admin | HEART AND MIND

03 Mar 2023

Sticky Post By admin Posted in Refugees Permalink

My mother’s 100th birthday

Sticky Post By admin On March 3, 2023

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.

24 Feb 2023

Sticky Post By admin Posted in Ethics, Refugees Permalink

Prayer for Ukraine, one year on

Sticky Post By admin On February 24, 2023

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.

17 Feb 2023

Sticky Post By admin Posted in Ethics, Israel Permalink

Israel, Judaism and Justice

Sticky Post By admin On February 17, 2023

In many parts of the world justice is in danger.

One sometimes hears Judaism referred to as ‘a religion of justice’ in derogatory tones, as if justice were inferior to love and could be summed up in the supposedly vindictive formula ‘an eye for an eye.’ But it’s a false comparison. Justice is the basis for love even in the closest of personal relationships. It is the foundation of equality and mutual respect across societies and between nations. Without justice, love and companionship cannot thrive. Justice is something to be proud of and defend, as the Torah teaches, ‘Justice, justice shall you pursue.’ (Deuteronomy 16:20)

But in many parts of the world, including, sadly, Israel under its current government, the integrity of the judicial process is in peril.

This week’s Torah portion is Mishpatim, which means ‘Laws.’ It opens with the words ‘And these are the laws…’ (Exodus 21:1) Being careful readers, the rabbis paid close attention to that ‘and’. They understood it as connecting all the Torah’s detailed rules with the revelation at Sinai described in the previous chapter. Just as the Ten Commandments were given by God, so the laws needed to govern a just and compassionate society are equally sacred.

A striking Midrash goes further. God is supremely powerful, yet God loves justice, as we affirm in every weekday prayer when we bless ‘God who loves righteousness and justice.’ Only tyrants seek to bypass the judicial system. Justice, administered with impartiality and humility, is how God’s will is made manifest in the world. (Yalkut Shimoni to Mishpatim)

The Torah insists that judges must be God-fearing, honest and incorruptible. They must ‘hate bribes’ which presumably includes not only financial but also political inducements. (Exodus 18:21)

An ancient rabbinic principle prefigures the separation of powers between government and governance: ‘There are three crowns: the crown of sovereignty, the crown of priesthood and the crown of Torah.’ (Sayings of the Fathers 2:10) No two crowns were ever to be worn by the same person. The role of Torah scholars, the rabbis and judiciary, was to ensure that society was ruled according to the principles of justice and compassion. Their responsibility was, and remains, to tell truth to power and hold it frankly and bravely to account.

These are the very issues about which hundreds of thousands are demonstrating across Israel today. One can criticise some of its decisions, but Israel has rightly been proud of the independence, integrity and courage of its supreme court. That independence is now under threat of politicisation and marginalisation by a government which wants to control its composition and undermine its authority. It’s a government which has little desire for true equality among all Israel’s citizens, which has racist minsters in its ranks, and which fails to recognise that democracy means not just the rule of the majority but respect for minorities and their views. In the frank words of Israel’s Attorney General:

Giving unlimited powers to the government is a sure recipe for infringing both human rights and proper governance. The principle of the separation of powers requires an autonomous, nonpartisan and independent judicial system… The results of [suggested changes to the Judicial Selection Committee] would damage the independence, the professionalism and the non-partisan autonomy of the Judiciary. (Issued 2^nd February)

These proposed measures, which threaten Israel’s democratic foundations, have met with massive resistance across Israel and the Jewish World. Ron Kronish, who has worked long and tirelessly for understanding between the different faiths in Israel, reported:

I attended the massive demonstration against the current insane government in Jerusalem on Monday, February 13^th, along with over 100,000 Israeli citizens from all over the country. It was an amazing experience…. The sane, rational, caring majority of Israeli citizens have woken up from their apathy! …Many groups in Israeli society are involved: high-tech workers, lawyers and jurists, professors and their students, teachers and their students, retired people, reservists from the army and many more… It was inspiring. A moment of hope. (The Times of Israel)

I’m writing about these matters, not eagerly, but because this is not a time to keep silent. Millions of Israelis, and others, Jews and non-Jews, have devoted their lives, and tens of thousands of Israelis have given those lives, for a country which has striven, and continues despite its difficulties to strive, to be ‘based on the precepts of liberty, justice and peace as taught by the Hebrew prophets.’ (Israel’s Declaration of Independence) These principles lie at the heart not just of Israel but of the Jewish religion through the ages.

10 Feb 2023

Sticky Post By admin Posted in Community, Ethics, Refugees Permalink

Report from a visit to Kyiv

Sticky Post By admin On February 10, 2023

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.’

03 Feb 2023

Sticky Post By admin Posted in Uncategorized Permalink

Between horror and wonder, silence and song

Sticky Post By admin On February 3, 2023

I love this pre-dawn, pre-rush quiet. I think it’s what Isabel Allende called her ‘witching hour.’ Spirits talk to us from worlds beyond, or maybe they’re really worlds within, our subconscious and soul. Perhaps they always speak, but in this calm it’s easier to hear. Then the roads and emails wake up, and the spirits retreat to hiding places down inside the heart.

This morning I wake with conflicting voices. Until midnight Nicky and I watched America and the Holocaust. It’s outstanding, horrifying, honest, brutal, clear. Superimposed on the pleading letters ‘Let my children in,’ I saw my own family’s handwriting: Trude, deported to Ostrow-Lubelski, setting down desperately ‘Tell them we’re still alive.’ Cruelties unthinkable; wrongs unhealable! I feel cold to the depths of my soul.

Yet something inside me still sings and won’t stop, sings from a very different world. For yesterday, too, I interviewed nature-lover, author and passionate campaigner George Monbiot. ‘I’ve felt more alive ever since,’ he wrote of his experiences in the Amazon. ‘What trees do you like most?’ I asked him. ‘Dead ones,’ he replied, enjoying my surprise. ‘Because they’re not really dead but sustain countless creatures, beetles, birds, small mammals, the seeds of innumerable new lives.’

Here we are, two thirds of the way across the calendar from Holocaust Memorial Day to Tu Bishevat, the New Year of the Trees, which begins this Sunday night. Half my heart is numb; half of it sings.

I sing because I love this world, people, animals, trees, the wren that sat on my windowsill, tiniest of birds, before recommencing its amazingly loud round of songs; the mini-flock of long-tailed tits that chattered around the feeder like congregants at Kiddush; the snowdrops, though I’m no expert on the two hundred varieties as Nicky is; the winter jasmine, wintersweet, mahonia, which reserve their fragrances and flowers for February. How wondrous this world is!

‘What do you need to replenish your spirit?’ I asked a person in mourning earlier this week. ‘I walk for an hour in the woods every day. The trees restore my soul.’

‘The fundamental reason all beings are created,’ wrote Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira

‘is so that they should sing, for in this way they reveal the greatness of God. Every single created being sings… Each and every being reveals a spark of the glory of the God of blessings.’

With a courage, devotion and discipline which are utterly beyond my capacity to imagine, he did not allow even the Nazis and the Warsaw Ghetto to silence his spirit’s song.

The songs of which he wrote are not just melodies of prayer, in heart language; they are no less songs of action, of chesed, deeds of kindness, justice, humanity and defiance. We must not fail to turn our love of the world into action, George Monbiot said to me. We need to sing and help the world sing, in word and deed.

Tomorrow is Shabbat Shirah, the Sabbath of Song. ‘So that my soul shall sing of you and not be silent,’ wrote the Psalmist. Only a person who understands the power of silence could write such words, its deep gravitational draw: How can I speak at all, when cruelty and horror destroy our world? Only a person who loves life could have composed them: How can I be silent when such beauty, tenderness and hope call out to my spirit to sing? ‘Oh God, I give thanks to you!’ (Psalm 30:13)

27 Jan 2023

Sticky Post By admin Posted in Community, Holocaust Permalink

For Holocaust Memorial Day: being ‘ordinary people’

Sticky Post By admin On January 27, 2023

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day, established to correspond with the date when the first units of the Red Army reached Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1945. The horrors are unspeakable; many, including the second generation, feel more shocked, bewildered and bereft year by year. We live as Jews in solidarity with our own people and with victims everywhere.

This year’s theme is ‘Ordinary People.’ As the home page of the HMD website says:

Ordinary people turn a blind eye, believe propaganda, join murderous regimes. And those who are persecuted, oppressed and murdered in genocide aren’t persecuted because of crimes they’ve committed – they are persecuted simply because they are ordinary people who belong to a particular group (eg, Roma, Jewish community, Tutsi).

I don’t think the Bible has such concept as ‘ordinary people’. A ben adam, a human being, is, without exception, made in God’s image. The Mishnah (c. 200CE) elaborates: every person is yechidi, createdunique. I’ve stood by the broken concrete at Birkenau and wondered: who did each of these people love, for whom did they long, as they were forced toward those chambers?

Yet the words ‘ordinary people’ ring true. We are all other people’s ‘ordinary people’. In an excellent talk, Dr John Launer noted how so many ‘ordinary’ individuals allowed the Nazis to come to power. Then, speaking of bystanders in general, he said with brave frankness that the older he gets the less he feels like the judge, and the more he feels among the judged.

The Torah forbids us to be bystanders: ‘Don’t stand idly by your fellow human’s blood.’ (Vayikra 19:16) ‘If you know that someone intends to threaten another person’s life, you have to speak out,’ explained Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin (1816 – 1893), head of the Volozhyn Yeshivah destroyed half a century later by the Nazis.

This is incomparably easier said than done. It leaves the discomforting question: whose bystander, whose ‘ordinary person’, am I?

Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, the Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto, was famed as a Torah educator. Who am I? he asked, before answering: I am those aspects of my potential self which my experiences have drawn out of me. That’s why it’s essential to live in environments which bring out the best and deepest within us.

He reminds me of when I was a guest of the church in Germany the 1990s. ‘Had the visit left me angry?’ I was asked on my return. In truth, something quite different had gripped me: relief that I lived in a country whose laws prevented me from doing the worst of which I might prove capable. How would I have behaved had I been an ‘ordinary’ Aryan under Nazi rule? How could I be sure? The consciences of so many people were so deeply infiltrated by the vicious yet alluring discourse around them that they failed to perceive they were doing evil.

But today? I’m less confident our society and world is helping prevent the worst in us.

I stress one hundredfold that there is no comparison with Nazi or other such evil regimes. But I fear the atrophy of conscience. Are we supposed to accept homelessness in our streets, the drowning of refugees in the Channel, the indefinite detention of asylum seekers, or mass food insecurity? What’s being done in the name of my own good country? What racism do some utter, profaning the name and true values of my beloved Judaism?

The Torah speaks not of ‘ordinary’ but of ‘holy people’, anshei kodesh. They aren’t priests or anyone special, but you and me. Anshei, from anoosh, indicates open-heartedness, empathy, humility. Holiness means being truly deeply human.

We can’t help sometimes being bystanders. There’s simply too much wrong. But we must never become inured to it, let alone make it worse. We must seek the courage to be, at least sometimes, not just ‘ordinary’ but ordinary holy people.

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.

06 Jan 2023

Sticky Post By admin Posted in Ethics, Israel Permalink

Israel’s new government and the Judaism we must struggle for

Sticky Post By admin On January 6, 2023

I’m never sure if it’s the Jewish thing to say ‘Happy New Year’ on January the first, or whether this greeting should be reserved strictly for Rosh Hashanah. But there’s certainly nothing wrong with the words and I’ve spoken them dozens of times already this 2023.

Only, I’ve been struggling with what ‘happy’ means in the context of today’s world. The definition I’ve come up with for myself is that this should be a year of striving to live faithfully by my deepest values as a Jew, a human being, and as privileged, albeit briefly, to belong to this breathing, vital, interconnected world of nature.

The challenges are overwhelming. In this time of shortages, one thing we aren’t short of is causes for which to fight. Whether it’s supporting our beleaguered health services, creating innovative social projects to alleviate hunger and loneliness, finding homes and work for refugees and displaced persons, or protecting nature in that slow, patient work of planting hedgerows and monitoring the numbers of newts and frogs, I’m constantly moved by the good so many people do. Across the world there are countless individuals and groups whose hearts and conscience are astutely awake, and who find the courage, creativity and commitment to act accordingly. They are my goad, my hope, and my unfailing source of inspiration.

But this week colleague after colleague and article after article has focussed on Israel’s new government. The Rabbinical Assembly, to which I and most Masorti rabbis across Europe belong, issued a powerful statement in response to Justice Minister Yariv Levin proposed changes to limit severely the powers of Israel’s High Court and make the judiciary a political appointment:

It is excruciating to see this government directly undermine the core values of democracy and religious freedom that we value so deeply…The integrity of the State of Israel and the well-being of the entire Jewish people hang in the balance.

Thinking also of the racism, homophobia, xenophobia and potential violence incited my key ministers in the government, my friend and teacher Rabbi Arthur Green, a true lover of Israel, sent an open letter. After acknowledging that the causes lie deep and include the long Jewish experience of being hated and persecuted, he wrote of certain racist members of the Knesset:

The damage these people threaten is not only to the State of Israel and its democratic institutions, but to Judaism itself and its place as one of the world’s great spiritual traditions. We are engaged today in a great struggle for the soul of Judaism. Those who read it in an exclusivist and xenophobic way have taken center stage… But this is about a legacy that we all share, one in which we take great pride. Do we really want to give it away to the racists among us?

This is no time, he stresses, for retreat.

What, then, is the Judaism for which I believe we should struggle? Any proper answer is inevitably complex, and that’s part of the point: it is a Judaism whose core is the Torah, the Prophets of Israel and the Hebrew Bible; whose teachings have been pondered, prayed, and argued over word by word through the extraordinary works of the Mishnah, Talmud, Midrash, Responsa and the entire two-and-a-part millennia of rabbinic culture; whose values have been forged in the crucibles of exile, persecution, marginalisation and martyrdom, but also challenged and enriched by other faiths, and by the arts, science, and political cultures of enlightened humanism and universalism. It is Judaism which has, throughout and despite these trials of history, preserved and deepened the search for God and for the sacred in every human being and every living thing. It is a Judaism which fights for justice against tyranny, compassion against cruelty, and human dignity against all forms of bigotry and contempt. It is a Judaism which, while contributing to and learning from the rest of the world, has maintained its spiritual, legal-halakhic, ethical and communal disciplines, cultures and integrity.

The happiness in ‘happy new year’ to which I aspire lies in trying to live by and struggle for these values.

23 Dec 2022

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

Where God’s light shines

Sticky Post By admin On December 23, 2022

This Chanukkah I feel I’ve witnessed two moving examples of God’s presence in the world, and two more, by inference, which I’d rather not have seen.

Why ‘God’s presence in the world’? Because of a question the Talmud asks about the Menorah: ‘Does God really need its light?’ Isn’t it rather the other way round, that we need God’s light, not God ours?

The Talmud answers that the Menorah isn’t there to provide God with a torch, but to symbolise how God’s light illumines the world. The lamps of the Menorah ‘are testament that God’s presence dwells in Israel’ and throughout creation.

The first example of God’s light was very public, when the Mayor of London, Sadiq Kahn, celebrated Chanukkah in Trafalgar Square. London is the greatest city in the world, he declared, as he always loves to say. That’s because it’s a place where a Muslim mayor can light the Chanukkah candles with a rabbi next to a huge Christmas tree in its most famous square.

How often in human history, I wonder, has such togetherness been possible? To me, it exemplifies what the Torah means when it teaches that every person, irrespective of religion, ethnicity, gender, or any of the many features which so often divide us, is created equal in God’s image.

The second example was very private. I was welcomed into a residential care home to say the Chanukkah blessings. But it was a different light from that of the candles which caught my attention. I watched the staff; I witnessed their kindness, sensitivity and patience. It’s not easy to provide constant, intimate care to vulnerable people who’ve often lost so much of their stature and independence in the closing phases of their lives. The staff’s conduct made me think of the Kabbalistic quality of gevurah shebachesed, strength within loving kindness, that challenging balance of resilient compassion which requires so much attentiveness, gentleness and restraint. If God’s presence is anywhere in this world, it’s with people like these carers.

Sadly, there are two further examples I’d rather not have witnessed. Were they of God’s presence, or God’s absence? I’m not sure.

The first was the long queue at a nearby food bank. Yes, the bank shows that there exists deep compassion within our society, a determined protest against want, and against the harshness and injustice which causes it, and which leaves so many people unable to provide food and warmth for their families. But it would be incomparably better if such testament were not so desperately needed by so many.

The second was the news that girls have been denied access to serious education in Afghanistan. I know people this will affect, through the knowledge that the suffering their families and friends are enduring is now even greater. To me, this gross cruelty testifies precisely through what it negates: it highlights the truth that God’s presence shines equally in the minds and hearts of men and women, and that it’s deeply wrong, a devastating desecration, to attempt to limit that light.

So the Talmud’s answer makes every sense to me: Yes, God’s light shines across the world.

But how often it is obscured!

That leads me to challenge the rhetorical nature of the Talmud’s original question about God needing the Menorah’s light. The anticipated answers is, of course, ‘No!’.

But down here, in this complex world where the sacred is so often obfuscated by conflict, cruelty and self-interest, God does need us. It’s not our light which God needs, and that deep flame which illumines the heart and mind and shines through all creation doesn’t belongs to us anyway.

What God needs from us is to notice the light, in each other, every person and all life. God needs us to protect and nurture it wherever we perceive it. God needs the light of the Menorah to shine not just in our windows but in our hearts.

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Chanukkah

HEART AND MIND

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