Tomorrow is the first of the month of Av. I’m never sure how to call it because, to the best of my knowledge, it’s the only Hebrew month which has two obvious names: simply Av, and Menachem Av – ‘Av the Comforter.’ I’ve often wondered which name to use when.
The Talmud says that when Av begins, our joy is diminished, (in contrast to the spring month of Adar, when our joy increases.) I remember saying to Gabi, my beloved Israeli uncle x-times-removed who always has a melody under his breath and wise words on his lips:
‘A sad month, this Av, isn’t it?’
‘Only until the 9th, the fast of Tisha Be’Av,’ he quickly replied, ‘After that, it’s Menachem Av, all about consolation.’
So the ‘comforter’ aspect is from the 10th of the month onwards.
But this year I’m starting early. That’s because we need consolation in order to keep going; we urgently need to be people of healing and repair, and there’s no time to waste.
Tisha Be’Av is about destruction: the Temples, the communities destroyed in the Crusades, the expulsions, book-burnings, slaughters. It’s not because there’s no devastation in today’s world that I’m thinking, ‘we’d better start the healing now.’ It’s because there’s so much destruction, done to us, done around us, some done by us, that it’s unbearable, and I can scarcely face thinking about it. Nobody needs me to go into details. It’s because it’s all too much, that’s why I’m stressing: ‘Menachem – Be a comforter – now.’
Don’t think: ‘I can’t stop the wars, so what can I do?’ Don’t be disempowered. ‘Little’ things count. If you can send a kind message to the family of a hostage, do. If you can contribute to get food to Gazan children, or anyone hungry anywhere, do. If you can cook a meal for a friend who’s sick, do it. If there’s a parched tree nearby and you can nurse with water through the summer heat, do it. If you can say a thoughtful word to someone you’ve had a disagreement with, do it. There’s no such thing as ‘too small to matter.’
The ‘little’ things we do can inspire others. ‘I asked my Palestinian doctor how his family were in these horrible times,’ a Jerusalem friend told me. ‘You’re the first Jewish patient to ask,’ he replied, and went on to relate how, in a North American street, he saw some teenagers humiliate an elderly Jew while hundreds stood around, and he, a Palestinian, intervened.
‘The British Lady’s Slipper Orchid survived in only one location,’ two leaders of the charity Plantlife told us. ‘But forty people helped germinate seeds and now it’s back in the meadows.’ You could say, ‘What’s that do for the troubles of the world!’ But plants are part of God’s creation, and who knows what comfort their beauty may bring. Heather Jones, an NHS nurse, writes in Plantlife’s magazine how her colleagues spend long hours in high-tech environments where mental and physical depletion can lead to burnout. But nature lifts the spirits and restores hope, so she’s rolling out healing in nature to all the healthcare professionals in her region.
I’m not writing about these ‘small’ acts out of romantic unrealism, to deny the devastation in the world, but in order to keep myself going, to keep on the side of healing and consolation.
I often think of TS Eliot’s line in The Wasteland: ‘These fragments I have shored against my ruins.’ Those fragments are my Menachem Av, my comforters. They’re the acts which sustain us daily, bring us closer to each other and give hope. They’re what we’re here on earth to do. At the end of each day, and, I believe, at the close of our life, they will gather round us, look us in the heart, and say, ‘You tried.’
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On our anguish and on healing
In these deeply frightening times, I pray that everyone we love and care for should be safe. Like us all, I’m calling Israel, messaging, worrying about what last night brought and what today will bring. Magen David Adom, the Herzog, other trauma hospitals and numerous organisations are calling on us and we must help as best we can. Meanwhile, the hostages remain in the grip of Hamas and the sufferings in Gaza continue.
We rightly reach out to our own people first. But I was touched by what happened when I went to my favourite vegetable stores:
Your family in Israel, are they OK?
Yours in Iran, are they alright?
The London borough of Barnet has both the largest Jewish and Iranian communities in the UK. We’re all human, desperate for those we love. A synagogue member of Iranian origin sent me this verse by the Persian poet Saadi (c. 13):
Human beings are like parts of one body,
For in creation they come from one gem.
If one part is in pain,
Other parts cannot in comfort remain…
Israel is not at war with the Iranian people, but with its evil regime and terrorist proteges, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthi and others, because of the unbearable risk that Iran will develop nuclear weapons. But it’s always ordinary people who bear most of the suffering.
Meanwhile, I’m acutely aware that our community is torn by different opinions. Deep anxiety leads us each to our allegiances, fears and hurts. So, as we come together for our Annual General Meeting, my fortieth + and my last as senior rabbi, I want to stress what I understand to be core Jewish values, for at heart we are a religious community.
Chesed, faithful lovingkindness, means being here for each other in joy and anguish, from birth to death, with care and consolation, through companionship, food, and the wisdom of ledabber al lev, listening and speaking to the heart.
Tesedek means commitment to doing and promoting justice. Tzedakah requires supporting social justice, giving where there is hunger, poverty, homelessness and medical and mental need, in the Jewish community, Israel, our local community, and the world.
Avodah means serving God by serving human life created in God’s image, and by caring for all life in its multiple manifestations of God’s presence, wonder and glory.
Kehilah, community, means being together in good times and bad, in prayer, study and action. It means solidarity with our Jewish community here, in Israel and worldwide, as well as with people of different faiths, with refugees, with those who need us and whom we need, and ultimately with the community of all life.
These values lead me to ask, especially now in wartime when we are constantly anxious for our people, that we place ourselves in solidarity with life and healing in whatever ways we can, whatever our political views and affiliations.
I received from Israel yesterday:
While death and destruction, chaos and fear exist all around, I took a sweet girl and her mother from Tarkumia checkpoint to Sheba Hospital near Tel Aviv. We drove on roads usually packed at this time of the day. They were empty. We laughed, we talked a little English, a little Arabic, a little Hebrew. When we arrived at the entrance to the Pediatric Department, this sweet girl put her arms around my legs. I got a hug. I wish I could show you a photo of her.
I’ve been criticized for just about everything – for being naive, for being patronizing, for paying lip service, for not taking a firm stand one way or another.
This IS my stand. This is my answer to what has been happening all over this region, a small tikkun olam, a small act of reparation, in a broken world.
There are many ways of taking our stand. Wherever possible, can we take it on the side of healing, in whatever ways we understand. For there is no end to the wounds in our bleeding world, and no limit to the healing that’s needed.
The Horror and the Hope
I have so wished to write today about the beautiful vision in our Torah of the Sabbatical year, when the fences come down, the fruits of the earth are shared, and citizen and stranger, farm-owner and refugee, rich and poor, wild beasts and domestic animals, appreciate them together.
But how can I do so, when we mourn the murder in an act of terrorist antisemitic hatred of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lichinsky, officials working for Israel’s Embassy, outside the Jewish Museum in Washington, after an event about peace-making and on the threshold of their marriage? Yaron, who grew up in Germany, was known to my colleague Rabbi Levi as a gifted, talented and very likeable young man. He and Sarah were dedicated longtime peacebuilders – Sarah wrote her graduate thesis on “the role of friendships in the Israeli-Palestinian peacebuilding process.” (The Jerusalem Youth Chorus Newsletter)
Our hearts go out to their families and friends, and we pray for the safety of all our communities.
This has also been a week of powerful international outcry, including from within Israel, at the lack of adequate humanitarian aid reaching Palestinian children in Gaza, trapped between the cynical nihilism of Hamas and Israel’s attacks. I stand with those Jewish, Israeli and international organisations who urge that sufficient aid be let in, with all due and essential safeguards to prevent it from falling into the vicious and merciless hands of Hamas. I don’t know the names or characters of the children who may be hungry, or have been killed, but their parents for sure do. Judaism teaches that an innocent life is a life, that every life matters, that we try to protect innocent life even amidst the horrors of war, and that we all carry within us, whether we honour it or desecrate it, the image of God.
Amidst these terrors, it would be wrong, un-Jewish and lacking in faith and hope to lose sight entirely of the vision held out in our Torah. ‘Ukeratem dror: Proclaim freedom,’ the Torah commands: ‘Let everyone return to their inheritance and their family.’ If only it were so! Dror, which here means freedom, is also the name of a bird, probably the swallow, that dips and rises over the fields. So do our hopes fall, – and must rise again. So must we cherish what gifts, friendships and solidarity we can gather.
In that vein, I received the following messages yesterday. Lord Kahn’s office called, sharing deep concern and offering support for our community. Julie Siddiqi, an eloquent Muslim leader who’s worked for Nisa-Nashim and Hope Not Hate, sent a what’s-app: ‘Senseless, heartbreaking, the young couple killed in Washington. Sending love to you and your community.’ Judith Baker emailed on behalf of The Quakers: ‘We send our condolences to you and the Jewish community and hold the victims and their families and friends in our prayers.’ Our rabbinic colleagues in the States shared verses from Psalms: ‘God stays close to the broken-hearted, providing salvation to those crushed in spirit.’
Among these greetings, which cannot be taken for granted, I am especially moved by these words from The Jerusalem Youth Chorus:
It is precisely in these darkest moments that [our] work becomes not just important, but urgent—. Our Palestinian and Israeli singers know intimately the weight of this violence; each of them has been touched by loss, fear, and grief. Yet they continue to choose each other. They continue to choose the radical act of singing together…of refusing to let the loudest voices around them define their future. (https://www.jerusalemyouthchorus.org/ )
Time and again I’m asked to focus on hope, on what we can do to take a sad world and make it better. Therefore, I try to pray and work, alongside so many others, for my own Jewish People, for all people across our countries, faiths and communities who simply seek to live a good, honest and happy life, and for this very earth, with all its species of life, that we must cherish and nurture, so that it continues to sustain us all.
Kabbalah and Counting: the mystical qualities of the Omer
I remember walking across Jerusalem looking for an Omer-counter. I wanted something both beautiful and mystical.
‘Omer’ is a measure of quantity, apparently equivalent to 2.2 litres, and refers to the offering of barley harvested on the night after the first day of Passover. But it’s come to mean the period of forty-nine days which links Pesach to Shavuot, the festival which marks freedom from Egypt, to the festival which celebrates the freedom to receive and follow the Torah.
I found what I wanted not in a boutique for religious artefacts but in an olivewood workshop. Olivewood has age and depth, resilience and beauty. My counter showed not just each date from ‘one’ to ‘forty-nine’ but, in tiny writing in the bottom corner, the kabbalistic quality of each day.
Today is the thirty-third day, Lag Be’Omer, celebrated as the date when the plague afflicting Rabbi Akiva’s pupils in the first or second century ceased. Mourning is suspended, music is permitted, bonfires are lit, and, most practically, if I have a free moment, I can finally get a haircut – so long as the barbers in this very Jewish borough of Barnet aren’t all booked out.
But what about that small writing in the corner of the counter? It’s hard to explain briefly, but each week of the Omer is dedicated to a kabbalistic quality: first hesed, loving kindness; then gevurah, strength; tiferet, truth or beauty; netzach, triumph or endurance; hod, humility; yesod, foundation; and malchut, sovereignty. Each separate day focusses on a specific quality within its week, guiding a detailed emotional and spiritual journey towards trying to hear God’s words now as once they were heard at Sinai.
Today’s quality is hod she’ba’ hod, humility within humility.
My teacher, Rabbi Louis Jacobs, liked to share the Hasidic teaching that everyone should have two pebbles, one in each pocket. On the first should be inscribed the Mishnah’s words, ‘The world was created for my sake.’ On the second should be the verse, ‘I am but dust and ashes.’ Wisdom is knowing when to take out which pebble.
I used to think that ‘dust and ashes’ was about humility, while seeing the world as ‘all for me’ was the opposite. But that’s wrong. Wonder is also humility: ‘Notice this magnificence, this intricacy, diversity.’ Nicky says her day is made if she sees a kingfisher.
In such moments, ‘for me’ doesn’t mean ‘aren’t I special,’ but rather, ‘what a privilege to be alive and see such beauty.’ ‘Dust and ashes’ doesn’t mean ‘I’m rubbish,’ but rather, ‘I know I’m mortal, so how treasured this brief privilege should be.’ Together the pebbles lead us neither to pride nor self-deprecation, but to the question: ‘How can I best care for life, my life, other’s lives, any life, in all its fragile vulnerability?’
As Arthur Green writes in A Kabbalah for Tomorrow: ‘Hod is the other side of wisdom, the self that bows before the mystery of what is as it is, the self who submits to reality and rejoices in doing so.’
I witnessed this when I served in the chaplaincy at the local hospice. After complex emotional journeys, perhaps through hope, anger, grief, regret, many people reached, in dying, places of appreciation. I’ll never forget the man and his wife to whose room I was called to share a prayer even though I’d never met them. ‘Tell us a verse about life’s wonder,’ they requested, ‘because together we have loved it.’
That’s hod she’ba’hod, humility, gratitude and graciousness woven together. I hold on to their words in these cruel times like a rope to climb up the cliffs of anguish to the green plateau of hope.
Beautiful Prayers from the Talmud
My Talmud class has been going for almost 40 years; it’s been a stable feature throughout my rabbinate, ‘Thursday mornings at 9.30,’ and I love it. Luckily, many of the participants love it too, and some have been there for all, or almost all, that time.
As anyone who studies Talmud knows, some passages are difficult, some are intense with a logic hard to unpick, some are morally inspiring, some are ethically challenging, lots are full of issues we still struggle with today, some spring straight from the page to the heart, and some are simply beautiful.
It was such a section that we hit upon yesterday, Berachot 16b – 17a, a daf, or page, about peace and hope which we fortuitously arrived at on the anniversary of VE Day, and amidst the troubles that beset our people and our world. The passage consists of the supplications that rabbis of the Talmud would add after they had completed their amidah, their obligatory communal prayer. Their words reach out to us across almost two millennia because what they longed for then, we long for too today.
Rabbi Elazar used to say: ‘Our God, may it be your will to cause love, fellowship, peace and friendship to dwell wherever we are apportioned.’ Perhaps even then communities were known for their fractiousness. Or maybe, as I prefer to believe, Rabbi Elazar was only reflecting back to God the comradely reality he experienced around him, together with the wish that it should continue thus.
He adds a stirring thought which none of the other rabbis include in quite the same way: ‘May our heart, when we rise in the morning, be filled with longing to experience awe before your name [and presence].’ Sometimes, when the alarm goes off, one gets up still weary, with a headache, not quite all there, or anxious. But on certain mornings, as dawn breaks a deep sense of wonder fills one’s spirit, as if, as the Zohar puts it, one’s soul had been taken by God on a visit to the Garden of Eden in the night.
Rabbi Yochanan’s prayer is more down to earth. He beseeches heaven to take note of how grim human life and the lot of the Jewish People can be, and calls on God ‘to clothe yourself in your mercy, garb yourself in your might, cover yourself in your loving kindness, gird yourself with your graciousness, and summon your qualities of goodness and humility.’ It’s as if there’s a conflict even within God: be tough with the world, or gentle and forbearing? Be kind to us, God, Rabbi Yochanan pleads, just as one’s partner might say during a bad patch: ‘I just need you to be nice to me today.’
Rabbi Chiya’s prayer is different again: ‘May it be your will, God, that your Torah be our occupation and that our hearts don’t become depressed or our vision darkened.’ Those words are so simple, and so close to the bone: Down here on earth it’s hard to keep our spirits up, so help us maintain a sense of hope and purpose and guide us in your Torah’s laws of justice and compassion.
‘What’s the take-away?’ one of the participants asked me after we had studied those prayers. Part of me wanted to answer, ‘Plus ca change! It was the same old world back then as it is now.’
But there’s a better response. Those teachers, immersed in Torah, well understood the challenges of the human condition and faced their difficulties with honesty, courage, and the hope that, somehow, the world would be guided by God in the direction of harmony and compassion.
That’s why their supplications speak to us today, not just as if they were, but because they truly are, our own.
In memory of my father, who died on Israel’s Independence Day, 18 years ago
It was my brother, Raphael, who thought to move our father’s bed in his dying days so that, if he was able to lift his head from his pillow, he would be able to see his beloved garden. Twice I saw him raise himself up, semi-conscious, and say the words of the daily prayer ‘mekayyem emunato – God keeps faith with those who sleep in the dust,’ before slipping back into sleep. Perhaps he meant the restorative powers of nature, perhaps his hope in his maker.
I think of our father in these days between Yom haShaoh, the Hebrew date established by the Knesset for remembering the Holocaust, its horror and the valour of resistance, and Yom Ha’Atzma’ut, Israel’s Independence Day with its longing for a different future. Aged just sixteen, our father fled Nazi Germany with his immediate family, fought in the British Army repairing tanks behind the lines at El Alamein, and served in the Hagganah during the siege of Jerusalem.
He had a tough life. By the time he was 42 he had lost two of his aunts and his grandmother, murdered by the Nazis, his sister Eva who suffered heart failure in Jerusalem in 1944, his favourite uncle Alfred, killed in 1948 in the convoy ambushed on its way to Mount Scopus, and his beloved first wife Lore, Raphael’s and my mother, who died of cancer in the Glasgow Royal Infirmary. Looked after by Isca, our second mother, our father lived to see the Bnei Mitzvah of his two eldest grandchildren, and died, aged 86, on Yom Ha’Atzma’ut 18 years ago.
I can’t speak about God’s side of the matter, but for his part our father definitely kept faith. I remember him coming up to our bedroom after Lore’s death to continue where she had been forced to leave off in teaching us the Shema: ‘If you’re good, I’ll tell you a few more words each night.’ I remember how, when I was sixteen, he came into my room and asked me, ‘Are you still saying the Shema every night?’ I fear my answer ‘Yes’ was less than a half-truth. But since then, I have never, unless overtaken suddenly by sleep, omitted to say those words, which define the Jewish faith.
I remember our father telling me one night, unexpectedly, out of nowhere it seemed to me, ‘Do your homework, because they can take away from you everything except what’s in your mind.’
Our father was a craftsperson, skilled with his hands; we did many house and garden jobs together. I recall how I was once rude to him; it was about some tool, perhaps a pair of pliers. I saw his face and realised: I must never speak like that to anyone, ever again.
I think of our father now when saying the words of the morning service: ‘For the sake of our ancestors who trusted in you, put it into our hearts to understand, listen, learn and practise all the words of your Torah and teaching in love.’ Our father loved his Judaism and felt especially close to Rabbi Louis Jacobs. They even both (under pressure from their wives) gave up cigars at the same time.
I think of our father in these cruel, uncertain and frightening times, his deep resilience, his love of gardens and nature, and the history about which, though a great raconteur when he got going, he rarely volunteered to speak: ‘We told aunt Sophie when she visited us in Jerusalem in 1938, “Don’t go back to Czechoslovakia,” but her husband was an ardent Czech patriot and she wouldn’t listen.’ I have Sophie’s last letter before deportation, written in January 1943 and smuggled to the family: ‘In this manner, we take our farewell.’
But our forebears don’t make their departure, at least not entirely. Our beloved dead stay with us in our hearts, and, through memories and stories and the places, foods, music and pursuits they enjoyed, continue to impart their love and strength.
What freedom is
At the second Seder, the second night of our journey mei’avdut lecheirut, ‘from slavery to freedom,’ I asked the company what freedom means to them. I gave no one any warning, so the responses were immediate and unpremeditated. Here is some of what followed.
‘Being here, that’s freedom:’ That was the first response, and those words have stayed with me. Life is easily taken for granted, health, mobility, the ability to attend a Seder. I think of the words one says each morning: ‘Modeh ani – Thank you, God, for giving me back my life and soul in mercy.’ I thought, too, of Naama Levy’s comment in The Haggadah of Freedom, on what enabled her to keep going while held hostage in Gaza:
‘I yearned for “the little pleasures of life”… food, a hot shower, time to spend with friends and family, enjoy the warmth of sunlight, to breathe fresh air and just stroll outside…’
‘Freedom is being together,’ said someone else, focussing us on those who long desperately to be reunited with loved ones still held hostage. The words reminded me too of Elsa, a refugee who lived with us for a few weeks, whose mother was murdered before her eyes. ‘And your father?’ I asked. ‘I don’t know if he’s dead, or alive somewhere in prison. I’ve heard nothing for twelve years.’
‘Freedom is remembering, sharing our story.’ There’s that sentence in Bruce Chatwin’s Songlines: the culture of the campfire faces that of the pyramids. Our strength has always been the stories we tell, from the Torah onwards, which unite us and imbue in us our values, community, dignity, justice, compassion.
‘Freedom is what the RAF did for us in the war’: ‘Having lived through one war,’ said Nicky’s aunt Chelle, ‘freedom is those who protect you and save you from bombing and air raids.’ Think of what’s going on today…
One special guest did not respond. Seven years ago, his wife begged us at our Seder to pray for her husband, a political prisoner in Belgian Congo: ‘I believe in prayer,’ she said. People get murdered in those prisons; I doubted she’d see her husband alive. But here he was, a free man, at our Seder. His commentary was his presence.
With us, too, was Okito, leader of the DCR’s community in exile. He wrote to me afterwards:
‘For us freedom is deeply tied to justice and human dignity. We are profoundly affected by the ongoing human rights crisis in our country of origin…The silence of the international community is heartbreaking… We see freedom not as something to enjoy in isolation, but as a recognition of others’ suffering. Today in Israel, families are in deep pain, grieving and waiting for loved ones taken hostage. True freedom cannot exist while others remain in chains. To fully experience our own liberation, we must acknowledge and respond to the suffering of others.’
The last comment went to our daughter Kadya, who read from Maya Angelou’s wonderful tribute to the mother, Love Liberates:
It doesn’t just hold you, that’s ego,
Love liberates…
She [her mother] released me, she freed me…
That’s love…
Here’s to a world of freedom, dignity, justice, love and hope!
Our Synagogue’s Golden Shabbat
Tonight and tomorrow our community of the New North London Synagogue, בית חדש– Bayit Chadash, celebrates its Golden Shabbat.
I wasn’t there at the beginning. But I heard many times how Rabbi Dr Jacobs, the inspiration behind this new congregation, stood on a chair and declared, ‘Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.’
What is that idea, or ideal? It was, and remains, the creation of a community deeply rooted in Jewish tradition and practice, engaged with learning, liturgy and halakhah, Jewish law, yet open-minded, open to the world, and open-hearted, ready to face truths from wherever they come and to struggle honestly with the challenges of contemporary life.
We have never finished working at what that ideal means and at how to make it real, and we never shall. The moment we finish, we will cease to be true to what it demands of us.
I remember, I remember!
I have many treasured memories from the last 40+ years, moments which touched my soul. But I can’t share most of them, because they were heart-to-heart and private.
Yet two stand out. The first happened about thirty years ago on Rosh Hashanah, the New Year. Leslie Lyndon, his memory is a blessing, had just concluded the long Mussaf service which he led year by year with depth and grace. He was taking the traditional three steps back with which one symbolically parts from the presence of God, when he became aware of a baby who had crawled up right behind him. I will never forget the laughing smile with which he looked down at the child as, singing the concluding words Oseh Shalom, ‘Maker of peace,’ he carefully side-stepped to avoid her. It was a sweet moment of meeting between the holy and the human, – and that’s what religion and community is all about.
The second moment is the Shabbat when we first prayed in our new synagogue building. We decided to move in as a congregation halfway through our Sabbath prayers. From each service people of all ages came singing as they carried our Torah scrolls from the much-loved premises where we had gathered for so long, into the new spaces which we were determined to fill with the same spirit and affection. Everything was master-planned by Claire Mandel, our then CEO, to whom I say on behalf of us all, ‘We owe you so much.’ I can’t remember the words, but the feeling of that singing still feeds my soul.
So we’ve reached our Golden Shabbat. I think of gold as the precious filament which the Torah describes as running through the garments of the High Priest, shining amidst the other strong colours of scarlet, blue and purple.
Today we have neither High Priest not sacred garments. We each approach God as equals, and our garments are own experiences and spirit, which, like the High Priest’s clothes, are composed of many threads. Some have the radiant colours of joy; others are knotted with pain and hurt as life draws them through our heart. But I hope that, even in tough times, we can keep sight of the filament of gold running through them. It’s composed of Torah, neshamah – soul music, hesed – loving-kindness, kehillah -community, and tsedek – the aspiration to do what is just and right. I hope we never lose sight of that gold thread.
The New North London community has shaped my life. I am deeply grateful for the fellowship, challenge, guidance, trust and inspiration.
I ask God’s blessing for all my companions on this voyage, and especially for my wonderful, gifted and dedicated colleagues who are taking this journey forward into the future.
May God bless us and care for us. May God’s grace enlighten us and God’s presence guide us. May God bring us, all Israel and all the world, to a place of peace.
Purim Sameach, Happy Purim! We need simchah, joy, in our lives and on Purim it’s a Mitzvah. We share food and drink with friends, (ish lere’ehu) and give generously where there is need (mattanot la’evyonim).
Joy is not always easy in our often troubled world, or in our sometimes troubled lives, when our ‘downs’ may feel deeper and last longer than our ‘ups’. But that’s why we need it. Simchah is ‘a religious precept,’ writes Art Green in Judaism’s 10 Best Ideas, his compelling summary of Judaism which I recommend to everybody. Joy is a spiritual matter: ‘Seeking God itself is an act that is to fill the heart with joy,’ he writes, quoting Chronicles 16:10: ‘May the God-seeker’s heart rejoice.’ But simchah is also practical, in the cooking and baking, blessing and eating, sharing and caring and community.
That’s why simchah shel mitzvah, the joy of practising the commandments, is a building brick, a cornerstone, of Judaism. We all have our favourite moments: challah on Friday night, the Seder, making the Sukkah, a ‘le’chaim, to life’ with friends.
But what about when we feel down? Talking about joy can seem like moral negligence, ignoring the suffering which permeates our realities. On a personal level, when one’s low, it can feel like soaking the heart in vinegar. ‘I said of simchah,’ wrote Koheleth, the Preacher, “What’s the point of that?”’ He had a gift for multiplying everything by zero, with predictable results. But even he acknowledged, in the end, that the best of life lies in its basic joys: eating, drinking and companionship, and, I would add, in appreciating the world around us.
That’s why I love small moments; they make up more than ‘a few of my favourite things:’ a glimpse of the moon before dawn, the dog stretching out to have its tummy scratched; feeding the birds first thing; seeking a woodpecker or a starling pecking at the seeds. As William Blake wrote:
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sunrise.
And sometimes the joy flies away very quickly.
Simchah is not the same as indulgence. It’s not turning our back on the misery in the world. In essence, simchah is about nourishing our sense of wonder, nurturing a Baruch shecachah lo be’olama, a ‘Blessed be God in whose world it is thus,’ consciousness whenever we experience anything beautiful or uplifting. It’s about deepening our comradeship with each other and with life itself. We do so precisely because this is our internal resource, our inner storehouse for when the seasons of famine come over us. It’s the root of our resilience, for ourselves and others, when the brutality and cruelty of what’s done in our world, when the wrongs committed and the hurts inflicted, besiege our consciousness.
Writing these words, I’m conscious that I’m talking to myself as much as to anyone else. I’m not great at seizing the moments, at never missing the chance to bless what’s generous, kind, beautiful or good. Very different thoughts often take hold of me, particularly over the last period of time.
But that’s precisely why we need to ‘kiss the joy as it flies.’ That’s why it’s so important to remember Ben Zoma’s answer to his rhetorical question, ‘Who is rich?’ – ‘The person who find joy in their portion.’
May we all, despite whatever challenges we face, find moments of true wealth.
The Return of the Bodies of the Hostages – yet even then we must find hope
There are two people I wanted to be close to yesterday. The first is Sharone Lifschitz, whose father Oded’s body was brought home from captivity in Gaza. I have Oded’s picture, with his warm, wise, deeply humane smile, near where I pray when at home.
The terrible date of October 7 was cut even more deeply yesterday into Israel’s heart.
As soon as I heard the news, I messaged Sharone, who lives in London, has spoken in our synagogue, and whose strong, thoughtful, quiet but firm words have often been heard on the BBC. ‘What prayers, what verses do I say?’ she replied. ‘My father loved the Hebrew Prophets,’ she added, ‘justice, wisdom and ahavat adam, love for humanity.’
Her mother, Yocheved, was among the first hostages to be released. ‘I went through hell,’ she said. Yet, Sharone told me, ‘She has a nickname: They call her Mezuzah.’ ‘Why?’ I asked in surprise. ‘Because everyone who sees her kisses her.’
The couple, founders of Kibbutz Nir Oz, ‘were lifelong peace activists and would regularly transport patients from Gaza to receive medical care in hospitals across Israel. Oded, a great-grandfather, was a journalist and a passionate advocate for human rights.’ (Times of Israel)
What a contrast the deep humanity of this family makes with the mocking brutality of Hamas as it handed over Oded’s body, and those of the young children, deliberately murdered, Kfir and Ariel Bibas and, purportedly, of their murdered mother Shiri, to the International Red Cross.
How badly that humanity is needed in a region seared with grief, trauma, pain, and the rubble of war. I wish I could have been in Israel yesterday, with the families I have come to know, and, in a tiny way, feel part of.
But, here in London, I was able to stand next to the second person I needed to be close to, Bishop Kenneth Nowakowski, head of Ukrainian communities across the UK and a faithful friend. I’ve witnessed the devastation of the suburbs just a few miles from the heart of Kiev. I’ve followed the bishop’s work in creating a centre to support the tens of thousands of displaced Ukrainians here in Britain. I’ve heard him speak of the kinship he feels with the Jewish People. The first time he came to our synagogue, he was speechless; at the pulpit, he wept.
‘You don’t have to come,’ he texted me, ‘Your own people’s heartache is enough.’ But Bishop Kenneth has heartache too, as President Trump lies about President Zelensky, and seeks to sell out Ukraine rather like Chamberlain sold out Czechoslovakia in 1938. (Ironically, this week’s Torah portion is Mishpatim, ‘just laws’. ‘The world stands upon truth, justice and peace,’ taught Rabbi Shimeon ben Gamliel, under Roman occupation 1900 years ago. If only!)
I had one further stirring meeting yesterday. I visited Marika Henriques, to thank for her remarkable film Chaos Dragon and the Light which we screened on Holocaust Memorial Day. It follows her struggles with the trauma she experienced after surviving as a hidden child in Hungary. Never able to draw anything (her own words), she found herself pouring out her feelings years later in paintings which flowed straight from her unconscious. However fierce she portrayed the dragons with which she battled, her pictures always included a red dot. She came to understand afterwards that this dot represented hope: ‘There has to be hope.’
‘We’re commanded to hope,’ Bishop Kenneth said, scarcely an hour later. Hope, we agreed across our multifaith gathering, is a religious obligation.
My hope is that the values which guided Oded Lifschitz’s life, – wisdom, justice, compassion and a commitment to our collective humanity – and which Sharone carries forward, will prove stronger and resonate more deeply in everyone’s hearts than all the hatreds which besiege them.