Thou me, and make me to live.”

It doesn’t matter at what age we come to death – we want more life, we want to go on in some meaningful way, we want to be part of the future.

We all know we will die. We share death with all who have ever lived and all who will ever be. We may fear the how or the when, but generally we get on with life as if death is not real. And we don’t plan for how we might continue to be a part of the future, for how our life may make a difference for our having lived it, or for how or what might be remembered of our existence.

Yet sometimes we are forced to confront our own mortality. And when that happens, these questions demand to be asked.

The whole period of the Days of Awe which are now coming to a close forces us to acknowledge our own transience in this world.  Be it the wearing of the kittel we shall don for the grave, the taking out of a whole day from time to focus on how we are living our lives in order to reset and readjust our behaviours, or the saying of yizkor prayers and visiting the graves of our families. Be it the autumnal edge we feel as we shiver in the sukkah, or the browning and falling of the leaves, or the daylight hours shortening perceptibly – we are viscerally aware of the darkness that is coming, the lessening outer energy alongside the power of the interior life.

Sometimes this knowledge that we will inevitably cease to be in this world brings out a search for meaning, for a sense of self that will transcend the physicality of our existence. Sometimes we become engrossed in our own personal wants and needs, sometimes we look further outwards towards our family and our relationships, sometimes we gaze further out towards our community or we look further in time to see what will be after we have gone.  I think often of the story of Moses in the yeshiva of Akiva (BT Menachot 29b), comforted by seeing that Rabbi Akiva is citing him as the source of the teaching being given, even though he does not understand anything of the  setting that is 1500 years after his own life.  It is a story of not being forgotten, of projecting values down the generations. Talmud also tells us that R. Yochanan said that when a teaching is transmitted with the name of its author, then the lips of that sage “move in the grave” (BT Sanhedrin 90b.  Rabbinic Judaism gives great honour to the idea that we live on in the teachings we offered, but also in the memories of those who choose to remember us. It is commonplace in the Jewish world to be named for a dead relative in order to honour their memory, to tell stories about them long after the hearers (or even the tellers) have a first-hand memory of the person, to fast on the day of their yahrzeit (anniversary of their death) as well as to light a 24 hour candle and to say the kaddish prayer.

So it is time for us to give serious thought about how we project ourselves into the future, what we pass on in terms of life lessons, the stories people will tell about us, how they will remember us, how they will carry on the values that we have cared about enough for them to see and for them to choose too.

All rabbis have stories of sitting with the dying as these desires clarify. One colleague has I think the ultimate cautionary tale of being asked to come out to a deathbed of a woman he barely knew, a long way out from where he lived, in terrible weather, and sent in the form of a demand. Deciding that he must go but unsure of what was wanted, he collected together a number of different prayer books to be able to offer her the spiritual succour she wanted. Her final wish was that her daughter in law would not inherit her fur coat. She was taking her feud past the grave.  I remember the woman who sat in bed in her hospice writing letters to everyone in her life, beautiful letters – but she refused to actually see any of the people she was writing to. I remember the people who made great efforts to right wrongs and those who tried to comfort the people left behind. I think with love of the woman who sent an audio file with her message that she had had a wonderful life with the right man and they were not to grieve, even though her death seemed unfairly early. I think of the woman who, having lost her fiancé in the war, proudly told me she was going back to her maker virgo intacta, and the woman who told me of her abortion while she was hiding in Nazi Germany, and her belief that the child had visited her alongside its father who died some years later.

Many a personal secret has been recounted at a deathbed, but often having been released from the power of that secret if there is time, the soul continues its journey in this world, and suddenly all sorts of things come into perspective. And it is these stories that I remember with such love and that have had such great impact on me.  The stories that people had hidden from their nearest and dearest but which explain so much of who they are and why they have done what they did. Their belief that they were not loved enough which led to them thinking they were not able to love as much as they wanted. Their umbilical connection to Judaism that they had not lived out publicly for fear of what might happen to them or their children should anti-Semitism return as virulently as they remembered in their youth.  Their subsequent horror that children and grandchildren were not connected to their Jewish roots, and their guilt at having weakened this chain. There are multiple examples but what I see again and again is the need for good relationships with others, for human connection with others , for expressing warmth and love and vulnerability, the need for living according to clear and thoughtful moral values, and for a sense of deep identity that passes from generation to generation and connects us to the other in time.

Moses in sidra Haazinu is just like any other human being, wanting his life not to be wasted but to be remembered, wanting his stories and his values to be evoked in order to pass on what is important to the generations that will come after him, however they may use them.  He needs to be present in their lives, albeit not in a physical way.  The whole of the book of Deuteronomy has been his way of reminding, of chivvying, of recalling and reimagining the history he has shared with the people of Israel. He uses both carrot and stick, he uses prose and poetry, he is both resigned and deeply angry, he is human.

There is a biblical tradition of the deathbed blessing, a blessing which describes not only what is but also what is aspirational.  Rooted in that has come the idea of the ethical will to pass on ideas, stories and thoughts to the next generation of one’s family, a tradition that has found a home also in reminiscence literature.  Sometimes we find out much more about the person who has died from their letters and diaries than they ever expressed  in life – and often we mourn that it is now too late to ask the questions that emerge from these, or to apologise or explain ourselves.

As the days grow shorter and we have spent time mulling over how we are living our lives and trying to match them to how we want our lives to have looked once we see them from the far end, we could take a leaf out of Moses’ life’s work in Deuteronomy and write our own life story, not just the facts but the stories around them, how we understood them, what we learned.  Next year we might write it differently, but what a rich choice lies in front of us, to explore what is really important to us and to ensure that it, like us, will live on.

Devarim: Shabbat Chazon:- Both Vision and Words to understand how we got to this position and how we stand with God.

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On the Shabbat before Tisha b’Av the liturgical calendar demands that we begin to read the book of Deuteronomy – Devarim, and for the haftarah we read the vision of Isaiah, the reading which unusually gives the Shabbat its special name – Chazon, vision. This haftarah is the third of a set of three haftarot that do not match up with the torah reading, but rather with the three weeks before the ninth of Av, and are called the haftarot of rebuke.  (In this case while today is the 9th of Av, it serves as the Shabbat before as we do not fast on Shabbat, and Tisha b’Av observance will begin tonight)

All sorts of cycles of Jewish history and philosophy come together in the readings for this week, focussing us for the task ahead as we become aware of the nearness of Ellul, and the need for serious introspection.  And the words, the language of the readings, give us a number of hints, guiding our thought patterns gently but certainly, as we enter this time.

On Tisha b’Av by tradition we read the Megillah of Lamentations, known by its first exclamation of desperation and sorrow – Eicha. The word, meaning “How can this be?” or simply “Alas” is not particularly common in bible, yet it appears in both the torah reading and the haftarah today.  It is as if the exclamation is being used as a prompt to our subconscious –“How can we have arrived at this state once more after all our good intentions last year?”

The word is uncommon.  It is used only by three prophets – Moses, Isaiah and Jeremiah (here in Lamentations).  But there is another word which looks exactly the same in the unpointed torah text and the Midrash notes this with interest:  After Adam and Eve had eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil they hid themselves away from God when God came looking for them in the garden.  And God called out to them “Ayeka” – Where are you?

The words Eicha? And Ayeka? look the same in the unvowelled text.

The Midrash suggest that in that call God was showing all the despair that would later be the Jewish experience at the destruction of Jerusalem – “How lonely sits the city once great with people”. (Lam1:1)

The link is obvious – that it is the choices we make that bring about ill fortune, it is our own behaviour that is the progenitor of our despair.

But there is another way to look at this similarity of consonants – in the passage in Genesis God calls out to human beings “Where are you”, but we might as easily call out to God the same question.  As we survey the destruction of our worlds again and again, we must ask of God – “where are You?”

Some years ago I had a long conversation with a woman congregant who had been brought out of Germany as a child in the kinderstransport, but who had then had to live with the terrible pain of knowing that her family had not survived the camps, had written letters to her begging her to help them out of that hell, had died wondering if she would be able to save them.  She told me that she was not going to fast on Yom Kippur any more.  I said I thought that was reasonable – she was ill and on a great deal of medication, but that wasn’t her point.  “No” she said, “it isn’t the medication, it is just that for nearly 80 years I have been saying sorry to God every Yom Kippur, and now I feel I have done it.  Now it is time for God to begin to say sorry to me”.

Her life had been long and filled with all sorts of pain, emotional, spiritual and physical.  But she had come to the last stretch and she had a problem for God.  It was both the exclamation “Eicha” and the question “Ayeka” – “How could this happen? Where were You?”

The list of the calamities that are said to have occurred on Tisha b’Av is extensive.  The day that the spies reported back that the land was wonderful but would not be easy to take – and the people rejected Moses and Joshua’s urging to go into battle for it – was said to have been Tisha b’Av for example.  And as we consider the violent history of the Jewish people, surviving terrible destructions again and again, we are left with the questions – “How could it have happened again?  Eicha?  And: Where were You? Ayeka?”

As the pain of the Jewish people reverberates down the centuries, so do those two words.

Which brings us to Devarim – and Chazon.

God creates the world in the very beginning of Torah with words – God speaks and the world as we know it emerges.  The huge bulk of Torah takes place in the midbar, the place where the action of speech and the words spoken create a space in which God can be encountered.  Wilderness, unstructured and unowned land – the dimension where ideas can be embodied not only in our usual use of language but in our very existence.  And at the end of the book of Numbers, known as Bemidbar, the narration leaves us poised on the edge of the land, with Moses about to die and told to anoint Joshua, the only other survivor of the midbar experience, as his successor.  Moses passes on his authority of leadership, he climbs a mountain so as to see the midbar where he has spent most of his life, and the land of Canaan which he will never enter, and then he begins to speak. Devarim. Words pour from him in a torrent. His memories, his meaning, his purpose – his very soul. Facing his end he chooses to mirror the actions of God at the creation of the world – he uses words to bring into being the most important things he knows.  He answers the questions “Eicha” – how can these situations happen?”  And “Ayeka – where are You?”

The situations happen because we contribute again and again to them happening.  Where is God?– God is right here.  Moses wants us to know these answers. He puts an enormous amount of energy into reminding us, calling heaven and earth as witness. He rehearses our history – and our complicity in it.  He offers blessings and curses and repeats the simple rule – what we choose to do always has consequences.  And he tells us again and again how God is waiting for us, is close to us, is never far away and only waiting for our call.  Poor Moses – it is learning he can never quite pass on to us, for each of us has to learn it for ourselves.

Today is Shabbat Devarim. It marks the beginning of the book of Moses’ final and more distilled teachings to go with us into the future when Moses cannot.  It is the Shabbat before Tisha b’Av, a day of almost resigned and patient waiting for the worst after almost three weeks of semi mourning.  Words seem to be useless now. They cannot change the future.  We arealmost weighed down by the number of them being prayed and read, exclaimed or muttered.

Words are everywhere – we cannot get away from them. And they begin to lose their power to reach us, so many words surround us.

And so Isaiah brings us something else along to help us with all these words – he brings a vision, a different sense of how to interpret and understand the world.

The vision of Isaiah son of Amotz….  Isaiah’s vision projects onto the harsh reality around him and establishes a different kind of perspective. Isaiah reminds us that at the Creation God spoke, and God saw.  Sometimes, when the words aren’t enough any more, it is important to draw back and to see. To notice, to observe and perceive, to witness.

We Jews are a people of words, and we can use words in so many clever ways. We are sometimes able to block out our reality for a time with a judicious use of language.  We are sometimes able to confuse ourselves or others about the truth of our lives.  We can construct so many different worlds, from the minutiae of our legal system to the legends chronicled in our midrashim.  By declaring time sacred, we can make it so for the period of Shabbat.  By asserting our scriptural narrative we can make order in the universe.  But sometimes we need not to declare or proclaim, but to look, and to really see.  We may have a prayer called “Shema” – Listen!  which we expect others as well as ourselves to hear as we recite it, but we also have a torah reading “Re’eh” – see!

Moses, our greatest prophet, said of himself that he was not so good with words.  He had instead the experience, the encounter, the vision, to take him and our people through the wilderness and to the edge of the promised land. Our prophets were also men – and women – of vision, something we occasionally choose to forget.

But this Shabbat we are reminded – Chazon as well as Devarim – Vision as well as words, to look as well as to speak and listen.

As we enter Tisha b’Av we will need both of these senses fully honed.  And in the run up to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur which these liturgical events signal to us, we are reminded- use words to understand the world and explain it to ourselves and to God, use words to pray, to ask, to meet each other – but never forget the other sense – stand back and really take a long hard look at our world and our place in it.  Watch ourselves and perceive our own contribution to where we now are.  Forget our clever use of words just for once, and instead, use our sight our foresight, our imagination, our revelation – get in touch once more with our own vision.

Balak of Moab who did not know what he did not know

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Israel faces a crisis – and yet does not seem to know it. Balak, King of Moab, is alarmed at the prospect of Israel crossing his land, has seen what they have done to others as they have journeyed towards his land. The Canaanites were entirely destroyed at Hormah (Num 21:3),  then it was the turn of Sichon the King of the Amorites (21;25-26)  who would not let them pass through his land and was defeated and destroyed, and finally Og the King of Bashan (21:35) who also went out to battle against them was utterly ruined. So Balak chose to get some supernatural help, and approached Balaam, a well known prophet the power of whose blessings and curses were legendary.

The sidra focuses entirely on the negotiations between Balaam and Balak, and the consequences of this discussion. What is happening in the Israelite camp is irrelevant – bible is telling us what is happening “offstage” so to speak, a side story that is however hugely important to the Jewish people even today.

Famously, to begin prayer, we take from this sidra the final words of Balaam, which he speaks almost without conscious intent. Balaam is hired to curse the people of Israel, though he knows that he cannot do this, for God has made clear that the Israelites are special and that the normal rules of blessing and cursing them will not apply. At the end of a long process of attempted curses in order to satisfy the wishes of his paymaster Balak, Balaam blurts out the phrase “Mah tovu ohalecha Ya’akov, Mishkenotecha Yisrael” – “how good are your tents Jacob, your dwelling places Israel” and this statement is taken by us as a blessing, and used as the phrase with which we begin our services – a tradition that was already established by the time the 9th century Babylonian Rav Amram compiled his first siddur and instructed us “”When entering a synagogue say: ‘Mah tovu ohalecha. . . V’ani, b’rov chas’d’cha; I, through your abundant love, enter your house; I bow down reverently at Your holy temple.”

Our liturgy begins deliberately by turning the curse of an enemy into a blessing for us to express our delight in entering a synagogue, confident that God will accept our prayer. The Talmud understands the tents and dwelling places as being the synagogues and houses of study of the Jewish people (Sanhedrin 105b). The Midrash on the other hand, quoted by Rashi (ad loc) (also Baba Batra 60a), sees the phrase as a paean of praise to modesty and privacy: “When Balaam saw that the tents of the Israelites were set up so that the entrance of one did not face the entrance of another, he praised them with the “Ma Tovu”.

Both traditions are teaching that it is the thoughtful behaviour of the Jews, either their respect for each other’s private space and personal modesty, or else the connection to God through prayer and study, that brings about the change in Balaam’s words, transforming attempted curse to fluent blessing. And that may indeed be a good lesson to draw from the story, but I think it is important to see respect for the other not as an end in itself, but as an important way of being.

To take this further: In this sidra the Israelites had no idea that Balak was so nervous of them. They were not intending to destroy Moab (Deut 2:8-9) who were distant relatives, being descended from Lot the nephew of Abraham. So while Balak was terrified of this horde of people who seemed to be destroying the peoples in their path – and was presumably ignorant of the requests for safe passage that were sent by the Israelites but that were not accepted and instead met with hostility and warriors – the people themselves knew nothing of their effect on the other peoples of the land. They see themselves only as innocents, wishing to travel through, to take nothing but what they would genuinely trade or buy from the inhabitants.

So the ignorance of Balak is matched – even dwarfed – by the ignorance of the Israelites, both of the effect they were having on others, and the reputation they were creating for themselves. Their ignorance extended to the machinations of the Moabite King and the professional prophet he hired, and also to the work that God put in to protect the Israelite people travelling through the desert. In the words of Donald Rumsfeld, they did not know what they did not know.

While Rumsfeld, then US defence secretary, was (unfairly) awarded the Plain English Campaign’s trophy for most obfuscating remark in December 2003 for the words: “Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know”. (Rumsfeld on February 12, 2002 at a press briefing at the White House on WMD)  The story of Balak is illuminated for me by his words. The Israelites knew the things they knew – though they did not always respond in the way that that knowledge would lead one to expect. They knew that God was looking out for them and providing for them, but they still rebelled; They also knew some things that they did not know – how to get into the land, when that would be, if they would succeed.  But they simply didn’t know how they were being perceived by the peoples whose land they needed to cross to get to Israel, they didn’t know how their reputation grew to be so fearsome that Balak was desperate for extra help, and they didn’t know that God was quietly active in the background in order to protect them.

What God is doing in this narrative remains, to the Israelites, an “unknown unknown”. Rabbi John Rayner would say that God does not intervene in the world, but that God is active in the world –meaning that God’s will is manifested in the actions of people: the choices by Balak and Balaam in this text, as well as the behaviour of the Israelites, being prime examples. Our daily actions, how we conduct ourselves and how that leads other people perceive us matters; indeed it is the one thing that can transform our world, that is able to transform curses to blessings. We cannot know the totality of the effects our choices have, but I would like to think that modern Jews and Israelites are more aware and perceptive than their ancient forbears about the effects on, and the analyses of, the peoples and lands around them of their actions. It cannot be enough to care for the wellbeing only of other Jews. It cannot be enough to spend our time in study and prayer. Such caring, such study must lead to good and ethical action, to being part of the action of God in the world.

The choices we make in our behaviour matters. How other people see us, even if we are currently unaware of them, or do not notice them, or find ways to sideline them – matters. If we see something as self defence but others see it as aggression – it matters. Even if their construction of events is something we would not recognise, their understanding must be understood and taken seriously and addressed. The bible is clear that God does not intervene in history – the story of the talking donkey shows how the bible views such intervention – but it is equally clear that the choices people make, whether they fully understand the situation or are in apparent ignorance of it, have real effects in the world. It is up to us, as it was to Balaam, to make the choices God would wish us to make, or we may find that the situation is taken out of our hands and we will lose the chance to make good choices and bring the will of God into our world. How then will curses be turned into blessings?

previously published on lbc.ac.uk