February | 2022 | HEART AND MIND

25 Feb 2022

Sticky Post By admin Posted in Community Permalink

Responding to the war against the Ukraine: never give up faith

Sticky Post By admin On February 25, 2022

‘I never thought we’d see this in our lifetimes:’ how many people have said those words in the last two days. Our hearts and prayers go out to the people of Kharkov, Kyiv, all the Ukraine, and to the world, to the children of now and the future, because once again tyranny and destruction have been let loose.

I think of Osip Mandelstam, the great Russian-Jewish poet who perished in transit to Stalin’s gulags. In January 1937 he wrote from exile in Voronezh

What shall we do with the plains’ beaten weight?…
And crawling across them
is that not the one whose name we shriek in our sleep –
the Judas of nations unborn?

People across the Ukraine, who are all on the front line facing this terrible betrayal of their humanity, hope and freedom, urgently need our help. Last night, at a service joined by hundreds across the world, Rabbi Reuven Stamov spoke from Czernowitz, explaining that people were gathering there in the west, currently the safest part of the country. They need food and shelter. There are already tens of thousands of refugees, and many elderly, unable to travel, left behind. There are hundreds of centres taking in people on the Polish border. Below are the details of our appeals and prayers.

Just now on Radio 4 a brave woman, speaking from the shelter where she spent the night, said ‘We need your help. We are your front line in Europe.’ She may well be right; this is war in Europe.

No doubt, in the coming years citizens of Russia too will pay miserably for this needless war, in money spent on armies and conquests instead of on their civic needs.

What in times like these, does Judaism teach us to do? One feels powerless and useless. The little good one tries to do seems like nothing, like dry earth disintegrating into dust in one’s hands. As the morning prayers say, ‘What can we tell you, God? The powerful are like nothing; the wise know nothing…’

Yet throughout the tribulations of history, Judaism has taught us to keep faith. There is a tried and tested resilience in the practices, prayers and values of Jewish life.

This faith is two-fold. In the first place it is faith writ large, the undying hope that one day the sun of righteousness and justice will shine forth, with healing on its wings; that one day all humanity will understand that this is God’s earth and behave towards each other and all life with integrity and respect.

In the second place, and this may be more important to us today, it is faith writ small. It is the faith which tells us never to succumb to the feeling that we make no difference or that our actions don’t matter. It’s the day-by-day faith of the ordinary mitzvah: keep going, keep helping whoever you can, keep giving, keep blessing God and life and for the small things, keep doing what’s good and fair, keep a hospitable heart and home, keep planting hope, keep validating what we and others can – and often succeed – in doing, take nothing for granted.

None of this everyday wisdom can withstand military might. But it takes shelter in billions of hearts and homes and will outlive the rockets and bombs and those who mastermind their unjust and cruel deployment.

Appeals and Prayers

World Jewish Relief have launched a special appeal. Paul Anticoni writes:

World Jewish Relief has been supporting Jewish communities across Ukraine for over 20 years. Our 29 partners are rooted within local communities. Our support provides daily help to almost 10,000 Jewish elderly, to those looking for work, to families living in poverty. We saw in 2014 the displacement of over a million Ukrainians who fled the conflict. World Jewish Relief and its partners in 2014 then helped provide emergency support, accommodation and longer-term assistance for thousands…

For details and to donate click here.

Masorti Olami, which supports Masorti congregations across the world, is also appealing for our direct help. They write:

We are in close contact with our communities in Kyiv, Chernivtsi, Odessa, Kharkov and Dnipro who report that they are currently safe and at home, but are worried about the future and are in a state of uncertainty, not sure when an invasion could occur or how it would play out. They have conveyed to us their current fears and needs and we have created this campaign, calling on the assistance of our supporters around the world, to help them.

Click here for further information or here to donate to their appeal (select ‘special programme’ and specify ‘Ukraine Communities Campaign’).

A Prayer for the Ukraine can be found here.

23 Feb 2022

Sticky Post By admin Posted in Community Permalink

Ukraine Emergency Appeal

Sticky Post By admin On February 23, 2022

In these dangerous times our hearts go out to all the people of the Ukraine, including our fellow Jewish communities there.

We pray that God who makes peace on high will make peace for us, all Israel and all the world. At the same time, we know from the history of Europe in the 1930s that cunning and deceit must be called by their true names and that tyranny cannot and must not be countered by propitiation.

Last Friday I spoke with Rabbi Reuven Stamov and his wife Lena. Leaders of the Masorti congregation in Kiev, they are also responsible for five major communities across the Ukraine. They explain that people are afraid, yet standing firm. They are preparing strongrooms in their homes, places of work and synagogues. Many from the east of the country are suffering from trauma after eight years of war, threats and intimidation. They ask us to think of, pray for and help them. To watch the video of our conversation click here.

World Jewish Relief yesterday launched a special appeal. Paul Anticoni writes:

World Jewish Relief has been supporting Jewish communities across Ukraine for over 20 years. Our 29 partners are rooted within local communities. Our support provides daily help to almost 10,000 Jewish elderly, to those looking for work, to families living in poverty. We saw in 2014 the displacement of over a million Ukrainians who fled the conflict. World Jewish Relief and its partners in 2014 then helped provide emergency support, accommodation and longer-term assistance for thousands…

For details and to donate click here.

Masorti Olami, which supports Masorti congregations across the world, is also appealing for our direct help. They write:

We are in close contact with our communities in Kyiv, Chernivtsi, Odessa, Kharkov and Dnipro who report that they are currently safe and at home, but are worried about the future and are in a state of uncertainty, not sure when an invasion could occur or how it would play out. They have conveyed to us their current fears and needs and we have created this campaign, calling on the assistance of our supporters around the world, to help them.

Click here for further information or here to donate to their appeal (select ‘special programme’ and specify ‘Ukraine Communities Campaign’).

Pesach is rapidly approaching, with its essential themes of justice and human dignity, and its timeless narrative of courageous opposition to tyranny. The world’s journey from slavery to freedom is long and hard; we pray that God will be with us as we strive to follow it.

18 Feb 2022

Sticky Post By admin Posted in Environment, Spirituality Permalink

Finding the voice of fine silence in the midst of the storm

Sticky Post By admin On February 18, 2022

I’m woken by gusts of storm and listen in between them to the first thin songs of the brave birds. I hear in the blasts of wind the opening lines of Shelley’s magnificent poem:

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing…

It’s late winter now and it will be more than leaves which are driven and broken. I saw the damage of storm Arven in Scotland; swathes of trees taken down, their branches smashed. Whose homes are being battered now; what treasured woodlands, long nurtured, torn through? Who’ll be left cold, wondering what corner of their home they can afford to heat without the children going hungry?

There are other and worse storms in the offing too; may it please God that their fierce powers disperse and never blast their violent way. I’m soon going to be speaking with colleagues in the Ukraine; may they, their communities and all the land be safe [see below]. It’s rightly been said that there’s a whiff of Munich in the air, that cunning which can’t be trusted. One fears for what may again overtake those terrible bloodlands of Jewish history, once regions of great learning and deep piety, first home of Hasidism and rebbes with pithy teachings and tales of wonder.

What sustains us when the world clenches its fists? I’m moved by the awareness that there’s something else to be heard in the wake of the wind. It’s the same sound which reached Elijah when he stood on God’s mountain in the thunder, earthquake and storm. It’s the ‘voice of fine silence’ which is present everywhere, and almost everywhere outshouted. It’s the same call which Moses intuited when he stood by the entrance to the Tent of Meeting in the desert and overheard God’s voice, speaking to itself. It’s there today, within the wind, beneath the tumult of the storm, present in the heart of life, and in our heart, which belongs to life, and knows and recognises its call.

What is that we know? Into what instruction must ‘fine silence’ be transformed in this world which demands practicality and action? I believe it translates into that simple, all-embracing, endlessly challenging commandment: ‘And you shall love your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might.’ It’s simple because there’s nothing sophisticated about it; all it requires of us is to try to do good. It’s endlessly challenging because it never lets go of us, both when we’re at our inspired best and when we’re tired, frustrated and at our demotivated worst. It’s all-embracing because it’s never about someone else, somewhere else or some time else. It’s now and always. For God’s presence is all about us, in all life. ‘You shall love’ is the demand which, throughout history, has impelled ordinary people to show extraordinary kindness despite the cunning and cruelty around them.

That voice, and the intentions and actions it draws out of us, unites us, even in times of deep uncertainty and trouble, with everything in the world which is good, kind, faithful and beautiful. We breath in the same breath which animates all of life and know that we belong to it. We are partners in the spirit of creation and compassion.

‘Pray for us; think of us; support us.’ Rabbi Reuven Stamov and his wife Lena, leaders of Masorti communities across the Ukraine, speak about their concerns.

Find the recording here.

Link to Masorti Olami’s campaign.

11 Feb 2022

Sticky Post By admin Posted in Community, Environment, Spirituality Permalink

That haunting phrase ‘the extinction of expereince’

Sticky Post By admin On February 11, 2022

‘The Hebrew for hedgehog,’ he said. It wasn’t the response I’d expected. Let me explain: the last of my series A Jewish Take on Life on Earth, scheduled for 9 March, is about mammals. Receiving no reply from elsewhere, I tried the British Hedgehog Society:

– Could they provide a speaker to follow on from my Biblical insights with something about the contemporary state of affairs?

– And you are???

– A rabbi; this is the kind of thing I do. You see, my community is very eco-minded…

To my surprise I’m given the mobile number of the Society’s spokesperson, Hugh Warwick, whose name I know from his books, such as A Prickly Affair. He answers at once. ‘I’m always up for a different kind of audience,’ he says kindly. ‘There are four references to hedgehogs in the Hebrew Bible, the word is kipod isn’t it, and there’s that magnificent passage in Job…’

As it happens, I’d already ordered his next book Linescapes about reconnecting Britain’s fragmented wildlife. On page 32 he quotes the remarkable phrase ‘extinction of experience’. He explains, ‘All over the world agricultural systems are being disrupted by this erosion – the loss of language, or just words, to describe, own and manage the land.’

That phrase ‘extinction of experience’ has climbed off the page into my head. It’s relevant not just to ecology, but to Judaism, and more: it encapsulates the danger there will be a rift, a break in transmission, in the core values of life.

When our children were growing up, we wanted them to have three loves: people, starting with family, nature and Judaism. We sought to teach them wonder, taking them to the forest by day, and in the owl-cry night. They’ve shown a remarkably loving degree of parent tolerance.

What we need to transmit aren’t facts or even skills. They’re experiences, and only the love and the living, the commitment of heart as well as head, has the power to communicate them.

Have I lived what I care about deeply enough? I don’t know. What I do know, though, is that being human, a teacher, indeed a rabbi is about precisely this: fostering the osmosis of good experience. Neither Judaism, nor nature, nor humankind can afford ‘the extinction of experience.’ One can teach through talks on Torah. That’s important. But the true purpose is to teach and learn through living and doing.

That’s the difference between being a teacher and an educator. I remember the names of many excellent teachers I’ve been lucky to have. But I’ve never even known the names of some of my educators, – like the elderly Jew who held a finger to his lips to tell me to be silent while he sewed new fringes onto my tallit, my prayer shawl, in an act of devotion the spirit of which still often wraps itself round me when I put the garment on.

That’s why, in a different context, I periodically WhatsApp our street, asking for shopping for the food bank. I’m aware that it makes better financial sense to set up a standing order to the Trussell Trust or Foodbank Aid; we should do that as well. But seeing the queue at the food bank makes me know something which filling in an online form cannot.

So I find myself, too, a rebel against extinction. I wouldn’t use all the strategies of XR. But I too feel the urgent need for a recentring of values back to the heart of being human.

My ambition at 64, felt even more deeply as I get older, is to live that love of people, nature and Judaism ever more fully and be inspired by others who do the same and more so.

04 Feb 2022

Sticky Post By admin Posted in Community, Israel Permalink

Building God’s sanctuary

Sticky Post By admin On February 4, 2022

It’s not the gold, silver or the fine cloths; the word which occurs most frequently in the detailed description of the Sanctuary which occupies the next several weeks of readings from the Torah, is the simple verb ‘make’.

‘Make me a sanctuary and I shall dwell among them,’ God tells Moses. God intends to live not in it, but among them; the holiness lies in the making and with those who make. Though the Torah records the completion of the sanctuary, in truth the work is anything but finished.

We live in a world full of cruelty, some inflicted deliberately, some through neglect. Too often life itself, people, nature, the very earth is measured almost exclusively in terms of utility. In this desacralized age, every act of kindness, generosity, respect, neighbourliness, connection and creative imagination is part of the making of the sanctuary.

During the week I thought about person after person I know in those terms:

– You’re a healer; you try to ease pain and help people live at peace with their bodies.

– You teach in your spare time. I remember when you took that noisy group of teens outside at twilight and said ‘Just look,’ and they fell silent watching the first stars.

– You sent me pictures of you and friends planting trees in a neighbourhood project in Uganda.

To my mind, every one of them is helping make this world holy, in very ordinary, very special ways.

There is also the extraordinary. I watched the wonderful programme on the seven portraits of Holocaust survivors commissioned by Prince Charles, who spoke movingly about the project. One of those whose picture was painted was Anita Wallfisch, who went to the same school in Breslau as my father. The programme told something of the horrors through which each of the seven had passed. But what it revealed most deeply was their remarkable attitude to life: the inner resilience, the determination to create a new family, to do good: ‘Hate? No; I don’t hate. I try to be kind to everybody…’

This project will contribute its profound and unique dignity to the marking of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s seventy years of reign and service on the throne.

There is also the painful and wretched. I skimmed many hurt or angry reactions to the report by Amnesty branding Israel as Apartheid, a term I don’t agree with. It brought instantly to mind all the bigotry, wrongs, rights, pain, fear, injustice, misery and seemingly hopeless intractability of the situation and the accounts of suffering I have personally listened to from many sides. ‘Use your energy,’ I was advised, ‘supporting those, like The Bereaved Parent’s Circle, or The Centre for Creativity in Education and Cultural Heritage (CCECH), who’re making connections, trying to bring healing, teaching and living the Torah of understanding, creating the basis in civil society for when a just resolution will finally come.’

We must try not to lose faith. The tasks of making the world whole and holy lie before us. They call to us from every part of the globe and every sphere of life with unmistakeable urgency. There’s nothing especially pious about them. What they need is our goodwill and commitment. What they don’t need is our indifference.

Who may contribute to building God’s sanctuary? ‘Whoever’s heart prompts them to give,’ says the Torah. Which means, explained Rebbe Avraham of Slonim, ‘Whoever is prompted to give from their heart.’

HEART AND MIND

Month: February 2022