In our house, the BBC’s general knowledge quiz University Challenge is a family must-do. We’ve an unwritten rule that if not everyone can make it when it’s actually shown, we wait until we can watch it together on i-Player. I wouldn’t deny that there’s a bit of a competitive edge.

This week, one of the questions was: ‘What words complete this line from a 20^th century poem: O what made fatuous sunbeams toil…

It’s from Wilfred Owen’s ‘Futility’ and the answer is

To break earth’s sleep at all.

I quoted this bleak World War One poem on Rosh Hashanah many years ago, the day Judaism celebrates the birthday of the world, because it puts the issue bluntly: since humanity is so destructive and life so cruel, is there any point in it at all?

The question can scarcely be considered new. The Talmud wryly records that for three-and-a-half years the rabbis debated whether or not it was better that humans were created. I’ll return to their conclusion later.

Although I have bleak days and know frightening hours of sinking down and down into inner spaces of no hope, I’m lucky to have been endowed with a tenacious, re-assertive love of life. But yesterday I listened to a transatlantic colleague relating some of the feelings of despair which she’s received: climate crisis, racism, Afghanistan, refugees, global terror, food insecurity, pandemic, floods, fires. People are in bleak places, she said; it’s a litany of fear and anguish and we’re not entitled to put our hands over our ears.

I believe the Jewish – and the universally human – response, the reaction which life itself impels, is to live all the more deeply and determinedly for the good. We shall fight back. But not, hopefully, with the materiel of war. Rather we respond with an armamentarium more vulnerable, yet, over the long course of time, more enduring than the accoutrements of mere power: we answer back against life’s cruelties with passion for justice and compassion for suffering; with insight, with courage and with the wisdom of endurance taught by faith and principle; with excitement about the world, with a heart open to beauty, with a spirit which, though often close to exhaustion, is replenished once again by wonder; with care for even the littlest things of life and, when we can, with gratitude and appreciation.

This is all summed up for me, in ways I can’t fully explain, through the memory of a brief scene in a hut in the Hula Valley years ago. A tall, strong man took into his hands with consummate skill a tiny bird weighing scarcely an ounce and carefully put a ring round its leg ‘So that we can understand it better and protect the environment it needs.’ He then gave it to my daughter to release.

To ‘What can we do?’ and ‘What difference can we make?’ the answer can only be: ‘Everything, every kindness, matters.’ This is the strength bestowed on us with which to combat the errors, destructiveness, folly and anger of our own species, and the random, unjust cruelties of life itself.

So, to what conclusion did the rabbis arrive after all their lengthy discussions?

Since humans have already been created, let them search their deeds.

In other words, ‘Should God have made us in the first place?’ is not the right question. Since we’re already here, what matters is what we do with our lives.

Therefore on Rosh Hashanah, the birthday of creation, the issue is: How can I cherish life? What can I contribute? In the classic rabbinic phrase, ‘How can I be a partner with God in protecting and honouring creation?’

Judaism is a ‘love life’ religion; it says a big ‘yes’ to life.

In my head, these words sing in German: ‘Ja zum Leben.’ This is because, during a time when I found every day a struggle and almost everything frightening, my aunt Etti, three times removed but close as close, would buy me an Israeli yoghurt called Leben and instruct me before I ate it to say the name in German: Leben, life, yes to life.

Moon-watchers out with their dogs, or simply enjoying the cool after over-hot days, will have noted how beautifully it has shone these last evenings and know that tonight is the full moon. It heralds Tu Be’Av, the festival of the fifteenth of the month of Menachem Av, Av the Consoler. It’s the ancient Jewish forerunner of Valentine’s Day:

There were no days so good in Israel as the 15^th of Av and Yom Kippur, when the girls went out to dance in the vineyards in borrowed white dresses (so as not to put to shame those who didn’t have). Whoever wasn’t married would go there. ‘Look,’ the girls would say… (Talmud, Ta’anit 30b-31a)

What follows is not egalitarian, definitely sexist, and certainly not PC. But it’s decisively an affirmation of life, future and fun. Significantly, the date is just six days after Tishah Be’Av, the bleak fast commemorating exile and destruction. The message is ‘Never give up’. More than that, it’s ‘Life is important, life can be good.’

The rabbis want to know why the 15^th Av is so special. They come up with some remarkably odd reasons: it’s the date by when the last of the generation doomed to wander in the desert without reaching the Promised Land had died. Alternatively, it’s when the Romans allowed the dead of Betar, the last Jewish stronghold of the Bar Kochba revolt, to be buried.

Admittedly, they also offer somewhat less unromantic explanations. But what are they trying to say? I believe it is this: whatever tribulations we have been through, we have to carry on with life. We mustn’t forget the past, but we must also embrace the future. Maybe that’s why, almost two millennia later, the birth rate among Jewish survivors in the Displaced Persons camps in Germany was extraordinarily high.

It strikes me how deeply Tu be’Av speaks to our reality today. Covid is not over in the UK, certainly not in other parts of the world. But life is calling us to step forward, carefully, with due concern for others and ourselves. Life beckons, with all its joys and challenges. Life is precious, all the more so because we’ve learnt to take its opportunities less for granted.

Etti’s youngest brother Gabi, may he live to the legendary age of 120, used to remind me that ‘life is made up of the little things.’ How can we appreciate everyday blessings? How can we share small acts of kindness and generosity, which maybe aren’t so small after all?

I’ve been bottling red- and blackcurrants these last days. By my side have been my father, much missed, who taught me the skill, and his aunt Sophie who wrote to her mother in the summer of 1938 that she’d been preserving blueberries, – and blackcurrants too. She perished in Auschwitz. Nevertheless she was in my kitchen, because love from the past feeds the present and travels on into the future.

I listened last night to a webinar by Rewilding Scotland. No, said one of the presenters, I don’t just want “sustainable”. I’m working for a re-forested, re-meadowed, re-invigorated, beautiful land for my children.

I hope we can embrace the future like that.

Tu Be’Av marks the turn-around, from destruction to creation.

We are all deeply shocked by the news from Israel this morning. Over forty people have been crushed to death through crowd pressure during Lag Be’Omer celebrations in Miron in the Galilee. We do not yet know either the full extent or the causes of this appalling and heart-rending disaster. But a day which should mark healing and joy has become a tragedy.

Our hearts go out to the families of the bereaved and injured, to everyone traumatised, to all the responders and medics who did and are doing their utmost to help.

The Jewish response, the human response, and probably the only thing we can do from afar, is to give tzedakah. This is probably the only channel we currently have to express our sorrow and solidarity. It is not yet clear if there is a specific appeal for the victims. So please consider supporting any medical charity in Israel and / or contributing to any cause of healing.

We have also been asked by members of our community currently living in India to contribute to the British Asian Trust Emergency Appeal. It is providing desperately needed oxygen and life-saving equipment. You can donate here.

All we can do is be on the side of chaim vechesed, life and compassion.

Today is the morning of Lag Be’Omer, the day of healing which comes two thirds of the way between Pesach and Shavuot, Passover and Pentecost. It’s beautiful in the gardens today; the pear trees and apple trees are in blossom and the scented lilac, held back by April frosts, will soon be open.

The date has a particular resonance this year. According to tradition, it marked the end of a plague which killed thousands of the disciples of Rabbi Akiva in the second century. Though the pandemic afflicting us is not over, we hope this day may come to mark an irrevocable turning point back to life, community and hope. Wherever in the world Covid continues to spread, bringing sickness and grief, we must all do our utmost to help.

Strangely, the date has its own ancient lockdown story too. Its hero is Rabbi Shimeon bar Yohai, who died on Lag Be’Omer and who whose life is celebrated annually with bonfires and songs. He was forced to hide in a cave for twelve years together with his son Elazar, to escape the Roman authorities who had condemned him to death for criticising their works. It’s a long time to be shielding, in secret, from the entire world.

But it’s what transpires when he emerges from lockdown which is so strangely moving. He and his son are unable to come to terms with the ordinariness of the world. They see people ploughing and sowing. Little could be more innocent or necessary and yet the sight angers them:

‘They forsake the life of the world to come (the study of Torah), and busy themselves with the things of this world!’ (they exclaimed.) Wherever they looked, they destroyed. (Talmud, Shabbat 33b)

A voice comes down from heaven, or perhaps it expresses the misgivings in their own conscience, and says: ‘Have you come out to destroy my world? Go back to your cave!’

The world is beautiful. It is God’s world, sacred and wonderful. Nothing in nature is too simple to be cherished. Life, ordinary, everyday life, is a privilege. Nothing should be taken for granted.

Perhaps it’s the shock of the transition which was too much for Rabbi Shimeon and his son. They return to their cave to absorb these lockdown lessons, which we too have been taking to heart for these last fifteen months. After a year, the same voice which ordered them to go back calls them to come out of their cave. They see an old man running to honour the Sabbath with bunches of myrtle; the sight restores their spirits. His son remains troubled, but wherever Rabbi Shimeon now looks, he heals.

I am moved by what might today be termed this post traumatic stress growth. Lockdown leaves many wounds. In the legend Rabbi Shimeon is met by his father-in-law Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair, who takes him to the bathhouse to treat his emaciated body. When he sees the cracks and chaps in his son-in-law’s skin from hiding for so long in a dry cave, he weeps and his falling tears sting the very sores he is trying to heal. It’s a tender scene of sorrow, hope and learning shared.

But what is decisive is that voice which Rabbi Shimeon hears when he first emerges back into life. It’s ‘my world,’ God’s world: life is to be loved and honoured; the ordinary is wondrous too; people’s foibles are to be tolerated and their devotion respected and admired….

Who would have thought that we would dip twice, a second year running, into a lockdown Seder? So what I want to say to everybody in our community and beyond, whether we are alone, or with closest family only; whether we have kept our health during the last year, or whether there has been illness; or whether, sadly, there is one more empty chair at the Seder: Chazak ve’ematz, may God give us strength and courage.

Seder is a night of defiance. Tyranny cannot ultimately destroy the human spirit. Slavery cannot conquer the quest for freedom. Injustice cannot crush the longing for justice. Cruelty cannot eradicate the urge to compassion. Misery cannot silence the impulse to sing. This is not to ignore the horrors perpetrated by wicked leaders and evil regimes throughout history, or to underestimate the impact of callousness and indifference. But the history of our own people, and of other faiths and nations, teaches that spirit is, in the long run and despite everything, mightier than power: ‘Not by might and not by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord.’

Seder is a night of hope. The Talmud insists that its story must be told mei’avdut lecheirut, from slavery to freedom. We know from the Torah that the way is long. In fact, the Torah closes with Moses looking down from the mountaintop onto the land into which he will not cross. This symbolises the unfinished journey of humankind. Slavery persists, all over the world; children are still sold and women trafficked. But we don’t give up working for the liberty of our own, and of all, people. Every single action which demands and protects, every kind word which restores and upholds, human dignity is a step on that road to redemption.

Seder is a night of solidarity. This may not take the ache out of being unable to sit together with our loved ones. But we are not alone. The Jewish People is with us, who, through over a hundred and twenty generations, have celebrated this night with the same longing and in virtually the same words. Our ancestors are with us; we feel our mothers’ and fathers’ presence in the commentaries and songs, the recipes and memories. Everyone across the world who longs for freedom and redemption is with us in spirit, just as we must be with them.

Seder is a night of faith. This faith is our trust in God’s guidance, in whichever way we understand it. This faith is also God’s trust in us, that we will honour and be true to the sacred spirit with which we, all humanity and all life, have been endowed.

Something Reflective – Seder as Resilience

I gave a talk last week on Haggadah illustrations during World War ll. We looked at editions from the concentration camp in Gurs (1941), from the Jewish Brigade fighting in the British Army in North Africa (1942), from the Jewish community of Morocco (1943, defiantly called ‘Haggadat Hitler’), from Kibbutz Naan (1942) and from the Displaced Person’s camp near Munich (1948). ‘What resilience!’ someone observed, and I saw the whole group nod in agreement.

Jewish history is filled with examples of resilience. One doesn’t have to think far back: my great-grandmother spent the years of Nazi occupation doing her utmost to keep in touch with her dispersed family; it’s all she cared about. Her last recorded words were, ‘Nothing will destroy my faith.’ Innumerable people showed the same spirit. That’s how Judaism, and how the best human values, have survived all the persecutions and degradations of history.

Halfway through the Haggadah we raise up our cup of wine and say ‘Vehi She’amdah – That which stood firm for our ancestors and us…’ It’s not clear what this ‘that’ refers to, which leaves plentiful scope for interpretation. For example: ‘That’ is dedication to Jewish learning; ‘That’ is never feeling secure on earth, so that our homeland is always our faith; ‘That’ is the Jewish women who’ve maintained the strength of family and community; ‘That’ is commitment to each other; ‘That’ is dedication to universal justice and compassion; ‘That’ is Hatikvah, hope itself.

We’ve had much need of resilience over the past year. Let’s draw from Seder night and the Haggadah on our long journey to redemption, renewed courage, hope, determination and faith.

 Something Halakhic – The Obligation to Ask Questions

The Mishnah insists that the Seder include questions. This is based on the Torah’s repeated instruction: when your children ask you – vehiggadeta, you shall tell them. (Hence the name of the Seder text, Haggadah.)

The Talmud explains that if there are no children present, one’s partner asks the questions; if one’s alone, one asks them to oneself and even if everyone present is a scholar, they must interrogate each other. The questions shouldn’t just be formulaic; they should be genuine.

This tenacious curiosity, this urge to learn, to understand more deeply, balanced against the awareness that all our knowledge is invariably tentative and that we must always explore further, – is a key part of resilience.

Rabbi Cardozo recalled how a non-Jewish friend asked to be taken to visit a yeshivah. When they left, the gentleman expressed horror at the arguing, raised voices and seeming chaos within: was this some kind of rebellion against the British Government? he asked. No, Rabbi Cardozo replied, they’re discussing the meaning of God and life. The man was shocked: I thought you’d have solved that long ago, he exclaimed. That, responded Rabbi Cardozo, referring to the questioning and debating, is why we’ve survived all our enemies!

Something Practical

Seder night is both then and now. It’s about history, and about the present. It’s what the ancient, never-ending journey towards freedom means to us today.

So maybe find, and also invite everyone who’ll be at the (inevitably small) Seder to find, a poem, picture or object which expresses for them some aspect of what that road from slavery to equality and injustice to justice means to them. At the Seder, ask them to explain how they see the connection.

Something reflective – Seder as Solidarity

‘In spite of it all, I choose love:’ these words were spoken by a colleague of our close friend Rabbi Marc Soloway at a huge online solidarity gathering for Boulder last night. The rabbi told of how she knew personally the baggers and workers at the King Soopers grocery store where ten people were murdered by a gunman. She had made them her friends, her community, people for whom she cared and who cared about her. Beneath her outrage, she said, the shootings made her feel vulnerable ‘for ourselves and for our children’. But vulnerability is the price for love, and ‘in spite of it all I choose love.’

The Seder is about comradeship, the fellowship of the story. It is at once uniquely Jewish, the history of our people on the long, unfinished road from persecution to freedom, and at the same time the story of all humanity, the unending struggle for justice and dignity. It opens with a call to comradeship: ‘Who ever is hungry come and eat; whoever needs, come share the Pesach.’ It culminates with an appeal to imaginative identification: ‘In every generation, everyone must see themselves as if they went out from Egypt.’

This solidarity is the core of moral being. The French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas wrote that

The traumatic experience of the slavery in Egypt constitutes my very humanity, a fact that immediately allies me to the workers, the wretched, and the persecuted peoples of the world. (Difficult Freedom)

I believe we must try to live this solidarity is concentric, outward-moving circles: towards our family, our community, the Jewish People, the society we live in, and any group suffering persecution. That, more than anything, is what the Seder means to me. This year Jewish communities across the world are particularly marking our connection with the Uyghur People. [add link to Uyghur Seder Reader ]

Levinas continued: ‘My uniqueness lies in the responsibility I display for the other.’ That responsibility, or, in the words of the rabbi from Boulder, that love, is the purpose for which we are here.

Something Halakhic – ‘This night we dip twice.’

Everyone is familiar with the first dipping at the Seder: we dunk our karpas (parsley, celery, watercress, whatever vegetable we use) in salt water. This is understood to represent our ancestors’ tears because of the cruelty, family separation and slave labour to which they were subjected. The green hope of life is ruined by cruelty.

The second dipping is less familiar: the maror is momentarily immersed in the charoset. According to the Talmud, the reason is to neutralise the venom of its potentially life-threatening sap. The Tosafot quote the geonic tradition that the charoset must be made from fruits and spices mentioned in the Song of Songs, such as figs, dates, apples, wine and cinnamon. (Talmud, Pesachim 116a) Charoset is thus the Jewish version of ‘the food of love’. What mitigates the bitterness and unfairness of life is the love we show one another, the companionship and solidarity we share.

Something Practical – Charoset recipes

There are charoset recipes from all over the world, Sephardi, Ashkenazi and Yemenite; there are versions from Curacao and India. For years, we’ve had the family tradition of making two or three different kinds. It’s a culinary form of inclusivity, acknowledging the rich diversity of the Jewish People and the range of Jewish geography. Go online and you’ll find tens of charoset options. If you can, adventure beyond your familiar recipe. It’s fun.