Rabbi Elli Sarah

THE LEFT, ISRAEL/PALESTINE AND ANTI-SEMITISM: CHANGING THE CONVERSATION

‍‍3 Iyar 5778 - 18, April 2018

[I wrote this paper last year. I’m posting it again in the context of the recent re-emergence of the issue of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party – ETS]

Good evening everyone and thank you for inviting me to participate in this meeting. I would like to contribute to our discussion about how we can change the conversation concerning the left, Israel/Palestine and anti-Semitism by inviting us to think about how we might move away from a binary approach to the issues. In the interests of the Palestinians, who have been subjected to occupation for the past 50 years, all those who want a just resolution to the conflict are challenged to acknowledge that such a resolution will only be achieved on the basis of justice, peace and security for both peoples.

In the interests of avoiding binary conceptions, I would like to start by reminding us of the variety of Jewish responses to the conditions of Jewish existence in the late 19^th century, when Zionism emerged as a political movement in Europe in response to anti-Semitism. For Theodore Herzl and other exponents of political Zionism, the establishment of a Jewish state was the only solution to the persistence of anti-Jewish persecution in the diaspora.^[1] Nevertheless, there were at that time three major alternative approaches:

Many orthodox groups remained committed to life in the Diaspora and opposed Zionism because as they saw it, the redemption of Zion was dependent on the Divine will and the coming of the Messiah.

Jewish Socialism, as articulated by the Bund – shorthand for the General Jewish Workers’ Union in Lithuania, Poland and Russia – rejected Jewish nationalism in favour of international socialism.

Progressive Judaism argued that the people of Israel best fulfils the prophetic vision of being ‘a light unto the nations’^[2] by living amongst the nations.^[3]

So, Jews spoke with many voices – and we continue to do so. While Jewish Socialism’s opposition to Jewish nationalism has remained fairly constant since the late 19^th century, approaches within Orthodox and Progressive Judaism have become more diversified – for the most part in response to the 1967 Six Day War. And so, the past 50 years has seen ultra-Zionist religious zealots holding sway among the West Bank settlers, and the development of Progressive Zionism, which at one end of the spectrum is reluctant to publicly criticise Israeli policy, and at the other, is actively involved in challenging the occupation and campaigning for a two-state solution.

Jewish life is nothing if not extremely complex! That complexity has its roots in complex, multifaceted Jewish experience. It also has its roots in Jewish teaching. Jewish teaching is multi-vocal. Look at a page of the Mikra’ot G’dolot, the ‘great commentaries’ on the Hebrew Bible, or a page of the Babylonian Talmud, and you will find a host of interpretations and perspectives. Literalism and fundamentalism are anathema to Jewish teaching. As the saying goes, two Jews, three opinions. This has always been the way of Jewish life.

And so, there are many Zionisms, just as there are many expressions of Judaism and Jewish identity. Varieties of Zionism within ‘Zionism’, with different goals and different approaches to the Palestinians.

But before I say more about that, I would like to approach the question of how we can change the conversation concerning the left, Israel/Palestine and anti-Semitism by acknowledging an issue that precedes the Left’s exclusive presentation of Zionism as colonialism; an issue rooted in Christian anti-Semitism and in Christendom – that is, Christianity wedded to imperial power, which was the outcome of Roman Emperor Constantine converting to Christianity in the early 300s CE.^[4] Seen through the lens of historic Christian supremacist triumphalism, the Christian case against Judaism has been presented by a set of binary oppositions: Jewish law versus Christian love; Jewish justice versus Christian mercy; Jewish particularism versus Christian universalism. In reality, however, Jewish teaching embraces law and love, justice and mercy, particularism and universalism: a particular piece of land and the whole world. And so, just as the Jewish people is part of humanity, the particular bond between the Jewish people and the land forms an integral part of the Torah, of the unique history of the Jewish people and of Jewish identity for many Jews.^[5] Jews are a people of the world and a people connected to a particular land. Both. Contrary to popular myth, after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE by the Romans, Jews continued to live in the land, where the rabbis reconstructed Jewish life and teaching for a post-Temple era, culminating in the production of the Jerusalem Talmud, which was edited around the year 400.^[6] Moreover, a remnant continued to live there, mostly in Jerusalem, during the succeeding centuries. Meanwhile, vibrant Jewish life continued in other centres of Jewish existence – in particular in Babylon, present-day Iraq, where the Babylonian Talmud was edited around the year 500. Down the centuries, Jews have lived in practically every corner of the earth, including in the land.

The Left’s demonisation of Israel reflects, both, the failure to acknowledge the roots of Zionism in Jewish experience, and the failure to acknowledge the complex diversity of Jewish points of view and the diversity of Jewish life.

Now I would like to say something more about plural Zionisms, which are an expression of this diversity. The first Zionist Congress was held in Basel in 1897. In 1925, largely in response to the Arab riots of 1921, Vladimir Jabotinsky established the Revisionist movement. An open split occurred at the 14^th Zionist Congress in August 1925 between Jabotinsky’s confrontational approach towards the Arab inhabitants of the land, and the approach represented by Chaim Weitzman and others. At the Congress, Chaim Weizmann declared: ^[7]

In true friendship and partnership with the Arabs we must open the Near East to Jewish enterprise… Palestine must be built in such a way that legitimate Arab interests are not impinged upon in the slightest…- we must take Palestine as it is, with its sands and stones, Arabs and Jews as they are. That is our work. Anything else would be deception… We shall rise or fall by our work alone.

Another delegate at the Congress, Arthur Ruppin, expressed the need to acknowledge the Arab inhabitants of the land and work in partnership with them in even stronger terms:^[8]

… there is the possibility… to establish in Palestine a community where both nations, with no ruling advantage to the one, nor oppression of the other, shall work shoulder to shoulder in full equality of rights towards the economic and cultural development of the country.

Arthur Ruppin became a founder member of Brit Shalom, ‘Covenant of Peace’, an organisation with a binational approach to Zionism, which held its first meeting in his house in mid-November 1925. Martin Buber, Robert Weltsch, Hans Kohn and Hugo Bergmann were also founder members. The clearest articulation of Brit Shalom’s form of Zionism is in the ‘open letter’ that Martin Buber wrote to Mahatma Gandhi in 1939 in response to Mahatma Gandhi arguing that, and I quote, ‘Palestine belongs to the Arabs’. Let me quote from the letter. Buber wrote:^[9]

I belong to a group of people who from the time Britain conquered Palestine have not ceased to strive for the concluding of a genuine peace between Jew and Arab.

By a genuine peace we inferred and still infer that both peoples together should develop the land without the one imposing its will on the other…. We considered it a fundamental point that in this case two vital claims are opposed to each other, two claims of a different nature and a different origin which cannot objectively be pitted against one another and between which no objective decision can be made as to which is just, which unjust…

… We considered and still consider it our duty to understand and to honor the claim which is opposed to ours and to endeavor to reconcile both claims.

The continuing conflict, which included Arab riots in 1929 and 1936, marginalised the stance taken by Brit Shalom. Nevertheless it’s binational state platform was adopted by Mapam, the leftist United Workers Party in the 1940s, and in the wake of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the emergence of the Peace Now movement, once again brought different conceptions of Zionism to the fore, and in the years that followed there has been proliferation of groups concerned with working together with the Palestinians towards coexistence.

Some years ago, Jews for Justice for Palestinians asked me for a quotation from Jewish teaching to include in JfJfP literature. I chose this verse from the parashah – Torah portion – Shof’tim, Deuteronomy chapter 16, verse 20: Tzedek, tzedk tirdof – ‘Justice, justice you shall pursue.’ Pithy and powerful this statement says so much in three short Hebrew words. In Hebrew syntax, the verb usually comes first. Here, the word ‘justice’ precedes the verb, and repeated for further emphasis, teaches that it is impossible to pursue justice for one side without pursuing justice for the other. The choice of verb, however, is equally important: tirdof – ‘you shall pursue’. Justice is so hard to achieve, we have to go after it. At the same time, we have to recognise that acknowledging, as Buber puts it, that ‘two vital claims are opposed to each other, two claims of a different nature and a different origin which cannot objectively be pitted against one another and between which no objective decision can be made as to which is just, which unjust…’, securing a just resolution to the conflict – either in the form of two states or one – will involve compromises on both sides in order to achieve peaceful coexistence.

In view of a complex reality in which there are many Zionisms, but one ongoing persistent problem, namely, the occupation and the continuing dispossession of the Palestinians, the task must be to pursue – to borrow that expression from the Torah – a just resolution of the conflict. In place of the overwhelming predominance of non-constructive anti-Zionist rhetoric and demonisation of Israel, what is needed now, as Sam Bahour and Tony Klug argue, is that, either, the occupation is dismantled, so that an independent State of Palestine can be established, or, the lands occupied by Israel are incorporated into Israel and equal citizenship rights granted to the Palestinians.^[10]

Finally, in my article recently published in the American Jewish journal, Tikkun, in the special issue, ‘Israel’s Occupation at 50’, taking as my starting point that anti-Zionism is not by definition anti-Semitic, I offer three criteria for identifying an anti-Zionist position as anti-Semitic:^[11]

First: the unilateral rejection of Jewish nationalism alone among the nationalisms of the world, and the targeting of Zionism for special condemnation.

Second: this exclusive preoccupation with Israel and demonisation of the Jewish state becoming enmeshed with historic anti-Semitic tropes about Jewish power.

Third: the presentation of Zionism as a form of European colonialism without any understanding or recognition of how the Zionist movement of the late 19^th and early 20^th century was a response to the rise of a new malevolent form of racist anti-Semitism in Europe.

For the Left to engage in a new kind of conversation about Israel/Palestine, one that does not get enmeshed in anti-Semitic tropes, a starting point would be recognition of the conditions of Jewish life in which political Zionism emerged.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue

Contribution to panel discussion

(meeting organised by Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Independent Jewish Voices and the Jewish Socialist Group, 28.06.17)

See Theodore Herzl’s Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), first published in 1896, a year before the inaugural meeting of the Zionist Congress in Basle. ↑
Isaiah 47:6. ↑
The non-Zionist stance of early Progressive Judaism is expressed, for example, in paragraph 5 of ‘The Pittsburgh Platform’ of 1885: ‘We recognize, in the modern era of universal culture of heart and intellect, the approaching of the realization of Israel s great Messianic hope for the establishment of the kingdom of truth, justice, and peace among all men. We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.’ http://ccarnet.org/rabbis-speak/platforms/declaration-principles/ ↑
Emperor Constantine reigned from 306-337 CE. ↑
From the moment that Abraham and Sarah set off on a journey to a land that the Eternal promised to ‘show’ them (Genesis 12:1) until the time when their descendants completed their journey through the wilderness and camped on the eastern border of the Jordan in readiness to cross over into the land (Numbers 36:13), the land frames the Torah narrative. ↑
The work of the first generations of rabbis, the tanna’im, ‘teachers’ led to the creation of the Mishnah, the first rabbinic code of law, edited around the year 200 CE. ↑
Protocols of Fourteenth Zionist Congress, pp 328-329, translated by Hagit Lavsky, and cited in Lavsky, Hagit, German Zionists and the Emergence of Brit Shalom, translated from the Hebrew, reprinted in Reinharz, Jehuda and Shapira, Anita eds. Essential Papers on Zionism, New York University Press, 1996, pp. 664. ↑
Ibid. cited in Lavsky, p. 664. ↑
From: Martin Buber’s ‘Open Letter’ to Gandhi Regarding Palestine (February 24, 1939) in Arthur Hertzberg, ed.,The Zionist Idea. (Jewish Publications Society, 1997), pp. 463-464.

↑
See: ‘Israel Can’t Have It Both Ways. Recognize Palestine or Grant Equal Rights’ by Sam Bahour and Tony Klug, Tikkun, October 26, 2015 http://tikkun.dukejournals.org/content/30/4/26.full See also: ‘A Never Ending Occupation: The End of Hope?’ by Tony Klug, The Palestine-Israel Journal Vol.21 No.3, 2016 / The Dual Legal System http://www.pij.org/details.php?id=1692 and ‘After 50 Years: Save Israel, Stop the Occupation’ by Izhak Schnell and Daniel Bar-Tal, The Palestine-Israel Journal Vol.21 No.3, 2016 / The Dual Legal System http://www.pij.org/details.php?id=1690 ↑
‘When anti-Zionism becomes anti-Semitism and Zionism becomes anti-Palestinian’, Tikkun, Volume 32, No., 2, Spring 2017, pp. 59-62. ↑

A DAY TRIP TO AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU

‍‍23 Nisan 5778 - 8, April 2018

Eight Poems by Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

On 21st February 2018, I spent a day that began at midnight, accompanying 200 Lower Sixth Formers from Brighton College – together with their Head Teacher, Deputy Heads and the Heads of the College Houses – on a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau. On the plane journeys there and back and the following day, I wrote eight poems.

A day trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau

A day trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau?
I imagine that no one has ever slept there
except fitfully
or hungry for oblivion.

Journey to Auschwitz-Birkenau I

Gathering at midnight
in the Gala Bingo car park on Eastern Road
young voices
chatting
laughing
as we wait to begin
a sleepless day out of the everyday
with a coach ride to Gatwick.

As the plane speeds
eastwards
a journey
backwards
dawn retreating
into an endless night.

Journey to Auschwitz-Birkenau II

On the plane
I glance at the video of the flight-path:
we have just left Germany
and crossing over the Czech Republic
we are heading towards Prague.

On the monitor
our plane is a broad arrow
pointing to Kraków.

Oswiecim

Entering Oswiecim
McDonald’s beckons
and KFC.
The camp turns out to be
a few roundabouts along on the right.
But those ubiquitous signs remind me that
Oswiecim was also just like any other
ordinary town
back then

except
while 1.3 million people were murdered
1.1 million of them Jews
and the smoking crematoria
choked the skies
the people of
ordinary Oswiecim
continued to go about
their daily lives.

Pilgrimage to Auschwitz-Birkenau I

Our journey
by coach and plane and coach again
brings us
here
to stand on our own two feet
and walk
and walk
for hours.
Transported here swiftly
in comfort
I think of the harried and deported
And then
as we walk
I think of their steps
to the left
or to the right
to gruelling labour
‘in all weathers’
in the searing heat
in the freezing cold
or to death.

transported here
in cattle-trucks
that took several torturing days to arrive.

Pilgrimage to Auschwitz-Birkenau II

I am dressed in black
from head to foot
I have come here as
a mourner
to accompany the dead
and the living
of this Christian foundation school
who accompany me
their rabbi for one long day
alongside their priest.

At the end of our trek
over rough stone paths and frozen snow
and in and out of Hell’s interior spaces
we assemble for a moment of reflection
at the end of the tracks
that led to Birkenau’s gas chambers
and crematoria

The voices of 200 16 and 17-year-olds
reciting psalms
from our shared traditions
breathe warmth and solidarity
into the frigid wilderness
(a teacher remarks later that he felt
the temperature rise, as we stood there).

And then
as the snow begins to fall
amongst this gathering
of accompaniers
scattered voices
accepting my invitation
join me in reciting the Kaddish
and we become a congregation
of mourners
together.

hastily-built to deal with the
mounting dispatches
and then hastily destroyed
as the Allies advanced.

The day after visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau

I wash the dirt
of Auschwitz-Birkenau
off my boots.
But not completely.
Traces trapped
in the fine tread of the soles.
I will walk now with
that contaminated soil.
As for a few days until I recover
I will walk with a limp
my right hip jarred
and the two small toes of my left foot
bruised from
hours of navigating
the jagged paths.

Of course
Auschwitz Birkenau
is now
But the Polish authorities
have left the roads and paths
as they were.
So, listening
in silence on headphones
to our guide
as she expertly shepherded us along
we walked the uneven stones
cautiously
mindfully.
We could not avoid
the difficulty
of treading the paths
trod before us
by the captives
and the selected.

My feet will remember.

a tourist destination
complete with coach parks
and visitor facilities
alongside the museum displays.

Aid to remembrance

As I prepared to visit
Auschwitz-Birkenau
I added ‘Oswiecim’
to the BBC weather app
on my smart phone.
We could expect temperatures of -5° C.
I selected clothing accordingly.

I’m going to keep ‘Oswiecim’
on my list of weather-places
alongside my Bishopstone home
Brighton and Hove
and my favourite destinations.

As the year turns
I want to know the temperature
in Auschwitz-Birkenau
so, I don’t just remember the grey cold of
a single day in my life
21 February 2018.
I want to be aware of
the changing temperatures
back then
month after month
through the seasons
of incarceration
and death.

REMEMBERING THE EXODUS AND THE SHO’AH | Pesach Sermon 31st March 2018

‍‍15 Nisan 5778 - 31, March 2018

It’s Pesach, when we eat matzah, the unleavened bread that simultaneously expresses our slave ancestors’ hasty departure from Egypt – their dough having no time to rise^[1] – and the ‘affliction’ they endured in ‘the house of bondage’. As we read in Aramaic in the Haggadah: ha lachma anya di achalu avhatana b’ara d’mitzrayim – ‘This is the bread of affliction that our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt’. Pesach: the festival when we celebrate our ancestors’ liberation from slavery – and recall the persecutions they suffered.

That order: celebration of freedom and remembrance of oppression is significant. As we look backwards into the past we remember the agonies of incarceration through the prism of the Exodus.

The Haggadah we read at the seder, first composed by the early rabbis,^[2] echoes the Torah narrative, presenting the Eternal One as the supreme redeemer, who delivered our slave ancestors ‘with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm’ – b’yad hazakah u’viz’ro’ah n’tuyah.^[3] The Torah also offers this poetic and captivating image of the omnipotent, sovereign Deity liberating the slaves. We read in parashat Yitro, at Exodus 19, verse 4:

You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I lifted you up on Eagle’s wings, and brought you to Myself.

Atem r’item, asher asiti l’mitzrayim; va-esa etchem al-kanfei n’sharim, va-avi etchem eilai.

I would like you to hold in your minds that image of the Eternal One as a mighty Eagle as I turn for now from the Exodus story to the Sho’ah. On 21^st February, I accompanied the 200 Lower Sixth formers of Brighton College on a day trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau, having been invited by a Jewish former pupil of the school, who is working there as an assistant teacher in his gap year. The visit was meticulously organised, and the preparation for it, involving a week-long Holocaust education programme for the whole school and special pastoral guidance for the participants had been very well planned. The care taken in preparing the visit was also reflected in comprehensive staff support. The coaches organised into Houses, the pupils were accompanied by their House Masters and Mistresses. The entire company also included the Deputy Heads, the Headteacher and the full-time Christian chaplain.

There are no words adequate to express the experience of visiting the single most infamous site of enslavement and mass murder in the geography of the Sho’ah. On one level, the simple facts tell you everything: 1.3 million people murdered, including 1.1 million Jews, gas chambers, crematoria, gruelling labour on minimum rations for the ‘lucky ones’ not selected for death, who were packed together at night and driven relentlessly in all weathers during the day. Yes, the hard, bare facts are familiar to us. Being in Auschwitz and then Birkenau, placed in situ so to speak those hard, bare facts, but could not animate them. The reality of the Sho’ah belongs to another time. And, seeing the sites of that depravity did not help make it any more real, either. We have seen the images again and again: Arbeit Macht Frei – ‘Work Makes (you) Free’ – over the gates of Auschwitz; the train tracks leading to the gas chambers and crematoria of Birkenau. But the visceral experience of visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau did make a difference to my sense of what happened there. I felt the Sho’ah; felt it through my feet, my legs, my hips, my body, as we trod the same untreated rough stone paths trod before us by the inmates and the murdered.

Where was God during the Sho’ah? Why didn’t the mighty Eagle arrive to lift the Jews out of Germany and Holland and Poland and Russia and Austria and Hungary and Czechoslovakia and Greece and France and Italy? Those questions have been asked again and again over the years since the horror – and were no doubt asked at the time by thousands, maybe millions of the victims themselves. Why was the Eternal One, the erstwhile interventionist Redeemer of the Exodus narrative, absent, passive, silent? An entire literature has been devoted to the conundrum, and a new discipline known as Holocaust Theodicy emerged in the second half of the 20^th century to address the theological problems posed by the Sho’ah.^[4] For some, there was only one conclusion possible: God was dead.^[5] Importantly, there have been examples in Jewish life since the Exodus of the lack of Divine intervention. The first generations of rabbis, teaching in the shadow of the Roman’s destruction of Jerusalem and the last Temple in 70 CE, spoke of the Sh’chinah, the Divine Presence, going into exile with Her people^[6], and so presented a theology of the God who, far from being absent, suffers with us.

But still, that starting point; the Pesach narrative: The Eternal One liberated our ancestors from slavery in Egypt. We are so familiar with the Exodus story that we forget some elements that challenge our assumptions about the ever-ready interventionist God. Near the beginning of the Torah narrative, following the account of Moses fleeing Egypt after he has killed an Egyptian taskmaster, we read in Sh’mot, Exodus chapter 2, verses 23 to 25:

And it came to pass in the course of those many days that the king of Egypt died; and the Israelites groaned from their bondage, and they cried out, and their cry came up to God from their bondage. / And God heard their cry, and God remembered the covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. / Then God saw the Israelites and took cognizance of them.

‘God heard their cry, and God remembered the covenant’. Hadn’t the Eternal One already been listening? Had God forgotten the covenant? ‘Then God saw the Israelites and took cognizance of them.’ Hadn’t the all-seeing omniscient God known all along what was happening? We read later in the story that ‘the time that the Israelites dwelt in Egypt with 430 years’.^[7] Allowing for the generations in which the Israelites dwelt unperturbed in Egypt prior to the arrival of a new Pharaoh ‘who did not know Joseph’ and was determined to ‘deal wisely’ with the alien people in his land^[8], we might estimate that the Israelites were enslaved for more than 200 years. So, where was God during that time? If we examine the language of this passage more closely, the text suggests that a process provoked God’s remembrance: ‘… the king of Egypt died; and the Israelites groaned from their bondage, and they cried out, and their cry came up to God from their bondage. / And God heard their cry, and God remembered the covenant…’ Perhaps, the death of the king disturbed the relentless rhythm of perpetual enslavement; perhaps, this moment of change would herald a change in the fortunes of the slaves; and so, instead of simply enduring the hardship of bondage, they groaned, and then, more than that they cried out in protest, expressing their desperation to be free. Only at this point does the text relate: ‘And God heard their cry, and God remembered the covenant…’

Perhaps, the process that led to the Exodus was triggered not by Divine intervention, but by political developments that created the potential for change, stirring the slaves to reject their chains. And there are other examples in the Exodus story of the role of human intervention: the midwives, Shifrah and Pu’ah, who resisted Pharaoh’s genocidal decree to kill the new-born baby boys^[9]; Moses’ mother and elder sister, who saved his life and ensured his survival^[10]. And, of course, there were the human leaders of the Exodus, Miriam, Moses and Aaron. Interestingly, while all these characters populate the Torah narrative, they are entirely absent from the traditional Haggadah, which focuses exclusively on the Eternal One alone.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn, zichrono livrachah – may his memory be for blessing – a former inmate of Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen, who was one of my teachers at Leo Baeck College, and died in 1996, used to say that the crucial question was not, where was God during the Sho’ah, but rather, where was humanity? Whatever your theology, whatever you make of God, and whether or not you make anything of God, whether in our post-Sho’ah world, you think of God as dead or hiding or absent or a presence suffering with the victims, the question remains concerning what people were doing and not doing while the Nazi regime pursued the ‘final solution’ in the quest to make Europe Judenrein, ‘clean of Jews’, and Judenfrei, ‘free of Jews’.

I mentioned earlier that we look backwards at the enslavement of our ancestors through the prism of the Exodus. For many people, their understanding of the Sho’ah is framed by the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 three years after the defeat of Hitler. And so, the rebirth of Israel, albeit an entirely human achievement, indicates the redemption of the Jewish people after the catastrophe. Of course, there is no doubt that the existence of Israel proclaims in no uncertain terms that am Yisra’eil chai – ‘the Jewish people lives’. However, I would suggest that the creation of the modern State of Israel, however remarkable, still cannot, in my view, redeem the Sho’ah. There is no redemption possible out of that abyss. Of course, we can feel some sense of relief that Hitler was defeated and that his much-vaunted ‘Thousand Year Reich’ lasted just twelve years. And as we acknowledge the murder of half the Jewish population of Europe, we can also acknowledge that half the Jewish population of Europe survived. But let us be in no doubt: the continent of Europe is a vast cemetery, and those who survived the torments of Nazi genocidal tyranny, scarred physically and psychologically, were also victims.

This morning, I have spoken about the Exodus and the Sho’ah. It is no accident that the Jewish commemoration of the Sho’ah takes place less than a week after the end of Pesach. As I have mentioned on National Holocaust Memorial Day, the date of 27^th Nissan was deliberately chosen by the Israeli government as Yom Ha-Sho’ah because of its proximity to the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising against the Nazis, which lasted for three weeks in April 1943, and began on Erev Pesach.^[11] It is good to remember the young ghetto fighters, but as we applaud their valiant heroism, we must also face the stark reality that resistance against the Nazi murder machine was virtually impossible. That is why the Jewish philosopher, Emile Fackenheim, spoke of ‘planet Auschwitz’^[12].

So, if redemption after catastrophe is impossible, what does that say about hope? When the king of Egypt died, the slaves cried out against their bondage and dared to hope. It’s also apparent in the testimony of some of the survivors of the Sho’ah that keeping hope alive was what kept them alive day after day. As Rabbi Hugo Gryn’s father put it to him when the young Hugo objected to using their tiny margarine ration to kindle a Chanukkah flame, when they were confined in the Lieberose camp of the Sachsenhausen complex: ‘You and I have seen that it is possible to live up to three weeks without food. We once lived almost three days without water. But you cannot live properly for three minutes without hope.’^[13] Ultimately, for the generations after 1945, staring backwards into the abyss of the Sho’ah, hope is the only alternative to despair. May we celebrate Pesach and commemorate Yom Ha-Sho’ah in that spirit. And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue, 15^th Nissan 5788 – 31^st March 2018

Bo, Exodus 12:39. ↑
Mishnah Pesachim, chapter 10. The Mishnah, the first code of rabbinic law, was edited c. 200 CE. ↑
Va-etchannan, Deuteronomy 5:15 ↑
See, for example: Berkovits, Eliezer. Faith after the Holocaust. New York, 1973. Cohen, Arthur A. The Tremendum. New York, 1981. Cohn-Sherbok, Dan. Holocaust Theology: A Reader. New York, 2002. Fackenheim, Emil L. The Jewish Return into History. New York, 1978. Greenberg, Irving. The Third Great Cycle in Jewish History. New York, 1981. Maybaum, Ignaz. The Face of God after Auschwitz. Amsterdam, 1965. Raphael, Melissa. The Female Face of God in Auschwitz: A Jewish Feminist Theology of the Holocaust. Religion and Gender. London and New York, 2003. Rubenstein, Richard L. After Auschwitz: History, Theology, and Contemporary Judaism. Indianapolis, 1966. Rubenstein, Richard L., and John K. Roth. Approaches to Auschwitz: The Holocaust and Its Legacy. Rev. ed. Louisville, Ky., 2003. ↑
See Richard L. Rubenstein’s, After Auschwitz: History, Theology and Contemporary Judaism cited in note 4) ↑
Midrash Eichah (Lamentations) Rabbah, 1. 5:22. ↑
Bo, Exodus 12:40. ↑
Sh’mot, Ex. 1:8-9. ↑
Sh’mot, Ex. 1:15-22. ↑
Sh’mot, Ex. 2:2-10. The ‘mother’ and ‘sister’, Yocheved and Miriam, are unnamed in the story. ↑
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/yom-ha-shoah-holocaust-memorial-day ↑
Fackenheim, Emil L. “The Holocaust and Philosophy.” The Journal of Philosophy, Volume 82, Issue 10, Eighty-Second Annual Meeting American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division (Oct. 1985), p. 511. ↑
The full story is related by David Wolpe in “What We Really Need to Live,” in Floating Takes Faith: Ancient Wisdom in the Modern World (Behrman House, Springfield, NJ: 2004), p. 197): “My father took me and some friends to a corner in the barracks. He announced that it was the eve of Hanukkah and produced a small clay bowl. Then he began to light a wick immersed in his precious but now melted margarine ration. Before he could recite the blessing, I protested at this waste of food. He looked at me, then the lamp, and finally said, ‘You and I have seen that it is possible to live up to three weeks without food. We once lived almost three days without water. But you cannot live properly for three minutes without hope.'” That last phrase is included in the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust account of ‘The story of Hugo Gryn’ – See: http://www.retoday.org.uk/media/display/Hugo_Gryn.pdf ↑

Two dates in March by Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah, SJN March 2018

‍‍14 Adar 5778 - 1, March 2018

We Jews are the people of many books. There is one particular book on my shelves that I dip into from time to time, when I want to know what happened on a particular day in Jewish history: A Jewish Book of Days by the Anglo-Jewish historian Cecil Roth (Edward Goldston, London, 1931). Roth is probably best known for A History of the Jews in England (Clarendon press, Oxford, 1978), first published in 1941.

This year, the first day of Pesach is on 31^st March. Looking up the date in A Jewish Book of Days, I came across a little-remembered fact: that the edict of expulsion of the Jews of Spain, was promulgated in Granada by the Christian monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella on 31^st March 1492 – four months before the actual expulsion came into effect on Tishah B’Av. Roth’s passage on the edict and its consequences, also reminded me that the expulsion extended to the Jews living in the whole of their dominion, including Sicily and Sardinia (pp.77-78).

In A Jewish Book of Days, Cecil Roth does not make any connection between events recorded for any particular day. So, for example, his passage for 1^st March records the martyrdom of representatives of the Jewish community of Worms, Germany in 1349 (p. 54), and the one for 2^nd March records the massacre of Jews in Paris in 1382 (p.54).

Nevertheless, reading through Roth’s March record, I discerned an interesting connection between the expulsion of the Jews of Spain and the passage for 25^th March, which begins with the journey of a single individual, who set off from his home in Forli, Italy on 26^th October 1486, bound for Jerusalem (p. 73).

Italian scholar, Obadiah di Bertinoro, famous for his commentary on the Mishnah, determined to end his days in eretz Yisrael, arrived in Jerusalem on 25^th March 1488. According to Roth, Bertinoro’s arrival there ‘marked an epoch in the history of the Jewish community in the city and in the Holy Land as a whole, and may indeed be taken as the date of the birth of the modern Jewish settlement in Palestine.’ (p. 73).

Bertinoro became the spiritual head of the community. Roth writes: ‘He instituted in this capacity regular courses of study, founded a yeshiva for the study of the Law, brought charitable and benevolent institutions into existence, suppressed corruption in the community, and improved relations with the Moslem authorities. Thus, the ground was prepared for the vast increase in the Jewish population of the Holy Land which took place as a result of the expulsion from Spain a few years later.’ (Roth, pp. 73-74).

460 years after Bertinoro arrived in Jerusalem, the modern State of Israel was established on 14^th May 1948. Another March date: Cecil Roth was born in London on 5^th March 1899. He died in Jerusalem on 21^st June 1970.

60 Second Sermon to mark LGBT History Month | Broadcast on BBC Radio Sussex

‍‍3 Adar 5778 - 18, February 2018

It’s February: the shortest month of the year and the last month of winter, reminding us that spring is just around the corner. So, a time for looking forwards. This year, February has also been a moment for looking backwards 100 years to 6^th February 1918 and the Representation of the People Act, which gave women the right to vote to vote for the first time^[1] – although it took another ten years before there was full equality.^[2]

In recent years, February has also been marked as LGBT History Month.^[3] Many people regard the existence of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people as a modern phenomenon; the product of the more permissive society that emerged in the 1960s. LGBT History Month reminds us that lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people have a long history – as long, indeed, as the history of the human species – it’s just that in many places and for long periods of time, LGBT people have been forced to live their lives in hiding. Of course, that is still the case in many countries around the world today.

At the Brighton Museum, there are currently two exhibitions of British artists that remind us of this history. The paintings and sculpture of Glyn Philpot, who lived from 1884 to 1937, explore the artist’s life and his relationships.^[4] The display of the life and work of Gluck, who was born Hannah Gluckstein in 1895, and who died in 1978, reveals how a Jewish lesbian became ‘a trailblazer of genderfluidity’ with her men’s clothing and short hair.^[5]

Gluck died forty years ago, the same year that the rainbow flag was first adopted as a symbol of LGBT life.^[6] The rainbow flag also reminds us that LGBT people are now and have always been people of all colours, ethnicities, cultures and religions. LGBT people are not a race apart, but rather, part of the glorious, rich fabric that is the human race. This LGBT History Month, may all of us, regardless of our sexuality or gender, celebrate the wondrous diversity of human existence.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah, Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue

Prayer for Peace Between Israelis and Palestinians | January 2018

‍‍15 Shevat 5778 - 31, January 2018

A PRAYER FOR PEACE

BETWEEN ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS

As the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians continues to rage decade after decade, to pray for peace seems a hopeless and naïve folly. And yet, in this year that marks the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel, it is more urgent than ever that a just and peaceful resolution is achieved that acknowledges the needs of both peoples for sovereignty and security. And so we pray:

El Malei Rachamim, God Full of Compassion, who heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds, we ask You to show all Your children the way of love and compassion, so that hatred ceases to scar their lives.

Ein Ha-Chayyim, Source of Life, we call upon You to send Your abundant blessings into every home, Israeli and Palestinian, so that new hope may overcome old fears.

Adonai Tzadik, Righteous One, who exhorts us to pursue Justice, we fervently pray that a spirit of righteousness may prevail, so that both peoples find the courage to reach a just settlement of their differences.

Oseh Shalom, Maker of Peace, who teaches us to be seekers of peace, we entreat You now to spread Your tabernacle of shalom–salaam over all the inhabitants of Your land, and to support the peacemakers among both peoples in their efforts to walk the path of reconciliation, so that a just peace may reign supreme at last – bimheirah b’yameinu, speedily in our own day.

And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue

January 2018

PRAYER FOR REFUGEES – THINKING IN PARTICULAR OF THE ROHINGYA MUSLIMS

‍‍15 Shevat 5778 - 31, January 2018

PRAYER FOR REFUGEES

Eternal God, our Creator and Liberator, we pause to remember Your children across the world whose lives are blighted by the curses of poverty and persecution.

We think of the many millions in flight from tyranny, violence and destitution, risking their lives as they make their escape in the hope of finding refuge and security elsewhere.

In particular, our thoughts turn at this time to the 650,000 Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar, who have been driven from their homes, and had their villages burnt to the ground, as part of a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing.

Let us pause to reflect.

Eternal Teacher of Your people Israel, as the children and grandchildren and descendants of refugees, aware of Your teachings of justice and our sacred obligations towards the stranger, we express our commitment before You now to open our hearts and our hands and our communities to welcome those in need of refuge, and to do what we can to contribute to the alleviation of their suffering. And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue

WHAT’S IN A NAME AND A DATE? NATIONAL HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY AND REMEMBRANCE OF THE SHO’AH.

‍‍11 Shevat 5778 - 27, January 2018

Today is rather complex. We are celebrating Shabbat, our weekly opportunity for rest and renewal. It is also National Holocaust Memorial Day, the day set aside by the British government since the millennium for remembrance of the Holocaust, and for educational activities about the horrors of Nazism and subsequent genocides.^[1] So: a day of joy and a day of sorrow. Meanwhile, in the garden of members in Hove, the children and their parents are enjoying a morning of activities celebrating Tu Bishvat, the New Year for Trees which falls on Wednesday

Traditionally, mourning is suspended on Shabbat. And yet, we must pause to acknowledge National Holocaust Memorial Day. The Nazi terror machine was set in motion in 1933 when Hitler came to power, and continued churning out its horrors until Hitler was defeated by the Allies in April 1945. That terrifying time could be remembered on any day in the calendar. So, why 27^th January? On 27^th January 1945, the Red Army liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest and most notorious of the Nazi concentration camps that also doubled up as a death camp, and was the site of the murder of millions of Jews and Poles. And so, that date marks the beginning of the end of what the philosopher, Emil Fackenheim referred to as ‘Planet Auschwitz’.^[2] 27^th January 1945: a date salvaged from the depths of the abyss; edged with hope.

The calendar that regulates our lives – and Jews live in two calendars – is full of dates that we tend to take for granted as intrinsic to the annual cycle. The creation of a new date reminds us that every special date on the calendar has a political dimension. The British government chose to mark National Holocaust Memorial Day on 27^th January. There was, perhaps, a more obvious candidate: Kristallnacht, ‘the night of the broken glass’ on 9^th November 1938. After five years in which the Jewish citizens of Germany were subjected to a systematic process of legal, economic, cultural and social discrimination that excluded them from German society, 9^th November 1938 marked the beginning of the violent persecution of the Jews of Europe.^[3] Why was this date chosen by the Nazis? Significantly, since 1989, 9^th November has also marked a new milestone: the reunification of Germany. This only begs a further question: why was 9^th November chosen for German reunification? Before Kristallnacht, 9^th November was already a significant date in the German calendar.^[4] On that date, in 1848, the execution of liberal leader, Robert Blum, came to be seen as the first step towards the crushing of the German Revolution in April and May 1849. On 9^th November 1918, the German monarchy ended when Kaiser Wilhelm II was overthrown. On the same date, in 1923, the Nazi party experienced a setback, and during Nazi rule, 9^th November was observed as a national holiday in memory of the Nazis who died in what became known as the ‘Beer Hall Putsch’ of that year. So, the inauguration of violent pogroms against the Jews on 9^th November 1938 was not accidental – and it is not surprising that 9^th November was chosen as the date for German reunification. Clearly, since 1989, the significance of 9^th November in German consciousness as the date of a new beginning for the German people, has effectively trumped the significance of Kristallnacht. And so, since 1989, Kristallnacht has been chiefly marked by the Jewish people. This year, the 80th anniversary coincides with Shabbat, and we will be holding a day of commemoration, concluding with a film screening.

I have spoken about two dates for marking the Holocaust. But for Jews there is another date: Yom Ha-Shoah, which unlike 27^th of January and 9^th November, takes place in the spring, on the 27^th of the Hebrew month of Nissan, just a few days after the end of Pesach, Passover, the festival that celebrates the liberation of our ancestors from slavery. Of course, the choice of this date is also political. But first, let us consider the name: Yom Ha-Shoah, literally, ‘the day of devastation.’ Reference to sho’ah, ‘devastation’ is found repeatedly in the Hebrew Bible, in particular in the books of the prophets.^[5] Sho’ah, is not the Hebrew translation for ‘Holocaust’. Look in the dictionary of Biblical Hebrew edited by Christian Doctors of Divinity, Brown, Driver and Briggs, and first published in 1906, and you will find that ‘holocaust’ is the translation of the Hebrew word, olah, ‘burnt offering’.^[6] For Jews, it is inappropriate, to say the least, to speak of the murder of the Jews of Europe as an offering to God. There was nothing ‘sacred’ about the smoking crematoria of the death camps.

I mentioned that the choice of date for Yom Ha-Sho’ah was political. After the Sho’ah ended, Jews across the world began to discuss how it might be commemorated^[7] – and not surprisingly, Kristallnacht was an obvious choice. In the Hebrew calendar, 9^th November 1938 coincided with the 16^th of the Hebrew month of Cheshvan. Hebrew months follow the moon, so in the middle of the month, the moon is full, which might explain the memory of all that broken glass which would have been glinting in the moonlight. Interestingly, Cheshvan is the only month in the Jewish calendar that is not marked by any special commemorations, and for that reason the early rabbis dubbed it as Mar Cheshvan, ‘Bitter Cheshvan’, and the month is still known by that name. How appropriate that the Sho’ah should be remembered during a month devoid of other commemoratives dates, and so already experienced as ‘bitter’. But it wasn’t to be. In 1953, the Israeli government established 27^th Nissan as the date for the annual commemoration of the Sho’ah. The original proposal had been 14^th Nissan, the anniversary of the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising against the Nazis, which began on 19^th April 1943, on the eve of Pesach, Passover. However, because of its proximity to Pesach, 14^th Nissan was not considered suitable by the Israeli rabbinate, so the government settled on the 27^th – although for the ultraorthodox, a completely different date was preferred: the 10^th day of the Hebrew month of Tevet, which is the anniversary of the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. By the 1970s, the commemoration of Yom Ha-Sho’ah on 27^th Nissan had become established throughout most of the Jewish world.

So, why did the Israeli government choose the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as the date for Yom Ha-Sho’ah? Like 27^th January, the choice reflects the desire to focus on hope rather than despair. And more than this. On 27^th January 1945, the Red Army were the liberators of a remnant of a crushed people. On the eve of Pesach 1943, audacious, defiant young Jews, no doubt inspired by the Exodus, decided to take it into their own hands to liberate their own people. It’s an inspiring story, and until very recently, when visiting Beit Lochamei Ha-Geta’ot, ‘the Ghetto Fighters House’ in the kibbutz in northern Israel, established in 1949 by survivors, you could still talk with a few of those who had managed to escape through the sewage system to join Polish partisans in the woods and continue the fight for freedom.^[8]

So, since 2000, there are now three major dates for commemoration of the Sho’ah: Kristallnacht, Yom Ha-Sho’ah and National Holocaust Memorial Day. Within this triad, Kristallnacht and Yom Ha-Sho’ah remind us of the particularity of the Sho’ah; that at the heart of the Nazi programme lay Hitler’s determination to wipe out the Jewish people. I will never forget how a rabbinic delegation to Berlin in 2005 to mark the 60^th anniversary of the end of the Sho’ah brought that home to me. As part of our programme, we visited the villa on the Wannsee, the lake outside Berlin, where the Nazi top brass had met together in 1942 to work out the ‘final solution’.^[9] One of the items in the exhibition was particularly chilling. It was a typed list of the Jewish populations of Europe, with a total at the foot of the page: 11 million. Hitler didn’t quite succeed in hitting that target. Of course, Britain featured on the list, and alongside, a number: 500,000. Only a narrow strip of water, and the courage of British airmen ensured that Hitler did not reach these shores.

The Nazis did not invent anti-Semitism. 2000 years of Christian Jew-hatred accomplished that. The Nazis did not invent the fantasy of a demonic Jewish race conspiring to control the world. In 1912 Russian anti-Semites published a notorious anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which continues to be reprinted around the world to this day. The Nazis did not invent the specious notion that Jews are a subhuman race. The development of ‘race science’ in the 19^th century gave them all the tools they needed. What Nazism achieved was a further malignant development of racist anti-Semitism with a new project: to make Europe Judenfrei and Judenrein: ‘free of Jews’ and ‘clean of Jews’.

National Holocaust Memorial Day has a purpose that it is distinct from Yom Ha-Sho’ah and the anniversary of Kristallnacht. It was inaugurated in Britain in 2000 to acknowledge the enormity and significance of the Holocaust and to acknowledge the genocides that have happened since 1945, and promote educational activities so that children, in particular, actively engage in learning the lessons of the past for the sake of the future. And so, since NHMD was inaugurated, commemoration has also focused attention on the genocides in Cambodia (1975-79), Bosnia (1992-95), Rwanda (1994) and Darfur (2003). It is vital that National Holocaust Memorial Day remains a date in the calendar of this country, enabling people to learn about the specificity of each case of genocide and to understand the social, cultural, political, and economic conditions that make it possible for one group to target another and single them out for destruction. The current persecution of the Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar, which involved the torching of their villages, and has resulted in the exile of 650,000 people, is not only a replay of ethnic cleansing as carried out in the early 1990s in Bosnia, it also has all the hallmarks of genocide-in-the-making, if it is not brought to a halt.

When I began I remarked about the complexity of this day of joy and sorrow. Let us remember that Shabbat is more than the weekly Jewish festival of rest and spiritual renewal. The invention of Shabbat by our ancestors over 3000 years ago was a radical response to a hierarchical social structure rooted in a dichotomy between the leisured ruling class that never worked and the enslaved masses, who never ceased. Shabbat, the day of ‘ceasing’, which is what the word means, is a day of freedom, when we commemorate the Exodus and remember that all the slaves must go free.

Jews are a remembering people. But remembrance is not an end in itself. Throughout the Torah, and echoed in our blessing for liberation recited after the Sh’ma, we remember the Exodus because we have always seen in that experience an ethical imperative. As we read, for example, in the first biblical code of law, Mishpatim, at Exodus 23:9: ‘A stranger you shall not oppress; for you know the inner being – nefesh – of the stranger, seeing you were strangers in the land of Egypt.’

Who is the stranger? Any person, any people, who lives on the margins. In addition to demonising the Jewish people, the Nazis also rejected all groups considered not to fit the Aryan ideal: the Roma, LGBT people, the disabled. The persecution of those considered ‘other’ was not – and is not – just a Nazi crime. All the genocides since the Sho’ah have targeted ‘others’ – those not considers to be ‘like us’. And to this day the hatred of the other continues. Entire peoples are targeted and individuals are targeted. Earlier this month, a 19-year-old Jewish gay man, Blaize Bernstein, was murdered in Los Angeles by a former classmate, in a ferocious attack that was motivated by homophobia.^[10]

The Torah is read in an annual weekly cycle that begins after the autumn festivals, and as it happens, this year National Holocaust Memorial Day coincides with the reading of the portion that relates the Exodus: B’shallach. That conjunction reminds us that, ultimately, freedom and justice will prevail.

Marking National Holocaust Memorial Day on Shabbat also reminds us that for Jews, the celebration of life will always be our priority. The Jewish people is still here today, despite living as a vulnerable minority under a succession of imperial regimes for millennia, despite centuries of Christian persecution, despite the Nazi attempt to wipe us out, because of our determination to live as Jews day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. The Jewish toast is L’Chayyim! To Life! Today, on National Holocaust Memorial Day, as we lift our glasses of wine and grape juice to celebrate Shabbat, may our toast, ‘L’Chayyim!’ also inspire us to challenge persecution and oppression in every place. And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue

27^th January 2018 / 11^th Sh’vat 5778

See: http://hmd.org.uk/ ↑
Fackenheim, Emil L. “The Holocaust and Philosophy.” The Journal of Philosophy, Volume 82, Issue 10, Eighty-Second Annual Meeting American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division (Oct. 1985), p. 511. ↑
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. ↑
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_9_in_German_history ↑
See, for example Isaiah 47:11. ↑
Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon edited by Francis Brown, D.D., D.Litt. with the cooperation of S.R. driver, D.D., Litt.D, and Charles A. Briggs, D.D., D.Litt. Hendrickson publishers, 2006, p. 750. ↑
For an account of the debate in the Jewish world concerning the appropriate date for commemoration of the Sho’ah, see Irving Greenburg, The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays, Summit Books, 1988 pp. 326-343. ↑
http://gfh.org.il/Eng/?CategoryID=231 https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ghetto-fighters-x0027-house ↑
See: The Villa, The Lake, The Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution by Mark Roseman, Penguin Books, 2003. ↑
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/blaze-bernstein-death-details-released-student-stabbed-20-times-samuel-woodward-idd-as-suspect/ ↑

HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY 27th January 2018

‍‍11 Shevat 5778 - 27, January 2018

NATIONAL HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY – THE POWER OF WORDS

On 27^th January, it will be National Holocaust Memorial Day; the day set aside by the UK government for annual commemoration of the Holocaust; chosen because 27^th January 1945, the date when the Red Army liberated Auschwitz, marked the beginning of the end of the Nazi horror. NHMD was established to ensure that people in Britain remember the Holocaust, acknowledge the genocides that have happened since 1945, and actively engage in learning the lessons of the past for the sake of the future. And so, since it was NHMD was inaugurated at the beginning of the millennium, it has also focused attention on the genocides in Cambodia (1975-79), Bosnia (1992-95), Rwanda (1994) and Darfur (2003).

The theme of NHMD 2018 is ‘the power of words’. We read on the website (http://hmd.org.uk/resources/theme-papers/hmd-2018-power-words):

Words can make a difference – both for good and evil.

HMD activities could focus on the impact that words had in the Holocaust and subsequent genocides, through propaganda used to incite, through slogans written in resistance, and through memoirs written to record and respond to what was going on. The words that we see and hear all around us today – in newspapers, online, in conversations – the words that we choose to use, all have an impact upon us and those around us.

Words are powerful. The usual word used to designate the murder of the Six Million – the Holocaust – is actually highly problematic. If you look up the dictionary of the Hebrew Bible, known as ‘BDB’ because it was compiled by three Christian ministers, Brown, Driver and Briggs, you will find that ‘holocaust’ is the translation given for olah, meaning ‘burnt offering’. From a Jewish perspective, the annihilation of one third of the world Jewish population was not a sacred offering. It is for this reason that the preferred designation is sho’ah, meaning ‘devastation’, found, for example, in Isaiah 10:3.

The Torah is composed of thousands of words. During January this year, we will begin reading the Book of Sh’mot, Exodus, and be reminded of the resounding message that the slaves will go free. The words that we read were originally called out, so that people could hear them. Significantly, the Hebrew root, Kuf Reish Alef, means both to ‘read’ and to ‘call’, and the narratives we read in the Torah tell stories in which utterance take central stage. ‘Let My people go that they may serve Me’ (Va-eira, Exodus 9:1), Moses repeatedly proclaims to Pharaoh on behalf of the Eternal Liberator. When, eventually, the newly-liberated slaves walk on dry land through the divided Sea of Reeds, Moses and Miriam sing songs of triumph (B’shallach, Ex. 15:1-21). And then after the liberation, at the beginning of the third month, in the wilderness of Sinai, they stand beneath the quaking mountain, and hear ‘The Ten Utterances’ – aseret ha-dibbrot – known in Christian tradition as the Ten Commandments (Yitro, Ex. 20:1-14).

Jewish life is concerned with right action that is rooted in teachings, written and spoken. As we reflect on NHMD on the use and abuse of words, in particular, in the context of hate crimes of all types, and the way in which hateful words precipitate hateful deeds, let us remember the words of love, compassion and justice that we find in the Torah, not least, in the Book of Exodus, and resolve to be guided in our actions by these teachings. As we read in the first law code (Mishpatim, Ex. 23:9): ‘You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the nefesh – the inner being – of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt.’

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

SHABBAT SERMON: JOSEPH, MOSES AND JESUS

‍‍5 Teves 5778 - 23, December 2017

With the Christian festival of Christmas just two days away, this Shabbat, I’m going to talk to you about the connections between the stories of three nice Jewish boys: Joseph, Moses, and Jesus. Of the three, Joseph is the odd one out, since there are no tales about him as a baby – Joseph’s story begins when he it’s already 17 years old.^[1] What we read about Joseph also suggests that he wasn’t simply a boy – but I’ll have to leave that for another sermon.

The story of Joseph is rather exceptional, but nevertheless, as we shall see, there are links between the narratives of Joseph, Moses and Jesus. In this week’s Torah portion, Va-yiggash, we learn about how Joseph finally revealed his identity to his brothers. And that’s not all he revealed. We read:^[2]

Then Joseph said to his brothers: ‘Come near to me, I pray you.’ They came near. And he said: ‘I am Joseph your brother, whom you sold into Egypt. / Now do not be aggrieved, nor angry with yourselves, that you sold me here; since God sent me before you to preserve life. / For these two years famine has been in the land; and there are still five years, in which there shall be neither ploughing nor reaping. / God sent me before you to give you a remnant on the earth and to save your life for a great deliverance.’

Joseph could be considered as the first Jew to make it in the Diaspora. The dreamer who accomplished the survival of Egypt and of his family by taking practical measures to save the people from famine with the help of the Eternal One – who also had another purpose: the future deliverance of their descendants from slavery. Of course, that later deliverance begs some questions. Why did Jacob and his family need to settle in Egypt only for their descendants to be liberated from Egypt centuries later? Just so that they might experience Divine redemption?^[3] I will leave you to ponder these questions, as we continue exploring the links between Joseph, Moses and Jesus.

First: Joseph and Moses. Just as Joseph saved the people, so did Moses. In the account of the burning bush, when Moses is addressed by the Eternal One for the first time, we read:^[4]

‘Now, behold, the cry of the Israelites has come to Me; moreover, I have seen the oppression with which Egypt oppresses them. / Now therefore, I will send you to Pharaoh, that you may bring My people, the Israelites out of Egypt.

So: In the cases of both Joseph and Moses, God’s work is accomplished through human agency.

Jesus, by contrast, is presented in the Christian Gospels in a very different way. The Nativity stories suggest that Jesus was destined for a sacred purpose. But that is not all. We read in the Gospel of Matthew, the first Book of the Christian Scriptures, known as the ‘New Testament’:^[5]

¹⁸This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.¹⁹Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. ²⁰But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. ²¹She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”’

That last phrase is key, so let’s keep it in mind: Jesus is destined “to save his people from their sins.” The Christian Scriptures were originally written in Greek. Significantly, when we translate ‘Jesus’ into Hebrew – Yeshu – we find that it is based on the root Yud Shin Ayin, to ‘save’. The names of two other significant Biblical characters are also based on this root: Joshua – Y’hoshu’a – Moses’ successor, who led the people into the land beyond the Jordan;^[6] and the prophet Isaiah – Y’shayahu – who, as we learn in the opening verse of the Book of Isaiah, inspired by a vision – chazon – proclaimed the word of God to the people of Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Yotam, Achaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.^[7]

The notion of Jesus as the one who ‘saves’ is utterly different. What the Gospel of Matthew relates about Jesus before he is born, sets him apart as utterly unique; a child conceived by the ‘Holy Spirit’. The Gospel of Luke which follows reinforces this message, and also provides details of the circumstances in which Jesus was born. We read:^[8]

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. ²(This was the first census that took place while. Quirinius was governor of Syria.) ³And everyone went to their own town to register. ⁴So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. ⁵He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. ⁶While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, ⁷and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them. ⁸And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. ⁹An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. ¹⁰But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. ¹¹Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. ¹²This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

So, according to the Gospels, conceived by the ‘Holy Spirit’, Jesus is unique – and he also has a lineage: he is a descendant of King David – who was also a ‘messiah’. But King David was a Messiah in the Hebrew sense of the word: mashi’ach, an ‘anointed one’; that is, anointed with the oil of kingship.^[9]

Interestingly, in addition to presenting Jesus’ Jewish credentials, the Gospels also include a story that has parallels with the tale of the circumstances surrounding the birth of Moses. Let me quote the passage found in Matthew in full:^[10]

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, wise men^[11] from the east came to Jerusalem ²and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” ³When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. ⁴When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born.⁵“In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written: ⁶“‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’” ⁷Then Herod called the wise men secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. ⁸He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.” ⁹After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. ¹⁰When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. ¹¹On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.¹²And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route. ¹³When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.” ¹⁴So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, ¹⁵where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”¹⁶When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the wise men, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the wise men. ¹⁷Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: ¹⁸“A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”

Before we explore the similarities and differences between the Jesus and Moses nativity narratives, let’s note the way in which this passage explains events by reference to biblical prophecy in the Hebrew Scriptures – so, to repeat three sections:

First: The Messiah was to be born ‘“In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written: ⁶“‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’” This is a quotation from the Micah, chapter 5, verses 2 and 4.

Second: Jesus had to brought to Egypt, so he could come out of Egypt: ‘So, he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, ¹⁵where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”’ This verse is found in Hosea, Chapter 11, verse 1.

Finally: When Herod ordered the murder of the baby boys: ^17 ‘Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: ¹⁸“A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”’ This verse appears in Jeremiah, chapter 31, verse 15.

For the Gospel writers, it is not enough to establish the lineage of Jesus as a descendant of the House of King David, he must also be seen as the fulfilment of the Hebrew Scriptures – which brings us back to the connections between the narrative of the birth of Jesus and the narrative of the birth of Moses. Just as Pharaoh gave orders to kill all the new-born baby boys of the Hebrews, King Herod gave orders to kill all the boys in and around Bethlehem, who were two years old and younger. Both Pharaoh and Herod were motivated by fear. And both of them were outwitted by those commanded to follow their orders: the midwives, in the case of the Hebrew baby boys, and the wise men, in the case of Jesus. But of course, there is a crucial difference between these two narratives. Herod is primarily exercised by the claims about one particular baby boy. As ‘King of the Jews’ himself, he must get rid of any potential contender for his crown; and so, when outwitted by the wise men, he resolves to kill all the baby boys.

By contrast, fearing that the Hebrews will become too numerous and pose a threat to Egypt, Pharaoh resolves from the outset to kill all the new-born baby Hebrew boys.^[12] Moses was not a special target. And yet, the actions of his mother and sister – unnamed in the story^[13] – set Moses apart. Moses wasn’t simply saved from death by the courageous midwives,^[14] Moses’ mother and sister ensured his survival. First, his mother made a water-resistant basket, and placed it in the reeds by the river. And then, when Pharaoh’s daughter came down to bathe, Moses’ sister, who had been standing guard to see what would happen, had the initiative to offer to fetch a Hebrew wet nurse – and brought the baby’s mother.^[15] And so, Moses survived and thrived in the Egyptian court, suckled by his mother until he was weaned.

The next time the Torah mentions Moses’ sister, following the crossing of the Sea of Reeds at the beginning of the exodus from Egypt, she is named – Miriam – and more than that, she is described as a n’vi’ah, a prophet.^[16] What did Miriam prophesy? Commenting on Miriam’s designation as a prophet, the sages explained that when Miriam saved her baby brother she had foreseen subsequent developments and his future role in the liberation of the slaves.^[17] While, the narrative of the baby Moses provides the back-story of the future reluctant leader of his people out of slavery, the narrative of the baby Jesus, with its echoes of the Moses tale, aims to provide the evidence of his unique status as the one born of the Holy Spirit, destined ‘to save his people from their sins.’ As the account of the life story of Jesus turned out, ultimately, to do this Jesus had to die. In the figure of Jesus, the imperative of redemption is spiritualised. By contrast, it’s not just that both Moses and Joseph are fully human, the redemptive work they do on behalf of God is bound up with the material conditions of life: people need food and the slaves must go free.

It may seem rather strange to explore New Testament passages in a Shabbat morning sermon. Perhaps, it should strike us as equally strange that while most Christians are familiar with the Hebrew Bible, which is read in churches, apart from RE lessons in school, most Jews have little knowledge of the Christian Scriptures. Of course, this is hardly surprising, given the long history of Christian persecution of Jews and defamation of Jewish teaching. Nevertheless, in today’s more pluralistic culture and in the interests of greater understanding between Jews and Christians, perhaps the time has come for Jews to read the New Testament – including, the explicitly anti-Jewish passages – and even better, for Jews and Christians to read the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament together. Who knows what Jews and Christians might learn from one another and about our own particular religious traditions by reading our respective sacred texts in each other’s presence. As the other New Year beckons, let us all resolve to take steps towards finding out. And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue

23^rd December 2017 / 5^th Tevet 5778

Va-yeishev, Genesis 37:2 ff. The simple fact of Joseph’s birth to Rachel is mentioned in Va-yeitzei, Genesis 30:22-24. ↑
Va-yiggash, Genesis 45:4-7. ↑
Note: Lech L’cha, Genesis 15:13-14: When God comes to Avram ‘in a vision’ – ba-machazeh – he learns that his descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and be afflicted as slaves before being liberated when God judges the nation that they serve. Again: no reason is given. ↑
Sh’mot, Exodus 3:9-10. ↑
Matthew 1:18-23. I’m using the NIV translation. ↑
V’zot Ha-b’rachah, Deuteronomy 34:9. ↑
Isaiah 1:1. ↑
Luke 2:1-12. ↑
2 Samuel 5:3. ↑
Matthew 2:1-18. ↑
The NIV translation is ‘Magi’. I’ve decided to use the more familiar designation. ↑
Exodus 1: 8 ff. ↑
Moses’ mother was Yocheved: see Numbers 26:59 ↑
Their story is related in Sh’mot, Exodus 1:15-22. ↑
Sh’mot, Exodus 2:1-10. ↑
B’shallach, Exodus 15: 20-21. ↑
There are many rabbinic commentaries concerning Miriam’s powers of prophecy. For example:Who are the seven prophetesses? Sarah, Miriam, Deborah, Channah, Abigail, Chuldah, and Esther (M’gillah 14a). She prophesied and said, “My mother is destined to bear a son who will redeem Israel” (M’gillah 14a).When Moses was born, the whole house was filled with light. Her father kissed her on her head and said, “My daughter, your prophecy has been fulfilled.” (M’gillah 14a). ↑

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From: Martin Buber’s ‘Open Letter’ to Gandhi Regarding Palestine (February 24, 1939) in Arthur Hertzberg, ed.,The Zionist Idea. (Jewish Publications Society, 1997), pp. 463-464.

Eight Poems by Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah