Tag: jewish

article · israel

Who will we be now?

levtaylor

The following essay is published in the Movement for Progressive Judaism’s first book, Progressive Judaism, Zionism and the State of Israel, alongside 40 other contributors.

Stand on the edge of the canyon of history.
Clasp your hands around your mouth and call out: who are the Jews?
A hundred answers will echo back at you.
Throughout the cavern, stories will reverberate. Voices saying you are monsters. Voices saying you are victims. Sounds of priests and prophets; legends and laws; heroes and martyrs. How do you choose? Which version of the story of the Jews is you?

***

From out of history come the sounds of persecution.
In September 2025, Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner appeared as a witness on the BBC’s Moral Maze. One of the panellists brought her a question. He said: “Sadly, the problem in the Middle East conflict is that both sides are right about each other. Do you share that view?”
Rabbi Laura responded with a question: “Can you finish the sentence?”
For a moment, the questioner fumbled, then put forth that both Israelis and Palestinians had “very little good intent, very little willingness to compromise.” He averred that, given half the chance, either the Israelis or the Palestinians would destroy the other. Their positive views of themselves were lies, and their demonisation of each other was the truth.
Rabbi Laura ignored the simplistic stereotyping and talked about how interconnected Israeli and Palestinian lives are.
I shuddered. I heard unspoken echoes of old European prejudices. The questioner certainly did not intend malice, but the well of antisemitism goes deep, and people draw from it without realising. Medieval passion plays depicted Jews as greedy, bloodthirsty baby-killers. Crusader propaganda portrayed Muslims as barbarous, fundamentalist hordes. The unflattering stereotypes of Palestinians and Israelis go back centuries, and do not originate from either party. They are the product of systematic othering.
Who the Jews are is not only determined from within: it is, unfortunately, a conversation with bigotry. In some minds, you are still Shylock pursuing his pound of flesh. You are the snivelling moneylender. No matter how assimilated you have become, you are Fagin trafficking children into crime.

***

Go ask Bondi Beach who the Jews are.
Dare those academics, who arrogantly proclaim that Jews are not oppressed, to tell that to Heaton Park Synagogue Manchester, or Tree of Life Synagogue Pittsburgh, or Hypermarche Paris, or Lee Park Charlottesville, or The Great Synagogue Copenhagen. From coast to coast, the voices echo.
So many places will tell you that Jews are victims. History is littered with millions of Jewish corpses. In some minds, you are still the helpless child in striped pyjamas, with a yellow star stitched on your lapel, and a number tattooed on your arm.
But don’t let that be your only answer. If we think of ourselves as permanent victims, we will rob ourselves of the agency God gave us. We will forget our power: to hurt and to heal.
We must retell our story as Jews. We cannot think of ourselves exclusively as the persecuted, and never as the persecutor.
Jews have entered history. We must take responsibility for what we do there.

***

Take a walk to the well and call into it. Ask the well who the Jews are.
The voice of the prophets will rebound, telling you that righteousness will flow out like an ever-flowing stream. You will hear the song of Miriam, whose fountain followed the Israelites in the desert; the cries of Hagar, who found water when she needed it most.
At the well of Beersheva, our father Abraham and his rival Avimelech chose to share water. Abraham, the first of our people, showed that a Jew was one who could negotiate and apportion according to need.
Still, the well may tell you that there is not enough water for everyone. That either we will drink or they will. The water might tell you that you have only one commandment, and that is to survive. If you do not drink, you will die.
Atop West Bank settlements, religious Jews rejoice at surviving. They chant: “the nation of Israel lives on; our father lives on.”
Let the water show you how some settlers have mains pipes filling their swimming pools, while Bedouin shepherds have to ration their water in butts.
Yet other Jews fight for shared resources and shared futures. Rabbi Dana Sharon stands in the way of settlers who want to attack Palestinian farmers in the West Bank. She is an organiser for Rabbis for Human Rights.
When I first met Rabbi Dana, I asked what had inspired her to get involved in peace activism. She said: “Ever since I was a  child, I wanted to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Of course, I thought the problems in my own country would be sorted by the time I grew up, and I’d have to do it somewhere else.” She knew what kind of Jew she should be, and became it.
In November 2025, Dana was shot with a drone by a settler wearing military fatigues. She was seriously injured. When I think of Dana, I believe that our father Abraham lives on. His message resounds: that sharing is a greater guarantor of survival than fighting.

***

Go to the Cave of Machpelah and stand at its entrance. This is a holy site in Hebron, where the founders of monotheism prayed. It is a tomb many thousands of years old, in Area A of the West Bank. You will have to get past checkpoints and walls and into a fortified compound, but you will find a cave.
Clasp your hands around your mouth and call into the hollow: who are the Jews? A hundred answers will echo back at you.
Here, Abraham procured a burial place for Sarah, and in turn was buried there. Abraham’s two sons, Isaac and Ishmael, came to bury him in Hebron. Ishmael had been cast out by his father. Isaac had nearly been killed by Abraham. We can’t imagine the pain they felt seeing each other, and performing a funeral for this man. Nevertheless, they prayed together at that sacred site.
Here is an answer to who Jews are. We are the descendants of Isaac, who prayed at the same tomb with his brother, Ishmael. We are the people who choose non-violence, reconciliation, and prayer.
The cave’s echoes continue, coming ever closer to the present day. The cave is a mosque and a synagogue, but the brothers do not pray together. In 1929, Palestinian rioters killed 67 Jews as part of a pogrom based on false rumours. In 1994, Baruch Goldstein killed 29 Muslims at prayer.
Murder reverberates over the South Hebron Hills. Only last year, Palestinian peace activist Awdah Hathaleen was murdered by settler Yinon Levy. Despite the assassination being filmed, the killer has not been charged with a crime.
Is this not also an answer about who Jews are? Can we reject it so swiftly because we abhor it?

***

So ask the shtetl yeshiva who you are supposed to be.
Confronted with the horrors of some Jews’ deeds, you may wish to retreat back there. You might imagine life would be simpler before Jews had power that they could weaponise against others. Maybe the Satmar Hassidim were right and we all just need to keep our heads down until the Messiah arrives.
So, go ahead. Pretend the Enlightenment never happened. Go back to the old Jewish study houses of a vanquished world. Sit at the rebbe’s table. Unless you’re a woman, of course. But, gentlemen, by all means, take a seat and open a holy book.
There, in your Mishnah, you will read: “be disciples of Aaron, loving peace, pursuing peace, loving all creatures, and bringing them closer to Torah.”
Hillel reaches out through the millennia-old books and grabs you by your shirt collar, and growls: did you think you could escape your responsibilities that easily? Our tradition demands you seek peace in your own world and lifetime. You cannot shirk away from the task of building a perfected world just because reality frightens you!
The study of Torah may happen in the yeshiva, but you live out its precepts in the streets. You fulfil the commandments by acting and taking risks.
If you want to be Jewish, you must know your past, but you cannot live there. You have to resist hatred, war, and greed in your own time. Be a disciple of Aaron. Love peace and pursue it.

***

Stand on the streets of any major city and start a chant: who are the Jews?
In New York, London, Cape Town, Paris, and Sydney, you will find people protesting for peace. In every demonstration, no matter where you are, you will find a Jewish Bloc. You will see Jews standing proud in their heritage and furious at oppression. You will hear them invoke their ancestors and their traditions in the name of human rights. Truth echoes out through skies and seas as thunderous clouds.
The prophet Jeremiah went to jail for protesting against the powerful. He chastised the false prophets who proclaimed peace where there was none. He accused them of putting tiny plasters on great gashes. Jeremiah’s rebuke of Israel was harshest because he knew that peace was possible and he saw what Jews could be.
Go ask the streets and they will tell you: those who wave placards and chant songs of dissent today stand in the footsteps of the prophets.
But the streets have other stories too. On those same marches, in other sections, there are people who chant words denouncing Jews. There are those who glamourise terror and those who monger hate.
Yes, it is true that not everyone in the coalition for Palestine is there for Palestinian human rights. Some march because they want to see Jews destroyed. Some march against militarism, nationalism, and fundamentalism. Others march for militarism, nationalism and fundamentalism of their own.
When Jeremiah denounced Israel, he chastised them they could not trust Egypt or Babylon. He attacked those who would ally with their enemies. The judgement of the prophet falls on every nation.

***

Go stand at the viewing point in Sderot. Look out over the ruins of the Gaza strip.
From this point, for two years, tourists watched bombs explode on houses like they were fireworks. Spectators could watch Jewish boots carry Jewish guns under Jewish flags into a densely-packed enclave.
Why don’t you ask Gaza who the Jews are? Will you like the answer that you hear from the unnumbered dead and rubble? Does the bombed-out rubble think the Jews are heroes?
You need not speculate. The words of Palestinians are publicly available, if you can brave the burning eyes of Gaza. Asmaa Al-Ghoul is a secular feminist in Gaza, who campaigns against the corruption of Fatah and the terrorism of Hamas. She witnessed more corpses than any soul could bear. After her cousin’s home was bombed, killing everyone inside, she wrote: “the house and its future memories have been laid to waste, its children taken to early graves, homes bombed into oblivion, their inhabitants homeless and lost, just as their camp always had been. Never ask me about peace again.”
In the days of the Judges, Samson was held captive in Gaza; all his strength sapped and his eyes gouged out by Philistines. With the last ounce of energy left in his battled body, Samson pulled down the pillars of the temple, killing himself and everybody in it.
We are brought up with stories of Samson. We call him “Samson the Hero.”
I met with a father from Gaza who had not seen his daughters in two years. They were trapped in that war zone. He told me: “They are destroying the world on top of our heads.” I wondered whether echoes of Samson were still there in Gaza, raining down destruction on their heads. Is this our hero?
In Hebrew, the word for hero, strongman, and warrior are the same. On military checkpoints, teenagers in IDF uniforms smile out from stickers, with words about who they were. For some, they are proof of ongoing Israeli heroism. All I see is dead kids, cast aside as cannon fodder for a vainglorious war.
We need to find a way of separating out heroism, masculinity, and war. Vivian Silver used to transport people from Gaza back and forth from this borderland. She lived on Kibbutz Be’eri, and was murdered there by Hamas on October 7th. 3 days beforehand, she organised a march of thousands of Israeli and Palestinian women against war.
Which is more heroic: to destroy an enemy or to make a friend? We need heroes whose strength is not in force but in fortitude.
Maybe Vivian Silver’s spirit still echoes on Gaza’s borders, too. And maybe, then, there is another way to be a Jew.

***

Go to your own heart and ask it who you are.
The great medieval sage Rabbi Moses ben Maimon told us that the ultimate question was not “what should I do?” but “who should I be?” Rambam wrote that the point of our religious laws, stories, and rituals was to help us morally perfect ourselves. Our goal should be to become the best possible human beings, in terms of character and intellect.
Rambam saw our religious inheritance as a guidebook on how to become moral agents. He taught that human beings are free to choose the right course, and showed that repentance is always available to us.
You are not stuck with a fixed version of who a Jew is. You always have the ability to make yourself anew. You can become more peaceful, more loving, and more devout. Seek to be the kind of person who wants peace and justice. Let your actions follow the highest inclinations of your heart.
Ask your heart who you are as a Jew. Let it tell you that you are a work in progress.

***

Now, return to the valley where it all began. Go stand on Mount Sinai. Surely this is the canyon of history. From atop its peak, the Ancient of Days spoke to you.
Clasp your hands around your mouth and call out: who are the Jews?
From out of this desert, the Jews spread knowledge of ethical monotheism throughout the world. At Mount Sinai, you once heard a voice: “I am the Eternal One your God, who redeemed you from the land of Egypt, to be your God.”
It is time you introduced yourself too.
Ask the canyon: who are the Jews? The question will come echoing back at you.
Canyons echo. The canyon of history is no different. If history repeats itself, it is only because we keep asking the same question.
Like a boomerang, your question returns to you: who are you?
History is Jewish. It likes to answer a question with another question.
This is your power and your burden. You must decide who you will be.
You are the answer to who the Jews are.

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.

judaism · sermon · theology

If you don’t fancy killing pigeons, you’re probably a Progressive Jew

levtaylor



Have you ever done something wrong, completely accidentally, with all the best intentions, and, feeling ashamed and repentant, thought to yourself: “that’s it, I better go kill a pigeon.”

Of course you haven’t. Because as an astute reader of Torah knows, if you have committed a sin, you need to sacrifice at least two pigeons. A goat for serious misbehaviour. A bull, if you really messed up.

This week, we enter the Book of Leviticus, an impressive catalogue of sins and sacrifices. This third book in the Torah cycle, called in Hebrew Vayikra, acts as a directory for priests.

Here, you can match up any misdeed or lifecycle event with the appropriate sacrificial animal, and it comes with a handy recipe book for how to make the meat smell nice enough that God forgives you.

(Bit of oil… bit of incense… bake for three days in a smoke oven…)

We leave behind the great moral myths of Genesis. We leave behind the inspiring liberatory narrative of Exodus. And this, too, is where we leave behind Orthodox Judaism.

If you are an Orthodox Jew, the only problem you can see with killing a pigeon to atone for your mistakes is that you don’t have a Temple to do it in.

In the Koren Sacks Siddur, the Orthodox daily prayer book, you will find petitions to be recited every day that God rebuilds the Temple in Jerusalem, brings back the hereditary priesthood, and restores the sacrificial cult.

Finally, if I make an accidental mistake, I will be able to fulfil the Torah’s command that I should splatter a bull’s blood and entrails all over a table.

Frankly, I don’t know how our friends further up the Thames have managed to go so long without enacting this sacred duty.

At its best, the rebuilt Temple of Orthodox Judaism involves some kind of mystical descent of a palace from the clouds at the end of time. At its worst, there are Jews currently hoping to blow up the Al Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount and replace it with a gaudy pillared Roman-style shrine.

I’m not going to get into the geopolitics of why that would be a terrible idea. My area is theology, and I can tell you now, that from a religious, moral, spiritual, and ethical perspective, bringing back any kind of Temple would be a terrible idea.

Even as a metaphor, the yearning for Temple Judaism is an abrogation of responsibility, a refusal to engage in the real world, and a fantasy that blood can avenge wrongdoing. We cannot tolerate this idea on any level, whether real or abstract.

It is hard to overstate what a fundamental difference this is between Progressive and Orthodox Judaism. Opposition to rebuilding the Temple is central to Progressive theology.

In 1885, American Jews came together at the Rodef Shalom Synagogue in Pennsylvania and signed up to their foundational document: the Pittsburgh Platform. This decree has influenced how Progressive Jews see our religion ever since.

In it, they declare: “we expect no sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron.” From the outset, we have believed that the synagogue has permanently replaced the Temple.

The author of the Pittsburgh Platform was an inspiring rabbi, named Kaufmann Kohler. Born in Germany, he became America’s preeminent Reform scholar. If you’ve ever dipped into the Jewish Encyclopedia, you’ve probably read something written by him.

Kohler wrote an introduction to Jewish theology that dealt thoroughly with how we Progressive Jews should understand these Temple texts. They were, for their time, a tool to help Jews gain moral understanding. The rituals and sacrifices showed us how to take responsibility for our thoughts, and even our conduct.

But, over time, we outgrew pigeon slaughter. We moved on to the world of rules and structures created by the early rabbis. And now, in our modern age, we are still moving forwards: so that we will do the right thing without being bound by old laws.

That’s what the progress in Progressive Judaism means: progressing from the age of slaughter through the age of laws towards the age of morals.

It’s not that we should discard the laws, or even the stories of slaughter. We should be like students who learn more through our schooling- at each stage, we retain what we learnt earlier, but we refine it, and we realise that some of our earlier ideas were too simplistic. Wanting to rebuild the Temple is like wanting to go back to the crayons of nursery school.

Throughout the moral education of humanity, we received hints that this was where we were going all along. In the Book of Proverbs, written when cattle murder was the normal way of dealing with guilt, it says: “To do what is right and just is more desired by the Eternal One than sacrifice.”

Throughout the books of the prophets we are repeatedly assured that God is far more interested in our moral conduct than in how much fat we can burn off the bones of a lamb.

Centuries later, when the early rabbis were busy codifying all their laws, the midrash explained why the Torah would say this. Sacrifices could only happen in the Temple, but you can do good deeds anywhere. Sacrifices can only atone for mistakes, but with good deeds you can repent for what you did wrong on purpose. Sacrifices only last a short while, but righteousness can endure forever.

At every stage of its development, says Rabbi Kohler, we Jews were a priestly people. Even in the days of animal sacrifice, we were always trying to demonstrate how to live with knowledge of God and concern for morality.

So, says Kohler, our mission on earth is to constantly be a beacon of moral behaviour. If we forfeit that, even for a moment, we will cease to be worthy of being called God’s people.

The idea of rebuilding a Temple isn’t just a dead end: it is a reversal of history. It takes us backwards from reason to superstition. It is the most retrograde step from our understanding of animal suffering to treating God’s creatures as subjects for abuse. It is abhorrent.

And I think most people know that. I honestly believe that, if we asked the vast majority of our friends and family who attend United or Federation synagogues if they think we would be better off with a cult of butchery based in Jerusalem, they would be repulsed by the concept.

In that case, they do not believe in Orthodox Judaism. Mazel tov, they’re Progressives already! Come through our doors, come celebrate with us, come pray with us!

You can leave your fantasies of pigeon massacres at the door. Come and be God’s priestly people.

Come and be a Progressive Jew.

Shabbat shalom.

festivals · halachah · sermon

I refuse, therefore I am

levtaylor

There are seventeen sleeps to go until Pesach. I am genuinely excited.

You know, one of the things I love most about Pesach is the matza. 

I enjoy clearing out all the leavened products from the house, dumping bags of pasta with the food bank, hiding the toaster in the garage, and eating only matza for a week.

It’s not that I like the taste. (Although it is good as a vehicle for my favourite food group: butter.)

In fact, I think it’s precisely the discipline that I enjoy. It is having a religiously-mandated prohibition built into my life, if only for a little while.

I am going to talk here about my own relationship with consumption, food, and restriction, but this will be very different for everyone. I know that, for some, ‘saying no’ to food can become a burden rather than a blessing, and that achieving a neutral relationship with food is its own spiritual discipline. 

Judaism teaches us that if a fast or a restriction endangers our health—physical or mental—the commandment is actually to eat. Our goal is to be masters of our impulses, not enemies of our own survival.

So, in telling you what is meaningful to me, I am not trying to tell you how to live your life (I have no such right), but to tell you why the practice of clearing out chametz and eating only matza matters to me.

And, personally, I love the moments of spiritual discipline.

I think there is something in the human condition that means we want some help sublimating our desires. Every religion, throughout the world, places restrictions, either permanently or for short periods, on how people can consume. 

We all want to know that we are not slaves to endless gluttony, but can serve something Higher than ourselves.

Two weeks ago, I had the privilege of joining the Dialogue Society‘s iftar at Kingston Guildhall. This is a daily meal, served after sunset every day throughout the month of Ramadan. 

Throughout the evening, we learned a number of facts about Ramadan and iftars. But as the evening went on, I reflected that I could never truly know what Ramadan was. I would never understand it as an insider; as one who fasts every day for a month; as one who considers this deprivation a pillar of faith. 

The iftar was lovely, but the fast is what brings people to the meal. Through their fast, Muslims learn what it is to sympathise with the poor, to feel one with a global community, and to submit to their Creator’s will.

I was seated with the other clergy: the imams and vicars that KLS has enabled me to befriend. Reverend Joe shared that the Christians were also going through their own period of deprivation: the Fast of Lent. During these forty days, Christians give up the things that tempt them most. In Reverend Joe’s case, this was alcohol and chocolate. 

As an outsider, I have seen the end product of Lent – its festival of Easter, filled with chocolate hunts, painted eggs and, once or twice, even a gory reenactment of Jesus’s crucifixion. 

Easter looks fun, but I realise that what must make it so meaningful is the period of deprivation beforehand. Their experience of refusing temptation is designed to help them better understand Jesus’s suffering. Here, too, the spiritually important part is saying no to something else. 

The idea of saying no to consumption feels so alien to our modern world. The second I want something, I can order it online and have it delivered a day later. If I like the sound of any food from anywhere in the world, I barely need to think before I’m eating it. 

And, personally, I have a hard time saying no to just about anything. I struggle to eat just one biscuit or drink just one glass of wine. And, if there’s food on the table, I can be sure I’ll keep eating until there isn’t. 

I shouldn’t be surprised by this.

I’ve been completely inundated with advertising and consumer culture since birth. When I’m bored, I can stare at my phone to shut off my brain and get more of the same.

Our old medieval superstitions have been replaced by the new religion of consumption. You can practise all of them at once: eat chocolate at Easter and turkey at Christmas; eat doughnuts at Chanukah and soup at Pesach. 

And, of course, at every opportunity, we must buy; we must spend money. We must make sacrifices to the god of The Market who will slump and weep if we stop purchasing for even a moment. In the name of our new religion, we must swallow the whole world.

So, refusing consumption feels like something medieval and irrational. 

But isn’t it precisely the foundation of Judaism?

The tenth commandment is לֹא־תַחְמֹד – thou shalt not covet. Do not desire. Do not lust. Do not gaze greedily at everything around you from your friend’s partners to your neighbour’s animals. Do not envy.

This is the basis of all the other commandments. If we don’t want what others have, why would we ever steal? If we don’t lust after anybody else, why would we ever betray our partners? If we don’t want anything but what we have, why would we ever go chasing after other gods?

But wanting is not like stealing or cheating. Wanting is a primal urge. 

How can I be expected to have no desires at all for what is beautiful? This rule is telling me to suppress my own feelings; that just the very fact of wanting anything is a sin. That feels cruel and punitive.

We’re not the first to feel this way. Generations of Jews have grappled with exactly this problem.

There is a lovely midrash from thousands of years ago on this topic, that says, it’s not that we’re supposed to say we have no desires for things we can’t have. Instead, we should say “actually I do want all these things, but God in Heaven has decreed against it.”

Some part of me does want to consume everything; to own everything; to control everything. I need to know that this is within me. And then I need to remember that I am more than a gluttonous animal. I have the ability to exercise restraint.

The medieval commentator, ibn Ezra, taught that this is deeper than just self-deprivation. By saying no to our desires, we say yes to our God. We say yes to trust and faith. We see the world’s beauty as even more beautiful precisely because we know it is forbidden to us.

The French-Algerian philosopher, Albert Camus, wrote that saying no is the foundation of all human values. “I refuse, therefore I exist.” What we are willing to say no to determines who we are. 

The Israelites were not truly God’s people until they refused to be Pharaoh’s slaves. Our ancestors said no to subjugation; no to tyranny; no to being someone else’s property; no being held back by the false gods of greed and idolatry. 

With one no, they could say many yeses. Yes to the God of all Creation. Yes to being commanded by a greater power. Yes to the festivals and yes to the holy days. Yes to the humble pursuit of God’s will. Yes to peace, equality, dignity, and freedom.

And that is what the matza symbolises to me today. 

It is more than a cracker. It is a statement about what I am willing to say no to. 

I say no to leaven, and therefore no to a system that demands I consume everything until there is nothing left of the world. 

I say yes to matza, and therefore yes to pursuing justice, living with simplicity, and walking in God’s ways.

As we come to this Pesach, consider what you can do to exercise spiritual discipline. My practice is to cut out leavened food, but you may find your own.

Can you clear out your cupboards, and give excess clothes to charity? Can you look at your spending, and set a bigger portion aside for those in need? Can you put a restriction on your phone usage?

What is the chametz, the leaven, that is weighing you down in your life? And how will you make the conscious choice to say no to it?

I refuse, therefore I am.

We say no, so we are.

Shabbat shalom.

judaism · ritual · sermon

Make like a spider and weave

levtaylor

This sermon will be addressed to two girls who are having baby blessings at Kingston Liberal Synagogue. Their names are redacted from this online version.

Girls, welcome to your synagogue.

I will address this sermon to you, but you will not remember it, and that’s OK, because I am really speaking to all Jewish children when I give this address. And you should know that all adults, no matter how big they get, never stop being children. So I am speaking to you, but really I am speaking to everybody gathered here today.

My message for you, girls, and for all Jews is: learn to be like a spider. 

You see, from the moment a spider is born, she already carries everything inside herself to make a home. The silk with which she will construct her web is built into her body. Without ever learning from a parent or attending a school, the spider already knows how to build her home, wherever she goes. 

In this way, the spider is the perfect Jew. Jews, wherever we are, carry in us all we need to make our home. Our home can be woven absolutely anywhere. Whether in a desert, an ocean, or an Arctic tundra, Jews will always find ways of creating our sacred spaces. 

Our home is not made of silk, like a spider’s. Our home is made of the bonds we build with each other. Between every community member, there is an invisible thread. If you look around this room and squint in exactly the right light, you will see how one thread connects to each other, and every thread interlocks somewhere. That is the web of our community.

Our home is also made of rituals. In Hebrew, the word for a tractate of Talmud is masechet. The masechet is the page of our religious texts that tells us how to mark every moment and celebrate every festival. Do you know what masechet also means, dear girls? It means a weaving; a web. 

Because our home is made of rituals, you can find yourself anywhere in the world, and if somebody starts a prayer, or lights a candle, or cooks a food, you will realise that you are suddenly back in your Jewish home.

Our home is made of stories. Yes, we sew together patchworks from ancient traditions and family tales and our life experiences and all of it comes together in this great big web, so that Jews are all brought together by these stories.

Now, some religious knowledge may be innate. Girls, there is a story that before a baby is born, her soul has already been to the Garden of Eden and heard the revelation at Mount Sinai. Perhaps you are sitting there, knowing far more about the secrets of the universe than any of us. 

But the truth is, we are not like spiders. We can’t just weave the Jewish home from the moment we are born. We need to learn how to do it. We need teachers and elders who have learned to build the web from the generations before them. The thread we spin with comes from a yarn thousands of years old, and you need people who will pass on the tools to you.

That’s why, here, in your synagogue, you will be able to come to Kinderlach when you are small, and join Beiteinu as you grow, and come to many family services, and go on adventures with your youth movement. All of this exists to help you learn how to make your web, so that it is strong and beautiful and unique, like you.

Children, a moment ago, you came and were held underneath the tallit to receive a blessing. We call the tallit a “sukkah” – a tent, a tabernacle. It represents the Jewish home. “Sukkah” has the same root in Hebrew as “masechet” – the weaving we mentioned earlier. You see, the Jewish home is a portable prayer shawl, made by people skilled with textiles, and we can pull it out at any moment.

In the Torah portion we read today, on this day of your Simchat Bat, God tells us how to build a mishkan – a sacred place where God can live. I’ll give you one guess what it’s made of. 

The tabernacle where God lives is made of wool and cloth and thread and yarn. Oh, it comes in so many colours! Blues and purples and crimsons all finely interlocking on a great stretched canvas made of animal hides. 

That is where God lived with the Jews for the years we wandered in the desert. After slavery, the Jews had to learn how to be truly free. We needed to be independent of the great demands of Egyptian slaveowners and even the comforts of their homes. We needed to know how to live transiently. 

Yes, we needed to learn to be more like spiders. We needed to build a home wherever we went.

And you, dear girls, need to learn to make a home too.

Girls, I have been to your house, and I know how lovely it is. Somehow your dads manage to keep it such a calm and clean place at all times. I don’t know how they do it. I hope they can manage some semblance of the same order when you both start crawling. 

But even if you ransack the living room, and draw all over the walls, and leave your toys strewn across the stairs, they will still love you, and it will still be your home. You may move many times, or you may stay in one place, but your home will be the people you come back to. It will be the stories you tell, and the songs you sing, and the rituals you make up. Home will be your own private language that only makes sense between you.

You come today into this synagogue, and know that it will be your home. Around you, you have your whole community, who have come here to show that they will love and support you. They will teach you how to weave webs, and you will soon start wrapping your own silky strands into the patchwork of this community. 

When I welcome you to your synagogue, I am not talking about the building. That’s not our home – it’s just the frame we use to make it in.

Our home is the web we weave together – the invisible threads that connect everyone in this community. 

We are like the ancient Israelites who carried their home through the desert. 

We are like the spiders who carry their homes in their bodies.

We build our home through connection and song and story.

May you build this home with us.

Shabbat shalom.

interfaith · sermon · torah

Do not hide the tears of tolerance

levtaylor



As some of you know, my kippah is a permanent fixture on my head, and has been since my early 20s. I often get asked whether I experience any feedback for being so visibly Jewish. My answer is: yes. Occasionally, Christians come up to me and say “shalom.” I say “shalom” back.

Well, this week, I have a more interesting story to tell.

Last Saturday night, Laurence and I were on our way back from a friend’s birthday lip synch. (Yes, in my time off, I do competitively mime to Nicki Minaj wearing a space suit and kitten heels.)

We were heading into Vauxhall Station. A group of men in their early 20s were dancing around, holding hands, and reaching out their hands for others to join them.

It will probably not surprise you to hear that I joined in. The boys cheered.

Within moments of joining them, I realised I might have made a terrible mistake. The man whose hand I was holding was, in fact, wearing a Palestine football shirt. They were all speaking Arabic. A taller man noticed my kippah and said to the others “hu yehudi.” I know what this means in Arabic, because you say it the same way in Hebrew: he’s Jewish.

And I thought, well, it’s basically the same language, I’ll try talking with them in Hebrew. Friends, these gentlemen did not, in fact, speak Hebrew. Their English was pretty stilted too.

Right next to us, a fist fight broke out between two white guys.

We all fumbled awkwardly, and tried to communicate across a language barrier. The tension became palpable. It was just me and Laurence and a whole group of Palestinian men.

I asked: “where are you from?”

“We are from Gaza,” the one who had been holding my hand said. “Do you support the government?”

I said: “of course not.”

The man said: “Really?”

I said: “Yes.”

The men cheered, and resumed dancing. I got on my train back to Ditton.

There was no time to explain that the Israeli government wasn’t actually my government at all, but my answer would have been the same whichever government he was talking about.

I am under no illusion that this story could have ended differently. But, as it is, the story ended with dancing in the streets of London, and everybody walking away with their dignity intact.

Now, I may have been the first visibly Jewish person these men had met who was not wearing a military uniform. And perhaps now, with the freedom of London, they will get the chance to learn more about who Jews are.

And perhaps I will go away and actually do my Arabic homework so that I can have a better quality conversation. At least, in the future, I won’t default to Hebrew as a good enough alternative.

I think we tend to imagine that tolerance is the true harmony of everyone fully understanding each other; living side by side; eating in the same restaurants; celebrating and grieving together.

I still believe that true peace will come, when everyone has full equality, and nobody has any more need for conflict.

But, most of the time, life is not like that.

As long as there is inequality, those with less will want what those with more have; and those who have more power will exert it over those with less. Until we all have everything we need, there will be conflict for the power and possessions we lack.

Tolerance, in our society, is the decision to set grudges aside, to suspend prejudice, and to just let each other go on with life. It is the decision of the stronger to spare the weaker. It is a choice to ignore stock characters and old grievances for the sake of everyone getting on with their day.

It is not easy passivity, but a conscious choice to accept the world as it is. Sometimes, that is painful.

So it is with Joseph and his brothers.

Consider all the array of feelings Joseph must have held when he first saw his brothers. The last time he had encountered them, they had thrown him in a pit, then sold him at a cheap price to travelling merchants.

Do you think he was in the mood for forgiving?

And what about his brothers? They are now in abject poverty. They have travelled miles on foot to escape famine in their homeland. And they have to prostrate themselves and beg before a foreign king in a language they do not understand.

The powerful and the powerless have switched places; the resources are now all in Joseph’s hands.

Joseph doesn’t just shrug his shoulders and get over it. Instead, he decides to test his brothers and bring his entire estranged family to Egypt.

Joseph hides a silver cup in his brother Benjamin’s satchel and uses the supposed theft as a pretext to hold him hostage. Joseph announces to his family that he is going to keep their youngest brother as a slave, making them relive what they did to him.

At the moment when our parashah ends, we don’t actually know how the story is going to pan out. We, who have heard this story many times, are already aware that the brothers will repent and offer their lives for Benjamin’s. We know that Joseph will announce himself and forgive his siblings.

But, for this week, we are suspended in the tests of Joseph and his brothers.

The Joseph narrative is the longest part of the Book of Genesis, not least because of the extensive detail given to Jacob’s sons’ journey back and forth between the two countries, and the lengthy description of how Joseph examines his brothers’ hearts.

This story is, in fact, repeated almost exactly in the Quran. Surah Yusuf is a lengthy narrative in the formative text of Islam. Within the chapter itself, the Quran says that it is repeating the words of previous prophets and is confirming the prior revelation of the Torah.

But there is a key difference between the Torah’s version and the Quran’s. In the Islamic retelling, Benjamin is in on the ruse from the start. Joseph reveals himself to Benjamin before hiding the cup and tells him to go along with the ploy.

Perhaps the goal here is to make Joseph seem more righteous. That is, indeed, what many of our midrash do when they retell Torah narratives. They iron out biblical figures’ imperfections.

But, if you look at the texts of the stories side by side, the parallel verse in the Torah reveals something more interesting. In our recension, rather than revealing himself, Joseph runs off to his room and cries.

The Quran’s version, then, makes the story less painful. It glosses over how heart-wrenching and difficult this process is of forgiving and letting go.

There is a lesson here for us. We all want to jump ahead to the part of the story where everyone is friends again and loves each other. We all want to fast forward to the point in history where there is lasting peace and harmony.

But, the Torah tells us, you have to stay in the feelings. You have to live in the mess for a while.

As Jews in Britain, we are forever doing a delicate dance of interfaith relations, while plagued by trauma. As the whole world seems ever more oriented towards intolerance and tribalism, we still need to show up to shared spaces with our best faces and our best expectations of others. We need to set aside prejudices for the sake of a better society.

And that is hard. So don’t gloss over the tears. Don’t hide the pain away in another room. Let us be honest with ourselves and each other that the task of building a multicultural society is tough.

But, while we hold the challenge, remember that we do still know how this story ends. We know that we are heading towards an ultimate conclusion of liberty and equality. God has a plan for the world. And it will end with true peace.

One day, all people will embrace one another as members of the human family. One day, we will all weep together over the years wasted on war. One day, without fear, we will all dance unabashedly in the streets.

May that time come soon and last forever.

Amen.

Alexander Ivanov, The Silver Goblet is Found in Benjamin’s Sack

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.

sermon · torah

Who gets to see the world?

levtaylor

Hello, I am back from my holidays in Spain and France. I brought you all back some lovely little trinkets from The Louvre. Just don’t tell anybody you got them from me. 

I spent my holiday thinking about how easy it is for me to travel, and how impressive my journey would seem to previous generations. I wondered about what it was like in earlier centuries for people travelling the world. 

In 1532, a great king travelled across the Atlantic to meet a previously unencountered tribe. The king was, in some ways, disgusted by the society he encountered, which was rife with inequality, governed by a despotic ruler, near constantly in a state of war, and yet to develop serious hygiene practice.

He was, however, impressed by the luxuries he saw in the local king’s palace, and intrigued by the sophisticated religious culture the people had developed. 

The indigenous people went by many names, but the locals called themselves “the English.”

That’s right, in the early 16th Century, an Aimoré king travelled across the Atlantic from Brazil to the court of King Henry VIII and attended the palace as a distinguished guest.

We are used to thinking of international travel in the Tudor Age as something that voyagers from England, Portugal, Italy and Spain did to the so-called “New World,” but plenty of people also went the other way. 

Recently, the historian Caroline Dodds Pennock released a book called On Savage Shores, which looks at the people who travelled from the Americas to Europe. They gave their own verdicts on European society, often quite damning of its inequality and sanitation.

Dodds Pennock is well aware that, by telling these stories, she is reversing the gaze. To the indigenous travellers, it was the Europeans who were the strange exotic outsiders. 

If this feels surprising to us, it is probably because we are so in the habit of imagining that rich colonising men go out and see the world, but we don’t often think of those same men getting looked at by the world.

There is a reason that Abraham’s story of setting out from Haran was so compelling to its ancient listeners. Most people did not travel more than a mile from their own town. The world beyond was a mysterious and exciting place. They could only hear about the journeys, people, animals, and plants that others saw from testimonies, like those given in the Torah.

Abraham’s trek belongs, then, in a similar category of travel literature to Homer’s Odyssey, which was likely told as an oral story, and then committed to writing at a similar time to Abraham’s journey in the Torah. Odysseus encounters singing sirens, multi-headed monsters, and lotuses that make you forget your home. 

Abraham, on the other hand, goes on a thousand-mile hike with no less than the One True God. Along the way, he marries a foreign princess, meets the king of Egypt, does battle in the Dead Sea with local lords, and meets angelic messengers over a meal.

This story must have remained compelling to many generations of Jews afterwards. Medieval Jews were used to living in one place. They may have been visited by merchants and Crusaders. Some may have gone away on fixed routes as merchants, and there were times when whole communities had to leave in haste. 

But the idea that one of their own – the first ever Jew – went out on such an exciting adventure would have been thrilling to the Torah’s audience. 

We know much of what other people thought of the Jews they met. Medieval accounts describe Jews almost as a people fixed in time; like a noble relic from a simpler age. The European travellers who encounter Jews treat them with a combination of scorn and exotic interest. In that sense, the Jews of Europe had more in common with the colonised people of the Americas, who were similarly treated as foreign oddities. 

Bucking the trend, however, was a fascinating figure of the 12th Century, called Benjamin of Tudela. Born in the Spanish kingdom of Navarre, Benjamin went out on a journey tracing the Jewish communities of southern Europe, northern Africa, and south west Asia. 

He took a long route on pilgrimage to Jerusalem that brought him through countries we would know today as Italy, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran. He seems also to have travelled around the Arabian peninsula, looking for the Jews of Africa, but never reaching the Gondar region of Ethiopia, where he might have found them. 

Benjamin recorded all of his encounters in Hebrew, in a book called Sefer HaMasa’ot, the Book of Travels. His chronicles were so fascinating that they were reproduced over many centuries, and translated into Latin and most European languages.

Today, Benjamin’s records have attracted scholarly attention, not least because they subvert our expectations of who goes exploring and who gets explored. Benjamin writes with fascination and joy about the Pope in Rome and the Caliph in Baghdad. 

Most importantly, when Benjamin meets Jews in other countries, he is at once meeting his own people and meeting people entirely different from himself. When he sees how other Jews do things differently, he feels joy in diversity. When he sees Jews doing well, he feels pride; and when he sees other Jews in a persecuted condition, he suffers with them as his own.

This is the great blessing of Benjamin’s travelogue: he can see the world through two sets of eyes – as both an outsider and as an insider. When he travels, he is never quite the colonialist going out to comment on others, but he’s never just looking at his own people. This gives him an impressive position of humble curiosity.

As British Jews, we may learn to do the same thing. 

We have a blessing by dint of our position. That blessing is a special ability to look at the world through multiple sets of eyes.

We can, indeed, look at the world through European eyes. We are Europeans, and we belong here. We can see England as it is imagined by the English, where this island is the centre of the world, its monarchs the most illustrious, its culture the highest human attainment. We should not shy away from seeing the best in Europe: we are part of it, and there is much to love.

We can also, if we choose too, see this continent through outsiders’ eyes. We can see its flaws, its delusions of grandeur, and its odd habits. We can be the best possible internal critics of our country, because we understand what it is to belong, and what it is to feel like we do not.

The danger in either of these sets of eyes is that we turn them into a haughty gaze. Like the early colonialists, we have the capacity to see every other culture as backward and barbaric, or its people and lands as subjects for exploitation. Inverting the gaze, we might come to see the Europeans as horrible invaders, without directing the critical lens on ourselves. 

But if, instead, we can approach the whole world with modesty, we can see every nation and every place with loving curiosity. With humility, we can see ourselves as fellow travellers with everyone else, discovering this wonderful world together.

If we can do this, then, like Abraham, we may truly learn to walk with God.

Benjamin of Tudela

academic · poem

Immanuel of Rome’s 9th Machberet

levtaylor

Emmanuel of Rome –in Hebrew, Emmanuel haRomi; in Italian, Manoello Giudeo – was born to an aristocratic Italian-Jewish family in 1261. Although only a minor poet by comparison to his pre-Renaissance contemporaries, Emmanuel was the first ever poet to write sonnets in any language other than Italian. Around 1300, Emmanuel produced a series of Hebrew sonnet collections that dealt with both secular and religious themes.

Using Dov Yarden’s edition of the Hebrew, I have created English translations of Immanuel’s 9th Machberet, which is a series of sonnets for each month of the Jewish year. So far, there has not been any systematic effort to translate all of Emmanuel’s works and only a few contemporary scholars show much interest in him. By putting these translations into the public domain, I hope others will take up interest in him.

I tell my story and say: וָאֶשָּׂא מְשָׁלִי וָאֹמַר 

TISHRI 

In Tishri, I rejoice; as the feasts to God 
Awaken me, to songs of passion sing  
I will delight in honey and nectar 
A time when willows string up violins 
And I shall surround myself  with youth 
I’ll eat a banquet fit to feed a king 
While staring at the apple of my eye, 
The juice of grapes and pomegranates drink. 
My face in battle, like before a flame 
I won’t be mute, but surely I will sing 
As her warden, I open up my lips  
I borrow kisses from Ofra’s wellspring 
And thank the Lord who made humanity 
Complete with all the perfect openings  		בְּתִשְׁרִי אֶשְׂמְחָה כִּי מוֹעֲדֵי אֵל
 יְעִירוּנִי לְשׁוֹרֵר שִׁיר עֲגָבִים
 וְאֶתְעַנַּג בְּנֹפֶת צוּף וּפַנַּג
 וְכִינוֹרַי תְּלוּיִם עַל עֲרָבִים
 וְאַצִּיבָה סְבִיבוֹתַי נְעָרַי
 וּמוּל פָּנַי לְאַיֶּלֶת אֲהָבִים
 וְאֶסְעַד מַעֲדַן מֶלֶךְ וְאֶשְׁתֶּה
 עֲסִיס רִמּוֹן וְאֶשְׁכַּר דַּם עֲנָבִ
ים וְאֶשְׁכַּח רִישׁ וְלֹא אַחְרִישׁ וְאָרֹן
 וּפָנַי בַּקְּרָב כִּפְנֵי לְהָבִים
 וְאֶלְוֶה מִשְּׂפַת עָפְרָה נְשִׁיקוֹת
 וְלִפְרֹעַ שְׂפָתַי לָהּ עֲרָבִים
 וְאוֹדֶה אֵל אֲשֶׁר יָצַר בְּחָכְמָה
 בֵּני אָדָם וּבָרָא בָם נְקָבִים 

MAR-CHESHVAN 

In Mar-Cheshvan, we’re lifted up by light 
I long to stand on dark borders of clouds 
And cry out from the fastened fires of night 
So sticky honey drips on land unploughed 
Upon the borders of the fields I press 
The nectar into syrup and the olives into chow 

I drink until I forget poverty 
And drive out all the grief from hearts somehow 
I bless each bairn to any woman born  
I see this as the time for seeds to sow 
The autumn plants assert this as their hour 
Nothing has thorns that sting as sharp as now 
But shoots will spring from barren earth again 
Like men from graves, accomplishing God’s vow  		בְּמַרְחֶשְׁוָן מְאוֹר יַעְלוֹת וְזִיוָן
 אֱהִי עֹרֵךְ לְמוּל אֹפֶל עֲנָנָיו
 וְקָרָתוֹ בְּאֵשׁ חֵשֶּׁק אֲגָרֵשׁ
 וְתַמְרוּרָיו בְּנֹפֶת צוּף עֲדָנָי
 וּמוּל פִּרְשׁוֹ יְהִי חֵשֶק וְדִבְשׁוֹ
 וְאֶל מוּל בָּאֳשׁוֹ רֵיחַ שְׁמָנָיו

  אֲנִי אֶשְׁתֶּה וְאֶשְׁכַּח רִישׁ וְאַחְרִישׁ
 וְאָסִיר מִלְּבָבִי עִצְּבוֹנָיו
 וּמִכָּל חַי יְלוּד אִשּׁה אֲבָרֵךְ
 אֲנִי נֹחַ וְנִטְעֵי נַעֲמָנָיו
 אֲשֶׁר לוּלֵי נְעִימוֹתָם יְכֻסֶּה
 זְמָן חָרוּל וְעָלוּ קִמְּשׁוֹנָיו
 עֲלֵי יָשְׁרוֹ אֲחוֹנֵן אֶת עֲפָרוֹ
 בְּתוֹךְ קִבְרוֹ וְאֶרְצֶה אֶת אֲבָנָיו 

KISLEV 

In Kislev, God’s horseman I will be 
And through calm pride I surely will agree 
A light on high supports a needy man 
To lift the dust of earth to build freely 
We light each night an eight pronged candel’bra 
Drink whiskey like the finest smooth honey 
The beauty of the girls’ arms, so exposed 
Whose eyes, like light’ning, shine in front of me 
One woman sets the table for the meal 
Another one runs after her to clean 
One coyly turns aside and rends men’s hearts 
Another bakes up biscuits for high tea 
I need not wonder what the meal will be 
The main course is spread out in front of me		בְּכִסְלֵו אֶהְיֶה שָׁלֵו וְאוֹדֶה
 לְצוּר רֹכֵב בְּגַאְוָתוֹ שְׁחָקִים
 וְאוֹר עֶלְיוֹן אֲשֶׁר אִישׁ דַּל וְאֶבְיוֹן
 מְרִימִי מֵעֲפַר אֶרֶץ וּמֵקִים
 וְנֵרוֹת אֶהְיֶה מַדְלִיק שְׁמֹנָה
 וְשִׁקּוּיַי כְּנֹפֶת צוּף מְתוּקִים
 וְהַיָּפוֹת זְרוֹעֹתָן חֲשׂוּפוֹת
 וְעֵינֵיהֶן יְרוּצוּן כַּבְּרָקִים
 וְאַחַת עֹרְכָה שֻׁלְחָן וְאַחַת
 תְּשַׂדֵּד אַחֲרֶיהָ הָעֲמָקִים
 וְאַחֶרֶת תְּלַבֵּב הַלְּבִבוֹת
 וְאַחֶרֶת תְּבַשּׁל הָרְקִיקִים
 וְצַפִּיחִת וּמַעְשֵׂה הַחֲבִתִּים
 וּמַרְחֶשֶׁת מְזָוֵינוּ מְפִיקִים 

TEVET 

The tenth Tevet: a fast for those who died 
When God’s children, like roaring seas, shall thrive 
They come in waves before the courts of God 
Where fools can dream and helping hands can strive 
To dig the chilly ground; this cold man shakes  

Those muscly men who work the harsh outside 
Who pull the jumpers round their necks and hide 
On snowy roads beneath the winter sky 
On days like these, I look for doe-eyed dames 
In secret surfaces where they reside 
My life is like a dead stalk in decay 
And yet, with only a gaze, I revive 
I know that God will crush all those who hate 
But meanwhile, I’ll be fortified by wine 		בְּטֵבֵת בַּעֲשָׂרָה בוֹ יְצוּמוּן
 בְּנֵי אֵל חַי וְכַיַּמִּים יְהִימוּן
 לְבוֹא צַר בֵּית אֱלֹהִים וַחֲצֵרָיו
 בְּכֵילַפּוֹת וְכַשִּׁיל יַהֲלֹמוּן
 וְהַקֹּר יַחֲלֹף הָאִישׁ וְיִדְקֹר

  פְּנֵי שָׂרִים הֲכִי חָבוּשׁ בְּטָמוּן
 וּמִטְרוֹת עֹז וְטִיט חוּצוֹת וְקֶרַח
 וְשֶׁלֶג עַל מְסִילֹּתַי יְרֻמוּן
 לְעֵת כָּזֹאת אֲשַׁחֵר הַצְּבִיּוֹת
 אֲשֶׁר סוֹד עַל יְגוֹנִים יַעֲרִימוּן
 וְעֵינֵיהֶן וְהוֹד צִיצַת לְחֵיהֶן
 יְחַיּוּנִי נְבֵלָתִי יְקִימוּן
 וְאֵיךְ אִירָא וְיֵינִי לִי לְעֶזְרָה
 וְהוּא יִמְחַץ מְשַׂנְאַי מִן יְקוּמוּן 

SHVAT 

Your face is harsh as bastards’ are, Shevat 
You send your time and frosty ice like loaves 
The whizzing snow breaks skies and cools my heart 
I spot the lovers hiding in alcoves 
They thrust and grab with their bosoms exposed 
Their voices cry out loud within their homes 
I cursed the stupid sermons as I froze 
And realised I was better off alone  		שְׁבָט אַכְזָר וְעַז פָּנִים כְּמַמְזֵר
 וּבוֹ יַשְׁלִיךְ זְמָן קַרְחוֹ כְפִתִּים
 וְהַשֶּׁלֶג גְּאוֹן הַלֵּב יְפַלֵּג
 וְהַדּוֹדִים בְּחֵיק יַעְלוֹת נְחִתִּים
 וְרָצֵי הַצְּבִיּוֹת הֵם דְּחוּפִים
 וְכָרוֹזָא בְּקוֹל קָרֵא בְּבָתִּים
 אֲרוּרָה דֹּרְשָׁה צֶמֶר וּפִשְׁתִּים
 לְעֵת כָּזֹאת לְבַד מַעְשֵׂה חֲבִתִּים 

ADAR 

Adar arrives to teach the bawdy tale 
Of how Haman and Zeresh caused such shame
If I had not such wealth and dignity 
I could not feast upon these geese and game 
In my right hand, a cup of toddy wine 
I shout each time I hear Haman’s curs’d name 
I join my mates and drink myself insane 
Until the heroes and the brutes are same 
We cheer with throats full of liquor and food 
For tyrants who will never rise again 
Only good wine can expel pain and strife 
And so we praise its healing holy name  		בְּאַדָּר אֶהְיֶה ישֵׁב וְדֹרֵשׁ
 וְאַזְכִּיר חַסְדֵי הָמָן וְזֶרֶשׁ
 וְלִי יוֹנִים וּבַרְבֻּרִים אֲבוּסִים
 וְלֹא אָחוּשׁ הֲאִם לִי הוֹן וְאִם רֵישׁ
 וְהַיַּיִן מְבֻשָּׂם אֶל יְמִינִי
 בְּקוֹל קֹרֵא וּבַדִּבּוּר יְפָרֵשׁ
 וְאִם אֹמַר אֲרוּר הָמָן וְזֶרֶשׁ
 יְשִׁיבוּן אַל תְּקַלֵּל דּוֹד לְחֵרֵשׁ
 וְקוֹל קֹרֵא אֱכֹל וּשְׁתֵה לְשָׁכְרָה
 וְלֹא תַשְׁאִיר לְנֹחֵל אוֹ לְיוֹרֵשׁ
 בְּיַעַן הוּא לְבַד רִפְאוּת וּמָזוֹר
 וְכָל רַע וָחֳלִי גָּרֵשׁ יְגָרֵשׁ 

NISSAN 

Nissan, I will recall God’s miracles 
Come see our homes, delight with joyous Jews 
How good and pleasant are these former slaves 
Our ancestors whom God opted to choose 
Once cloaked in cloud, they wandered in deserts 
But now delight and wonder are our views 
Up from these blossomed trees call turtle doves 
Our doorways filled with special treats, infused I fall
in love with her between the flower beds 
And couples ride the heavens in pursuit 
I will sacrifice the flesh and wool 
Of lambs and rams and farmers’ choicest ewes 
Let me cry out to all my famished friends: 
Jerusalem and food wait here for you!  
Upon the Torah’s head a diadem 
And graceful bracelets embedded with jewels 
Her crown reveals her lovely wonderment 
Each heart lights up to listen to her news 
Although a broken world encroaches now 
When morning comes, the world awaits her truth 		בְּנִיסָן אֶזְכְּרָה נִסֵּי אֱלֹהִים
 וּבֹו אוֹרָה וְשִׂמְחָה לַיְּהוּדִים
 וַּמה טּוּבוֹ וַּמה יָּפְיוֹ אֲשֶׁר בּוֹ
 אֲבֹתַי יָצְאוּ מִבֵּית עֲבָדִים
 וּפָשַׁט הַזְּמָן עָנָן לְבֻשׁוֹ
 וְעָטָה אוֹר וְכֻלּוֹ מַחֲמַדִּים
 וְקוֹל הַתּוֹר עֲלֵי מִפְתָּן וְכַפְתּוֹר
 וְאֶרְאֶה עַל פְּתָחַי כָּל מְגָדִים
 וְחשֵׁק עִם חֲשׁוּקָה בֵּין עֲרֻגוֹת
 בְּשָׂמִים רֹכְבִים יַחְדָּו צְמָדִים
 וְאֶזְבַּח שׁוֹר וְשֶׂה נָקֹד וְטָלוּא
 לְבַד מִן הַתְּיָשִׁים הָעֲקֻדִּים
 וְאַעְבִיר קוֹל לְכָל צַד כָּל דְּכָפִין
 וְצָרִיךְ לֶאֱכֹל יִהְיוּ עֲתִידִים
 וְאַצִּיב יַעֲלַת הַחֵן לְנֶגְדִּי
  בְּרֹאשָׁהּ צִיץ וְעַל יָדָה צְמִידִים
 וְהִיא תַעְנוּג לְכָל לֵב נוּג וְלַחְרֹט
 פְּאֵר הוֹדָהּ יְדֵי הָעֵט כְּבֵדִים
 לְדַעְתָּהּ יֵצְאוּ יָדַי גְּדוּדִים
 וְעַד בֹּקֶר הֲכִי נִרְוֶה בְדֹדִים 

IYYAR 

Iyyar asks me a joyful oath to swear  
I join my hands, both left and right, as pairs 
With lustful oxen, all Hebrews will unite 
By seeking dreams and chirpy birdsong pray’r 
I will never see liberation come 
Nor hear lads singing in the streets somewhere 
The world removes the mourning clothes she wears 
To swap for fancy garb, with lovers shared 
I free myself from books I have to read 
The Talmud’s texts, to which I am an heir 
Instead, I’ll set myself beside a doe 
Her body giving life beyond compare 
And though the heat of morning beats us slow 
When death does come, we will be holy there  		בְּאִיָּר אֶשְׂבְּעָה שׂבַע שְׂמָחוֹת
 וּבִשְׂמֹאלִי וּבִימִינִי נְעִימוֹת
 בְּשׁוּרִי חשְׁקִים מִכָּל עֲבָרִים
 בְּצִיץ צִצִּים לְשַׁחֵר הָעֲלָמוֹת
 וְלֹא אֶרְאֶה לְבַד גִּילַת וְרַנֵּן
 וְלֹא אֶשְׁמַע לְבַד שִׁיר עַל עֲלָמוֹת
 וְתֵבֵל תַּחֲלִיף סוּת אַלְמְנוּתָהּ
 וְלִכְבוֹד חשְׁקִים תִּלְבַּשׁ רְקָמוֹת
 וְאֶתֵּן גֵּט לְעֵרוּבִין וְגִטִּין
 וְסַנְהֶדְרִין וּמַסֶּכֶת יְבָמוֹת
 וְאֶבְחַר לִי לְצֵידָה הַצְּבִיָה
 לְחִי שׁוֹשָׁן נְשָׁמָה לַנְּשָׁמוֹת
 פְּנֵי חַמָּה אֲשֶׁר כָּל שֹׁחֲרֶיהָ
 קְדֹשִים יִהְיוּ בָהּ אַחֲרֵי מוֹת 

SIVAN 

Sivan makes me remember all God’s deeds 
How by wonder, He lifts us up, proceeds 
He brought His treasur’d people to freedom 
His children follow after where he leads 
They see his words and statutes as their light 
Enlightened by the Torah’s sacred creed 
Hear us, O God, as we cry out to You 
Comfort our fears in this, our hour of need 
O, show us Moses, whom we need so close 
Who came from mountains in the clouds, decreed 
To us the ten statutes by which we live 
For Jeshurun bowed down and found he’d heed 
Then Esau saw that God fulfilled His will 
And Ishmael learnt that God would be his steed  		בְּסִיוָן אֶזְכְּרָה פִּלְאוֹת אֱלֹהִים
 אֲשֶׁר נִשָּׂא וְגָבַהּ עַל גְּבֹהִים
 אֲשֶׁר יָצָא לְיֵשַׁע עַם קְרֹבוֹ
 יְלָדָיו הֹלְכִים אַחְרָיו וְנִנְהִים
 וְנָתַן הוֹד וְנֵר מִצְוָה וְתוֹרָה
 לְעַם קָדְשׁוֹ לְאוֹר יִשְׁעוֹ כְמֵהִים
 וְשָׁמַעְנוּ אֱלֹהִים חַי מְדַבֵּר
 וְנַחְנוּ פֹּחֲדִים מֶנְהוּ וְרֹהִים
 וְרָאִינוּ אֲזַי משֶׁה בְּגִשְׁתּוֹ
 לְעַרְפַלָּיו וְעָמַדְנוּ תְמֵהִים
 וְהִתְוָה תָו עֲשֶׂרֶת דִּבְּרוֹתָיו
 הֲתִשְׁתּוֹחַח יְשֻׁרוּן עוֹד וְתָהִים
 שְׁאַל עֵשָׂו הֲרָאָה כֵן בְּעֹשָׂיו
 וְיִשְׁמָעֵאל הֲשָׁמַע קוֹל אֱלֹהִים 

TAMMUZ 

Stripped bare and broken, in Tammuz, I go 
To play and say the eulogies of woe 
My contrite heart cries out in broken pain 
My clothes are drenched in blood and wet sorrow 
That soaks the valleys of God’s holy home 
The plunder and destruction of my foes 
Those heathens burn the sacred sites they hate 
And tear up Torah scrolls, they overthrow 
An idol stands upon God’s conquered throne 
It breaks my heart in ways I’ve never known 
I take my sword, prepare myself for war 
The huntsman within me readies his bow 
So all of my tears will break down these walls 
In grieving the lost ones, I cry alone 		בְּתַמּוּז אֵלְכָה עָרוֹם וְשׁוֹלָל
 וְלִשְׂחוֹק אֹמְרָה נַפְשִׁי מְהוֹלָל
 וְאֶתְעַנֶּה בְּלֵב נִשְׁבָּר וְנֶעְכָּר
 וּמַלְבּוּשִׁי בְּדַם דִּמְעִי מְגוֹלָל
 אֲשֶׁר בּוֹ הָבְקְעָה עִיר בֵּית אֱלֹהַי
 וְהֵצַר צַר וּבָזַז בַּז וְשָׁלָל
 וּבָטְלוּ הַתְּמִידִים בּוֹ וְשָׂרַף
 אֲפוֹסְטוֹמוֹס לְתוֹרַת אֵל וְחִלָּל
 וְצֶלֶם הֶעֱמִיד תּוֹךְ הֵיכְלֵי אֵל
 מְשׂוֹשׂ לִבִּי לְזֹאת חָרַב וְדָלָל
 הֲיַעְרֹךְ צִיר אֱלֵי צִירִי וּמַכְאֹב
 לְמַכְאֹבִי אֲשֶׁר בָּא לִי וְעוֹלָל
 וְלָכֵן כֹּל אֲשֶר דִּמְעָה יְפַכֶּה
 וְיִתְאַבֵּל לְפִי שִׂכְלוֹ יְהֻלָּל 

AV 

Throughout the month of Av, I will cry and grieve 
I’ll pump out reservoirs of tears of pain 
For desecration of God’s wasted home 
The refugees removed by Rome’s campaign 
On one long day, like Haman’s sons we hang 
While God destroys His seat of holy reign 
With fuming rage, my life force God destroys 
I sob out floods of salty tear-filled rain 
Now traitors and cynics surround me 
But I won’t eat or make love for the slain 
And were it not for God’s endless mercy 
My mouth would never know to laugh again  		בְּחֹדֶשׁ אָב אֱהִי נִכְאָב וְאֶדְאַב
 וְאֶשְׁאַב מֵי דְמָעַי מִכְּבֵדִי
 וְאֶתְעַנֶּה לְחָרְבַּן בֵּית אֱלֹהַי
 וְעִיר קָדְשׁוֹ וְעַל הָגְלַת כְּבוֹדִי
 בְּיוֹם אָרוּךְ כְּמוֹ וָי”ו וַיְזָתָא
 בְּחֻמּוֹ נֶהֱפַךְ חֹרֶב לְשַׁדִּי
 וְהַמַּיִם אֲשֶר אֶשְׁתֶּה לְשִׂכִּים
 בְּמוֹ עֵינַי וְלִצְנִינִים בְּצִדִּי
 וְאַרְחִיק הַצְּבִיָּה מִיְּצֻעַיְ
 וְאֶתְגּוֹלֵל בְּמִטָּתִי לְבַדִּי
 וְלוּלֵי נַחֲמוּ בִּבְנֵי אֲוָזָיו
 יְמַלֵּא פִי שְׂחוֹק אֶבְכֶּה בְעוֹדִי 

ELUL I 

The nobles’ daughters now are frollicing 
On flower beds of Elul’s evenings 
And balls run down the rafters of downswings 
Like those who made our rabbis into kings 
O, let us go and see the vineyards spring 
We’ll search for fresh grown figs until ev’ning 
Where trees not only grow but even sing 
And they will speak words kind and flattering 
Lift up your hand and don’t forget a thing  

I wrote these words of verse when I was young 
So ev’ry month could have its praises sung 
Today, in age, I wrote another one 
In sacred oil to praise the Elul month 
And now my greatest poem has begun…  		בְּאֵלוּל אֶעֱלֹז עִם בַּת נְדִיבִים
 בְּעֶרֶשׂ רַעֲנָנָה עַל עֲרָבִים
 וְהַגֻּלּוֹת יְרֻצוּן בָּרְהָטִים
 כְּאִלּוּ יִתְּנוּ שָׁמַי רְבִבִים
 וְנַשְׁכִּימָה וְנֵצֵא לַכְּרָמִים
 לְשַׁחֵר הַתְּאֵנָה עַד עֲרָבִים
 וְאָז אֶרְאֶה גְפָנַי אֹמְרִים לִי
 בְּפֶה חָנֵף וּבִדְבָרִים עֲרַבִים
 הֲתִקַּח הַתְּאֵנָה דּוֹד לְמָנָה
 נְשָׂא יָדְךָ וְאַל תִּשְׁכַּח עֲנָבִים

  אֵלֶּה הֵם הַשִּׁירִים הַמְפֹאָרִים
 אֲשֶר חִבַּרְתִּי עַל הֶחֳדָשִׁים בִּימֵי הַנְּעוִּרים
 וְעוֹד חִבַּרְתִּי שִׁיר עַל חֹדֶשׁ אֱלוּל
 בֶּשֶׁמן מִשְׁחַת קֹדֶשׁ בָּלוּל
 וּלְיָפְיוֹ הוּא עִלָּה וְכָל שִׁיר זוּלָתוֹ עָלוּל
 וְהוּא זֶה 

ELUL II 

If only you would bless my eyes, Elul, 
For you I would become an Amora 
A lord of words, a student to Rava 
And I will fast and search for sweet Mannah 
Within the vineyards I will sit pretty 
And sing and dance although my death’s not far
And I will leave my soul behind in words 
I’ll suckle breasts from vine shoots as they are 		בְּאֵלוּל תְּבַלּוּל בְּעֵינַי יְהִי אִם
 אֲקַנֵּא לְרָבָא וְלִהְיוֹת אֲמוֹרָא
 אֲנִי הַתְּאֵנָה אֲבַקֵּשׁ לְמָנָה
 לְנַפְשִׁי וְאֶדְרשׁ אֲנִי רֹאשׁ אֲמִיָרה
 וְתוֹךְ הַכְּרָמִים אֲנִי בַנְּעִימִים
 אֲכַלֶּה יְמוֹתַי בְּשִׁירָה וְזִמְרָה
 וְאָשִׂים גְּפָנַי סְבִיב צַוְּרֹנַי
 לְעָנָק וְאִינַק שְׁדֵי הַזְּמוֹרָה 
high holy days · judaism · sermon

Knowing we will die helps us live to the fullest

levtaylor

Here’s the deal. Let’s see who will take it.

Today, you get a million pounds. But the catch is, tomorrow you die.

Any takers?

I didn’t think so.

You value living more than you value money. 

In fact, when you put death into the equation, you realise how much living matters to you. It matters more than any amount of wealth or status you could accrue.

Knowing we will die helps us understand what we value from life.

In many ways, Yom Kippur is a death rehearsal.

We act out today as if these were the last moments we would be alive.

Like the dying, we refrain from food and water. 

We turn up in modest clothes, without jewellery. Some wear white, the colour of the funeral shroud. Some wear kittels, the gowns in which we will be buried. Some wear tallits all day, from evening to evening – a unique point in the year when we do so – just as the dead are traditionally buried wearing their tallits. 

Over the course of this fast, we repeatedly recite vidui, the prayer of deathbed confession. We say psalms and chant petitions that are associated with death and funerals.

All of this serves as a ritual memento mori: a reminder that we will die.

Then, as we approach the end, we erupt into songs. We joyfully recite the neilah prayers. For many of us, there is a great rush of relief and joy as we realise we have made it through this marathon day. 

Yes, today is a reminder of our death, and it is one that affirms life. 

On this day, our Torah instructs us: “choose life.” Only by recognising that death is inevitable can we do so.

By really considering the finite amount of time we have on this earth, we are able to celebrate the days we have and live them to the fullest.

So much of modern Western society shies away from death.

For previous generations, death was a sacred process undertaken among family and community.

Today, it is sanitised: dealt with in hospitals and hospices by qualified experts.

There are great advantages to this. The professionalisation of death means that the sick can receive high quality care and pain relief right up to the last moments of their life. It takes a great deal of pressure off of family and friends, because the care for the dying does indeed require constant work.

But one downside to our compartmentalisation of death is that it means it is kept out of sight and taboo. 

When we do have to face death, it is often a shock, and can cause great trauma to living loved ones. Intellectually, all of us know we are mortal, but facing death as a lived and embodied experience can feel like a real rupture.

Having the Yom Kippur experience – which draws our attention to our mortality and makes us reflect on the quality of our lives – can be a powerful way to help us face death. In these rituals and fasts, we can prepare for our mortality. 

This real confrontation with death isn’t morbid. It’s a direction to truly embrace life. 

Knowing we will die helps us consider what we want to do with life.

In Progressive Judaism, we have a tendency to downplay some of the more explicit symbolism of death and mortality in our services. It is there in the machzor – in our silent confessions, themed readings, and traditional prayers. But our services often tiptoe over death’s undercurrents in the prayers.

This year, I have tried to reintroduce some of those themes to the service. 

Last night, at Kol Nidrei, we joined the rest of the Jewish world in holding the scrolls out of the ark, leaving it bare. The great American Reform liturgist, Rabbi Larry Hoffman, points out that the open ark is supposed to evoke a coffin. We stare into the empty space, which usually includes our Book of Life, and lay witness to our own tomb.

This morning, during shacharit prayers, we reintroduced the prayer “who by fire,” a traditional part of Unetaneh Tokef, which recounts the many ways in which a person might die. It is painful to consider life’s fragility, and all the vulnerabilities we face in life. 

But, by facing up to the possibility we will die, we get better at deciding how we will live.

We realise that we value life, and we take stock of what it is we love about it.

Marie de Hennezel is a French therapist focused on end-of-life care. In the early 90s, she was among the first staffers at a palliative care unit for people dying of HIV/AIDS. At this time, there was no cure – the deaths of HIV patients often involved rapid deterioration and great suffering. 

In 1995, de Hennezel wrote up her experiences of accompanying the dying into a memoir, entitled Intimate Death: How the Dying Teach Us to Live. The book even carried a foreword by French president Francois Mitterand.

She recounts stories of individual patients, as well as their carers, doctors, and nurses. In each vignette, she tenderly lays out how important it is to be with the dying. 

From her support, the patients often learn to live through challenging ordeals. Those who feel like giving up or who contemplate suicide decide that they will indeed live until their last moments on earth. By helping them face their death, the patients gain the strength to embrace their life.

This work, it seems, also transforms the carer. De Hennezel writes that she has learnt so much about living from the dying.

She writes poignantly:

Life has taught me three things: The first is that I cannot escape my own death or the deaths of the people I love. 

The second is that no human being can be reduced to what we see, or what we think we see. Any person is infinitely larger and deeper than our narrow judgments can discern. 

And third: one can never be considered to have uttered the final word on anything, is always developing, always has the power of self-fulfilment, and a capacity through all the crises and trials of life.

Let us take this as our message from Yom Kippur today.

Our lives are not over. We can affirm them. We can do so much with them.

And, though we do not always realise it, we love our lives more than any amount of wealth or status.

By facing up to the fact that we will die, we can live the days we have to the fullest.

Gmar chatimah tovah – may you be inscribed in the Book of Life for good.

Yom Kippur Yizkor 5786