Rabbi Elli Sarah

JULY: A TIME TO REMEMBER – Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah – SJN, July 2018

‍‍18 Tamuz 5778 - 1, July 2018

With July, summer begins in earnest – weather permitting, of course. This year, Tishah B’Av, the 9^th day of the Hebrew month of Av, falls towards the end of July. Commemorating the destruction of King Solomon’s Temple by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and the destruction of the last Temple by the Romans in 70 CE, Tishah B’Av is a day of mourning, marked by fasting. The other principal observance is the reading of m’gillat Eicah, the scroll of Lamentations, the biblical book that describes the havoc wreaked on Jerusalem and its inhabitants by the Babylonians.

Those devastating events belong to the distant past, but annual commemoration ensures that they are remembered. Moreover, subsequent catastrophes deliberately scheduled for Tishah B’Av – most infamously, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 – have reinforced the sense that Jewish history is one long inventory of churban, destruction; what the 19^th century German Jewish historian, Heinrich Graetz, described as ‘a vale of tears’ (See the five-volume English edition of his History of the Jews, 1891-92). But this is a one-sided view. Jewish life has also thrived in many different times and places over the centuries – not least, in Babylonia, where the magnificent 63-volume Talmud was redacted in 500 CE, and in Muslim Spain, where Jewish poetry and learning flourished for many centuries before the reconquest by the Christian monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella that culminated in expulsion.

The story of the Jewish people is complex. If we take the journey of the Jewish community in Britain as an example and survey a few key events that happened in England in the month of July in the 13^th and 19^th centuries respectively, we can see how external socio-political realities impacted on Jewish life. The mediaeval period was grim, and after more than a century of persecution, on July 18, 1290, King Edward ‘the confessor’ signed the edict of expulsion of the Jewish community from England, which dictated that every last Jew had to leave by All Saints Day, November 1^st. But that was not the end of the story. Oliver Cromwell instigated the revival Jewish life in England by inviting the Jews of Holland to settle in the 1650s. And then, following the 1789 French Revolution, the destruction of the feudal social structure that had forced Jews to live a segregated existence led to a complete transformation in the circumstances for Jewish life across Europe. So: July 23, 1858 marked the Parliamentary emancipation of the Jews of England. 12 years later, on July 14, 1870, the United Synagogue was established. July 2, 1871 saw the foundation of the Anglo Jewish Association. On July 9, 1885, Nathaniel Meyer, the first Lord Rothschild took his seat in the House of Lords. You could say that by the late 19^th century the Jews of England had made it.

But a new century saw a change in Jewish fortunes. As hundreds of thousands of Jews fled pogroms in czarist Russia from the 1880s onwards, Britain’s toleration of its small Jewish community gave way to fear, resulting in the enactment of the first anti-immigration legislation in this country, the 1905 Aliens Act. And so, the complex, changing story of Jewish life in this country continued… And it continues: challenging us now to acknowledge – and remember – times of joy as well as times of sorrow.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE: CITIZENS UK COMES TO BRIGHTON AND HOVE – SHABBAT SERMON

‍‍10 Tamuz 5778 - 23, June 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

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

23^rd June 2018 – 9^th Tammuz 5778

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

LEARNING TO SURVIVE – Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah – SJN, June 2018

‍‍18 Sivan 5778 - 1, June 2018

Last month, I re-watched Simon Schama’s The Story of the Jews, first screened on BBC 2 in 2013. In the fifth and last episode, ‘The Return’, focusing on Israel as the centre of the revival of Jewish life after the Sho’ah, Schama draws attention to the republication of the Talmud seventy years ago by the United States Army, following an agreement in 1946 between the commander-in-chief of the US occupying forces in Germany and the Jewish American relief organisation, the Joint Distribution Committee. This special edition of the Talmud was printed in 1948 in Heidelberg at the Carl Winter Printing Plant that had previously published Nazi propaganda.

With a title page depicting the Land of Israel above an image of barbed wire surrounding a camp, what became known as the ‘Survivors’ Talmud’ includes a special dedication to the United States Army by Rabbi Samuel A. Sneig, Chairman and Chief Rabbi of the U.S. zone ‘in the name of the Rabbinical Organisation’, which concludes with these words:

This special edition of the Talmud published in the very land where, but a short time ago, everything Jewish and of Jewish inspiration was anathema, will remain a symbol of the indestructibility of the Torah. The Jewish DPs will never forget the generous impulses and the unprecedented humanitarianism of the American forces, to whom they owe so much.

Only 100 copies of the ‘Survivors’ Talmud’ were printed. Nevertheless, it is a potent reminder that Jewish survival is not simply a matter of physical existence. Study and an engagement with Jewish teaching has always been the wellspring of Jewish life. Two other Talmud stories, mentioned by Jewish historian Cecil Roth in A Jewish Book of Days (Edward Goldston, London, 1931), bring this point home. Rabbeinu Tam, the grandson of Rashi, who was the leader of the Tosaphists – the ‘supplementers’ who continued Rashi’s work – died on 9^th June 1171 (pp.140-141). To this day, the commentary of the Tosaphists appears in every edition of the Talmud – including, the ‘Survivors’ Talmud’ – opposite that of Rashi. The Talmud itself is also a ‘survivor’. On another June date seventy-one years later, a disputation in Paris with the Christian authorities resulted in the burning of the Talmud by the tribunal of Church dignitaries. Roth writes (p. 147):

On Friday, June 17, 1242, twenty-four cartloads of priceless Hebrew manuscripts were publicly burnt in Paris. This disaster was mourned by the Jews hardly less bitterly than the martyrdom of their brethren. Meir of Rothenburg, who was studying in Paris at the time and witnessed the holocaust, commemorated it in a heartbroken elegy (‘Ask, is it well, O thou consumed in fire’). This was the first episode in the long-drawn attack upon Hebrew literature, which, though it failed of its purpose, explains the extreme scarcity of manuscripts of the Talmud preserved at the present time.

Roth’s ‘present time’ was 1931 – before the Sho’ah. Let us give thanks this June for the life and work of Rabbeinu Tam and the Tosaphists – and for the ‘Survivors’ Talmud’ of 1948. And just as important, let us acknowledge the contribution made to the revival of Jewish study in recent years by the development of Limmud, the cross-denominational Jewish educational project (that like ‘Talmud’ means ‘learning’), which has now become a regular feature of the Jewish landscape in this country, reconnecting Jews of all ages and backgrounds to our sacred inheritance

DEAR PRESIDENT TRUMP: A PLEA FOR INTERVENTION FOR THE SAKE OF ISRAEL AND PALESTINE

‍‍12 Sivan 5778 - 26, May 2018

Dear President Trump,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is a home?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Israel is a fortress, but not yet a home.

David Grossman concluded his address with those words.

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

Yours sincerely,

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue

26^th May 2018 – 12^th Sivan 5788

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

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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