Tag: jewish

high holy days · judaism · sermon

It is time to tell a different story about ourselves

levtaylor

It is time to tell a different story about ourselves.

We are writing a story about our lives right now.

On Rosh Hashanah, our story is written. On Yom Kippur, the story is sealed.

What, then, are we doing today? 

This morning, we are editing. We are looking over our story and choosing what to keep and what to discard. What to highlight and what to relegate to the footnotes.

Of course, we cannot change the events of our past, but we can decide what they mean. In writing our story today, we choose what role we played in the narrative of our own lives. 

When you tell this story, are you a victim, or a villain? A saviour or a sinner? 

Look at your mistakes. The way you tell your story will help you decide whether they were a defining part of your personality, or whether they were opportunities you took to learn and grow. 

Look at your suffering. Others have hurt you. You need to tell your own story of what that pain means. You need to decide if your suffering is the sum of your life, or if it is something you overcome. 

You are writing the story of your life right now. Be careful how you tell it.

In our Mishnah, Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi teaches: “Apply your mind to three things and you will not come into the clutches of sin: Know that there is above you: an eye that sees, an ear that hears, and all your deeds are written in a book.”

But here is what the Mishnah does not tell us:

The eye that sees can see more perspectives than we can.

The ear that listens knows all hearts in ways we do not.

And, most importantly, the book is constantly being edited and re-written.

We are always re-writing the Book of Life with our God, and that means we have the power to shape our story.

We cannot imagine that God’s eyes and ears are anything like ours, or that God writes a book the way we would. The story that an Infinite Being has to tell about you must be incomprehensible from your perspective. 

When we tell ourselves our story, we are biased, seeing only our perspective. Our narrative is partial, not knowing what others really feel.  Our account is unreliable, because we tell it to fit the character we have already made of ourselves. 

God, on the other hand, sees not just what we did, but what we hoped to do. God says to the prophet Samuel: “I do not see as human beings see; human beings see only what is visible, but I see into the heart.”

God instructs the Prophet Isaiah: “Whenever anyone turns back to Me for pardon, I freely forgive, for as the heavens are high above the earth, so are My ways high above your ways, and My plans above your plans.” 

God is able to see errors in ways we cannot. And God can understand our pain in a context that is beyond us.

This is because God is telling a different story about you to your own.

In God’s plan, you are the main character. Of course, so is everyone else. 

But that is because God has written a great novel where every creature has a vital role to play. No character could be introduced if they did not have a role in the great unfolding tale that progresses towards goodness’s triumph over evil.

So, today, look at the manuscript of your life. Decide what you want to focus on. Tell yourself stories of gratitude and joy. Consider the events that have given you pride and a sense of accomplishment. 

Look, too, at the stories in your life that are hard. Re-tell the stories of where you have been hurt, and decide for yourself what meaning you take from them.

Re-examine the stories of when you have hurt others, and decide what changes these will bring for you when you enter your next chapter.

In this way, you can take control over the story of your life. 

You cannot change what happened, but you can decide what it means. 

Only you can decide how your story ends.

Treat God as your co-editor, rather than as the author of your destiny.

For some of you, the story I have told so far is too wrapped up in religious language. You cannot get on board with all this God-talk, and the quotations from Scripture prove nothing. 

Let us turn, then, to the science of psychology. 

Over many decades, psychologists have experimented with what makes for a good life. We now have more data than ever about how people forgive. We understand a great deal more about how to overcome trauma. And we know what motivates people to live better lives.

I am going to assume that, if you are here on Yom Kippur, you came because you want to let go of some past hurt, to repent of things you have done wrong, and to live a more fulfilling life.

The Scriptures tell us how to do this, but the language they use may feel too alien to the modern mind. The sciences, however, can corroborate the same claims.

Dr Fred Luskin runs the Stamford University forgiveness project. His team has researched the best methods to help people overcome their grudges and live more fulfilling lives. 

He has tried out his techniques for helping hundreds of people forgive, including in the most extreme cases, like mothers whose children were killed in sectarian violence.

His book, Forgive for Good, is an accessible version of his research.

Dr Luskin teaches that our inability to forgive comes when we tell ourselves a “grievance narrative.” 

You may have such a story yourself. If you keep coming back to an event in your life where you were wronged and replaying it, you may be stuck on recalling a past hurt. If, in this story, there is a clear villain, and you are a helpless victim, the chances are you have a grievance narrative.

Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Many people do. 

I began reading Dr Luskin’s book out of academic curiosity, but soon found I was noticing my own grievance narratives. Some of them went right back to old hurts in school. I looked over some of the stories I had about my own life, and found they did not serve me.

Dr Luskin says that the key to getting out of the trap of these painful stories is to consider how you tell them.

First of all, decide how much space in your mind you want this story to occupy. Yes, you have been hurt, but do you want to keep letting those same people hurt you by giving them unlimited air play in your head? 

One way forward is just to change how much you think about them. Rather than letting them be the main character in your story, focus your internal account on your own successes and joys.

Secondly, consider how you are telling your story. If you have a grievance narrative, the hurt you experienced may determine everything that comes after. 

You were wronged, and that may have a lasting impact. But is it not also true that you survived, overcame, and learnt from the experience? You have the power to tell the story so that you are not a victim, but a hero.

None of this means pretending that pain doesn’t hurt, or that the wrongs others did were not wrong. Quite on the contrary: in order to move on with anything, you have to be able to say how wrong it was, and what it made you feel. 

The difference is that you get to decide what it means. You can decide whether someone else has written your story for you, or whether you are your own author. You can choose to focus your attention on your own pride and resilience.

Just as our faith tells you to pay attention to how you tell your story, so, too, do the psychologists. The story you tell can help shape how able you are to move on from past pain and be a better person.

This is true, not just on the individual level, but also at the collective level. The stories we tell about Jews are the stories we tell about ourselves. What is the story we tell about ourselves as Jews?

There are plenty of stories out there about us. There are stories where we are perfect victims, forever blameless for the suffering we endured. There are stories where we are bloodthirsty brutes, responsible for the worst evils in the world. 

Both of these stories deny us agency. These stories turn us into history’s stock character, whether as martyr or as monster. They deny Jews the ability to do what everyone else does: to hurt others, to learn from our mistakes, and to become better people. They strip us of the opportunity to grow and change.

We need, therefore, to think hard about what the narrative is that we are writing about Jews.

Rabbi Dr Tirzah Firestone sits at the intersection of spirituality and psychiatry. Firestone began her career as a psychoanalyst, then came back to the religion of her birth, embraced Renewal Judaism, and became one of its leading rabbis.

Firestone grew up with Holocaust-surviving parents. She felt that she and her siblings inherited great trauma from her family, and from the stories they told. Or rather, did not tell. Much of their former life escaping genocide was clouded by secrecy. The stories her father did tell were of persecution: that the non-Jews inherently hated Jews and would destroy them at every opportunity.

As a therapist and rabbi, Firestone urgently felt the need to tell different stories about Jews. She insists: “Identifying ourselves as victims freezes our focus on the past, and therefore forecloses our future.”

This does not mean pretending that Jews have never been victims. We need to face up to the traumas of Jewish history, including Shoah, pogroms, and persecution. Ignoring them, and refusing to tell the stories, can actually exacerbate the transmission of trauma.

What we need to do, says Rabbi Firestone, is honour Jewish history without internalising the harmful aspects of Jewish trauma. 

We need to remember that, as Jews, we have collective power. We are able to influence the world, and not just subject to the vicissitudes of history. We must claim our agency, and take ownership over what happens to our future. 

Most importantly, says Firestone, we should draw connections with others suffering from persecuting systems. By making these links, we strengthen ourselves, support our neighbours, and find positive meaning out of difficult circumstances.

We must, therefore, tell a new story about Jews. A story where we are survivors, who have been hurt and used creativity and resilience to overcome our pain. A story where we are complete human beings, who can hurt others, and who can repent and change. A story where our story connects to all of humanity for the sake of a shared future.

The story we are writing does not have to be one where we are always victims, nor incomparable monsters. We can create a narrative that acknowledges our past, honours it, and uses it to direct us towards a more positive future.

On Rosh Hashanah, our story is written. On Yom Kippur, the story is sealed.

We are writing a story about our lives right now.

Today, with the help of God and this sacred time, write your story.

Write a story you can be proud of. Write a story where you have the power to do better. Write a story where you overcome your challenges.

The events of your life so far have already been written. What they mean is up to you.

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

Yom Kippur Shacharit 5786

high holy days · sermon

The world is governed by compassion

levtaylor

“Hineni he’ani mi-ma’as – behold, I am poor in deeds and lacking in merit. Nevertheless, I come trembling in the presence of You, O God, to plead on behalf of Your people Israel who sent me, although I am neither fit nor worthy of the task. You who examine hearts, be my guide, and accept my prayer. Treat these words as if they were spoken by one more righteous than me. For you listen to prayers and delight in repentance. Blessed are You, O God, who hears our prayers.”

In the synagogues of medieval Europe, the service leader used to begin with this public prayer of atonement, openly acknowledging their own inadequacy. 

In the Liberal world, we have been shaped by the Victorian attitude that eschewed public vulnerability. So, instead, this prayer is given out to rabbis to read privately to themselves. 

The days when we had to pretend to be perfectly put-together are over. In our age, we recognise that openly sharing our insecurities builds a more emotionally authentic culture, where people are better at handling their feelings.

So, this year, I not only quietly recite this prayer in my office, but share it with you openly.

This year, these words feel more profound than usual. 

This is a sensitive time, and I know how fragile so many hearts are. 

In the build-up to these Days of Repentance, an American Masorti rabbi, Joshua Gruenberg, wrote:

“Rabbis stand before their congregations with trembling hearts. We know that every word matters. We know that words can wound and words can heal. And we know that in a climate like this one, the margin for error feels impossibly thin. […] The only way we will find wholeness is if we grant each other the space to be imperfect, the courage to be vulnerable, and the grace to be human.”

As this year came to an end, I thought back on the conversations I’d had with you over my time here. I thought back over some of the pain and worry you had felt, and realised just how much stress some members of the community were feeling. 

Words can, indeed, hurt and heal. They matter. I want to honour that, by reflecting on the pain some of you have expressed.

We come here because we want to be together, in our fullness, with all our wounds and trauma, so that we can move towards healing. 

To that end, let’s consider how we can approach anxious and hurting people with compassion. That is, after all, what we all need from each other.

The world has changed greatly in the last few years. So much feels more precarious. 

Ten thousand people rallied at Tommy Robinson’s far right march in London to a speech by Elon Musk telling the crowds to get ready for violence against immigrants. The news from Israel and Gaza, and Russia and Ukraine, and Sudan and Ethiopia, keeps rolling in, feeling ever worse. 

For me – and I know for some of you – the horrors of October 7th and the ensuing assault on Gaza marked a major turning point. In many of us, these events have brought up trauma responses we didn’t even know we had.

Since then, so much has unfolded that is out of our hands. This can feel painful when your instinct is to find solutions and assume control.

We have to accept our own limitations. I sometimes recite to myself the Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Those of us within this room do not have the power to bring about peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. We cannot get the hostages back or stop the starvation of Gaza.

That feels hard. If it were up to the members of this synagogue I have no doubt that the whole world could live in peace. 

I am certain that we could indeed solve the country’s problems and fix our hurting planet. But nobody seems to be letting us do that, outside of setting the world to rights over kiddush.

But that does not mean we have no power at all. 

The one area where we have real power is in our own homes and our own community. 

And, there, we have the power to decide how much compassion we feel.

Even in the face of our own trauma and fear, we can choose to feel compassion for others.

Perhaps you can relate: in the immediate aftermath of October 7th, I felt intensely isolated. I felt a void where compassion ought to be.

I felt, among Jews, my own people, that I struggled to find many people who felt compassion for the people in Gaza. 

On the left, as much my natural home as the synagogue, I struggled to find many people who felt compassion for Israelis. 

Initially, I narrowed my circle to a small niche of Progressive Jews with left-wing opinions. It was comfortable and reassuring, when what I needed was to feel safe. 

But if I was looking for compassion in the world, I needed to bring it into the world. I needed to model it. 

Not just with the people who I knew felt like I did, but also with those whom I assumed were miles away from me. 

It is easy to love humanity in general, and fine to pity people on TV. It is much harder to love the people nearest you when you feel so distant, or to understand them when it feels like they are living in a different world. 

How could I look for compassion elsewhere if it wasn’t in my own heart? 

How can we look for compassion if we do not feel it?

You can’t expect others to extend compassion to strangers when you can’t even have conversations with the people you already know.

I felt then – I still feel – that, perhaps, if we can feel compassion in our synagogues, and extend it out towards the world, and that others could extend their compassion too, then it might cause something to shift.  

And, ultimately, that shift might make this world, which is harsh and unkind, a little better than it has been.

The message of compassion is already explicit in the liturgy of our Yom Kippur service. 

God’s name is Compassion. 

We read the refrain that repeats throughout the High Holy Days: “Adonai, adonai, el rachum vechanun… a God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in compassion and faithfulness…”

It is a beautiful invocation of God’s qualities to help us through Yom Kippur. 

The verses come from Moses’s second acsent of Mount Sinai, when he takes the new set of the Ten Commandments in his hand. As Moses walks down the mountain, God comes with him.

As Moses chants out these declarations of God’s mercy, it is as if Moses has truly understood what kind of God he is dealing with.

He learns how the world really works. He sees that it is governed by compassion.

Just before coming to get the new tablets of the law, Moses had seen the Israelites worshipping a golden calf, and smashed up the first set of the Ten Commandments. 

These are great sins: idol worship and wanton destruction are strictly prohibited. The Israelites have been wayward. Moses has been angry. 

Still, God, abounding in compassion and faithfulness, says: “Try it again. Have another go.”

In the Talmud, Rabbi Yohanan teaches that whenever the Jewish people sin, they should think back to this verse.

In the repetition of “Adonai, Adonai,” the Jews should understand that God is their Loving Creator before a person sins, and God is their Loving Creator after a person sins and performs repentance.

God is always willing to give people another chance.

In the same section of Talmud, we learn that, in the moment when Moses recited those words, God made a covenant based on thirteen attributes of mercy. It was a promise that God would always hear our prayers.

Later, in the Middle Ages, the French commentator Rashi elucidated what these thirteen attributes were.

In each word, says Rashi, is a reflection of the type of compassion God feels. 

God is slow to anger to give you a chance to repent.

God is abundant in mercy, even with those who don’t deserve it.

God remembers good deeds even for a thousand years.

Even when we hear that God holds grudges for three and four generations, Rashi says that this only refers to people who maintain the evil ways of their ancestors. If they repent, all can be forgiven of them too.

This is how one truly maximises compassion.

So, let us be compassionate.

Let us maximise how much compassion we feel.

Our own community and our own homes are small places where we can truly practise compassion in a world where it seems so sorely lacking.

Last week, in her Rosh Hashanah address, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, of the American Reform movement’s flagship synagogue in New York, reflected on how the division in the world was creating strife even within her synagogue.

She urged her congregation to practise compassion, saying:

“It now seems that any expression of compassion for “the other side” is regarded with suspicion – as disloyal, or even threatening. Is our capacity for empathy so finite? Are our hearts so small, that if we increase our empathy for certain people, that we need to reduce it for others — until one day, we conclude: that ‘other side’ is not deserving of any compassion?”

Here, the “other side” could be so many different groups in this increasingly polarised and hostile world. 

We all want to feel like people understand our own side, but struggle to extend our understanding the other way.

You don’t have to agree with people to love them. You just have to be curious, and try to understand them.

Some days, we may be capable of less compassion than others. On those days, let’s give ourselves grace, take time out, and remember how flawed we all are.

Even on our worst days, we can always try to understand each other. We can hold our own hearts while making them permeable enough to feel others’ pain too.

When people challenge us, let’s look for the best in them. Imagine their best intentions, and try to consider what problems they might be facing.

We are, all of us, flawed and temperamental. We all ask good grace of others, and we can all give it in return.

This year, let’s try to feel compassion for the people in our own families and homes.

Let’s try to find compassion for the people in our neighbourhoods. Perhaps we will shift something in them.

Let’s find compassion for the people in our community, so that we can hold each other, in our diversity, through these trying times. 

And, as much as we can, let’s try to find compassion for everyone. 

It won’t change the news cycle, but it might change you. And you might change others. 

It is a small contribution to this world, but it is a mighty one. 

It is the best that we can do.

Behold, I am poor in deeds and lacking in merit. Nevertheless, I come trembling in the presence of the One who hears the prayers of Israel. O God, You listen to prayers and delight in repentance. Blessed are You, O God, who hears our prayers.

Amen.

Kol Nidrei 5786, Kingston Liberal Synagogue

high holy days · sermon · theology

What if death comes as a kiss?

levtaylor

Moses said to the Israelites: “I am one hundred and twenty years old. I cannot go on. God has already told me that I will not cross over the Jordan River. Now, do not be afraid. God is going with you. You will do marvellous things.”

Moses was not afraid of death. He asked the Israelites not to fear either. Instead, carry on and keep living.

How could Moses not fear?

If I asked you to depict death, you would likely draw a ferocious figure. For centuries, the Western imagination has presented death as a cruel and frightening creature.

To the Ancient Greeks, death was the merciless deity Thanatos, who came into the world with his siblings, Blame, Suffering, Deceit, Strife, and Doom. Thanatos, the despised god with wings, wrested the souls of the living and dragged them down to the Underworld, where they were handed over to Charon, the Ferryman who took the dead across the Acheron and the River Styx.

Michelangelo, Charon, The Sistine Chapel

On the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo depicts Charon, the chaperone of the dead, as a terrifying monster. Charon has clawed talons for feet and grotesquely bulging eyes. He hoists his oar over his shoulder, ready to transport the unfortunate souls.

From the time of the Bubonic Plague in Europe, death was often depicted as a morbid skeleton. In The Triumph of Death, a great oil panel painting by Dutch master Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Death is an enormous skeleton upon an emaciated red horse, slaying all in sight. He brings with him an entire army of macabre skeleton figures, all of them razing the mortals from the earth. 

Today, we know this figure as the Grim Reaper, who reached his full form in the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe. You can thank that 19th Century American novelist for the popular image of death today: the skeleton in a cloak holding an hourglass and scythe.

With such frightening depictions of death, how could Moses not fear?

Moses was lucky. He did not inherit the Western artistic tradition. The ancient Israelite attitude was remarkably different. The Jewish view of death was one far more tender.

At the end of Moses’s life, we read: “Moses the servant of the Eternal One died in the land of Moab, by the mouth of God. God buried him there in the valley, and nobody knows Moses’s grave to this day.”

In the Jewish imagination, it is God who comes personally, and takes care of the treasured people. In our Torah’s description of Moses’s burial, it sounds almost like a parent tucking in a child to sleep. The sand covers Moses’s body like a blanket, and he can finally rest.

Pieter Bruegel, section, The Triumph of Death

Our rabbis noticed an interesting choice of words from the Torah. Here, it says that Moses died by the mouth of God. 

This language is also applied to the deaths of Aaron and Miriam. They, too, die by the mouth of God.

Literally, this might mean that Moses and his siblings died at God’s command.

In the Talmud, the rabbis say instead that this means they died by a kiss. 

There are many ways that we might imagine this. We might picture a personal God pressing lips against our prophets to remove their last breath.

I like to picture a parent, gently kissing our legendary figures on the forehead. When Moses dies, God wraps him up in the blankets of the desert sand, embraces him, and pecks him on the forehead, to send him off into his eternal sleep.

Moses, the last of his siblings to die, would also have seen Miriam’s and Aaron’s deaths. He would know that death was not a fearsome monster, but the gentle caress of sleep at the end of a long day.

Indeed, the Roman Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, when he tried to explain the Jewish attitude to life to a Western audience, asked: “why should we fear death, when we embrace the repose of sleep?”

Of course, to we who are still living, death does not always feel so gentle. It can be painful and fear-inducing to witness the ones we love waste away, or be suddenly snatched from our world. 

Our Torah is aware of this. Sometimes, death is indeed depicted as a menacing spirit, as when the Angel of Death slays the first-born during the Exodus. Sometimes, death is indeed an all-consuming monster, as when the ground opens up on the supporters of Korach, to wrench them down to the netherworld of Sheol.

To us, who have to see death while we live, it can indeed feel frightening, and we should not shy away from that terror.

But, perhaps, for those who die, it does not feel so horrifying.

Sebastian Junger is a conflict journalist from New York. In 2020, he suddenly had a near-death experience. While awaiting surgery and bleeding out on an operating table, Junger suddenly had a vision of his father, hovering above him. 

Junger said his father appeared as a comforting mass of energy. In that moment, he thought he understood that there was a life beyond this one.

A devout atheist and rationalist, he went on a journey to discover how this vision was possible. He turned his voyage of enquiry into a book, published last year, called In My Time of Dying.

Tracking shamans and religious leaders from across the globe, he discovered how common his experience of approaching death was. 

This led him to wonder what his own father, a Jewish physicist, would have made of his experience. There is a poignant moment, towards the end of the text, where Junger sits down with his father’s physicist friends, and asks them for an explanation.

One of the scientists tells Junger that he thinks his father would indeed have believed it, because he was romantic like that. He explains that our understanding of physics is constantly evolving, and we know so little about it. He posits, even, that one day the presence of a reality beyond death might be the foundation of physics, or indeed its absence might be. 

Of course, Junger does not rule out the possibility that this is simply the brain’s way of protecting us, and our body’s way of making the inevitable feel less frightening. Yet, even though he is a firm rationalist, he cannot rule out the possibility that his father really was with him in his moments of near-death. He concludes feeling a deeper connection, both to the living and the dead.

None of us know what happens when we die. Nobody can see beyond the grave. Nobody has ever come back to tell us what exists in the world beyond. 

The Western imagination has conditioned us to find this uncertainty terrifying.

But what if Moses is right? What if neither this world nor the next have anything to be feared?

Maybe death does just arrive as a loving parent, tucking you into an eternal rest.

Would it change the way you lived today, if you believed, as our Torah says, that death comes as a kiss?

Jaume Barba, sculpture, The Kiss of Death

high holy days · sermon

To be the head and not the tail

levtaylor

Everything has changed. Everything keeps changing. 

We meet tonight to pause. 

Tonight is a return to a definite, reliable point in the calendar. While the world spins on outside, for a brief moment, we stop. We reflect. We take stock of all that has changed, so that we might change too.

You have already seen this evening many simanim – symbols of the Rosh Hashanah seder. These small tokens speak to us about what the festival means.

There is another one, though, that you won’t see here, partly because our synagogue is a meat-free site, and partly because it just would not feel right in a Liberal synagogue. 

It is a ram’s head.

Yes, in many New Year seders throughout the centuries, Jews would place the carcass of a sheep’s skull in the centre of the table. This tradition goes all the way back to 9th Century Babylonia.

By the 15th Century, the German rabbi, the Maharil, explained the custom using a phrase from the Psalms: 

שנהיה לראש ולא לזנב 

– that we should be the head and not the tail.

There is a play-on-words here. After all, what does Rosh Hashanah literally mean?

The Rosh is the head. It is the head as in the beginning; it is the head as in the body part; and it is the head as in the one who has control. 

This symbolism works because, in Hebrew, a word contains multiple meanings and associations. 

So, the fish head represents our being on top of our own lives.

Now, what about hashanah? The word shanah does indeed mean year, but its root ש-נ-ה also means cycle, difference, repetition, or change. 

This makes sense: a year is a cycle, a return point that we repeat, each time observing the change. 

So Rosh Hashanah does mean “start of the year.” But, through the associations with the words’ other meanings, Rosh Hashanah is also “the master of change.”

Outside of these walls, the world is full of changes. AI unleashes new technology into a society that has already been completely transformed by the Internet. Our climate is changing, and we are truly starting to notice its effects on our own seasons. 

International relations are changing: violence, war, and fear feel like a new normal. And, of course, we are only a few years out of global pandemic and lockdowns.

So, at this juncture, we return to the start, and try to find a small oasis of calm to reflect on this changing world. 

Yet, inside these walls, things have changed too. This is my first High Holy Days with you. This is your first High Holy Days in the newly refurbished sanctuary. This is our first High Holy Days where we have voted to join a new movement. 

This is our first time doing the High Holy Days without the choir in every service and, as you will see, that means we are changing how we do music.

In every case, these changes will evoke many feelings, including excitement, trepidation, loss, and growth. This is a chance to face all our feelings. 

Change is inevitable. Change can be good. And, yes, change is hard. 

I don’t know about you, but I have changed. I have not just grown a year older since the last Rosh Hashanah. I also feel like I have aged many decades in the last few years.

The world transforms and I shift with it. As I shift, I do not even always notice the ways I change, or work out what they mean. 

I don’t even have time to decide if I like who I am becoming before I find that things changing again.

So, at Rosh Hashanah I come to this space, this synagogue, this everlasting home with God, and ask: can I love myself better? Can I love my community? Can I muster up the strength to face all that is changing? 

Can I find a way to be the head and not the tail?

Blessed are You, Eternal One our God, who gives us the power to change.

judaism · theology

A Theological Platform for a Judaism that Does Not Yet Exist

levtaylor

1. We are living in apocalyptic times. War, climate disaster, and neoliberal capitalism are plunging us into ongoing and worsening crisis. Apocalyptic times call for apocalyptic theologies.

2. When we survey how Jewish people rebuilt their communities in the face of devastation, we see that Jews have stubbornly held onto hope. From the destructions of the Temples, through Crusades and Expulsions, to colonialism and genocide, our greatest leaders have never wallowed in despair. They always reaffirmed their faith in God and humanity.

3. The task of building the Messianic age is more pressing than ever. Like our forebears, we affirm that the Messiah will not be a man, but a time, in which all will understand the Oneness that lies beneath all superficial differences. The Messianic Age will be defined by equality between people, peace between nations, and harmony with nature. Our task is to build it.

4. Because of faith in God, we understand that our desire for a transformed world is sacred and just. With an outstretched arm and wondrous deeds, God liberated the slaves from Egypt. God hears the cries of all who suffer and shares their pain. God continues to defend the dignity of all who are subjugated.

5. In every age, our people have sought to understand the will of God. In their hardship, they communed with their Creator. Out of their struggles, they developed theologies. These are our inheritance: Torah; Prophets; Writings; rabbinic literature; Jewish philosophies. We claim them for our own time.

6. Our texts are central to our worldview. They are incomplete and polyvocal. We will never make idols of them by treating them as unquestionable authorities. Rather, they are our dialogue partners to understand our God, our world, and ourselves. We uphold the tradition of questioning, reconsidering, and retelling. Every answer is open to interrogation.

7. We affirm belief in the pure monotheism to which our ancestors aspired. We seek to connect with God, who is singular and infinite; immaterial and transcendent; eminent and imminent. Our God is nevertheless directly part of our lives. As the source of ultimate truth, God seeks to impart to us truth as we can understand it.

8. Life has meaning. Its meaning is intrinsic. Everything that lives on this earth was placed here deliberately by a loving Creator to serve a purpose. All that affirms life affirms God.

9. Jews are called upon specifically and by name. We feel that the task of healing the world has been entrusted to us, personally and collectively. This is what it means to be chosen. The task of Jews is to speak God’s truth and to fulfill God’s dominion on earth. A world ruled by God will be one in which no human being can subjugate another.

10. God created all people, replete with diversity, deliberately. We do not wish to make others like us. We reject any uniformity. We accept that people inhabit multiple, contradictory, and overlapping spiritual realities.

11. We bring our spiritual reality to life through our rituals. Our laws, practices and customs are all articulations of our moral purpose. Even where they carry no obvious moral instruction, they instill within us discipline, wonder at creation, and hold us together in community.

12. Our ancestors call to us from history. As refugees and outcasts, they knew what it was to live on the margins. Their memories demand vindication.

13. We have witnessed the progress of humanity. Scientists have developed incredible medicines. Engineers have shown how to harness natural resources to power the entire planet. Activists have shown how collective strength can transform history. We believe that it is our duty to sustain that progress.

14. In the hands of oppressors, progress is a dangerous force. Warmongers have found ever more efficient ways to kill. Capitalists have found increasingly profitable ways to exploit. We have seen how human ingenuity can be employed for systemic violence. We must wrest the tools of progress from those who worship the false god of wealth.

15. Nationalism is a sickness that is plaguing the world. We repudiate all xenophobia and chauvinism. We will not worship the false idols of states and their symbols. We reject all efforts to politically divide humanity.

16. Until all of humanity is fully redeemed, we remain in exile. Only when everyone has achieved full political, economic and spiritual freedom can we say we have reached our Jerusalem. The earthly Jerusalem is as much a part of exile as any other city, until the day when it becomes the heartland for peace and brings all humanity into unity with God. As such, we align ourselves with all those who seek to bring about an earthly Jerusalem based on the prophets’ visions of dignity, human rights, and liberation.

17. Individualism is killing us. Human beings have survived by being social creatures. The ideas of autonomy and personal choice do not serve us in this age. We need to resist the atomisation of people and create community, which necessitates sharing norms, ideals, and practices.

18. We see the Jewish family as expansive and interconnected. We are all responsible for one another, and want to live as if we are one family. This includes a commitment to loving rebuke where necessary.

19. We return to halachah. We see it not as the binding decisions of previous generations but as the creative forum of the present, in which we find new ways to live by our shared values.

20. We commit to Jewish time, which is shaped like a snail shell: always progressing, and always returning to the same points. We return constantly to our shabbats, our fasts, and our festivals. Every time we return to them, we learn more of what God requires of us, and we urge ourselves on to the next stage of our development.

21. The end of time is coming. It does not have to be disastrous. It could be wondrous. Our telos is a perfected world. We will never reach it. We will always fight for it.

Rabbi Lev Saul

protest · sermon · theology

We are guests in God’s mansion

levtaylor


Suppose you woke up one morning and discovered, to your surprise, that you had inherited an enormous mansion.

The lord of the manor has welcomed you as a guest to his entire estate. You have no need to pay rent.

This country villa has plush places to sleep, wonderful waters to swim in, and endless entertainment.

More than that, this house is magical. It provides for your every need. Its luscious garden grows your favourite fruit and vegetables. There is plenty of space to graze and raise whatever animals you desire.

It belongs to you and your descendants forever.

What if I told you that you had indeed been bequeathed such a home, and that you were already living in it?

It is this Earth.

That is how Moses understood the planet on which we live when he instructed the Israelites in Deuteronomy. Moses wanted to impart to the people what a miracle it was to be alive, and to get to live in this abundant and fertile world.

So, says Moses, “the Eternal One your God is bringing you into a good land – with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills; a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; a land where you can eat bread and never run out, where you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills.”

This is the biblical mindset. You are guests in God’s mansion.

You have inherited a paradise and it is the whole world. The seas, the ice caps, the deserts, the mountains, and the forests. They are all yours. And they are all everyone else’s too.

Every human being was granted this world as a gift. Every living creature was placed here by their loving Creator.

Now, if you inherited a mansion like that, you wouldn’t trash it on the first day. You’d want to look after it and make sure your children and theirs got to enjoy it the way you did. You’d want to make sure the grass stayed green and the water kept flowing and the fruit trees kept producing. You’d want to know that everybody would be able to dwell in it for all time.

So, says Moses: “Keep faithfully every commandment I am giving to you this day, so that you can thrive and increase and come and inherit this land which was promised to your ancestors.”

Yes, this land requires no rent, but it does have conditions attached. You have to tend to it. You cannot be violent or greedy or deceitful. You must regularly redistribute the land, and make sure that everyone who lives in it gets their fill, and make sure everyone gets plenty of time for rest.

Well, these are small stipulations, given how wonderful my portion is. I get to live on this earth, which is so abundant, and all I have to do is look after it and share it? It sounds like a fantastic deal.

It is, but there is a trap. You see, you might get used to how great this mansion is. You might forget who gave it to you.

You might commit the gravest sin: you might think that this is yours, and yours alone.

This, says Moses, is a terrible error. “You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” Instead, remember the Eternal One your God, for it is God who gives you the power to produce wealth.”

You might think that you earned the mansion, and you built it, and you can do with it as you please. Well, then, you would become a threat. A threat to the mansion and everyone that lives there. A threat to its babbling brooks and fig trees.

If you fool yourself into thinking this is yours, warns Moses, then “your heart will become proud and you will forget the Eternal One, your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.”

Yes, you have a dark past. A history of slaves and masters. There was a time when people claimed ownership over everything. They declared that the Nile River and the rainwater belonged to them. They hoarded the grain and took possession over the vineyards. They owned the animals. They even owned you.

Do you want to go back there?

Now, look around at our home, here in Surrey. This place truly is wonderful. Working here, I have had the chance to paddleboard down the River Wey, walk on the Surrey Downs, and watch others swim in Divers Cove. I can really believe this county was a gift from God.

And yet this county is certainly not treated as a common treasury.

How did it happen that God’s creation became so gated?

You see, Moses’s description of the world as a common heritage bequeathed by God wasn’t just an idle fantasy. That was how many people saw the world throughout a large part of history.

Until the start of the 17th Century, large swathes of English land were held in common by all people. This meant that everyone could graze the land together. They could rotate crops together; care for the land together; and make sure everyone got fed.

It’s not that England was one great egalitarian utopia. Far from it. There had been kings, paupers, lords, peasants, and landless workers, for centuries. But, at least a part of it was treated as a shared inheritance.

Then, in 1605, the government began a process called Inclosure. They took all that had been previously common and handed it over to the already wealthy. They stripped the poor from their land and forced them into the cities to work in factories. They destroyed whole ways of life.

This mansion, already divided, became the possession of just a few. Just as Moses had warned, the wealthy imagined that their power had come about by their own hands. They thought of themselves as more than lords; more than pharaohs: as gods.

Now, right here in Surrey, a group of people tried to resist them. In 1649, on St George’s Hill, and at Little Heath near Cobham, a group of religious dissidents got together, and decided that they would take the land back from the lords. They were called The Diggers.

Their leader, Gerard Winstanley, has a memorial plaque near Weybridge Station, and there is a tour you can take with historic placards, showing where the Diggers went.

The Diggers wanted a return to the Law of Moses and the biblical attitude.

In the Levellers’ Standard, Gerard Winstanley wrote: “The Earth (which was made to be a Common Treasury of relief for all, both Beasts and Men) was hedged in to In-closures by the teachers and rulers, and the others were made Servants and Slaves: And that Earth that is within this Creation made a Common Store-house for all, is bought and sold, and kept in the hands of a few, whereby the great Creator is mightily dishonoured, as if he were a respector of persons, delighting in the comfortable Livelihoods of some, and rejoycing in the miserable povertie and straits of others.”

Like Moses before him, Winstanley was adamant that God was not a propertarian but a generous host, and human beings simply welcome guests. How, then, could some divide up the land and force others off of it?

The Diggers lost their battle for the land, and the world we inherit is made according to the laws of those who enacted Inclosure.

But there is a message, that rings out through time, from the era of Moses through the 17th Century, and right up to today.

That message is that this world is a paradise, bequeathed to us all. And we need to act like it is so.

Shabbat shalom.

sermon · social justice · torah

Don’t make trans people scapegoats

levtaylor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It should not be this way. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shabbat shalom.

sermon · torah

The things you hate in others are the things you hate in you.

levtaylor

The things you hate in others are the things you hate in you.

All too often, we create monsters out of others because we fear there is something monstrous in ourselves. We turn outsiders into figures of hate because there is something we cannot stand inside ourselves.

In the Talmud, Laban is called the trickiest of tricksters. He came from a family of tricksters, in a town of tricksters, and all he ever did was trick.

Now, Laban was indeed a trickster. He was a thief and a manipulator. But was he really the worst of the worst? Most importantly, was he really worse than Jacob?

Laban did wrong, multiple times. He behaved appallingly. 

From the outset, he took Jacob in on false pretences. 

Laban told Jacob that, if he worked for him for seven years, he could marry his younger daughter, Rachel. Jacob adored Rachel, and was willing to do anything for her, so fulfilled his obligations. 

Then, on the day of the wedding, Laban swapped out Rachel for her older sister, Leah. Laban made Jacob work another seven years to marry the woman of his dreams.

Once Jacob had married both daughters, Laban continued to trick and deceive. He kept trying to rob Jacob, arbitrarily changing the terms of the contract. 

Jacob says that Laban had tried to swindle him with new rules ten times. In our midrash, the rabbis say it was in fact a hundred. Laban absolutely stole, and absolutely tricked.

Now, can we compare this to Jacob?

Only last week, we saw how Jacob tricked his father and his brother to steal from them. Jacob dressed up as his brother, pretended to cook like his brother, and stole his brother’s birthright. Jacob took advantage of his elderly father, who was going blind, to swindle him out of a blessing.

Jacob, too, stole and tricked.

To read the rabbinic tradition, however, you would think it only went one way!

The midrash bends over backwards to exonerate Jacob. It says that his father, Isaac, knew what was going on all along, and was only pretending to be deceived. It says that his mother, Rebecca, was given prophecy by God, so she knew what the future of her sons entailed. Throughout rabbinic commentaries, we get apologia for why Jacob was really right to receive the birthright, and why Esau would have been a terrible choice.

None of this is in the text. It is really a PR campaign to protect Jacob’s reputation. 

Laban, by comparison, is subjected to thorough demonisation.

The rabbis say that Laban sought to kill Jacob, despite there being no evidence of it. They go further: Laban wanted to massacre the Israelites entirely so they would have no future. Laban wanted to subjugate the Israelites worse than Pharaoh ever could. The rabbis say Laban lived hundreds of years, and could think of nothing else but swindling Israelites throughout that entire time, motivated only by spite. They call him ugly, and stupid, and say he slept with animals.

Contrary to the plain reading of the text, our tradition turns Laban into a monster, with every flaw exaggerated to absurd degree. They warp him from being a simple trickster into a demonic tyrant.

Our rabbis’ goal is to divide the world into the two camps: the innocent and the evil. On the one side, they have Jacob, who, no matter what he did, can never be held accountable. On the other side, they have Laban, the pinnacle of malice. No matter what may have motivated him, Laban will always be depicted as a corrupt crook, lusting after the death and misery of others.

In fact, the crimes of Jacob and Laban were almost identical. Laban tricked; so did Jacob. Laban stole; so did Jacob. 

There is a good reason why the rabbis would want to defend Jacob and castigate Laban in this way. Jacob is us. He changed his name to Israel and became the founder of the Jewish people. If Jacob is bad, so are we. 

Laban is our enemy. If he can be excused, what does that make us? How can we be the good guy, if he is not the bad one?

Naomi Graetz, a scholar at Ben Gurion University, compiled all these sources and suggests that what is going on here is a classic case of negative projection. 

We know that Jacob did those bad things. But, if we throw them all onto Laban, they no longer stick to us. By constructing Laban as a monster, we can feel assured in the positive self-image we want to hold. 

This, she says, is what groups often do. They create “others” – people that they imagine to be different to them – so that they can throw at them the worst fears of what they themselves might be.

The things we hate in others are often, really, the things we like least about ourselves.

Hating others gives us an easy way to escape our own feelings of discomfort. If we can hate them, we don’t have to look too hard in our own mirror.

In mediaeval Europe, that was a big part of how antisemitism functioned. Jews were the “other” onto which their neighbours projected all their anxieties.

The Jews, according to the antisemitic imagination of the time, were usurers, stealing money from people. In the Middle Ages, most money-lenders were not Jewish. They were Christians. At this time, certain Christians were also becoming very wealthy as landlords and merchants. Rather than deal with it as a social problem shared by everyone, they racialised it. They turned it into a Jewish problem, so that they did not have to face it as their own.

Even the blood libel, a mediaeval conspiracy theory that Jews drank Christian blood, can be understood as projection. As part of regular Catholic services, they drink the blood of Jesus, in the form of wine. Clearly feeling some guilt about their own rituals, they thrust this fear onto the Jews. It is not us who drink blood, it’s them!

It is probably not a coincidence that the modern antisemitic trope of Jews ruling the world came about when the European empires were at their height.

Antisemitism was a way for Europeans to resolve their discomfort about who they were by turning it into hatred of someone else.

Still, if I only talk about how bad and racist others once were, I would be projecting. The point is not that they can do it, but that we can. 

We are very capable of making demons where there are just people. We can just as equally project our own fear by turning it into hatred of others.

We need to remember that the world is not made of heroes and villains. Humanity cannot be divided up so easily. 

If we look at the biblical story, as it appears in the Torah, Laban is not a monster. Nor is Jacob. They are just people. Flawed, messy, human beings, doing wrong, and making mistakes. They both did wrong. But neither of them were evil.

The Torah gives us a whole host of complicated characters. They are not models of perfect behaviour. They are not even moralising cautionary tales. They are just a reflection of reality: which is complex and scary. We learn best from our imperfect prophets. 

Rather than trying to resolve our anxieties with hatred, let us look inside ourselves.

When you see something in someone else that you hate, ask: what is it in me that makes me feel this?

When another group seems like devils, ask yourself: are we really angels?

People will do wrong. All the time. They will mess up and cause pain in all kinds of ways.

Most of the time, we cannot change that.

But we can work on the things we can change in ourselves.

We can forgive the things we cannot change. 

And if you accept that you are capable of harm, without it making you evil, you may be able to have compassion for yourself.

And you may find that you love yourself, after all. 

You may see yourself the way God sees you. As an imperfect human who makes mistakes. Not a monster. Just a mess. A thoroughly lovable mess. 

And if you can love yourself, warts and all, you may find you have less space left to hate others. You may find that you contain more compassion and empathy than you knew. 

The things we hate in others are the things we hate in ourselves.

The things we love in ourselves, we can love in others too.

Shabbat shalom.

high holy days · sermon

We can be proud of how we handle death

levtaylor

It is no secret that Oaks Lane sees its fair share of death. The fact that so many of you are here for this service is testament to that.

This is one of the Reform movement’s largest synagogues, and a large number of our members die each year. During the Covid pandemic, Rabbi Lisa carried out some 350 funerals. How she managed to do that with such grace will always be a source of personal wonder to me.

Before I came here, then, I expected that coming to work at Oaks Lane would mean constantly swimming against a tide of grief. I thought that this community would be defined by pain and sadness, eking out moments of joy through a long slew of burials.

I was wrong. I was wrong about Oaks Lane. More importantly, I was wrong about grief.

I had accepted the conventional wisdom that grieving was the tough work of slogging through sadness. I believed, without much interrogation, that people had to process stages of denial and anger and sadness to eventually begrudgingly accept the mortality of their loved ones. 

Yet, when I began working in this synagogue, I was astounded by what actually happened. I discovered that, in their last moments, people were eager to pass on their happiest moments and their favourite jokes. 

I found that, while funerals were always deeply sombre affairs, shiva houses could be full of raucous laughter and mourners could be alleviated by relief that the deceased had gone on to a better place. I was amazed at how quickly families made meaning of their loss, and turned the memory of their loved one into positive action. 

Even concerning the saddest and most unjust deaths, the grieving people of this community are amazingly strong.

The truth is that this congregation can feel very proud of how it handles grief.

It turns out that grief is deeply sad, but that’s not all it is. It also shows the immense capacity human beings have to be resilient.

That observation is now supported by scientific study. The psychologist George Bonnano has dedicated his life to studying grief. When he first came to look at bereavement, he found that, while there were plenty of big claims about how grief works, there was scant little evidence to back it up. 

Over years of working with mourners, hearing their stories, and measuring their emotional responses, Dr Bonnano found that all the stereotypes about grieving were wrong. 

As it turned out, the five stages of grief rarely turned up in people’s lived experiences. In many cases, people did not need to go deep into the recesses of their subconscious to find out why a death had hurt them so much. 

Quite on the contrary, many mourners found that they could make meaning of their lives and honour their dead. Many grieving people found that their emotions were close at hand, and that they could handle them best by being honest about them.

Above all, mourners did not need to “get over” their sadness. Instead, people emotionally processed best when they understood their sadness as a helpful emotion. Sadness, it turns out, slows us down, makes us more contemplative, helps us to create more accurate memories, and focuses us on what truly matters.

Bonanno discovered that one of the factors that made people most adverse to handling grief was the Western obsession with reason. The demand that we be constantly rational, strip ourselves of rituals, and just ignore our spiritual inclinations in times of distress actually exacerbates emotional trauma, and can prolong the grieving process. 

Of course, that does not mean dealing with death is easy. For some people, the sadness can go on for years, and some people experience very traumatic and complex grief. In all of his studies, Bonnano could not find a single unifying factor for why some struggled more than others. It doesn’t really say anything about a person or their loved one if they struggle more with death.  In fact, it seems to be largely random.

One thing Bonnano did find is that, in cultures that ritualise communicating with their dead, and that have a sense of death’s sacred purpose, mourning is often healthier.

From that point of view, I think we Jews can be very proud of how we deal with death.

The tractate of the Talmud that deals with death and dying is called smachot. Literally, the word means “joys” or “festive celebrations.” I had always assumed that the title was a euphemism, to cover over all the other great feelings associated with death. 

Now, I wonder if perhaps the rabbis gave it that title as a reminder of what was at stake. Yes, you will feel sadness, but all of those are for the sake of remembering your joys. Yes, these mourning rituals will be sad and sombre occasions, but they may also be festive celebrations of the lives you have lost.

Smachot sets out a clear set of guidelines for how to handle death. Bury as soon as possible. Sit in remembrance for seven days. Avoid certain kinds of work for thirty. Say kaddish for a year. 

At every stage, the rabbis provide us with a spiritual framework that means we always have something to do, and continually have receptacles for our grief. With the infrastructure established, Jews are free to experience the full gambit of emotions associated with death.

In addition to its regulations on mourning, Smachot advises ways to handle people who are grieving. Rabbi Meir teaches that, in the early days of somebody’s bereavement, you should offer them words of consolation, then ask them how they are. After the first thirty days, you should ask them how they are, and then offer words of comfort. By the time twelve months have passed, you shouldn’t bring up the death at all unless the mourner does, so that you do not re-open wounds. 

All of this provides a way to speak openly and honestly about grief, without allowing it to be all-consuming. I find this rabbinic wisdom incredibly powerful, but it is even more poignant when we see it in real life.

Over the last year, I have watched in awe as our senior rabbi handled his own grief. This time last year, Rabbi Jordan and I switched our expected slots, and I took the yizkor service, so that Rabbi Jordan could have a chance to grieve his recently deceased mother. 

Grief could have swallowed Jordan up. Instead, he set up a weekly minyan so that he could say kaddish with all the others who were bereaved. He wore his mourning openly, and channelled it into helping everyone in the community to heal. Perhaps most surprisingly, throughout that whole period of aveilut, Jordan led this congregation with integrity, sincerity and passion. There is much in here for him to feel proud.

I am also continually impressed by the Jewish Joint Burial Society, whose work can never be sufficiently celebrated. Whenever I call Mitzi, Ian or Andrew, they combine a great sense of dignity with humour and good spirit. They oversee hundreds of funerals every year, and support families in their very hardest moments, and do so with an incredible sense of holy purpose. They are an endless source of pride.

More than anything, this community is a source of pride. Its volunteers in the care team leap at the chance to call up people on their yahrzeits. I rarely attend to a family that hasn’t already heard from a congregant already. Alan, Adrienne, Hazel, Brenda, Sheila, and Ailsa… you do more for the people in this congregation than you will ever fully know.

And that is true for all of you. As members, you repeatedly show up for each other and support each other. As mourners, you do everything in your power to honour your loved ones.

So keep on doing what you’re doing. Keep asking after each other. Keep showing up. Keep being vulnerable and honest. 

As we sit here, together, mourning our dear loved ones, know that you are here for yourself and you are here for everyone else. And we truly appreciate your presence. 

I am incredibly proud of how this community handles death.

Gmar chatimah tovah.

high holy days · sermon · theology

You are the impossible child God yearned for.

levtaylor

You are the impossible child God yearned for.

You are a miracle. 

You may not hear that often, and you probably think about it even less, but you truly are.

The British-Indian poet Nikita Gill has written about just how unlikely is the fact of your existence:

“The very idea that you exist considering those extremely low odds is a miracle on its own. You see, the exact DNA that comes from your parents to create you could have only happened when your parents met, which is 1 chance in 20,000. That alone should be enough, but when you add up the fact that it has taken 5-10 million years of human evolution for you to exist at this time, in this moment, you begin to recognise just how much of an impossibility you are.”

– Nikita Gill

Add to that, and remember that you are a Jew. Remember that in those 10 million years of evolution, Judaism has existed for only 3,000 of them, and is still one of the world’s oldest continuously existing cultures. You are the product of a long line of ancestors, dating back to desert nomads, who, at one time, heard the voice of an invisible God, and kept that story alive for hundreds of generations. That is a miracle.

In the last century, the ancestors who held onto that story fled from countries all over the world, and migrated to farthest corners of the earth, and faced down war and genocide, and survived extermination. Faced with such experiences, many turned away from their heritage and disappeared from Jewish life.

But you are here, in the 21st Century, alive, and Jewish, and living out that story. You are the product of billions of years of matter interacting and millions of years of human evolution and thousands of years of cultural transmission. You are here. And that is an incredible, awe-inspiring miracle.

One of the prevailing themes of Rosh Hashanah is the miracle of human life. It is everywhere: in our liturgy, in our Torah portions, and in our haftarah. All of them are bound together by a sense of wonder at our existence.

Three weeks ago, we read the prophet Isaiah, who expressed joy at the wonder of childbirth. His great prophecy opens:

“Sing for joy, infertile woman, you who never bore a child! Sing for joy and laugh aloud, you who never felt a stomach cramp. Because the children of the barren are more numerous than those who suckled infants.”

But who is this talking about? Who is the sterile woman giving birth to the miracle child?

In the 9th Century, the great collection of rabbinic stories, Midrash Pesikta Rabbati, offered us three answers: Sarah, Hannah, and Jerusalem. At Rosh Hashanah, we read the stories of all three.

In the Torah portion, we read of Sarah’s miraculous labour. Sarah was elderly and post-menopausal. When three angels told her she would give birth in a year, she laughed. For years, she had yearned for a child, but, in her old age, she had given up. How would her withered husband and her empty womb bear a child? 

A year later, Sarah gave birth. She ate her words and called her baby boy Yitzhak, meaning ‘laughter.’ She said: “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.”

A miracle. An impossible birth. So that infertile woman who had never had a child rejoiced, just as Isaiah described.

In our haftarah, we read, too, of Hannah’s wondrous labour. She was infertile. Her husband Elkanah’s other wife, Peninah, had plenty of children. Peninah became her rival, and relentlessly mocked her, saying that God had closed her womb.

In the depths of her despair, Hannah prayed to God. She whispered fervent promises to God that, if she was allowed a baby, he would be dedicated forever to religious service. 

As Hannah prayed, she was so full of silent anguish and tears, that the High Priest Eli thought she was drunk. He heckled her to sober up. But when she explained that her behaviour was the product of deep distress, Eli prayed with her that her wish be granted.

A year later, Hannah gave birth, and called her baby “Shmuel,” meaning “I asked God for this.”

Another miracle. A barren woman who bore no children rejoiced, just as Isaiah described.

Pesikta Rabbati offers a third infertile woman to whom Isaiah’s proclamation might refer: the city of Jerusalem.

At the last major event in the Jewish calendar, Tisha BeAv, we commemorated Jerusalem’s destruction. We fasted, wept and prayed, remembering how the holy city was razed to the ground. Following the destructions by Assyria and Rome, that city was left stripped of its inhabitants. Its most sacred spaces were desecrated and burned. The whole town was abandoned like an empty womb.

And out of that barren place came Judaism. At the time when it most seemed like the Jews had been destroyed, the rabbis came forward and gave them life previously unknown. They developed tefillah, Mishnah, midrash, and Talmud. 

They spread the message of ethical monotheism throughout the entire globe. Judaism, from its point of near-destruction, became one of the world’s most notable religions, and influenced civilisations everywhere.

Jerusalem was an infertile womb, out of which came more children than could ever have been imagined.

Sarah yearned for a child and was blessed. Hannah yearned for a child and was blessed. Jerusalem yearned for children, and now has millions.

But there is another impossible birth that we must celebrate. An unbridled miracle. A human being created by God out of nothing, who had the potential to be the saviour of all humanity.

Whose birth was that? 

Yours.

What, did you think I was going to say somebody else?

For the Christians, that person was Jesus. In their story, their Messiah was born by immaculate conception to a virgin mother. For them, Jesus’ birth fulfilled the prophecy related by Isaiah.

In the 9th Century CE, when this midrash was composed, Christianity had become a full-fledged international religion. It was the official doctrine of the Roman Empire, and was spreading throughout Europe through the Carolingian Empire. Christian polemicists criticised Jews for denying the truth of their Testament, and insisted that their story completed our Torah. 

Part of the motivation for the compiler of Pesikta Rabbati must have been to show that Isaiah could easily be proven from texts within the Jewish canon. But, more than a difference of interpretation, this midrash speaks to a fundamental difference between how Jews and Christians have seen the world. For us, Jesus is not the beloved child of God born by miracle. You are.

As Lily Montagu, the great religious reformer and East End social worker, put it:

“We have the belief that man can directly commune with his God, that he needs no intercessor […] The Christian feels himself brought into contact with God by means of Jesus, his Saviour. Jesus is conceived as, in a special sense, the son of God, and as able to direct all seekers to the divine sanctuary. We Jews hold that every man is the son of God, and that all His children have access to Him when they try to live righteously.”

– Lily Montagu

So, all humanity is God’s miraculous creation. All humanity is in direct relationship with our Divine Creator. And all humanity has the potential to bring this world closer to its salvation.

Rosh Hashanah, as a festival, marks the sixth day of the world’s creation, on which the first ever human being was made. It celebrates the miraculous creation of Adam HaRishon, the original person, sculpted from clay and breathed alive with the sacred air from God’s nostrils.

Consider what a wonder this is. Knowing all that we do about the history of the universe, how many billions of years must God have spent yearning to create the first ever person. 

How impossibly beautiful is it, that, after the creations of thousands of galaxies and multitudes of planets, the Universe somehow put together the exact elements that would support life. And that life became social and conscious and able to reflect on its own existence. And, conscious of its own selfhood, that being was able to reach beyond itself and worship the Eternal Mystery that created it.

Who knows what the chances are? But it is certainly a miracle.

The cosmos was, at one point, an insignificant speck, devoid even of matter, and now it includes human beings. And now it includes you.

You are the impossible child God yearned for. You are a miracle.

However much you wish to connect with your Creator, just think how much your Creator wants to connect with you. Whenever you feel like you can’t quite find God, just take a second to contemplate how many billions of years God spent trying to find you.

Your existence is a miracle, and I am so glad you are here.

Shana tovah.