Tag: moses

high holy days · judaism · torah

Not everything must be forgiven

levtaylor

Not everything must be forgiven.

Earlier in the year, I went to a Holocaust Survivors Centre to deliver a service. After we had sung songs, discussed Torah and celebrated the day, I went to join some of the survivors to eat.

We sat and chatted. They were all elderly, but brimmed with life. These refugees, mostly women, who had survived camps and treacherous journeys to get here, seemed to possess a vitality I rarely saw in people my own age.

They talked about their grandchildren, their local community and their synagogues. But they wasted no time getting to the really gritty questions. “Why should I believe in God after what happened to us?” “Did God let that happen to us?” “Do you believe in an afterlife?” I bashfully tried to answer their questions, often replying that I did not know.

But then one of them asked a question to which I did know the answer. To which I was in no doubt. She asked me: “Do I have to forgive the Nazis?”

“No,” I said. “No you do not have to forgive the Nazis.”

I did not cite a Torah verse or a scholar or a halachah. I just said no. There are things that are unforgivable, and I was taken aback at even the suggestion that a survivor could forgive the Nazis for what they did.

Not everything must be forgiven. Not everything should be forgiven. Not everything can be forgiven.

We have reached Elul. The new month has begun and we have entered the last lunar cycle of the year, taking us through to Rosh Hashanah. This is our season of contemplation and reflection; of apology and of forgiveness. In this time, it is natural that we want to unburden ourselves of the guilt we have clung to.

Forgiveness is supposed to be the release of resentment and vengeance when we feel we have been wronged. With it ought to come a feeling of relief and a sense of restitution in the world.

Yet, so far, I have encountered far more people struggling because they cannot forgive than because they cannot apologise. I think it is important to stress: you do not have to forgive everything and you cannot be expected to forgive everyone.

Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah taught: “for transgressions between a human being and God, Yom Kippur atones, but for transgressions between human beings, Yom Kippur does not atone, unless the wronged party forgives.”[1] Judaism has no absolution. Our religion teaches that you must work to earn forgiveness, and guilt cannot be magically removed by prayer.

Even then, there are sins that can never be forgiven. For the most heinous crimes, like murder, even God does not forgive.[2]

We must assume that God does not forgive such an act because no human being could. Murder is irreversible in a way that other acts or not. The murdered person is not alive to forgive; no family member could forgive on their behalf. Even if they could, nobody could reasonably ask the family member of a murdered person to provide forgiveness, because it would take a super-human level of magnanimity.

In this week’s Torah portion, Shoftim, Moses creates cities of refuge throughout Canaan.[3] In ancient Israelite culture, the relatives of murdered people were not only not asked to forgive. They were expected to kill the killer as a matter of honour. Such a person was called a “blood redeemer.” They were required to avenge their family member’s killer, even in a case of accidental manslaughter.[4]

Moses established the cities of refuge so that the accidental manslaughterer would have somewhere to run. The killer could live there and escape being killed. Although they would need to start a new life, they would not be executed by the blood-redeemer, nor punished by the courts.

What is noteworthy about this system is how compassionate it is. There are times when people commit crimes and there is nobody at fault. Deuteronomy gives the example of a wood-chopper’s axe that backfires and kills a co-worker.[5] In this case, it would be improper to try the killer as a murderer, because there was no malice.

Yet, more importantly, it is compassionate to the victims. It does not ask the victim’s family to abandon their anger, but builds in an assumption that there would be raw feelings that would never be resolved within the court system. Rather than tell them to forgive, Moses establishes systems that mitigate their anger and prevent a cycle of violence.

Moses knew that not everything could be forgiven. That principle follows us through to this day. During the Second World War, Simon Wiesenthal, who was interred in the concentration camps, met an SS officer, who begged his forgiveness. The Nazi, on his death bed, admitted to having killed over 300 Jews by burning down their house and shooting at those who escaped. He said that he needed a Jew to forgive him. Wiesenthal did not.

Over the years, Wiesenthal contemplated whether he should have forgiven the Nazi after all. He wrote to thinkers across the world, including rabbis, philosophers, judges, priests and historians, asking for their view. He collected all their letters back into a volume called ‘The Sunflower’.[6] Of the respondents, not one Jew said he should forgive.

Most of those who said he should forgive replied as Christians, and said they would do as ambassadors for Jesus. Yet there is a more compelling answer offered by Jose Hobday,[7] who was a Catholic priest of Native American descent. He wrote of his experiences as an indigenous person in North America, experiencing genocide and persecution. He explains how those experiences and indigenous spirituality had taught him to forgive, not for the sake of his oppressors, but for the sake of himself. That forgiveness helped him transcend the wrongs that were done to him and his people. That if he did not forgive, it would only make him feel worse.

Yes, if forgiving will make you feel better, then you can do so for your own sake. But believing that you have to forgive when you cannot will only make you feel worse. Sometimes it is necessary for hurt people to hold on to their hurt and not relinquish it through forgiveness.

So, for your own sake, go into this Elul knowing that you do not need to forgive everything. You do not need to forgive those who have not made amends and you do not need to forgive what is beyond your capacity.

Judaism is not about creating perfect people, absolved of blemishes and able to exercise the infinite mercy we expect of God. It is about accepting we are real people, who make real mistakes, learn from them and try to improve. It is about accepting that we are vulnerable people, who are capable of hurting and being hurt, and who might not find resolution in this lifetime.

Work on what you can change in yourself. Apologise for what you have done wrong. Forgive where you can forgive.

But know that not everything must be forgiven. Not everything should be. Not everything can.

Shabbat shalom.

sunflowers

I will give this sermon on Saturday 22nd August at Newcastle Reform Synagogue.

[1]Mishnah Yoma 8:9

[2]Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 74a

[3]Deuteronomy 19:1-3

[4]Deuteronomy 19:6

[5]Deuteronomy 19:5

[6]Schocken Books, 1970

[7]Chapter 23

judaism · sermon

We know darkness

levtaylor

It was a dark, cold and stormy night. Mendelsohn, an old man, knew that the end was near. “Call the priest,” he said to his wife “and tell him to come right away.”

“The priest? Honey, you’re delirious. You mean the rabbi!”

“No, no,” said Mendelsohn. “Call the priest. Why disturb the rabbi on a night like this?”

Darkness is familiar to most of us.

In this week’s parashah, God brings a plague worse than all those that have preceded. Worse than frogs, blood, boils and locust. God brings on eternal darkness. When it’s day, it’s dark. When it’s night, it’s dark. After a while, people lose track of whether it’s day or night. Nothing grows. It’s never warm. People can feel the lack of sunlight on their skin and in their bones. They’re agitated and grumpy. It sounds a lot like London in January.

The month of January is notorious for being the most miserable. The days are so short. The nights are so long. It’s cold and wet and it feels like it will never end. Personally, I find just getting out of bed a struggle. The idea of slogging along on a bus with cold hands and feet, dripping in my raincoat with all the other commuters, just feels unbearable. It’s not a coincidence that this is the time when people can be most unhappy.

In fact, this coming Monday is said to be the most unhappy day of the year. Perhaps consequently, today is Mental Health Shabbat. People are broke. We’re at our coldest. Our bodies are aching. The darkness feels like it will never end.

A few years ago, the darkness started driving me to distraction. I couldn’t sleep when I needed to, and when I needed to be awake, I felt constantly tired. I was itchy and irritable. I have a spine disease, which fuses the joints in my back, and this was the worst year I’d had for pain. I could barely move. All that pain made sleeping even harder, being awake even more tiring, and my mood even worse.

I tried all sorts of things to get my body back on track. I tried upping the dosage of painkillers. I started drinking camomile tea in the evening to soothe me. I invested in one of those SAD lamps that slowly lights up, creating a synthetic dawn in my bedroom. Still, I felt hopeless.

I tried something else as well. I tried praying. I got up in the morning and said a few words of gratitude. Thank you, God, Creator of the Universe, for giving me this day. I wrapped tefillin on my head and arms and took a few moments for reflection. It was a struggle. It required discipline. I forced myself to say thank you even when I felt like I had nothing to be thankful for.

But that discipline did something new to me. It made me reflect on what was good in the world. Even if everything was dark and cold and painful, I was still alive. That was enough.

I realised, with time, that I’d been trying to push myself to be something I wasn’t. I was cursing my body for being disabled. I was trying to pretend that it was dawn when it wasn’t. I was angry, all the time, at the way the world was. And I was angry at myself just for being angry.

I couldn’t handle that it was cold and dark because that was just the way January was meant to be. January was the way it was meant to be and I was the way I was meant to be. I was comparing January to July, when they’re completely different months. Neither of them are meant to be like each other.

I was comparing myself to healthy people, with all the mobility, flexibility and energy they had. That wasn’t the body I had. That wasn’t who I was. The problem wasn’t me and the problem wasn’t the month. The problem was that I was comparing everything to an artificial standard. As if there was one ideal body, one ideal night’s sleep, one ideal mind, one ideal season, one ideal month, one ideal day. No such thing exists.

Prayer gave me permission to stop trying to live up to false standards. When I pray in the morning, thanking God that I’m alive, I’m not asking to be any different. I’m not saying thank you for things I don’t have or wishing for things I did. I’m just acknowledging one reality: that I’m alive.

We live in a system that teaches us that we have to always live up to this perfect standard. Capitalism requires us to be productive. We internalise that attitude so that we worry when we’re not efficient enough. We can even take that attitude home with us, striving for an ideal of a perfect home that we can never quite attain. And we can’t attain that ideal because it’s impossible. It’s somebody else’s standard.

Judaism teaches us that we are created in the image of God. We are, each one of us, a mirror of the Divine. So, no matter what cards we’ve been dealt, we are the standard. Just by being alive, we are living up to the standard that God set for us.

That’s what’s enabled me to deal with the darkness. When things are at their worst, I remind myself that things can’t always be perfect. I cannot live up to somebody else’s expectations of me. All I can do is accept myself for who I am, and give thanks that I’m alive.

January is a difficult month. This week may feel unusually hard. But I believe that we can get through it. If we are willing to love ourselves for who we are, and accept what we are not, we can make this darkness a little easier.

Shabbat shalom.

rainy london

I gave this sermon at Mosaic Liberal in Harrow for Parashat Bo on 12 January 2019.

 

judaism · sermon · Uncategorized

This burden is too heavy for you to bear alone

levtaylorLeave a comment

One of the things I love about our prophets is that they’re not perfect people. If they were perfect, what could we learn from them? Moses is a profoundly imperfect person. In Egypt, he gets so angry with a slaver that he murders him and runs away. In the desert, Moses gets angry again and smashes a rock to get water from it, rather than talking to it as God asked. Moses is somebody who gets angry, impatient and struggles with everything he has to do.

In this week’s parasha, Moses is no longer angry or impatient – he is just burnt out. His father-in-law, Yitro, comes to visit him in the desert. Yitro is a Midianite priest who gave Moses work when he was on the run after the killing the slaver. While Moses was there, Yitro’s daughter, Zipporah, fell in love with him and started a family with him.

As soon as Yitro arrives, Moses prostrates himself and offers him food. Yitro looks at him. Moses is growing old. When they left Egypt, Moses was already eighty. His body is aching. He’s had enough. But he’s persisting. From dawn until dusk, Moses sorts out people’s problems. He listens to their concerns and solves them.

Moses has been trying to deal with everything on his own. Rashbam, a medieval commentator, points out that Moses has been trying to do so much he’s been left doing nothing. Instead of empowering people to solve their own problems, he’s left them standing in the desert, waiting for his judgement. He is on the verge of burning out.

Yitro sees all this. Yitro puts a hand on his shoulder. He gently cajoles him: “What are you doing to the people? Why do you act alone, while all the people stand about you from morning until evening?”

Moses tells him: “The people need me, I have to do this.”

“No, you don’t,” says Yitro. “This is not good for you. It’s too heavy for you.”

Moses, known for his anger and impatience, just gives in. “You’re right,” he says.

Yitro comes up with a plan for him to delegate tasks. He spreads out the work so that Moses just supports a few people, and in the smallest groups, Moses assigns responsibility so that people can look after themselves.

For me, this is a beautiful moment. Moses realises that he can no longer carry a burden – and he shares it. First, he shares it with Yitro, acknowledging that he’s vulnerable. Then, he shares it with the whole community, recognising that power and responsibility need to be shared with everyone.

In their groups of tens, the community will share their problems. They will talk about their worries and solve them together.

This has such a profound message for us. In our society, we are so often discouraged from sharing our problems. Chin up. Stay strong. Keep calm and carry on. We are conditioned to think that our emotions are better kept to ourselves; that being vulnerable means being weak.

The expectation that we should always be happy, or always be calm, and shoulder our burdens ourselves, is not reasonable or realistic. We’re real people, living in a broken world, who feel the full range of human emotions – of sadness, frustration, anger, ecstasy, bliss and joy. There is no reason why we shouldn’t sometimes need to unload.

Our society is beginning to initiate conversations about mental health. Those conversations are not easy. For decades, we have been taught that our mental wellbeing is something that needs to be dealt with privately. But how can it be? Human beings are social creatures. Our individual lives are deeply locked in to the lives of everyone else around us. How everyone else is feeling intimately affects how we are.

This is especially important here in the Jewish community. Many of our members have endured a great deal and need to be able to process that in a healthy and compassionate way. Often, there are few other places to go with our problems but our religious communities. Plenty of us would understandably struggle to open up about our feelings with regular friends. If we decide to seek out counselling, we might find NHS waiting lists inordinately long. Even if we do get counselling, it can only take us so far – it is not a substitute for a loving community where people talk to each other and support each other.

The synagogue is a place where we can talk about our feelings in a supportive environment on our own terms. Creating a supportive environment doesn’t mean wallowing in misery or forcing conversations that aren’t comfortable – it just means creating a space where people can be themselves and connect with their traditions.

In this community, we’re going to try and do much more of that. Andrew has very kindly agreed to hold services once a month, so that between us we will have regular shabbats every two weeks. These services and study sessions will give everyone opportunities to connect with their religion on their own terms.

Just as Moses delegated out responsibility, the engine of Manchester Liberal Jewish Community is in its members. We work together to take on the tasks that keep this community going, so that this inclusive and empowering Jewish community can exist in Manchester. Every one of us puts effort into ensuring that the community continues to run – whether that’s by cooking food, doing admin, advertising events on social media or just turning up.

Whether you’re a regular or a newcomer, this community is here for you and will welcome you. We need you to help us create a supportive, inclusive, Jewish space in Manchester, where everyone can participate and everyone can benefit.

Moses accepted that the burden he was carrying was too heavy to bear alone, so he shared it. Come share your burden. Come be part of a community. Come and find peace.

manchester dusk skyline

I gave a slimmed-down version of this sermon at Manchester Liberal Jewish Community on 2nd February 2018. If you are Jewish and living in Manchester, do consider joining our community. If you are living elsewhere in the UK and want to find an inclusive Jewish community near you, look on these listings from Liberal Judaism and the Movement for Reform Judaism.