Tag Archives: God

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 דָּ֖ן יָדִ֣ין עַמּ֑וֹ כְּאַחַ֖ד שִׁבְטֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Haftarah for Vayigash – approaching and confronting – but will it lead to reunification?

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Ezekiel, master of metaphors and mystical visions, lived in the days before and after the destruction of the First Temple, and preached to his fellow exiles in Babylon in the early years of the 6th century BCE. They were captives in a foreign country, and they never ceased to hope for an eventual return to their homeland. 

            The sidra tells us of the reunification of Joseph with his brothers.  Ezekiel foretells that the ten lost tribes will be reunited with the tribe of Judah, which, with Benjamin, had formed the southern kingdom.  As we know, history did not bear out Ezekiel’s hope. The Northern Kingdom disappeared into the mists of history, and we Jews – Yehudim – are so called because we are the inheritors of Judah – Yehudah.    Yet still we retain Ezekiel’s text, the story of his vision, because we see that it bears more than one interpretation, that the united Israel is more than the physical bringing together of the 12 tribes, but is the spiritual coming together of those who have held on to the vision, who are gathered in by being united in a return to covenant with God.

             The sidra begins with the words “Then Judah came near to him”.  This meeting between Judah and Joseph, and the dialogue which followed it, marks one of the most dramatic incidents in the whole narrative of the children of Jacob, the forefathers of the tribes of Israel, until their exile into Egypt.  The midrashic literature makes a great deal of this drawing near, and the meeting is used as the model of the later interpretational rule that ‘the histories of the ancestors are the paradigm for the children’.  Hundreds of years before the  historic national events, here in vayigash we have recorded a confrontation between the tribe of Judah, (who settled in the Southern Kingdom,) and what would later be known as the kingdom of Israel, the ten tribes led by the tribe of Ephraim, Joseph’s son – and in this version in Genesis the confrontation ends with reconciliation.

            It is curious that the haftarah chosen for this portion is that of Ezekiel’s vision of unification of the two kingdoms that existed in the land of Israel, for while one can read the text at its face value as being a reflection of the reunification of Joseph and his brothers, it is open also to reflecting on that reunification as superficial and temporary.  Just as one could make the case that there was never a single state in which all the tribes came together as one easy unity, but that instead there was always some resistance to merger, so too one could read that the approaching of Judah and Joseph remained just that – a coming closer without the final step which would have brought about true shalom, completion. 

            There are those who say that even at the earliest time of a nation state, during the days of David and Solomon, there were effectively already two separate kingdoms under a joint king who ruled both, (Y. Leibowitz) so that immediately after Solomon’s death the formal partition was inevitable.  So how then, if we see the two stories as intimately linked and commenting on each other, do we read of the approaching, the confrontation and the meeting of Joseph and Judah in Egypt, of what was really happening for the forefathers of the two kingdoms?

            Ezekiel prophesied after both the ten tribes of the Northern Kingdom and the tribes who lived in Judah had already been exiled.  His vision was that the two nations would return, and that this joint experience would somehow forge the full unification which had never quite taken place.  Jeremiah, his contemporary, foretold in a very emotional style the return of the ten tribes, and of course, there were Hosea and Amos, Northern prophets who foretold the destruction of the kingdom of Israel, who also added their view that in the future Israel would return.  We know all of these visions did not materialize in fact.  And I think that we cannot reconcile this knowledge by accepting the midrashic view that prophesies that have not yet been fulfilled must be in abeyance, ready to be fulfilled at the end of days.  Surely we must accept that the ten tribes, including the descendants of Joseph, were destroyed from the face of the earth, assimilated into other peoples, spiritually erased.  Even in Talmudic times Rabbi Akiva stated that “the ten tribes will not return”.  Even then he knew that they were lost.

            But the fact that the prophecies didn’t happen needn’t undermine our understanding in the prophetic tradition, for the truth is that Jewish prophecy isn’t about fortune telling, but about what will occur if we carry on the way we are doing, or else what ideally should happen – as the Tosafot says “No prophet foretells but what ought to occur, if there is no sin”. 

            Judah approaches Joseph, comes closer.  There is confrontation and there is meeting.  One can read the text so that the meeting was a papering over the cracks; or one can read the text to see that the meeting was profound.  Certainly it had the potential to be either.  The haftarah leaves us with tantalizing hints – Ezekiel prophesying the reunification of the tribes which descended from Judah and from Joseph, should it be a superficial reunification or a will it be a complete one? 

                            One can look at the sidra and the haftarah either way – either there is hope that even after a series of almost murderous problems with each other, the family of Jacob can come together in peace and harmony, approach each other and meet at a fundamental level; or that there has never been a true unity within the Jewish people, that we have always operated a model of dynamic tension, of coming closer but never actually merging.  That doesn’t have to be hopeless of course; It could be said that it is the inbuilt diversity of such a model that actually allowed us to survive all of this time. But wouldn’t it change our perception of ourselves if we acknowledged it, that we have no one orthodoxy, there is no one form of the Jewish people, that we thrive on the antagonisms within our structures.

            Our great prophets foretold events that never historically happened.  Our midrashic literature relocated those events to some mythical end of days, when all problems will be solved and unity will be achieved.  We could use our prophetic tradition as a guide to remind us that whatever our differences, our ideals remain – it is that matrix of ideas and beliefs which support us on our continuing journey in Judaism, that blend of varieties of vision which keep us aware of the significance of our journey. 

Lech Lecha – the covenants of peoplehood and land

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After giving a talk at a Muslim interfaith forum, entitled “One God, one humanity, many religions” I was asked after it by a group of interested young Muslim men – What makes the Jews Jewish?  Christianity they understood, Islam they understood, but Judaism – what makes Jews Jewish?

What gives us our special identity and our difference is the way we see our relationship with God, the understanding we have of being in a relationship of Covenant. The contract/covenant we have with God is unbreakable, however many times we don’t keep to the rules, however many times we transgress. The covenant we have with God is always there, it is inescapable, it defines us and creates the parameters of our religious identity. We know of it, we live with it day in and day out, but I don’t think that any of us can say that we really understand it.

The bible contains within its narrative many different sorts of covenant. Already there has been a covenant with Noach, and one with all of humanity – defined through the sign of the rainbow. This sidra, Lech lecha, sets the scene for some of the specifically Jewish ones. Brit milah, the covenant of circumcision and more puzzlingly the “Brit bein habetarim” the covenant of the pieces.

God appeared to Abraham seven times in his career, and put him to the test, made demands, held our promises and endowed him with the blessings of land and of descendants. The fourth appearance, the middle one of the revelations, was different from those that came before and those that followed it – it came in the form of a vision.

This vision begins with God telling Avram not to fear, that God will be his shield, that he will ultimately have a great reward – but immediately we are into a problem – what is it that God thinks that Avram fears?

Only AFTER the divine reassurance does Avram speak, asking what of worth could God possibly give him, seeing that he has no child of his own to be his heir. His question is answered – his descendants will be as numerous as the stars of heaven. God is the redeeming God who has brought him out, who will give him a new land to inherit. But Avram has another question – “how will I KNOW that I will inherit it?”

Maybe this second question is too much for God – although that statement may itself be a heresy. Whatever the reason for it, we are suddenly plunged into a difficult and obscure text. We don’t even know if the vision is the framework, or if Avram is operating in the physical world when, under divine instruction, he takes a three year old heifer, a three year old she-goat and a three year old ram, and two birds – a turtle dove and a young pigeon, and apparently slaughters all the animals, dividing each of the three animals in half, laying each half over against the other, and when the birds of prey come as they naturally would, Avram drives them away. What is the symbolism of three? Three animals, each three years old?  And of the six parts as each of the three is halved? And what of the two, the birds who are untouched?

The vision deepens into a tardema– the kind of magical sleep that happened to Adam in the Garden of Eden during which Eve was created. And for a second time Avram hears the promise that he will be a father of a great nation, and also that the nation will know suffering, although not in his own lifetime. And then the covenant is ratified as a smoking furnace and a flaming torch, symbols we can only assume of the presence of God, passed between the pieces.

We don’t see Avram wake up as we saw Adam awake and meet his companion. We don’t know how Avram interpreted his vision, who he told, how it altered him. We are left only with a description, a sense of deep symbolism, an awareness that while the human side of the covenant is still unclear, God is obligated by the event. Just as with the covenant with Noah God is obligated but nothing is demanded of humankind. The later covenants don’t work like this – the Brit is generally dependent on Israel’s faithfulness to God, but here in the early covenants with humankind the remarkable fact is that they are unconditional, they demonstrate entirely selfless love given by a God who is prepared to be faithful and unchanging when responding to humankind.

The true symbolism of the covenant of the pieces is lost in the mists of the past, although we can intuit a reasonable amount of understanding. The three sets of three – a magical number long before the existence of Christianity, denoting a special kind of wholeness. The birds of prey driven off symbolising the nations who would try to pre-empt or even destroy the covenant, being defeated by Avram. The other birds, symbols of liberation, of perfections, of the divine presence, who become invisible in the text. And the cutting into two and then passing through the pieces denotes the parties to the contract guaranteeing the wholeness of it. Dividing as a way of symbolising completion has been around for a long time – even today we cut a deal. Or cut a ribbon or smash a bottle or a glass, and circumcision too requires the action of cutting.

We have a contract with God. Unlike any other formulation of any other religion, ours is based unequivocally on this idea of covenant of mutual obligation. God is our God because we are God’s people – that is the bottom line. But just how do we understand that contract and how do we honour it?

Traditional Judaism is clear about this –the system of mitzvot which provides a framework for all we do and all we are, this is the content of the contract. By observing the mitzvot the commandments, we are honouring the metzaveh, the commander. Whether we understand or not, whether we get a spiritual feeling or not, whether we feel good about it or not, this is the way of the relationship forged with our ancestor Abraham, this is the obligation to which we are signed up

Progressive Judaism has a slightly harder time of it, for the idea of covenant remains, and the framework of acting within a system of mitzvot remains, but quite what the content is and how one squares the unconditional acceptance of the obligation with more rational and libertarian thinking is, to say the least, problematic. And as soon as one begins the questioning there is the fear that the questioning will take over, that the precious essence of the covenant will in some way be lost to us.

What one might call the covenant par excellence, Brit Mila – has been the object of much questioning recently. It seems to be as obscure in its way as the covenant of the pieces, for there is the quality of unreality about it, of vision. There is the cutting of the flesh and the exposure of vulnerability, the division symbolizing the wholeness, Brit Milah perfecting the child on whom it is done.

Why do we circumcise our baby boys, and what symbolism does it hold for us? We do so at one level because it is a mitzvah, it is commanded of us by God, it symbolises brining that child into the covenant. Of course any Jewish boy remains Jewish even if Milah doesn’t take place, but somehow the ceremony is seen as essential in denoting the identity of the male Jew. Throughout history Jews have risked death to circumcise their sons, throughout history it has remained an act of pride, sometimes of defiance, always of inner if not outer freedom. We circumcise our sons to mark their bodies indelibly with this sign of our ancient covenant. Whatever we think it to be, deep down is that sense of unconditional obligation, of God being our God if we are God’s people.

The covenant is the framework for religious identity, forming the inner core and the outer parameter of Judaism. In an increasingly rational and libertarian world we need to understand the nature of covenant, to orient ourselves within it as best we can, and to teach its meaning to our children.

When God created two different covenants with Abraham, one to do with descendants the other with land, the model was set for all time – people and land, Jewish people and Jewish land. What each was to become was left unclear, but that both are necessary and each needs the other is certain to us.

So what is the meaning of the Jewish people and of a Jewish land? We are in a time of enormous uncertainty, of wildly differing opinions.  I offer my own thoughts now – the Jewish people are neither more special nor more talented than any other, what we have is an attachment to being God’s people, by which we mean we try to bring God more closely into the world through what we do. Listening to the different voices from different traditions earlier this week, that idea is not unique to us, but what is unique is our covenantal relationship that both binds us and frees us to relate in our own way to God, safe in our chutzpadik challenges towards God that God will not ever abandon us for good.

And our land is where we are supposed to bring God’s presence most potently, a place where God’s eyes are always watching, a place close to God’s heart.  I grieve for how little we are fulfilling our role there at the moment, I despair when I see the values and teachings of our religion traduced or ignored.

Abraham is told lech lecha, to go – but where? The Hebrew is obscure. Is it to go to a different physical place or to go into himself and draw from himself his essential humanity?  He is told to be a blessing. And this is our ultimate purpose, to understand that all humanity is under the special care of God, all humanity is equal in God’s eyes; to use this understanding to bring about blessing in the world.

Right now I fear that we are not doing our job well. The two contracts of peoplehood and land are both under threat from our own actions. But the imperative to go out and be a blessing, that still feels true and possible. And that must be our task – to speak out, to go that extra distance, and create blessing in our world.

Noach – A world washed away and the consequences of our actions and inaction.

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The stories in Noah are mostly well known. That society descended into a state of anarchy and utter corruption, and only Noah remained righteous and faithful to God’s ways. God warned Noah of a flood soon to destroy all of civilization, and only he and his immediate family would survive in a ark that he was to build. Noah was commanded to take seven pairs of each species of kosher animals and birds, and one pair of all other species. They all boarded the ark and the flood began with torrential rains lasted for forty days and nights. The waters covered even the highest mountains, killing all humans and animals; everything died except the occupants of the ark. After the waters raged on the earth another 150 days, God caused the waters to subside. The ark eventually rested on Mt Ararat, and Noah opened the window and dispatched birds to see whether it was time to leave the ark. First he sent a raven, which just circled the ark. He then sent out a dove. On its second attempt the dove went and did not return, signalling that the earth was once again habitable.

Noah built an altar and offered sacrifices. God blessed Noah and his sons and told them that he is establishing a covenant to never again bring a flood to destroy the world and the rainbow was the sign of this covenant: 

What is less well known is what happened next. Noah planted a vineyard, made wine, became drunk and fell into a deep drunken slumber — while naked. Noah’s son, Ham, saw his father naked, did not cover him but informed his two brothers of their father’s state. The brothers, Shem and Japheth approached their father and covered him. When Noah awoke. he cursed Cham’s son, Canaan, and blessed Shem and Japheth. This section then names Noah’s seventy grandsons and great-grandsons, the antecedents of the “seventy nations,” and their adopted homelands.

Then we have another familiar story –that of the Tower of Babel. Noah’s descendents gathered in the Babylonian valley and started building a tower, in an attempt to reach the heavens. God disrupted them by causing them each to speak a different language, thus destroying their communications. This caused them to disperse and settle in different lands. The Torah then lists the ten generations of Shem’s descendents. The tenth generation is Abram (later to be known as Abraham), who married Sarai (later to be known as Sarah).

Utterly familiar stories which we can even see in our mind’s eye – all those nursery illustrations of arks with giraffes reaching out, and rainbows enveloping them. The crazy ziggurat tower of Babel, with people climbing up with bricks. But truthfully these are not cosy bedtime stories at all; they are terrifying narratives which attempt to give meaning to cold hard truths.

The clue is in the story that is less well known. How Noah built a vineyard, made wine and stupefied himself with it so that he exposed himself in his tent, causing one son to see and tell, the other two to carefully cover him without themselves looking at their father in such a humiliating and vulnerable state.

There is a Midrash that is telling about this post diluvian Noah.

“When Noah came out of the ark, he opened his eyes and saw the whole world completely destroyed. He began crying for the world and said, God, how could you have done this? … God replied, Oh Noah, how different you are from the way Abraham … will be. He will argue with me on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah when I tell him that I plan their destruction… But you, Noah, when I told you I would destroy the entire world, I lingered and delayed, so that you would speak on behalf of the world. But when you knew you would be safe in the ark, the evil of the world did not touch you. You thought of no one but your family. And now you complain? Then Noah knew that he had sinned” (Midrash Tanchuma, Parashat Noach).

Noah is introduced to us right at the beginning of the story as “a righteous man in his generation”, and quite rightly the rabbis do not see this as a great compliment. The qualifying phrase “in his generation” makes it clear that his righteousness is relative rather than absolute. So this just about good-enough man is enabled to survive in order to begin the world afresh. But as starts to face the future, he realises all that he had not done, that his selfishness and narrow vision had allowed the great destruction to happen, that it didn’t have to be like this.

Noah, facing the new world, cannot actually face the past and his part in it, nor really can he move on into the future. He just gets stupefyingly, paralytically drunk, and his sons are forced to deal with the consequences. The younger one does not know what to do – Midrash suggests that he actually assaults his naked father as he lies dead to the world – but at the very least he does nothing;  the older ones treat him with more respect, but reading the text one has the feeling that they simply cannot bear to see their father lying there, seeing what he has become. By covering him they are also trying to cover up everything that Noah has symbolises – his passivity, his refusal to engage with the situation God tells him of, his lack of compassion for other living beings, his lack of any timely compassion at all and his inability to deal with the consequences of his own inaction.

Upon waking, Noah curses Canaan, the child of the younger son, and blesses God on behalf of the other two, giving them an approximation of a blessing. 

Why? Why curse Canaan, the child of Ham who saw him naked? Why not Ham himself? Noah is passing the pain down the generations, to those who are neither present nor responsible for the destruction. His own drunken misery becomes a curse for some of his descendants.

The truth that Noah doesn’t want to face is that he is in a new world now. A world washed clean of the violence and horror of the past, but also washed away – its resources, its people, and its structures all gone. This is no longer the world of miraculous creation, when God walked among the people in the Garden, and oversaw the perfection of the world. We are now in a world that Nechama Leibowitz described as ‘post miraculous’ a world where suddenly there are obligations – the seven mitzvot of the b’nei Noah are given here, … “It was in this renewed world — the world destined to be our world and not in the earlier, miraculous world — that saw the opening of the gate to the conflict between the values of  tikkun olam (perfection of the world) and Humanity .Avraham, who appears at the end of Parashat Noach is the person who takes upon himself the mission of perfecting the world as Kingdom of God, rather than taking the world for granted as Noach had done”

Noach took the world for granted. When warned by God of what was to happen, he took that for granted too. And when the worst had happened and the world was washed away leaving Noah and his family to begin it once again, he failed to do what was necessary, and it took another ten generations – till that of Abraham, for the relationship between God and human beings to flower once more.

It is interesting to me that this parashah began with the phrase, “These are the descendants of Noah,” yet does not go on to list any people, but rather begins a discussion of Noah’s attributes. One commentator suggests that this teaches us that what a person “leaves behind” in the world is not only children, but also the effects of their deeds.

Noah left behind both of course – everyone in the world is a descendant of this man if the flood story is to be believed, and so everyone is obligated to the mitzvot of b’nei Noach. But he also left behind the effect of his behaviours, deeds both committed and omitted.

Noah did not help to perfect the world. He allowed it to be washed away.  He didn’t appreciate the value of the world at all, focussing only on his own family and his own needs. Only after it was gone was he able to understand what was lost, and even then he was not able to deal with this loss. He curses a part of his family into perpetuity, his descendants go on to build the Tower of Babel in order to in some way find a purpose and meaning in their continued existence, and maybe also to challenge the divine using their newly created technology. So they too are forced to confront catastrophe as they are scattered across the world and left unable to communicate with each other. It takes ten generations, with the emergence of Avraham, for the world to begin to heal itself.

Like Noah we too are facing a time when the world seems to be set on a pathway to destruction: climate change, global heating, over fishing, the rainforest which once covered 14% of the earth’s surface now covers less than 6%, with all the consequences of loss of species that involves, years long droughts and famines.  We can see the warnings of destruction, we know the consequences of what is happening now, yet somehow we walk about in a dream, neither warning each other nor challenging what is happening. We spend our time trying to ensure only that we and our families can be safe, that our houses are weatherproofed, that our pantries are stocked. We are behaving no differently than Noah. And if we give it some thought and project our ideas into the near future, we can see than those who survive this environmental tumult will not have the resources to cope.

It is our job to take the story of Noah seriously – not as a good enough man who was saved from cataclysm because he did what God said without question, but as a man who was at least righteous in his generation, someone who hadn’t completely surrendered to the corruption and destructive activities around him. And we should see the consequences of his inactions too – that the world he allowed his children to inherit was damaged and fragile and took generations to heal.

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Renew our Days as of Old

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The book of Lamentations, traditionally said to have been written by the prophet Jeremiah after the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE and the exile of the people from Israel, ends with the recognition of God’s anger about Israel’s sins, but the custom is always that when a book ends on negative note, we repeat the penultimate verse – in this case the petition “הֲשִׁיבֵנוּ ה’ אֵלֶיךָ וְנָשׁוּבָ חַדֵּשׁ יָמֵינוּ כְּקֶדֶם  Return us God to you and we shall return, renew our day as before.

It is a verse you will know – we sing it when we return the scroll to the ark after reading from it every week. And it is a verse filled with complex layers of meaning.

It is a book filled with torment and despair, which famously begins with a description of Jerusalem as a widow, abandoned by God (her husband), empty of life and full of tears, beginning with a question “Eicha” – “How?” The suffering portrayed is overwhelming, and graphically described. God does not speak, the writer acknowledges their role in bringing this terrible situation about.

And then the penultimate verse ask God to bring us back to God, and we will return. And finally this strange request – hadesh yameinu k’kedem.  Make our days new – as they were before.  Or maybe “Make our days new – as we look towards the future. K’Kedem, which means “like in the past”(coming from the idea that the sun rises in the East and moves across the sky, so Kedem means both east and older or earlier), can also be construed as “with progression and advancement” (mitkadem references the future). So together these phrases ask for newness and renewal and for a return to an earlier state of being.

They remind us that we want to reclaim the good parts of our past while progressing into a new  position, becoming something more than we already are.

As we move through the month of Elul we are in the process of examining our past and reclaiming the parts that we feel make us a good person, while looking to a future and aiming to become the best person we can.  We recognise our role in, and responsibility for,  being the person we are now, and contemplate what we can change in ourselves going forward. And we petition God – “help us to come back to you” for we know ourselves to need such assistance if we are to make that journey.

Yitro – an abundance of learning

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Six sidrot in our torah reading calendar are named for people – they are the parashiot of Noah, Hayei Sarah, Yitro, Korach, Balak and Pinchas. It’s an odd list – the first is a man who was the part of the tenth generation after Adam, named by his father Lamech for much longed for rest and comfort after the expulsion of human beings from Eden and the requirement for them to work for everything they needed: “This one will provide us relief from our work and from the toil of our hands, out of the very soil that GOD placed under a curse” but whose life is anything but respite from the hard work of survival, and who, having been the only one to survive the flood with his family, makes another covenant with God. Then there is Sarah, wife of Abraham and the woman through whom the divine covenant for Israel is fulfilled with the birth of Isaac, a woman whose life was multifaceted and whose death is recorded right at the beginning of the sidra which then details the arrangements for her burial. Then Yitro a priest of Midian – about whom more later, then two different members of the priestly tribe of Levi both of whom challenge the leadership of Moses and Aaron, and finally a Moabite King who has heard about the Israelites and their travels in the wilderness, and in his fear of them he hires a prophet to curse them – unsuccessfully.

When we meet Yitro, we meet him first as a father and a priest, rather than learning his name: – “The priest of Midian had seven daughters” (Exodus 2:16). Later on he will be described as the father in law of Moses (who married his daughter Tzipporah) (Exodus 4:18). We see him take in the young Moses who is fleeing from Egypt, and bring him into his home. Later we will see him teach Moses about timely justice. We see him in many different roles and indeed our commentators suggest that the many names and descriptions of Yitro refer to the different periods of his life, his evolving relationships and facets of his identity. (see Nachmanides ad loc)

The midrash is particularly interested in his various names in bible “ Yitro had seven names: Yeter, Yitro, Chovav, Reuel, Chever, Putiel, Keni. Yeter — he added (yiter) a section in the Torah; Yitro — he was “abundant” (yiter) in good deeds. Chovav — he was beloved (chovev) by God. Reuel — he was a “friend” (rea) to God. Chever — he was a “companion” (chaver) to God. Putiel — he “weaned himself” (niftar) from idolatry. Keni — he was zealous (kinei) for Heaven and he acquired (kanah) Torah. (Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, Tractate Amalek 3:12)
The same midrash teaches that he relationship between the Moses and Yitro undergoes a significant shift after the exodus – “In the beginning Moses was proud of being the son in law of Yitro. Afterwards, Yitro was proud of being the father in law of Moses.”
The midrash builds on the difference between the names Yeter and Yitro noting that there is an additional letter vav – a letter whose origin is a hook, and concluding that this change in name is in order to demonstrate that he linked his fate to that of the Jewish people – that is, he converted to Judaism.

The midrash converts Yitro to Judaism, suggesting that he tried every form of idolatry in order to find the true nature of the divine and meaning of existence, and only after a journey through the entire world of idolatry does he see what God does for the children of Israel, and recognise the One true God. He becomes a sort of icon for the personal spiritual journey in this way.
But for me this rather misses the point. For me, Yitro personifies the goodness of the outside world, taking a refugee into his home and family, giving him not only a place in the family but work and meaningful status. I like the idea that we learn from others, that Yitro (which can mean both that “abundance /more” and “remnant/left over”) can offer for us to become more of what we are, and can also show the power of what is “not us”. It can speak of the sense of “plenty”, and it can at the same time remind us that with even a small amount of our tradition and people surviving, there can always be new growth. How often do we learn in Jewish history of the power of a small remnant to pick ourselves up and build ourselves once more?

One of the nouns that derive from the same Hebrew verbal root as Yitro means a cord or a rope, something that ties together. By holding on together, by organising ourselves in relationship with each other, this biblical figure reminds us that we are able to build ourselves again, however great the opposition to us may be, however small a group of us is left.

So I would rather Yitro stays a Midianite – a supportive and critical friend, an outside eye who sees what we may not notice. One of the best biblical examples of this is his teaching to Moses of creating a responsive judicial system, rather than delaying justice for people. Yitro is a figure who challenges precisely because he isn’t part of Israel, someone who can ask difficult questions, challenge the group-think, make us rethink the norms. And as such he provides a great service, both in the biblical text and later. We are told (BT Sotah 11a) that his descendants the Kenites lived at Yabetz – and that they sat in the Sanhedrin in that the place, and the Jewish people went there for advice, in the Chamber of Hewn Stone. (See Sifrei Bemidbar 78)
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Yitro and his descendants model the dynamic and mutually beneficial relationship between the Jewish people and those outside the community. They are the “other” whom we respect and value, who bring their insights and understanding to our world, who remind us that while we have a particular covenantal relationship with God, God is the God of all peoples. They remind us to value other faith traditions, to understand that each of them has perception and awareness of God that we may not be party to, to know that God is much greater than the particular relationship with the Jewish people. As the prophet Amos reminds us
“To Me, O Israelites, you are Just like the Cushites —declares GOD.
True, I brought Israel up From the land of Egypt,
But also the Philistines from Caphtor
And the Arameans from Kir. (Amos 9:7)

The many names of Yitro remind us that people are made up of many experiences and identities. And they remind us too of the many names for God – the same God, the only God, who manifests in every tradition and faith.

There are six sidrot named for people and they can be seen as sets of pairs. Pinchas and Korach are Levites, both act zealously according to their own narrow world view, and challenge Moses and the leadership. Sarah and Noach are each critical to a covenant with God, each produce the child through which the covenant will continue. Balak and Yitro are also a pair – Balak sees the travelling Israelites on their way to their land, and is afraid of them coming through his kingdom. His response is to pay a freelance prophet of God to curse them and so destroy what he perceives to be a threat. Yitro hears of the splitting of the sea and the escape of the Israelites from the pursuing Egyptians and recognises that God cares for this ragtag of ex-slaves travelling to freedom. His response is to help them to organise themselves for the future. He is a reminder that every outsider need not be an existential threat, but that people of faith can care for each other and lift each other.

Yitro walks away just before the giving of Torah at Sinai. I have always wondered about that decision – was it his way of retaining his own Midianite and priestly relationship with God, or was he sent away because his work was done? Either way, he remains the consummate critical friend, the figure we need to give us perspective, to remind us that difference is good and that there are many, many paths to the One God.

Managing our money according to Jewish Values

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

Sermon Bereishit 2024

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Il testo italiano segue il testo inglese

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

תַּאַמִיןֹ שֶיְכוֹלִין לְתַּקֵן אִם אַתָּה מֲאַמִין שֶיְכוֹלִין לְקַלְקֵל   

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ma dobbiamo chiederci: l’inizio di cosa?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

15th Elul: Which God do you not believe in?

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Elul 15 23rd August

A discussion among my colleagues – “What does one say when someone says to you “Rabbi, I don’t believe in God””

One answer – “I always ask them which God they don’t believe in”.

My teacher Rabbi Dr Jonathan Magonet used to bemoan the fact that so many Jews give up serious Jewish education at bar/bat mitzvah. They had, he used to say, a thirteen year old god. And as they grew and matured, their idea of God was frozen in time, adolescent and unbelievable.

Jews are the people of Israel – literally the ones who struggle with God. We are not required (despite the Maimonidean doctrine) to believe in God. Indeed earliest rabbinic Judaism was not so much interested in what people believed about divinity, but talked instead about shared narratives. Slightly later we have the extraordinary rabbinic midrash on the verse in Jeremiah (16:11) “They have forsaken Me and not kept my Torah”   – “If only they had forsaken Me but kept my Torah!” (Pesikta d’Rav Kahana 5-7th Century)

Rabbinic Judaism is far more interested in how people behave, in the keeping of mitzvot, in action rather than in belief.

Since the giving of the Ten Commandments at Sinai on the way from slavery in Egypt to freedom in their ancestral land, Jews are a people who are commanded – who are under a chiyyuv, and obligation – and whose live are traditionally framed by the observance of mitzvot.

Of course the idea of commandments does somewhere require there to be a commander, but while we may have an historic metzaveh in our texts, the doing of mitzvot is in and of itself integral to our religious life. So for example Rabbi David Polish wrote that “When a Jew performs one of the many life acts known as mitzvot to remind themselves of the moments of encounter, what was only episodic becomes epochal, what was only a moment in Jewish history becomes eternal in Jewish life”[i]  His examples of the lighting of shabbat candles or of sitting at a Pesach seder are some of the examples he gives of our connecting with Jews across the world and across time.  The meaning and purpose of mitzvah for him is in part a way of sharing history and experiences across Jewish people hood, something that strengthens us in the world, and that momentarily allows us to transcend the mundane into the spiritual. 

There are many rabbinic names and descriptors for God. There are ways of understanding God not as a noun but as a verb – we are not tied to a thirteen year old god, some kind of supernatural being to whom we have to speak in stilted and formalised language. My very favourite name for God is “haMakom” – literally “the place”. Not a geographical location but a space where things can happen.

Israel – Jews – are named for struggling with God. Struggling with the ideas, the ethical demands, the behaviours that are required of us to be in covenant with God. The struggle is ongoing. If you find it hard to believe in the God of your childhood, then it is up to you to search the texts and find God with whom you can have a dialogue.

[i] ” Gates of Mitzvah: A Guide to the Jewish Life Cycle, ed. Simeon J. Maslin [New York: CCAR Press, 1979]

Rosh Chodesh Elul

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1st Elul  2021 Rosh Hashanah Le’ma’aseir Behema    9th August

Mishnah tells us there are four New Years, and the 1st of Elul is the New Year for the accounting purposes of tithing domestic animals.

While this is a date for a Temple practise and therefore has no practical significance today, the date has been glossed in order to publicise the Jewish value of Tza‘ar Ba’alei Hayim  – of preventing the suffering of animals.

The phrase originates in a Talmudic discussion about the treatment of domestic beasts, their loading and the conditions they must work under (BT Bava Metzia 32b).

Hebrew uses a number of words for animals – in Genesis animals, like humans are “Nefesh Chaya” – living souls. Biblically we see behema/ot are domesticated animals, Chaya (literally “alive” the word for wild animals (in modern Hebrew the generic word for animals, while wild animals are chayat bar, animals of the wild). But this  Talmudic  phrase Ba’alei Hayim not only recognises that animals are living, but that they are quite literally the masters or owners of life.

What does it mean to be an owner of life? And how does seeing our domestic animals as such figures influence how we think of them and treat them?

Judaism generally treats God as the Owner of Life – the One who gives and takes away life. We read in Talmud (Berachot 60b) the prayer familiar to all who read the morning service, the Elohai Neshama…:

When one awakens, one recites:
My God, the soul You have placed within me is pure.
You formed it within me,
You breathed it into me,
and You guard it while it is within me.
One day You will take it from me and restore it within me in the time to come.
As long as the soul is within me, I thank You,
O Eternal my God and God of my ancestors, Master of all worlds, Possessor of all souls.
Blessed are You, O Eternal who restores souls to lifeless bodies.

While it is clear that the Talmudic phrase “Ba’alei Chayim” is referencing animals that are in the service of human activity, it uses a lens we frequently ignore or even deny. Animals, even those who work for us or are farmed and herded in order to provide food for us, have a level of existence and meaning that also reflects the Creator of Life. We humans may have accorded ourselves the highest level in the creation story, the ones who name the animals and who will use them for our own benefit, but animal life too is important and has a spark of divine force, and it is not enough simply to avoid unnecessary cruelty.

Talmud tells us (BTBava Metzia 85a) “Once a calf being led to slaughter thrust its head into the skirts of Rabbi [Yehudah HaNasi]’s robe and began to bleat plaintively. “Go,” he said, “for this is why you were created.” Because he spoke without compassion, he was afflicted [at the hand of Heaven].(the midrash tells us he suffered toothache for 13 years)

Then one day, his maidservant was cleaning his house and came upon some young weasels. She was about to chase them away with a broom, when Rabbi Yehudah said to her, “Let them be, for it is written: ‘God’s tender mercies are upon all God’s works'” (Psalms 145:9). They said [in Heaven], “Since he is merciful, let him be treated with mercy.” [Thereafter, his pain ceased.]

This day, Rosh Chodesh Elul, is the day to consider the value of Tza’ar Ba’alei Hayim and ask ourselves, how do we value Creation in our daily lives.