Category: social justice

sermon · social justice · torah

Such giants we will slay together

levtaylor



Why do giants feature so prominently in our stories for children?

I recently had the joy of reading some chapters from Roald Dahl’s BFG to my six-year-old godson. Reading to him as he got ready to sleep gave me such warm nostalgia. I remembered my own childhood, hearing this story for the first time; feeling at once so safe, and like anything was possible.

To children, the whole world feels populated by giants. Grown-ups are so much larger and, just like in Giant Country, have built everything to their size. Some adults, like the BFG, are kind and fun. But some, like Fleshlumpeater and Bonecruncher, are decidedly nasty and cruel.

So we give children stories where they defeat giants, and help them process these menacing creatures so much larger than themselves.

The Austrian-Jewish psychiatrist Bruno Bettelheim explored fairy tales as one of the ways that children gain their sense of self and develop confidence. In The Uses of Enchantment, Bettelheim writes that “although adults can be experienced as frightening giants, a little boy with cunning can get the better of them.”

Such is the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. I remember so gleefully participating in the school pantomime of this story. (I played Jack’s mother, of course.) Through play, we children could act out a world where we saw those bigger than us for the lumbering oafs they were and used our wits to bring them down.

Giant stories have probably existed as long as we have had the words to tell them. In our Torah portion, Shlach Lecha, Caleb, Joshua, and their intrepid band of boys set out on an adventure to see the Promised Land.

Upon arrival, they spot frightening giants, the children of Anak. “We looked like grasshoppers compared to them, and they must have seen us the same way.”

To show the other Israelites back in the wilderness how enormous their foes were, they brought back the ogres’ food. A bunch bearing a single cluster of grapes required two of them to carry it on a pole. They rolled a pomegranate the size of themselves back out of the land of Canaan.

Throughout the camp, everyone burst into terror. Only Joshua and Caleb had faith that the giants could be beaten. We, of course, identify ourselves with those fearless leaders.

“Fairytales,” says Bettelheim, “intimate that a rewarding, good life is within one’s reach despite adversity – but only if one does not shy away from the hazardous struggles without which one can never achieve true identity.”

“Do not be afraid,” say Caleb and Joshua. “Have faith. Trust in each other. Trust in God.”

Here our Torah gives us the same gift of instruction as a fairytale. It reminds us to be brave and use our cunning, because the giants can surely be defeated.

In Torah, grammar is always important. Joshua and Caleb insist: “we can defeat them.” This is not an instruction to others or a profession of their own greatness. It is an invitation to collective power: together, we are going to conquer the giants.

Later, Joshua and Caleb are proven exactly right. They destroy the children of Anak and drive them out, cowering, into Philistine towns. Later still, King David will slay the last of the remaining giants, a monster called Goliath. No wonder this is one of the best stories to tell at cheder.

These fairytales continue to serve us long after we have outgrown them. Now that we are grown-ups, the world may not still feel so magical, but we still have giants to slay.

The problems facing us are manifold in this world dominated by racial injustice. The oppressions of our age are many-headed monsters, far bigger than the enormous ogres of our stories.

I look at the children in our synagogues and feel pained that, perhaps, they will be less protected from the horrors of the world than we were. I wish we could insulate them a little longer from harsh realities.

As an adult, I discovered that my beloved Roald Dahl actually didn’t much like Jews, but, by then, I was secure enough not to be bothered by it. I see that our young people are far less protected from the nasty views others hold. They are already having to learn the skills to deal with antisemitism in their schools and in the material they see online. I feel blessed not to have had to confront such evils until much later.

I do not envy the challenges our young people face, but I feel deeply proud of how they have risen to the task.

On Sunday 10 May, members of RSY and LJY joined the rallies against antisemitism in central London. Holding true to our Progressive values, one of the movement workers’ placards denounced Islamophobia, racism, and anti-immigrant hatred, alongside their condemnation of antisemitism.

They held their heads high, and refused to back down on the prophetic call for unity. Racism are enormous giants to conquer, but these are the battles that have animated the Jewish religion since its inception. The earliest prophets promised “vindication and justice for all who are oppressed” (Psalm 103:6).

For the supposed infraction of drawing connections with other oppressed groups, our young people were harassed as they marched. They were completely unobtrusive, but drew great ire from the Christian fundamentalist sect, Stop the Hate.

Yet, according to the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, the UK’s only academic thinktank on anti-Jewish hatred, drawing connections with others’ struggles is precisely what we need to do.

In their report last year for the Runnymede Trust, these scholars showed that, by pitting the fight against antisemitism against the struggles of other minorities, the problem was only getting worse. Jews were becoming more isolated, and finding their battles harder.

What we needed, the Institute said, was to build alliances with other racialised minorities, so we could take on the mammoth system of racism together.

Here, the wisdom of established academics meets the optimism and zeal of youth. Just as in the earliest days of Judaism “the old dream dreams and the youth see visions” (Joel 2:28).

Young people – as you go out to fight antisemitism; as you lock arms in the struggle against all forms of racism; as you protest for a more equal world – please know that you are never alone. We are with you, and struggling alongside you.

However small you may feel, come stand on our shoulders. Don’t worry: we are standing on shoulders too. Shoulders of generations before us who battled poverty, war, pogroms, and genocide.

Yes, we Jews stand on the shoulders of ancestors going back centuries, who fought against the same giants you tackle now.

And when you realise that you are standing on top of this human pyramid, you will see that the ogres are much smaller than they first appeared. We may feel like grasshoppers in their eyes, but we stand together on a foundation they cannot even imagine, and that makes us enormous.

Just as Caleb and Joshua once cohorted the Israelites in the desert, we know we need not fear.

Have faith. In your traditions. In each other. In our God.

Together, we are going to slay these giants.

sermon · social justice · torah

How did the exodus look from the back?

levtaylor

When the silver trumpet blasted, the Israelites decamped and moved to a new location in the desert.

At the front of the procession, this seems to have been a marvellous affair. The tribal leaders assembled at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting with triumphant fanfare. God’s presence ascended from the Tabernacle as a glorious pillar of smoke in the day or a fearsome column of fire at night, and the chieftains marched in pre-assigned order behind their divinely appointed leaders: Moses, Aaron, Miriam, and the priests. 

For the men at the head of the procession, this must have felt like a victorious military march towards the future.

But what was it like at the back? How did this experience of moving through the desert feel to the people who were on the edges of this grand voyage?

Consider how many Israelites were wandering in the desert. We have heard their numbers and know they amount to the size of a small city. There were more Israelites crossing the Sinai desert than there are people living in the modern country of Luxembourg. 

In such a large group of people, most had no idea that all this pomp was happening at the front of the group. If they were midway through the camp and all the travellers were silent, they might have had a chance at hearing the vaguest echoes of trumpet blasts. But it is unlikely that anyone on the edges heard these fantastic instruments at all. 

Perhaps, at a far distance, they could see the plumes of smoke and fire to let them know they were moving. But, far more likely, the greater indication would be the others around them shifting. They would hear rumours and murmurings, and get ready to move on their encampment to its next stage.

While the priests at the front played with their horns and struck up a marching rhythm, a whole other group of people would get to work. 

The people who pitched tents would start the laborious process of deconstructing them. Breastfeeding mothers would gather up their infants in slings. Parents would call out to playing children and try desperately to cajole them into staying close. Water-carriers would haul tankards over their heads or hoist them on their backs. Animal handlers would load their donkeys and camels, and entice them to carry rations.

Our Torah is told from the perspective of those at the front of the procession. We learn their family dramas, hear the complicated rituals they performed, and picture the magnificent relationship they had with God.

For most of the desert Israelites, however, the journey was altogether different. What kept them together, more than these supranatural experiences and religious rites, were their relationships with each other. 

I think it is important to centre their stories.

I have a long commute from Essex to Surrey. If the traffic is good, it takes about an hour and a half each way. To pass the time, I spend my journeys listening to audiobooks.

This has opened up a new world of literature to me. My usual reading is philosophy and theology, but that’s hard to focus on at the same time as the road. So I’ve started listening to sci-fi and fantasy novels.

Over the last few months, I’ve made my way through a whole bunch of stories by Ursula Le Guin. As a storyteller, she is a favourite of the college principal, Rabbi Dr Deborah Kahn Harris, and was beloved by her teacher, the legendary Rabbi Sheila Shulman.

Fiction, Rabbi Deborah assured me, is sometimes the best way to get across theological ideas. I have found this to be totally true.

During my car journeys, I have listened to Le Guin’s Earthsea Quartet from beginning to end. For the first three books, this was a world inhabited by dragons, powerful mages, young kings, demonic spirits, and magic spells. It was captivating.

The fourth book, Tehanu, has a sudden change in tempo and style. It was written more than 25 years after the first novel, with the characters having aged by the same amount of time. 

At first, hearing this final book, I was somewhat disappointed. The pace is slower. Far less seems to happen. The characters, who had previously been magical heroes who cast spells and rode dragons, were now old, disempowered, and facing a world that is violent and cruel.

Only after I finished listening did I get to hear the author’s own voice. In a recorded post-script for the audiobook, Le Guin says that Tehanu looks at the high fantasy world from below. It shows what the world I had loved and lived in during my car journeys is like from the vantage of the people without power: women, workers, and children. She says this was her way to give voice to her own people in the world of Earthsea.

Now it made sense.  I was, I discovered, learning a philosophical and theological lesson from the story, just as Rabbi Deborah had threatened I would. The world, after all, can be violent and cruel, and it is especially so to those without power.

History and politics are very different when you see them through the eyes of people who don’t march at the front, but gather at the back. 

That doesn’t mean that life for workers and women is all misery. In Le Guin’s story, the powerless still have their own magic, their own rituals, their own beliefs, and build their power in community with each other.

That’s true for our biblical ancestors, too. Thanks to archaeology, we now have a better idea of what life looked like for the earliest Israelites who had no access to the Temple cult. They had their own parallel religious practices, with God centred in their homes. In their kitchens and bedrooms. They had fertility rituals, prayers they recited, and stories they told, even though they were excluded from the world of priests and kings.

This is one of the great joys of Judaism. While it has always had its figureheads who spearhead the community from the front and pronounce the direction for all to proceed, it has also always had its margins. 

Within Jewish life, those who were excluded from the centre have built a religious life on the edges. These are exciting, creative places. They are, often, where real changes are first ignited.

Today, we must pay attention to the wonderful world of Jewish life that is being created far from board rooms and conference podia. There are other Judaisms, constantly being made in people’s homes, and in communities quite separate from the centre of north west London. Why, there are even congregations south of the River! This Judaism may not always make headlines or even get written down, but it is the lifeblood of our religion.

We should, of course, listen to the sounds of the great trumpets blasting to tell us we are moving.

But we must also pay close attention to what people are saying at the back, as we move on our eternal journey to freedom. 

Shabbat shalom.

Ursula K. Le Guin
sermon · social justice

Why do people hate Jews?

levtaylor



A joke from darker times in history.

Two Jews sit on a park bench in 1930s Germany. One sees that his friend is reading Der Sturmer, the mouthpiece of the Nazi Party. Horrified, he asks: “what on earth are you doing reading that rag?”

His friend replies: “This newspaper says Jews control the banks, the media, and the governments of every country. These days, that’s the only good news I get!”

I try, where I can, to pay attention to the questions people in this community are asking, and make my sermons answer them. The question I have heard most frequently in the past few weeks is: “why do people hate Jews?”

I’ve heard it from young and old, Jew and non-Jew, left and right. It’s a heartbreaking question, because it shows how anxious people are. It is a serious question, so it deserves serious answers.

Why do people hate Jews?

My first answer is: they don’t.

Look at our neighbours, friends and coworkers. We are surrounded by love.

Whenever the Jewish community faces attacks, this synagogue is inundated with messages of support. (You will remember that, for a while, we kept all our letters of solidarity on a board.)

When Finchley Reform Synagogue was threatened last week, their local community came to uplift them. Mosques, churches and community centres. The Lebanese community brought doughnuts. The councillors, politicians and emergency service workers filled up the shul until it was standing-room only.

These people don’t hate us: they stand with us.

But that doesn’t mean no people hate Jews. Clearly, some do.

On Monday night, the BBC ran a Panorama called “Why are British Jews afraid?” It brought the wider British public’s attention to the reasons for fear of which we are already aware.

The attack on Heaton Park Synagogue on Yom Kippur. The murderous gunman on Bondi Beach at Chanukah.

In the last month, terrorists set fire to Hatzola ambulances and attempted arson against multiple Jewish gathering points in north west London. Recently, an Iranian operative was arrested for plotting to attack the site where I trained to be a rabbi, the Sternberg Centre.

Reports once distant are coming closer to home, affecting my own friends and colleagues.

It is because of these abhorrent acts that the question is even asked: why do people hate Jews?

Yet, even in these cases, I don’t think the perpetrators actually hate Jews, because I don’t think they even know who we are. Had the teenagers from Leyton who set fire to Hatzola ambulances ever met a Jew?

They were not even thinking about Chabad of Golders Green. Presumably, they were responding to news from the Middle East, but that doesn’t mean their violence is just misdirected anger against Israel.

I find it quite perverse to entertain the idea that, if only Israel would behave itself, British Jews wouldn’t warrant terror threats. I think most of us have expressed great anguish over Gaza, but that doesn’t prompt us to attack ambulances. The same is true of the rest of Britain.

As Dave Rich of the Community Security Trust said on the BBC documentary: the vast majority of people attending pro-Palestinian protests in London are motivated by a sincere concern for human rights. It is a minority of interlopers that are the cause for concern.

The primary groups who radicalise against British Jews are white nationalists and Islamists. Neither group particularly cares about Palestinians or Israelis, but only makes a pretence of it to serve their own supremacist agendas.

People were attacking Jews and Jewish institutions for many centuries before Israel was founded. They don’t need Israel to commit war crimes to justify burning synagogues.

Antisemitism is not really about Jews. Not real, living Jewish people. It is about a fantasy boogeyman who causes all the world’s problems.

The people who commit crimes against Jews are generally boys whose lives lack meaning. They know that something is wrong with the world, but they have no words to say what. So they invent an enemy, and their fabricated villain is a Jew.

The problem is not that they don’t like Jews but that they don’t like themselves.

Still, you can’t get from feeling dissatisfied with life to chucking petrol bombs at a synagogue without encouragement.

Antisemitism, like all forms of bigotry, is created from the top down.

April Rosenblum’s pamphlet The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere is a fantastic introduction to what antisemitism is and how to fight it.

Medieval antisemitism, she says, worked by having a group to sit in between the masses and the ruling class. Unlike other forms of racism, which are about making sure the boot is always on some minority’s neck, antisemitism worked by creating a buffer class so the people in charge could blame someone when things went wrong.

So, England on the brink of bankruptcy from Crusades banished the Jews; the Tsar’s supporters in decaying Russia invented The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; and in the 1930s Nazis gained power in impoverished, humiliated Germany by promising to deal with the Jews.

Judaism has changed much in the last thousand years, but antisemitism hasn’t. When Donald Trump says “the Jews don’t like me because they can’t buy me” or Elon Musk says Jews push hatred against whites, they’re standing in a long tradition of elites pointing at Jews for problems they created.

When Iranian leaders say that terrorist attacks are false flags launched by Jeffrey Epstein’s cabal to undermine Europe, they’re not even trying to hide their conspiracies behind innuendos.

These people don’t hate Jews. Jews are just convenient fodder for their smokescreens. What they hate is that they might lose some of their wealth or power. What they can’t stand is the thought that people might see past the lies and blame the real enemy: them!

Whether in America, Iran, or Britain, demagogues want people to hate Jews so that they won’t ask questions about what really causes social problems.

If only people did just hate Jews, it would be easier to defeat antisemitism. We could find every one of our enemies and bash them down like an anti-racist game of whack-a-mole.

But antisemitism runs deeper than that. It is a system of distraction and confusion, baked into the world’s contradictions over hundreds of years. It may draw on myths from religious texts or items from the news, but its core object of hate is not a real Jew.

Its Jew is a pantomime villain, created by corrupt elites to give desperate people someone to blame. The Jew they hate is a phantom, who vanishes on contact with reality.

So, to all those in this community asking why people hate Jews, let me say with surety: there is nothing in you that deserves hatred.

There is nothing you have done that made terrorists mad. There is nothing you could have done differently to stop fools attacking synagogues. Their hatred is not for you.

But the love is real. The relationships we have with our neighbours are based on genuine connections. The friendships we have built across faiths are sincere. The good work we do in our community has a real impact.

May we never let anybody’s hatred diminish that. May we only love harder.

Let us love our neighbours more. Let us love each other more. Let us love, ever more, our synagogue, our Torah, and our God.

So let us love Jews.

Shabbat shalom.

protest · social justice

We must build a wall to protect you from the Moabites.

levtaylor

We must build a wall to protect you from the Moabites.

We must build a wall. You cannot trust the Moabites.

The Moabites are on the other side of the salty Dead Sea and the Jordan River. A river is not big enough to keep the Moabites away from our land. They will take everything we have if they get the chance.

The Moabites are dangerous and brutal. They will destroy you if they get the chance. 

We must destroy the Moabites before they can destroy us. We must kill their kings. Their king Eglon is a murderous tyrant. You will never be safe as long as he reigns. You must kill him.

You must kill every Moabite that stands in your way. You must capture the Moabite city of Heshbon. We need it to keep the Moabites away from us. 

We must build a wall to protect you from the Moabites.

They must never come near you. 

You must never meet them. 

Because, if you met the Moabites, you might see that they are not monsters. You might see that they are like you.

And then you would not be able to kill them.

And then you would ask why we are building walls.

And then you would ask who was building these walls.

So you must always abhor the Moabites. You must fear them and revile them.

We must build a wall to protect you from the Moabites.

It must be high enough to protect you from them. It must be high enough to protect you from yourselves. It must be high enough to protect you from peace.

You may not immediately notice it, but nestled in this week’s Torah portion is an early example of war propaganda. In the vulgar and violent story of Lot is an origin myth for the Israelites’ greatest enemy: the Moabites.

The scene begins as God destroys Sodom and Gamorrah, two cities so wicked and licentious that they have to be wiped out and turned into the Dead Sea.

Only Lot and his daughters escape from that awful place. They retreat into the mountains on the east of the Jordan. There, the two daughters get Lot drunk, seduce him, and use him to sire their children.

The oldest is called Moab. And to really drive the point home, the Torah adds explicitly: the father of the Moabites.

The women in this story are not even given names. They are just grotesque plot devices to tell us how awful the Moabites are. 

Those people, Israel’s nearest neighbours to the east, are so wicked that they came from Sodom. Their ancestors are so twisted that they were born of incest, drunkenness, and assault. It is a story to inspire revulsion in its Israelite listeners.

This is part of a general campaign of literary warfare against the Moabites, continued throughout the Torah. 

Isaiah promises that the Moabites will be trampled like straw in a dung pit. Ezekiel vows endless aggression and possession. Amos says the whole of Moab must be burned down. Zephaniah swears that Moab will end up just like Sodom, a place of weeds and salt pits, a wasteland forever.

The war propaganda reflects real wars. The ancient Israelites did repeatedly wage war, conquer, and capture Moabites. They did kill their kings, and they did turn Moab into a vassal state. 

Based on the Moabites’ texts, we can see that it also went the other way, and that Moab also captured, conquered and slaughtered Israel.

We do not know how many Israelites or Moabites died in these wars. We do not know how many people grieved their families and homes. All that remains is the propaganda of the competing tribes.

Today, it is hard to imagine why anyone would have hated the Moabites so much, or even that we would believe the hyped-up stories of how vulgar they were. With centuries of hindsight, we can see that they were probably very similar to the Israelites, but dragged into wars for the glory and material wealth of their kings.

Of course, there were dissenting voices at the time. The Book of Ruth can be read as a polemic about love between Israelites and Moabites. It is a beautifully humanising story where the central character, Ruth, is portrayed as a Moabite who is kind, loving, devoted to her family, and committed to Israelites.

As long as there has been war propaganda, there has been anti-war propaganda, and our Torah contains it all.

This Shabbat, we honour Remembrance Day. We think of all of those who died in wars past, and those who served their countries in military operations. This feels so close to our hearts, as we reflect on the great toll wars took on military personnel and their families, including many in our communities. 

We remember the pain of those who have lived through and died in the awful wars that have passed.

This solemn day dates back to the armistice of the First World War, on November 11th 1918. The following year, England hosted France for a shared banquet as they recalled the ceasefire. From then on, it became an annual day of reflection on the horrors and sacrifices of war.

During the First World War itself, even as the conflict was ongoing, many challenged the war. The great British-Jewish soldier-poet, Siegfried Sassoon, charged that the war had been whipped up by jingoistic propaganda.

In July 1917, Sassoon published “A Soldier’s Declaration,” which denounced the politicians who were waging and prolonging the war with no regard for its human impact. 

Sassoon lambasted “the callous complacence with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share, and which they have not sufficient imagination to realise.”

It is true that people like me, who enjoy peace, cannot even contemplate the pain that people went through in fighting wars and enduring bombing. 

Today, we honour them.

Honouring them does not mean parroting propaganda and whipping up war. 

Quite on the contrary. It is the duty of every civilian to ensure as few people as possible ever have to fight in wars. It is our responsibility to minimise the number of people who suffer and die in armed conflicts.  It is our task to pursue peace.

We, who will never know the sacrifices of the front line, must heed Sassoon’s call, and resist the drive to war.

So instead:

We must tear down every wall with the Moabites. 

Yes, with the Moabites, and, yes, with the Germans, the Russians, the Chinese, the Koreans and the Iranians.

We must find commonalities and engage in shared struggles.

We must learn to trust our fellow human beings and distrust the propaganda of war.

We must cease all killing. The machinery of war has destroyed too much and taken too many lives. We must endeavour to put an end to violence and destruction.

We must learn to understand the people we are told are our enemies.

We must tear down every wall.

Shabbat shalom.

israel · sermon · social justice

We must drag the sun over the horizon

levtaylor


In Judaism, night comes before day. The day begins when the sun sets and the first stars appear in the sky.

This has been the way of the world since its mythic origins.

In the beginning, there was endless darkness. Then God said “let there be light.” And there was light.

And God separated the light from the darkness. The first distinction. And the darkness God called night, and the brightness God called day.

And there was evening, and there was morning. A first day.

Having created nights and days, God populated them with matter. At the end of each period of creation, there was evening, then there was morning. Each day.

During the sixth day, God created human beings and placed them in a garden. Then there was evening.

The first human beings had never seen an evening before. They did not know that the sun could set. They did not know the difference between night and day.

What must it have been like for the first sentient beings to realise who they were and who their Creator was, only to see the sun disappear? How frightened they must have been!

Perhaps they called out to God and asked for guidance. But that evening marked the beginning of the seventh day, and God was resting. God did not answer them.

Our Talmud teaches that when the first human beings saw their first nightfall, they fell into despair. Adam feared that the sun had disappeared as punishment for his sin. He worried that the world would now return to the endless darkness with which it began.

Eve cried. She fasted and prayed. Adam and Eve wrapped their arms around each other and held their bodies close as they prepared for the end.

Then the dawn broke.

And they realised: this is the way of the world.

The world began in autumn, at the festival of Rosh Hashanah.

When the first winter nights crept in, and they saw the length of days decreasing, they panicked once more. Now in exile from Eden, they had no way of knowing what would come next.

Again, they fasted, wept, and prayed.

Then the spring came, and brought with it longer days.

And they realised: this is the way of the world.

We begin with darkness. Light follows.

There is evening. Then the dawn comes.

There is winter. And it always becomes spring.

This is the way of the world.

We can observe this dialectic in almost all matters of life. Our suffering is followed by joy. Our struggles are replaced by triumphs.

Some days feel like endless nights, but the dawn is always waiting for those who are patient for it. So we hold each other close and wait for the sun to rise.

This is the way of the world.

These trends appear, too, in history. There will be periods of decline followed by ages of plenty. There will be economic busts, and there will be booms. There will be war, but peace will come.

This is the way of the world.

But human history is different from all other natural rules. The order of night and day and the structure of the seasons was predetermined before we arrived on this earth.

History, on the other hand, is made by human beings. History is the one area of life where we can, collectively, choose what happens. Our actions determine whether we live in the winter of war or bountiful springtime.

So, it is incumbent upon us not just to hold each other and wait for morning, but to drag the sun over the horizon and demand that day appears.

In 1969, “Shir LaShalom,” became the anthem of the Israeli peace movement. In the final stanza of the song, we sing out: “Do not say the day will come. Bring on the day.”

Just as people make the active decision to go to war, peace is also a choice. Those who want an end to war cannot just wait in the darkness.

We sang Shir LaShalom in this sanctuary on Simchat Torah. I felt, and I think many of you did too, truly jubilant at the news of ceasefire and hostage release. After two years, we could finally see a possible end to the suffering.

My jubilation was tinged with pain as I remembered the last time that Shir LaShalom was chanted throughout synagogues.

That was in 1995. Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat had shaken hands on the lawn of the White House. They had agreed to the Oslo Accords.

While already imperfect and tentative, the Oslo Accords of three decades ago were the last major effort at a comprehensive peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians. They paved the way for mutual recognition and the possibility of two states.

High on the dream of peace, Rabin joined Peace Now protesters in Tel Aviv Square and sang along to Shir LaShalom. With the lyrics still in his breast pocket, Rabin headed to the car park. There, a far right fundamentalist waited for the Prime Minister, and shot him dead.

There is still a copy of Shir LaShalom, stained with Rabin’s blood. There are those words, covered in the blood of a man who tried to make peace: do not say the day will come, bring on the day.

Yes, we must indeed bring on the day. But there are some who want to return us to endless night.

An Israeli fanatic shot dead Rabin to stop his day from dawning.

When Hamas saw the prospect of the Oslo Accords creating two states, they launched suicide bombing attacks on public transport. They took control of Gaza and promised endless war.

The Israeli far right wrested control over the offices of government. They promised there would be no Palestinian state and that every effort to achieve one would be swiftly repressed.

It saddens me that, even in the brief interludes since Rabin’s assassination when Netanyahu’s party has not had control over the legislature, few Israeli politicians have attempted to break from their logic of violence and occupation as the only answer to the Palestinian national question. 

Daybreak always comes, but there are those who prolong the darkness, and we have been living through a terribly long night. The call to bring on the day from earlier generations has been eclipsed by militarism and fear.

We have endless war. This is the way of the world.

But this is the way of the world as some have chosen to make it. And we can make the world another way.

On Monday, we saw the first thing in a long while that looked like a sun beam.

We celebrated the hostages coming home and an end to the bombing of Gaza. It was the first reminder we have had in a long time that peace is possible, and war is a choice.

We are able to bring on the day.

Now we must create even more sunshine.

But we have become so accustomed to darkness that the dawn may even be painful.

In daylight, we will have to look hard at the choices that made this war so prolonged and destructive. We will likely see that peace was possible much earlier and that more hostages might have come back alive sooner. We may ask searching questions about the morality of this war.

In the light of day, we will have to look hard at what Israel has become, and what the spiritual state of our Jewish institutions now is.

But we must bring on the day. We cannot return to the long-lasting night of war, murder, zealotry, and extremism. We cannot let anything that happened in the last two years ever happen again.

Throughout this dark night, our Progressive Jewish counterparts in the Israeli Reform Movement have been pushing hard for serious change.

They have been protesting outside Netanyahu’s house every Saturday evening. They have been joining Palestinian olive farmers in the West Bank to protect them from settlers. They have been demanding a real overhaul of the deep, structural causes of this century-long conflict.

My month with Rabbis for Human Rights before I began here helped positively frame my rabbinate. Although the picture on the ground is bleak, it made me realise just how many people are desperately trying to create daylight in the darkest contexts.

I hope that we will not fall into complacency now because the hostages are home. The task of peace building is more pressing than ever.

I want us to draw ever closer to those who are defending human rights and trying to bring about a future based on dignity and equality. I hope that, next year, we can bring a full delegation of Progressive Jews to support the West Bank olive harvest. I hope this can be a moment where we truly embrace the cause of peace.

This is not the seventh evening of creation. It is not the time to rest. We cannot leave our colleagues alone in this struggle now.

This is the first dawn of a new morning.

It is an opportunity for real accountability. It is a chance for meaningful peace building. It is the first crack of sunshine, and we have to drag out every possible ray of light to join it.

We must wrest the light into the darkness.

We cannot say the day will come.

We must bring on the day.

halachah · sermon · social justice

How does the Torah say we should treat refugees?

levtaylor

There is a verse in the Torah so radical that one of my teachers did not believe me it was even in there. 

I was working on a project as a rabbinical student and I brought a text that cited this verse. 

“That can’t be in the Torah,” my teacher said. She was a serious scholar, with not only rabbinic ordination but also a PhD in rabbinics and a host of published articles. 

“No ancient society would allow a law like that. The entire economy would collapse.”

I thought, perhaps I had misread it. It was a bold claim. So I went back to look. 

But there it was, nestled among a litany of miscellaneous commandments in Deuteronomy. On one side of this law was the instruction to make sure soldiers did not have nocturnal emissions, and on the other side was the requirement not to bring money gained from prostitution as a Temple offering. 

There it was, a law completely at odds with ancient society, which threatened to collapse an entire economy if enforced:

Do not hand over a slave to his master who is taking refuge with you from his master. He will dwell with you in your neighbourhood in the place he chooses, in one of your gates that is good for him. Do not oppress him.

– Deuteronomy 23:16-17

Let us start by acknowledging why this law is so radical. Ancient agrarian states were built on slavery. Prisoners of war, pillaged people, indentured servants and trafficked humans did back-breaking work to make the farms run. Their unpaid labour was what made the brutal machinations of early states even possible. 

Here we have a rule: do not hand over any slave to their master. The Torah is biased, and it’s not on the side of the owners!

More than this, if you get a runaway, your duty is to look after them. You have to give them accommodation. You have to give it in a place where the refugee himself feels is good for him, within the gates of one of your towns.

This is bold.

But still, it may be I had misunderstood. We already know from many other Torah sources that Israelites cannot be held as slaves. They might be debt labourers and bondsmen, but if somebody is part of the Israelite family, they can never be subjected to lifelong slavery. 

So, perhaps, this law is just talking about what to do if an Israelite runs away. In such a case, they might have been the slave of another Israelite, in which case they were being held against the law. Of course you would then give the slave refuge. 

Or they might have been an Israelite running away from another country, like an Edomite who had captured them in war. Well, then, they have come back to their people and need to be cared for.

So, have I mistranslated? Is this actually about Israelite slaves?

I’d have to look at earlier translations to check what it means. 

The earliest translation of the Torah is Targum Onkelos, a 2nd Century rendition of Scripture into the vernacular Aramaic. 

This translation gives details that clarify things. In this case, it adds an adjective to the Torah’s word for slave. עממין – from the foreign nations. A non-Israelite. The translation is unambiguous: we are talking specifically about foreigners.

This is even more radical. It’s saying we insist on looking after complete outsiders. They have no connection to us. 

They may even, then, be running away from Israelite masters. The Torah is saying that, if a slave runs away from their master, even though the slave is definitely not one of us, and the master might actually be one of us, we are on the side of the slaves.

About a century after this translation, the rabbis in the school of Rabbi Akiva wrote a commentary on the Book of Deuteronomy to expound its meaning. The book is called Sifre Devarim, and it takes all the legal verses from these books and adds oral traditions about how to interpret the laws.

Sifre’s explanation of this verse gives details on how you are supposed to treat a runaway slave when they come to you. Not only do you have to welcome them into your towns, say the rabbis, you also have to make it possible for them to make a living. They have to live with you, and not on the borders of the town.

It adds that the commandment not to oppress the runaway extends even towards words. Even the language you use must be kind. And it insists: you have to make them feel like the place they have come to is better than the one they left.

This is even bolder than where we began. It’s an official open borders policy to every runaway, with the requirement that they not only get refuge but actually get a livelihood and integration in the place where they move to. 

It is not only uneconomical, it goes against all the foundations of the ancient economy. 

You cannot even appeal to other economic reasons. There’s no organised mass of runaway slaves that the law-givers need to accommodate. There’s no suggestion that there was great pressure from the peasantry to be kind to foreigners.

It is a law entirely based on compassion.

What makes this law so radical is that it seems to be motivated entirely by altruism. That is why my teacher was so incredulous about the law being in the Torah at all.

And yet, isn’t that why we turn to the Torah to begin with? Not for cold economics, but to know the right way to live. We want a moral guide for how we should treat people.

Rabbi Julia Neuberger, who serves as a crossbencher in the House of Lords, has been a consistent voice for refugees, as each successive government has threatened hostility and sanctions.

As a lawmaker and a rabbi, she has to balance the high moral demands of our religion with the practicalities of government. 

In all her addresses, she emphasises the need for compassion. She treats refugees as a litmus test for the compassion of a society, because their marginal status tells us how our country is likely to treat everyone else. 

Baroness Neuberger advocates firmly for the rights of refugees.

Perhaps that is why the Torah introduces this seemingly radical rule. It wants to set a culture where the most vulnerable people get the best possible treatment, so that the whole of society will be based on kindness. 

The foundation of Torah law is about caring for the poor, the orphan, and the widow. This most intense case – a complete outsider running away from slavery – is the Torah’s own test for its moral system. 

It is a test every society faces. How people treat refugees shows what they think of human beings.

For the past few weeks, protesters have been gathering outside hotels, demanding refugees be sent back. The main political parties have entered into a race to the bottom for how unwelcome they would make refugees. 

Their rhetoric and laws may turn out to be a threat to us all. They may undermine the very basis of a compassionate society. 

Let us consider what would happen if Britain implemented Torah laws in its approach to refugees.

What would happen if this country made an active decision to welcome refugees and refuse to send them back? To deliberately integrate them and make sure they were firmly part of our towns? To set them up so that they could make a livelihood and refuse any insult to them? 

Would this collapse our economy, or would it make this place better for everyone?

And, if we had to choose, why would we not choose to follow the Torah?

Shabbat shalom.

sermon · social justice · torah

Don’t make trans people scapegoats

levtaylor

“It makes no sense to hate anybody. It makes no sense to be racist or sexist or anything like that. Because whoever you hate will end up in your family. You don’t like gays? You’re gonna have a gay son. You don’t like Puerto Ricans? Your daughter’s gonna come home Livin’ La Vida Loca!”

This quotation is so erudite, you may wonder which ancient sage said it. That was in fact, the comedian Chris Rock, in his 1999 “Bigger and Blacker” set.

I must have been about 10 when I heard that line, but it has always stuck with me. Over the years since, I have watched it become true. The world is so small that whatever bigotries someone holds, the people they hate are bound to end up in their own homes.

Recently, I realised that this had happened to me. I hope I am not much of a hater, but a friend pointed out to me how much I used to make jokes about Surrey. I used to say that we should saw around the county lines of Surrey and sink it into the sea, drowning all the golf courses and making a shorter trip for Londoners to the beach. 

Now, here I am, eating my words. I am about to marry a man from Surrey and have all my in-laws in Surrey. I’m the rabbi for a congregation in Surrey, and looking to move as soon as I can to Surrey. That thing I hated, even in jest, is right here in my family and inside of me.

I had some terrible stereotypes that everyone who lived here was a tax-dodging, fox-hunting billionaire. They weren’t grounded in reality. They were just about my own fears, projected onto people I had never met. 

Chris Rock was right. Whoever you hate will end up in your family. 

More than that: whoever you hate is already something inside of you. 

All of us can do it: we can stereotype, generalise, and project all our antagonisms onto a group as a way to cast off all the fears we have about ourselves. What do we call someone who captures all this externalised hatred? A scapegoat.

In this week’s Torah portion, we read about the original scapegoat. As part of the rituals for collective atonement, Aaron the High Priest gets two goats and brings them into the tabernacle. They pick straws for the goats. 

The lucky one is to be sacrificed for God. Onto the lucky one, Aaron ceremonially transmits all the sins of the Israelites, then chases it out into the wilderness. As it scarpers off, the scapegoat symbolically carries away all of the Israelites’ misdeeds.

The biblical narrative describes a psychological trick we can all play on ourselves. When we are ashamed of something inside ourselves, we take all that fear, turn it into hatred, and throw it at whatever unwitting bystander will carry it. 

Is this not precisely what Britain has been doing to trans people?

Gender is changing. The roles of men and women are shifting dramatically. There are so many new ways to live gender, to express ourselves, and to talk about our identities. 

Rather than embrace these changes and think about what opportunities they can afford us all to be more free, reactionary parts of British society have whipped up a concoction of bigotry and thrown it all at trans people. Every anxiety our bigots have about gender has been exaggerated and projected onto one small part of the population, who have been turned into monsters through these prejudiced eyes. 

It makes sense that people will find social changes scary and destabilising, but why should trans people bear the brunt of those fears?

A few years ago, I went to hear a panel of esteemed Jewish leaders give a retrospective talk about the ordination of gay, lesbian, bi and trans rabbis. On the bimah was Rabbi Indigo Raphael, Europe’s first openly trans rabbi. 

In his opening words to the congregation, Rabbi Raphael proclaimed: “I am a transgender man. I am not an agenda; I am not an ideology; and you can’t catch trans by respecting my pronouns.” The room immediately erupted into applause.

He should not need to say it. He shouldn’t need to defend his own existence, but such is the level of moral panic in parts of Britain that he has to assert his right not to be scapegoated before he can even teach Torah.

In the last few weeks, trans people have been subjected to legal rulings and government decrees that may make their lives unlivable and keep them from basic participation in public life. Like the goats of the ancient world, they are being cast out into the wilderness to carry away all of people’s fears.

It should not be this way. 

When we feel like scapegoating others, the best thing to do is look inside ourselves. We need to face our fears and work out why others bother us. The chances are, it’s something in ourselves that we’re not happy with, and when we need to get right with our own souls.

When we get to know those we “other” we get to know ourselves better. And when we realise we can like the difference in others, we learn more about what we can like in ourselves.

Reflecting on this, Margaret Moers Wenig, an American Reform rabbi wrote an essay called “Spiritual Lessons from Transsexuals.” She talks about how knowing trans people has enriched her own spiritual life. 

Interacting with trans people, Rabbi Wenig says, has taught her that all of us can craft our bodies as we will; we are all more than just our flesh and blood; we have living souls that can differ from others’ assumptions; that only God knows who we truly are. These are wonderful lessons that can only be learned when we turn away from fear and embrace curiosity.

They chime with my own experiences. At first, knowing trans people made me question myself. If gender is something we can change, am I really a man? With time, seeing other people embrace their gender and become who they are has made me feel far more happy in my own gender. I am a man, and I like being a man, and I like being an effeminate man.

When we turn away from fear, we see that we have no need for scapegoats. The parts within us don’t need to be divided up so that some are holy and others need to be chased out into the wilderness. Every part of us is for God.

The world has more than enough hate. It’s time we swapped it for loving curiosity.

After all, Surrey, it turns out, is rather lovely.

Shabbat shalom.

social justice · theology · torah

We are waiting for a different Messiah

levtaylor

Some years ago, an Orthodox friend asked me: “what would you do if the Messiah came and it turned out we’d been right about everything? What would you say to the Messiah?”

What would I do if the End of Days came, and Elijah literally came storming out of the whirlwind in a chariot made of fire and declared that the Son of David had arrived to cast judgement? And that we were to be judged on how strictly we had separated men and women; how well we had obeyed family purity laws; how stringently we had adhered to traditional authorities?

What would I say to this Messiah?

I have thought about it for a good few years and I think I now have my answer.

I would say: “F@£& off.”

I would tell that messenger: “You are not my Messiah and you’re not my king. Now go back where you came from.”

In this week’s haftarah, we read the prophet Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of the dry bones. For centuries, Orthodox Judaism has based its understanding of Messianism on these verses.

Ezekiel finds himself in a desert surrounded by skeletons. God tells Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones, and he does so, covering them in sinew, breathing life back into their lungs, and reviving their bodies, so that they stand up as a skeleton army.

These, says God, are representative of the people of Israel.

So, Orthodox Jewish tradition teaches, a day will come when the dead are literally physically resurrected. The corpses of pious Jews throughout the ages will be brought back to life; the exiles gathered to Jerusalem; and all judged by a righteous king descended from the biblical King David.

For this reason, many Orthodox Jews eschew cremation, and insist on being buried intact, so that their bodies can be resurrected at the End of Days. They vie for graves on the Mount of Olives, so that they can have front row seats when the Messiah arrives at the walls of Jerusalem and summons up the dead from their tombs.  

In recent decades, religious fanatics have come to espouse an even more intense version of this apocalyptic vision. 

There are Orthodox Jewish extremists, funded by American evangelical Christians, who are trying to destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount; build a Third Temple; and restore animal sacrifice and priestly leadership.  They seek to expand Israel’s borders to restore the ancient Kingdom of King David.

This week, Rabbi Charley Baginsky was quoted powerfully in The Times, saying: “We are afraid — not just for Israel’s future, but for Judaism itself. What becomes of our tradition if it is captured by messianic extremism, by racism disguised as religion, by power without principle? If the current trajectory continues, if Jewish supremacy becomes policy, then Judaism itself may become synonymous with oppression.”

In this context, you might be forgiven for thinking that messianism itself is the problem. Surely a religious zeal that drives people to commit such crimes is itself dangerous. For some, witnessing this fervour makes them question the foundations of Judaism itself.

The Israeli religious scholar, Avraham Uriah Kalman, warns against this way of thinking. His article earlier this year, entitled Another Messianism, addresses a tendency in Israeli secular society to dismiss all religion as varying stripes of nationalist fanaticism.

Yet, he claims, precisely because of the strength with which racist extremists have captured Judaism, we must return with equal zeal in our reclamation of Judaism. We, who believe in justice, democracy, and human rights must just as vigorously defend our corner.

If we do not have an equally powerful vision for what society could be, we will always be on the back foot, compromising with monstrous ideologies that want to blow up buildings and raze down villages.

Our ethics are grounded in the Jewish tradition. They are derived from the Jewish texts. They are sourced from the Living God. 

We cannot allow the far right to take exclusive hold over any part of Jewish life, or we surrender it to them. That includes Messianism – the grand utopian visions of ideal societies promoted in every book of the Prophets. 

The Prophets, whose mission of speaking truth to power and uplifting the lowly, are far more in line with our Progressive visions of the world than they are with the soulless dreams of those who want to oppress women and gays as part of their supremacist agenda. 

In the Prophets, we see clear visions of a perfected world. Their writings testify to a world of peace; where all resources are shared; where everyone lives in dignity; and where all are free.

Outside of specific esoteric texts like this week’s mystical imaginings from Ezekiel, it is hard to see any of the far right’s fantasies reflected in our Prophetic texts.

Messianism is really supposed to represent a rupture in the established order, but that is not really what the far right offers. War, racism, and misogyny are already the norm. At core, they don’t really want to change anything except to make existing tendencies more violent and oppressive.

So, says Dr Kalman, progressives must embrace messianism. We must turn to the Prophets as our source of hope, rather than buckling under the weight of despair. From our own utopian visions, we can develop ethics that speak to our daily lives and help us practically realise a better religious vision.

Kalman draws on a whole range of Jewish religious traditions, including Talmud, Kabbalah, Musar, and 17th Century Tzfat mystics. 

Yet, curiously, he seems not to be aware that this project, of developing a Progressive Messianism, has already been deeply thought through. The early Reform movement in Germany, from which Liberal Judaism descends, was animated by looking to the Prophets to rethink Jewish eschatology.

The early Reformers taught that the Messiah would not be a man, but an Age. 

It would not be characterised by Temple and Kingdom revival, but through the realisation of the values of the Prophets. It would be a world of peace and justice, achieved through the moral advancement of all humanity.

Explaining this theology, Rabbi Sybil Sheridan writes: 

“Though the end goal is world peace, the ideal is not pacifism, nor is it the peace of treaties at the end of war that are based on winners and losers. That notion continues the imbalance of power among peoples and nurtures the resentment that leads to dreams of revenge. The peace of the Messianic Age is a peace forged in complete mutuality. No one should be afraid that people may covet their vine or fig tree, no one will fear the loss of land or resources, no one will be humiliated. The world provides enough for everyone and sufficiency will take away the desire for war.”

While we Progressives do not accept the Orthodox doctrine of bodily resurrection and rebuilt Temples, that does not mean we should reject Messianic thinking. Times of despair and horror are when we most need to cling onto our hopes for a better world.

Progressive Messianism takes the task of perfecting the world away from mythical figures like Elijah and King David, and places it directly in our own hands. It says: we will not wait for someone else to bring about redemption; we are going to do it ourselves.

So, if Elijah came down from the Heavens and declared that the Orthodox had been correct all along, I would tell him he was wrong. 

For thousands of years, we have sought to create a better world. We have learnt through struggle about the dignity of women; the importance of justice; and the shame of racism. We now have a much better idea of how the world can be.

We can see a future in which every human being lives in harmony with each other and their planet. We can see a world where all live in freedom and peace. We are sure now that we can live in love and equality. 

We are going to realise our Messianic age.

And nobody- not even a prophet descending from the skies – is going to stand in our way.

protest · sermon · social justice

When a swastika appeared on my primary school wall

levtaylor

Do you remember the first sermon that really moved you?

I do. It was a primary school assembly.

Mrs. Kilou stood at the front of the hall, as all us uniformed children awaited the morning messages.

She began with a question: “who knows what I hate most in the world?”

A kid suggested: “Lateness.”

“No, not lateness.”

Another offered: “scruffiness.”

“No, not scruffiness.”

One more: “When we don’t do our homework.”

“No, this is the thing I hate most in the world. Way worse than lateness or scruffiness or not doing the homework. The thing I truly despise.”

Finally, a kid ventured: “racism.”

“Racism, that’s right!” She spat the word and the whole crowd sat up to attention. The fury in her voice was palpable.

She had good reason to be angry. Somebody had spray-painted a large swastika on the outer wall of our primary school.

***

For the last two months, I have been trying to work out what to say. There have been days recently when many of the parents from this community didn’t send their children into school, worried that they would be targets. Members have shared stories of taking down their mezuzot, and hiding their symbols of Jewishness. I have felt, at times, like the community is overtaken by panic.

What do you say to people who are so anxious and angry? How do you meet people in their fear, and help them move beyond it?

I haven’t known what to say. So, the last few times I have stood on this bimah, I have just shared what is in the Torah.

But there is a trauma that needs to be addressed.

It doesn’t help to tell people that there is nothing to fear. That only makes people feel alone in their feelings, and that just makes them more afraid.

What repeated studies show is that what matters about handling traumatic events is less what happens afterwards than what happened before. People are better able to negotiate destabilising situations when they already have a strong sense of self; feel proud of who they are; and have a clear story about themselves.

So, I think the best thing to do from here, for now, is to tell my own story. My own relationship to antisemitism.

My account is, of course, personal, and not definitive. But I hope it will open up spaces for others to share their stories, and for us to begin a conversation about who we are, and what experiences formed us.

***

The swastika on my school wall was not for me. Not in the direct sense. That is to say: whoever drew it did not have Jews at the forefront of their minds.

We were not a Jewish school. We were a multicultural one in the centre of an industrial town, surrounded by white suburbs, and even whiter countryside. The other students, my friends, were Pakistani Muslims, kids from the Caribbean, refugees from Kosovo… we were a little bubble of people from everywhere, and, though I did not know it then, were a source of moral panic among readers of certain newspapers. We were, to those that feared integration, a symbol that Britain wasn’t British anymore.

And, of course, that swastika very much was for me. It was an attack on my community. It was antisemitic because all swastikas are. It was calling to me, because all racism does.

Around that time, my parents began telling me stories. But not the stories you would expect. They didn’t tell me about family members who had escaped Germany or died there. They did not explain why some members of the synagogue had tattoos on their arms, or how others had met each other on refugee trains. I only came to learn that much later.

They told a story about how, not long ago, the Council had erected a new housing block. One of the first people to be offered a home there was a black woman. Racists came to protest. ‘Houses should be for whites.’ The Pakistani community centre came out in large numbers and escorted the racists back to the train station and out of town.

This is an oral history, and I won’t be able to verify it from newspaper reports, but I suspect my parents made it sound more peaceful than it really was.

They told me other stories too. Stories of hundreds turning out to see off the National Front. Stories like how the Jews and the Irish united to defeat the Blackshirts at Cable Street. Stories of partisans and resistors.

They told me how people could stand up against racism and win. They told me about how, when it comes to racism, our greatest strength is each other.

I don’t know if this was their intention, but I learnt then that the swastika was not something to be feared. It was something to be destroyed. And that people could, and did, destroy it, wherever it appeared.

So, I grew up feeling not so scared of Nazis as determined to stamp them out.

***

Some university students spend their weekends studying. Others spend them partying. Me and my friends? We spent our weekends chasing the English Defence League.

Don’t get me wrong. I did study. And I did party. But some of my most formative memories from that time were of bundling into minivans and car convoys with my housemates to towns in the Midlands and the North.

At that time, Tommy Robinson had assembled a band of white supremacists, bored football hooligans, and lost boys, to go and protest wherever there was a mosque. They usually targeted the mosque itself, and would go to the towns with the express aim of intimidating the Muslims.

Opposing them felt like the only right thing to do. Fighting fascism felt like a calling in a very similar way to how the rabbinate does today.

There was a group of us, from different towns, who always went along, led by a gentle couple called Simon and Sadia. We were always met by locals, usually gathered from community centres and religious groups, who would join in showing the racists that they weren’t welcome.

I learnt from these forays into antifascist activism that, while there were always some who resisted fascism, they weren’t necessarily popular. Media narratives after each protest often framed the unfolding events as if the fascists and their opponents were equally bad. As if it would be better if these small groups of students and locals stayed home and let the racists go unchallenged.

I might have believed them, if it weren’t for what I saw happen in Dudley. There, the English Defence League significantly outnumbered the protesters. Police lost control of the situation. Over that weekend, in broad daylight, those thugs went round smashing in the windows of any house with black and brown people living in it.

As we ran away from the violent gangs storming the town, we passed a house where a black teenager had been visiting a white family. Their windows had been smashed. “I’m sorry,” he was saying, “I think it’s because of me.”

I learnt from this a lesson that has informed how I think about all racism and antisemitism since. Our strength is in each other. Our defence is our neighbours.

This runs contrary to some of the received wisdom about antisemitism. We are, after all, a small minority that lives in concentrated areas of large British cities. One story about how to handle the prejudice we face is that we must depend on the state to defend us against the baying mob of our neighbours. It is because of this that older members will share the axiom: “as long as the king is safe in his castle, we’ll be safe in Tower Hamlets.”

My experiences turn this on its head. The non-Jewish majority is not our enemy. They are our most reliable bulwark against racism. When it comes to fascists, we are the masses and the masses are us. Our greatest strength is each other.

***

That story, of solidarity in the face of racism, is also played out in the story of this synagogue. My friend, Joseph Finlay, just completed his PhD, looking at Jews and race relations in post-war Britain. During his archival research into the history of fighting racism, one shul kept cropping up. This one.

During the 1960s and 1970s, this synagogue was led by the visionary rabbi, Dow Marmur. He arranged visits from volunteers to homes of new immigrants to Redbridge, as well as English conversation classes to help neighbours settle in. In 1978, the synagogue held a “multiracial dance,” in a clear statement of unity against racist scaremongering about miscegenation.

Rabbi Marmur brought a motion to the RSGB Conference of 1968, which encouraged other synagogues to adopt similar policies, and follow SWESRS’ example. He accompanied his motion with a powerful sermon.

While others shied away from fighting racism, or even expressed sympathy with the anti-black and anti-immigrant feeling, Rabbi Marmur issued an impassioned plea. Yes, he said, the racists do draw comparisons between Jews and black people, and “we have a special duty to remember the Prophet’s comparison and to affirm that we are, in fact, alike -in the beneficent eyes of God!”

He encouraged meaningful solidarity, urging “let us beware of condescending and patronising “do-goodery” … “And at no time must we allow ourselves to be fobbed off with cowardly calls for “prudence” and “caution” when these are euphemisms for inactivity and indifference.” Finally, Marmur compelled his listeners: “the primary force of our involvement must be our religious conviction; God bids us act-and we must obey!”

This summons stands at the centre of my own response to antisemitism. It is not only the swastika that calls me, but, more importantly, the voice of the Living God.

In that voice, I hear the demand to continue being Jewish, without apologies.

In God’s Word, I hear the call to resist antisemitism, not only out of self-preservation, but from a religious demand that there must be diversity.

And in God’s Torah, I hear, always, that most-repeated verse: “love your neighbour.” Yes, love your neighbour as yourself. Love them because they are you. Love each other because that is our strength.

And our love for each other may be our salvation.

Shabbat shalom.

halachah · judaism · social justice

Are Jews allowed to lend money at interest?

levtaylor

Of course, I am Jewish, but I also consider myself very English. I am English in the very parochial sense that I love canal boats, think provincial churches are beautiful, will definitely barbecue on the only day of summer, and put mayonnaise with everything. But, last autumn, I did the most English thing I have ever done. 

I wrote a disapproving letter of correction.

I had never done it before. I’ve never written in to the BBC or a newspaper. To the best of my knowledge, I’ve never sent a letter of complaint about anything. But this one was too important to simply ignore.

Someone in a play had misrepresented a complex point of Jewish law. 

Now, this may seem trivial. But, six months later, I am still so incensed about this common misconception of halachah, that I feel the need to preach on it. 

In September, last year, I got a real treat: to go see one of our members perform at the Royal Court Theatre. Rachel Hosker, who will be getting married under our auspices in the summer, was performing in a play called ‘Jews. In their Own Words.’ Written by Jonathan Freedland, the play interviews famous Jews, including Tracy-Ann Oberman, Luciana Berger, Margaret Hodge, and Howard Jacobson, trying to give a sense of antisemitism, past and present. 

I’m not a theatre critic, but let me tell you: Rachel acted fantastically. She and the rest of the cast did a fantastic job of bringing the characters to life. 

But there was a line, really a throwaway comment, that stuck with me. The play was attempting to explain the trope of the money-hungry Jew, and how Jews had come to be associated with money-lending. An actor representing CST’s Dave Rich said: “the rulings of the church forbade lending money at interest, which was considered usury, whereas Jewish law allowed it.”

This, to me, is alarmingly inaccurate. It shows not only a misunderstanding of Jewish law, but also of antisemitism, and how it works. It places the responsibility for Jews as medieval money-lenders onto Jews, and our religion. Nothing could be further from the truth.

If it was the case that Jewish law allowed money-lending at interest, you would be hard-pressed to explain the commandment in this week’s Torah portion: “You may not act as a creditor to your people. You may not exact interest from them.” You would also have to reckon with the same commandment, given in the Holiness Code: “Do not exact advance or accrued interest, but fear your God… Do not lend your money at interest, and do not give your food at interest.” The same commandment is repeated again in Deuteronomy: “do not deduct interest from loans to your kindred.”

Of course, you might say, the Torah is not the only source of Jewish law. Perhaps these commandments are amended in the Mishnah, or the Talmud, or the Codes. No, no, and no. The Mishnah says charging interest is so reprehensible that it involves breaking six commandments. The Talmud says that even scribes and witnesses who participate in such contracts are guilty. 

In the defining law code for most of the Jewish world, the Mishneh Torah, Rambam looks at the word for interest – neshech – which is the same as the word for a snakebite, and says it is called as such “because it bites, it causes pain to a fellow human being, and consumes a person.” He repudiates it completely.

Be in no doubt: Jewish law does not permit money-lending at interest.

So, how did it happen that Jews nevertheless ended up associated with money-lending, despite its very explicit prohibition?

In the 4th Century CE, Church Father Augustine of Hippo declared that Jews would be permitted to survive as “living witnesses” to the truth of the Bible, but must be kept in a degraded state, with the mark of Cain, for their refusal to accept Jesus. This became the official policy of Christian Europe’s primary institutions: its churches and monarchies. 

Jews were allowed to live in England neither as citizens nor serfs. They could not own land or participate in the nation. They were excluded from universities, and cut out of the professions. They were only allowed to live in the country on condition that they did the dirty work of the ruling class: tax collecting and money-lending. 

Now, most Jews did not do such jobs. They did the work that was needed for their community, as bakers, vintners, stonemasons, and millers. But, as long as some Jews fulfilled these functions for the monarchy, all Jews could live in European countries as “treasured subjects” – effectively pets of the king. 

This had a profound impact on the lives of medieval European Jews. They were forced to wear humiliating clothes to mark them out. Associated with tax collecting and money-lending, many of the local peasants associated the Jews with all the financial problems they faced. 

The local lords actively exploited this division. They drummed up hatred against Jews, and treated them as a pressure valve, so that, in times of economic crisis, peasants would attack their local Jews rather than turn their ire on the landowner class.

That is why the worst pogroms that we have recorded came in times when the monarchy was in financial straits. In England, these came when the country was bankrupted by its military Crusades to capture Jerusalem. Jews, the perceived cause of money problems, and naturally associated with the Holy Land, had all the anger and resentment of impoverished people poured out on them. 

If the monarchy or the Church were struggling with their own debts, they had an easy way out: they could simply expel the Jews and confiscate all their property. In 1290, Edward I expelled the Jews from England to cancel his debts and win back the support of the knights and lords in parliament, who were also heavily indebted.

This put the rabbis, the arbiters of Jewish law, in a very difficult position. If they permitted lending at interest, they would turn their backs on their entire religious inheritance. If they insisted that Judaism forbade money-lending at interest, they would effectively force their community to leave where they were. And, since all of Christian Europe had adopted the same policy, they would have nowhere to go. 

So, the rabbis had to find a way. They looked at the laws, which said such lending was only prohibited to their kin. Rabbi David Kimchi, writing in medieval France during pogroms and expulsions, said that Jews were not permitted to lend at interest to people who respect Jews. The corollary was that if people would not treat the Jews as full human beings, then they, in turn, could lend to them at interest. In England, the Christians had estranged them and made them explicitly not their kin.

This is why correcting this point on the understanding of Jewish law is so important. It is not just because we are sticklers for getting the halachah right. It is so that we understand what antisemitism is and how it works. 

We Jews did not create this system. We did not allow it, nor have the power to stop it. For over a millennium, European powers embedded and promoted antisemitism to prop up their system. As Rabbi Lionel Blue, of blessed memory, so pithily wrote: “The problem of the Jews in Europe was never the Jews. It was Europe.”

Now, we are citizens in this country. With Emancipation, we might have hoped that it would bring an end to cultures of debt and division. True, most of the banks and money-lenders are now not owned by Jews, and very few Jews today engage in such work. 

But that is not because we are living closer to the laws of the Torah or our rabbis. It is because the whole of our society is caught up in loans. All of us are more indebted and more divided than we ever were. We are pitted against each other by a media eager to see us all fighting. 

Combating antisemitism does not only mean counteracting myths and biases against Jews. It is also about dismantling the material realities that created antisemitism. The hatred of Jews erupts when we are scapegoated for economic problems in society. We must not only contradict the myth that we are responsible, but also fight to ensure that the problems people face of economic hardship and drowning in debts no longer exist. 

When we realise that the world has enough for all of us, and distribute it so that everyone can prosper, we will be far closer to a world without prejudice and fear.

Shabbat shalom.