Month: May 2024

24 May 2024
Sticky Post By Posted in Israel Permalink

This war through Chagall’s eyes?

Sticky Post By On May 24, 2024

I write from a full heart.

I feel great distress for Naama Levy, still held hostage by Hamas after 230 days. Her family released heart-rending footage of her capture in a desperate effort to persuade governments to do more.

Her mother Ayelet says: “We only see a fraction of the horrible things that are going on in their surrounding in the shelter. [Naama] is terrified and wounded, there is fear in her eyes, and she is saying what she can, she is begging for her life. The top priority is to bring her home, bring them all home now.”

I wrote to Ayelet at once: We feel heartfelt solidarity with you.  

In the video we hear Naama say, ‘I have Palestinian friends.’ Ayelet told me, ‘I hope she’ll soon be back to building such bridges.’ Amen to such prayers.

Since October 7 I’ve written repeatedly about the horrors of this war, brutally instigated by Hamas, into which it has calculatedly drawn Israel to such grim and disturbing effect.

Forgive me if today I try to imagine looking at it through the eyes of Chagall.

My wife and I had two hours to spare in Nice, after a conference of European rabbis to which she accompanied me. ‘You must see the amazing Chagall pictures,’ Nicky insisted. I’m so glad I did.

The Musee National Marc Chagall was built during the artist’s lifetime to exhibit his series of extraordinary paintings of Biblical scenes. At the opening, in July 1973, Chagall said:

‘I wanted to leave them in this House so that men can try to find some peace, a certain spirituality, a religiosity, a meaning in life.’

The paintings of the Flood engrossed us most deeply. Chagall’s genius is that, like rabbinic Midrash, his work can be interpreted in so many ways, all valid, none ‘correct’.

In Noah’s Ark the hero is inside his great ship, his tired face benign, one hand on the head of a calf as if in blessing, the other releasing the dove. Outside, a dead man floats past. Behind Noah, a crowd huddles. Are these the unsaved? Some hug, someone screams, some stand haplessly by. Are these, also, some of the numberless, including Chagall’s own family, who drowned in the gas?

In Noah and the Rainbow, Noah reclines beneath God’s outstretched white wings. Is he at peace with God’s promise? It’s hard to know. A crowd – those same unsaved? – still stands between him and his God.

Every corner of these paintings is full: figures clear in colour, figures half-hidden, gentle faces, sharp-beaked birds. But everywhere there’s empathy. Maybe that’s why the paintings are so beautiful: – the wonder and pathos of life in the magnificent depths of colour.

Sadly, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking: How would Chagall paint this terrible war now? What figure would be centre, – a hostage, a mother in Israel, or Gaza, or both? He would surely ignore none of the many kinds of pain. In what colours would be Israel’s, and Gaza’s griefs?  

Yet, as he said, ‘Is not painting and colour inspired by love?’ In the richness of his colours, love and care would surely, somehow, show through.

That’s what matters now in our own communities, and hearts. We’re each responding differently to different parts of the pain and wrong. We’re each clutching differently at the wind-blown blanket of hope.

Therefore, despite our diverse feelings, we must lay this upon our hearts: What’s required of us, amidst our fears and anguish, is our love, hope and empathy. That’s what we need from each other. That’s what Israel and the Jewish People need. That’s what the suffering of ordinary people trapped in Gaza, and everywhere in war’s horror, calls out to us for. That’s what the world needs. That’s why we’re here on this earth.

As Chagall said in his inaugural speech:

‘‘If all life moves inevitably towards its end, then we must, during our own, colour it with our colours of love and hope.”

17 May 2024
Sticky Post By Posted in Spirituality Permalink

Seeking inner strength in cruel times

Sticky Post By On May 17, 2024

Yesterday someone asked me the million-dollar question, ‘How do you find strength in times of personal and collective suffering?’ Only, ‘a million dollars’ is not enough: this is a matter beyond all price, at the very core of life.

I had no chance to ask, ‘Why are you asking?’ no opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of what pain lay behind the request, and no way to escape responding.

Which of us knows the answer to such a raw and penetrating question in these cruel times (to which I make no specific reference in what follows)? What can one say? One can only speak from one’s heart and pray that one’s words will be true, that, in the unknown heart-space where they land, they will, at least, not cause further hurt.

There’s deep strength in our ancient prayers. I say Shema, Listen! – the opening of Judaism’s twice daily meditation. It’s not about what I mean when I cover my eyes and utter the words. It’s the presences which meet me. I enter a timeless soul-space; without speech or gesture they greet me, our ancestors, generation before generation, who’ve lived through all the travails and tribulations of history. They take my consciousness into their custodianship. For a blessed moment, I am a drop of water drawn into a great pool of spirit, and all the anxious thoughts of my ‘I’ are obliterated, washed clean. This happens for me only rarely. But that’s enough, because I know that this can be, that this is so.

There’s another way to follow the path of Listen. Kalonymus Kalman Shapiro, the Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto, taught that God speaks in two ways in our world. One is Torah, the language of Judaism’s, and humanity’s, great spiritual traditions. The other is creation, life itself. These two modes are in truth one, because through both, if we are aware, we can hear the ceaseless flow of sacred life, ‘in the chirping of the birds, the lowing of cows and the tumult of human discourse.’ (Esh Kodesh, Warsaw Ghetto, July 1942) Therefore I tell myself:  Stop and listen. I say in my heart, ‘You there, goldfinch, squirrel, beech-leaf,’ and, recognising that they belong to the source of all life, am calmed and strengthened in the knowledge that I belong there too.

Sometimes, it’s nothing at all; no effort, no intention. It’s simply what the beloved speaks in The Song of Songs: ‘I sleep, but my heart wakes.’ For precious moments I live from my heart, not my head, and know the Psalmist’s truth: ‘To You, God, silence is praise.’

Therefore, my most urgent prayer to God, people, all the life around me is simply: don’t shut yourself off when I seek you.

But the challenge does not lie elsewhere. It’s in myself. No passport or permission is required to visit the places where God’s spirit flows. Access, the only access, is through our own consciousness and heart.

Here lies the challenge: how do I find the way to myself? How do I still myself enough to listen when I say Listen. That’s why I often say when people ask me about inner strength: What brings a touch of calm into your day? Yoga, prayer, dog-walk, coffee, friends, music, park-walk, crossword, swimming, moments of pure nothing? Do it! Because that’s what takes you to your unique entrance to the pathway to the infinite, the inexhaustible and unfathomable, the source of strength and life.

This all sounds very private. But it’s about community and friendship too because they give us the space, support and encouragement to seek to what lies beyond all space, the spirit from which we draw the strength to live, to care and love.

10 May 2024
Sticky Post By Posted in Israel Permalink

For Yom Hazikaron and Yom Ha’Atzmaut, in a terrible year

Sticky Post By On May 10, 2024

I face next week with pain, fear, dismay and anger, yet with prayer, hope and love. Monday brings Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day for the Dead. Tuesday is Yom Ha’Atzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day. If only things were simpler; everything tears at the heart.

There’s pain. ‘It’s over twenty years since my son Noam was killed in Lebanon,’ my friend Aaron Barnea tells me, ‘Yet a hundred and fifty people still came for the anniversary.’ I think of Ilana Kaminka, her son killed defending his base, on October 7. My heart travels to the site of the Nova Festival, the trees planted for everyone killed, the photos and letters tied to them: ‘We miss you, love you, long for you.’

I hear the terrible cry of the Palestinian mother, trapped between Hamas and the IDF in Gaza’s misery. Her child has just been killed: ‘Before God I call to account…’

On Yom HaZikaron I’ll say the Prayer of the Grieving Mothers, written by Raba Tamar Elad-Applebaum and Sheikha Ibtisam Mahameed together:

God of Life, who heals the broken hearted…
Hear the prayer of mothers…
For you did not create us to kill each other…
But …to sanctify Your name of Life… [1]

I fear the hatred waiting to ambush the future. For decades, Hizbollah’s gunmen lie hiding beneath the houses of South Lebanon, foot-soldiers of Iran’s brutal, hate-filled leaders, dreaded and loathed by their own people.  

I feel shame and dismay at the racist haters among my own people. I saw the children’s books scattered across the broken floor of a Palestinian school bulldozed by a settler, after the villagers, intimidated and afraid, abandoned their homes. This isn’t what God meant by commanding us to be anshei kodesh, holy, heart-aware people, attuned to the sanctity of life.

Then there’s the chaos of the campuses, the bigotry, hatred and folly. Is this really for the good of Palestinian people, or another way in which their just needs are betrayed? I feel for the fear and loneliness of so many fellow Jews in this threatening, violent world.

But I can’t stop here. For we have prayer, hope and love to strengthen our hearts.
My prayer is ‘Veshavu banim legevulam – May the children, may all the hostages, be returned to their longing families. May this terrible fighting, this catastrophe, end, with a forward-looking plan for the security and dignity of all. Mindful of Nachmanides’ words that ‘where true tears are, God is too,’ I pray with all who weep.

For we mustn’t act as God tries to act after the golden calf. ‘They’re your people now,’ God tells Moses,’ You deal with them.’ God – albeit temporarily – wants nothing to do with them anymore. In contrast, I recall the woman in Israel’s far north who turned to me quietly: ‘People are saying, “My country, right or wrong.” I’m saying, “Wrong. But they’re still my people.”’

I struggle, like countless others. I think, ‘Right in this; wrong in that.’ But the Jewish people is my people and Israel is our only country. I pray for it to survive and thrive. I’m bound by ties of faithfulness and love. I don’t mean love for any racist and corrupt members of Israel’s leadership who disgrace Judaism. Many families of hostages are furious with them, wanting a deal, not yet more bloodshed.

But I care deeply for the innumerable Israelis, Jews and also Arabs, who work to heal wounds, in Israel’s hospitals, food banks, hesed (lovingkindness) NGOs, schools and arts.

I know so many who see beyond the bloodshed and anger, who reach across the grim wall between Israelis and Palestinians and say, ‘Enough tears, enough heartache; how can we build together?’ How can my heart not be with them? With them rest my prayers, love and hope.

03 May 2024
Sticky Post By Posted in Holocaust Permalink

Seeing the Light

Sticky Post By On May 3, 2024

I write – somewhat in haste so as not to miss my train – from Frankfurt-am-Main, the city with which my grandfather, Dr Salzberger, fell in love when he came in 1910 to be interviewed for the post of rabbi. (It’s a relief to be in a town where the Israeli flag hangs among others from the city hall [on the Roemer, the square where the SA paraded 90 years ago])

I was invited by John Schlapobersky to speak about my family’s Frankfurt roots at a conference of group analysts. And, John adjoined me, address the question: ‘Where’s the light now?’

For it was from here, from my grandfather’s former community at the Westendsynagoge, that I had symbolically lit a flame from the Eternal Light, which all the devastation of Kristallnacht had not succeeded in extinguishing, and walked home with it to kindle the Ner Tamid at the dedication of our own new building, thirteen years ago.

I recalled, as I struggled what to say, how on some village street, somewhere on that 400k walk along the Rhine, an old man had stopped me, saying: ‘D’you realise the torch in your backpack is still on?’ ‘Yes,’ I’d explained, ‘I’m carrying the light.’

So, said John, tell us where that light is now. It’s an apposite question for the Shabbat before Yom Hashoah, the Hebrew date for remembering the Nazi Holocaust.

But first I must write about darkness, and those very different flames, of fire. ‘Quickly! Out of here!’ my great-aunt Jenny recalled; they’d been living in a flat in the great Boerneplatz Synagogue when it was torched on Kristallnacht. ‘I saw through an open door the burnt-out cupola, before it was quickly shut and I was whisked away.’To this day, she told me, she can’t bear railway stations; the anguish of being sent away from her family still pierces her heart.

On the same date my grandfather was arrested by the Gestapo. They’d been waiting for him in the family home. He was taken to a great hall where Jews were made to crawl across the floor, their ‘exercises’ strangely interrupted by a Mozart aria: ‘In diesen heiligen Hallen / kennt man die Rache nicht – In these sacred halls we know not revenge.’ A Jewish musician had, with that cruel and quirky absurdity which characterised certain Nazi behaviours, been offered his freedom if he could prove he was indeed an opera singer.

Reflecting back, I recall how, on entering the Westendsynagoge to light my torch and ‘take’ the light, I’d been struck to the heart by the verse which adorned it: ‘Lo amut ve’echyeh – I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of God.’

So here we were now, together in Frankfurt, German and British therapists, Israelis too, all dedicated to caring for that greatest abode of God’s light here on earth: the human heart.
Yet darkness was close about us. One of the conveners lost his son-in-law on October 7. All of us mourned the loss of life of Israelis, Palestinians caught between Hamas and the IDF. We all feared the antisemitism, the racism, and what horrors might come next.

I have no great answers, just two rabbinic sayings to guide me. The first is from Nachmanides, the thirteenth-century rabbi with the deepest heart: God’s light is with all who weep amidst oppression, God sees their tears. I believe God is with all those, too, who weep for others in their anguish, who weep with all who suffer.

The second consists of just four Hebrew words: ‘“Neri beyadecha, venerecha beyadi – My light is in your hands; your light is in mine,” say God.’ God’s light is within us, if only we can find it. Not only that, – the holy light of each other’s lives is in our hands too, if only we can see amidst the gloom, and cherish it despite the contagious hate that fills our streets.

03 May 2024
Sticky Post By Posted in Uncategorized Permalink

Seeing the light

Sticky Post By On May 3, 2024

Dear Community,

I write – somewhat in haste so as not to miss my train – from Frankfurt-am-Main, the city with which my grandfather, Dr Salzberger, fell in love when he came in 1910 to be interviewed for the post of rabbi. (It’s a relief to be in a town where the Israeli flag hangs among others from the city hall [on the Roemer, the square where the SA paraded 90 years ago])

I was invited by John Schlapobersky to speak about my family’s Frankfurt roots at a conference of group analysts. And, John adjoined me, address the question: ‘Where’s the light now?’

For it was from here, from my grandfather’s former community at the Westendsynagoge, that I had symbolically lit a flame from the Eternal Light, which all the devastation of Kristallnacht had not succeeded in extinguishing, and walked home with it to kindle the Ner Tamid at the dedication of our own new building, thirteen years ago.

I recalled, as I struggled what to say, how on some village street, somewhere on that 400k walk along the Rhine, an old man had stopped me, saying: ‘D’you realise the torch in your backpack is still on?’ ‘Yes,’ I’d explained, ‘I’m carrying the light.’

So, said John, tell us where that light is now. It’s an apposite question for the Shabbat before Yom Hashoah, the Hebrew date for remembering the Nazi Holocaust.

But first I must write about darkness, and those very different flames, of fire. ‘Quickly! Out of here!’ my great-aunt Jenny recalled; they’d been living in a flat in the great Boerneplatz Synagogue when it was torched on Kristallnacht. ‘I saw through an open door the burnt-out cupola, before it was quickly shut and I was whisked away.’To this day, she told me, she can’t bear railway stations; the anguish of being sent away from her family still pierces her heart.

On the same date my grandfather was arrested by the Gestapo. They’d been waiting for him in the family home. He was taken to a great hall where Jews were made to crawl across the floor, their ‘exercises’ strangely interrupted by a Mozart aria: ‘In diesen heiligen Hallen / kennt man die Rache nicht – In these sacred halls we know not revenge.’ A Jewish musician had, with that cruel and quirky absurdity which characterised certain Nazi behaviours, been offered his freedom if he could prove he was indeed an opera singer.

Reflecting back, I recall how, on entering the Westendsynagoge to light my torch and ‘take’ the light, I’d been struck to the heart by the verse which adorned it: ‘Lo amut ve’echyeh – I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of God.’

So here we were now, together in Frankfurt, German and British therapists, Israelis too, all dedicated to caring for that greatest abode of God’s light here on earth: the human heart.
Yet darkness was close about us. One of the conveners lost his son-in-law on October 7. All of us mourned the loss of life of Israelis, Palestinians caught between Hamas and the IDF. We all feared the antisemitism, the racism, and what horrors might come next.

I have no great answers, just two rabbinic sayings to guide me. The first is from Nachmanides, the thirteenth-century rabbi with the deepest heart: God’s light is with all who weep amidst oppression, God sees their tears. I believe God is with all those, too, who weep for others in their anguish, who weep with all who suffer.

The second consists of just four Hebrew words: ‘“Neri beyadecha, venerecha beyadi – My light is in your hands; your light is in mine,” say God.’ God’s light is within us, if only we can find it. Not only that, – the holy light of each other’s lives is in our hands too, if only we can see amidst the gloom, and cherish it despite the contagious hate that fills our streets.

Shabbat Shalom

Jonathan Wittenberg

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Address: Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, New North London Synagogue, 80 East End Road, 
Finchley, 
London N3 2SY

Phone: +44 208 346 8560

 

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