Tag: prophet

climate change · sermon

This world could just as easily be wonderful

levtaylor



In the time that we are alive on this earth, it could burn in front of us. There could be droughts and famines and wildfires and pandemics of deadly diseases.

But. In the time that we are alive on this earth, it could be transformed into a paradise. The planet could become run entirely on renewable energy, with enough food for everyone, where everything that lives could have all its needs met.

Within our lifetimes, we could once more see a resurgence of fascism, racist nationalism, and global war. We might see once more the increased subjugation of women and the rise of bigoted intolerance.

But. Within our lifetimes, we might be the first generation to witness world peace. We might see a new flourishing of tolerance and inclusion. We might live in a society without inequality, where the rights of all are respected.

Why is it so much easier to imagine disaster than success? Why do we allow our imaginations to deprive us of the possibilities of a better world?

Sure, this world could be horrible. But it could just as easily be wonderful.

What world will our children inherit?

Will it be the burning dystopia that feels so present, or the perfected society that seems so distant?

The Prophet Isaiah was not sure either.

In the build-up to the High Holy Days, we read haftarot from the Prophet Isaiah. The lectionary cycle offered us three readings of warnings and six of comfort. That great leader of ancient Israel struck fear into our hearts with threats of how horrible the future might be. Then he promised us solace with visions of how wonderful life could be. Which should we believe?

In one of his prophecies, Isaiah warns that the coming world will be “a cruel day, with wrath and fierce anger—to make the land desolate and destroy the sinners within it.” He forewarns of unending darkness and exile and terror. He offers no remedy. He tells us that everyone will go to war against each other, that every neighbour will become the other’s oppressor, and nobody will win.

Yet elsewhere, Isaiah envisions a redeemed world, in which the poor see justice, and wolves lie with lambs, and refugees find home, and people beat their swords into ploughshares and no nation goes to war any more.

Isaiah holds two visions in the balance. One of hope and one of fear.

Perhaps we might say that this is the same vision seen from different perspectives: that what would be wondrous for some would seem disastrous for others. That justice for the poor would feel like tragedy to the rich. That the end of war for its victims would be calamity for its profiteers.

But that doesn’t seem plausible. Surely, there will either be outright war or there will be none? Justice may be subjective, but conflict over resources is a fact. Either everyone will have all they need or all humanity will battle fir scraps.

You might say: perhaps these prophecies were given at different points in Isaiah’s life? The historical critics argue that the book of Isaiah in fact had three different authors, all writing in different periods.

But this still doesn’t explain the discrepancy. Within even the same chapter and verse, Isaiah oscillates between dream and nightmare, holding both possibilities in contrast.

The contradiction only exists if you imagine prophets as fore-tellers of a pre-ordained history. The Jewish tradition has tended to see them instead as forth-tellers: bringing God’s word to show what might be possible.

In this week’s haftarah, Isaiah promises both together. Isaiah talks about vengeance and redemption.

Isaiah is showing us the two ways in which humanity might go, and leaving open both options. This world might be brought to its end by disaster. But it could be wonderful too.

The fear of what this world might be can sometimes keep me up at night. I think of unfolding climate catastrophes, with floods and wildfires already engulfing parts of the globe. I see escalating wars between major powers in multiple countries. I hear the rhetoric from political leaders, ramping up racism, xenophobia, sexism and transphobia. And Isaiah’s nightmares do not seem so distant.

But I am trying to rejig my perspective. There is nothing radical or interesting about pessimism. Misery is easy. It is the default for minds accustomed to defeat, prone to anticipate worst case scenarios.

But hope. Hope is harder. Hope demands far more imagination as we expand our horizons of the possible. If we have hope, we cannot give in to how things are. Hope demands of us action.

Recently, I have found reason to hope in fiction. There is a wealth of writing by Jewish eco-futurists, who create worlds set in the not-too-distant future. Instead of the dystopias imagined by 20th Century writers like Orwell and Huxley, they ask a much bolder question: what if we made it right? What would the world look like if, instead of accepting the inevitability of defeat, we projected winning?

A few years ago, TV star and beloved Essex Jew, Simon Amstell, made a film imagining a world fifty years in the future. In it, the whole world is engaged in a truth and reconciliation process, as elders try to explain to the young where they went wrong and how they rebuilt. The new world is idyllic, and all that had to happen, says Amstell, is that everyone stopped eating meat.

The film, called Carnage, is clearly satirical, and takes a self-referential jibe at preachy vegans. But it also posits something intuitively true and beautiful: a better world than this one could be possible with very small changes.

Over the summer, I have been reading the solar-punk fiction of author Sim Kern. Their works imagine alternative worlds to this one. In their major book, ‘Depart Depart’ a dybbuk haunts a Jewish youth as he makes his way through a world ravaged by climate catastrophe. Yet, in more recent works, Kern imagines alternative worlds in which humanity made steps towards addressing these disasters. Imperfect, true, and still full of tension – otherwise there would be no story – but they still pitch another reality. And inhabiting those fictional worlds has helped me realise how real they could be.

Enough with pessimism.

Sure, this world could be horrible. But it could just as easily be wonderful.

Let’s make it so.

sermon · social justice

Were our prophets crazy?

levtaylor

There was once a magician, a wicked magician, who constructed a mirror whose purpose was that everything good and beautiful, when reflected in it, shrank up almost to nothing, whilst those things that were ugly and useless were magnified, and made to appear ten times worse than before. The loveliest landscapes reflected in this mirror looked like boiled spinach; and the handsomest persons appeared odious, so distorted that their friends could never have recognised them. 

This is the opening of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale, The Snow Queen. I begin with this story because there was a time when this was how the world looked to me. I once saw the world as full of threats, violence and despair. 

I received a diagnosis of anxiety and was placed on medication. I began talking therapy, which I have now done on and off for many years. I changed my diet and began regular exercise. For what felt like the first time, beautiful landscapes looked like beautiful landscapes, instead of boiled spinach. Friends looked like friends instead of enemies. The world looked… normal. I felt like I could finally think.

Today is Mental Health Shabbat. Across the Jewish community, we are encouraged to spend this day reflecting on our own mental health and that of those around us. 

Sometimes, today, preachers will come up with prescriptions, about how everyone can just sort themselves out. Like how everyone needs to talk more, or we could all do with being kinder, or perhaps we just need more walks in the woods. I find these sermons quite patronising, oblivious to people’s individual circumstances, and insensitive to the realities of psychosis and personality disorders. Not everything can be so easily solved. 

One of the problems with advocating for everyone to be more well-adjusted is, well, adjusted to what? Do we not live in a world that really does pose depressing realities? Do we not see around us a society gripped by isolation and defeat? 

If we want to seriously think about mental health, we need to ask much more probing questions. I want us to think about what sanity and madness really means. I want us to ask real questions about how anyone can be sane in a society gone so wrong. 

That, I think, is part of the question our Prophets were trying to answer. Since the dawn of biblical criticism, scholars have asked whether our prophets were crazy. These great men and women of ancient times saw visions nobody else could see; wept in the street when everyone else went about their daily lives; shouted angrily at a deity that nobody else believed would listen. If they were alive today, they would surely be committed, imprisoned, or put on some very strong drugs.

The greatest of these crazy prophets was Jeremiah, whose haftarah we read today. He is so associated with depression that, as a noun, the word ‘jeremiad’ means “ a writing or speech in a strain of grief or distress.” His very name conjures images of sadness and despair; of a tortured soul who saw unfolding doom and was ignored in his predictions.

He was, in his time, treated like a madman. For the crime of speaking his prophecies, Jeremiah was placed in stocks and ridiculed. When his visions came true and Babylon besieged Jerusalem, he was imprisoned by the Judean King in the courthouse. Rulers even tried to kill him. Mocked, assaulted, tortured and imprisoned, Jeremiah was treated as a crazy menace throughout his life, and ended it weeping over the destruction of his city.

We should not be surprised that others saw him as mad. From the moment he received his first prophecy, Jeremiah was assaulted by visions of mundane objects revealing hidden messages to him. In the branch of an almond tree, Jeremiah saw the fulfilment of God’s promises. In a steaming kettle, he envisioned warmongering enemies descending from the north. Modern psychologists might interpret these as paranoid hallucinations, and perhaps it is only the holiness of the ancient text that stops us from agreeing with them.

To meet in public, Jeremiah would have been a frightening sight. He stood at the gates of the city. He ranted at the perceived sinners of the city, telling them that their carcasses would be eaten by birds; that their graves would be dug up and desecrated; and their wives handed over to their enemies.  If you heard such things from someone standing outside a train station, you, too, would likely conclude that the speaker was mad. 

But, perhaps, Jeremiah saw his society more clearly than the sane people who surrounded him. Jeremiah saw widows and orphans attacked; the wealthy hoarding all the resources; the privileged living in luxury while refusing to support those in need. 

If Jeremiah had looked upon such a society and accepted it, or tried only to tinker with it and reason with it, who would he be? We might well accuse him of being callously indifferent.

Yet that is how most of us get by. The way most of us function in this sick society, surrounded by exploitation and greed, is to ignore it. If we truly reflected on all the injustice in the world and saw how complicit we were in its continuity, we would all join Jeremiah in going mad.

So, where does this leave us? I know I’m not going to give up my medication or all the tools I have found to live a better life. I actually want to participate in society, and love that I am no longer gripped by anxiety. 

But I also don’t want to impose a world where everyone sees the same reality. People with mental health issues are often detained and restrained, rather than understood. 

The message of Mental Health Shabbat cannot only be talking more, but also listening more, especially to people who have been labelled as insane. 

I want us to hear people in their depression, in their anxiety, and in their psychosis. I want us to truly listen to what everyone has to say, even if it doesn’t conform to the worldview we know.

That doesn’t mean agreeing with everything others say, or never challenging it. It just means taking it seriously. Just as when we approach sacred texts, we can oppose them while recognising their holiness, so we can do with people. 

So, on this Mental Health Shabbat, I urge you: if you can listen to the Prophets, you can listen to your neighbours in their distress too.

Shabbat shalom. 

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.