Tag: nationalism

festivals · sermon

How seriously should Progressive Jews take Purim?

levtaylor



On Monday evening, we will do something in this synagogue that would have horrified earlier generations of Liberal Jews.

It’s not that we’ll be drinking alcohol in the sanctuary. They did that at Simchat Torah.

It’s not that we’ll be getting dressed up. After all, why not?

It’s not that we will be hosting a Burlesque act. The founders of our movement were great patrons of the arts, and hearing that this was an expression of feminism would make the show even more appealing.

No. What we will be doing is a far greater sin in the eyes of our Liberal forebearers. We will be celebrating Purim.

For true Liberals, Purim is the most-maligned festival.

One year, while at Leo Baeck College, I dressed up as Lily Montagu and chastised all my classmates for reading the Megillah.

My grandfather, Rabbi John Rayner, was opposed to Purim altogether. He called it “unhistorical, irreligious and unethical.”

So I can only imagine how disappointed he would have been, as I put on my heels and stuffed a packet of cigarettes into my push-up bra, to think I was celebrating such an illiberal occasion.

In 1960, my grandfather was invited to give a lecture about Purim at a Reform synagogue, called Alyth, in Hampstead Garden Suburb. He told them that, while he wasn’t too bothered about it, he would let the facts speak for themselves.

The story of Purim never happened, he began. The entire tale is a fantasy built on other such plays from antiquity.

In fact, it couldn’t possibly have happened. No empire has ever been as expensive as the one attributed to Ahasveros. No royal feast has ever lasted six months uninterrupted. Esther was supposed to have spent an entire year on beauty treatments, Haman was supposed to have been bribed with millions of pounds, and his eventual gallows are supposed to have been 83 feet tall. The whole thing is ludicrous.

On this point, every reader of history agrees. But why should that stop us celebrating a festival? After all, we can’t prove that the Ten Plagues ever happened, but we’re not about to give up Pesach any time soon. What matters is the moral message the narrative conveys.

On that point, I’m afraid, granddad has already anticipated me. The point of religious services is ethical instruction, but there is no positive message in Purim.

God is completely absent from the Megillah. While many generations later, rabbis made great interpretations about God’s presence through absence, there is very little trace of divinity in the text.

Everything in the story is about chance. There is no room for human agency, moral conduct, or God’s deliverance. A movement dedicated to service of the sacred has no business entertaining something so atheist.

The entire premise of the story is based on ethnic prejudice. Mordecai refuses to bow down to Haman, the standard greeting in Persia, because Haman is an Amalekite, and the Jews have a centuries-old grudge against his entire people. My grandfather writes, quite rightly, that this chauvanistic loyalty to race has no relation to religion.

And that doesn’t even get into how gruesome the entire story is. The climax is an outrageous bloodbath, wherein Jews go from town to town slaughtering Amalekites by their thousands and tens of thousands. The murdered line the streets and Haman’s ten sons have their heads impaled on pikes and paraded.

It is the most gratuitously violent festival imaginable. It smacks says, my grandfather, of secular nationalism, which everyone knows is the primary enemy of Judaism, and should be given no encouragement.

What lesson are we meant to take from this? The moral, if you can call it that, is that you must commit genocide against others before they get the chance to do it to you.

This is a horrendous position, and I am certain no Progressive Jew would ever endorse it.

For this reason, despite my best efforts, some members of this synagogue continue to boycott Purim altogether. They are “Classical Liberals”: Progressive Jews who hold on to our original mission, that Judaism should be rational, ethical, and God-focused.

In fact, in recent times, even Orthodox Jews like Peter Beinart have come to agree with all these criticisms of Purim.

This sermon is not really an effort to convince the Classical Liberals that they should don their frocks and come for the Cabaret. Honestly, if I did succeed in changing their minds, I’d be a little disappointed to see the diehards give in. But I do want to make the case for why I do celebrate Purim, and why other members should feel free to get out their gladrags and their graggers.

Like the diehards, I also uphold a version of classical liberalism. I agree that Judaism should be God-focused, and I sometimes worry about the secular drift of our synagogues towards becoming cultural centres. Like them, I feel that Judaism only makes sense as an ethical system, and its goal should be to turn us all into better human beings.

But where we disagree, I think, is on what makes a religion rational. Just because our worship should be rational doesn’t mean it needs to be serious. As Oscar Wilde assured us, we must treat all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.

The point of Purim is it’s a joke. The Megillah, the story, the festival, its mitzvot, and its observances, are supposed to be funny.

The story is an old rehash, and we know that because it has all the same characters as the Commedia dellArte from medieval Italy, whose tradition goes back to the court jesters of the ancient empires.

And, no, the empire was not that big. The oversized empire with its outlandish feasts is supposed to be ridiculous.

The characters, the story, and the props are all supposed to be impossibly big. Like a pantomime, with its villains, heroes and dames, its magic comes precisely from how unbelievable it is.

And, yes, it is horribly racist. The whole thing promotes Jewish violence and prejudicial fear. But we have to think about it in its context. This play was written for a time when Jews lived under persecution. It is a revenge fantasy against their oppressors, not a real-world instruction manual for the modern age.

That’s how we ought to understand the gory violence at the end. We should imagine it in the same way as the climax to Tarantino’s movie Inglorious Basterds, when the heroine burns all the Nazis alive, or like in Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit, when the little boy kicks Hitler out the window. The bloodshed is catharsis for a beleaguered people.

And that is Purim’s real moral lesson for us. It’s about how to survive when you feel most downtrodden. Purim is an answer to a question: what do you do when you are persecuted, exiled, and you feel like God has abandoned you?

It answers us: try laughing.

Try to find the funny side.

Find a way to ridicule it all and remember that this whole life is one big joke.

The trouble only comes when you take Purim seriously. If you imagine this festival is supposed to be morally instructive. If that were the case, any rational person would scrap the festival altogether.

But, put in its proper context, this festival can give us the relief we really need.

We’re coming to the end of a long grey winter, in which many of us have felt weighted down and miserable. We’re living through unpredictable times. I can’t tell you how much I long for a news day that was precedented.

We need a bit of ridiculousness, a bit of raucousness, and a chance to do something stupid.

My grandfather actually left us with a little permission in his lecture notes. He said, if you must celebrate Purim, just do as Americans do, expunge the ugly bits, and turn it out into a carnival.

In other words, if you’re going to do it, don’t take it too seriously.

Wise words indeed.

Shabbat shalom.

sermon · social justice · torah

After war

levtaylor

There is a particular kind of sadness that comes from remembering war. It is not only the needless loss of life, nor those who come home traumatised. There is something specific in the discomfort that comes after furious build-up, tragic participation, and ultimate reconciliation. 

In this week’s haftarah, Ovadiah promises a glorious war against Edom. The Edomites will be defeated and humiliated. Israel will be victorious and avenged. 

Ovadiah addresses Israel’s neighbouring nation of Edom: “For the violence against your brother Jacob, disgrace will surround you. You will be cut off for all eternity.”

He tells these nations: “The house of Jacob shall be fire, and the house of Esau shall be straw. They will set fire to it and consume it.”

In these bellicose proclamations, we get the feeling of the build-up to war. We realise, too, that Jacob and Esau are not just the names of characters in a story: they are representatives of nations.

Jacob is Israel. Esau is Edom. They are the respective countries on either side of the River Jordan. Their inhabitants imagine themselves as twin brothers, yet constantly in conflict.

This helps us make sense of the story in Torah this week. Jacob heads over to the river to make amends with Esau. He has been wrestling with his conscience and wants to make amends, but fears that if he puts forth an olive branch, Esau may kill him.

Jacob separates his clan into divisions to approach from different sides, like military battalions. He sends forward gifts and apologies with every single one. As he approaches his brother, he prostrated himself many times, bowing down in peaceful submission. Finally, they reach each other, hug, and cry. They are reconciled.

When we understand that these brothers are representatives of neighbouring nations, this is not just a story of family strife, or conflict between competing characters. It is the biblical redactors’ fantasy of what peace could mean. These countries could be united. Their bitter violence could be set aside. After years of fighting, people might once again embrace each other and cry with relief.

The special sadness of remembrance comes with contemplation after the war. What was it for? Whose interests did it serve? And how do we resolve to prevent it happening again?

After World War 1, poppies bloomed in Flanders Field, where some of the worst battles had been fought. Out of the trenches where so many had died, these scarlet flowers sprouted from the ground. They became a symbol. 

“Never again,” they said. 

Around 40 million people had died. Once it was over, many could no longer remember what they had been fighting for. The motivations of Empire and nationalism no longer seemed so compelling in the wreckage of war. Countries pledged to end the impetus to war with diplomacy, increased international cooperation and greater understanding between peoples.

After World War 2, the politicians once again pledged never again. Never again would fascism be able to rear its ugly head. They would combat, too, the root causes that had allowed Hitler to look appealing. No more would they allow such poverty and inequality to persist, giving way to racist scapegoats. 

The countries of Europe built social democracies, with universal healthcare systems and progressive welfare states. They said they would not repeat old mistakes. They formed alliances and international bodies that, they said, would prevent war.

For as long as I have been alive, Britain has been at war. Earlier this year, NATO troops finally withdrew from their twenty-year conflict in Afghanistan. It had begun when I was starting secondary school. Some of my friends enlisted to fight. 

At the time, we were told the war would avenge the World Trade Centre attacks; find Osama bin Laden; and defeat the Taliban. In the end, Osama bin Laden had never been Afghanistan and the Taliban emerged more powerful than ever. I doubt many of the victims of 9/11 feel much joy in seeing the war that has been carried out in their name.

When the war was declared, it was popular. Today, it is hard to find anyone who says they agreed with it.

Politicians declare war full of nationalist fervour and triumphant spirit, only to return defeated and bereft. Even the victors feel no glory once a war is won. They leave too much devastation in their wake.

Families are torn apart. Cities are destroyed. Lived are lost. Entire ways of life are destroyed. And, at the end of it all, the only thing to do is reflect on what went wrong. We promise once more to make peace.

The Torah’s narrative of Jacob and Esau offers us a glimpse of what peace might look like. It encourages us to look beyond the narrow excitement for violence proclaimed by Ovadiah and the promises of national glory. It reminds us to think of how much greater it would be to have peace.

Like the Prophets of old, we pray for the day when nation no longer lifts up sword against nation, and no more no peoples learn war.

May God grant us, and all the world, peace. 

Shabbat shalom.

I gave this sermon for Remembrance Shabbat, Parashat Vayishlach on Saturday 20th November at South West Essex and Settlement Reform Synagogue

interfaith · sermon

Where Abraham came from

levtaylor

Once there was, and once there wasn’t. In the long-distant days of yore, when haystacks winnowed sieves, when genies played jereed in the old bathhouse, fleas were barbers, camels were town criers, I softly rocked my baby grandmother to sleep in her creaking cradle…

So begin Turkish folk stories. And this is a folk story, although whether it is Turkish, you will have to decide.

This is the story of our common ancestor, Abraham. For as long as there have been followers of his mission, there have been people telling his story. Across trade routes and migratory passages, Jews, Muslims, Christians, Samaritans and Druze exchanged legends of the man who made monotheism. 

These stories could be more valuable than coinage because they allowed people to connect across boundaries of language, ethnicity and religion. He could be called Avraham, Ibrahim, and everyone would know who you were talking about. There weren’t right or wrong versions of the story – only different iterations of the same truth.

That story, as we know it, begins today. It starts when a man named Avram sat in his ancestral home in Ur. He heard a God he did not know call to him and say: “Lech lecha! Go! Get out.”

“Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and curse those that curse you; and all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you.”

Avram pilgrimages from there to many places: through Canaan, Jordan, and Egypt. He meets many people: friends, enemies, family, and angels. To mark his changed status, Avram receives a new name: Avraham. The father of many nations. God promised him that he would have as many descendants as there are stars in the sky. He would have as many children as there are grains of sand on the shore.

And, indeed, just as God had promised, Avraham’s spiritual descendants now comprise over a third of the globe. Those who affirm monotheism and lay a claim to this spiritual tradition started in his name call themselves “Abrahamic faiths.” Their stories and beliefs, although disparate, fall under the banner of a single prophet who taught of a single God, revealed through history, known by good deeds.

Because of his great international fame, many places claim to be his hometown. There are various cities in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon named “Ur,” or with variant names, that say they are Abraham’s father’s house, from which he went out on his mission. 

One such city is named Urfa. It is located in the modern-day state of Turkey, in a southeastern corner inhabited largely by Kurds, and bordering Syria. It has been Akkadian, Armenian, Byzantine, Arab and Ottoman. About seven years ago, I was lucky enough to visit the place.

It is stunning. The entire city is built around a cave where, the locals say, Abraham was born. According to their legends, Abraham was birthed there in secret to avoid the wrath of the wicked king Nimrod. 

Around the cave, there is an incredible mosque complex. Beautiful off-white stones form curving arches, high ceilings, and expansive courtyards.

There are carved streams with carp in them. A local told me that these had been there since the time of Abraham. The Pagans had attempted to burn our prophet alive, but God intervened. As they set alight a bonfire with Abraham at the centre, the flames became water and the logs became fish. Today, if you eat any of the fish in the surrounding streams, you will instantly go blind.

I was certainly not going to test this superstition.

I went during the month of Ramadan, as pilgrims wandered around the site. It remains one of the most blissfully spiritual places I have ever been. I went through the mosque and into the cave. 

Around me, some men were doing the raqqas of Muslim prayer. I prayed as a Jew, mumbling Hebrew verses as I faced the spot where our patriarch was allegedly born.

Nobody batted an eyelid. We were all praying to the same God at the site of a shared prophet. I felt on some level that Abraham himself would have approved. This was the movement he had spawned. Uniting people in love of their One Creator. 

That unity, however, is threatened. Overhanging my time in Turkey was the heavy weight of nationalism. Over the last century, Turkish authorities have attempted to homogenise the country – transferring their Christian population to Greece; imposing taxes specifically on Jews to push them to move to Israel.

The country today has a virulently ethno-nationalist government that only briefly allowed the Kurdish minority some relative freedom to speak their language and live their culture. When Erdoğan launched counter attacks against ISIS, part of his goal was to crush Kurdish rebellion and extend Turkish military control.

Turkey is not unique. Nationalism has defined the politics of Europe and the Middle East for over a century. Entire groups seem increasingly set on defining themselves by ever narrower criteria, and enforcing the boundaries of who belongs with greater violence. 

This nationalist tendency permeates religious thought too. There are those who want to claim Abraham only as their own. There are those who try to say that they, and only they, have access to the true religion. There are people who want to pretend they are exceptional, and that with their difference comes claims to land, wealth and military might.

What could be more antithetical to the message of Abraham! This prophet sought to unify. His mission was one of going beyond borders, defying the lies of national gods and bringing people together under the truth of something beautiful and transcendent. 

There are many stories about Abraham. These stories can place him all over the world and ascribe to him all kinds of miracles. These stories can be used to bridge divisions and form common purpose. And they can be used to foster conflict and hatred.

We must be careful with which stories we tell.

Shabbat shalom. 

article · theology

A Tale of Two Gods

levtaylor

In the time of the First Temple, in the world of the Hebrew Bible, the ancient Israelites brought sacrifices to the cultic centre in Jerusalem. One of these was the korban o’la – an offering of burnt animal fat. Every part of the sacrificed animal was burnt on the altar, except for its skin. The Hebrew word o’la, meaning rising up, referred to the pungent smoke released twice daily when the sacrifice was made.

Many centuries after the destruction of the First Temple, in the time of the Second, a group of pious believers came to translate the text into Greek. This early translation of the Bible became known as the Septuagint. Greek had no direct translation for the term o’la, so the editors chose a word meaning ‘completely burnt’ – holo kauston. Holocaust.

That is the word that has come to represent the ritual slaughter of 17 million people, 6 million of whom were Jewish, in the middle of the 20th century. Like the animals of many millennia before, the people in the concentration camps were burnt throughout the day so that nothing remained of them.

It is perhaps for this reason that many of the victims were reluctant to use the term Holocaust. Jews called it by the Hebrew word shoah, meaning ‘disaster’ or churban – ‘destruction’. Roma people called it Porajmos – ‘the devouring’. For historians it was simply called by its Latin name ‘genocide’ – the killing of a people.

Something sinister lurks behind the very word ‘Holocaust’. The Jews, forever seen as relics of the Christian Old Testament, were murdered in the manner described by their book as a tool for expiating sin.

The word calls us to ask: to whom were these Jews sacrificed? On whose behalf? For what sin were they intended to atone? And was the God that received these offerings satisfied?

In the time of the First Temple, minor transgressions were deemed to pollute the land. The o’la served as a way to ritually cleanse ancient Israel of its impurities. Priests appealed to the national god for mercy and knew their petitions had been answered by the arrival of regular rainfall.

In the world of the Third Reich, ethnic impurities and social deviations polluted Europe. Germany and its empire was in breach of its duty to be thoroughly white, Christian, patriarchal and heterosexual. Isolating the minorities was not enough to recompense for their transgressions. The minorities had to be destroyed in their entirety. Devout Nazis played their part to remove and destroy every blemish in their land.

Of course, such blemishes can never be fully removed. The sin of non-whiteness is too volatile and its terms too expansive. The god of nationalism is thoroughly empty, so no amount of flesh will ever fill him. He is insatiable. Modern fascists remind us that the nationalist god is still hungry for blood.

The God of the ancient Temple, by contrast, no longer requires burnt meat. That Temple was destroyed and its people forced into exile. God fled with the refugees and, with them, became transnational. Prayers replaced sacrifices. The God of Israel became the God of the Jews, who wanted good deeds, social justice and piety. It mutated into the God of Love and could be found on every continent.

The god of nationalism, paradoxically, is now no less international. He permeated borders through colonialism and found a home on every soil. In every country, he can be seen represented by each flag. His priests can be found adorned in military uniforms of every stripe. His followers proclaim his word from pulpits the old preachers could never have imagined, reaching millions.

And he still requires blood. His altars are the lynch ropes for Muslims in India. His followers ritually parade through Charlottesville, Belfast, Rangoon, London and Sao Paulo. And, yes, the god of nationalism is worshipped in Israel too. The very land that birthed the universal God now hosts nationalism in its gates. In every place, his offerings are returned in coffins. And, no matter how many die, it will never be enough.

As the god to whom fascists make their sacrifices ascends, the universal God of the Jews withers. In Auschwitz, our God stood trial. The pious Jews who prayed in the camps convened a court and charged God with breach of covenant. God had abandoned them. Or forgotten them. Our rabbis had no choice but to pronounce: God is guilty. And when they knew that divine help was not coming, they did the only thing they could. They prayed.

After the camps were liberated, the remnant survivors had to face a new reality. They wondered whether their God was dead. A bitter irony. For centuries, the Jews had been accused of deicide against Jesus. Now they witnessed their own God burned in the flames of fascism’s altars. Only later did the quiet Christian witnesses realise that their God had been the same one, and was dying too. Their doctrine of goodwill and universal love was no less weakened. And only then did they realise they had killed the wrong God.

Is it too late? Can the old religion of truth and humanity be revived? Certainly, its followers are rebuilding. Synagogues are emerging anew in places where sceptics imagined that God was buried: in Córdoba, Warsaw and York. True believers congregate in mosques, chapels, gurdwaras and living rooms. Those who hold the greatest hope are unafraid to protest in God’s name against violence. They refuse to sacrifice to the new gods. They are the source of my faith.

As we mark Holocaust Memorial Day, we must remember not only the millions of human sacrifices, but the deity for whom they were killed. We must rededicate ourselves to destroying its idols and exposing them for the false gods that they are. In memory of the murdered, we must destroy fascism today.

Yet just because we oppose one god does not mean we must give up the One God. The Force of hope, solidarity and justice cannot be abandoned, even if we feel as if it has abandoned us. So, in memory of all those who were martyred professing a faith in that religion, I ask you to do something normally unthinkable in a radical publication like Novara Media – and pray.

burning smoke columns

I wrote this article for Novara Media for Holocaust Memorial Day on Monday 27 January 2020.