Equality & Diversity Patcham School
There is quite a lot I could say about equality and diversity from a Jewish perspective.
Jewish teaching about how we should live and relate to other people comes out of our experience of persecution. The rules for how we should act in the world, first set out in the Torah, the Five books of Moses, remind us again and again that we were once slaves and so should treat others with love and compassion. For example, the law code included in the Book of Exodus says: ‘You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress them; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt’ (Ex. 22:20). Another verse, literally, gets to the heart of the matter: ‘A stranger you shall not oppress; for you know the inner being of the stranger, seeing you were strangers in the land of Egypt’ (Ex. 23:9). Another code, in the Book of Leviticus, repeats the same message, and then adds something very important: ‘If a stranger lives with you in your land, you shall not wrong them. / The stranger who lives with you shall be to you as the home-born among you, and shall love the stranger as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.’ (Lev. 19:33-34).
In the same code, we read: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’ (19:18). But loving those who are our neighbours is not enough. We also have to love those who come to live with us from other lands. Perhaps the reason why this is such an important Jewish teaching is because Jewish experience of persecution did not end 3000 years ago when we were slaves in Egypt. Since that time, Jewish communities across the world have been persecuted again and again and those who were not murdered were forced to flee. For example, my mother’s parents fled pogroms– that is violent riots against Jews – in Russia and Poland in 1905 and came to live in the East End of London. Three years earlier the British government had created a new law, the Aliens Act designed to keep out Jewish refugees, who had been fleeing pogroms for decades beforehand. My own father left Austria 1936 – which was just as well because his father was taken from his home in Vienna in the middle of the night just four days after Kristallnacht, the ‘Night of Broken Glass’ on 9th November 1938, which was the beginning of the Nazis’ violent persecution of the Jews. He was deported to Dachau concentration camp. 30,000 Jewish men were deported and sent to concentration camps after Kristallnacht. After being beaten up and tortured, my grandfather was released on 19th January 1939, on condition that he leave the country with his family. My father managed to get domestic permits for his parents to come to England and work as servants, and they arrived just before the Second World War broke out in September 1939. They then decided to travel to America, and settled in Chicago. My grandfather was so traumatised by his experience that he never worked again, and he died in 1955, shortly after I was born.
So, both Jewish teaching and Jewish experience make Jews sensitive to the plight of refugees and asylum seekers and to all those who are oppressed and persecuted. My own congregation – Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue – makes a weekly collection of toiletries and non-perishable foods for the refugees supported by Brighton Voices in Exile.
Jewish teaching extends beyond how we should treat the stranger to how we should respond to all those who are vulnerable and marginal in the society. In addition to the stranger, the Torah speaks specifically of the plight of the orphan and the widow, and also of those who are poor, homeless and destitute. Ancient Jewish teaching was not so compassionate when it came to sexual orientation and gender. This is because the laws were created at a time when females were completely dominated by males and heterosexuality was considered the only acceptable form of sexual orientation. In the past 40 years, new teaching about sexuality and gender has been developed – based on what is perhaps the most important teaching in the Torah, found right at the beginning in the first story of Creation. We read in the Book of Genesis that every human being is created ‘in the image of God’ – b’tzelem Elohim (Gen. 1:27). God, of course, does not have a face or form. This teaching tells us that each human being, whatever their colour, culture, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender is an image of God. In other words, we find God in every human being. We are all equal.
Another Jewish teaching reminds us that it is not enough to say all human beings are equal, we have to take action to ensure that all human beings are treated equally. We read in the Book of Deuteronomy: ‘Justice, justice, you shall pursue’ (Deut. 16:20). The Hebrew is short and sweet: Tzedek, tzedek tirdof. Usually, in Hebrew the verb comes at the beginning of a sentence, so we would expect the sentence to be, ‘you shall pursue justice’. The fact that the word justice comes first, and is repeated, puts the emphasis on justice. But the verb is important, too: ‘Justice, Justice you shall pursue.’ To pursue something is to run after it, to chase it, to direct all our energies towards it. We cannot take justice for granted; we have to do everything we can to get hold of justice and make it happen.
Like Christianity and Islam and all the other religions, there are many different Jewish denominations – different expressions of Judaism. Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue belongs to Liberal Judaism, an organisation in this country which is affiliated to the World Union of Progressive Judaism. Progressive Judaism in general, and Liberal Judaism in particular, is concerned with responding to the needs of the age and to the needs of individuals, couples and families. Just as the first rabbis created a new form of Judaism after the destruction of the last Temple in Jerusalem almost 2000 years ago, in 70 CE – a form of Judaism that was not dependent on a particular holy place or a particular land – so, Progressive Judaism created new ways of living Jewishly in response to the emancipation of Jewish communities in Europe in the 19th century. Up until then Jews were forced to live in separate areas known as ghettos, many of which was surrounded by walls, and where they were locked in at night. Emancipation meant that for the first time in 2000 years, Jews were free to own land, enter the professions, and integrate as citizens into the wider society.
Since that time, Progressive Judaism has been at the forefront of gender equality between men and women, and more recently, has championed the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. In December 2005, Liberal Judaism published a booklet of commitment ceremonies to coincide with the Civil Partnership Act. Liberal Judaism then went on to support the campaign for equal marriage. Liberal Judaism has also provided a home for a series of LGBT+ projects: Rainbow Jews, exploring the heritage of LGTB+ Jews; Rituals Reconstructed, creating opportunities for LGBT+ Jews to develop rituals that express their own lives; Twilight People, a multifaith transgender initiative; and Rainbow Pilgrims, which focuses on the lives of LGBT+ migrants and asylum seekers, who come to the UK.
We are fortunate to be living in a time when ensuring equality and celebrating diversity has become a high priority, and hopefully, everyone who is here today will benefit from living in a society in which everyone and every community enjoys full equality. From a Jewish perspective, the perspective of a minority people that has experienced oppression and persecution and always looks forward with hope to better times ahead, it is wonderful to have the opportunity to join with others to achieve these goals.
I would like to end with two Jewish teachings found in a collection of the wise sayings of the early rabbis that is included in the first code of rabbinic law, the Mishnah, edited around the year 200 CE. We read (Pirkei Avot 1:18): ‘The world stands on Justice, on Truth, and on Peace’. To make it clear that it is our task to ensure that there is justice, truth and peace in the world, another passage states (1:14): If I’m not for myself, who will be for me? But if I’m only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?
Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah
Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue
Patcham School, 15th January 2019