Spirituality | HEART AND MIND

07 Jul 2023

Sticky Post By admin Posted in Spirituality, The Jewish Year Permalink

The voice of hope and courage

Sticky Post By admin On July 7, 2023

‘Go tell Jerusalem, “I remember the devotion of your youth, the faithful love of your bridal days, following me through an unsown land…” (Jeremiah 2:2) These are some of my favourite words.

In the Bible, they’re what God instructs Jeremiah to tell an imperilled Jerusalem. In my family, they’re the inscription on my grandmother’s grave. My grandfather fell in love with her at a Purim party. They had to wait through most of the First World War before they could marry. They fled Nazi Germany together to a – to them – unknown and unsown land, this England.

Romantic as they sound, the truth behind God’s words to Jeremiah is hard. God is frustrated. Jerusalem is on the brink of destruction, yet the people won’t listen. They put their trust in the wrong things; they refuse to change their ways. It’s scarcely the best time to speak of love.

Yet to God nothing is more important. So why does God do it? How do we? In a world full of reasons for anguish, how do we turn to healing and love?

These are questions which weigh on the soul at this challenging season of the Jewish year, the three weeks beyn hameytsarim, ‘in the straits’, between the breaching of the walls of Jerusalem and the sacking of the city by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and the Romans in 70 CE. How do we turn destructiveness into creativity and frustration into hope?

I struggle with these issues constantly. Things distress me: how will what’s happening in Israel ever lead to less hatred and more understanding? Things sadden me: tomorrow will be the 500^th day of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Things madden me: why is there such heartless injustice? Why does so much money go into things which destroy nature, and so little into restoring it?

But there’s no point, no strength of morale, no leadership in venting such feelings. What, then, is the spiritual formula, the inner alchemy, which turns anguish into action and trepidation into inspiration?

It’s definitely doable. The NHS, seventy-five this week, was established in the wake of the Second World War. It’s our best loved public institution, and deserves to be, for all it’s done and continues to do for tens of millions. Choose Love, which supports thousands of homeless refugees, was created out of the ‘Jungle’ at Calais. The Psalmist’s hope has been vindicated time and again: ‘I lie down at night in tears, but the morning brings joy.’

What nourishes this resilience? The inspiration is all around us. We have only to see what so many people are doing. I get requests all the time: Join our campaign to protect Europe’s wild spaces. Write about free school meals for children whose cupboards at home are bare. Meet Ukrainian environmentalists planning how to rebuild greener. Support our work to bring together women leaders from across Israel’s society, orthodox, secular, Druse, Christian, Muslim. How can one not be moved by what so many good people do, sometimes in private, often in small local groups, but also nationally and internationally against the current, courageously?

As well as looking outwards, it’s also important to travel inwards. We need to go down, not, as can happen, to grey inner spaces, but deeper still, to the well of living waters, the inexhaustible flow of God’s spirit within us. Here at this hidden well, life cleanses the mind, heals the heart and renews the spirit.

Here we encounter the voice which says, ‘Leave anger and frustration. Don’t feel down and don’t give up. Remember that faithful love which has led so many generations through unsown lands. It will surely guide you too.’

It’s a voice we need to hear.

02 Jun 2023

Sticky Post By admin Posted in Ethics, Spirituality Permalink

Blessing: the wonder and oneness of life

Sticky Post By admin On June 2, 2023

Dod Werner, Uncle Werner, as everyone called him, has not been alive for many years now. I believe he made it to 102. Whenever I was in Jerusalem, I would visit him and ask him to bless me. I don’t entirely know why, since he wasn’t actually my uncle, but that of a friend and colleague. It was something about him, his wisdom, his presence.

Dod Werner wasn’t a cohen, a priest, to whom as we read tomorrow, the Torah entrusts the privilege of bestowing the blessing beloved of people of all faiths:

May God bless you and keep you.

May God’s face shine upon you and give you grace.

May God’s face be turned toward you and grant you peace.

But there’s something greater than saying a blessing. It’s what God tells Abraham: ‘heyeh berachah, be a blessing.’ A much-quoted Midrash has God say to him: ‘until now the blessings were in my hands, henceforth they are in yours.’ Since Abraham is ‘the father of many nations’ this instruction is the prerogative of all humanity. More than that: it’s a commandment; it’s what we are here for, it’s life’s purpose.

According to the Shulchan Aruch, the sixteenth century definitive code of Jewish law, we should say at least one hundred blessings every day: ‘Bless you for opening the eyes of the blind, for clothing the naked, for enabling people to walk…’ It’s hard to avoid reciting them by rote.

But they remain a bulwark against taking life for granted. And suddenly, when one’s back goes and one can hardly walk, one realises that nothing should be taken as given. The Talmud recounts how two rabbis pay their respects to a blind scholar in a village through which they happen to be passing. Moved by their kindness, the man thanks them, saying: ‘May the One who sees but cannot be seen bless you who visited one who can be seen but cannot see.’ There’s grace and gratitude in those words.

But blessing is more than words, more even, writes Rachel Remen in her wonderful book My Grandfather’s Blessings, than ‘something that one person gives another.’ When we bless, we ‘touch the unborn goodness’ in each other: ‘A blessing is a moment of meeting…in which both people involved remember and acknowledge their true nature and worth.’

Last Tuesday night, unable to sleep, I read Adam Kirsch’s ‘Can humans ever understand how animals think?’ Then I dreamt of how important it is to bless and feel blessed not just by humans, but by animals too. When the time comes, I’d like to spend some of my old age in their company, humbled, simplified, blessed by their presence.

Looking deeper at God’s instruction to Abraham, heyeh berachah, I realise that heyeh is composed of three of the letters in God’s name, Yod Heh Vav Heh, letters which also form havayah, the Hebrew word for ‘being’. When we bless truly, God is present, the being at the heart of all being. In blessing, life touches life in a moment of togetherness deeper than all the accidents, differences and injuries of this world.

The mystics relate berachah, blessing, with berechah, pool, the hidden reservoir from which life flows down through all existence. We cannot bless while we harbour arrogance or anger. Life won’t flow through us then.

Blessing is a moment of trust and entrusting, of fidelity and companionship with life. Words of blessing are important; we need to tell people how much we cherish and care for them. But blessing at its deepest has no words. It is known in the heart: a silent shared acknowledgement of the wonder and oneness of life.

19 May 2023

Sticky Post By admin Posted in Ethics, Spirituality Permalink

Be on the side of life

Sticky Post By admin On May 19, 2023

These two times ‘I’ may be all the world needs. The first is ‘I am’ and the second is ‘I shall.’ But beyond them waits a third, the terrible sentence of Cain.

The first anochi, ‘I am,’ is the opening word of the Ten Commandments, which we will read next Friday morning on Shavuot, the Festival of the Giving of the Torah. The description of the scene at Sinai moves me greatly, the cloud over the mountain, the rising cry of the shofar, the voice of God from nowhere and everywhere, saying Anochi, ‘I’.

When they heard that ‘I am,’ wrote Rebbe Yehudah Aryeh-Leib of Ger, (1847 – 1905) when they experienced that ‘I am your God’, not just the Children of Israel but every living being felt it was addressed directly to them. More than that, they felt it was them, the voice at the very core of them, the holiness in the essence of all life.

Those simple words ‘I am your God’ say something deeper than the divine equivalent of ‘Look, this is me!’ They are not really words at all, but the translation into human language of a truth at the centre of all existence. They are vitality itself, the very articulation of the sacred energy which flows through all organic beings, giving them form, life, consciousness and the gift of time.

Therefore, the presence of God, – perhaps it’s less daunting to call it the sacred, the special, -can be felt in all things, in our fellow human beings, in our companion creatures on this earth, in the trees, in meadows, in a tiny flowering plant, even an insect.

This is the first, and most definitive, ‘I am,’ the life of all life.

The second anochi, ‘I’, is what Judah says to his father Jacob to persuade him to entrust Benjamin to his care and allow him to go with his brothers back down to Egypt to buy grain and stave off starvation. Anochi e’ervenu, he says, ‘I shall stand surety for him.’ (Bereshit 43:9) Send the boy with me; I’ll look after him.

I hear about that second anochi almost every day, and often witnessed with my own eyes: ‘I’ll commit to that,’ ‘I’ll take care.’ They’re simple words, but what they represent is not so easy, a combination of awareness, kindness, and the readiness to take responsibility.

I saw only part of the film Mo Farah is making about his life. Alongside those who trafficked him to the UK and enslaved him in domestic service were those who heard him, listened and strove to protect and love him. ‘I’ll stand surety for him,’ they said.

We hold innumerable lives in our hands. The great question, the issue which will define the future of humanity, is whether we can say ‘I’ll stand up for you,’ and mean it truly. That ‘you’ may be a child. But it may also be an orphaned or mal-treated animal, a local park, a meadow. I’ve met people who treasure the tiniest creatures, looking after with wonder. What matters is that we are on the side of life, engaged in heart, practical in our care.

These two words, God’s ‘I am’ and our answer ‘I shall’, may be all we need to find our path through life.

But against them, louring, is a third anochi, the ‘Am I?’ of Cain: ‘Hashomer achi anochi? Am I my brother’s keeper?’ He’s the prototype of those treacherous perpetrators who stalk our future with their byline: Why should I care who I hurt or kill?

That’s why it matters absolutely, always to be on the side of life.

05 Apr 2023

Sticky Post By admin Posted in Spirituality, The Jewish Year Permalink

I wish everyone Chag Sameach

Sticky Post By admin On April 5, 2023

I wish everyone Chag Sameach.

In these difficult times we draw strength from the depth of our faith and tradition.

The Haggadah tells the story of me’avdut lecherut, the journey from slavery to freedom. Into its ancient account we weave our narratives of now and find solidarity across tens of generations.

The struggle to maintain freedom is taking place today in Ukraine, in very different ways on the streets of Israel, and wherever in the world people strive to act with justice, behave with decency, and honour God’s image in every human being.

The values we affirm are simple: life matters, every person matters, justice matters, equality matters, kindness matters. We believe these to be the values God cares about because God is not the yes-man of tyrants, but weeps with all who suffer, whoever they are, and longs for redemption.

These are difficult times, but it is not difficult to know against what we must stand and be counted: tyranny, falsehood, injustice, cruelty, and the degradation of any human being anywhere.

These are difficult times, but it is not difficult to know for what we must stand: truth and integrity, Torat Tsedek – the rule of justice, Torat Chesed – the law of compassion, and the dignity of every person.

This Seder night we take courage from the generations who have gone before us and upheld these same values through other troubled years. We draw courage from the millions of fellow Jews and people of all faiths and nations who, at this very time, stand together with us in striving to live by these ancient, timeless and essential values.

May God give us strength and bless all the world with peace.

Chag Sameach

03 Apr 2023

Sticky Post By admin Posted in Spirituality, The Jewish Year Permalink

What the matzah says

Sticky Post By admin On April 3, 2023

‘Come in and mill it yourselves:’ Nicky and I were in Jerusalem’s Me’ah She’arim, in a courtyard so well hidden we had to ask three times before we found it. Everything was covered in white dust, except that this wasn’t dust but kosher-for-Passover matzah flour. ‘It’s a mitzvah to grind the wheat yourselves,’ said the Hasid in charge. Sadly, on this occasion we couldn’t stay, but, as the saying goes, ‘Next year in Jerusalem.’

I love it when I bake my own matzah; everyone else loves it when I refrain. This year, when I can neither bake nor mill, I can at least mull, and there’s much to consider about what the matzah at the Seder means.

Firstly, there’s the question of whether it’s the bread of slavery or freedom. At the start of the Seder we say, ‘This is the bread of affliction our ancestors ate in Egypt,’ yet later we describe it as the flatbread baked hastily in liberty’s first flush. Which is it? Both, explains Rebbe Yehudah Aryeh-Leib of Ger, because only by remembering the cruelties of slavery can we appreciate the significance of freedom. Otherwise we’re liable to take it for granted, forget the sufferings of others and squander our own privileges, – until we realise once again how precious freedom is and demonstrate in the streets in its defence.

Then there’s the Torah’s description of matzah as lechem oni, which intrigued the Talmudic rabbis. Oni sounds like oneh, ‘respond’, making matzah the bread of question-and-answer, the food of curiosity. ‘Investigate. Figure things out for yourself. Take responsibility for what you communicate,’ wrote Timothy Snyder in his 2017 masterpiece On Tyranny. Don’t rely on social media. Shun the dominion of fake news, the totalitarianism of lies. This too is essential in the defence of liberty.

But oni might equally derive from ani, poor. The Talmud explains: society must work as a team to support the poor just as matzah needs teamwork to make it kosher. Matzah, then, is the bread of society. Therefore I need to know who provided me with it, alongside Rakusens, and God ‘who brings forth bread from the earth.’ Remember where the wealth of nations comes from, wrote David Olusoga in Cotton Capital. Consumer culture tends to forget those whose lives and homelands are consumed in its making. Let matzah, then, be our bread of tzedakah, social and environmental justice.

But no name for matzah is as unlikely as that of the Jewish mystics: lachma de’asvatah, the bread of health. Many stomachs strongly disagree. Maybe, though, this is what the mystics meant: matzah’s made of flour and water, nothing else. There’s no yeast, oil, egg or sugar, not even any salt. Matzah’s simple; simplicity brings clarity and clarity leads to healing. Perhaps there’s an answer to why we’re here on earth which cuts through the complication and confusion: to serve not tyranny but freedom, not tyrants but the presence of God in all persons and all life.

Finally, a thought about process. Matzah can only be made out of the same five kinds of flour from which bread is baked: wheat, barley, oats, spelt or rye. What’s different about matzah isn’t the ‘what’ but the ‘how’. It’s as if the matzah says ‘We can do this a different way.’ That’s a message desperately needed across our world today.

I wish us all a happy and worthwhile Pesach and a year in which we truly value freedom.

24 Mar 2023

Sticky Post By admin Posted in Israel, Spirituality Permalink

Why I went to the demonstrations

Sticky Post By admin On March 24, 2023

Sometimes people do things they shouldn’t, but years or even generations later one’s grateful. My cassette machine, if people remember what that is, stands gathering dust on my study windowsill; I guess I’ve left it there just in case its very antiquity should somehow prove it useful. It was an instrument like that which someone smuggled unlawfully into the synagogue in Berlin’s Pestalozzistrasse one Rosh Hashanah. That’s how we have a series of recordings of my grandfather Rabbi Dr Georg Salzberger’s sermons, audible despite the static, in that strong, clear voice which, even in his nineties, he never lost.

So this morning, as I think of the fighting in Ukraine, where I was six weeks ago, or the battle for true democracy and the impartiality of justice in Israel, I hear my grandfather’s voice as he opens a sermon with the words of Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, the leader of the Jewish People through their struggles under Roman tyranny in the mid second century:

The world is established upon three things: truth, justice and peace. (Chapters of the Fathers 1:18)

Then I hear my grandfather ask: ‘Ist es denn so, wirklich so, meine Freunde? – Is that so, really so, my friends?’ He had, after all, lived through two world wars, persecution, flight, and the Cold War after that.

It’s because of these same principles that I will shortly set out to join the demonstrations in London, because they constitute the foundations of Torah and the soul and strength of Judaism throughout its long history of moral courage and survival.

I will go in sorrow, because the very fact that it should be necessary to demonstrate against the Prime Minister of Israel Binyamin Netanyahu’s visit to London troubles me. But I will go willingly, because I will be standing in public support of Israel, in solidarity with the hundreds of thousands on the streets of its cities every week. They want their, and our, beloved country, for whom they are ready to give their lives, to be precisely a place of truth, integrity, justice and peace, because these are the qualities upon which a free, honest and equal society depends.

Truth, and the unflinching readiness to tell it to power, is the very heart of the prophetic literature, which forms a full third of the Hebrew Bible. Time and again, kings and ministers turned on the prophets; many knew they might die for their cause and several were indeed murdered. Yet still they spoke out, because God’s words ‘burned like fire in the bones’; because they could not witness wrong and keep silent.

This fire was inflamed by every form of injustice, the wrongful accrual of wealth, the arrogance and dishonesty of high office, the heartless dispossession of the poor, the failure to honour the supreme value of chesed, loving kindness, which must always be the partner of justice.

This same cruelty and wrongdoing, the similar endeavour to corrupt and pervert justice, is manifest today before our eyes in many lands today, sadly now not excluding Israel.

The prophets had probably never heard of democracy; their chant was not de-mo-krat-iah but tsedek, justice. For them, theocracy was the ideal form of governance and God the supreme Judge.

But the underlying values were the same. They understood that God is the God of truth ‘who sees to the heart.’ They knew that justice had to be placed in the hands of those who ‘respected God, loved truth and hated corruption.’ (Exodus 18:21) They understood that a peaceful society depends not just on the rule of the majority, but on how it upholds the dignity, voices and rights of minorities because every human being is created in God’s image.

They knew, and we know, that it is on these principles that the good name of Israel and the reputation of Judaism rests.

20 Jan 2023

Sticky Post By admin Posted in Spirituality Permalink

A very precious prayer book

Sticky Post By admin On January 20, 2023

I’m sad about the fact that my little Siddur, my small prayerbook, is beginning to fall apart. When I say small, I really mean it: it’s about four inches high, three inches wide and one inch thick, with eight hundred and ninety extremely thin pages. More than once I’ve had to tape the covers back on, but the book is precious to me and I shall continue to do my best to repair it.

It’s not my first miniature Siddur. I had one decades back, but left it behind one day after a service and never found again. I don’t know if it was passed down to me by my grandfather or my father, but I lost something of the spirit of my ancestors that day and still blame myself for being so careless.

When I went into a pious bookshop in Jerusalem and saw an equally tiny daily Siddur I bought it on impulse, never thinking I’d love it as much as its precursor. I was wrong. Especially since lockdown it has been my faithful companion. It’s not, of course, my God, that would be blasphemous. But it’s one of my pathways, if not to God, at least to my own spirit, which belongs to God. Its pages are my refuge and in the shelter of their words I find my restoration.

This is mental health Shabbat, and I need that Siddur for my mind’s health. One’s own consciousness can be a lonely, wretched, cruel and persecuting place. Years ago when I was teaching at an infant school, I had a cold and was dithering between going in and returning to bed. A guest of my mother, like her a psychotherapist, took one look at me and said, ‘You’re wondering if you can face a day with yourself at home.’ It was such an astute observation that I can still see her saying those words, forty years later.

Like most of us, I’m not mentally or spiritually sufficient unto myself. I need my prayer life, with my community, at home by the family photographs, or out among the trees at night, or with the dog, or in that atmosphere of collective compassion I experience among the care staff of hospices and hospitals. Perhaps prayer makes it sound too formal; it’s spiritual companionship, a silent, deep and generous companionship.

Something I especially love about my siddur are the pious instructions and mystical extras, many of which to this day I’ve not yet read. For example, I found in the small print preceding the morning service, ‘It is my intention for the sake of God from now until this time tomorrow to direct all my actions, words and thoughts, towards doing what is good for my own, my people’s and the whole world’s sake.’ This was closely followed by the declaration, ‘I take upon myself the positive commandment ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’

After the main prayers, the Siddur reverts to the same miniscule font to record the personal supplications of Talmudic rabbis, such as Rabbi Elazar’s petition, ‘God, make our town a place of love, fellowship, peace and solidarity,’ or Rabbi Alexandri’s meditation, ‘May our hearts not become depressed or our eyes darkened.’

I realise as I write that it’s not just the prayerbook but this kind of Judaism which I love. Rooted in the depths of the soul, which is God’s place within us, it reaches out into community and the public square to bring God’s presence there too, an encompassing, just, caring and healing presence in which each person and all life is made welcome.

13 Jan 2023

Sticky Post By admin Posted in Community, Ethics, Interfaith, Spirituality Permalink

A passion for God and social justice: on the 50th Yahrzeit of AJ Heschel

Sticky Post By admin On January 13, 2023

It’s strangely fitting that we should be marking the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Abraham Joshua Heschel just as we begin the Book of Exodus. He died in the night of 23 December 1972, the Hebrew calendar equivalent of which, 18 Tevet, fell this last Wednesday.

Heschel, like his namesake Abraham, like Moses, understood the spiritual call to fight against slavery, degradation and human misery. To him, as to them, relationship with God meant, simultaneously and ineluctably, an impassioned relationship to social justice. That was the essence of the ‘mutual allegiance’ between God and humanity.

People said of Heschel, as if in surprise, that he had intense kavvanah, inwardness, yet a burning engagement against the wrongs of his time. That’s incorrect, wrote his student Rabbi Arthur Waskow: don’t say yet, say therefore. To Heschel the light of the spirit and the flame of conscience came from one and the same fire, just as the burning bush was at once a spiritual and a moral summons to Moses.

In lines I find intensely moving, Heschel wrote in an essay on his involvement with the peace movement that what compelled him to engage was ‘the discovery that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself:’

There is immense silent agony in the world, and the task of man is to be a voice for the plundered poor, to prevent the desecration of the soul and the violation of our dream of honesty.

The wrongs Heschel protested included the annihilation of European Jewry, the persecution of Soviet Jews, racial injustice in America and the Vietnam War. All too often he was left to feel a lonely voice, unheard by those religious and political leaders he sought to stir to action. In the end, wrote another of his disciples, Byron Sherwin, ‘His conscience remained resolute, his integrity remained intact, but his heart could not survive the onslaught.’

Heschel’s activism was founded on a knowledge of Judaism as inward and integrated as the blood in his arteries. His spirituality was rooted in the intense Hasidic world of piety and learning in which, from well before his teens, he was studying Talmud and rabbinic writings, sometimes eighteen or twenty hours a day. His ‘spiritually-rooted politics’ (Arthur Waskow) were shaped by Hasidic piety and commitment to community, and by the fervent passion for justice of the prophets of Israel, to which he devoted many years of study.

It was this knowledge and passion which made him, a not very successful and little appreciated lecturer, a national moral figure in America recognised first by Christian and subsequently by Jewish leaders:

Rabbi Heschel was a person with whom we could pray. His prayer moved him to action, action for a better world…His commitment to social justice was our commitment to social justice. (Gary Michael Banks: Rabbi Heschel Through Christian Eyes)

Banks is correct about Heschel’s radical, yet deeply traditional, understanding of prayer:

Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement.’ (On Prayer)

This was what famously led Heschel to say on returning from marching alongside Reverend Martin Luther King in Selma, Alabama, ‘I felt as if my legs were praying.’

Abraham Joshua Heschel is a religious leader of inestimable importance for our time, whether we live in the UK, Israel, or elsewhere. We urgently need a spirituality which summons us to fight for justice and human dignity for everyone, and a passion for justice and human dignity inspired and emboldened by our spirituality.

16 Dec 2022

Sticky Post By admin Posted in Community, Spirituality, The Jewish Year, Uncategorized Permalink

About hope and courage: why Chanukkah is truly a big festival

Sticky Post By admin On December 16, 2022

‘It’s the biggest Jewish festival,’ said the twins I was teaching for their Bar Mitzvah. ‘A big festival,’ said our Ukrainian guests, who’d evidently been reading up about Chanukkah just as we had about how Christmas is celebrated in Ukraine.

The truth is that, no, Chanukkah is fairly minor in the scale of Jewish festivals. But it felt mean to say this, so I replied that it had ‘become big.’ ‘Why?’ the boys, who recognise a half-hearted answer when they hear one, promptly asked. ‘Because of competing with Christmas, and because the Maccabees were important role models,’ I responded.

But there’s a better reason why Chanukkah is, and should be, big today: Chanukkah is about hope and courage and we need large doses of both. Our hearts go out to so many people in so many directions in these difficult times that we need reinforcements in our core.

Chanukkah begins on Sunday night with just one light, except for the servant-candle shammes. These days, everybody follows the School of Hillel whose principle is that ‘in matters of holiness we go up, not down,’ adding one further candle every night, culminating with eight. Eight is the Jewish number of the natural cycle of seven, plus one: plus wonder, faith and hope.

As everyone knows, we light the candles in honour of the pure olive oil the Maccabees found in the ruined precincts of the recaptured temple, which, sufficient for just one day, burnt on the menorah for eight.

But there’s a kashe, a logical problem. Why do we bless God for a miracle on the first night? One day’s oil ought to last for one day! A practical answer could be that the Maccabees saw immediately that something unusual was happening because the oil was burning very, very slowly. But they surely wouldn’t have noticed this phenomenon until at least part way through the day.

Rebbe Yehudah Aryeh-Leib of Ger (1847 – 1905) offers a better explanation: The miracle began because on that first night because the Maccabees lit the menorah with a whole heart despite having so little oil. In other words, miracles don’t begin in heaven, but here on earth, with what we do.

The Maccabees could have said: What when the oil runs out? Wouldn’t it be wiser to wait for more supplies? But they found the courage, took the risk and the flame they lit burnt not for one, nor even for eight days, but for generations, illumining innumerable dark and difficult years in countless lands and lives. Its light burns yet.

I’ve met many people who do like those Maccabees. They say: I don’t know where this’ll lead, but I’m starting a food bank. I’ll create a warm space. I’ll start Cook for Good, to bring whole communities together.

Perhaps almost everyone who has an idea is like that first contingent, who, looking round the war-ravaged temple precincts, asked themselves: What can we do? Where can we find some light?

They search, not in the rubble but in their hearts, and find their symbolic jar of oil, the fuel for a plan: Maybe this could work. Maybe this will bring some hope. Then they ask themselves: But will it take on? What about resources? Will it all go nowhere? Will the flame go out? But they find the courage; they make something happen.

Then, as so often when something good is initiated, others join in, bringing their own energy and inspiration. Further and further circles are drawn to the light. People ask how to help, what to contribute. They too feed the flame until its light lasts longer and spreads far wider than those who first lit it thought possible.

That’s what hope and courage can achieve.

Is the story of the Maccabees and the oil historically true? Probably not. But does it express and eternal truth? Yes definitely! That’s why Chanukkah is, and should be, truly a big festival.

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Urim Sameach, Happy Chanukkah

09 Dec 2022

Sticky Post By admin Posted in Environment, Spirituality Permalink

COP 15 and the jasmine in the porch

Sticky Post By admin On December 9, 2022

A tendril of jasmine has made its way through the tiny gap between the windowpanes and its small white blooms have brought their perfume into the porch where our guinea pigs live. Tiny, star-shaped, the flowers glow at night like nature’s own Chanukkah candles.

I write from love of this world of plants and animals. ‘You shall love your God with all your heart,’ teaches the Torah in Judaism’s best-known meditation. Part of that love is to love what God has created. I’m far from being a creationist; I embrace the science of evolution. But I’m with the mystics when they feel the divine presence both in people and nature, something holy that should not be hurt or harmed.

Several times during lockdown an email arrived in my inbox: ‘Please put your guinea pigs out on the lawn and leave your side gate open. My children have asked to see them; they need this for their mental health.’

For my own mental – and physical and spiritual – health, I had to get out early in the morning or late at night and join the trees in prayer. I’d go where they surrounded me with their meditations, their patient sense of time. Among them, I sensed the steady decontamination of my thoughts, the restoration of the mind’s clarity, the renewal of that bond with the sacred beauty which exists within this world. In such moments we touch a deeper consciousness with the power to guide us even through our complex dealings in this confusing world.

I’m reading Guy Shrubsole’s wonderful book The Lost Rainforests of Britain (If you need a seasonal present, I give it five stars). Someone directs him to the notebooks left by Oliver Rackman, ecologist and ‘wise man’ of the forests:

Written in pencil and faded ink, their well-thumbed pages read like prayer books to the woods in which [he] worshipped.

I hadn’t actually known that Britain had rainforests, but it turns out I’ve walked in them, lush, full of oaks, birches, rowans, ferns, lichens and other epiphytes. (Nearby was a conifer plantation, the ground beneath the serried trees almost lifeless, dark.)

I’m writing about these matters because I love those woods, and because I don’t want my or anyone else’s children or grandchildren to have ‘loved and lost.’

We’re several days into COP 15, the UN’s biodiversity summit. I hesitate to quote Secretary General Antonio Guterres’s opening words: ‘We are treating nature like a toilet. This conference is our chance to stop this orgy of destruction. To move from discord to harmony.’

At the close of his life Moses tells the people: Don’t say this teaching is far away. It’s not in heaven or over the seas: it’s ‘in your mouth and heart, for you to do it.’

The same applies to caring for nature, and each other. There’s so much near to home we can do. ‘I work with everyone, farmers, landowners, crofters,’ a forester told me as I tried to keep the midges out of my eyes and look out across the hillsides they were restoring. ‘This’ll be two hundred thousand trees, with ponds and pathways,’ Nick told us, as our community team took up their spades and started planting less than ten miles from home. (See JTree’s website for planting opportunities this winter).

People probably think I’m crazy because I sometimes say hello to the jays and blackbirds when I walk to the synagogue. But they’re part of my prayer life.

It’s not a question of either nature or people. To my mind, it’s always ‘both and.’ If you love the world, you care about everything.