It could be you

August 20, 2021August 21, 2021 levtaylor

A woman passes her baby over the fence to an American soldier. She does not know the soldier. She does not know if the baby will be safe. She does not know whether she will ever see the baby again. But she knows that she must give the baby to someone, anyone, so that he doesn’t grow up there.

A sixteen year old boy with a promising career as a footballer grabs on to the side of a plane. He begs. He hopes the plane will take him too. The plane takes off, flinging him to the ground. He dies instantly.

An elderly woman with nothing to her name takes off on a long journey across desert mountains by foot. If she is lucky, she will arrive in a squalid refugee camp and spend the rest of her days living in white tents managed by the UN. She probably will not be so lucky.

Today those people are Afghans.

Only a few generations ago, they might have been you.

Most of the people here have ancestors who fled just as these refugees do today.

The great migration of Jews into England came at the end of the 19th Century. They had been living in the Pale of Settlement in Russia and Eastern Europe for centuries. Under Tsarist persecution, Jews were confined only to certain parts of the Russian Empire. They worked as peasants and in menial jobs, building their own communities in the shtetls.

When the Tsar’s power was threatened and the Russian Empire began to crumble, his supporters blamed the Jews. For decades, state-backed mobs rampaged through the villages. They torched houses, massacred people, stole property and made life unbearable. We call these waves of antisemitic violence pogroms.

So, our forebearers fled. Most did not make it. Some arrived in England. When they did, they were met by hostility, racism, cramped housing and sweatshop jobs.

Not long ago, the hordes of fleeing refugees were you. You know what it meant to be a stranger. Even if you do not remember.

The Torah asks you to remember. According to our narrative, thousands of years ago, we were strangers in the land of Egypt. We were refugees from a famine in Canaan. We were wandering migrants with no home. We were enslaved and confined to one part of the Nile and worked hard labour building garrisons for the Pharaoh. We were mistreated and judged with prejudice. We are instructed by Scripture to remember how that felt.

This week’s parashah sets out the rights of migrants. Never abuse them. Do not exploit them. Pay them upfront. Don’t hold their property hostage. Give them dignity. Don’t mess them around. Make sure they have food and shelter. Look after them.

Why? Over and over again, Deuteronomy repeats: “Always remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt. That is why God enjoins you to observe this commandment.”

You have to support strangers because they are you. When you look at migrants and refugees, you are not allowed to see them as different. You have to look at them as you. It is the most-repeated commandment in the whole of Torah: to know what it is like to be a foreigner in a foreign land. Remember what this means.

Not everyone remembers.

Last week, Danny Finkelstein wrote in The Times praising border controls. He took his family story of fleeing as refugees from the Nazis to advocate for keeping some foreigners out.

He wrote, and I quote here: “strongly believe in immigration control. And I am not in the slightest bit put off by the suggestion that this would have prevented my grandfather from becoming a British citizen […] yes, I would deny immigration to some very deserving and worthy people I would be quite happy to live next door to. Even people I would be happy to be related to. Just because I favour immigration for someone, that doesn’t mean I favour it for everyone.”

Personally, I cannot share Mr. Finklestein’s flippant disregard for immigrants, or join him in championing border controls. Like his, my family also fled the Nazis. Most did not make it out. Only a few, who were children, or who could prove they would be useful as nurses, were permitted entry. Under the current system, I doubt they would have been allowed. If I were a refugee today, I would not fare so well as my grandfather did.

But the reason I object to Danny Finkelstein so strongly is not selfish pragmatism. It is religious. It is because I truly believe what the Torah teaches about the rights of strangers. Those refugees are my ancestors who fled persecution. They are my progenitors from millennia ago who were strangers in the land of Egypt. Those Afghans, gripping onto planes and handing their babies to soldiers and walking for miles in the sun… they are me.

And they could be me again.

The only thing that stands between a comfortable citizen today and a desperate refugee tomorrow is luck.

We in this room do not have to think about what we would do if our corner of the world was faced with famine or war. We do not have to imagine where we would go when faced with our own version of the Taliban.

But if ever I did have to think about this, I would pray that somebody, somewhere, had taken to heart the message of the Torah. I would want somebody to say that no number is too many, that their homes were open, and that my life mattered, no matter what I could provide.

Thankfully, there are people in Britain today, making precisely this case.

The Jewish Council for Race Equality has put together a Jewish community response to the Afghan refugee crisis. It sets out clear actions the government must undertake to meet its moral obligations.

It must scrap its anti-asylum seeker legislation. It must stop deporting Afghans back to certain danger. It must allow more refugees into this country.

I urge you all to sign this petition in support of these very reasonable demands.

These are really the minimum standards we must meet. The Torah never even thinks to introduce border controls or to police citizenship. Our Scripture assumes that migration is natural and inevitable. God’s instruction is that, once strangers are with you, you give them all the rights and compassion you would show to someone you have known all your life.

Torah repeats itself so many times to drill home this message.

Always remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt. That is why God enjoins you to observe this commandment.

Shabbat shalom.

I delivered this sermon at South West Essex and Settlement Reform Synagogue on 21st August 2021 for Parashat Ki Teitzei.

Who built the ark

August 8, 2021August 8, 2021 levtaylor

A boat is coming to carry people away from the flood.

You do not have a ticket.

You do not have the money to get a ticket.

You cannot forge a ticket.

You fumble in your pocket anyway, despite knowing you will find nothing.

If you are wondering whether you know anyone who might be able to get you the money or the paperwork, you do not. You do not even know anyone who knows anyone.

The flood is coming. It has been coming for a while. It has reached others. You have heard reports. You have seen it yourself. You have met victims.

You didn’t think it would come for you. At least, you didn’t think it would come for you to begin with. Now it is nearly here.

So is the boat. But you are not allowed on the boat.

The boat is reserved for one man and his family. His name is Noah. He and his sons and their partners and their grandchildren will be rescued. You will not. You will not even be allowed on the ship even to serve them and clean up after them. You cannot stowaway.

Many said that floods were coming. They saw the weather signs. They felt the ground dry up. They knew the trees had stopped bearing leaves. They saw the black clouds and felt the stormy winds.

You did not laugh at people who said the floods were coming. You did not join in with alarmist panic either.

You did not commission people to make sure you would be insulated against environmental catastrophe because you didn’t have that kind of money. You knew you were powerless either way when the warnings came.

You just kept working. What else could you do? You worked and raised your children and made sure you had shelter and a roof over your head. You had fun times with your friends and family. You tried to enjoy life. You tried not to think about it.

You got on with your job.

And this is the kicker: your job is building boats.

You are a skilled carpenter. You sand down wood and hammer nails and apply coats of varnish. You breathe in sawdust and work twelve hours a day and learn how to make the dimensions exactly right so that a ship of any size will float.

You know the boat is coming because you are building it.

You were among the people commissioned to build the ark that is going to take that man and his family away.

You have never been able to afford to go on any of the boats you have made before. This will be no exception.

Even with the floods already here and the rains rising all around you, you have no choice but to watch.

Noah will float away to safety on the boat that you are building, because he has the wealth to commission you. And the power to leave you behind.

He has his wealth because his father, Lamech, had wealth. And his father before him had wealth; Methusaleh said he was so rich he could defy time.

The family gained their wealth through placing indentured servants in long-term debt bondage. Their slaves would work the land without pay and Noah’s family would cream off the profits from their work. In that sense, Noah is no different from any other man who has wealth and power.

But he is different, because he will have a boat. People call him a visionary and a genius. People say he is a prophet because he knew that it was the right time to build a boat when he realised that floods were coming. Some of them stand on and watch in awe as you saw planks for him.

In years to come, children will ask who built the ark. They will not say your name. They will chant back the name of the man who commissioned you to build it.

You are not building this boat alone. You are building it with hundreds of others. There are people who chop the wood, who transport it to you, who treat it, who clean it, who keep you fed, who watch the children, who make sure everyone is clothed, who design the ships, who furnish the insides, who create the infrastructure to make sure boats can be built.

You are among many.

There would be enough room for all of you on this ark. Noah is taking his collection of exotic pets.

Nobody is impressed by your ability to make boats. They are impressed by Noah’s ability to commission you to make them.

Many people do not share such reverence. They fight over the last scraps of food and clean water. They scramble to reach the highest perches, and push others out of them, even though it will ultimately be pointless because the floods will drown everyone.

Everyone except the people on that ark.

They know that. People fight to reach the ship so that they can get a place on it. They will not get one.

Noah has hired the strongest people to prevent the others from fighting with each other. They form a solid ring to stop anyone reaching the boat. They control the food and water rations. The floods will drown them too.

The man they think is a genius because he has money will sail away on a boat you cannot afford to get on and leave the whole of humanity to drown.

Afterwards, he will tell the story from his perspective. He will say that everyone else was violent. He will say that you deserved to drown.

He will say that he was the only righteous person throughout the entirety of his generation. He will say that the flood was God’s will.

He will say that, if anything, he saved humanity. He will take the credit for the survival of the animals.

And you will be washed away.

So, why do you keep building?

I wrote this in response to unfolding environmental catastrophe. I will likely preach it in October for Parashat Noach.

judaism · sermon · social justice

How much should I give away?

August 7, 2021 levtaylor

In 2013, a survey revealed that Jews were the second biggest charitable donors in the UK.

Muslims were first.

Ever since, I’ve been trying to recruit Jews into competition so that next time a survey is run, we will win.

Coming second is fine, I guess. But if we’re going to be a light unto the nations and take moral responsibility for the world, we should be coming first no problem.

They didn’t win because there are more of them than us. That wouldn’t be a fair comparison. Muslims outdid us on both how much each person gave on average, and how much they gave as a proportion of their income.

I’m not really advocating getting into a competition between the religions. There’s enough of that going on in the world.

But I do think there is something important we can learn from Muslims. One of the reasons they do so well on charitable giving is because of how seriously they take the messsage from this week’s parashah.

Here, we read Reeh. This part of Torah introduces the concept of tithing. Tithing is an old English word, meaning ‘taking a tenth.’ And that is exactly what is prescribed here. Every Israelite must take a tenth of their produce and give it to the priests for redistribution.

The priests then use some of it for upkeep of the community; some for orphans and widows; some for the poor; and some for supporting migrants passing through.

This is the basis of Ancient Israelite society. The world of the Bible was very unequal, and living conditions were particularly harsh, so they truly saw the importance of a basic welfare system.

In the Ancient Near East, almost everyone was a subsistence farmer. Each extended family had a small plot of land, which they would use for harvesting crops, rearing animals, and general living. One bad year on the farm could render an entire family destitute.

The Torah introduced social provision, so that everyone contributed and anyone who needed it could benefit. Richer people did pay additional levies on their crops, so that a tenth was the minimum, but some could give much more. The earliest tzedakah was probably much more like modern taxes for the welfare state than charity.

But that should not excuse us taking seriously our obligation to give to charity. I’m sure we all agree that the welfare state is a wonderful thing, and that it is impressive that it has a biblical basis. I don’t need to tell you to pay your taxes. You don’t have much choice in that.

What you do have control over is your tzedakah. Your charitable giving. It is a mitzvah doraita, a commandment from Torah, that we are supposed to give 10% of our take-home income to charity.

Now, who actually gives 10% of their income to charity? Anyone here? I am embarrassed to admit that I don’t. I have regular standing orders that go out to causes I care about, but when I look back on the year, I never actually make it to a tenth of my income.

I feel especially ashamed to admit this, because that tenth is supposed to be the bare minimum. Maimonides teaches that people should give more if they can, as long as they are not consequently rendering themselves in need of charity.

But my motto is never to lead perfect be the enemy of good. All of us can start by taking charitable giving seriously as a spiritual practice and building it into our daily lives.

Muslims do this with what they call “zakat.” At the end of every week, they give at least 2.5% of their earnings to charity. They’re big donors because they make this a consistent practice and see it as a fundamental part of their religion.

It is also a fundamental part of Judaism. Charitable giving is supposed to be essential for us all. Some older members may remember that, not long ago, every home had a pushke, or tzedaka box, which would collect whatever spare change a person had. Giving has been heavily integrated into some people’s Jewish lives, and it should be again.

Elul is coming. It is the last month of the Jewish year. It is our time for reflection. We use this time to look inward and assess our deeds.

In Hebrew, this process of introspection is called “cheshbon hanefesh” – auditing the soul. We weigh up our good deeds with our bad, and put our own morals on the scales of judgement. A part of this must surely mean re-examining our giving. A cheshbon is a bill, a record of how much you owe. We owe many things: deeds, love, kindness and study. But we also do literally owe money to those who need it more than we do.

Now is the time to redouble our efforts at donating and to make sure we do fulfil our sacred requirements. The synagogue will be sending round its High Holy Day appeal soon, and I encourage you to give it a good look.

Giving to others is good for us. It strengthens our soul and sense of self-worth. It is good for others. It means people less fortunate get the support they need. It means great causes can continue to thrive.

And, of course, giving is good for the Jews. Especially if it might mean we win a competition.

Shabbat shalom.