Sermons

Shabbat Shalom and welcome to the third streamed Shabbat morning service from the sanctuary at Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue.

This Shabbat is called Shabbat ha-Gadol – ‘The Great Sabbath’ – echoing, the reference to the ‘great’ day ahead proclaimed by the prophet Malachi, whose prophecy is read as the haftarah, the ‘concluding’ reading on the Shabbat before Pesach.^[1]

Pesach, the great festival that celebrates the Exodus of our ancestors from Egypt, begins this year on Wednesday evening. So, after this day of ceasing and rest, there will be just four days left to prepare for it: to clean out our kitchens, remove chameitz, leavened products – and if possible, donate our unused items to refugees – get matzah and the items we need for the Seder plate, and do some Pesach baking.

Well, that at least is the usual plan. But this year is not a usual year. Jews are a remembering people. We remember all the twists and turns of our journey over millennia. Everyone and every people across the world will remember this extraordinary year when the devastating coronavirus pandemic utterly disrupted our daily lives and our usual routines.

So, perhaps, many of us will not be able to get hold of matzah and our Seder plate will be sparer than usual.

And then, there is the Seder itself. ‘Why is this night different from all other nights?’ The opening words of the four questions traditionally recited by the youngest at the Seder will take on a very particular resonance this year. The shul’s gathering, which usually sees 80 people fill this sanctuary on the first evening of Pesach, like communal s’darim the world over has been cancelled. Families and friends, too, will not be sitting around the Seder table together.

Thank goodness for the wonders of technology, which will enable people who have access to it to gather together virtually. But let us spare a thought for those who don’t have laptops, smart phones and tablets, and wouldn’t know how to use them if they did – many of whom are also over 70 and alone in their homes.

Those of us who are able to gather virtually, could adopt the tradition of leaving a place empty at our table for the guest who is unable to join us, and pause during the Seder to think of them.

So, Pesach has not been cancelled – many people will be having a Seder, albeit, across the ether. In recent years a number of new items have been added to the Seder plate. So, alongside the karpas, a green vegetable, maror, bitter herb, charoset, a sticky, sweet concoction, beitzah, a roasted egg, and z’ro’a, a lamb bone – or vegetarian equivalent – we may also place other symbols to express our sense of solidarity with all those who are oppressed today and our commitment to tikkun olam, repair of the world. These include: an orange, as a beacon of the inclusion of LGBTQI people, shoe-laces to remember the plight of refugees, olives to acknowledge the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a red chilli to evoke the climate change emergency.

Our Seder plates will be very full. Can we find space for one more item? What symbol will we add to our Seder plate this year in recognition of the coronavirus pandemic? Maybe, just as we leave a place empty at the table to remind ourselves of those who are isolated in their homes, so we should leave an empty space on the Seder plate as a symbol of ‘social distancing’ and ‘self- isolation’, these new terms that actually represent real hardship and distress.

A unique Pesach experience awaits us – one I’m sure we hope will never be repeated. Meanwhile, it is Shabbat. One of the important lessons of the coronavirus crisis is that we must try to do whatever we can, each one of us, to extract as much joy as possible – despite the challenging circumstances we find ourselves in – out of each and every day. So, let us now enjoy, the gift of Shabbat.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue

Shabbat Ha-Gadol

4 April 2020 – 10 Nisan 5780

1. Malachi 3:4-24. ↑

Shabbat Shalom everyone. Welcome to the second streamed service from the sanctuary of Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue. For those of you have the those of you have the Siddur booklet – or the PDF – I will be announcing pages, so please join in.

But first, a few words.

During the past week, individuals and communities have been doing everything we can to help and support one another through the coronavirus crisis. People have been creating WhatsApp groups for their street and sharing resources, and putting ‘Hello’ notes the letterboxes of neighbours, and offering to pick up shopping, get urgent supplies or post mail for those are self-isolating, and also to call them if they’d like a chat. These notes – you may have seen or used them yourself – include the name of the person making the offer, where they live locally, and their phone number.

Here at BHPS, several people have volunteered to make phone calls to our vulnerable members – and to go shopping for those in need. And with the Festival of Pesach just around the corner, one of our members, has offered to source matzah and deliver it. If more people volunteer, it will be possible to phone everyone who is a member or friend of the synagogue to see how they are.

Meanwhile, across the country, community groups have been gathering volunteers, and in response to the ‘Your NHS Needs You!’ call for volunteers to deliver medicines, drive patients to doctors’ appointments and make phone calls to check on people isolating on their own, as of yesterday, almost 700,000 people have responded.

How wonderful that as social distancing becomes the norm, we are finding all these ways to reach out and support each other. Last week, we finished the second book of the Torah, the Book of Exodus, which concludes with the setting up of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle in the wilderness.^[1] The scroll is always raised after the Torah reading, and when a book is completed, as we are raising the scroll, we say the words: Chazak! Chazak! v’nitchazeik – ‘Be strong, be strong and let us strengthen one another.’ During the past week, all of us, whether or not we heard that challenge, have responded to it. As the coronavirus crisis has deepened, we have been strong and we have strengthened one another.

This week, a new book of the Torah has opened, the Book of Leviticus^[2], so-called because the first few portions of the book focus on the sacrificial system conducted by the priests of the tribe of Levi in Temple times. The last Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Roman occupiers in 70 CE – just fifty years short of two thousand years ago – so we might wonder what we might learn from reading about the ancient sacrificial cult. Indeed, the sacrifices strike us as very alien, and even for those who are not vegetarians or vegans, the images they conjure up of animals slaughtered and blood splattered, quite repugnant.

But there is something we can learn from the account of the sacrifices offered in Temple times. Just think of those words ‘sacrifice’ and ‘offering’. Our ancient agricultural forebears made a real sacrifice as they brought their gifts from their herds and their flocks.

After the Temple was destroyed, the early rabbis replaced the Divine service of sacrifice – Avodah – with Avodat ha-Lev, Service of the heart, that is, prayer.^[3] Prayer is a beautiful way of addressing and connecting with the Eternal and reaching into our spiritual depths. But however ardent and sincere our prayers, to offer words in place of livestock is so much easier, so less demanding and costly – indeed, words cost us nothing at all, except our time.

Which brings us back to this moment, this ongoing coronavirus crisis. Perhaps, people are doing a lot more praying at this time, more praying than usual – and, perhaps, those who are not used to uttering prayers, find themselves doing so. But during the past week, alongside private prayers and the billions of words buzzing across social media, there has been a proliferation of material offerings, as people do what they can to reach out to those in need, to support their isolated neighbours and to connect with each other.

Before we begin the service and turn in the midst of it to the first portion of the Book of Leviticus, I would like to remind you of the closing image with which the Book of Exodus concludes following the setting up of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle: an image of the Eternal One as a cloud dwelling upon it; a cloud that only moved on, when the people continued on their journey.^[4] As we to endure through this coronavirus crisis, as we do what we can to help and support one another, the presence of the Eternal One is with us – and will remain with us when the crisis is over and we continue our journeys. In the meantime, let us take courage and say to each other: Chazak! Chazak! v’nitchazeik – ‘Be strong! Be strong! And let us strengthen one another.’

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue

28 March 2020 – 3 Nisan 5780

1. P’kudei, Exodus 40. ↑

2. The Hebrew name is taken from the first word: Va-yikra – ‘Then He called’ – referring to the Eternal One, and connecting the beginning of Leviticus to the concluding section of the Book of Exodus. As with the naming of the other books of the Torah, the Hebrew name of the book is also the name of the first portion of the book. ↑

3. Babylonian Talmud, Ta’anit 2a: ‘What is this service of the heart? [avodah shehi b’leiv] You must say: it is prayer [t’fillah]. ↑

4. Ex. 40:34-38. ↑

So, the UK has left the EU. Let’s look at those acronyms for a moment. The ‘United Kingdom’ that encompasses England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Oh! what a complex morass of stories spanning centuries, underlie that conflict-ridden alliance. The ‘European Union’; formed in 1993, the EU was preceded by the European Economic Community that was established by the Treaty of Rome of 1957. The EU – now minus the UK – encompasses 27 nations, spanning from the Republic of Ireland in the west to Poland in the north east and Cyprus in the south east.^[1]

The debate over the past three and half years since the Brexit referendum has been dominated by the binary anthem, played over and over again: ‘Remain’ or ‘Leave’? ‘Remain’ or ‘Leave’? I haven’t conducted any research, but my gut feeling is that the majority of Jews voted ‘Remain’. Why? I would guess one reason could be that having wandered all over the world for millennia, we like the idea of ‘freedom of movement’. Another reason: having been defamed and persecuted for millennia – a major spur to our constant movement – we feel strongly about equality and the execution of justice in all areas, including the economic arena, and so are in favour of the European Court of Human Rights and EU employment legislation.

After all, Europe wasn’t always like this. For hundreds of years, Jewish life in Europe was circumscribed by the strictures of mediaeval Christian regimes that restricted our movements, forced us to wear identifying emblems and items of clothing, like special hats, prevented us from owning land, entering the skilled guilds or professions, and confined us to walled ghettos whose gates were locked after sunset. And, if that wasn’t enough, we were subjected to violent attacks at Easter time and periodic massacres – for example: in the Rhineland in 1096, perpetrated by Christian Crusaders heading east to liberate the Holy Land from the Muslim caliphate^[2]; and the Chmielnicki massacres of the Jews of eastern Poland and Lithuania that took place during the Cossacks’ uprising of 1648-1657.^[3]

And then of course, there were the attacks on Jewish teaching. Throughout the Middle Ages, Christian authorities staged ‘disputations’ aimed at disproving Judaism.^[4] In 1239, Pope Gregory issued a letter to every ecclesiastical authority in France demanding the confiscation of Jewish books on the first Saturday of Lent, March 3, 1240. He subsequently ordered the heads of the Dominican and Franciscan orders in Paris to burn the books at the stake. The kings of France, England, Spain and Portugal received similar instructions. Two years after the disputation staged in Paris in June of that year, 24 wagon-loads of books were burnt. Attacks on the Talmud, specifically, continued over the next centuries. The last public burning of the Talmud – one thousand copies in all – took place in Poland, in Kamenets-Podolski in the autumn of 1757.^[5]

So, violent attacks against Jews and the destruction of Jewish teaching. The notorious Spanish Inquisition, established by the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella in 1478, combined the two themes: Jews were given the choice of conversion to Christianity or death.

Finally, when the Jew-hating tormentors had exhausted all options: the expulsions of their Jewish populations – often on several occasions from the same place. Between 1100 and 1600, Jews were expelled from Crimea, Silesia, France and Provence, England and Wales, Germany, Hungary, Austria, Lithuania, Spain, Portugal, Sicilia, Sardinia, Tunis, Naples and the Papal States. The most well-known expulsions were from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497, following the reunification of Spain orchestrated by Isabella and Ferdinand.^[6]

Of course, even in the most hideous circumstances, Jewish communities across Europe lived the cycle of the Jewish year and continued to study and expound the Bible and the Talmud. And for those who did not live within Christendom, life could even be rather wonderful. By contrast with conditions in northern Europe, Jewish existence in Muslim southern Spain from the 10^th through the 12^th century blossomed into a ’Golden Age’ of cultural sharing and borrowing and creativity.^[7]

And then, the development of the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, beginning in the 17^th century, signalled a change in fortunes for the Jews of central Europe. Nevertheless, it took cataclysmic events to force change. It was in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789 that over the course of the 19th century Jews were liberated from a segregated existence, and given equal rights, most importantly, the right of citizenship wherever we lived – that is, for the first time, the right to be French or German or British, and so on.^[8]

But we know that that wasn’t the end of the story. There were other developments in the course of the 19^th century. Anti-Judaism morphed into anti-Jewishness. Consequently, it was no longer possible to escape the calumny of being Jewish by converting to Christianity. According to the new ‘race science’, Jews were, essentially, a demonic and evil race. We could not be civilised and sanitised. Hence, in the 20^th century, in the aftermath of the abdication of the German Emperor towards the end of the First World War and the economic crash in the late 1920s, when a scapegoat was needed, the Jews, those erstwhile Christ-killers, became the prime target in the new National Socialist campaign in pursuit of Aryan purity.^[9]

You know what happened next. Europe became a mass grave. How ironic that with the extension of the European Union eastwards, the EU has managed to include most of the sites of the mass murder of half the Jews of Europe in the Sho’ah.

Of course, for those who came here as refugees from Nazism – and my Dad came here from Vienna via South Africa – Europe was their home. When I was growing up in Finchley, North London, home-life followed the rhythms of life in Vienna, complete with Sunday afternoon kaffee mit schlagobers – coffee with whipped cream – accompanied by the sonorous tones of Richard Tauber on the turntable.

But let’s not be romantic about Europe. Certainly, the continent boasts magnificent architecture and spectacular art. But while Michelangelo was painting those beautiful frescoes on the roof of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican in Rome (between 1508 and 1512), Jews were an alien, hated, feared and persecuted people living a segregated existence – and soon to be expelled. In fact, there were two expulsions from the Papal States, in 1569 and 1593, respectively.^[10]

So, Europe has not exactly been a haven for the Jews. But is the UK any better? The history of Jewish life in England, in particular, suggests not.^[11] Some Jews probably made their way to these shores at the time of the Romans, but the first significant immigration was from France with William the Conqueror in 1066. Before too long, Jews were the object of fear and hatred, expressed in the most extreme form in ‘blood libel’ accusations – which were also a feature of anti-Jewish persecutions across Europe. Alongside accusations of well-poisoning and desecration of the communion host, the myth that gave rise to what came to be known as ‘blood libel’ was the notion that Jews make matzah – unleavened bread – out of the blood of Christian children.

The first blood libel accusation took place in Norwich in 1144, when the Jews of Norwich were accused of ritual murder after a boy named William was found dead with stab wounds in the woods. A certain Thomas of Monmouth made the claim that every year an international council of Jews convened at which they chose the country in which a child will be killed at Easter. Similar accusations were made in Gloucester (1168), Bury St Edmonds (1181) and Bristol (1183). And then, in 1189, a deputation of Jews attending the Coronation of King Richard the Lion Heart was attacked by the crowd. Not long after, On March 16, 1190, 150 Jews in York were attacked and then massacred when they took refuge in Clifford’s Tower. A century later, King Edward The Confessor expelled the Jews of England on All Saints Day, November 1, 1290. The edict of expulsion has never been revoked, but during his brief rule, Oliver Cromwell invited the Jews of the Netherlands to come over to England, and Jewish life became re-established on these shores from 1656 onwards.

There were further chapters to come. When Jews began to immigrate to these shores in large numbers in flight from pogroms in the late 1890s, fear of an alien invasion led to the enactment of the first anti-immigration legislation in Britain, the Aliens Act in 1905.^[12] When German Jews sought refuge from Nazism, between two and three thousand were interned as aliens on the Isle of Man.^[13] Famously, ten thousand Jewish children – a fraction of the over one million children murdered – were saved on kindertransports^[14] – but not their parents and other relatives.

So, for Jews, both life on the continent of Europe and life on this island has been marked by persecution and hatred – and continues to be complex. Jewish experience simply doesn’t fit easily into the ‘Remain’/’Leave’ binary divide. In both Britain and in Europe, we have made our home and we live as an ever-vulnerable minority. And more than that, by definition we transcend the binary divide between this island and the continent, both physically, and just as important, in terms of our values. In this week’s parashah, Mishpatim, we find the first code of law in the Torah, including laws on worship, serfdom, the treatment of strangers, the vulnerable and the needy, injuries, property, economic and moral behaviour. Fashioned for life in the land across the Jordan, like the aseret ha-dibbrot, ‘the ten utterance’s, known as the Ten Commandments in last week’s parashah, Yitro, the laws we find in Mishpatim are not defined by a particular geographical area – and indeed, the narrative setting is the wilderness. Rather, they have international application.

And we are an international people: the Jews, the Israelites; our oldest name is the ‘Hebrews’ – ivrim – from the Hebrew root, Ayin Beit Reish, to ‘cross over’. The most defining characteristic of this international people is the physical fact that since Abraham and Sarah set out on their journey away from their land, their kindred and their family home,^[15] we have crossed borders and settled in different lands. And if one of the reasons that so many Jews voted ‘Remain’ was because of a commitment to freedom of movement, then the Jewish experience of wandering across the world demonstrates that the principle of freedom of movement should be applied globally.

So, how should we express our Jewish internationalist values in post-Brexit Britain? In particular, how should we express our Jewish and internationalist values as a congregation in post-Brexit Britain? By speaking out against nationalism and xenophobia. By challenging immigration policies designed to keep out the poorest migrants and by championing the cause of refugees. By supporting efforts to ensure that the UK continues to adopt environmental, food-safety and animal welfare regulations in relation to the import of food products into this country. By campaigning for the re-establishment of the Human Rights Act that has been progressively dismantled over the past ten years. In short, by doing everything we can as individuals, as a community and as citizens of this nation to act on our global responsibilities towards the planet, including, all its inhabitants, and every living thing that lives here with us.

Kein y’hi ratzon. May this be our will. And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue

22^nd February 2020 – 27^th Sh’vat 5780

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union ↑

2. See Jewish People, Jewish Thought. The Jewish Experience in History by Robert M Seltzer (CollierMacmillan, London, 1980), Chapter 7 Mediaeval Jewry to 1500. ↑

3. See Seltzer, Chapter 10, Jews and Judaism in the Early Modern Period (Sixteenth to Mid-Eighteenth Centuries). ↑

4. Seltzer, Chapter 7. ↑

5. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/burning-of-the-talmud ↑

6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsions_and_exoduses_of_Jews ↑

7. Seltzer, Chapter 7. ↑

8. Seltzer, Chapter 11 The European State and the Jews, 1770-1880. ↑

9. Seltzer, chapter 14 The Onslaught of Modernity: Jewish History from 1880 to the Present. ↑

10. See note 6. ↑

11. for the classic account, see A History of the Jews in England by Cecil Roth (Clarendon Press, Oxford 1978). ↑

12. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Edw7/5/13/contents/enacted ↑

13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Isle_of_Man ↑

14. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindertransport ↑

15. Lech L’cha, Genesis 12:1). ↑

When I travelled to Australia last March to speak at the 25th Jewish LGBT+ World Congress in Sydney,^[1] I went on a special mini-bus day-trip to the Blue Mountains situated eighty miles north-west of the city. When we think of mountains, we often imagine massive ranges of rock. By contrast, the beautiful Blue Mountains are covered by densely packed trees and are called ‘blue’ because of the mist of moisture that hovers over this elevated forest.

On the way, we visited a wild life park, where all the unique creatures that are associated with the largest island on earth can be encountered up close. It was a real thrill to see hopping kangaroos and diminutive flat-billed platypuses, to stroke baby wallabies and to gaze at koala bears sitting in eucalyptus trees, munching away. I have to admit that before we left, I visited the souvenir shop and bought a small cuddly koala bear for Jess.

I think you know where I’m going with this, but first let’s turn to the Torah. Last Shabbat we began reading the Book of Exodus – Sh’mot – with its tales of the enslavement of our ancestors to Pharaoh in Egypt, their remarkable liberation, and the beginning of their wilderness wanderings, dramatically shaped by their encounter with the Eternal at Mount Sinai.

The first major turning point in the story comes with Moses’ personal encounter with the Eternal – not on the top of a mountain, but rather, as we read in Exodus chapter 3, verse 2, at the foot of a mountain, at the burning bush that was not consumed by the flames.

The burning bush. As soon as I say those words at this time, our minds turn from a middle eastern desert scene over 3000 years ago to the burning bush fires that have been raging in southeast Australia – including, in the Blue Mountains. There, of course, the burning bushes have been consumed – and the fires have also consumed every living thing around them: koalas, kangaroos, wallabies. After three consecutive years of summer droughts, the raging fires have burned everything in their wake – and the blue, green, multicoloured landscape has been replaced by grey, charred remains.

We are shocked and horrified. The sight of wounded, traumatised koalas, their burnt paws wrapped in bandages so painful and distressing. But we have done this. Of course, not us, personally. But our wanton consumerism and profligate attitude to everything we consume; so much of it, so quickly dispensed with and disposed of as we move onto the next must-have item. But are we really to blame? After all, none of us one day decide to behave like this. We have been lured and trained by a global economy dedicated to profit that has harnessed every form of media, including, the World Wide Web, to stimulate our wants and then transform our wants into needs – and all in the name of the pursuit of happiness and the illusion of freedom that is actually a form of slavery.

Let’s return for a moment to the burning bush Moses encountered. Nothing much grows in the desert. The bush – the Hebrew word is s’neh – was a thorn-bush; compact, low-lying and rugged; perfectly suited for the super-dry desert conditions. The miracle of the story appears to be that bush burned but was not consumed by the flames. The real miracle was that Moses noticed. Just imagine: Moses was shepherding his father-in-law’s flock in the blinding light and heat of a desert day. Perhaps, he was wearing a cloth over his head, but he certainly didn’t have sunglasses. So, how come Moses noticed that ubiquitous desert resident, a lowly thorn-bush? We read at Exodus 3, verses 1 to 3:

Now Moses was shepherding the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian; and he led the flock behind the wilderness, and came to the mountain of God, to Horev / Then the messenger of the Eternal appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of the bush; and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, but the bush was not consumed. /Then Moses said: ‘I will turn aside now, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.’

The ‘messenger’ of the Eternal – malach Adonai – often translated as ‘angel’, could only appear to Moses because he looked, because he turned aside from his shepherding, because he allowed himself to be apprehended.

The burning bush that Moses encountered came with a message to liberate the slaves. He was presented with a gigantic task, but the signpost to the great mission Moses was called on to perform was so subtle, he could so easily have missed it; he could so easily have not seen it and just walked on by. And if Moses had just walked on by, he would have continued to live out his days as a shepherd in Midian and the Exodus of the slaves might never have happened. And we wouldn’t be here to retell the tale.

But then, perhaps, had Moses failed to notice, after a while he would have been shown a bigger more obvious sign, one that he simply could not ignore. The burning bush fires in south-eastern Australia proclaim to us that we have missed all the singular burning thorn-bush signs of climate change and impending ecological disaster. So, is it too late to turn aside and notice? Have we missed our chance to take action and save the planet?

In this week’s Torah portion, the parashah Va-eira, which begins with a continuation of Moses’ encounter with the Eternal at the burning bush, we learn that persuaded to return to Egypt by four-fold promises of liberation, when Moses relayed the promises to the slaves, they were not prepared to listen. We read at Exodus chapter 6, verse 9:

Moses spoke thus to the Israelites, but they would not listen to Moses because of shortness of spirit and because of hard bondage – mi-kotzer ru’ach u’mei-avodah kashah

Is it surprising that after hundreds of years in servitude, the slaves could not take in the message that they were going to be liberated? So, prosperous as we are, what’s our excuse? Of course, unlike the message that Moses tried to deliver to the slaves, the one that we have refused to receive decade after decade is terrifying and doom-laden. And so, we have seen fit to bury our heads in the sand.

In the context of the prospect of ecological catastrophe, that saying isn’t just a cliché. On the contrary, it’s very apt. The longer we continue to bury our heads, the deeper and more widespread the sand will become. After all, we face not only raging fires and other consequences of extreme weather events, but also the increasing desertification of the planet.

There are understood to be eight major causes of desertification:^[2]

1. Overgrazing
2. Unsustainable agricultural techniques
3. Deforestation
4. Unsustainable water management
5. Overpopulation and overexploitation of natural resources
6. Urbanisation and the development of tourism
7. Famine, poverty and political instability
8. Climate change

And the effects of desertification become progressively devastating:^[3]

1. Vegetation is damaged or destroyed
2. Soil becomes infertile
3. Soil erosion gets worse
4. There is increasing vulnerability to natural disasters
5. Sources of drinking water become polluted
6. There is a rise of famine, poverty and social conflicts – which leads to another effect:
7. Mass migrations – and then in time:
8. Collapses of civilisations – and the
9. Extinction of species

Isn’t it amazing how much we now know about humanity’s destructive impact on the planet, and yet we continue to do so little? The enormous challenge of achieving global cooperation in the face of vested interests and resurgent nationalism cannot be underestimated. So, what can we do? Of course, we can reduce our own carbon footprint at home and in our communities – including, here at BHPS. We can also take collective action. The Torah relates that it took ten plagues – a concerted assault on Egypt – but eventually, not only was Pharaoh persuaded – the slaves were, too. As we read in the parashah Bo, Exodus chapter 12 (:39-41), after a sojourn of 430 years, they fled in such haste, there was no time for their dough to rise. The significance of this small detail is easily missed. It speaks of sudden flight, but also of the settled life that preceded the Exodus. The slaves inured to their slavery, not only toiled each day, they also went about the ordinary tasks of daily life; rearing children and baking bread. But finally, they knew they had to break free.

So, how long will we continue to go on with business as usual before we act? At the World Economic Forum at Davos this past week, Prince Charles, long-time green advocate, launched his ‘sustainable markets initiative’ for 2020 – the ‘super-year for kickstarting action.’ He presented a whole raft of suggestions for ‘putting people and planet at the heart’ of a sustainable economy and concluded with these words: ‘The only limit is our willingness to act and the time to act is now.’^[4]

The message is positive: we can avert disaster. It’s up to us. I’m going to conclude by turning again to the cute cuddly souvenir koala. If we don’t act soon to stop the damage we are doing to the planet, then in the future, assuming that a remnant does survive, all they will have to console them and remind them of the richness and beauty of their blue planet gone grey, will be cuddly toy versions of koala bears and all the other creatures that used to roam and make their home with us. So: let us take note of all the signs around us of ecological emergency and summon all our resources of intelligence, ingenuity, courage, will and hope to act now. And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue

25^th January 2020 – 28^th Tevet 5780

1. March 21-24 2019. I gave the opening keynote: ‘Hinneinu: Here We Are: LGBT+ Jews Celebrating All Our Voices and Repairing the World’. https://rabbiellisarah.benjaminbenjamin.co.uk/category/lectures/ ↑

2. https://greentumble.com/causes-and-effects-of-desertification/ ↑

3. Ditto ↑

4. BBC News 24 Live broadcast, 22.01.20, 1.40 pm G.M.T ↑

Shabbat seems to be exactly the right time to take a break from Brexit and the forthcoming general election. So, today I would like to explore a different pressing contemporary issue. It also happens to be a very ancient issue, featuring centre-stage in the stories from Genesis that we are reading at the moment: Gender.

On the one hand, in the past fifty years, huge strides have been made in gender equality – in the western and northern regions of the world, and on those west-leaning islands in the south of Australia and New Zealand – not least, in the context of mainstream educational provision, ensuring that girls are free to excel in all areas of the curriculum and so can aspire to become, lawyers, doctors, scientists and engineers. On the other hand, there’s a long list of items that tell a very different story: the stubborn tenacity of a ‘pink for girls, blue for boys’ mentality relentlessly promoted in the retail industry; recent revelations about the persistent gender pay gap; the glass-ceiling for women that hangs over most areas of employment still; domestic abuse; the sexual abuse of children; the ongoing menace of sexual harassment and abuse exposed through the #MeToo movement – highlighted in the past two weeks in relation to the Jeffrey Epstein case; the sex-trafficking of women, girls and boys; the persecution of transgender women. All these ‘facts’ about gender relations, make it clear that patriarchal assumptions and practices still rule the day – and the night. And I’m only talking about what continues to go on in so-called ‘enlightened’, ‘progressive’ societies. 

It’s hard not to feel very depressed – and yet reality is more complex than this list of horrors suggests. Yes, male power still persists, but much has also changed. To be more precise: the circumstances of life for those whom the French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir referred to as the ‘other’ in her ground-breaking book, Le Deuxième Sexe – The Second Sex, first published in 1949,^[1] haven’t just ‘changed’; women have taken action to change their lives. More of that in a moment.

This week we are reading the parashah, Torah portion, Chayyei Sarah. The parashah begins with the death of Sarah, but the opening words invite us to think about the life of Sarah. We read at the beginning of Genesis chapter 23: Va-yih’yu chayyei Sarah, mei’ah shanah v’esrim shanah v’sheva shanim; sh’nei chayyei Sarah – ‘The life of Sarah was 127 years; these were the years of the life Sarah.’ What does the Torah tell us about the life of Sarah? The tale of the ancestors of the Jewish people begins at parashat Lech L’cha with Avram – as he was called at that point – responding to the call of the Eternal One and leaving his land, his kindred and his father’s house. We read in Genesis 12 (:5): ‘And Avram took Sarai his wife – as Sarah was called then – and Lot his brother’s son…’ Sarah – and Lot – taken. But Sarah proved to be an actor in her own right. When she was unable to bear a child, Lech L’cha tells us at chapter 16 (:2): “So, Sarai said to Avram: ‘Behold now, the Eternal One has restrained me from bearing; go in, please to my handmaid; perhaps I shall be built up through her.’ And Avram listened to the voice of Sarah.” It wasn’t the last time that Abraham listened to his wife’s voice. When as we read in Genesis chapter 21, Sarah finally conceived and bore her own child, Isaac, threatened by the presence of her husband’s first son, Ishmael, in the household, she told Abraham (21:10): ‘Cast out this slave woman with her son; the son of this slave woman should not be heir with my son, with Isaac.’ Abraham was very upset. But then we read (21:12): “And God said to Abraham: ‘Let it not be grievous in your sight because of the lad and because of your slave woman; in everything that Sarah says to you, listen to her voice; for in Isaac shall seed be called to you.’”

Sarah was an actor; she was not acted upon. Hagar, Sarah’s Egyptian handmaid also took action. When newly pregnant, Sarah treated her harshly, Hagar took flight into the wilderness and then chose to return in the certain knowledge that God had listened to her. We read in chapter 16 (:11): “The messenger of the Eternal One said to her: ‘Behold, you are with child, and shall bear a son; you shall call his name Yishma’el because the Eternal One has heard your affliction.’” Yishma’el means: ‘God shall hear’.

If there was more time, we could explore the story of Rebekah, which begins in this week’s parashah – arguably, an even more important and decisive actor in the narrative of our ancestors than Sarah – and the tales of Leah and Rachel, too. The stories of women as decisive actors continues beyond Genesis. Generations later, Miriam, the elder sister of Aaron and Moses, entirely independent because she was not married, took a pre-eminent role in the Exodus.^[2] What we learn from these ancient tales is relevant for our understanding of the complexity of gender relations today. Children, by definition, subject to the absolute power of their parents and the decisions their parents make about their lives, may be victims, but grown women are never simply victims, unless they are, quite literally, imprisoned by the circumstances of their lives.

Each year, when Chayyei Sarah is the parashah of the week, I always think of my mother, who died on the Sunday night following Shabbat Chayyei Sarah on 3^rd November 1991 – 27^th Cheshvan, according to the Hebrew calendar. This year, 27^th Cheshvan falls after sunset on Sunday. My mother, who was beautiful and vibrant and had a wonderful contralto singing voice, who could recite huge chunks of Shakespeare and scores of poems off by heart, and became an actor in the Spiro Yiddish Theatre Group, nevertheless, saw herself as a victim. Despite having a strong speaking voice, she never challenged her husband’s tyrannical behaviours, let alone asserted herself in his presence. Having left school when she was evacuated, aged 17, and not gone back, she had no saleable skills in the marketplace. On top of this, having experienced multiple losses during her childhood and then the loss of her first husband during the Second World War, when she was only 19, she had no sense of her own volition. She did leave her marriage for 18 months when confronted with aspects of her husband’s conduct she had not previously been aware of, and went to work in a women’s clothes shop owned by one of her sisters – but then she went back to him when I went off to university in the autumn of 1973. She simply could not manage on her own. In 1984, my father suffered a severe stroke the day after her 61^st birthday that left him paralysed on his right side and unable to speak. Just over six years later my mother died of lung cancer, aged 68. He lived another six and a half years and died on my birthday, aged 83.

My mother was an extraordinary ordinary woman of her time. How many women, who were married after the war and had their children in the 1950s, were able to realise themselves and participate in the world beyond their domestic environment? They were constrained and confined by the social and cultural mores of their time. Perhaps, that’s the greatest change that has taken place in the past 50+ years; women going out to work – and not just for ‘pin money’ – and so, gaining a new perspective on their lives and new ambitions beyond being wives and mothers. Nevertheless, although she saw herself as a victim, my mother did have choices. She chose to go back to her husband. I understand the choice she made and why she made it. But she could have made another choice. It would have been very hard, but she would have been free to walk her own path, however challenging that path might have been.

Of course, the past is the past. But there are lessons to be learned. When we survey the Jewish past, we can find exceptional women who defied patriarchal boundaries – like B’ruria, the wife of 2^nd century Sage, Rabbi Meir, whose scholarship was so remarkable, some of her teachings are even recorded in the Talmud, that early 6^th century compendium of male rabbinic scholarship.^[3] More recently, there was Rabbi Regina Jonas, who was, in her own words, ‘the one and only woman Rabbi’, and was ordained in Germany on 27^th December 1935.^[4] But being an exception, by definition, means singularity. There were no spiritual descendants of B’ruria, or of Regina Jonas. Subsequent generations of rabbis defamed B’ruria and the refugee German rabbis who survived the Sho’ah never mentioned Regina Jonas, who was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944. It took the first generation of women rabbis, ordained in the 1970s and 80s to ‘discover’ these exceptional women.

It is when we think of these exceptional singular women alongside the millions of isolated ordinary women like my mother that we can see that there has been a massive transformation in gender relations – brought about by collective action. From the strike of women workers at Ford Dagenham in 1968 that led directly to the 1970 Equal Pay Act^[5] to the development of the Women’s Liberation and Gay Liberation movements in the 1970s that established communities of activism that led to significant changes in the lives of women and LGBT people, and in the law in this country – including, the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act^[6], equalisation of the age of consent in 2000^[7], the Gender Recognition Act in 2004,^[8] the Civil Partnership Act which came into force in 2005^[9] and the Marriage Equality (Same Sex) Act of 2013^[10].

The changes we have seen in the past five decades haven’t just been apparent in the wider society, they’ve also been evident in the Jewish world. In 1991, women rabbis in Britain – there were only 15 of us at the time – set up the Half-Empty Bookcase, a Jewish women’s educational project aimed at increasing the knowledge, confidence and participation of women in congregational life and and promoting Jewish women’s scholarship. Similar initiatives were already taking place at the time United States. Back then, the bookcase of Jewish life was half empty because save for a few exceptional books^[11], 99% of Jewish literature was written by men. Today the bookcase is crammed full of Jewish women’s scholarship. In addition to two books produced by British women rabbis – Hear Our Voice edited by Sybil Sheridan^[12] and Taking up the Timbrel edited by Sylvia Rothschild and Sybil Sheridan^[13] – and my own modest contribution, which includes Women Rabbis in the Pulpit. A collection of sermons, edited with Rabbi Dr Barbara Borts,^[14] there are works by scores of Jewish women rabbis and scholars. One of the most immediate ways to appreciate the scale, breadth and depth of Jewish women’s scholarship today is to pick up The Torah. A Women’s Commentary, edited by Dr Tamara Eskenazi and Rabbi Dr Andrea L. Weiss, which runs to 1350 pages. All the books I’ve just mentioned can be found in the synagogue library.^[15]

So, how do we make sense of the changes we have seen in gender relations, both, within Jewish life and in the wider society, alongside all the examples I mentioned earlier of the persistence of male power and the oppression of women and girls? Perhaps, all we can say is that change takes a long time to be embedded in the hearts and minds and reflexes of people – especially, when many men still have a vested interest in the patriarchal status quo. I think there has to be a complex interaction between individuals taking responsibility for their own lives and engaging with others to participate in collective transformation. Perhaps, if my mother had known at least one other woman, who had left her oppressive marriage and taken action to change her life, they could have supported one another along the way to independence. I remember moving into a bedsit in 1980, in a house owned by a Jewish woman in her 60s, who would only have women as tenants. When she interviewed me for the room, she told me a little bit about her life, including the fact that she had left her husband a few years earlier and gone to live in a bedsit herself. I remember thinking: I should introduce you to my Mum – but I didn’t do it. Perhaps, if I had, it would have made all the difference…

One of the most positive developments of the past few years has been the challenge to the gender binary that underlies the institutionalisation of male power. Perhaps, if, regardless of their biological gender, young people could simply be themselves on their own terms, wearing what they like, expressing themselves in their own ways, exploring their interests without being channelled in one direction or another by the gender-bind, being female or male would not carry with it the same burden of assumptions and expectations. As I mentioned in my Rosh Ha-Shanah morning sermon, I’m proud that the Council of the synagogue endorsed the decision taken by the education committee at the beginning of last year to offer our young people the non-gendered option of B’ Mitzvah alongside Bat Mitzvah and Bar Mitzvah. May this congregation always be a beacon of equality and inclusion, celebrating all the different individuals, couples and families who choose to find a home amongst us. And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue

23^rd November 2019 – 25^th Cheshvan 5780

1. The Second Sex was first published in English by Jonathan Cape in 1953, and subsequently, by Penguin Books in 1972. ↑

2. See chapter 2 of my book, Trouble-Making Judaism (David Paul Books, 2012): Why Miriam Spoke Against Moses: An untold Story. ↑

3. See chapter 3 of Trouble-Making Judaism: B’ruria: A Suitable Case for Mistreatment. ↑

4. See chapter 4 of Trouble-Making Judaism: Fräulein Rabbiner Regina Jonas and the Mysterious Disappearance of the First Woman Rabbi ↑

5. https://tuc150.tuc.org.uk/stories/dagenham-womens-strike/ ↑

6. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1975/65/enacted ↑

7. https://edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/17270 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/1047291.stm ↑

8. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/7/crossheading/applications-for-gender-recognition-certificate ↑

9. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/33/contents ↑

10. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2013/30/contents/enacted/data.htm ↑

11. The first two books to make a mark were: On Women and Judaism by Blu Greenburg (JPSA, 1981) and On Being a Jewish Feminist edited by Susanna Heschel (Schocken Books, 1983) ↑

12. SCM Press, 1994. ↑

13. SCM press, 2000. ↑

14. Kulmus Publications, 2015. ↑

15. Published by Women of Reform Judaism and the Union of Reform Judaism Press in New York in 2008. ↑

Today, we begin reading the Torah – again – and so, usher in an annual cycle that we return to year after year. How can we be beginning now? Surely, life renews itself in the spring, not in the autumn? The autumn is a season of dying – in glorious shades and hues. Nevertheless, for Jews, the autumn is all about beginnings – from harat olam, the ‘birthday of the world’ on Rosh Ha-Shanah through our t’shuvah journeys urging us to ‘return’ to the true path of our lives and make a new beginning after the gates close on Yom Kippur. And then, the building of the sukkah, a make-shift hut, too flimsy to shelter us from the storms of life, reminding us that everything we build and create is like that: fragile and impermanent. Finally, we complete the cycle of Torah readings on Simchat Torah and begin again with B’reishit – Genesis.

So, here we are this Shabbat morning, preparing to read from the first parashah, the Torah portion, B’reishit. The first Creation story with which the Torah opens in Genesis chapter 1 is magnificent and majestic. Out of ‘formlessness and void’– tohu va-vohu – God summons Life, the world into existence; all its material elements; everything with the capacity of growth within it – from blades of grass and creeping swarms through creatures of the waters and the sky and the earth – including us: humanity. Save for the curious anomaly of the description of the creation of the Sun, Moon and stars on the ‘fourth day’, and the absence of our ape forbears, a Darwinian evolutionist with a penchant for poetry could not have said it better.

Of course, we may be returning to the tales of beginnings related in the Torah, but we know that we are not really beginning again. We are simply continuing with our lives, interrupted as they were for some remarkable moments during the sacred days that mark autumn each year. But let’s imagine for the sake of entering into the spirit of B’reishit, the first portion of the first Book of the Torah, which is all about beginnings, that the New Year is really a new year. Interestingly, the word for ‘year’ in Hebrew, shanah, is based on the root – Shin Nun Hei – that means, both, to ‘change’ and to ‘repeat’. It makes sense: the year goes around and around, the cycle is repeated, and yet, each New Year is a new year. The same can be said for the days of our lives: a new day is a new day. And so, even if very little seems to be changing in our lives from day-to-day, as we awake each morning to a new day, we have the opportunity of making a mini new beginning in the midst of our lives.

But how do we do this? It’s extremely hard. After all, for the most part, each day is spent dealing with so much that we feel we cannot change – on the domestic front, in our working lives. And as we grow older, the energy required to begin afresh is hampered and constrained by health issues that can make the effort involved just too overwhelming. And yet. One of the problems we face in trying to make mini new beginnings is that we tend to focus exclusively on the macro-level. When we become preoccupied with the enormity of everything around us and the massive issues that dominate our lives – Brexit, climate change, the global refugee crisis – we are likely to fail to notice refreshing signs of life on the micro-level – like the birds chirping with joy after the rain. And yet, even when we feel weighed down with our concerns about the world and our anxieties about ourselves and our loved ones, each new day promises micro-moments with the potential to lift our spirits and delight our senses – like the refreshing feel of water on our faces washing away sleep.

Most people could quote in English the first words of Torah, the opening words of Genesis chapter 1: ‘In the beginning’. Actually, the Hebrew doesn’t say that. The Hebrew is B’reishit – ‘In beginning’ not Ba-reishit ‘In the beginning’. There is no definite article: B’reishit bara Elohim eit ha-shamayim v’eit ha-aretz – ‘In beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth’. The ‘big bang’ aside, there is no time ‘back then’ we can designate as ‘the beginning’. Beginning is a process not a time. As we read in the Yotzeir blessing in the daily morning service: The Eternal One ‘renews the work of beginning continually every day’ – m’chaddeish b’chol yom tamid ma’aseih v’reishit.^[1] And so, it is with us. At any moment, at every moment, we have the possibility of engaging in beginning, and of crafting our lives anew out of our 21^st-century version of tohu va-vohu, ‘formlessness and void’; the brokenness and chaos all around us.

I have a poem pinned to the noticeboard in my study at home. It’s by Marge Piercy and is called Nishmat,^[2] after the prayer that is part of the morning service: Nishmat kol-chai t’vareich et shimcha, Adonai, Eloheinu – ‘The breath of all Life shall bless Your name, Eternal One our God.’^[3] It’s quite a long poem, but I want to quote it in full – and will end with it – because it has so much to teach us about the challenge of rising to embrace every new day – and also because, as we resume the Torah reading cycle with tales of beginnings, it may inspire us to find ways to navigate the micro- and macro-worlds we inhabit, and strive to renew our lives day by day.

Nishmat by Marge Piercy

When the night slides under with the last dimming star

and the red sky lightens between the trees,

and the heron glides tipping heavy wings in the river,

when crows stir and cry out their harsh joy,

and swift creatures of the night run towards their burrows,

and the deer raises her head and sniffs the freshening air,

and the shadows grow more distinct and then shorten,

then we rise into the day still clean as new snow.

The cat washes its paw and greets the day with gratitude.

Leviathan salutes breaching with a column of steam.

The hawk turning in the sky cries out a prayer like a knife.

We must wonder at the sky now thin as a speckled eggshell,

that now piles up its boulders of storm to crash down,

that now hangs a furry grey belly into the street.

Every day we find a new sky and a new earth

with which we are trusted like a perfect toy.

We are given the salty river of our blood

winding through us, to remember the sea and our

kindred under the waves, the hot pulsing that knocks

in our throats to consider our cousins in the grass

and the trees, all bright scattered rivulets of life.

We are given the wind within us, the breath

To shape into words that steal time, that touch

like hands and pierce like bullets, that waken

truth and deceit, sorrow and pity and joy,

that waste precious air in complaints, in lies,

in floating traps for power on the dirty air.

Yet holy breath still stretches our lungs to sing.

We are given the body, that momentary kibbutz

of elements that belong to frog and polar

bear, corn and oak tree, volcano and glacier.

We are lent for a time these minerals in water

and a morning every day, a morning to wake up,

rejoice and praise life in our spines, our throats,

our knees, our genitals, our brains, our tongues.

We are given fire to see against the dark,

to think, to read, to study how we are to live,

to bank in ourselves against defeat and despair

that cool and muddy our resolves, that make us forget

what we saw we must do. We are given passion

to rise like the sun in our minds with the new day

and burn the debris of habit and greed and fear.

We stand in the midst of the burning world

primed to burn with compassionate love and justice,

to turn inward and find holy fire at the core,

to turn outward and see the world that is all

of one flesh with us, see under the trash, through

the smog, the furry bee in the apple blossom,

the trout leaping, the candles our ancestors lit for us.

Fill us as the tide rustles into the reeds in the marsh.

Fill us as the rushing water overflows the pitcher.

Fill us as light fills a room with its dancing.

Let the little quarrels of the bones and the snarling

of the lesser appetites and the whining of the ego cease.

Let silence still us so you may show us your shining

and we can out of that stillness rise and praise.

And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue

26^th October 2019 – 27^th Tishri 5780

1. The Yotzeir (‘Creator) – known by the first word of the blessing that differentiates it from other blessings – is the first of two blessings that precede the Sh’ma in the morning service. According to the notes in Siddur Lev Chadash, (Liberal Judaism, 1995, p. 666), the sources of the blessing are found in the Mishnah: B’rachot 1:4 and in the Babylonian Talmud (c. 500 CE), tractates B’rachot 11a-b, 12a and Chagigah 12b. The first liturgical version of the prayer is found in Seder Rav Amram, I, 20 (by Amram ben Sheshai, c. 860 CE, Babylonia. Ed. Daniel Goldschmidt, 1971). ↑

2. The Art of Blessing the Day. Poems on Jewish Themes by Marge Piercy. Five Leaves Publishing, 1998, pp. 115-117 ↑

3. According to the notes in Siddur Lev Chadash, (Liberal Judaism, 1995, p.670), the sources of Nishmat are found in the Babylonian Talmud, tractates B’rachot 59b, P’sachim 118a and Ta’anit 6b – inspired by biblical verses found in Psalms 35:10 and 103:1. The first liturgical version of the prayer is found in Seder Rav Amram, II, 21. ↑

What a summer it has been. The hottest July on record. Possibly, one of the wettest Augusts on record. And then, the hottest late August bank holiday on record. And while experiencing climate change in action and dealing with its impact – not least on the National Grid and the rail network – some of us have also been finding times to reassure ourselves with visits to the beach, where the sight of people sunbathing and paddling and swimming suggests that, thankfully, some things don’t seem to be changing…

A new month begins tomorrow. Yes: September, with the prospect of new beginnings for schools, colleges and universities – and for the educational programmes for adults and children here at the synagogue, too. And another new month also begins tomorrow – rather, this evening at sunset: the Hebrew month of Elul. Traditionally, Elul is the time when we prepare ourselves for the aseret y’mei t’shuvah, the ‘ten days of return’ that begin on Rosh Ha-Shanah and conclude on Yom Kippur.

Like the names of the other months of the Hebrew calendar that were derived from our people’s exile in Babylonia, the word, Elul is Babylonian. It originated in the Akkadian word for ‘Harvest’, elūlu, and first appears in the TaNaKh^[1], the Hebrew Bible, in the Book of Nehemiah, which relates the return of ‘N’chemyah, son of Hachalyah’ to Jerusalem forty years after the destruction of the city, to oversee the work of repair.^[2] Significantly, the month of Elul is mentioned in the context of a verse in chapter six stating that ‘[t]he wall was finished on the 25^th of Elul, after fifty-two days’^[3]. Then, later, chapter 8 relates how the Israelites, having settled back into their towns, assembled before the Watergate in Jerusalem at the beginning of the seventh month, and listened to Ezra the scribe read ‘the scroll of the teaching of Moses’ – sefer torat Moshe^[4].

The Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and King Solomon’s Temple in 586 BCE. When the Persians defeated the Babylonians, King Cyrus of Persia permitted our ancestors to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple. The scene described in the Book of Nehemiah relates to that great rebuilding project. And it also hints at another kind of repair: the repair of the people as they ‘assembled before the Watergate at the beginning of the seventh month, and listened to Ezra the scribe read ‘the scroll of the teaching of Moses’ – sefer torat Moshe.

So: Elul, the month the month that precedes ‘the seventh month’, when the work of repair begins, or rather, we prepare to make the journey of repair. In S.Y. Agnon’s marvelous anthology, Days of Awe, we find this story:^[5] “A tale is told of one who sat in study before the zaddik Rabbi Mordecai of Nadvorna, of blessed memory [19^th cent.], and before Rosh ha-Shanah came to obtain permission to be dismissed. That zaddik said to him, ‘Why are you hurrying?’ Said he to him, ‘I am a Reader, and I must look into the festival prayer book, and put my prayers in order.’ Said the zaddik to him, ‘The prayer book is the same as it was last year. But it would be better for you to look into your deeds, and put yourself in order.’”

This tale reminds us of the purpose of the yamim nora’im, the ‘awed days’ that begin on Rosh Ha-Shanah and conclude on Yom Kippur, and of the unique opportunity that the month of Elul provides for us to examine our deeds of the past year and resolve to restore our relationships. By the time Rosh Ha-Shanah arrives, there is so little time to make amends – just ten days in all. How much more sensible to begin the process in Elul. There is an interesting difference between Sephardi and Ashkenazi practice in this regard. In Sephardi tradition, which originated with the Jews of Sepharad – those who lived in Spain and Portugal until the expulsions of 1492 and 1497 – it is customary to recite prayers for s’lichot, ‘forgiveness’ and blow the shofar (ram’s horn) at the end of shacharit (morning prayer) from Rosh Chodesh (the new moon of) Elul until the eve of Rosh Ha-Shanah. In the Ashkenazi tradition that has its roots in Jewish life in northern and central Europe during the Middle Ages, s’lichot prayers and the blowing of the shofar begin from midnight on the Saturday prior to Rosh Ha-Shanah – unless there are, as this year, less than four days between Saturday night and the New Year, in which case, the ritual is put back a week.

So, it looks like Ashkenazi Jews lose out when it comes to making the best use of Elul as a month of preparation for the yamim nora’im. But there are other Elul traditions to help us prepare. There is the custom of expressing our best wishes to people l’shanah tovah – ‘for a good year’ – both in person, and when writing letters – and these days, emails. This simple practice serves as a daily reminder to ourselves and others that the New Year is approaching. It is also traditional to visit the graves of loved ones during Elul – reminding ourselves of our connection with those who went before us, and the legacy we have received from them. On a more demanding level, Elul is the time to begin to orientate ourselves to the major challenges of the Days of Awe: T’shuvah, T’fillah and Tz’dakah – translated most usually as, ‘Repentance, Prayer and Charity’. The Hebrew words are more complex. T’shuvah: We are called to ‘return’ to the true path of our lives, to ourselves and to others. T’fillah: We are challenged to judge ourselves – l’hit’palleil – essentially that is what t’fillah, ‘prayer’, means. Tz’dakah: We are summoned to practice ‘righteousness’ by giving to those in need. Each of these tasks, T’shuvah, T’fillah and Tz’dakah, represents a demand on our time and our energies – and challenges us to reflect on our values.

Elul is a month of preparation for the yamim nora’im. But for Jews, preparation is always practical; it is never simply a matter of what’s happening in our heads. We can make a start by engaging in cheshbon ha-nefesh, literally, make an ‘account of the soul’ – in much the same way as we examine the state of our finances. The t’shuvah journey begins in Elul with just such a cheshbon – an account of our souls and an account of our actions – towards family, friends, colleagues, fellow congregants, neighbours, people in the wider community, strangers near and far, and the world around us. In other words, we make a list of the wrongs we have committed that encompasses all the different errors and misdemeanors of our everyday lives: ignoring the needs of our partner or spouse, being impatient and jumping the queue, discarding our rubbish without checking which items might be recycled. The list goes on…

But there is a danger in drawing up an ‘account’ of our misdeeds, if we simply focus on what we have done to others. The danger is that we are left feeling totally wretched – which is the last place we want to be if we are going to have the courage to change. Our cheshbon ha-nefesh can only work if we also focus on what we have done to ourselves over the past year. In fact, this is the place to make a start, before we consider how we have treated others. If we can understand how we have hurt ourselves, mistreated ourselves, ignored ourselves, belittled ourselves, then we may have a chance of recognising what we have done to other people.

The month of Elul signals a new beginning. But it is important to acknowledge that Elul of itself does not bring renewal; it is up to us to use the month for this purpose. Disconcertingly, a similar word in the TaNaKh, the Hebrew noun, Elil, means ‘worthlessness’ – as in Jeremiah^[6], where the prophet rails against the worthless divinations and deceits of false prophets. Spelt almost identically – except for the difference of a vowel – ‘u’ in Elul, ‘i’ in Elil, the words Elul and Elil – the one Babylonian, the other, Hebrew – are not related; although, curiously, in the verse in Jeremiah^[7], Elil is written to look like Elul. But even without this scribal error, the similarity between these two very different words teaches us an important lesson: Unless we take steps to renew our lives during Elul, the gift of Elul will be worthless.

So: the month of Elul begins this evening. Like most Jews in Britain – and the other synagogues in Brighton and Hove – BHPS follows the Ashkenazi tradition. But let’s not wait until the Saturday night of 21^st September to begin our journey of t’shuvah, ‘return’. As we read in another gem from S.Y. Agnon’s anthology^[8] – taken from the Maharil, an acronym for ‘Our Teacher, the Rabbi Ya’akov Levi’ Moelin:^[9] “All the month of Elul before eating and sleeping let every person look into their soul, and search their deeds, that they may make confession.” As the sun sets this evening, let’s resolve to begin the process of making a new beginning. And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue

31^st August 2019 – 30^th Av 5779

1. Acronym for Torah, N’vi’im, K’tuvim – ‘Teaching, Prophets, Writings’ – the three sections of the Hebrew Bible. ↑

2. Nehemiah 1:1 ff. ↑

3. Neh. 6:15. ↑

4. Neh. 8:1ff. ↑

5. Schocken Books, New York, 1965, p. 38. ↑

6. Jeremiah 14: 14. ↑

7. Ibid. ↑

8. Agnon, p. 25. ↑

9. c. 1365-1427. ↑

Good morning. Eight days ago, the peace of the Sabbath at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh was shattered when an armed far-right extremist, screaming ‘death to the Jews’ went on the rampage, killing 11 people. The first incident of its kind since Jews first began to immigrate to the United States in the 1650s, that horrific attack was also a horrifying sign of the times. Across the Americas and Europe, in particular, we see the resurgence of the far-right, spewing hatred of black and LGBT people, Jews, Muslims and immigrants.

We had hoped that the end of the 20th century had seen the end of such atrocities. This year, 11th November marks the centenary of the Armistice, which concluded the First World War. There is also another significant anniversary that immediately precedes it: the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the ‘Night of the Broken Glass’. After five years in which the Jewish citizens of Germany were subjected to a systematic process of legal, economic, educational, cultural and social discrimination that excluded them from German society, 9th November 1938 marked the beginning of the violent persecution of the Jews of Europe that culminated in the Holocaust; what Jews call the Sho’ah, the ‘devastation’.^[1]

As each year passes, there are fewer people alive who experienced Kristallnacht and the Sho’ah. At Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue just two survivors remain, one of whom, Margarete Mendelsohn, has published her account of those years: The Nazis – Through the Eyes of a Child. ^[2] Margarete will be reading from her autobiography during our special Kristallnacht anniversary programme. If you’d like to join us, you can book in – free of charge – on eventbrite.

We have been planning the 80th anniversary Kristallnacht commemoration for months. Of course, we had not planned to hold another commemoration on the preceding Shabbat – just yesterday – in solidarity with the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. The past haunts us. The present challenges us. Last Monday, the Sussex Jewish Representative Council organised a vigil for the Jews of Pittsburgh at Hove Town Hall, which was attended by 200 people from across Brighton and Hove. Speakers included a local Imam and a representative of City of Sanctuary. Apparently, the killer targeted the Tree of Life synagogue because of the involvement of the Jewish congregations of Pittsburgh in supporting refugees. That support will continue. The lesson of Pittsburgh and of Kristallnacht is that we must all stand together against hatred and work together to support the most vulnerable and marginal in our society. May remembrance of victims of violence and hatred past and present, inspire us to build relationships of understanding and respect between communities, nations and peoples and to cooperate together to repair the world.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue

1. For an authoritative and accessible history of the Sho’ah, see: The War Against the Jews 1933-1945 by Lucy S. Dawidowicz, Penguin Books, 1975. The word Sho’ah is derived from the Hebrew Bible – e.g. see Isaiah 10:3. ↑
2. MyVoice Publishing, 2012 ↑

On Tuesday evening, I participated in the pre-launch Assembly of Brighton and Hove Citizens UK. Over the past couple of years, Peter Brierley, the community organiser of Citizens UK, based in London, has made regular trips to Brighton forging contacts with local organisations, including local churches as well as our synagogue, with a view to bringing Citizens UK to the city. In February, Peter led a two-day Citizens UK training workshop at the shul with representatives from a number of local organisations, including two BHPS congregants – one, wearing two hats – and me. But Peter stayed in the background at the Assembly. Held at Brighton Table Tennis Club, which is one of the organisations that has taken up the challenge of establishing Citizens UK in Brighton and Hove, the event was skilfully hosted by two young people – a student from Sussex University and a Syrian refugee, who has found his voice as a result of getting involved in the Brighton Table Tennis Club. More of that young Syrian refugee in a moment.

Citizens UK is about bringing power back to the people. As we read on their website:^[1]

Citizens UK organises communities to act together for power, social justice and the common good. We are the home of community organising in the UK, with diverse civil society alliances in London, Milton Keynes, Nottingham, Birmingham, Wales and Leeds. We develop the leadership capacity of our members so they can hold politicians and other decision-makers to account on the issues that matter to them. Community organising is democracy in action: winning victories that change lives and transform communities.

Up and down the country, local people do not have an effective voice. The plan for Brighton and Hove Citizens is that the funds pledged by local organisations will make it possible to employ a local community organiser in September, who will then engage in a listening exercise, so that the concerns of local people are brought before the candidates of all the political parties at the local elections next May.

One of the people who has helped to get the initiative off the ground is Saul Becker, the new deputy Vice Chancellor at Sussex University. In his previous university posts, Saul has combined his university role with establishing Citizens UK in two cities, Nottingham and Birmingham. How fortunate we are that Saul Becker has moved to Brighton! And he has already achieved key results: Sussex University has pledged £10,000 a year to the fund to pay the salary of the local community organiser and Sussex Student Union has pledged £1500 per year. The target is £30,000. So far, £24,000 has been pledged, and the synagogue council has made the decision to devote one third of this year’s High Holy Day Appeal to Citizens UK, as a first step towards demonstrating our commitment to establishing the initiative in Brighton and Hove.

Judging by what local voices have had the opportunity to say as a result of Citizens UK’s work elsewhere, the issues that are likely to emerge in Brighton and Hove encompass the need for a rent-cap on privately rented properties and other housing issues, issues of employment and financial hardship, including the cost of credit, social care, and safe passage for unaccompanied children and vulnerable adults.^[2]

You could say that since we can probably guess the priority issues for local people in our city, why do we need to go to the expense of employing a community organiser to listen to them and identify their concerns? One of the main factors in the success of Citizens UK so far – which has included the stunning Living Wage campaign – has been, precisely, that it is centred on local people getting the chance to be citizens, to articulate their concerns to those with the power to make decisions – principally, local councillors – and so, have a central role in shaping policy on a local level.

There is no doubt that there are a lot of social justice and community organisations doing good work in Brighton and Hove. However, the dimension of coming together to galvanise local people in order to have an impact on the policymakers has been missing. Hopefully, these diverse groups will get on board with the initiative to establish Citizens UK in order to tackle some of the intractable problems in our city. After all, Brighton is not just a trendy, progressive heartland; an oasis of ‘Labour’ and ‘Remain’ voters on the south coast and an attractive tourist destination. One of the items in the programme on Tuesday evening involved another Sussex University student doing a mini multiple-choice quiz with us. One particular fact, struck me very powerfully. The question concerned where Brighton is on the list of cities when it comes to the suicide rate. Is it 10th or, perhaps, 30th? It turns out that our city is third – after Blackpool and Durham. Yes: the third highest suicide rate in Britain is here in Brighton and Hove.

There is no doubt that we need Citizens UK in our city. As I said a few months ago, the first task of the local community organiser will be to listen to local people. I’ve just quoted a statistic – one among many. Statistics, by definition, are abstract. To give another example: We are aware that homelessness continues to be significant phenomenon nationwide, but all we hear and see are statistics. When it comes to the local terrain, however, we can see the reality of homelessness on the streets of our city. We can see people and the bundles of their belongings in doorways. In recent weeks, a homeless man has been sleeping on our doorway – here at the synagogue. Thankfully, with the help of Street link,^[3] a local organisation that the shul council has chosen as another one of the recipients of this year’s High Holy Day Appeal, he is now receiving help. One of the speakers on Tuesday evening was Craig, who had been on the street for many years. He told us that what kept him going during that terrible time was his creativity, mostly expressed in the poems he composed. He recited one of his poems to us. To hear Craig’s poetic account of his decidedly un-poetic experience was very moving.

We need to hear the individual voices of the homeless. We also need to hear the individual voices of refugees. In recent years, the refugee crisis has dominated the headlines, and we have been particularly aware of the conflict in Syria. The news is so overwhelming. How do we make sense of it? Brighton and Hove has been designated as a ‘City of Sanctuary’.^[4] This means that ‘refugees are welcome’ here.^[5] For the past couple of years ,we have collected weekly donations of non-perishable foods and toiletries for the refugees supported by Brighton Voices in Exile.^[6] More recently, we held an all-night study marathon at Shavuot in aid of Thousand 4 1000,^[7] another local refugees’ charity – in this case, raising money to house refugees. The thinking behind the name is that for every 1000 people who donate just £1 per month a refugee can be given a home. You can work out for yourselves how many refugees might be housed if 10,000 people donated £2 per month.

But still, giving donations to needy refugees however essential, is not the same as listening to their stories and finding out about their lives. Speaking articulately, having learnt English since he arrived in Britain, Wassim, the young Syrian co-host of the evening I mentioned earlier, brought the reality of being a refugee home to us. Wassim began by saying, “I have seen the best of the world and the worst of the world.” Then he spoke briefly about having grown up with a certain amount of privilege, including, attending a private school, and then having his world turned upside down. Wassim experienced the horrors of the conflict in his home country before finding himself in a refugee camp in Lebanon. Let me share with you what he said next:

If anyone has an excuse to give up to say what’s the point, or change isn’t possible it’s me but that’s not what I’m going to do. Maybe when you see me you see a refugee but I ask you please don’t label me. I’m a citizen of Brighton, a member of Brighton Table Tennis Club and a student of Bhasvic.^[8] I believe change is possible and change starts with me. What can I do, what can Brighton and Hove Table Tennis Club do and how can I be a part of that. Don’t get me wrong I see what’s wrong with the world, it makes me angry but it moves me to want to act. I’m inspired by the best of the world to believe that we can work towards a better world, a better Syria, a better Lebanon and a better Brighton.

Listening to Wassim was very inspiring. After hearing his testimony, we were then invited to take a few minutes to speak with the person sitting next to us to share the issues that resonate with us, and a particular change we would like to make. ‘1-2-1s’ as Citizens UK calls them, are a central feature of the work of galvanising people. The goal of becoming active citizens engaging with and transforming our communities and the society in which we live begins with individuals speaking and listening to one another.

In other words, it begins with our stories. A strong community is built out of our lives as individuals, our experiences. So, what happens when the stories of individuals are not told? The story of the community vanishes. Which brings me to this week’s Torah portion, Chukkat. When the narrative resumes at Numbers, chapter 20, thirty-eight years have elapsed and not one word about them. Let’s be clear about this: last week’s parashah, Korach, continuing on from the previous portion, Sh’lach L’cha, narrates events in the second year of our ancestors’ journey in the wilderness. When the narrative picks up again in this week’s parashah, it is the first month of the fortieth year (Numbers 20:1). What happened during those lost years? We will never know. Where are the stories? Were they ever written down? And if they were scribed, why hasn’t an account of that time survived? I suspect that the stories that people told during those years of wandering were deliberately not written down. Why might one reach that conclusion? It is in Sh’lach L’cha, the portion of two weeks ago that we learn that following the ‘evil report’ of ten of the twelve tribal leaders concerning the reconnoitre of the land (Numbers 13:32ff.), the people were condemned to wander in the wilderness for a total of forty years. One verse states the matter very boldly (Numbers 14:33):

Your children shall be wanderers in the wilderness forty years, and shall bear your strayings, until your carcasses are consumed in the wilderness.

Now that’s an image! In a sense that fainthearted generation suffered a double punishment: condemned to die in the wilderness, they were also condemned to disappear without trace, their experiences excised from the record, just as their bodies were utterly consumed in that forbidding terrain, as if they had never lived.

We cannot relate and transmit the stories of that wilderness-wandering generation during those lost years. But we can and we must tell our own stories and listen to the stories of those who have hitherto been voiceless in Brighton and Hove. Again: Wassim said: “I believe change is possible and change begins with me.” Change begins with each one of us. By working together as citizens of Brighton and Hove, we can ensure that all the diverse voices of those living across our city are expressed – and translated into demands for change. Kein y’hi ratzon. May this be our will. And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue – Adat Shalom v’Rei’ut (‘Congregation of Peace and Friendship’)

23^rd June 2018 – 9^th Tammuz 5778

1. http://www.citizensuk.org/about_us ↑
2. http://www.citizensuk.org/about_us ↑
3. www.streetlink.org.uk ↑
4. https://cityofsanctuary.org/ ↑
5. For the national ‘Refugees are welcome’ campaign, see: http://www.refugeesarewelcome.org/ ↑
6. https://en-gb.facebook.com/brightonvoicesinexile/ ↑
7. https://thousandfor1000.wordpress.com/ ↑
8. ‘Bhasvic’ is Brighton, Hove and Sussex Sixth Form College. ↑

Dear President Trump,

I’m writing to you in the hope that you will help to resolve a problem that until now has proved completely intractable: the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians over a piece of land that each people regards as their home.

Why am I writing to you? After all, I’m a British citizen, so if I’m looking for help from a government, surely, I should be turning to the British government? But the thing is, the record of British governments on this particular issue isn’t good. In fact, in large measure Britain helped to create the problem. Certainly, in a letter to Lord Rothschild on November 2^nd 1917, Lord Balfour asserted that “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”^[1] But following the collapse of the Ottoman empire at the end of the First World War, Britain and France divided up the territories between them. Of course, at the time this was only supposed to be an interim situation. But then, in the subsequent decades, the British Mandate in Palestine only served to make matters worse, and when a proposal to partition the land into two states was put before the United Nations on November 29^th 1947,^[2] Britain abstained. The United States, on the other hand, voted for partition.

Despite the UN’s positive vote in favour of two states, the conflict continued, and when the British Mandate came to an end on May 14^th 1948, the leadership of the Jewish community in Palestine declared the establishment of the State of Israel. That bold unilateral act precipitated a war, and the fledgling nation was immediately attacked by the neighbouring Arab states. The war continued for two years. When it finally came to an end, the ceasefire line cut Jerusalem in two, with the old city sacred to Jews, Christian and Muslims on the east side of the line.

That ceasefire line, known as ‘the Green Line’, effectively established the border between Israel and Jordan. In June 1967, the Green Line was breached, when following the concerted attack of the Arab states, Israel was the victor in what became known as the ‘Six Day War’ (5-10 June). For Israel, victory on the ground, was immediately transformed into a spiritual homecoming, as for the first time in decades, Jews now had access to the Jewish quarter of the old city, and the western wall of the last Temple, which had been destroyed by the Romans conquerors in 70 CE. But the spiritual homecoming was soon overwhelmed in the years that followed by the heavy cost of occupation of the territory beyond the Green Line – a cost borne by the Palestinians, and also by Israelis, as occupation precipitated the development of a campaign of terror against Israel.

Why am I telling you all this? You probably know it already. And why you? I mentioned that the United States voted in favour of the UN partition plan in November 1947. Years later, after decades of conflict, including further wars after 1967 and the continuing Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, it was an American president, who helped broker a peace accord, which brought the two sides together. I will never forget being in my sister, Julia’s home on September 13^th 1993, Julia heavily pregnant – she gave birth just over two weeks later – and her two-year-old daughter, Rose, running around the living room, as we sat glued to the TV screen, watching President Clinton facilitate a handshake between Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Two men who had been sworn enemies, reaching across the gulf between them with the help of the President of the United States of America. And what a gulf that was: Yitzhak Rabin, a former Israeli soldier, as Minister of Defence at the time had been involved in directing the Israeli military response to the outbreak of the first Palestinian intifada in 1987; meanwhile, as chairman of the PLO, Yasser Arafat had been the instigator of numerous terror assaults, including, the murder of eleven Israeli athletes at the Olympic games in Munich in 1972.

A historic moment and cause for celebration. But the rejoicing was short-lived. As we all know that famous handshake on the White House lawn came to nothing. The Oslo Accords of 1993 so difficult to achieve, were shattered one fateful November night in 1995 (4^th) with the murder of Prime Minister Rabin by an Israeli fanatic at the end of a peace rally in Tel Aviv.

Now, I have to admit when it comes to American politics, my allegiance is with the Democrats rather than the Republicans. I had hoped that Hillary Clinton would become president at the last presidential election, not least because as Secretary of State in the first Obama administration (2009-2013), she had addressed the issue of the on-going Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I had hoped that as president, she would make the issue a priority.

So, I am writing to you, Mr President, because you are the incumbent president of the United States. But that’s not the only reason for my letter to you. As president, you have already intervened in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, by moving the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and so affirming the position of the Israeli government that the whole of Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. I’m sure that you would like to see a peaceful resolution to the conflict, but this is not the way to do it. On the contrary, by moving the American Embassy to Jerusalem you have taken sides – something which previous American administrations have not done – and betrayed the trust of the Palestinian people.

But even with the American Embassy now up and running in Jerusalem, all is not lost. After all, you are the president of the United States – and the embassy is situated in West Jerusalem, not in East Jerusalem. In recent months, the world has witnessed a change of heart on your part in regard to dealing with North Korea. Perhaps, you may yet secure a nuclear-weapons agreement and help heal the breach between North Korea and South Korea. That would be a truly historic achievement. And so, Mr President you have an opportunity to do likewise in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. All you need to do is make it clear that the establishment of the American Embassy in West Jerusalem proclaims the message that West Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, and then declare your intention to establish an American Embassy in East Jerusalem, following the negotiation of a two-state solution in which East Jerusalem becomes the capital of Palestine, with the ancient sacred walled city under joint Israeli-Palestinian governance, supported by a special international body, agreed by both nations.

Perhaps, this looks like an impossible dream. But surely, you of all people, never allow yourself to be stymied by what others deem to be impossible. And there’s something else to consider. Watching the television reports of the gathering held at the opening of the new American Embassy, it was clear that there was a strong presence from Christian groups. On the surface, all that this demonstrates is Christian support for the ‘Holy Land’ that was home to Jesus, which seems perfectly reasonable. But the agenda of fundamentalist Christian groups goes way beyond allegiance to the land in which Jesus, a faithful Jew after all, was born, lived and died. The principal reason for their ardent support for Israel is the belief that it is essential for Israel to become the singular home of the Jews, and that it is only when all the Jews of the world have returned to their ancestral home that the Messiah Jesus will return, at which point all the Jews will see the light and convert to Christianity. Now, I’m certain that you don’t subscribe to this agenda, but that doesn’t mean that it is not a real agenda – and a real threat to Israel as a Jewish state.

So, Mr President, as a steadfast friend of the State of Israel, there are two very pertinent reasons for you to take steps to help reignite negotiations between the Israeli government and the leadership of the Palestinians: first, because justice demands that finally, the land is partitioned into two states, so that a secure State of Palestine is established alongside a secure State of Israel; second, because the land that is sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims is the homeland – the only homeland – of the Jewish people.

Mr President, I would like to conclude my letter to you – my plea to you to engage your energies and the energies of your administration in the task of helping to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – by quoting extracts from a speech delivered at the alternative Memorial Day event on April 17^th 2018 held in Tel Aviv in the presence of bereaved Israelis and Palestinians. The speech was given by Israeli writer, David Grossman, whose son, Uri was killed in the 2006 Lebanon War. In his address, David Grossman asked a crucial question:^[3]

What is a home?

Home is a place whose walls — borders — are clear and accepted; whose existence is stable, solid, and relaxed; whose inhabitants know its intimate codes; whose relations with its neighbors have been settled. It projects a sense of the future.

And we Israelis, even after 70 years … are not yet there. We are not yet home. Israel was established so that the Jewish people, who have nearly never felt at-home-in-the-world, would finally have a home. And now, 70 years later, strong Israel may be a fortress, but it is not yet a home.

The solution to the great complexity of Israeli-Palestinian relations can be summed up in one short formula: if the Palestinians don’t have a home, the Israelis won’t have a home either.

The opposite is also true: if Israel will not be a home, then neither will Palestine.

At the end of his address, David Grossman turned to the ‘home’ he would like Israel and Palestine to be:

Where we will live a peaceful and safe life; a clear life; a life that will not be enslaved — by fanatics of all kinds — for the purposes of some total, messianic, and nationalist vision. Home, whose inhabitants will not be the material that ignites a principle greater than them, and supposedly beyond their comprehension. That life in it would be measured in its humanity. That suddenly a nation will wake up in the morning and see that it is human. And that that human will feel that he is living in an uncorrupted, connected truly egalitarian, non-aggressive and non-covetous place. In a state that runs simply on the concern for the person living within it, for every person living within it, out of compassion, and out of tolerance for all the many dialectics of ‘being Israeli’. Because ‘These are the living words of Israel’.

… One can dream. One can also admire achievements. Israel is worth fighting for. I also wish these things for our Palestinian friends: a life of independence, freedom and peace, and building a new, reformed nation. And I wish that in 70 years’ time our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, both Palestinian and Israeli, will stand here and each will sing their version of their national anthem.

But there is one line that they will be able to sing together, in Hebrew and Arabic: “To be a free nation in our land,” and then maybe, at last, it will be a realistic and accurate description, for both nations.

Israel is a fortress, but not yet a home.

David Grossman concluded his address with those words.

Mr President: Please will you do what you can to make it possible to restart negotiations, so that both Israelis and Palestinians may at last be at home.

Yours sincerely,

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue

26^th May 2018 – 12^th Sivan 5788

1. https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/The_Balfour_Declaration ↑
2. https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/7F0AF2BD897689B785256C330061D253 ↑
3. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/full-text-speech-by-david-grossman-at-alternative-memorial-day-event-1.6011820/1.6011820 ↑