Today is Yom Kippur. Some of us are here on this sacred occasion for the first time. Most of us have been here before. The year goes around, and every year is marked by its regular milestones – birthdays, anniversaries, festivals. Are these simply dates on the calendar? Milestones in our personal lives – especially birthdays – remind us that we are a year older. All of them tell us that another year has gone by. So, what’s the point of our celebrations and commemorations? Can the milestones in our lives, in the life of our people, and in the life of the world, be catalysts for change as well as moments for remembrance? – or, at least, prompt reflection that leads to renewal?

On Rosh Ha-shanah, we listened to the voice of the shofar – to multiple voices: t’ki’ah – a single clear blast; sh’varim – three broken wails; t’ru’ah – nine rapid-fire short toots. The shofar summoned us to remember our deeds of the past year and change our ways. The Hebrew word for ‘year’, shanah, is based on the root letters, Shin Nun Hei, meaning to change. It seems that the years just go around and around in an endless cycle, but each year is a direction signal, inviting change and renewal.

So, here we are on Yom Kippur facing the year ahead. Many of us – perhaps most of us – find change very difficult. We want to change aspects of how we behave and relate to others, and how we deal with life, but we find it so hard to change, despite our good intentions. Perhaps, we just make it too difficult; there are so many things about ourselves we want to change, the challenge is just too insurmountable. Perhaps, we could simply resolve each year to achieve one change. I mentioned in my Erev Rosh Ha-Shanah sermon that in the past few months, I’ve begun having a 30-minute walk first thing every morning. My motive was to improve my physical health – my lungs and my back – but I’ve discovered that my daily walk has had an impact on my mental health, too. Yes, shanah, ‘year’, is based on the root, meaning to change, but just because the year changes, doesn’t mean that we must change everything at once. The wisdom of the shanah year-change connection, is that each year of our lives, we are presented with the opportunity to change something, however small. Year after year, change can follow change, so that we change incrementally.

But what about change in the world around us? On the one hand, change seems so rapid – technological changes, in particular – we can hardly keep up. And the impact on the planet of rapid technological developments since the beginning of the industrial age, means that the fragile ecosystem that Life depends on, is changing, increasingly rapidly, in disturbing ways. On the other hand, change on the economic level seem so very slow. Caught up in a global economic system based on the pursuit of profit, that was shaken but not substantially reformed in the aftermath of the global banking crisis in 2008, the only perceptible change is that the rich continue to get richer and the poor continue to get poorer.

We have witnessed some major changes on the social, cultural and legal level in Britain in the past few years – most recently, with the achievement of full equality for LGBT – lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender – people. Certainly, we can say that since the 1967 Sexual Offences Act decriminalised sexual acts between two men over the age of 21 in private,^[1] legal changes over the past 50 years have resulted in an equal age of consent,^[2] equal marriage^[3] and the possibility of transgender people altering their birth certificates to reflect their new name and gender identity.^[4] But let’s not forget: these legal changes only happened because LGBTQ people engaged in a struggle for acknowledgement of our full human rights.

Along the journey of that struggle, there have been setbacks, including the infamous ‘Clause 28’ of the Local Government Act 1988, introduced by the then Conservative government. Known also as ‘Section 28’, the clause stated that a local authority “shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality”, or “promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.”^[5] Although, there were no prosecutions brought under Section 28, fears that they could be in breach of the Act on the part of council legal staff meant that many LGBT student support groups were closed down. Meanwhile, LGBT teachers lived in fear. Clause 28 was finally repealed – in June 2000 by the new Scottish Parliament and in November 2003 in England and Wales – but only because LGBT people and our allies took to the streets.

When it comes to political change, it seems that with the vote in June 2016 by a slight majority of the UK electorate to leave the European Union, enormous upheaval lies ahead. And not just political upheaval. Brexit, promises, to have an enormous impact on the economic life of the UK, and on the rights of employees,^[6] if European Union provisions are not incorporated into UK law. Many of us are fearful of the changes in store – not least, if trade deals are made with the United States, where food safety and animal welfare standards are much lower than those that operate in the European Union.

So, change ahead for Britain. When it comes to the political arena of the Middle East, our main concern is the lack of any change. June 5^th marked the 50^th anniversary of the start of the Six Day War and subsequent occupation of the West Bank. In the lead up to that momentous anniversary, a new initiative was launched in Israel, the SISO Movement, with the slogan, ‘Save Israel, Stop the Occupation’. At our communal seder, we used material from the Jubilee Haggadah created by SISO to raise awareness. But as another significant anniversary approaches, the centenary of the Balfour Declaration of 2^nd November 1917, the British government’s important statement of support for a Jewish homeland as it prepared to establish the British Mandate in Palestine, following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, there have been no moves towards breaking the deadlock. Meanwhile, across the denominational spectrum here in Britain, the Jewish community has been busy planning the commemoration of the centenary set for Sunday, 5^th November. Of course, it is important to mark this significant anniversary, but when we turn to the actual text of the Balfour Declaration, we can see that in the hundred years since it was made, and in the 69 years since the State of Israel was established in May 1948, the terms of the Declaration have not yet been fulfilled. This is the text of the Declaration, which was made in a letter that Lord Balfour wrote to Lord Rothschild: ^[7]

His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

Ensuring ‘the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine’ was bound to be difficult. In the decades that followed the Balfour Declaration, and in particular, after the Arab riots of 1929 and 1936, there were successive attempts to reach an agreement between the Zionist yishuv – the pre-State Jewish community – and the indigenous Arab population – later identified as the Palestinians. These attempts eventually culminated seventy years ago in the UN vote on 29^th November 1947 to partition the disputed land into two states, Israel and Palestine.^[8] Like the other partition plan earlier that year in response to the conflict that ensued between Hindus and Muslims, following the end of the British Raj, which resulted in the creation of the separate states of India, East Pakistan and West Pakistan,^[9] the partition plan agreed at the United Nations on 29^th November 1947 was far from perfect. Nevertheless, had the plan been accepted – reluctantly, the Zionists agreed to it but the Palestinians didn’t – perhaps negotiations could have ensued to adjust the borders, with a view to reaching a compromise between the nationalist aspirations of both peoples that was acceptable to both peoples. As it is, post-1947 and following the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948, after several wars, innumerable terror attacks, two Palestinian insurrections, a failed peace process involving patchy concessions to the Palestinians, withdrawal from Gaza, the building of the ‘separation barrier’ to stop the terrorists and provide bulwarks around the major settlement blocs in the West Bank, and the continuing expansion of settlements, the impasse continues, with no change in sight…

Of course, there are people on both sides – amongst, both, the Israelis and the Palestinians – who continue against the odds to work together and who are eager to make an agreement, and prepared to accept the compromises involved.^[10] But there are more people on both sides, who remain intransigent. We don’t know what the year ahead will bring after this year of anniversaries, but it seems unlikely that we will have much cause to celebrate.

It is hard not to lose heart. But we cannot – must not – lose heart. Having listened to the voice of the shofar on Rosh Ha-Shanah, at the end of this sacred day, we will listen to one single ‘great’ blast: t’ki’ah g’dolah. According to the Torah, in parashat B’har, Leviticus chapter 25 (:9-10) the shofar was to be sounded on Yom Kippur at the beginning of the fiftieth year, following seven cycles of seven years. We read:

You shall cause the shofar to sound t’ru’ah in the seventh month, on the tenth of the month, on Yom Kippur, you shall cause the shofar to sound throughout your land. Then you shall sanctify the fiftieth year and proclaim freedom in the land to all its inhabitants; it shall be a Jubilee to you; and you shall return everyone to their possession, and everyone to their family.

There is little evidence that the Jubilee year was ever observed.^[11] But perhaps the time has come to proclaim freedom – d’ror – in the land to all its inhabitants, both Israeli and Palestinian. Of course, both Israelis and Palestinians must want freedom from perpetual conflict, must find the will to change. Another anniversary – not a Jewish one – might serve to remind us that, ultimately, change is possible, provided people have the will to change. On 17^th October 1917, the Bolsheviks triumphed, completing the collapse of the Russian Empire and ushering in a new era of Communism.^[12] Many rejoiced – not least Jewish Communists. Over the years, expectations in the new dawn of the Communist revolution were eclipsed by a dictatorship, not of the proletariat, but of Stalin’s death squads. Absolutism and terror reigned and millions were exiled and murdered. But just as Hitler’s ‘Thousand Year Reich’ was defeated by the Allies in 1945, so, the USSR began to disintegrate in the late 1980s in response to oppositional movements. In recent years, authoritarianism has re-emerged and President Putin seems unassailable. Nevertheless, the catalogue of changes that have taken place in Russia and the other nations of the former Eastern Bloc since 1917, tell us that people have the power to generate change.

The message of the past hundred years of Russian history is also a message for Israel and Palestine. Perhaps not this fiftieth anniversary year, but the time will come when the will to change will gather momentum amongst Israelis and Palestinians. Just as important, the changes we have witnessed in the world around us during the span of our own lives, remind us that we can also be agents of change, both, in our personal lives, and in the wider society. We can change, if only, one change at a time. May this sacred day for reflection, inspire us with the courage to renew our lives, and the resolve to do what we can to foster renewal in the world around us.

And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Brighton & Hove Progressive Synagogue

Yom Kippur Shacharit 5778 – 30^th September 2017

1. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1967/60/pdfs/ukpga_19670060_en.pdf ↑
2. http://www.youngstonewall.org.uk/lgbtq-info/legal-equality ↑
3. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2013/30/contents/enacted/data.htm ↑
4. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/7/notes/contents ↑
5. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/9/section/28 ↑
6. http://strongerunions.org/2016/02/25/10-workers-rights-brexit-would-risk/ ↑
7. https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/The_Balfour_Declaration ↑
8. http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/foreignpolicy/peace/guide/pages/un%20general%20assembly%20resolution%20181.aspx See also: http://www.un.org/Depts/dpi/palestine/ch2.pdf ↑
9. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/modern/partition1947_01.shtml ↑
10. For examples, see: https://www.childrenofpeace.org.uk/ http://www.familiesforum.co.uk/ For lists of groups, see:http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/13-peacebuilders-in-gaza http://www.mepn.org/peace-groups-palestine-israel/ ↑
11. http://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/12967-sabbatical-year-and-jubilee ↑
12. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/eastern_front_01.shtml ↑

As we gather here this evening, just nine days into the New Year, the sombre, reflective spirit associated with Yom Kippur, combines with a complex bundle of feelings that each one of us carries within us, as we face the year ahead. We know that our purpose on this most sacred day of the Jewish year is to examine our lives, acknowledge our errors, and the ways in which we have hurt others as well as ourselves, with as much honesty as we can muster, and resolve to do better in the year ahead. But we don’t live our lives in a vacuum; beyond the circle of our personal relationships, we live in community, in a nexus of communities, in society, in the world.

We look back at the past year, and even before we get down to unravelling our own behaviour in our efforts to change, it is hard not to feel overwhelmed by external events, issues, problems and stubborn realities: authoritarian regimes that torture and subjugate their own people, radical movements, responding to colonialism and tyranny by engaging in acts of terror at home as well as abroad, unending wars, the global refugee crisis, gender violence, homophobia and transphobia in so many parts of the globe, poverty and the widening gap between the haves and have-nots, the global ecological crisis and the threat of climate change, continuing instability in the Middle East, and in particular, the ongoing impasse in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. The list goes on. There are so many reasons to despair. Some of us may be asking ourselves the question: What’s the point in trying to improve myself and my personal relationships when the world around me is so chaotic and uncertain?

Yes, it’s hard not to despair. But despair is so dangerous. We get mired in feelings of hopelessness. Some of us divert despair into equally negative emotions and responses, like: cynicism and fatalism. The main problem with cynicism is that like a contagion it infects any efforts to change the world. The word, deriving originally from a school of ancient Greek philosophers known as the Cynics, those who are cynical are inclined to question the integrity of others and believe that people are motivated purely by self-interest – not least, politicians and the whole enterprise of politics. In this particular context, it’s clear to see that cynicism is closely connected to scepticism, distrust, mistrust, doubt and suspicion. Allied, too, with incredulity, negativity and world-weariness, cynicism also expresses the disillusion, and disenchantment we can feel when efforts to create change seem to come to nothing. Of course, at the heart of cynicism: pessimism; an inclination to feel that nothing ever changes and to see any efforts to create change as futile.

Which brings me to fatalism. Fatalism is just as dangerous as cynicism. Those who are inclined to fatalism imagine that all the terrible things that happen are predetermined and therefore inevitable. From a fatalistic point of view, free -will is impossible. We cannot control what happens or institute any change. Fatalism can breed a submissive attitude to events, passive acceptance, resignation and defeatism. Everything is just fated. Like cynicism, fatalism tends to pessimism and negative thinking, and a ‘doom and gloom’ mentality.

It’s not my intention this evening to make any of us feel even more gloomy and despairing than we already feel. It is my intention to argue that given that cynicism and fatalism lead nowhere and only serve to intensify a sense of hopelessness and pointlessness, we must commit ourselves to Hope – with a capital ‘H’. To give up on hope is surely to pronounce a death sentence on humanity. But then again, the question remains: how can we genuinely generate a feeling of hope, given the state of the world?

Perhaps, we could begin by remembering that hope – tikvah – in Hebrew, is an endemically Jewish inclination. The very survival of the Jewish people against the odds is evidence of the triumph of a spirit of hope. Just think of the catalogue of calamities that have afflicted our people: over 200 years spent in slavery in Egypt in the 13^th century BCE; conquest by successive empires from the eighth century BCE through the first century CE: the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans; 1700 years of demonisation under Christendom, involving segregation and marginalisation, persecution and violence; the deadly consequences of the development of modern racist anti-Semitism, culminating in the Sho’ah.

Why are we still here? Of course, there are many possible answers to this question, including, for some that despite the terrible catastrophes that have befallen us, the Eternal One is with us eternally. That response was certainly evident in previous generations. Tomorrow afternoon, in the musaf service, the ‘additional service’, which is the deepest moment of the day, we will sing the song, Ani Ma’amin, derived from the ‘Thirteen Principles of Faith’ composed by the Jewish philosopher and codifier, Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, known by the acronym, Rambam, and as Maimonides.^[1] Ani Ma’amin declares: Ani ma’amin be’emunah sh’leimah – ‘I believe with complete faith that the Messiah will come’ – in our Liberal Judaism version, ‘that the time of redemption will come’ – ‘and though he/it be long delayed, I will await him/it every day.’ I remember my mother telling me that as her father approached home at the close of Shabbat – Shabbes in their household – he would be singing a Yiddish song that begins: a gitte voch, a gitte voch, mashi’ach vet kimmen aufen villen voch – ‘a good week, a good week’ – the Yiddish version of the Hebrew, shavu’a tov, shavu’a tov – the Messiah will come in the fullness of the week’. For the generations, who endured a ghetto existence, Shabbes nurtured the hope of the messianic times, and so to ward off feelings of sadness as Shabbes ended that the Messiah had not yet come, instead of resorting to despair, our forebears looked forward with hopefulness to the prospect that maybe at the end of the coming week, the Messiah would arrive…

Of course, we live in very different times and circumstances. The spirit of hopeful expectation expressed in that Yiddish song is generally only found among the Chasidim today, who tend to live as though they are still in Eastern Europe in the 18^th century. So, what about us? What can we do, so modern and sophisticated as we are, to nurture the spirit of hope? In his book of essays, Writing in the Dark, published in 2008,^[2] David Grossman, who as an Israeli, and as a parent, whose son was killed in the 2006 Israeli incursion into Lebanon, is more than familiar with despair,^[3] speaks about what he calls “acquired naïveté”. David Grossman writes:

I must … admit that I’m a great believer in “acquired naïveté,” by which I mean a conscious and determined decision to be somewhat naive, precisely in a situation that is all but rotting away with sobriety and cynicism, that for years has been leading us astray. It is a naïveté that knows full well what it faces and what it contends with, but also knows that despair creates more despair, hatred, and violence, while hope – even if it is the product of this “acquired naïveté” – may very slowly bring about the mechanisms of prospect, of faith in the possibility of change, of extricating oneself from an eternal victim mentality.

‘Cynicism has been leading us astray…. despair creates more despair, hatred, and violence.’ So, our only hope is hope. Let us not forget that the Israeli National Anthem is Ha-Tikvah – ‘The Hope’. Perhaps, this year that marks the 50^th anniversary of the Six Day War and the subsequent occupation,^[4] the 70^th anniversary of the UN vote on partition of the land on the eastern seaboard of the Mediterranean into two states,^[5] and the centenary of the Balfour Declaration that expressed the British government’s support for the establishment of a Jewish homeland,^[6] might remind us that, ultimately, the only hope of a future for the State of Israel is that the hope of a State of Palestine alongside Israel is realised.

So, do you think you can make ‘a conscious and determined decision to be somewhat naïve’? It may be easier for some of us. I know that I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for my basic naïveté – my naive belief that most people’s inclination to open-hearted benevolence will be stronger than their drive to mean-spirited malevolence. After a horrendous time in my life – and my rabbinic career – just over 20 years ago, when I had experienced a particularly bad period of homophobia, I decided to adopt the middle name, Tikvah, and so consciously and determinedly make ‘hope’ part of my identity. In the face of all signs that there was no reason to hope, realising how far hope had got me from the time that I began my rabbinic journey in 1984, despite the naysayers and bigots, I decided against reason, to make tikvah, my mantra.

Each one of us must find their own way towards hope. During the past year, in response to continuing racism and bigotry, particularly in the United States, we have seen the rise of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement.^[7] We need to realise that our individual lives matter. In that quest, a nugget of wisdom in the Talmud is instructive: ‘Happy is the one who performs a good deed that may tip the scales for themselves and the world.’^[8] Yes, we may feel overwhelmed by what is going on across the globe, but each one of us can make a difference – a difference, not only for the world, but also for ourselves; because when we defy despair, cynicism and fatalism, and adopt hope as a strategy, we can, both, help to repair the world and heal our own brokenness. This evening, as we face the challenge to renew our lives, may the survival of our people ‘from Egypt until now,’^[9] and the bonds of community we share together, inspire us to summon up a spirit of hope for the journey that lies ahead. And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue

Erev Yom Kippur 5777 – 29^th September 2017

1. Born, c.1135 in Cordova, Spain; died in Egypt in 1204. ↑
2. Bloomsbury, pub co, 2008, p. 207. ↑
3. David Grossman’s grief at the loss of his son is expressed in his book, Falling Out of Time, published in 2014. ↑
4. 5 June-11 June 1967. ↑
5. 29 November 1947. ↑
6. https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/The_Balfour_Declaration ↑
7. https://www.facebook.com/BlackLivesMatter ↑
8. Babylonian Talmud Kiddushin 40a. ↑
9. Sh’lach L’kha, Numbers 14:19. ↑

Have you heard of ‘Earth Overshoot Day’? I only found out about it through Twitter. I then went to the Overshoot Day website, which states – and I quote:^[1] ‘Earth Overshoot Day is the date when humanity’s annual demand on nature exceeds what Earth can regenerate over the entire year.’ This year, Earth Overshoot Day fell on August 2^nd, which, as the website informs us, is ‘the earliest date yet’. The web page then goes on to explain ‘the costs of this global overspending’, which ‘include deforestation, drought, fresh-water scarcity, soil erosion, biodiversity loss, and the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.’

On the same web page where you will find this challenging information, you can also read about the release of a ‘new Footprint Calculator’ that ‘allows users to measure their own demand on nature (Ecological Footprint) and assess their personal Earth Overshoot Day’, explaining that ‘A user’s personal Earth Overshoot day is the date Earth Overshoot Day would be if all people had their Footprint. A personal Earth Overshoot Day earlier than August 2 means your demand on nature is higher than the world average. If it is earlier than April 24, it is higher than Germany’s average; if it is earlier than March 14, it is higher than the US average.’

If the notion of calculating what looks like becoming a doomsday scenario feels rather depressing, the website also makes it clear that the point is to take action before it’s too late. We read further: ‘For Earth Overshoot Day this year, Global Footprint Network, along with 30+ partners, is highlighting solutions and individual pledges to #movethedate. If we moved Earth Overshoot Day back 4.5 days every year, we would return to living within the means of one Earth before 2050; we are currently using 1.7 Earths. Reducing the carbon component of the global Ecological Footprint by 50% would move Overshoot Day by 89 days.’

Today is the birthday of the world – in Hebrew: harat olam. Happy Birthday world! But is there any reason to celebrate? As I ask this question, I’m aware that at that at this very moment, Hurricane Maria, the third ferocious hurricane in the region of the past month, is pounding the Caribbean. Aren’t we all aware that the impact of global warming on the temperature of the oceans means that unless we begin to take responsibility for the planet, hurricanes and floods will only get increasingly more frequent and devastating?

Today is also known as Yom Ha-Din, ‘The Day of Judgement’ and Yom Ha-Zikaron, ‘Day of Remembrance’. Surely, there is a connection between these names. In terms of an individual’s life, a birthday is an annual opportunity to reflect on the past year and assess what we have and have not done, and think about what adjustments we would like to make in the year ahead. Of course, the world is not 5778 years old today – a number derived from adding up the chronologies in the Torah. Nevertheless, the birthday of the world is an appropriate time for individuals and communities to reflect on our impact on the planet and resolve to take steps to do something about it. In the Torah, the first day of the seventh month, which later acquired the Babylonian name of Tishri, is referred to simply as Yom T’ru’ah, ‘Day of Blasting’^[2] – that is, the day for blowing the shofar. The first rabbis who reconstructed Jewish life after the destruction of the last Temple by the Romans in 70 CE, designated the first day of the seventh month as Rosh Ha-Shanah, literally, ‘The Head of the Year’. But the blowing of the shofar remained at the heart of the day. In the multiple blasts, we hear the call to remembrance and cannot escape the sense of being in the presence of a judgement on our lives.

Ha-yom harat olam – ‘Today is the birthday of the world’. In the musaf – additional – service, which centres around the shofar blastings, we will sing a passage that is common to the various Jewish prayer rites, and which is traditionally recited after the blowing of the shofar at the end of each of the three sections of blastings. The passage first appeared in the very first siddur, Seder Rav Amram, published circa 860 CE^[3] – with its origins in the Babylonian Talmud, edited around the year 500 CE.^[4] The text opens with these words:

Ha-yom harat olam. Ha-yom ya’amid ba-mishpat, kol-y’tzurei olamim, im k’vanim, im ka’avadim.

Today is the birthday of the world. Today, all the creatures of the world stand in the presence of judgement, whether as children, or as slaves.

Of course, children and slaves, because they are subject to the authority of others, are not held responsible for their actions. But although this liturgical passage presents us as subjects of the absolute sovereign God, we are, in fact neither children nor slaves. We must take responsibility for this planet that is our only home – the home of all of us – humans and all the other forms of life – together.

In recent years, a global consciousness has been dawning. Nowadays, recycling is taken for granted in every area of our lives – domestic and public. But still, we remain rampant consumers, litter the seas with plastic bottles – because we’ve bought into the ‘spring water is best’ sales-pitch – and very few products are made to last; indeed, their built-in obsolescence and the need to constantly replace and update them is essential to the engine of global capitalism that demands that we keep on spending.

A global consciousness that encompasses concern for the restoration of planet Earth, including reversal of climate change, and the care of all its endangered species, and also for global justice and human rights seems at odds with globalisation, which the Oxford Dictionary online defines as ‘the process by which businesses or other organizations develop international influence or start operating on an international scale.’ The Wikipedia entry, which is, fittingly, vast, opens with a more detailed definition that reveals the full reach of globalisation’s domination of the planet:^[5]

Globalization (or globalisation) refers to the free movement of goods, capital, services, people, technology and information. It is the action or procedure of international integration of countries arising from the convergence of world views, products, ideas, and other aspects of culture. Advances in the means of transport (such as the steam locomotive, steamship, jet engine, and container ships) and in telecommunications infrastructure (including the rise of the telegraph and its modern offspring, the Internet and mobile phones) have been major factors in globalization, generating further interdependence of economic and cultural activities.

So, globalisation is not all bad. It has brought the world closer together and fostered a sense of interdependence. But it has also enabled the economically powerful nations to dominate more fragile economies, in particular those dependent on single crops. Further, globalisation, has resulted in a global cultural homogenisation, reinforced by tourism – that is, by the phenomenon of inhabitants of the richer nations, with more disposable income to spend on leisure pursuits, taking holidays in increasingly exotic locations, often in the poorer regions of the world, which are becoming less exotic by the day, as traditional cultural activities and artefacts are squeezed out by the ubiquitous products of the global consumer economy – not least, by those exemplars of healthy soft-drinks, Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola, still vying for world domination.

Clearly, globalisation is a complex phenomenon. Perhaps, the time has come to rediscover and reinvigorate an older and simpler concept: internationalism. Internationalism fosters mutual cooperation between nations. In the aftermath of the unprecedented scale of death and destruction unleashed by the First World War, the new spirit of internationalism gave rise to the establishment of the League of Nations in 1920.^[6] And then in October 1945, following the horror of the Sho’ah, and the yet more devastating and catastrophic Second World War, the United Nations was established.^[7] Although for some, internationalism implies that nation states are superseded, more accurately, internationalism enables individual nations to thrive in the nexus of cooperative relationships with other states. Above all, it promotes a life-affirming global consciousness rooted in recognition of a shared responsibility for the planet, and the need for individuals, families and communities to thrive in every place.

It is useful to reflect on internationalism in the aftermath of the European Union referendum of June 2016, when the UK voted by a very small majority for Brexit. The binary contest involved – should the UK remain or leave – which had the Conservative Party divided as usual between ‘Eurosceptics’ and ‘Europhiles’^[8] – obscured a much more significant discussion concerning internationalism, which is probably why the Labour Party was so divided on the issue.^[9] From an internationalist perspective, the prospect of ever-greater European integration conjures up the spectre of ever-widening economic inequalities as long as the free movement of capital dominates the global economic agenda. An internationalist perspective invites us to ask, not what’s best for the UK, but rather how can this nation, in cooperation with other nations, ensure that poverty is eradicated and that everyone, wherever they live, enjoys a decent standard of living. At the same time, assessing the European Union from an internationalist perspective also helps us to see how individual nations and their citizens benefit from belonging to a pan-national entity, as the European Court of Human Rights based at The Hague in the Netherlands, has clearly demonstrated.

So, today on the birthday of the world, I hereby make a plea for internationalism in the global arena! And: for intercommunity engagement on the local level. During the past year, the synagogue hosted the annual Brighton and Hove Interfaith Service^[10] that brought together people of different faith traditions to share our sacred texts and practices for the benefit of all. I will never forget the sight of the imam of the Medina mosque chanting the Muslim call to prayer in front of our Ark. And then there was the wonderful Brighton Festival Open House exhibition, ‘Reflections of the Divine’, which brought over 600 people from across Brighton and Hove into the synagogue on four consecutive Sundays in May to see beautiful artworks reflecting the Jewish, Christian, Islamic and Daoist traditions.^[11] Just last Saturday evening, I was honoured to share the pre-S’lichot service study session with my dear friend and colleague, Imam Muhammad al-Hussaini on the theme of Jewish and Muslim texts on forgiveness.

Interfaith engagement in no way diminishes the integrity of the individual faiths that participate – on the contrary, it provides a context for us to appreciate what is unique about each tradition, and, what we share as human beings engaged, all of us in our different ways, in journeys of meaning and meaning-making.

As the example of interfaith activities demonstrates, we need so much more of the ‘inter’ in our lives and the life of the world: more mutually beneficial interrelationships; more interfaith, more interaction, more intercommunication, more interconnection, more interlinking, more interdependence. We also need to acknowledge intersectionality – that is, the intersection between different identities within individuals, like being, both, black and Jewish – and give much more attention and commitment to the interface between diverse groups and communities. Going back to that new ‘ecological footprint calculator’, we also need to take more individual responsibility for the communities, countries, and world in which we live. Let me close with a poem by the Jewish poet Marge Piercy on the theme of our individual responsibility for the planet, which will be included in the new Liberal Judaism siddur that will, hopefully, be published in five or so years’ time. As co-editor with my colleague Rabbi Lea Muehlstein of Northwood and Pinner Liberal Synagogue, I can certainly guarantee that the first draft of the Shabbat morning service will be circulated to congregations in January 2018. The title of the poem is ‘The task never completed’. ^[12]

No task is ever completed,
only abandoned or pressed into use.
Tinkering can be a form of prayer.

Twenty-six botched worlds preceded
Genesis we are told in ancient commentary,
and ha-Shem said not only,

of this particular attempt,
It is good, but muttered,
if only it will hold.

Incomplete, becoming, the world
was given us to fix, to complete
and we’ve almost worn it out.

My house was hastily built,
on the cheap. Leaks, rotting
sills, the floor a relief map of Idaho.

Whenever I get some money, I stove
up, repair, add on, replace.
This improvisation permits me to squat

here on the land that owns me.
We evolve through mistakes, wrong
genes, imitation gone wild.

Each night sleep unravels me into wool,
then into sheep and wolf. Walls and fire
pass through me. I birth stones.

Every dawn I stumble from the roaring
vat of dreams and make myself up
remembering and forgetting by halves.

Every Dawn, I choose to take a knife
to the world’s flank or a sewing kit,
rough improvisation, but a start.

Marge Piercy’s poem is inspired by a passage in Pirkei Avot, the ‘Chapters of the Sages’, included in the Mishnah, edited around the year 200 CE, which teaches: ‘It is not for you to complete the work, but neither may you desist from it.’ ^[13] Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Marge Piercy’s honest and modest ruminations on the unending task of tikkun olam, repairing the world, might encourage each one of us ‘to take a knife to the world’s flank or a sewing kit’. Today, on the birthday of the world, may we all resolve to make a start. And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Brighton & Hove Progressive Synagogue – Adat Shalom V’rei’ut

Rosh Ha-Shanah Shacharit 5778 – 21^st September 2017

1. http://www.overshootday.org/newsroom/press-release-english-2017-calculator/ ↑
2. See Pinchas, Numbers 29:1 and also the biblical festivals calendar in Emor, Leviticus 23:23 and ↑
3. The work of Amram ben Sheshna. See the text in SRA, II, 114, in the edition edited by Daniel Goldschmidt, Jerusalem, 1971. ↑
4. In tractate Rosh Ha-Shanah 10b ↑
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globalization ↑
6. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/league-of-nations-instituted ↑
7. http://www.un.org/en/sections/history/history-united-nations/ ↑
8. http://ukandeu.ac.uk/the-conservative-party-and-brexit/ ↑
9. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jan/20/labour-eurosceptics-accuse-corbyn-reversing-position-eu-referendum For the statistics on the divisions within the two parties see: https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/03/07/tories-more-divided-labour/ ↑
10. On 20 November 2016. Organised by the Brighton and Hove Interfaith Contact Group. ↑
11. The exhibition was held each Sunday in May 2017. ↑
12. From The Art of Blessing the Day. Poems on Jewish themes by Marge Piercy. Five Leaves Publications, 1998 pp. 82-83. ↑
13. Mishnah Avot 2:16. The Mishnah is the first rabbinic code of law. ↑

The journey of the past year has now ended and the journey of the New Year has just begun. The language of journeying has become so overused in recent times – both in the context of Jewish life and in the wider world – that it seems to have become empty of meaning. Another cliché to add to the thousands of clichés with which we reduce the complexity of life to a set of palatable truisms. And yet, one of the reasons that we speak so readily and repeatedly of taking journeys is because we understand deep in the core of our beings that, ultimately, we are all on an inescapable one-way journey from birth to death. Our way of speaking may have become overtaken by clichés, but the challenge of being alive and making our days meaningful during the finite span of our lives is very real. So, how can we find a way of reflecting on our life’s journey that helps us to live more fully and deeply?

This evening, at the dawn of this New Year, I’d like to suggest that we might begin to respond to this question by burrowing back to the roots of the metaphor of journeying. Back to the simple act of walking. Three months ago, I started to go for a thirty-minute walk first thing each morning – for the benefit of my back and lungs; and, as it has turned out, for the good of my soul, too. Apparently, ahead of any other form of exercise, walking every day, for at least half an hour, is the best way of ensuring our bodies remain healthy as we get older. If you think about it, walking upright on two legs and two feet is what distinguishes homo sapiens from all the other creatures – including our nearest cousins, the apes. Walking is integral to our human nature.

Interestingly, walking also plays a very special role in the story of the Jewish people, from the time that our first ancestors, Abraham and Sarah, left home in response to the challenge of God. We read at parashat Lekh-L’kha, Genesis chapter 12, verse 1:

Va-yomer Adonai el-Avram, Lekh-l’kha mei-artz’ka, u’mi-molad’kha, u’mi-beit avikha, el-ha-aretz asher areka.

The Eternal said to Avram, go for yourself from your land, and from your kindred, and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you.

We read further at verse 4 that Avram responded decisively: Va-yeilekh Avram – ‘So, Avram went.’

You might think these verses don’t say anything about ‘walking’ as such, but the Hebrew root Hei Lamed Kaf means, both, to ‘go’ and to ‘walk’. Importantly, ‘going’/‘walking’ is very different from ‘going out’ – the Hebrew root Yud Tzadi Alef – which is the language of flight and exile, as reflected in the Torah, both, in the story of Jacob and in the narrative of the Exodus. Of course, Jews have taken flight many times; the world is crisscrossed with the flight-lines of the Jewish people. And Jews have also walked as an expression of our commitment to our way of life. Think back to our agricultural forebears, who went on pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem three times in the year, at Pesach, in the spring, at Shavuot, in the early summer, and at Sukkot, in the autumn, bringing the fruits of their labours as sacred offerings. These three festivals are known as shalosh r’galim, literally, ‘three feet’. Interestingly, the word for ‘festival’ in Hebrew, chag, designates these three festivals as pilgrimages – plural, chaggim. You might notice the connection between chag in Hebrew and haj in Arabic, the word used by Muslims to refer to the annual pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Strictly speaking, the term chag, and consequently the greeting, chag samei’ach, ‘happy festival’, only applies to the three pilgrim festivals.

Jewish life did not stop centring around walking after the Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE, and our ancestors no longer went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The first rabbis responsible for reconstructing Jewish life after that catastrophe, created a system for regulating Jewish observance that became known as halakhah. Halakhah is usually translated as ‘law’ or ‘Jewish law’, but the word is based on that same Hebrew root, Hei Lamed Kaf – to ‘go’ or to ‘walk’. So, in place of walking to the Temple, Jewish practice as walking.

Of course, the halakhic system first outlined in the first rabbinic code of law, the Mishnah, edited around 200 CE, is rooted in the legal codes of the Torah. And not only in the Torah’s legal codes as such, but also in the language used in the Torah to convey what it means to be true to the Eternal One. And so, we read at the beginning of parashat B’chukkotai, at Leviticus chapter 26, verse 3, in a passage that relates the rewards due for obedience to God:

Im b’chukkotai teileikhu, v’et-mitzvotai tishm’ru va’asitem otam…

If you walk in my statutes and keep my commandments and do them …

As you can see here, ‘walking’ is equivalent to ‘keeping’ and ‘doing’. But why is this? Perhaps, ‘walking’ has transmuted into ‘following’, which captures the sense of observance reflected in ‘keeping’ and ‘doing’.

The first paragraph of the Sh’ma, on the other hand suggests a more down-to-earth sense of walking as ‘walking along the way’, being integral to Jewish life. We read in parashat Va-etchannan, Deuteronomy, chapter 6, verses 6 to 7:

V’hayu ha-d’varim ha-eilleh asher Anokhi m’tzav’kha ha-yom al-l’vavekha. / V’shinnantam l’vanekha, v’dibbarta bam; b’shivt’kha b’veitekha, u’v’lekht’kha va-derekh, u’v’shokhb’kha, u’v’kumekha.

These words that I command you today [shall be] upon your heart. / You shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall speak of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking along the way, when you are lying down, and when you are rising up.

Speaking, sitting, walking, lying down and rising up: ultimately, halakhah is about the rhythm of our daily lives.

So, is it possible for us as progressive Liberal Jews to reclaim halakhah from the absolutist, prescriptive and non-negotiable edifice of Jewish law? The answer to that question is ‘yes’, according to the late great Rabbi John Rayner, Zichrono livrachah, May his memory be for blessing, who died twelve years ago yesterday, on 19 September, 2005. Rabbi Rayner understood that Liberal Jews need a framework for our lives as Liberal Jews.

Given that Liberal Judaism is non-prescriptive, it might not surprise you to know that there is not unanimity on the issue in the Liberal Judaism Rabbinic Conference. It is for this reason that although the Rabbinic Conference has considered producing guidance on Shabbat observance, this has not come to fruition. As it happens, I, like some of my colleagues, including Rabbi Rachel Benjamin, with whom I co-led two workshops at consecutive LJ biennials on the theme of creating a Shabbat booklet, feel that it is possible to offer a Liberal Jewish approach to Shabbat, without resorting to a series of dos and don’ts. In fact, in the absence of a booklet published by Liberal Judaism, the synagogue will be producing one in time for Chanukkah. Satisfying the much-repeated request for the Hebrew text, transliterations and translations of the items included in the CD of Shabbat songs and blessings I created 10 years ago with Andy Cable, the booklet also will also include my thoughts on keeping Shabbat as Liberal Jews.

The cultural Zionist Ahad Ha-Am, argued that ‘More than Jews have kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept the Jews.’ ^[1] Obviously, the regularity of the weekly Sabbath has played a part in this. It’s also true that Shabbat is emblematic of the Jewish approach to life as ‘walking along the way.’ Our lives are not simply led in an endless daily round, interrupting the cycle of the days, the seventh day creates an opportunity, both for ceasing and for letting go, and for reflecting and looking forward. Aware that the festivals and the ’Days of Awe’ break into the cycle of daily life each year, offering us sacred days for remembrance and renewal, we tend to forget that Shabbat is a gift of time out of time on a smaller scale every week – a gift, which, increasingly, in our 24/7 world, has become a much-needed lifeline.

I began with the metaphor of the journey, and have taken us, metaphorically, on a walk into the terrain of Jewish life. I want to conclude by bringing us back to the actual phenomenon of walking as a way of keeping physically healthy and spiritually attuned. And so, I offer this poem, ‘A Walk’ by the Bohemian-Austrian novelist and poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, who lived in the last quarter of the 19^th century and the first quarter of the 20^th:^[2]

My eyes already touch the sunny hill.
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has inner light, even from a distance –

and changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
we already are; a gesture waves us on
answering our own wave…
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

Rilke reminds us that even a modest walk, the kind of walk that we may take every day, or once a week, in it’s simple, elemental way transports us to a realm that offers us a perspective on our transient lives, even as it immerses us in the passing moment; in the feeling of ‘the wind in our faces.’ As we embark on a new year may the wisdom of the poet reflecting on his walk, combined with the wisdom of Jewish practice as halakhah, walking, encourage us to look forward, and to journey onward each day into the landscape we may not reach. And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Brighton & Hove Progressive Synagogue – Adat Shalom V’rei’ut

Erev Rosh Ha-Shanah 5778 – 20^th September 2017

1. The words of the poet and leader of cultural Zionism, Asher Tzvi Hirsch Ginsberg (1856-1927), known as Ahad Ha’am, which means, literally: ‘one of the people.’ ↑
2. Rainer Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926). ‘A Walk’ is translated by Robert Bly.https://allpoetry.com/A-Walk↑