Tag: Jewish Law

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.

halachah · sermon

What makes food kosher today?

levtaylor

Not long ago, after a near-lifetime of vegetarianism, I decided to try treif. And not just any treif, but the real deal: pork.

I knew I wanted to give it a go but I was afraid of being seen by other Jews. So I went on holiday to Gran Canaria, sat down in a fancy restaurant, and ordered a full-blown roast pork.

As I was waiting, however, a couple from my old congregation walked into the same restaurant. They instantly recognised me and came up to say hello. Just as we greeted each other, my pork came out from the kitchen: a giant pig on a massive platter with a big red apple in its mouth.

Flummoxed, I exclaimed: “My goodness… so this is how they serve apples here!”

OK, so that last part didn’t happen, but I really did decide to try treif about a decade ago. I’ll be honest with you, some of it tastes pretty good, but they’re not worth giving up Judaism for.

I hadn’t eaten pork since childhood. Aged 6, I had precociously insisted to my parents that I wanted to be religious and go to synagogue. My mum had told me that if I was going to force her to go to synagogue, I’d have to give up sausages. I wanted to be Jewish and I wasn’t allowed to do it half-heartedly.

I think all of us know that food laws play some role in our Judaism. Some of you here keep kosher kitchens. Some of you guiltily sneak a steak when you think you won’t get caught. Some of you, like my brother, eat extra bacon ‘to make up for all the ancestors who missed out on it.’

Whatever your choices, being a Reform Jew means to get to make those decisions for yourself. Our movement believes in informed choice.

Making the choice is your responsibility. But making sure you are informed is mine. So it’s my responsibility to share with you that there are lively debates happening in the Reform rabbinate about what kosher should mean today.

I recently attended my first Assembly of Reform Rabbis, where learned colleagues were discussing kashrut for the first time since the 1970s. It says something interesting that the topic hasn’t been addressed in such a long time.

The reason we are discussing kashrut again today is that the government is contemplating whether to ban traditional ritual slaughter – shechita. For many centuries, Jewish butchers have used the same methods for killing animals. That is: they slit their throats, puncturing the trachea, oesophagus and arteries with one rapid incision.

Throughout our history, Jews have considered this to be the cleanest and most humane method of killing animals. It comes out of a desire to show respect for the animals and to minimise risk of diseases.

Today, however, there is a new movement to favour stun slaughter. In this method, animals are electrocuted before they are killed. For cattle, this means putting a charged bolt through their heads. For chickens, it means electrifying them as a group. Proponents argue that this is more humane, since it renders animals insensitive to pain in their final moments.

There are two other factors that have made stun slaughter so popular, neither of which should be ignored. One is that industrial meat production means that factories produce far more meat. They want to be able to slaughter as efficiently as possible to maximise profit from the animals. Industrial stun slaughter certainly helps here.

Another factor is antisemitism. Across Europe, the movements to ban traditional slaughter have largely been led by white supremacists. Their primary target is Muslims, whose customs around halal slaughter are very similar to our own methods of shechita. Jews are really collateral damage in cultural wars about trying to retain Europe’s status as a Christian continent.

These factors make addressing this issue exceptionally complex. Proponents of stun slaughter ask us to set aside questions about racism and capitalism, just to focus on the issue at hand. I find that very hard to do. Rabbinic law is never about making moral decisions in the abstract. We make our ethical choices as real people living in the real world.

I think it is highly doubtful we will ever be able to prove that taking an animal’s life is better served by electrocution than through throat slitting. It may well be true that these new methods of industrial killing cause less pain, but shechita requires butchers to actually look animals in the eye before taking their lives. I’m not convinced either is more humane.

But, even if one were, we cannot escape the horrific systems that underpin animal consumption. Right now, the insatiable demand for meat is one of the leading causes of global warming. This week, we saw record-breaking temperatures. We can expect such heat waves to take place more regularly and more ferociously as runaway climate change unfolds.

The meat industry is an enormous enterprise that involves destroying natural habitats, depleting the oceans, battery-farming animals, deplorable working conditions, and unspeakable cruelty.

In every generation, Reform Jews have to work out anew what the most ethical way of living is. Today, it is hard to make the case that this includes participating in such an unjust system.

Rather than engaging in debates about specific methods of killing, I feel the appropriate response should be to question whether we should keep eating meat at all.

Indeed, this synagogue has long been an exclusively vegetarian site. This is partly because of convenience: it means we can host anyone and we can avoid messy arguments about separating meat from milk. But it also comes from the moral courage of previous leaders in this community, like Rabbi Henry, who felt that was the best way to live our values.

Please do not think me preachy. Quite on the contrary, I want to be open about my own hypocrisy. I still do eat meat on occasion, especially fish and chicken. I eat eggs and cheese. But, deep down, I know that the ethical vegans have already won the argument.

I once expressed my sadness about this to a frum vegan friend. She advised me: don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good. If you wish you could be vegan but can’t give up cheese, be vegan except for cheese! If you wish you could be vegetarian but like fish too much, be pesacatarian! We must all find ways to reduce our meat intake and limit our negative impacts on the planet.

The Reform rabbinate is still in open conversation about how we redefine kosher for our age. We did not settle the matter at the Assembly, and I don’t want to leave this sermon as if I have reached a definite conclusion. Instead, I want to bring you into the conversation. I want to hear how you think we should best live our values today.

Let us engage in open discussion. Let us talk with each other about our own practices and our own driving values. And let us fashion together a new future for what an ethical Jewish life looks like.

Shabbat shalom.

halachah · sermon · social justice

My objections to euthanasia

levtaylor

I try not to broadcast disagreement with the rabbinate, especially when many colleagues are very senior, and I am still a student. It is even more cavalier, then, to express opposition to something advocated by the two Progressive movements, both Liberal and Reform Judaism. This issue, however, has been brewing for some time, and I feel compelled to speak out on it.

I do not agree with the current responsa coming from the movements on euthanasia. In fact, they make me deeply uncomfortable. I know that wading into such a morally complex discussion will undoubtedly upset people. Please know that my position is, almost certainly, a minority one. Please also understand that it is very sincerely and deeply held.

In June of this year, Liberal Judaism became a founding member of the Religious Alliance for Dignity in Dying, a collection of multi-faith groups that campaigns for the rights of terminally ill people to determine how, when and where they die. 

This signaled the movement’s support for euthanasia, or assisted dying: when patients with incurable diseases are legally killed by their doctors. At the time, the decision caused some consternation in the Liberal rabbinate. Only a handful of people had made the decision with very little consultation. Dissidents objected that this was not a morally cut-and-dry decision, but one that needed much more careful thought than had been given. 

Nevertheless, the movement celebrated the media coverage they had received. They proudly displayed their reporting in The Sunday Times, Politics Home, and The Jewish News. Bold stances certainly grab headlines, and this was as bold as they could get.

This week, Reform Judaism took a more measured approach. After a great deal of consultation and discussion, the movement effectively arrived at the decision not to pick a side. Their responsum, published on the front page of the Jewish Chronicle this week, says we “will not campaign either in favour or against efforts to change the law on the issue.” 

Nevertheless, the decision garnered media attention because, for the first time, Reform Judaism promised it would provide pastoral care to patients who did choose to end their lives. In itself, that might not have been newsworthy. Since our founding, we have endeavoured to provide compassionate care to everyone who sought it, regardless of beliefs or life choices. 

It is uncontroversially the right choice that we should support individuals, regardless of our personal beliefs, and stay neutral on the law, when we are so patently divided. It would have been far more surprising if Reform Judaism had announced it was not going to provide pastoral care to terminally ill people. That would have resulted in much greater outrage.

Clearly, the “landmark” decision received the attention it did because it sent a subtle message of support for euthanasia. It suggested, while of course doing everything possible to argue to the contrary, that the movement endorsed such decisions. This responsum was consequently followed up by much media coverage, including an opinion leader in The Times.

The two movements are certainly leading a conversation in this country on assisted dying, but are they leading it in the right direction? I think not. 

This is not because I am in any way a conservative on this issue. In general, Jewish religious law up to this point has stood against the principle of assisted dying. The traditional Jewish response has been that life comes from God, belongs to God, and only God can take it away.

As such, the Mishnah rules that even closing the eyes of a dying person is tantamount to murder. The Shulchan Aruch says that a dying person must be given all the rights of a living one, and the Mapa adds that it is forbidden to do anything to hasten death.

These halachic rulings form the backbone of Orthodox objection to euthanasia. Most Progressive Jews share the Orthodox belief in the sanctity of life. Since at least the 1980s, however, we have had internal debates about what that means and how it should be implemented. Some have argued that, with necessary safeguards, relief of pain should be prioritised over unnecessary prolongation of life. 

As Progressive Jews, we are not bound by the decisions of the past, but seek to draw on them in conjunction with the best medical and moral reasoning of our age. We move with the times.

My objection is not to the abstract principle of euthanasia, but to the political context in which these decisions are being made. We never legislate in a vacuum, but have to consider what we advocate in the context of what is happening in the context of society at large. 

Yes, we can move with the times, but let’s look at where our times are heading. Right now, there is a wholesale assault on the rights and dignity of disabled people. Successive governments going back many decades have vilified disabled people as scroungers, leeching off the state, taking more from society than they give to it. 

With the introduction of fiscal austerity in Britain, the greatest burden fell on disabled people, who had their services, welfare, and jobs cut. Since the beginning of the pandemic, many ministers have made it clear that they see the lives of clinically vulnerable people as disposable. They have shown that they would prefer to prioritise the economy over the lives of people in hospitals and care homes. It is little wonder that some disabled people want to die, when they have been deprived of so much in life.

What message does it send out now if we say that we support assisted suicide? We may have been silent on the great attacks on disabled people’s lives, but, don’t worry, we are liberals, we will let you die. Just to show how caring we are, we’ll let you commit suicide, with support from the very state that has made your life so difficult.

If we are moving with the times, we are moving very much in the wrong direction. Coming out as pro-euthanasia now puts us on the side of those who are currently dehumanising the elderly and disabled. Publicly championing euthanasia is not defending the vulnerable, but attacking them.

Yes, as Progressive Jews, we do advocate choice and personal autonomy. But not all choices should have our enthusiastic support. The actor and disabled rights  activist, Liz Carr, has rightly said that, if someone is going to kill themselves, it is hard to stop them, but “that does not mean when a fellow human being – disabled or abled – expresses the wish to die because their life is shit, that we should agree with them.”

Some disabled people already feel that they are too great a burden on others. This is because we live in a system that reinforces that message: focusing on a person’s ability to be “economically productive” as their sole source of value, rather than loving them unconditionally for the fact of being alive.

That system, and the ideological apparatus around it, tells disabled people that their lives are not worth living. If we join in as cheerleaders for assisted dying, we are sharing the message that we agree with them. No wonder every disabled rights charity in the country opposes euthanasia liberalisation.

If we want to send out the right messages, I suggest we need to go in a different direction entirely. Rather than campaigning on people’s right to die, we should put the weight of our movements on campaigning for the right to live.

That means channelling our energy in campaigning for jobs for disabled people; proper welfare provision; decent and accessible social housing; the restructuring of our cities and public transport networks so that everyone can access them; investment in clubs and societies people can actually reach.

Yes, all of these things cost money. But the way we are going now costs lives.

I want you to know that, whatever you decide to do in life, I will absolutely support you and be there with you. But I will do that because I believe, on a fundamental religious level, that your life is precious and worth living. I believe in making that it is the duty of religious people, and of the government, to make people’s lives on earth as good and fulfilling as they can be.

We should absolutely support people at every stage of their lives, but the build up to someone wanting to die matters far more than enabling them to do it. We ought to assist people to live, not to die.

Shabbat shalom.