One of the loveliest parts of synagogue life, which many of you will have experienced here, is getting to teach our religion to visiting schools. It’s such a joy to pull out things we normally leave aside, and point to things we often take for granted.
By teaching others about our ritual objects, things that are familiar become foreign. We have to reconsider what they are, and why we have them.
Take, for example, the tallit. Of course, these prayer shawls have existed in some form since biblical times. But, showing them to non-Jewish children, we need to come up with an explanation for why we continue to use them here and now.
I tell the school kids: these four corners remind me that God is everywhere, and the knots on them tell me all of the good deeds I can do in my life.
I do, indeed, feel that way when I wrap myself in the tzitzit. I feel enveloped by God’s mantle. I see the strings and think of all the mitzvot- not, in the Orthodox sense of listing out food rules, but of all that God has asked me to do in this world.
It’s nice to have a visible reminder of God’s presence.
That’s just what Jacob gets in this week’s Torah portion. Jacob lies down while travelling on a certain mountain and has the profound dream of a ladder ascending to heaven, with angels going up and down.
In his dream, the Eternal One appears to promise Jacob many descendants, spreading out like dust across the desert, and that God will forever accompany Jacob on his travels.
When he awakes, Jacob exclaims: “Wow, God is in this place and I did not know it!”
How could Jacob not realise that God was on that mountain? Surely he already knows that God is everywhere?
Perhaps Jacob did not realise already that God is everywhere. For some commentators, this is the beginning of Jacob’s prophecy. Only now does he really understand who God is and that this God is with him.
There is a deeper meaning in the language, too. Before the revelation, God is called Elohim. For the ancients, Elohim was universal- the God that permeates all places and things.
Then, in the dream, God is announced by the ineffable Name, Hashem, which we often render as Adonai. This name of God, in Torah, is specific. It is the personal God, who communicates directly with human beings.
When Jacob awakes, he says: “Behold, Hashem is in this place, and I did not know it.”
Jacob knew that God in general was there, because God is generally everywhere, but only at this moment does Jacob realise that the personal God who cares about him is also present.
Now we can understand why God says to Jacob: “I will not leave you until I have done with you what I promised.” God is helping Jacob understand that he is never truly alone. Not only is the world full of God, but so is Jacob’s own life.
In fact, in the moment before Jacob falls asleep, a miracle happens that is so subtle it can’t be noticed until after he wakes up.
When Jacob lays down his head, the Torah says there are many stones in the place, and he takes one of them as a pillow. When he wakes up, there is only one under his head.
Our Talmud says that this is a divine act. According to Rabbi Yitzḥak, all the stones on the mountain argued with each other about who would lie under Jacob’s head. Unable to decide, they merged together into a single rock. That rock, in turn, became an altar to God.
This is a wonderful view of the world, where God is not only in all places and with human beings personally, but acts in every part of nature. Even stones are agents of miracles and servants of God.
If we take seriously this idea that God is everywhere and personally connected with all that exists, there are real consequences for our lives. It means that everything is sacred. It suggests that we need to treat this world as an arena for revealing divinity.
For Progressive Jews, this is one way we might think of commandments. Rather than just a list of dos and don’ts, they’re an attitude towards reality. They see everything as an opportunity to do good, and to make the world better. We are blessed with the chance to show how God is everywhere, including in our own actions.
The same section of the Talmud says that this is why God loves humanity so much. Angels can only praise God when they are told to. Rocks can only move by miracle. But we, endowed with freedom and reason, can perform miracles and make things sacred whenever we want.
That’s what I see when I look at the tzitzit of my tallit. That God is in every place and that every moment is a chance to do right.
You don’t need to wear a tallit to do that. This is my suggestion to you for this week. Try and shift, ever so slightly, how you see the world.
Look around, for a moment, and imagine that everything permeates God’s presence. See God in the bricks of your home and the slabs of the street. At some point this week, try to picture the space where you are as a massive canvas that you can paint with good deeds.
Let us all try to be like Jacob and say: “Wow, God was here, and I did not even know it.”
At home, my fiance paces back and forth, preparing for his exams in anaesthetics. In a week, he will be tested orally to see if he can become a consultant. He recites definitions of key medical terms, revises laws of physics, gives diagnoses of uncommon diseases.
One definition he has repeated so many times it is now imprinted in my mind too.
Death is the irreversible loss of capacity for consciousness and loss of capacity for breathing.
At times, we have pondered over such terms together. On long walks, we have discussed medical ethics through Jewish lenses. We have debated whether and how modern medicine aligns with ancient wisdom.
Now is not the moment to challenge him on the medical definition of death. But the definition sticks with me, because this is an area where I do not think science and religion align.
While Laurence prepares for his exams, you will have to listen to my thoughts on what Judaism teaches about mortality.
Death is the irreversible loss of capacity for consciousness and loss of capacity for breathing.
Is it? Is that what it means to die?
If it were, then would living simply be brain activity and breathing? Is that all we are?
Chayyei Sarah – the life of Sarah – is our portion. It opens with her death. By telling us about her life from her death, the Torah is telling us something about how life and death interact.
The parashah is a recounting of Sarah’s burial. It is a terse text, where the primary narrative concerns Abraham’s attempt to purchase a lot for internment.
So much is left unsaid. So many emotions are not expressed. In the silences and interstices, we are left to reconstruct our own imaginings of what Abraham was thinking. Let us try.
Abraham proceeded to cry and eulogise Sarah.
He held her hands, once so strong and firm. Those hands had kneaded bread for strangers at a moment’s notice. They had sewn garments for whole families. They had, at times, pointed accusations, separated children, raised objections… Strong hands. Determined hands. Strong, determined hands, that were now drained of all their vigour, and sat coldly in his own palms.
Abraham rose from beside his dead, and spoke to the Hittites.
Abraham sprang into action. Sarah had not died in the land of her own family in Egypt, nor of Abraham’s in Chaldea. They were in a strange place, far from their own homes, among Hittites in the hill-country of Canaan.
Abraham said: “Here I am, a stranger and a foreigner among you. Please sell me a piece of land so I can give my wife a proper burial.”
Sarah had left her father’s home in the palaces of Egypt, where she lived as a princess. She was an aristocrat in a great empire who gave it up to travel with a wandering man. Abraham claimed to have spoken with the One True God, and Sarah just followed him. She forsook luxury for a life on the road. Now, she lay dead on the road, and there would be no fine processions to pyramids to entomb her.
The Hittites replied to Abraham, “Listen, my lord, you are an honoured prince among us. Choose the finest of our tombs and bury her there. No one here will refuse to help you in this way.”
Sarah used to laugh with her whole belly. Her shoulders bounced up and down. She can find humour where nobody else could. Even when she struggled with infertility, she found ways of making jokes. Abraham would not hear her laugh again.
So Abraham bowed low before the Hittites and said, “Since you are willing to help me in this way, be so kind as to ask Ephron son of Zohar to let me buy his cave at Machpelah, down at the end of his field. I will pay the full price in the presence of witnesses, so I will have a permanent burial place for my family.”
Sarah had been so beautiful people tripped over themselves staring at her. On their wanders, every prince desired her. Sarah was as beautiful at 127 as she had been when they had first met. She was still just as honourable and God-fearing. Nobody would be as good and beautiful and true again.
Ephron was sitting there among the others, and he answered Abraham as the others listened, speaking publicly before all the Hittite elders of the town.
Sarah received no ennoblement or reward for marrying Abraham. Yet so much honour came to Abraham through her. She could see visions and speak with God.
“No, my lord,” he said to Abraham, “please listen to me. I will give you the field and the cave. Here in the presence of my people, I give it to you. Go and bury your dead.”
Abraham had bargained over everything. He had struck a deal with Avimelech to share water sources. He had even negotiated with God over the destruction of a city. This was a bargain he could not accept.
Abraham again bowed low before the citizens of the land, and he replied to Ephron as everyone listened.
“No, listen to me. I will buy it from you. Let me pay the full price for the field so I can bury my dead there.”
Abraham was ageing too. Who would bury him? He had cast out one son and tried to murder another.
Ephron answered Abraham, “My lord, please listen to me. The land is worth 400 pieces of silver, but what is that between friends?”
What is four hundred shekels between strangers? What is a price on the life of Sarah? What sort of burial could ever be enough for her?
Ephron said: “Go ahead and bury your dead.”
These are some words we may complete into the silences. They come from the other biblical stories and midrash, and they paint a fuller picture. In the spaces, we see that this is not a negotiation over a burial plot, but a negotiation over the nature of death.
Death is the irreversible loss of capacity for consciousness and loss of capacity for breathing.
Is it? Is that what it means to die?
If it were, then would living simply be brain activity and breathing? Is that all we are?
Medically, scientifically… maybe.
Spiritually, Jewishly… no.
Death is as much a journey as life is.
For seven days, we eulogise, as the last imprint of a person leaves us. For thirty days, we mourn, as the shock and grief harrow us. For eleven months, we pray, as some part of the soul heads on its journey to Heaven.
Then, every year, we say the names of the dead, and some part of our loved ones returns to us. Their soul breaks through the gaps in Aramaic words and we feel them with us once more.
Thousands of years later, we still say Sarah’s name, and some part of her keeps living long after breath and consciousness.
We are more than what we exhale: we are the laughter and joy we bring to others. We are more than our own thoughts: we are the memories living on in others.
In memory, in prayer, in faith, we grasp something greater than the material world.
Trusting in You, Eternal God, we see life beyond death.
A simple Jew prays to God on Yom Kippur, and says “Ribon shel olamim, ruler of the Universe, I do not have much to repent of. Not compared to you. Unlike you, O God, I have not taken away children from their parents; I have not taken away parents from their children; I have not allowed disease and starvation and war. Compared to you, Holy One, I have been a saint. So, this year, I won’t be repenting. It’s your turn to repent.”
The rabbi asks him, “what were you praying there?”
He tells her all that he’s said.
She says: “You fool! You let God off too easy. You should have told God to bring about the Redemption as well.”
I don’t know about you, but I haven’t felt much like repenting this year. After all, what have I done, compared to the enormity of wrongs perpetrated?
I haven’t killed anyone or waged any wars. I haven’t robbed anyone or embezzled any funds. To the best of my knowledge, I haven’t brazenly lied or misled. I certainly haven’t intentionally hurt anyone. I’m just not in the same league as the great sinners of our time.
And I don’t much feel like growing this year, either. Other years, I have enjoyed the stillness of Yom Kippur for reflection on being better. But I don’t feel like doing it this year.
Sure, I’m grateful for turning off my phone so I don’t have to look at all the bad news, but that’s more about self-care than self-improvement. I’m more interested in switching off from the world than in switching onto myself.
I mean, really, do I have to move? The world is changing so much, and not for the better. Shouldn’t I be allowed, as a one-off, to stop constantly evolving and just be as I am for a bit?
You know who else just wanted to stay still?
Jonah.
I think Jonah knew exactly how I am feeling now.
He was perfectly alright where he was, before God got involved and told him he needed to go and sort out all the problems of the world.
Who was Jonah in the scheme of things? He certainly was not a big player in the wrongs of the world. All of Nineveh’s sins were enormous and happening miles away. Why should he have to change himself?
So, when God called on Jonah to get up, that was already asking too much.
Jonah ran away to Tarshish. He shouted at God: “haven’t you got bigger fish to fry?”
God said: “you want to see a big fish? I’ll give you a big fish!”
One came along and swallowed him whole.
Now, all of the story before is about Jonah not wanting to move and all of the story after is about what happened after God moved him.
What happened in the whale, however, should really interest us.
This year, I feel like I’m in the whale. I am sitting in a puddle from which I feel like I cannot budge. I am stuck here and have no idea how to get out. All around me, the waves are crashing down and there’s nothing I can do to stop them.
(A pedant will point out it’s not actually a whale. Technically, it’s a big fish, and the idea of it being a whale came later. But, technically, I’m not actually inside a whale at all, I’m in a synagogue, so I’m going to stick with the idea of the whale because it feels evocative.)
Now, I’m not even on the level of Jonah. My task is not nearly as big and I am not even inside a literal whale. So Jonah should be a good starting-place for my feelings of stubbornness and obstinacy.
What did Jonah do inside that whale? He despaired. He observed. He prayed. He sang. He learnt. And, eventually, he repented and grew.
So, this Yom Kippur, let’s engage with the whale. Let’s focus just on the three days Jonah spent inside the belly. Maybe we can learn from Jonah what to do when everything feels too overwhelming but we know we have to change anyway.
The second chapter of the book of Jonah is not narrative-form, like the rest of the book. Only the first verse, where Jonah gets swallowed by the whale, and the last verse, where the whale spits Jonah back out again, follow a linear storyline.
The rest of the chapter, only eleven verses long, reads more like a poem. It is a song, where each verses contains a parallel structure. It would fit just as well in the Book of Psalms, where there are similar supplications to God.
If the second chapter of Jonah is a journey, it is only a spiritual one. Jonah himself remains completely static, stuck in the belly of the beast.
His soul, on the other hand, begins in the depths of despair, goes through questioning and defeat, recognises the glory of God, and finally comes out committed to getting out there, thanking God, making offerings, and taking part in the deliverance.
This feels like the most important chapter to us, then. We are just sitting and standing in the same space. But we are expecting our souls to move.
I am feeling stuck in a world I cannot change, but I know I have to get somewhere else spiritually. We can’t just sit around here and hope to become better people. We know it needs work. But without a narrative, how do we know what to do?
Well, in the spaces left by the absence of narrative, the rabbis come up with their own stories. Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer is a collection of creative writing, compiled over many generations, that retells the biblical stories. These are our midrash, and in this rabbinic fan-fiction, we get a story to go with everything that Jonah says.
From these stories, we might come up with our own meanings of what we should be doing here.
The first thing Jonah does is acknowledge where he is. He accepts that he is in the belly of the fish.
The midrash gives us a grandiose interpretation of what that looked like. It was like entering into the great synagogue: an enormous, echoey chamber. The fish’s eyes were two great windows, so that Jonah could see what was going on underwater. Inside the fish was a giant pearl, which illuminated the belly and shone out towards the sea. With a lamp and windows, Jonah had a clear vision of where he was.
What can we learn from this? We learn that we need to be honest with ourselves about where we are. The world is a bit of a mess right now, and there’s no point putting on a happy face and pretending everything is OK. Equally, we are pretty safe here. We in this room are not under attack, and the risk we would be is very low.
So, start by taking stock of reality. Where am I? I’m in a synagogue, sitting on a comfy chair, with my feet planted on firm ground. I can see the lights of the room and smell that familiar sweet must of this religious space.
But it’s not enough to just say where we are. We need to say how we feel. That’s what Jonah does next.
He says: “I am crying out to God from my narrow-straits, please answer me.” Jonah says, “I am crying out from the belly of Hell, may God hear my voice.”
The midrash says, that’s exactly where the whale took him. It plunged him right down into the depths and showed him the gates to Hell.
So, we need to do the same. We need to ask ourselves how we are really feeling. Be honest about the frustrations and worries and anger we feel.
Next, Jonah finds a way to relate what is going on to what has gone before. In the depths of the ocean, Jonah says, he sees the billows and waves and reeds.
According to the midrash, this is because the whale took him on a tour, not just of the sea, but of Jewish history. The whale showed Jonah the foundations of the earth, deep on the ocean-floor, and reminded him that God had made the world. The fish took him to the Sea of Reeds, and showed him the flora of the spot where the Israelites had crossed out of Egypt.
Faced with adversity, we have to remember that it has happened before. Once, there was nothing, then the world came into being. Once, we were slaves, but then we were freed. Wars and persecutions and empires have all come before and, somehow, our people have survived.
We, as individuals, have also survived challenges before. How recent was the Covid pandemic? We can take pride in our own resilience at getting through such troubles before.
Knowing what had gone before, Jonah was able to feel confident that he could face what was to come. Jonah cries out: “You saved my life from the very pits, O Eternal One my God!”
The midrash says that this came when the whale took Jonah down to meet the great sea-monster of the deep, Leviathan. Jonah told that nautical dragon: “You may think you are going to swallow me up, but I carry the promise of Abraham, and I know that one day, when God chooses, it will be you who gets eaten by the righteous.”
Like Jonah, let’s look at the problems ahead of us, and say: “I have faith. I can face you.”
Next, Jonah reflects back on what he has learned. He notices: “Those who cling onto empty folly forsake their own welfare.” He had been willing to stay where he was, clinging onto old vanities, but he did so at the expense of his own soul.
So, he proclaims, instead: “I, with loud thanksgiving, will sacrifice to You, God.”
We, too, can be grateful for what we have, and take on this next year in service of our Creator.
That is the journey on which Jonah took his soul, and it is where I hope to take mine over this Day of Repentance.
I said I wanted to stay still, but stillness is not inactivity. The Rambam understood that serious thinking was the most active you could be. It connects you directly to that Most Active Intellect: the thinking, living God.
In stillness, you can nurture who you are. Jonah was stuck in an underwater pit, but that was when he got most energised. It was when he really engaged in the audit of his soul.
This year, I have spoken to friends and community members and witnessed them say things they normally would never. People who would ordinarily be very liberal, turn racist. People who are normally very peaceful, justifying violence. People who are normally pretty discerning, regurgitating conspiracy theories. People who are usually nuanced, turn to absolutist thinking.
I am not saying this with any judgement. I say it because I’ve done it too.
And when I meet this now, I try to say to myself: I know you are scared and angry, and while you are feeling scared and angry, you can hold all those feelings. You are inside the whale.
But one day, please God, you will be released from this whale, and you will have to reckon with who you became there.
Take care of your soul. It is a precious gift. Don’t let it become too cynical or warped by the horrors that surround it.
That’s my goal for this Yom Kippur: to hold my soul with gentleness, and ask it to be porous and empathic and kind.
I am here, inside the whale. I cannot change what whale I am inside. I cannot stop the waves from crashing or remake the world so it is less scary.
I can only change what I can change. And what I can change, in this moment, on this Yom Kippur, is myself. I just have to deal with who I am here and now.
So, let’s be like Jonah. Let’s accept the whale we’re in, and, yes, despair, but also observe, pray, sing, learn, repent.
And it may be that, when we finally get blown out from that great fish’s blowhole, we might still be better people than when we got swallowed up.
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.
We are nearing the end of Sukkot and entering Simchat Torah.
We move from fragility to strength, from an open roof to a closed scroll, from the impermanence of life to the eternal truth of God.
What makes a sukkah kosher is its frailty. With its open walls and starlit roof, it stands in for all our wanderings and confusion. It is makeshift and temporary.
In its fragile state, it teaches us about the human condition: that we are vulnerable, at the whim of forces beyond our control. Into this transient home, we bring guests, both living and ancestral, who teach us that we only live by community.
The sukkah teaches us about the human heart: that it must be open and porous, welcoming to strangers, able to let others in and accept our own emotional helplessness.
But the sukkah also has another feature of what makes it kosher. It must be able to stand for eight days. It must be strong enough to withstand the weather. It cannot be drowned by rain or upended by windstorms.
This, too, teaches us about the spirit. We must be resilient. We must be confident enough to know our boundaries. We must be strong enough not to let others wave or topple us.
This is the tension we hold in the transition between Sukkot and Simchat Torah: between fragility and strength.
There is a story that Abraham’s tent was open on all sides.
Wherever Abraham looked, he could see whether strangers were coming to visit him.
If he looked out and saw them coming, he would run to meet them. Abraham was the model of generosity, so full of love for the wayfarer that he would do anything to let them in.
This explains why he greeted the angels who came to visit him at Mamre so enthusiastically, even though he thought they were just human beings. It explains how he was righteous enough to receive God’s blessing, and to become the progenitor of monotheism.
This is the version of the story that we find in Bereishit Rabbah, and you will find it printed in all sorts of commentaries. It is a beautiful myth that captures our imaginations and features heavily in sermons preaching charity. It teaches us about the importance of welcoming.
But it is not the only version of the story in rabbinic literature. A few centuries later, Avot deRabbi Natan, a commentary on the same text, explains it slightly differently. Instead of the example of Abraham, this midrash says we should be like Job.
It teaches:
Your house should have a spacious entrance on the north, south, east, and west, like Job’s, who made four openings to his house. Job opened up every side so that the poor would not be troubled to go all around the house: no matter what direction a stranger came from, they could enter in their stride.
At a glance, it tells the same story, just with a different prophet named. Job was also described as righteous and upright, a man who feared God and turned away from evil.
But there is a difference. Unlike Abraham’s, Job’s house is actually mentioned as having four sides. How do we know? Because, at the very start of Job’s story a messenger comes to tell Job that his house has blown down. “Amighty wind swept in from the desert and struck the four corners of the house. It collapsed on the young people and they are dead.”
Job’s house was so open that it was destroyed and killed everyone in it.
Job’s house was open on all sides. No wonder it fell down!
This later midrash is satirising the earlier one. Sure, openness is good, but too much openness leaves you exposed.
We have to exist, instead, in the tension between fragility and strength; between vulnerability and boundaries.
It may seem strange to preach boundaries from the bimah. Admittedly, it feels strange to me.
I used to believe that openness was the ultimate religious value. That being hospitable and welcoming were the most important spiritual attributes. And I do still hold them in high regard.
But I am increasingly learning that it is equally important to have structural integrity, and borders, and lines that cannot be crossed. Without them, the entire structure collapses, and the people the structure was established to protect can be destroyed with it.
Sukkot teaches us to live with utmost susceptibility, but only for a short time. We must eat and sleep and live in this shaky fruity shack, exposed to all elements and strangers. It teaches us to put ourselves in harm’s way.
But not forever.
At some point, the sukkah must come down. At some point, we must return to our own beds and kitchen tables and modern comforts. At some point, we have to hold on to something firm.
As we enter Simchat Torah, we turn to that certainty. That is our Torah, our faith, our belief in God-given moral truths. We grasp it steadfastly, and refuse to waiver from it.
Torah is our foundation. It is our immovable structure. There is some truth that we must hold on to tightly, never allowing it to be permeated or eroded. For us, that is our moral conviction.
The Mishnah instructs us to build a fence around the Torah. This commandment has been abused by some in Orthodoxy to justify always taking the most conservative approach, defending every law against the slightest leniency or adaptation. As such, Reform Jews have often poured scorn on the assertion, seeing it always as a reactionary threat.
But a fence is not the same as a wall. In fact, the word used in the Mishnah is siyag, which is closer to hedge. It is a boundary. It is a line that keeps some things in and some things out. It is a way of protecting the essence.
That does not mean it has no ways in and no ways out. It just means that some things must be shielded.
We are nearing the end of Sukkot and entering Simchat Torah.
We move from fragility to strength, from an open roof to a closed scroll, from the impermanence of life to the eternal truth of God.
We have learnt to be vulnerable and precarious. Now, we must learn to protect what we love.
At Yom Kippur, we stand trial. The Heavenly Court convenes and charges the Jewish people with its sins.
The Accuser lays out the prosecution. They have sinned. They have betrayed. They have been two-faced. The people have been angry, cruel, violent, hypocritical, dishonest and corrupt. All the evidence is laid out before the Holy One, who presides over the case as its Judge.
The evidence is pretty compelling. We have been everything that the Accuser says we have, and more. We cannot pretend to have been perfect. In fact, we have fallen pretty far short of decent.
The Angel of Mercy steps forward to plead in our defence. True, the Jews have been callous and unkind, but they have also been charitable, supportive, participated in mutual aid groups, called up vulnerable people, tried to make peace with their friends and neighbours. They have done their best.
The Accuser laughs out scornfully. “I challenge you,” says the avenging angel, “to weigh up this people’s good deeds against its pad. Set their mitzvot on the scales of justice and see how they manage against all their malice. Let’s see whether their good even comes close to counter-balancing their bad.”
The Angel of Mercy is nervous. Of course, they won’t win. The good deeds aren’t nearly numerous enough. Every one has been kept and held tight over the year. This is a sure way for the Jews to lose.
Perhaps the compassionate Angel can plead extenuating circumstances. After all, we’ve been through a pandemic. There has been so much uncertainty. The Jews have had to work from home with screaming children. They have been cut off from all their usual support systems. They have dealt with unimaginable stress.
Surely, God understands that they can’t be expected to have been on their best behaviour. Not this year. This has been the hardest year yet. And, yes, to be fair, the Angel of Mercy did make the same excuse last year, but this year really was even worse. It really was.
God interjects; raises a single finger. “Enough evidence,” God says. “This year, I have decided just to let it slide.”
Now, both prosecution and defence look confused. They glance at each other, the assembled Heavenly Court room, and we defendants here gathered in our witness box. Perhaps the Holy One has made a mistake?
“It is true,” says God “that this people Israel has done much evil, and it is true that they have done some good. Their good does not amount to much and their evil is pretty damning. Yes, there are extenuating circumstances, but they are not very convincing. I did, after all, give this Torah to all times and places, including to Covid-stricken Britain. So there is no good reason to forgive the Jews. But, having weighed up all the evidence, I’ve decided I’m just going to forgive anyway. I’m just going to pardon them. Court adjourned.”
And that’s it. That’s the end of Yom Kippur on high for another year.
It was over quickly. But it went exactly as it did last year. And the year before that. And every year going back to when humanity was first created.
This is the story told by Pesikta Rabbati, a great collection of stories and sermons from Jews in the 9th Century CE. According to this midrash, when Yom Kippur comes around, the Accusing Angel charges the Jews with all its sins before God.
This Angel heaps all of our sins on top of the scales of justice. They weigh down heavily, and it’s clear that the sins outnumber the good deeds.
God then gives greater value to the good deeds so that they can override the evil, but the Accuser has many more sins to submit in evidence.
So, says our midrash, God hides our sins. God wears a long purple cloak and shoves all the sins under it. God sneaks the sins off the scales, and determines to find us innocent anyway.
Our sins are removed and hidden away.
“Yom Kippur” is often translated as “The Day of Atonement,” but the literal meaning of “kippur” is “cover,” “curtail,” “tuck away.” This is the day when our sins are submerged under the great cover of God’s forgiveness.
They don’t disappear, but God is able to hide them away and forget them. For the sake of love of humanity, God just lets us off.
Lo ‘al tzidkateinu – not because of our righteousness do we pray for God’s forgiveness, but because of God’s unending love. Only on account of God’s infinite compassion do we get to carry on. God’s forgiveness is infinite and instant.
But if we already knew God would forgive us, why do we bother? Why turn up here for Kol Nidrei, and afflict ourselves, and spend 25 hours in prayer? What’s all this for?
Well, it might take God only a short while to forgive, but for us it takes a bit more work. We have to go through some effort to get to a fraction of that clemency. So, we take our time to look within, examine our imperfections, and release the guilt we have been feeling. Now is the time for us to forgive.
This year may seem like it requires more forgiveness than usual. This is an unprecedented time for conflict between friends and family, personal struggles, grief, job losses and frustration. It is hardly surprising that people feel so much resentment.
I speak to people angry about how much they have lost. Time. Money. Strength. Health. Joy. Socialising. All these things that we have been robbed of. We have struggled in ways never experienced before.
Understandably, people want to place the blame elsewhere. They project their anger onto others who they imagine haven’t followed the rules enough, or who have taken it all too seriously, or who don’t think the same way as they do.
All that anger does is sit inside of the people who hold onto it. It won’t help get back what has been lost. The weight of holding onto slights without forgiving just pulls us down. It just holds us back from growth. The only way to move forward is to let go.
That is why we have forgiveness. We acknowledge our hurt. We take stock of the injuries. And then, although it may be painful, we let go. We accept the way things are and make peace with what can’t be undone.
So, I urge you to forgive.
You might not get closure. You might not get apologies. You might not get reconciliation. Try to forgive anyway.
The people who have hurt you probably did much wrong. And they probably didn’t do enough to make up for it. And all the dire circumstances will not feel like enough to excuse their behaviour. If you can, excuse it anyway.
The people who you forgive might not be big enough to forgive you back. Still, consider forgiveness.
In the build up to Yom Kippur, we were supposed to apologise to everyone we wronged. You did apologise, didn’t you? Me neither. Not enough. Not completely. Not to everyone. Not for everything.
And I know my own reasons. I have been so tired and preoccupied and overworked and anxious. I have been too busy getting by to be trusting or vulnerable. The right time to apologise just never came up.
But I still want to be forgiven. And I know God has already found a way to be merciful towards me. So I will have to reciprocate.
At Yom Kippur, we stand trial, and God finds us not guilty. Not because we deserve it, but because God has decided to put trust in us. Our task over Yom Kippur is to validate that trust.
So, we will try to forgive. It is not easy. It may well feel incomplete, and some things may be beyond pardon. Nevertheless, let us try to leave some of the pain of the previous year behind.
Let us endeavour to accept people, including ourselves, flawed as we are, and move on.
Gmar chatimah tovah.
This is my Kol Nidrei sermon for South West Essex and Settlement Reform Synagogue
I am told that, as a toddler, whenever it came to game-playing, I had to be Postman Pat. No matter what the game was, I insisted on playing that friendly gentleman with a black and white cat. As I grew up, I had to compete with other children for different parts in our roleplay. We couldn’t all be the robbers, somebody would have to be the cops. Not everyone can be the Yellow Power Ranger and we can’t all be Ginger Spice.
Those were, at least, the parts we competed for in the 1990s. It was fairly low stakes, but it seemed quite important at the time.
But it’s nothing compared to the fight for roles that went on in the 5th Century CE. This big broigus was not just between two individuals, but between two whole religious groups: the Jews and the Christians. That battle was played out in two foundational texts of our traditions: a sermon by St Augustine of Hippo on the Christian side and the midrash, Bereishit Rabbah, for the Jews. Both were determined that they were Jacob, and the other side was Esau.
Which one would get to be Jacob?
At stake in this question is an ancient prophecy, told to Rebecca while she was pregnant: “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples will emerge from your body. One shall be stronger than the other; and the older shall serve the younger.”
When Rebecca gave birth to Jacob and Esau, she was not just birthing twins, but rival nations. A strong one and a weak one. An older one that would serve the younger.
We have Esau: the hairy, ruddy hunter. We have Jacob: the smart, younger upstart.
The contest over Isaac’s blessing and birthright laid out in our parashah was more than a competition between siblings. It was a war between peoples.
So which one is the Jews? And which one is the Christians?
As far as the Jewish texts are considered, Jacob must be the Jewish nation. Meak and smart? That’s us. Gentle but witty? Sounds Jewish. He even changed his name to Israel. Bnei Yisrael, the children of Israel, klal Yisrael, the community of Israel, daat Yisrael, the laws of the Jews. Surely Jacob must be us!
And meanwhile Esau… well, he’s Rome. He changed his name to Edom, which, granted, is on the other side of the River Jordan in Mount Seir, but was the birthplace of Rome’s most wicked emperor and Temple-destroyer, Hadrian. And look at those Romans. They’re the hairy, barbarous, fighting ones. They’ve got their swords and their empires, just as Esau had his bow and his field.
Two proud nations are in your womb, one is proud of his world and one is proud of his kingdom. Two prides of their nations are in your womb – Hadrian amongst the gentiles and Solomon amongst the Israelites.
We’re Jacob. We’re the one that God has chosen. We are the descendants of Solomon, proud of the world of Torah and obligation. They’re Esau. They’re the other brother. They’re the descendants of Hadrian, proud of their ill-gotten Empire.
Except, of course, for one obvious problem. Jacob is supposed to be the younger brother. Aren’t we, the Jews, clearly the older sibling? Our revelation is much older than the Christian one and the kingdom of David long predates the Caesarian Empire.
This fact was not missed by our Christian interlocutors.
Foremost among these Christians was St Augustine of Hippo. Augustine was a Father of the Christian Church, a theologian living in North Africa. His ideas were definitive in Christianity for many centuries, and people of all religious stripes still reverentially refer back to his writings. As far as Augustine was concerned, Jacob had to be Christendom. Israel, God’s treasured child, was the Church.
True, says Augustine, the Jewish nation sprang from Jacob, but since then, they have gone on to become Esau. They’re the elder people whom God has rejected. Esau was born shaggy and hairy, which means full of sins. Just look at the Jews – that’s clearly them!
Augustine continues: the prophecy promised that the elder would serve the younger, but that never happens in the biblical text. Esau goes on to become very rich and both wind up blessed in their lifetimes. Clearly, this refers to events that had not yet transpired: that the real Jacob would go on to have the upper hand. Now look at the world of Augustine, where the Christian Empire spans the globe and the Jews are a fractured diaspora in their lands. Surely this is the proof that the Jews are now Esau, serving their younger brother, the Christian Jacob.[1]
This battle of biblical exegesis probably sounds quite twee today. After all, why should it matter which of our religions gets to be Jacob? But this battle for religious identity and purpose shaped interfaith relations in medieval Europe.
If the Jews were Esau, then the Christians had replaced them as Jacob. Judaism was superseded, no longer necessary, and its practitioners were hairy remnants of an outdated doctrine. As Esau, the Jews were a savage menace who needed to be tamed by the genteel, pious Christians in their role as Jacob. This Christian doctrine was the theological basis for Jewish subjugation in Europe.
Faced with such hostility and oppression, it was only natural that medieval Jews felt the need to double down and insist that they were still Jacob. They imagined that Christian dominion would only last so long but that the Jews would ultimately triumph. They could still be Israel, despite what was said about them.
The modern era has seen reconciliation between Jews and Christians. Over time, theologians and historians on both sides have come to emphasise their kinship over rivalry. Perhaps, in the conflict over who got to be Jacob, these twin religions forgot that they were, in fact, siblings. Perhaps, still stuck in childhood contests, our communities had ignored the way the story ends.
By the time of the story’s completion, Jacob and Esau are no longer warring for the same birthright. They have both struggled, and lost, and achieved their own blessing. In maturity, Jacob and Esau meet again and wrap their arms around each other. They weep as they realise that God’s blessing is not finite. They never needed to fight over it.
After 2000 years of struggle, perhaps we Jews and Christians can reach the same intellectual adulthood. The campaign for who is the favourite brother can be put aside as we realise that we are on twin paths. We are both children of the same Divine Parent.
Perhaps we cannot all be Postman Pat, or Ginger Spice, or the same Power Ranger. But everyone can be Jacob.
I will give this sermon at Edgware and Hendon Reform Synagogue on Shabbat 21st November 2020 for Parashat Toldot.
[1] ‘Sermon on Jacob and Esau’, Jacob Rader Marcus and Marc Saperstein, The Jews in Christian Europe, pp. 33-34
A priest, a monk and a rabbi are debating which of their religions is the correct one. They decide to settle it with a contest to convert a bear to their religion.
The rabbi tries first. Two days later, the priest and the monk end up visiting him in the hospital.
The rabbi says: “OK, maybe I shouldn’t have begun with circumcision.”
Let’s set aside the foreskin jokes, because I don’t think the rabbi would have had much better luck with a lady bear. Isn’t it a strange fact of our religion that we almost never set out to proselytise?
We, of course, welcome all sincere converts, and this synagogue is happy to encourage anyone on their spiritual journey. But you won’t find us outside Asda, handing out flyers with words from the Mishnah. And you certainly won’t turn on your TV to see a rabbinic televangelist warning you about the perils of pork.
But if you think you have stumbled upon spiritual knowledge, don’t you want to share it with the world? Who are we to zealously guard the secrets of the universe?
Even if you take a more humble approach to Judaism’s teachings, and think they’re just as good as any other people’s, there must be something particularly worthwhile about Judaism for you to log in to this morning’s service rather than watching Bargain Hunt. (Wait, don’t go, I promise this is going somewhere!)
That strange paradox of Judaism – that we have a universal truth but don’t seek to spread it – is encapsulated in the story of Abraham.
This week, God tells Abraham: “Go out by yourself. I will make your name great and you shall be a blessing.”[1]
Then, in the next two verses, as if a parallel to the first, God says: “All the families of the earth shall be blessed by you.” Then Abraham goes out with Lot and Sarah.[2]
So… does Abraham go out to bless himself or does he go out to bless others? Which is it?
This is the great tension in Judaism. Do we exist only for Jews? If so, why are we trying to change the world? Or do we exist for humanity? In which case, why aren’t we trying to make everyone Jews?
Our midrash plays with this tension. Bereishit Rabbah, a collection of rabbinic explorations of Genesis, contains an unusual parable. In it, Rabbi Berekhyah compares Abraham to a tightly sealed bottle of perfume. The bottle was left in the corner and nobody smelt it. As soon as it was moved, its fragrance was emitted. This, says our midrash, is what it was like when God told Abraham to go out from place to place and make his name great in the world.[3]
Makes perfect sense, right? No? Fine, let’s unpack it.
Abraham is a tightly closed bottle of perfume when he starts out in Haran. At this stage, Abraham has encountered God. Abraham has realised that the idols amount to nothing and the Creator of the Universe is a singular and invisible presence. He is somehow pure and untouched. The Pagans have not affected his beliefs, and he has not affected theirs. He is hermetically sealed.
Then God tells him to lech lecha – to go out. Abraham moves around out from Haran and down to Shchem and Be’ersheva in the land of Canaan. As he moves between these places, others get to smell him. They encounter the truth that Abraham has learned about ethical monotheism. God is one and just! Now everywhere he goes people can get a whiff of this knowledge.
Only there’s another problem. Bottles of perfume don’t emit their scent because you move them. They only work when you open them. In this analogy, the balsamic bottle that is Abraham still remains sealed. How is he spreading his fragrances everywhere if he hasn’t even opened up?
I don’t think the editors of our midrash have made some mistake. I think they are telling us something profound about the Jewish paradox. We have a truth that we want others to know and yet we don’t want to convert anyone. Our role as a light unto the nations is that we go from place to place, showing others who we are, but not changing anything about who they are. We are still Abraham, that sealed bottle, going out from Haran, somehow expecting others to smell our perfumes but not opening up wide to spread our scent.
The very word “evangelism” is a Greek one, meaning good news, referring to the Christian Gospels. The early Church actively went out on recruitment drives, telling people about Jesus and his message. We have no such good news to share. What would we say to people? “Rejoice! God has commanded you to pursue justice and only eat unleavened bread in the springtime!” Jewish evangelism seems somehow a contradiction in terms.
And yet we do go out and share our beliefs. We are happy to expound our Torah to anyone. We expect to transform the societies we are in. When we speak out for justice wherever we live, we are very much hoping that others will take note of our concern for the stranger and adjust their actions accordingly. How can we reconcile this desire to change others with our lack of desire to convert them?
Perhaps the problem isn’t perfume metaphors and paradoxes. Maybe the issue is how we understand Judaism’s mission. Abraham wasn’t sent out to turn others into Jews. Abraham was sent out to be a Jew.
Abraham had to go out and be different, to hold a truth that no one else held. Even when he passes it on to his children, they each hold a different truth. Isaac becomes the founder of our Judaism. Ishmael becomes the founder of Islam. They go out holding different truths, both contradictory and complementary. Abraham’s revelation of God’s unity is a realisation that this universal God can never be captured by one person in a single truth.
Abraham’s mission wasn’t to make everyone Jews. It was to enable everyone to be themselves. It was that all these other nations could celebrate their differences, just as Abraham loved his own.
That is our task today. We don’t say to the nations: “we want you all to be Jews.” We say: “we want you all to be you.”
We are models of difference in a society where we are not a majority and in a world where we are not dominant. Our role is to show how to conduct that uniqueness in a way that demonstrates dignity.
This is our evangelism. That is the truth we hold and that we want to share. That difference is a wonderful and treasured thing. From our differences, we are blessed. And in our differences, we bless each other.
So go out from Haran and share that sacred truth. And don’t worry – you don’t need to go circumcising bears.
Sim Lev 