Comfort, my people, take comfort

July 31, 2020August 1, 2020 levtaylor

Comfort, my people, take comfort.

This Shabbat and its haftarah take their name, Nachumu, from the opening words of Isaiah 40: ‘Comfort, my people, take comfort, says your God.’^[1]

We have entered into the weeks of comfort, the weeks between Tisha b’Av and Yom Kippur. Here, the prophets promise us redemption and renewal if only we will correct our ways. It is a great build-up to the High Holy Days, leading us through the remaining summer months with a message of mercy.

After Tisha b’Av, we so need that reassurance. Tisha b’Av – or the 9th of Av – is a day of intense mourning in the Jewish calendar, which occurred during the week from Wednesday to Thursday nights. It recalls the destruction of the First and Second Temples by successive Empires in the days of our biblical ancestors. It summons Jewish congregations to lament our exiled state and God’s apparent absence from the world.

It is not a fast that is marked in all Reform communities, because it involves grieving for the Temple, which we do not want rebuilt, and because it wallows in so much misery, which we do not want to participate in.

Nevertheless, for the last 5 years, I have diligently engaged in Tisha b’Av rituals. This is mostly practical. On Yom Kippur, I’m often so busy curating religious experiences for others that I don’t get round to having one myself. My head is stuck on the next page in the prayer book, recalling the next tune, or remembering the complicated Hebrew I’ll read later. Tisha b’Av gives me a chance to have my own solemn day, where other people lead the services for me, and I can just use the time to reflect.

Most years, I go to Bevis Marks, the impressive Sephardi-Orthodox synagogue in central London. It is quite an experience. The building’s elegant chandeliers are extinguished. The beautiful decor is covered over with black sheets. A chazan chants the haunting melody of Eichah, beginning: “how lonely sits this city that was once full of people.”^[2] A choir of harmonious men chants kinot – dirges – recalling the gruesome details of the destruction of the Temple, and connecting them to every tragedy Jewish people have ever endured.

But this year, I couldn’t go to Bevis Marks. Nobody could. Coronavirus has made physical attendance of synagogues too dangerous. Even those that have braved it have only permitted a tiny number to attend, with strict social distancing and masked faces. The Spanish and Portuguese community was especially hit by Covid back in March, so it makes sense that they would be cautious.

But what about me? What would I do? I depended on the spiritual experience of Tisha b’Av to see me through the rest of the year, and now the gates were closed.^[3] I found myself wondering how it would be possible to do anything meaningful if I couldn’t do it the way I always had.

But I decided, for my own sake, I would make an effort. On Wednesday evening, I switched off my phone and tuned in to the streamed services from Lauderdale Road. I read through the Reform liturgies on my own, had one last glass of water before sundown, then went to bed. When I got up in the morning, I dressed as if going to synagogue, and watched a recording of the proceedings from the Kotel. I spent the day intermittently meditating, praying, studying texts and thinking about all the brokenness in the world.

For the first time, the loss of the Temple actually meant something to me. It wasn’t that I suddenly had a desire to return to animal sacrifices and priestly hierarchy, but I felt that I could emotionally connect to the verses in a new way. It can be really devastating to be away from the spiritual space to which you are accustomed. It is a shock to the system to realise that you can’t pray the way you used to.

And, strangely, I liked that I had made the connection. I liked that I could feel some new kinship with Jeremiah and the texts of Scripture. I liked knowing that the things I was experiencing had been suffered by others before. Because when I remembered that they had struggled, I also remembered that they had survived. In the face of difficult times, they had renewed Judaism, and changed its practices so that its message could continue.

I found myself enjoying marking the day alone. I didn’t feel like I was performing piety for others, but I was praying sincerely of my own accord. I realised that I, too, could adapt and reinvent.

In this week’s haftarah, Isaiah tells us: ‘The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever.’^[4] It wasn’t the building that mattered, it was the words that were spoken there.

After the destruction of Jerusalem, Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai was among the few sages who remained. He did not try to rebuild the city walls. He tried to rebuild Judaism. He established an academy at Yavne and taught Judaism as he had received it, bringing in new teachings to adapt the religion to post-Temple times.^[5] Rabbi Yohanan knew that the words of Torah were more enduring than any citadel.

Every edifice will eventually crumble. Temples, synagogues and familiar buildings get torn down, eroded and replaced. But the moral message of Judaism – the meaning we get from our texts – that will endure forever.

We now begin our ascent to the High Holy Days, with Rosh haShanah only seven weeks away. As we approach these important feasts and fasts, we may feel tempted to despair that the usual building won’t be there. It is true that we will not do things in our usual way. But like generations of Jews before us, we will find new ways to make our liturgy meaningful and turn its moral messages to our own day.

I encourage you to emotionally prepare yourselves for doing the High Holy Days differently. Think about how you can dress, act and participate so that the period will be meaningful for you.

We will explore new ways of praying, meditating, studying and feeling. And we will come out of this experience with a Judaism that has been transformed and renewed. It will be stronger, more versatile, and better equipped to face any crisis that may come. As Isaiah promised, we will soar on wings like eagles and run without ever growing faint.^[6]

So take comfort, my people, take comfort.

Shabbat shalom.

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I gave this sermon on Saturday 1st August 2020 for Parashat Vaetchanan/ Shabbat Nachumu at Glasgow Reform Synagogue, over Zoom.

^[1] Isa 40:1

^[2] Lam 1:1

^[3] Lam 1:4

^[4] Isa 40:8

^[5] Eichah Rabbah 1:31

^[6] Isa 40:31

Coronavirus Lamentations

July 30, 2020 levtaylor

This is a creative re-translation of Eichah 1 to reflect the current era, where our sacred sites again sit empty and a new enemy feels as if it has besieged us. I have written this partly to distract my mind from fasting on Tisha b’Av, and partly to help process the grief I am feeling around the closures of communal spaces.

How is this possible?

As lonely she sits, this synagogue, where once she thronged with congregants

She has become like a widow;

Great she was among people, a power for the prayers

She has become precluded.

She cries,

Bawls, in the night and her tears fall on her cheeks

She has no comforter from all her lovers

Her friends have abandoned her

She imagines them as loveless.

The Jews are exiled from her

Caused by inequality and sickness; she sits with the nations

She cannot find rest

The virus trounced her

In the narrow spaces where it traps its victims.

City streets are mourners,

Don’t welcome congregations any more;

All her doors are bolted

Her leaders are grieving, her lay people lament

She sits in bitterness.

Strange are these adversaries

Enemies who carelessly became overlords

A plague pronounced upon a people

That locks toddlers in captivity

Fearing a sickness outside.

The sanctuary’s splendour

Fled away from her

Her wardens scarper like deer to nowhere

Running breathless

From the airborne pursuer.

She remembers

Grandeur in her grief

All the precious people that made her home at first

Now her people are falling to the power of frailty

And a sickness that ridicules science.

Our surfaces

Have become contaminated

Uncleanliness in the air

And all the dangers we cannot see are suddenly laid bare

So she tries to sigh without breathing.

Hands spread

Infection over our most treasured relatives,

So once the problem has entered your body

You are commanded

Not to go out in public.

Everyone is panting

Just trying to once again enjoy taste

To have their good spirits revived.

Does God not look upon us

And see how much we suffer?

Don’t let it happen to you

Know that this is pain unlike all others

It has befallen me

As if God’s nose has flared up

And exhaled sickness in anger.

My bones bind

Like spines sticking together

Feet swell, immovable

I cannot turn around

And spend my days lying in pain.

My body is

Marked by the signs of disease

Neck scrunched up in knots

Whatever strength I had has failed me

As I find I can no longer stand.

The strongest are trampled

Now, God calls out to me, the time has come

To destroy the youth,

Stamping on brides and crushing down grooms

Like grapes in wine presses.

My eyes, my eyes

Over these I cry

Droplets fall without a refuge

Even our physicians are dying,

So powerful is our adversary.

Love extends her arms

Parting only to find no one there

Such unclear instructions

God of Jacob, this fear is surrounding me

Every centre is infected.

God, you take

Revenge against rebellious and uncovered mouths.

Please listen, all peoples,

Won’t you see the pain

Caused by endless captivity?

I keep calling my loved ones

So they know I still care

I seek out my elders

And bring food to the vulnerable

That they will not be forgotten.

I call out to God

To tell You: ‘I am in distress!’

My heart is turning round

Abroad the people are devastated by statistics

And we see death at home.

They can hear

Ululating outcries from loneliness

This indifferent virus listens

Knowing that no matter what you do

That appointed day will come.

Let all evil stand before God

Vanquisher and vanisher

Who knows all

Examines every dead

Your saving grace may one day come to those

Zealous attendants awaiting You.

Return us to You, O God, and we will return to you. Let us have back the times we had before.

empty london

climate change · judaism · social justice · torah

Pass on this Earth to your children

July 24, 2020July 25, 2020 levtaylor

‘Tell your children that this land will be theirs to hold in custody,’ cried out Moses to the Israelites on the precipice of the Promised Land. [1] ‘Tell them to guard it and look after it because you could not. Tell them we brought them here that they would love and care for every plant and tree, but we were not allowed to enter because we were too accustomed to slave mentality. We were too mistrusting and selfish. But our children, we hope that they will have faith. We hope that they will be strong. We hope that they will look after this earth.’

‘Tell your children to tell their children,’ Joel wailed to the elders. ‘Tell them about the environmental destruction we witnessed. Tell them how we saw droughts and crop shortages. Tell them how we saw fertile land turn barren. Tell them how we saw everything devoured and nothing remain. Tell them how we saw famine lead to war and war lead to plagues. Tell them that we knew it was our fault.’[2]

‘Tell your children,’ the prophets said, ‘not to make our mistakes. Tell them to treat every part of the earth as if it is sacred. Tell them to care for the planet because if they destroy it, nobody will come to repair it after them.[3] Tell them that there is only one world and it is precious and it must be sustained. Tell them not to pillage it but to work in harmony with nature.’

And the elders wept. The religious leaders cried before their altars. Even the animals cried out for salvation from God. And the chieftains sulked in their tents and asked: ‘does this mean that God hates us? What have we done to deserve this?’[4]

Scripture records the words of the prophets and elders, but we do not learn how the children responded. What did they say when their elders told them these lessons? History rarely records the words of the young, even on issues of intergenerational justice. Especially on issues that affect the youth more greatly.

During the last uprising of Extinction Rebellion, Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg preached to his congregation. He said: “in the synagogues, the elders are asking ‘where are the youth?’ But in the streets, the youth are asking ‘where are our elders?'”[5]

Young people are calling on us to take action for the environment. Their voices matter deeply, especially when the issue is the future of the planet. Climate change presents us with an unprecedented threat, and we are positioned as the elders scorned by the prophets.

I know that the people of my generation and older are not individually responsible for the climate crisis, but that it is a matter of systemic inequality and exploitation of natural resources.

Nevertheless I am increasingly conscious, as a parent, of what the next generation will inherit. Winona LaDuke, a Jewish-Native American activist from an indigenous reservation in Minnesota, urges us: “Be the ancestor your descendants would be proud of.”[6]

We cannot become such people if we don’t heed the call of the greatest call to intergenerational justice facing us. We cannot simply hide our faces in our homes like the elders confronted by Joel.

Of course, this congregation cannot take sole responsibility for ending economic reliance on oil or for replenishing the earth’s devastated ecosystems. But J and S have come to us with practical and necessary actions that we can take.

These students in our bar mitzvah programme have come to encourage us to take serious action. After only a year of teaching them, I have been so impressed by the intelligence, integrity and sensitivity of these young men. They will both become bnei mitzvah at Pesach time. As part of their studies, they have each taken on social action programmes.

J is asking you to recycle your plastic by making eco bricks. I hope that over this summer, every household in the Three Counties will return at least one eco brick to J in support of his project. J will also be appealing to the synagogue council, to ask them to make eco bricks part of the Mitzvah Day project this year.[7]

S is asking you to plant trees and sponsor his work with the Woodland Trust.[8] I encourage every member of the community to support S in some way, either by offering financial support or a place to plant. These projects are practical, necessary and helpful.

Joel tells us that the old shall dream dreams and the youth shall see visions.[9] In the future he prophesied, the generations were not adversaries in blame and despair, but companions in hope. The young people are offering us an opportunity to join them in healing our damaged planet. Let us take up their call.

Shabbat shalom.

introfigsm-m — This painting is by Winona LaDuke’s mother, Betty

I gave this sermon on Saturday 25th July at Three Counties Liberal Judaism for Parashat Devarim. This was my last sermon for the community. The names of the children are redacted for obvious reasons.

[1] Deut 1:39

[2] Joel 1

[3] Kohelet Rabbah 7:13

[4] Deut 1:27

[5] Heard at New North London Synagogue, summer 2019

[6] https://www.mtpr.org/post/winona-laduke-be-ancestor-your-descendants-would-be-proud

[7] https://www.ecobricks.org/

[8] https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/

[9] Joel 2:28

psalms · theology

Sore lungs sing out of sync

July 10, 2020July 10, 2020 levtaylor

By the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and there we wept as we remembered Zion.

Why did we weep by those waterways? Some times are harder than others to find songs inside your lungs. Faced with a strange land and held captive by a power you do not understand, it is hard to find the music within.

Some say that we could not sing because we could not stop crying. Every time we imagined we had run out of tears, new wailing broke out of our chests. Panting, we could not hold a note.

Midrash teaches that the rivers of Babylon were the industrial canals of the imperial capital. Where once we had drunk from freshwater springs, we now sat by sewage works and polluted channels. Our choleric lungs heaved and choked the psalms we wished to sing.

There on willow branches we hung up our violins.

Stringed instruments hung on stringed trees. If we cannot make music, maybe these old branches will play our lyres on our behalf.

Maybe we will sing again, so we won’t lay our tools on the ground, but gently tie them up in knotted bark. We will return to you, violins.

Maybe we hoped that the long leaves of willows drooping in layers would provide cover so that nobody would know we once used to play such melodies in our religious buildings. Maybe if they don’t know how joyous we once were, they won’t expect us to be joyous again. Pray they don’t ask us to sing.

For the wicked carried us away to captivity, and required of us a song.

We are in a strange land of captivity. We live in times that people keep calling unprecedented. Six months ago, few of us would have imagined we would be in the midst of a response to a global pandemic. None of us have lived through mass government responses to a pandemic in Britain. It is unusual to realise we do not have the freedoms we once knew.

Even though governments around the world have announced easing of restrictions, we cannot yet return to activities we once knew. We have to be careful, because the captor, Covid, still exists. We have to make choices about how we respond.

The Israelites lasted 70 years in Babylon. We could endure 3 months in our homes.

But in some ways, those 70 years were easier than the ones that followed. In captivity, Jeremiah told us to make the most of where we were because we would not be coming out any time soon. But when Jerusalem reopened, we did not know whether to stay or leave, and every option seemed like it would be the wrong choice.

In some ways, lockdown was easier. We knew what the parameters were and how to operate within them. Now, we are confused about what is the right thing to do is, as the conflicting needs of our mental health, our physical security and our economic livelihoods clash.

And somehow we are supposed to sing.

How can we sing the song of God in a strange land?

No, we cannot sing. It is one of the highest risk activities. The virus is airborne and transmitted when people dig deep in their lungs and project droplets from their diaphragms into someone else’s mouth. The collective singing involved in synagogue services, music concerts and sports matches is the greatest threat to overcoming the pandemic.

We enter a strange land where, for the first time in many decades, most progressive synagogues will be closed for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Once, Zoom felt like alien soil, although we have come to comfortably inhabit it for our Friday nights and Saturday mornings. Maybe it won’t feel like such a strange land by the time we arrive.

But how can we sing? Didn’t we try collective singing over Zoom? Everyone goes at a different tempo, completely out of synch, creating disharmony and awkward clangs. The first time we tried to sing together in disunity I felt like I had to go back and patch over all the cracks in our voices.

But in captivity, the Israelites learnt that even in the unprecedented land of Babylon, they had to find a way to sing. The Psalms are testament that even when we felt we could not make music, we still composed new material.

For centuries, the Hassids have rejoiced in singing out of sync. The nign, a wordless song intended to elevate the spirit, finds its strength in discordance and repetition. These mystics sing the same note sequence repeatedly, without aiming for harmony. They trust that, however it is arranged, the tune will reach God.

Perhaps we, too, can learn to enjoy singing out of sync.

That challenge feels even more pertinent now in a country whose rhythms have fallen out of sync. Some worry about losing their jobs. Some worry about losing their health. Some worry about losing their minds. And, with these concerns, everyone is making different decisions based on their comfort levels.

It is hard to feel like we are not singing in time with our neighbours. Some wish that everyone would just stay inside until we find a cure. Some wish that everyone would relax and go out. We look at each other with confusion, and struggle to find acceptable social norms.

Like the Israelites in Babylon, we have to find ways for sore lungs to sing out of sync. Anyone in the community who does not feel ready to go out yet should be supported to stay home. Anyone who feels they need to see their loved ones should be encouraged. And people who just need to get their hair cut or buy a coffee from a cafe should feel empowered to do so responsibly.

There is nothing wrong with feeling unease. The terrain we stand on is unfamiliar and there is much we do not know. But of all the things we can sacrifice, trust in the other members of our community should not be one of them.

The reason the Israelites survived their exile was because they knew they could depend on each other. They had different experiences and different aspirations, but knew they were created by the same God.

As we sit by these rivers in a strange land, let us trust each other to sing out of synch, and know that one day, we will return home, and sing together in harmony once again.

nora-kronstein-rosen-moire-removed.height-588

I gave this sermon on Friday 10th July 2020 for Three Counties Liberal Judaism. I thank my housemate, Joanna Phillips, for her support with the audio recording.