| ‘But the light has not gone out, and that is a sign from God:’ these are the words my grandfather, Rabbi Salzberger, overheard, when, summoned by the Gestapo to the burning wreckage of the great synagogue in Frankfurt’s Boerneplatz, he passed through the whispering crowds of German onlookers on the morning after Kristallnacht, in November 1938.Tomorrow is the eighty-sixth anniversary of that terrible date. Monday, Remembrance Day, Veteran’s Day in the States, reminds us of the terrible human costs of the war that preceded it and the war against evil which followed. The light the onlookers in Frankfurter were referring to was the Ner Tamid, the Eternal Lamp, of the Westendsynagoge, where my grandfather served for thirty years until forced by the Nazis to flee the country he once loved. That Ner Tamid is the parent lamp from which a flame was kindled, and carefully carried for hundreds of miles, to light the Eternal Lamp of my community’s synagogue, here in London. Thus the light still burns, through tough days and dark nights, embodying the truth that, however much the world assails our hopes, our hearts and our deep beliefs in justice and compassion, we must not let the lights of our faith go out. ‘Do I give up?’ people have been asking me, directly or by inference, this week. Do I despair of my fight for the environment, for the dignity, equality and rights of women, for refugees, for an end to race hate and hate speech? Of course, we already know the answer. But we must hear it from each other, because we need each other in the fight: However many rings of pain The night winds round me, The opposing pull is stronger… (Boris Pasternak, the Zhivago poems) During these challenging days, I’ve looked backward to last week’s Torah portion, Noach, in which God and humanity embark, as it were, on their second term. The first ended in disaster, ‘violence and corruption’, recrimination and destruction. (Genesis 8) But God determines not to give up and binds us, by the sign of the arching rainbow, in an everlasting bond: ‘We are bound together, you and I, you and all living beings, all the birds and all the animals, in a covenant of life.’ That contract still holds, obligating each and every one of us. The harder it is to honour it, the more compelling our obligation. I look forward to this week’s Torah portion, Lech Lecha, the start of Abraham’s journey: ‘Go,’ God tells him, ‘Go to the land I’ll show you,’ the land where My will for goodness, freedom and reverence for life shall be done. Go, and don’t ever stop going, because that’s how you become a blessing. Never give up. In a brilliant Midrash Abraham sees God, Master of the World, calling out from a burning building. ‘Help me,’ God cries, ‘My world is on fire and I need you.’ God’s world needs our most urgent help. That is the very same voice which my grandfather heard crying out from a burning synagogue eighty-six years ago on the Boerneplatz: ‘My light still shines despite the flames. Save it! Save my world!’ The fires of hatred may make threaten it, but they cannot extinguish God’s light, the inner light of humanity, the light within the soul. We must preserve it always. We must bear it with us and nurture its flame, wherever we may go. |
Refugees
For Refugee Week: God sees the tears of the oppressed
While Nicky’s not been well, I’ve slept in our spare room, where we’ve often hosted guests through the excellent organisation Refugees at Home. This is Refugee Week, and Tuesday was World Refugee Day.
I found a small note in that spare room last night. It was post-it size, stuck to the bedside bookshelf so that you could only see it with your head on the pillow.
It read as follows. On top was written in large letters simply: ‘A…’ (I won’t give his name). Underneath was ‘with love from Nicky & Jonathan & Libbi & Mossy & Kadya & Nessie.’ I guess A… cut it out from a birthday card we must have given him, I really don’t know…
A… has moved on now, to face a world which may or may not want him, where employers may help him, but may well also exploit him, where there may or may not be the apprenticeship as an electrician for which he’s been searching. (If you have any leads, please, please, tell me!)
Several times he said to us in the months that he was here: ‘Before I had no-one; now I have you.’ Our dog Nessie adores him.
I looked at the note and felt affection and appreciation, but also, and in greater measure, sadness and shame.
Many of our parents or grandparents, many of our great rabbis, were refugees. They knew from bitter experience what the Torah calls nefesh hager, ‘the soul of the stranger’.
Nachmanides, Moses son of Nachman (1194 – 1270), had to flee his native Girona; he would never see his beloved family again. Commenting on the Torah’s words ‘You shall not wrong or oppress a stranger, for you were strangers…,’ he wrote:
I, God, see the tears of the oppressed who have no one to comfort them and power lies in the hands of their oppressors, and I protect every human being from the hands of those stronger than them. Similarly, [the Torah says] ‘you shall not afflict the widow or orphan,’ for I hear their cry. For all these people do not trust in themselves but put their trust in Me…[because] every stranger feels low and vulnerable… (comment to Exodus 22:20)
God protects the vulnerable! If only that were true!
Yet it is true, in an indirect, attenuated, broken way. It is to the small spark of God in us, the infinitesimal part within us all of the Infinite, Compassionate One, who desires that all life be nurtured and loved, that every refugee, everyone person who feels lost, everyone who feels helpless before the roar of life’s ceaseless, merciless traffic, looks.
The whole purpose of religion is to expand that spark of God in us, so that it fills our consciousness and directs our actions. Few prayers, if any, are more important than the simple words said three times every day: ‘Petach libbi beToratecha, God, may Your Torah, Your teaching, open my heart.’
The purpose of a religious community, whether synagogue, mosque, gurdwara, temple, or church, is to nurture through our religious practice and spiritual teaching a counterculture of compassion, understanding and welcome, in the face of the cruelty of so much of the world, the randomness of chance and the constant injustice and oppression caused by human actions.
We all inevitably give hurt, however much we determine to do so as little as possible. The essential question is: what can I do with my life to bring healing and compassion?
My mother’s 100th birthday
I remember, I remember, how, when I was small, Isca, my mother, would come to say goodnight and I would beg her, ‘Tell me about your childhood.’
Isca will be a hundred tomorrow.
She would tell me about the huge family gatherings in Frankfurt on festivals, when there’d be poetry and plays and she and her sisters would talk so much they had to be allocated numbers to give them all a chance to speak. Later, when the Nazis came to power, she’d put her head under the pillow each night and pray no harm would reach her.
She told me how she spoke English on the street so that they wouldn’t be stopped, and how, once they reached the British Consulate, they were treated as humans once again. On Kristallnacht her sister Ruth made them all darn socks to keep calm.
She spoke of the Micklem family, who took them into their home in Boxmoor, five refugees. The family were wonderful, but so bad at washing up that she’d creep downstairs while they slept and clean the dishes again.
Being a child of refugees has formed me more deeply than I will ever understand.
But I was lucky, not just because we were safe and prosperous. The horrors of life under the Nazis, and of World War II, were communicated to me in stories in which goodness and kindness proved stronger than hate. (In my father’s family the silences were deeper, the losses greater.) The message I absorbed was that hate is combatted through generosity and love.
Tomorrow is Shabbat Zachor, the Sabbath of Memory. Judaism is full of positive memories, the Exodus from slavery, the wonder of creation. But on Shabbat Zachor we recall evil: ‘Remember what Amalek did to you, attacking your stragglers and you were weak and weary.’ Shabbat Zachor always precedes Purim, when we read the final round of this long conflict between Israel, guided by Esther and Mordechai, and Haman, the descendant of Amalek.
The commandment to remember Amalek is the Biblical equivalent of the famous words dubiously attributed to Edmund Burke: ‘All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.’
Amalek as a nation no longer exists, as the Talmud long ago established. Yet it remains as a concept, the embodiment of hatred and vengeance. As such, it knows no geographical boundaries, and no one is immune from its impact. An astute Hasidic insight rereads the Torah’s injunction not just as a warning against what Amalek can do to us, but against Amalek can turn us into: Don’t let cruelty make you cruel, or hatred make you hate. It’s easier said than done.
I’m troubled more than usual as we approach this Purim amidst so much violence, including in Israel and Palestine. Immediately before telling us to love our neighbour, the Torah commands us not to bear grudges or seek revenge. Yet across the world we witness how hatreds fester over centuries.
It’s unclear who originated the saying that the world will be healed not by sinat chinam, gratuitous hate, but by ahavat chinam, love which seeks no other reward than doing what’s compassionate and kind. This feels more like a prayer than a reality.
Yet there are countless people who, despite everything, manage to live like that.
Isca used to tell me that when she lay with that pillow over her head, hoping the family would find some route to safety, she determined that she would use her life to help other people become able to help themselves.
That’s exactly what she’s achieved. Her hundredth birthday marks one person’s remarkable and courageous triumph over hatred.
Prayer for Ukraine, one year on
I was privileged to be invited by Bishop Kenneth Nowakowski to offer a prayer of solidarity at the Ukrainian Cathedral this morning, a year since this phase of Putin’s assault so shockingly began. As Mayor Sadiq Kahn said, this is not the first anniversary of the war, but of the Western World waking up to horrors to which the people of Ukraine have been subject since 2014, and to the full significance of this war for truth, freedom and human dignity.
Many members of the Ukrainian community told me how deeply they felt supported by the UK and the Jewish community in particular. Worried about ‘news fatigue’ they asked that this should continue. I assured them that it most certainly would.
The Cathedral was decked with 461 paper angels, representing the Ukrainian children known to have been killed in the war. (Different faiths do things in different ways) There was a rolling screening of pictures of soldiers killed in the fighting, several of whom returned from Britain to defend their country. One feels, too, for the Russian conscripts and their families, young men sent to their deaths in a war they almost certainly don’t understand. It was hard to hold back tears.
It’s painful to say prayers like this on the eve of the Shabbat when we read in the Torah portion Terumah about the tabernacle, God’s sanctuary, which we strive to build so that God’s presence can dwell among us here on earth, and which symbolises a world at peace with a safe place within it for every faith, nation and person, and for all of nature too.
As Rabbi Tarfon said, we will surely not complete the work, but we are not free to desist from it. We need to muster all the solidarity, courage, compassion and creative imagination we collectively can, in the name of life and its blessings.
Prayer for Ukraine, 24 February 2023
‘Out of the depths, I call to you God.’ These Psalmist’s words cried out from the bones of my people at Babyn Yar, where the Nazis murdered tens of thousands of Jews, and which was bombed again last March. They spoke in my heart at Borodianka, by Bucha, by the burnt-out homes, by the charred statue of Taras Shevchenko, father of modern Ukrainian literature.
For the third time in a hundred years a tyrant is trying to annihilate Ukraine and subjugate its people.
This war is an assault on history and identity, truth and freedom, life and hope; a crime against humanity and nature.
The people of Ukraine couldn’t defend themselves against Stalin’s policy of mass starvation; millions of Jews were powerless before Hitler’s Einsatzgruppen.
But today, the President, Parliament, Army and Ukrainian people of all faiths stand united and courageous against tyranny.
In stalwart solidarity with them, we pray:
For Ukraine’s armed forces and those who support them: may you be resilient until victory and peace; may war’s cruelties not harden your hearts.
For everyone traumatised, tortured, raped, and stricken by the wounds and griefs of war: may the God of healing be with you.
For all Ukraine’s children, displaced internally and worldwide: may your families be reunited in a safe, democratic, intact and peaceful Ukraine.
For the ecologists investigating and striving to reverse the environmental devastation of battle.
For the broadcaster who dared to say on Russian television ‘you’re being lied to here,’ and all who seek and speak truth.
For the families of all those killed in this war.
From the depths of our hearts we call to you, God. May life, freedom, truth and peace speedily prevail.
Report from a visit to Kyiv
I’ve spent most of my week in Kyiv, with a small group Christian, Muslim and Jewish faith leaders, organised by Europe, A Patient. As I write, I’m on the long train journey back to the Polish border now, watching the snow-bound flatlands and villages with homes with a well in the garden, where it’s easy to imagine our ancestors, in their poverty, with their horse and cart, and the Rebbe with the faithful in the small Beis Medrash.
Of many encounters, two are foremost in my mind. We visited the Kyiv Masorti community where the group of roughly twenty was largely composed of women of a grandmotherly generation. ‘You’re in charge,’ I was brusquely informed. I hoped these women would tell their stories and, once had begun, they readily did. Fortunately Olena Bogdan, formerly head of religion and culture in Ukraine, was with us, with her superb English. Here’s some of what was said:
– I stayed in Ukraine because I felt the presence of women was needed. I lost my job caring for children with Down’s syndrome when they were evacuated. I spend my time supporting whoever I can, helping with humanitarian aid, rescuing animals too. I’m a psychologist. I support those going through trauma. The sirens, especially at night, shatter our nerves.
– I’ve no relatives. I don’t even know for certain I’m Jewish. But my grandmother’s sister was killed at Babi Yar. In this centre I feel safe; they’re my family. We care for each other.
– My family were mostly murdered at Babi Yar; who’d have thought we’d face another war? My son-in-law was killed. The Russists, that’s what we call them, fired randomly at columns of cars trying to rescue civilians. You never knew who’ll be hit.
(Babi Yar is at the outskirts of the city. We prayed by its frozen ravines. Here tens of thousands were shot by the Nazis in two days in September 41’ and thousands more in the weeks which followed. We were shown fragments of the Russian bombs which hit the adjacent television tower, in this sick, lying war against ‘Nazi’ Ukraine.)
We met Ukraine’s leading civil servant, a member of the Masorti community; when I asked him ‘What shall I say in London?’ he replied simply ‘Give us weapons.’ All the rest is secondary.
I shall never forget meeting Metropolitan Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head of the Greek Catholic Church of Ukraine. He had that presence one recognises in a person of courageous integrity, astute moral perception and embracing vision.
He spoke not just of the horrors of the war, but of its ideological character, its aim of obliterating Ukraine and Ukrainian identity. The Russians burnt books, including Bibles, he told us, just because they were written in Ukrainian. This brought to mind Heine’s warning that those who burn books proceed to burn people. We saw exactly what the Metropolitan meant in Borodianka, a small town next to Bucha and Irpin, where, among the air attacks on blocks of flats and civil institutions, Russian pilots strafed the statue of the poet Taras Shevchenko, founder of the modern Ukrainian language. (Over 20 people are still missing, unaccounted for presumed burnt to a cinder. Father Yasroslav, who showed us round said that for weeks he led seven funeral columns every day after the town was freed).
This is a war which concerns us all: of truth against lies; of freedom against totalitarianism; and, on a religious level, of faith in the God present in every human being and all life, as opposed to the idolatry of co-opting God to justify crimes against humanity. We ignore what’s happening in Ukraine at our peril.
For all that, the streets of Kyiv were far from empty, the cafes, including the kosher restaurant, were open and serving good food. But, as Olena warned, it’s an unreal normality: anything can happen in a moment. And the horror and trauma weight heavy in people’s hearts.
I’ll close by reverting to the words of the Metropolitan: ‘I’m concerned not just about the war, but the quality of the peace which has to follow, for Ukraine, for Russia and for the world.’
I’m writing these words for the Shabbat on which we read in the Torah, ‘Thou shalt not murder.’
Never think there’s nothing we can do
‘Queen Zelenska, Queen Zelenska:’ the boys were bursting with excitement after we got home. We’d been invited by Bishop Kenneth Nowakowski, who a few days earlier had been our guest in the synagogue, to the formal opening of the welcome centre for refugees from the war in Ukraine. ‘I never dreamt I’d be a refugee in London,’ said Halina who, with her daughter and grandsons, is living with us, ‘Nor that I’d meet the king.’ But King Charles meant little to her grandchildren; what impressed them was that their babushka had met Queen Zelenska.
The First Lady radiated presence and warmth. But what must have been on her mind! Over the previous days she’d addressed Parliament, then, with the Queen Consort, spoken to hundreds of women about the particular horrors, war-crimes, violence, abuse and misery to which the fighting left girls and women especially exposed. With all this on her heart, and with an agenda of summoning the maximum possible help, not least in prosecuting war-crimes, Mrs Zelenska nevertheless left an impression of dignity, courage and grace. What came across from King Charles was a quiet humanity; he cared. ‘After his first visit to us in the opening days of the war,’ Bishop Kenneth told me, ‘His office called every few days to ask what we needed.’
I believe all of us who were there left with similar thoughts: How can we help? What can we do, in whatever contexts or situations we can, to mitigate suffering in the world?
Wrongs and hurts assail us from every side. Some are caused by life itself with its illnesses and ill-fortunes: I’m mindful that yesterday was World AIDS Day. Other wounds are the result of human cruelty: this Shabbat is devoted to publicising the essential work of Jewish Women’s Aid, JWA. It’s shocking to realise the huge numbers of women, and sometimes, though more rarely, men, who suffer verbal, financial and physical abuse, very often in enforced or lonely secrecy, for years and even decades.
There are further home truths we also need to face. I’m troubled by the betrayal of what I consider Judaism’s core Torah-based values and of what history has taught us as a people, by the rise to positions in Israel’s government of Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who incite race-hate and homophobia. Not just they but those who appointed them must be challenged and held to account. We can, and should, support Israel by supporting those who truly uphold the just and democratic principles on which it was founded.
Trapped in Europe in the 1930s, Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote that we humans have two faces: the image of God and the visage of Cain. Later, a refugee in America saved at the last moment, he wrote in The Meaning of This War
The mark of Cain in the face of man has come to overshadow the likeness of God.
But, he continued, we have a choice:
There can be no neutrality. Either we are ministers of the sacred or slaves of evil… God is waiting for us to redeem the world. We should not spend our life hunting for trivial satisfactions while God is waiting….
I’m moved that the motto for this year’s World AIDS Day is ‘To Our World With Love.’ What, can we do to foster that love and bring healing, safety, joy and hope to our world?
I feel greatly challenged virtually every day, yet deeply inspired almost every day. So I want to include with another beautiful moment I, with Nicky, was privileged to share this week, and which I determine to carry in my heart through thick and thin.
We stood near the top of Skirrid, a sacred mountain in South Wales, a small group of Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders, and prayed together:
Eternal Spirit, Earth-Maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver…
We hold brothers and sisters who suffer from storms and droughts…We hold all species that suffer…
We pray that love and wisdom might inspire our actions…so that we may, with integrity, look into the eyes of brothers and sisters and all beings and truthfully say, we are doing our part to care for them and the future of the children.
May love transform us and our world with new steps toward life.
Then we joined local farmers and volunteers, and, as the sun set, planted trees to form windbreaks to protect the land.
We must try never to think that there’s nothing we can do.
AJEX Shabbat and Mitzvah Day
This week is AJEX Shabbat, followed on Sunday by the Jewish Military Association’s solemn commemoration. Whitehall is closed, service and ex-service men and women march by, as do their children wearing their parent’s medals in their honour. Over 120,000 Jews have served in the country’s armed forces.
But Sunday is also Mitzvah Day, a wonderful, creative and constructive response to the memory, and reality, of war.
Over the last years I’ve had the privilege of reciting the memorial prayer at the Cenotaph. I’ve found this humbling and intensely moving. Like so many of us, my grandfather and my father served, though in different armed forces. My wife’s uncle Sonny was killed supplying arms with the RAF to the French resistance. Jews, alongside other faith groups and minorities, have made immense contributions to this country, in war as well as in peace.
For those of us who’ve grown up since WW2, war in Europe had seemed a long way off. Not so now. Like others hosting families from Ukraine, Nicky and I wonder: do we leave the daily paper open, with the latest grim, or somewhat better, news? What immediate fears will the pictures bring when they come down for breakfast? It’s probably an idle question, as they speak to the men back in Kharkiv every day.
Here in the UK we are not faced with the constant threat of sudden death from bombs deliberately targeted at civilian infrastructures, something all too familiar to the generation who remember the V1s and V2s. We aren’t about to find on the outskirts of our towns and villages the half-concealed evidence of atrocities.
But war’s effects are all too clear. It wrecks the all-important works of peace. Farmlands are destroyed (We had eleven apricot trees, three produced really large fruits, all bombed, all bombed, ‘our’ grandmother said.) Grain from Ukraine’s rich black earth doesn’t reach the world’s poorest. Even in wealthy countries, rising prices push millions over the edge into destitution. Teachers in Birmingham say one child in three now lives in poverty. Richer nations are saying they can’t or won’t make the payments essential to help the planet’s most vulnerable nations minimise and adapt to climate change.
I’m sorry to write such horrible things but they weigh on the heart.
But they made me notice what I hadn’t properly taken in before: how, in the small siddurim, the grey-covered prayerbooks issues to His Majesty’s Armed Forces, the memorial prayers are followed immediately by verses full of longing for ‘the works of peace.’ They remind me that every Amidah, every single one of Judaism’s thrice-daily petitions, concludes with a prayer for peace. We must never take it for granted; it’s the most immeasurable blessing.
Late last night, unable to sleep, I went downstairs to fetch Isaac Rosenberg’s collected works. In a poem of 1917 he wrote how, returning from action, he and his men suddenly hear
But hark! Joy – joy – strange joy,
Lo! heights of night ringing with unseen larks.
Music showering our upturned list’ning faces.
Death could drop from the dark / As easily as song –
But song only dropped
Our hearts go out to those like him who longed for peace but never lived to see it.
On their behalf, we must rededicate ourselves to the works of peace, to everything which Mitzvah Day upholds, caring across the boundaries of our communities, cooking, planting, giving, doing everything we can to make that peace as real, as lasting and as deep as we possibly can.
Cop 27 and EcoShabbat
In an intense and complex week, one theme runs through everything, the preciousness of life. That’s what I’m focussing on this EcoShabbat.
But first I want to acknowledge that today brings the memorial to that fateful eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, when in 1918 the Armistice was signed which finally ended The First World War. Since then, this date has been marked as Armistice Day in Europe and Veteran’s Day in The States. (AJEX, the Jewish Military Association, holds its ceremony at The Cenotaph one week later).
It’s terrible to know that, in the words of Wilfred Owen, there’s another old man in Europe today who, unlike Abraham when the angel told him to spare his child,
Would not so, but slew his son
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.
Tonight, therefore, I will miss the beautiful synagogue service which marks the beginning of Shabbat, so as to attend a concert at the Ukrainian Cathedral, ‘The Cry, a Requiem for the Lost Child,’ in memory of the thousand children killed in Ukraine. Kenneth Nowakowski, the Eparchial Bishop, wept when I asked him to speak in our synagogue. It’s basic solidarity to stand with him in return.
Children were the subject at the service led by the Association of Jewish Refugees last Wednesday to mark Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938, the Night of Broken Glass. That was when my grandfather, rabbi in Frankfurt, went into hiding, only to give himself up because he learnt that the Gestapo were waiting in his home. He feared he might be putting his wife and daughters at even greater risk.
In the terror which followed, the cry went out across Britain ‘Get the children out!’ the title of Mike Levy’s remarkable book subtitled The Unsung Heroes of the Kindertransport. A note on the cover reminds us that these issues aren’t over: ‘In support of Safe Passage, legal routes to sanctuary.’ There are few, if any, such routes for children of war and terror today.
Meanwhile COP 27 struggles to find a safe passage forward for our entire planet, one-and-a-fifth hands tied behind its back by the world’s economic and fuel crises and the paucity of courageous political leadership.
Nevertheless, I’m buoyed up by a resilient hopefulness based on what so many people are doing, locally, persistently. I was privileged to hear Charlie Burrell, who established Knepp, describe the swift return of species unseen for decades. (See his wife Isabella Tree’s wonderful book Wilding) The glimpse of a butterfly once thought extinct is joy!
I participated in the conversations of the Elijah Interfaith Institute yesterday. (Please join us this Sunday). I carry with me the words of Hindu and Buddhist colleagues: All is oneness. God’s presence fills all creation; let it fill your consciousness too. Let it descend to the heart. Let its light guide your conscience and actions. Then you will seek not to hurt or harm any creature.
As we move into EcoShabbat, I take from this week the gritty hope which feeds determination. I tell myself (and others!) Notice; be aware! Be there to care! One life flows through all things: if we nourish it, it will nourish us.
We must work for life in whatever ways we can.
Our EcoShabbat focus– What’s Local To See:
Look out for the display in shul this Shabbat of our local wildlife.
Complete this survey to tell us which of these local animals, birds and trees you see over the next three weeks. Post your photos, stories, anecdotes in our Facebook group. Prizes will be awarded for the best responses.
Hear my Thought for the Day from this Thursday – ‘On Hope’
Remembering destruction in order to love creation more
The other morning Babushka – we all call her that though her actual name is Galina – came down crying. I didn’t need Russian to know she was telling me her home town of Kharkiv had been bombed that night.
Tomorrow is the 17th of Tammuz, the fast which begins the three weeks of beyn hametsarim, ‘between the troubles,’ culminating in the 25-hour fast of Tishah B’Av, the Ninth of Av. (Because it’s Shabbat, the fast is deferred to Sunday).
The 17th Tammuz commemorates the breech in the walls of Jerusalem; Tishah B’Av marks the sacking of the city and the temple by the Babylonians in 587 BCE and again by the Romans in 70 CE. Into this bleak period are added memorials to the crusades, blood libels, expulsions, persecutions and executions from which Jewish communities have suffered through two millennia.
Sometimes I struggle to comprehend why, when there’s so much destructiveness in today’s world, we need a special period of time to think about it. It feels enough just to listen to the news.
Part of the answer is that we must remember our history, the wars and struggles faced by our ancestors. This reminds us that, despite all our concerns, we live in fortunate times and privileged parts of the world. Probably never in history have so many of us had so much freedom.
But behind this lies a deeper reason. Recalling the horrors people have suffered makes us value the most basic things, life, safety, shelter, food, what it means to be able to walk in the street without fear for our lives. It teaches us to protect these freedoms, to oppose destructiveness in any and all of its manifestations and to place ourselves on the side of creation, proactively, determinedly and always.
Before I write one word more, I have to admit that sometimes during prayers what I really want to do is cover my face and weep before God. What’s being done to this beautiful world in which life is such a blessing is sometimes so wicked, often so careless, and more often still the undesired but nevertheless clear consequence of the way we live, that my heart aches, my head hurts and I have to swallow down despair.
But that is not the way.
Tomorrow’s Torah tells how Balaam, the hapless seer whose ass could out-see him, nevertheless managed, with some assistance from heaven, to turn his curses into blessings. That’s the challenge: whether the stresses and dangers which threaten our world can draw out of us the creativity and determination to find new ways of blessing.
Ma’alin bakodesh, teaches the Talmud: in matters of holiness we go not down, but up. I take this to mean that we must always be on the side of life to cherish it and appreciate its holiness. I see people doing just that all around me, and that’s what keeps me going.
Here’s an unexpected example: owls. ‘Small bird, large impact’ runs the headline in the Jerusalem Post. Instead of spreading toxic poisons to kill off crop-destroying rodents, across Israel farmers are now placing nesting boxes. The barn owls arrive and feast off the rats and voles, restoring nature’s balance chemical free. But it’s not just about animals; the scheme has brought co-operation between Israel, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and beyond.
Here’s a different, humans-only example. I wish I could speak to those people in Birmingham I mentioned weeks back, who created the ‘pay as you feel’ cafes from food rescued from being wasted, supplemented from community allotments, cooked by chefs who think menus on their feet and catering for many who’d otherwise have little to eat.
In Rebbe Nachman’s great tale The Seven Beggars, my favourite is the figure who goes around daily collecting deeds of kindness to give to the world’s heart so that it can sing to the spring which gives life to the world for one further day.
Seeing our own reflection: a Jewish version of Narcissus
I’ve been struck all week by a story from the Talmud. It’s told by Simon the Just. No one knows exactly when he lived, but folklore has him welcoming Alexander the Great to Jerusalem in the 4th century BCE.
One day there came to him ‘a man from the south, with beautiful eyes, good-looking, his hair finely arranged in curls.’ But he wanted to cut it all off and renew his vows as a Nazirite:
I asked him, ‘Why do you want to destroy this beautiful hair?’ He said, ‘I was shepherding my father’s flocks and went to draw water. When I saw my reflection in the stream, desire almost got the better of me…But I said to it: ‘Empty-head! Why be so proud in a world which isn’t yours, where your end will be worms?’ (Talmud, Nazir 4b)
The story initially reminded me of Hamlet’s advice to the actors who visit Elsinore on the purpose of art:
to hold, as ‘twere, the mirror up to nature, show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. (Act 3, Scene 2)
I can’t be the only one who can think of a lot of people in positions of power who could do with looking carefully at their own features.
But the first person who needs to consider their reflection is always our own self. It’s not just water which can show us our image. Being with refugees has made me see myself in different ways. (Next week is refugee week) I was going to hold my wife’s hand during bensching, the grace after meals, as I often do. Then I wondered: but the Ukrainian women at the table are worrying all day long about their husbands stuck in the fighting. Might I be breaking the rabbinic rule of lo’eg larash, mocking the poor, understood metaphorically as insensitively doing something in the presence of another person who’s prevented by circumstances or disability from doing the same?
Then a young man from Somalia said, when I offered him more food, ‘Crossing the desert I got used to eating once in two days.’ I saw in that moment how much I take my plenty for granted. I wondered what I must look like in his eyes, and felt ashamed.
What do we do when we see our own reflection in such ways?
That’s when I realised that the Talmudic story is in fact a Jewish version of the myth of Narcissus.
Narcissus fails to requite the love of the broken-hearted mountain nymph Echo. Taking Echo’s part, the goddess Nemesis punishes Narcissus for his callousness by making him fall in love with his own reflection in the water which, in some versions, he leans forward to kiss and is drowned.
It’s a powerful metaphor for humanity today. Here we are, looking at our own image: are we so in love with ourselves in our anthropocentric universe that all we can see are our own power, skills, achievements and desires? If so, we are liable to fall beneath the spell of Nemesis.
Or do we say like the young man who comes before Simon the Just: what am I doing on this earth which isn’t mine, where I’m a temporary resident, a passer-through and pilgrim? What can I contribute? How can I serve? What good can I achieve for the children and the future of this world?