How did the minor festival of Chanukkah get to be so big? I will return to this question, but first, it’s important to acknowledge that when the rabbinic sages referred to Chanukkah as a minor festival, they meant it in the sense that it wasn’t a biblical festival. The major festivals are those that are recorded in the Torah: Pesach, which celebrates the Exodus, the first fruits festival of Shavuot, ‘the day of blasting’ (later known as Rosh Ha-Shanah), Yom Kippur, that’s the Day for Atonement, the late harvest festival of Sukkot, and Sh’mini Atzeret, which concluded the autumn festivals.^[1] That was the festival calendar in biblical times – with a gap of almost six months over the late autumn and winter into early spring.

So, by definition, Chanukkah is a minor festival. Unlike the regulations governing the biblical festivals, there is no prohibition on work for any of the minor festivals.^[2] Daily life goes on as usual with the addition of special rituals; in the case of Chanukkah, the nightly eight-day ritual of lighting the nine-branched M’norah, which became known as a Chanukkiyyah distinguish it from the seven-branched Temple M’norah.^[3]

Chanukkah commemorates the cleansing and rededication^[4] of the Temple in Jerusalem in 164 BCE by the Maccabean freedom fighters during their guerrilla campaign against the oppressive Assyrian Greek empire. So, why does the festival last eight days? The simple answer to this question is found in the Second Book of Maccabees (10:6-8):

They celebrated it for eight days with rejoicing in the manner of the feast of Sukkot, mindful of how but a little while before at the festival of Sukkot they had been wandering about like wild beasts in the mountains and caves. That is why, bearing thyrsi and graceful branches and also palm leaves, they offered up hymns to God who had given them success in purifying the Divine place of worship. They decreed by edict and confirmed by vote of the entire nation that the Jews should celebrate these days every year.

A straightforward explanation for the eight-day celebration. But the books of the Maccabees were excluded by the sages from the canon of the Bible and so most people are not familiar with them. Why were they excluded? Because the Hasmonean priestly family that led the struggle became corrupt once they assumed the reins of political power in 140 BCE with the re-establishment of an independent Jewish state.^[5] As the famous adage puts it: ‘Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely’.^[6]

In place of the more mundane reason for an eight-day festival, the rabbinic sages promulgated the story of a miracle, which is recorded in the Talmud, in the tractate Shabbat (21B). Significantly, the Talmud was edited around the year 500, that is, almost 650 years after the events of 164 BCE. We read:

Mah Chanukkah? What is the reason for Chanukkah? For our sages taught: on the 25^th day of Kislev commence the days of Chanukkah, which are eight on which a lamentation for the dead and fasting are forbidden.^[7] For when the Greeks entered the Temple, they defiled all the oils in it, and when the Hasmonean dynasty prevailed against and defeated them, they made search and found only one cruse of oil which lay with the seal of the High Priest, which contained sufficient for one day’s lighting only; yet a miracle was wrought and they lit the lamp with it for eight days. The following year these days were appointed a festival with [the recital of] Psalms of praise [Hallel] and Thanksgiving.

So, according to the sages, Chanukkah is an eight-day festival because, miraculously, one day’s supply of oil lasted for eight days. On the same page of the Talmud we find a discussion of how the nightly lighting inaugurated to celebrate the miracle should be conducted. Should all the lights be lit on the first night, and then successively reduced day by day? This was the view of Beit Shammai, the disciples of the sage, Shammai. The matter was resolved in favour of Beit Hillel, the disciples of the sage, Hillel: An additional flame should be added on each successive night because ‘we promote in [matters of] sanctity but do not reduce.’ And so, we celebrate Chanukkah by increasing the light night by night. More of that in a moment.

What was the rabbinic rationale for promoting the miracle story? We find it in the reading set aside by the rabbis for the first Shabbat of Chanukkah.^[8] The passage is from the prophet Zechariah, and begins by describing the seven-branched Temple M’norah. It then goes on to make this glorious statement (4:6):

Lo v’chayil v’lo v’cho’ach ki im-b’ruchi amar YHVH tz’va’ot.

Not by valour, nor by might, but by My spirit, says the God of heaven’s hosts.

The word chayil is principally used in the TaNaKH, the Hebrew Bible, of soldiers in battle.^[9] Ko’ach means might in the sense of ‘strength’. Samson, for example, is described as having ko’ach.^[10] The word ru’ach, by contrast, a feminine noun, means ‘spirit’, ‘breath’, or ‘wind’. In the second verse of the Torah we read, for example: ‘Now the earth was unformed and void – tohu va-vohu – and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God hovered over the waters’ – v’ru’ach Elohim m’rachefet al-p’nei ha-mayyim.^[11] The philosopher and biblical commentator, Martin Buber likened ‘the spirit of God’ to a great mother-bird hovering over her young in the nest.^[12]

So, what do we learn from the biblical text chosen by the sages to convey the message of Chanukkah? The Maccabees may have won a military victory, but it was a triumph of the spirit that made the rekindling of Jewish life possible. But more than this, the central message of Zechariah is that valour and strength do not – cannot – accomplish this. Again:

Lo v’chayil v’lo v’cho’ach ki im-b’ruchi amar YHVH tz’va’ot.

Not by valour, nor by might, but by My spirit, says the God of heaven’s hosts.

This powerful statement raises an important question: When oppression and tyranny reign, how can we create change and transform society? When I was a sociology undergraduate at the London School of Economics in the mid-1970s and a member of the International Marxist Group, I shared the commonly-held revolutionary socialist belief that the oppressor never gives up their power without a fight. Of course, the French Revolution of 1789 was the model for violent insurrection. But look at what followed: the tyranny and narcissism of Louis the 16th was replaced by Robespierre’s Reign of Terror. And the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917 also involved massive bloodshed, which continued through the dictatorship of Stalin. The past hundred years have seen many more violent revolutions – which for the most part have only replaced one form of tyranny with another. By now, we must have learnt, surely, that violence only begets violence.

But the problem isn’t just that violence does not achieve justice – look at Northern Ireland, look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – but our understanding of how we create change is based on a false dichotomy. We think that all we have is a binary choice between evolution and revolution; between minutely gradual change that takes aeons to achieve and total apocalyptic transformation. Given that choice, in the face of oppressive regimes, I for one would go for revolution – minus the violence – every time. But generating change is not a matter of evolution or revolution; it’s about taking steps, real steps for change. It’s about the day by day work of creating change. Seventy years ago, on 10^th December 1948, in the shadow of the Sho’ah and in response to the havoc wreaked by two world wars in less than fifty years, the United Nations, which was established in New York on 24 October 1945, promulgated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The declaration set a new standard for the nations based on the acknowledgement that each and every human being, wherever they live, whatever their ethnicity, religion, culture, gender, sexuality, physical or mental ability has equal rights. The Torah, which includes texts that go back 3000 years, puts it more simply using sacred language: the human being, regardless of gender, is created b’tzelem Elohim – ‘in the image of God.’^[13] The implications of this awareness were explored by the early rabbis. We read, for example, in the Mishnah, the first rabbinic code of law, edited around the year 200:^[14]

Why was the human being created singly? A human sovereign has coins stamped out in a press and they all look alike. But the Holy One Who Is Blessed [Ha-Kadosh Baruch Hu] stamps each of us in the imprint of the first human, and no two human beings are the same.

A paradox: We are all essentially the same; we are all different. The concept of human rights is rooted in the notion that we are one human race and the practice of human rights depends on the recognition that all the ways in which we are different from one another are equal and demand equal treatment.

One of the chief architects of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was the French Jewish lawyer, René Cassin. The Jewish human rights charity, René Cassin, based in Britain has adopted his name to remind us of the Jewish links with the Universal Declaration. I’m very proud that one of our young people who grew up here at this shul, Hannah Swirsky, is now working as Campaigns Officer for René Cassin. With her colleagues, Hannah is engaging in the day by day work needed to make human rights a reality – including in the UK, which as a René Cassin briefing paper puts it, ‘is currently contravening its own Home Office guidance with the practice of indefinite detention of asylum seekers’; adding that ‘the UK is the only European nation not to have a time limit on detention.’^[15]

To return to my original question: How did the minor festival of Chanukkah get to be so big? A cynic would say that the minor festival of Chanukkah got so big under the influence of the commercialised extravaganza that Christmas has become. If this is the reason, it’s rather ironic, given that the Maccabees were also fighting against the assimilation of their fellow Jews to Greek culture.^[16] Not being of a cynical disposition, I like to think that Chanukkah has become so important because as technological developments make us increasingly conscious of what is happening across the globe, we are increasingly determined to increase the light; to muster the spirit of hope we need to engage in the work of tikkun olam, repair of the world.

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 Verei’ut

8^th December 2018 – 30^th Kislev 5779

1. See Emor, Leviticus chapter 23 for the biblical festival calendar. ↑

2. The minor festivals include the New Year for Trees on Tu Bishvat, the 15th day of the month of Sh’vat (Mishnah Rosh Ha-Shanah 1:1), Purim, which tells the story of a victory against anti-Semitism recounted in the biblical book of Esther, and Tishah B’Av, the 9th day of the month of Av, which commemorates the destruction of the first Temple in 586 BCE by the Babylonians and of the last Temple in 70 CE by the Romans. On Tishah B’Av, observances include the reading of the biblical book of Eichah, Lamentations, which describes the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. ↑

3. The first description of the M’norah is at T’rumah, Exodus 25: 31-39. The lighting is prescribed at T’tzavveh, Exodus 27: 20-21. ↑

4. Chanukkah means ‘dedication’. ↑

5. See Robert M. Seltzer, Jewish People, Jewish Thought: The Jewish Experience in History (Macmillan Publishing, New York, 1980), pp. 178-183. ↑

6. John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, the first of Baron of Acton, a Liberal peer in the second half of the 19^th century, who was also an English Catholic historian, politician and writer. ↑

7. See Ta’anit 9, the ‘Scroll of Fasts’, a work of the ta’anim, the ‘teachers’, the generation of scholars whose teachings are recorded in the Mishnah, the first code of rabbinic law, edited around 200 CE ↑

8. The passage from Zechariah is read after the weekly Torah reading as the haftarah, the ‘concluding’ scriptural reading, which like all haftarot (pl.) is taken from the second section of the TaNaKH, the Hebrew Bible, N’vi’im, ‘Prophets’. If Chanukkah begins on a Shabbat, then there are two Shabbatot in Chanukkah. The haftarah reading set aside for the second Shabbat is: First Kings 7:40-50. ↑

9. For example, see Joshua 1:14. ↑

10. Judges 16:6 ff. ↑

11. B’reishit, Genesis 1:2. ↑

12. ‘People Today and the Jewish Bible: From A Lecture Series’ by Martin Buber (November 1926) pp. 4-21 in Scripture and Translation by Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, translated by Lawrence Rosenwald with Everett Fox (Indiana University Press; Indianapolis,1994. ↑

13. B’reishit, Genesis 1:27 ↑

14. Sanhedrin 4:5. ↑

15. http://www.renecassin.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Refugees-in-Focus.pdf ↑

16. See Seltzer, 1980, pp.155-158. ↑

SUKKOT PRAYER

FOR THE SUFFERING PEOPLES OF THE WORLD

During this festival of Sukkot, may the fragile sukkah that recalls our ancestors’ forty-year sojourn in the barren wilderness, remind us of our obligation to assist the poor and the homeless, those in flight from persecution, and all those across the globe experiencing oppression, anguish, grief, loss, hardship and humiliation at this time.

Let us pause in the midst of our sacred celebrations to think, in particular, of the people of Syria – those trapped in war-torn cities and those who have become refugees – and also to remember the persecuted Rohingya Muslims exiled from Myanmar, now living in refugee camps in Bangladesh.

PAUSE FOR REFLECTION

Just as we wave the lulav in all the directions and so acknowledge the earth around us and Eternity beyond us, may we also to reach out to other peoples in distress wherever they live, contribute to the alleviation of their suffering, and commit ourselves to the sacred task of tikkun olam, repair of the world.

And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah, Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue

SUKKOT PRAYER

FOR THE SUFFERING PEOPLES OF THE WORLD

During this festival of Sukkot, may the fragile sukkah that recalls our ancestors’ forty-year sojourn in the barren wilderness, remind us of our obligation to assist the poor and the homeless, those in flight from persecution, and all those across the globe experiencing oppression, anguish, grief, loss, hardship and humiliation at this time.

Let us pause in the midst of our sacred celebrations to think, in particular, of the people of Syria – those trapped in war-torn cities and those who have become refugees – and also to remember the persecuted Rohingya Muslims exiled from Myanmar, now living in refugee camps in Bangladesh.

PAUSE FOR REFLECTION

Just as we wave the lulav in all the directions and so acknowledge the earth around us and Eternity beyond us, may we also to reach out to other peoples in distress wherever they live, contribute to the alleviation of their suffering, and commit ourselves to the sacred task of tikkun olam, repair of the world.

And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah, Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue

We have gathered here today on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, to mark a sacred moment that has been commemorated by the Jewish people for over 2000 years since the period of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.

For the past 45 years, Yom Kippur has also been the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War.^[1] Less than two weeks ago on the 13^th September, it was the 25th anniversary of that momentous handshake between the then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat that was supposed to be the beginning of the end of the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians.^[2] Meanwhile, this year is the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the modern State of Israel and last year was the 50th anniversary of the Six Day War and subsequent occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. How many more anniversaries will pass before a resolution to the conflict is finally achieved?

My niece, Bella, who was born sixteen days after President Clinton facilitated that famous handshake on the White House lawn wants an answer to this question. Having spent time helping with the refugee crisis on Lesbos three years ago, and then gone on to work with Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Bella is about to embark on an MA in Middle Eastern Studies at SOAS, London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies, where her special subjects will include the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

My response to Bella is that we must never lose hope. We must never say that the situation will never change because change is always possible. Nevertheless, the twists and turns of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have not yet transformed the lives of Israelis and Palestinians for the better. Amongst the most significant developments of the past thirty years has been the phenomenon of popular Palestinian uprisings – from the first intifada in 1987, through the second intifada in 2000 that followed the failed peace process and acceleration of settlement-building, through the unrest in the Gaza Strip today. Sparked by the move of the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem,^[3] the past few months have seen continuous protests in Gaza, involving mass gatherings at the border and retaliation by the Israeli army, resulting in scores of deaths, including the deaths of ordinary protesters alongside Hamas activists.^[4] This, in turn, has led to a new wave of rocket attacks and subsequent Israeli reprisals.^[5] The cycle of violence grinds on.

Meanwhile, here we are in Britain, a congregation of Jews, living as a minority. What can we do about events far away and beyond our control, which have nothing to do with our lives? We can’t do very much – but we can think and reflect – which is, after all, the main purpose of our being here on Yom Kippur. We can – and we must – think and reflect about Israel; not least because we have been reminded in recent months that Israeli government policy towards the Palestinians in the Palestinian territories, and also towards the 1.7 million Palestinians who live in Israel^[6], is predicated on the Israeli government’s understanding of Israel as a Jewish state. So, what does it mean to say that a country or a congregation is Jewish? Our Jewish congregation is home to many non-Jews and the Jewish state is also home to many non-Jews. One of the far-right parties that has emerged in Israel in recent years is called Yisrael Beytenu. Founded in 1999, Yisrael Beytenu translates as ‘Israel Our Home’. According to the vision statement of Yisrael Beytenu, published on their website, the party is guided by ‘three basic principles’: “1) Unity of the Nation, 2) the State of Israel as the National Homeland of the Jewish people, 3) No Citizenship Without Allegiance.”^[7] Israel has a multi-party system, so Yisrael Beytenu is one of many. However, its leader Avigdor Lieberman has held several ministerial roles, including, Deputy Prime Minister, and since 2016, he has been Minister of Defence. And so, the agenda of this far-right party has been for some years now at the heart of the Israeli government. Further, with the passage of the Nation State Bill into a law, entitled, ‘Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People’, the ‘three basic principles’ of Yisrael Beytenu have become the law of the land.

Of course, many Israeli political parties and national organisations committed to pluralism oppose the ‘Basic Law’, which was adopted with some amendments by the 120-seat Knesset on 19^th July, with 62 voting in favour, 55 against, and 2 abstentions.^[8] Significantly, the clause dealing with ‘the Capital of the State’, declares that Jerusalem ‘complete and united’, is the capital of Israel. In this way, the law not only officially relegates Israeli Palestinians to second-class status, but has ramifications for Palestinians living in the Palestinian territories, by legally enforcing the de facto treatment of Palestinian East Jerusalem as integral to Israel.

Clearly, from the perspective of the Basic Law, a Jewish state is one that privileges the Jewish people. Needless to say, this understanding of Israel as a Jewish state is at odds with its claims to be a democratic state in which all citizens have equal rights and responsibilities. It also contradicts a major clause of Israel’s Declaration of Independence:^[9]

THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

So, according to the Declaration of Independence, the founding statement delivered by David Ben Gurion on 14 May 1948 that established the modern State of Israel, a Jewish state is one that treats all its citizens equally. Echoes of other independence declarations going back to the establishment of the United States of America in 1776, resonate in this clause. But the clause is not just the product of a modern, enlightenment consciousness. Let me quote a key phrase again: ‘The State of Israel … will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel.’ In that phrase, we see the fusion of two understandings of what it means to say that Israel is a Jewish state: that it is the State of the Jewish people and that it practices Jewish values. The haftarah we read on Yom Kippur, from the second part of the Book of Isaiah proclaims these values. As we read it today, let us imagine the prophet addressing the Jewish people today (58:1-7):

Cry aloud, do not hold back, let your voice resound like a trumpet; declare to My people their transgression, and to the house of Jacob their sins. / True, they seek Me daily, and say they long to know My ways, as if they were a nation that did justly and had not forsaken the precepts of their God. They ask of me just laws and long to be near to God. / When we fast, you say, ‘why do You pay no heed? Why do we afflict ourselves, and You take no notice?’ Because on your fast day you think only of your business, and oppress all your workers! / Because your fasting leads only to strife and discord, and hitting out with cruel fist! Such a way fasting on this day will not help you to be heard on high. / Is this the fast I look for? A day of self-affliction? Bowing your head like a reed, and covering yourself with sackcloth and ashes? Is this what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the Eternal One? / Is not this the fast I look for: to release the shackles of injustice, to undo the fetters of bondage, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every cruel chain? / Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and to bring the homeless poor into your house? When you see the naked, to cloth them, and never to hide yourself from your own kin?

Of course, the imperative of justice is not only found in the words of the prophets. The opening statement of Israel’s Declaration of Independence refers to ‘the eternal Book of Books’ bequeathed by the Jewish people to the world. In that ‘eternal Book of Books, the Hebrew Bible, we find many statements about justice – including in K’doshim, the Holiness Code, Leviticus chapter 19, at the heart of the Torah, from which we will read this afternoon. In addition to the declaration, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself. I am the Eternal’ (19:18), the Holiness Code also states, ‘You shall not oppress the stranger … you shall love the stranger as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the Eternal your God’ (19:34).

When I was a child, and getting into scrapes, my mother taught me to make a particular declaration when challenged as a way of letting her know that I was being completely truthful: ‘on my Jewish word of honour’. And so, I learnt that being ‘Jewish’ means being honest and honourable. What did Avigdor Lieberman learn when he was growing up? The chief architect of a vision of the Jewish state that is completely devoid of Jewish values, migrated to Israel from Moldova in the Former Soviet Union in 1978 at the age of 20. A large proportion of the early Jewish immigrants to Israel also came from what was then the Russian Empire. One of these, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, brother of the well-known Bible scholar and educator, Nehama Leibowitz, was born in Riga (now the capital of Latvia) in 1903 and settled in Jerusalem in 1935. It would be an understatement to say that Yeshayahu Leibowitz had an entirely different outlook from that of Avigdor Lieberman. An Orthodox Jew all his long life – he died in 1994 at the age of 91 – Yeshayahu Leibowitz lived up to his name: ‘Yeshayahu’ is the Hebrew for ‘Isaiah’. This particular Isaiah was a true modern prophet of Israel. Indeed, he was one of the first Israeli thinkers to recognise that the occupation that ensued after the 1967 Six Day War, would have a terrible impact on the ethical fibre of Israel if it continued. This is what he wrote in his essay on ‘The Territories’ published just a year later, in 1968:^[10]

A state ruling a hostile population of 1.5 to 2 million foreigners would necessarily become a secret police-state, with all that implies for education, free speech and democratic institutions. The corruption characteristic of every colonial regime would also prevail in the State of Israel. The administration would suppress Arab insurgency on the one hand and acquire Arab quislings on the other. There’s also good reason to fear that the Israel Defence Force, which has been until now a people’s army, would, as a result of being transformed into an army of occupation, degenerate, and its commanders, who will have become military governors, resemble their colleagues in other nations.

I mentioned that Yeshayahu Leibowitz was an Orthodox Jew. The notion that a Jewish state should adhere to Jewish values is not a progressive idea. Jewish teaching about the land beyond the Jordan from the Bible onwards makes it clear that the nation must be rooted in the practice of justice. Indeed, the practice of justice is the nation’s principal purpose and if it is not rooted in the practice of justice, it will not endure. That is the message of the Torah and of the prophets – of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos and Micah, in particular – again and again. ^[11] A verse in the book of Deuteronomy puts it very succinctly: ‘Justice, Justice you shall pursue – Tzedek, tzedek tirdof – so that you may live and inherit the land that the Eternal God is giving to you.’^[12] It is also the message of history. The last independent Jewish state before the current one was the Hasmonean state that was established in 140 BCE after the defeat of the Assyrian Greeks. The Hasmonean state was short-lived, succumbing to Roman rule in 63 BCE. On the surface, it simply looks as though a small state was overcome by a massive empire. But the internal dynamics of the Hasmonean state tell a different story: a story of division and hatred, and of a leadership that became arrogant and corrupt.^[13]

When the Knesset passed the ‘Basic Law: Israel and the State of the Jewish People’, I tweeted my response using the hashtag, #notinmyname. The Jewish state is not just another country far away. Israel is maintaining a ruthless occupation of conquered land and subjecting 21% of its own citizens to second class status in the name of all those who identify as Jewish. If we want Israel to return to its founding ideals and be a refuge for Jews in flight from persecution and a beacon of Jewish ethical values, we must all say, not in my name.

Israel can be a Jewish state in the deepest sense of the word Jewish. Amongst the forty-nine nations of the world where Islam is the dominant religion^[14], the vast regions of the world where Christianity predominates and the fifteen nations where it is the state religion^[15] – including, England – the nations where Buddhism or Hinduism is the majority faith, the multireligious and officially nonreligious nations, Israel can be as the new Basic Law puts it, ‘The Nation-State of the Jewish people’. But it can only be ‘The Nation-State of the Jewish People’ if it practices Jewish values – or, as Israel’s Declaration of Independence puts it, if it ‘is based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel.’ In order to become this kind of Jewish state, it must extend equal rights to all its citizens and end the occupation.

It may feel impossible to imagine that Israel could become this kind of Jewish state. But the assertion of the ethical teachings of Judaism has always gone hand-in-hand with the determination to make what seems impossible possible by putting those ethical teachings into practice. One of the foremost Israeli champions of a just resolution of the conflict with the Palestinians, Uri Avnery, the founder and leader of Israel’s peace movement, Gush Shalom,^[16] died on 20 August in the midst of a period of huge demonstrations held in Rabin Square, Tel Aviv, against the ‘Basic Law’.^[17] In his tribute to Uri Avnery, Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun magazine, wrote:^[18]

Avnery devoted himself entirely to the struggle to achieve peace between the state of Israel and the Palestinian people in their independent state, as well as between Israel and the Arab and Muslim World. He did not get to the end of the road, did not live to see peace come about. We – the activists and supporters of Tikkun magazine, as well as the members of Gush Shalom as well as very many other people who were directly and indirectly influenced by him – will continue his mission and honor his memory.

Jews have always looked ahead to a better world – not a better world in the hereafter, but rather one that we build here on Earth. May our experience of observing this Yom Kippur inspire us and renew our spirits, so that we are ready to support and contribute to the efforts of all those, both in Israel and the Diaspora, who are working to make the Jewish state worthy of its name.

And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Brighton & Hove Progressive Synagogue

Yom Kippur Shacharit 5779 – 19^th September 2018

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur_War ↑
2. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/13/newsid_3053000/3053733.stm ↑
3. http://www.theweek.co.uk/jerusalem/90266/why-the-us-embassy-move-to-jerusalem-is-so-controversial ↑
4. https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/50-of-dead-in-gaza-protest-were-hamas-activists-says-hamas-official-1.6094899 ↑
5. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-45124357 ↑
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_citizens_of_Israel ↑
7. http://www.beytenu.org/the-vision-of-yisrael-beytenu-israel-our-home-2/ ↑
8. http://www.jewishpress.com/news/israel/the-knesset/basic-law-israel-as-the-nation-state-of-the-jewish-people-approved-by-knesset-62-55/2018/07/19/ ↑
9. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-declaration-of-the-establishment-of-the-state-of-israel ↑
10. Published in: Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State. Harvard University Press, 1992. pp. 225, 226. ↑
11. See for example, Amos, chapter 9, which states that the Eternal One has no special preference for Israel, and will, indeed, destroy ‘the sinful nation’. ↑
12. Shof’tim, Deuteronomy 16:20 ↑
13. See: Jewish People, Jewish Thought: The Jewish Experience in History by Robert M Seltzer, chapter 4, the Hellenistic diaspora and the Judean Commonwealth to 70 CE, pp. 178-184. Macmillan publishing, New York, 1980. ↑
14. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_world ↑
15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_by_country ↑
16. http://uriavnery.com/en/ ↑
17. https://972mag.com/tens-of-thousands-of-druze-protest-for-equality-in-tel-aviv/137069/ https://www.opednews.com/articles/Equality–100-000-demon-by-Joseph-Zernik-Civil-Rights_Israel-180805-652.html ↑
18. Tikkun E-Newsletter, 20.08.18. ↑