Tag: temple

festivals · high holy days · sermon

Why won’t God answer my prayers?

levtaylor

Now and again, members of this community will say to me: “I’m hoping for sunshine this weekend. Can you put in a good word?” Or “You’ve got a direct line. Tell the One upstairs to sort these problems out.”

I have to say. Do you really think that if God was listening to me the world would look like this?

A pious Jew turns up every dawn to the Kotel, the Western Wall, in Jerusalem and prays there until sunset.

A journalist comes and asks her: “what do you pray for?”

She says: “I pray for love, peace, and understanding throughout the world.”

The journalist asks: “And how do you feel, praying for such righteous things at this holy site?”

The pious Jew answers: “Like I’m talking to a brick wall.”

The Kotel is really a relic from a religion that no longer exists. It is the remaining ruined wall of the ancient Temple religion.

To the ancients, that wall may really have felt like a gateway to God. But, for modern Jews, it’s just a wall, no closer to Heaven than anywhere else.

To the Israelites of Temple times, the priests may really have felt like divine messengers, holding the keys to connect with the spiritual realm.

But we got rid of all that, and replaced the Priests with rabbis, who are just ordinary people. At best.

We no longer have holy places or holy people. Instead, we have holy time.

This is the season when the gates of repentance open. From the start of Rosh Hashanah until the end of Yom Kippur, there is a gateway in which we may seek to become better versions of ourselves.

This doorway is called Yamim haNoraim: the Days of Awe. The final service of Yom Kippur is called neilah, which means closing. That’s when the gates of repentance shut.

We stand in the threshold, in the brief passage when those doors are open.

Each year, we pray that God hears us. In the special blessings of the new year, we ask that God remember us for good; give us blessings; and grant us a good life.

Each year, we pray to God. We pray for the sunshine and rain in their due season; for security and prosperity in our own lives; and for all evil to be kept away from us.

Does anyone else feel like God isn’t quite delivering?

Often, I feel like I pray, but God doesn’t answer.

If you have managed to hold onto your faith and believe that God is with you even through all the trials of life, I admire you.

I don’t find it so easy.

I can feel the presence of God, who is the Source of all justice. But I look at our world, and feel how unjust it is.

The Psalmist says: “open for me the gates of righteousness; that the just may enter in!”

But it feels like the gates of justice are sealed shut. Why is there so much in this world that seems so profoundly unfair?

When I’m stuck with a question like this, I turn to the Talmud. Those Babylonian rabbis of old always have some good answers. And I never agree with any of them.

Because the Talmud doesn’t tell you what to think, it tells you how to think. So, in the tractate of Talmud focused on blessings, Talmud gives a few possibilities.

Maybe I’m praying for the wrong things. Maybe God can’t do what I’m asking. Or maybe God can’t hear me.

And maybe, maybe, God is listening to me, and it’s me who isn’t listening to God.

So, let’s explore the options, as they’re set out in the Talmud.

Talmud says some prayers are pointless. If you ask God to change the past, you’re praying in vain. If you hear a scream on your street and you pray it’s not in your house, you’re praying in vain.

On one level, Talmud is just saying God doesn’t do time travel. But I think there’s a deeper meaning here. I think Talmud is saying: bad things will happen in the world, and you cannot stop them from happening to you.

We cannot go back and change the past because suffering is built into the human condition. There are things I pray for, like the eradication of all sickness, that God just can’t do.

Human beings may have been able to defeat many illnesses over the last two centuries, and medicine today is capable of remarkable things.

But so long as we are human, we will be mortal, we will get sick, and we will experience pain.

As long as there is suffering in the world, some of it will happen to me and the people I love. God won’t open the gates of Heaven to do favours for the favourites.

So, if I only pray for the right things, will they happen?

The Talmud’s answer is: still, no.

Rabbi Elazar teaches: Since the day the Temple was destroyed, an iron wall separates the Jews from God.

On the one hand, we might take that literally, and imagine that God was busy in people’s lives until year 70 of the Common Era, then lost interest when there were no more chicken sacrifices on the altar, and decided to leave us all to it.

If only we still had a stone structure in Jerusalem, we could take a baby goat to a priest, and all our problems would disappear!

But I doubt it. Even in the time of the Temple, the Prophets were very suspicious of the supposed claims of the Priests to do magic. The Talmud is the project of the rabbinic movement, which was sceptical of the Temple cult.

More likely, the Talmud is answering a question that reading the Torah poses. Why God isn’t helping.

God rescued Noah from the flood: why not us? God parted the sea for Moses: why not for us? God fed the Israelites with manna from Heaven: why not us?

These stories belong not to a historical past but to a mythic time. They happened at the same time that giants roamed in Canaan, donkeys spoke in Moab, and dragons were slain in Persia.

That fantasy time has to end somewhen. God clearly doesn’t do magic anymore.

But this explanation feels inadequate. If I’m praying for the right things, and God has the power to perform miracles, why don’t they happen?

Talmud has another answer, because: “Rabbi Elazar also said: Since the day the Temple was destroyed, the gates of prayer were locked.”

We may imagine ourselves outside a great castle, calling out to be allowed entry. But nobody can hear us.

I might pray all day every day, but nobody can hear. I might shout and scream for God to solve all the world’s problems. But no message is getting through.

It’s not that God doesn’t care. It’s not that God can’t do anything about it. It’s that, for some reason, God cannot hear what I’m asking for.

For Rabbi Elazar, that sad fact is baked into the universe. God is listening, but cannot hear.

I can make whatever demands I like, but they go nowhere.

But Rabbi Elazar offers us some comfort. He says: “Despite the fact that the gates of prayer are locked, the gates of tears were never sealed.”

All my demands from God, whatever I shout for, won’t be heard. But my tears will.

God may not hear my orders, but God will hear me when I cry.

In our haftarah, Hannah goes and stands in the Temple to pray for a child.

Hannah’s soul was bitterly afflicted, and she wept incessantly. She whispered in ways those around her could not understand. She was so distressed that, to the Priest who saw her, she looked drunk.

Abarbanel, a 15th Century Portuguese commentator, says that Hannah was filled with tears, to open the gates of tears, because they are never closed. Then God would join her in her sadness.

Now, we must imagine something new. So far, we have been putting out protests, petitions, and pleas. But God hasn’t heard any of them.

Now, instead of our demands, we offer tears. Consider how different this is. A request requires an answer. Action. Yes or no. And you can ask God for whatever you like, but you won’t get it.

Tears are different. When I cry, it comes from a place of real grief, sadness, and exhaustion.

I cry when all the bluster is gone and I’m stripped back to my most vulnerable self. I’m not telling God what to give me anymore. I’m just telling God I’ve got nothing left to give.

And God hears that.

The gates of tears are never closed. There are no locks, no doors, no iron walls, that can stop God hearing when we cry.

And then God cries too.

Tears can’t be answered with magic solutions. The only way to really answer a crying person is to hold them and sit with their pain. So that’s what God does.

God joins us in our sadness.

I cry to God that the people I love get sick and suffer. And God weeps back, because that hurts God too.

I cry to God that the world is a mess, filled with war, hatred, and environmental destruction. And God weeps back, because that hurts God too.

I cry to God about how the innocent die and the wicked succeed. And God weeps back, because that hurts God too.

I say to God: please, do all you can to make this world just a little more just. And God answers: please, you do all you can to make this world just a little more just.

This gate swings both ways. Open up the gates of justice in your world, so that I, the Eternal One, may enter into your space.

The gates of repentance have opened.

Now is the chance to channel our most justice-seeking selves. In these Days of Awe, we seek forgiveness. We resolve to abandon our worst habits and to cultivate our best traits. We swear we will become a force for righteousness.

But all year round, the gates of tears stay open.

God may not grant wishes like a genie, but God will always be a friend; there to share the pain.

So, on the days when I feel like God isn’t listening to me, I need to try and listen out for God.

I need to hear that I am not the only one crying. The whole world is crying. And God is crying with us.

In this season of repentance, may we all find the strength to be vulnerable, to cry when we need to, and to feel God’s presence with us through our pain.

Whatever you are facing, may God be with you.

Amen.

Rosh Hashanah morning 5787

high holy days · sermon

Look for the helpers

levtaylor

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”

The pastor, Fred Rogers, said these words. He was speaking to nursery age children on American public TV. He was a gentle Christian minister, who gave people hope and comfort through trying times.

This year, I have returned to his words often. This has been a difficult year for the British Jewish community. We have seen previously unthinkable and frightening acts of antisemitism. 

And, yet, for every one person sowing hatred and fear, there have been hundreds of others bringing love and solidarity. 

On days when a disaster happened, I wished that every KLS member could be in this building. Then you could receive the cards, the flowers, the emails, the calls.

You could see all the neighbours checking in on us. All the faith leaders extending solidarity. All the politicians asking what we need. All the emergency services coming round to offer us reassurance.

I wish every member could receive all the love, because to look at the news, you would think there was nothing but hate. But there are so many good people, who are happy that Jews are here in Britain, and who want to build with us a society based on tolerance, liberty, and compassion.

They are our helpers. And we have had so many.

While some may want to kill and destroy, without the helpers, there would be no such thing as civilisation. 

Indeed, there was a time when even knowing Rosh Hashanah’s date depended on a great community of helpers.

In this modern age, we can look at our phones and quickly find out when Rosh Hashanah begins. Some use paper calendars or have the information stuck up on their fridges. 

But there was a time before all that. Not just before phones and fridges. But before we even had a fixed calendar. 

Back then, if you wanted to know when Rosh Hashanah began, you had to stare up at the night sky. 

Rosh Hashanah always starts with the new moon of Tishri. The new moon is a slither in the sky, visible only for about fifteen minutes on a clear night, and requiring expert precision to identify.

So, Jews throughout the Diaspora would gaze patiently at the waning moon, perhaps as they tended flocks, or nursed children, or laid on their backs under a cloak of stars. They would wait for it.

And then they’d see it. The exact moment when the moon looked almost entirely black, save for a faint glow around the perimeter. Blink and you’ll miss it. But see it, and the new moon has come, and with it, the new year. 

Still, it wasn’t enough for one person to spot the moon from a field. Every Jew had to agree that this was indeed the start of their year. 

So, the witnesses walked to Jerusalem. They trekked from wherever they were in the countryside to the old Temple. They gave testimony there before learned teachers, holding up picture charts, who could confirm that what they saw was a true new moon.

On the walk to Jerusalem, you could find others walking the same path, all heading towards the Temple courtyard, because they had seen the same moon that you had seen. Hundreds would descend on the courtyards to bear witness to fifteen minutes of a blackened sky.

Rabban Gamliel, the head of the Jewish community in the early first century, wanted to make sure that all these helpful people felt valued. So, he threw a great feast in the courtyard for everyone who came to volunteer their sighting of the moon. 

Gamliel ensured that every witness was questioned thoroughly, and asked to describe the moon they saw. And he made a new law, saying that anyone who was giving this testimony could walk two thousand cubits in every direction, even in violation of Shabbat. He wanted to reward people; to make sure they continued helping.

When every witness had been interviewed, and the rabbis had confirmed that the new moon had been seen, they would light up a fire on the Mount of Olives to declare that the festival had begun. And everywhere across the Jewish Diaspora that they saw a burning pyre, they’d light their own bonfire, to let the whole community know that this was the beginning of the year.

The Rosh Hashanah of Antiquity was made by helpers.

Now, every year, for thousands of years, at exactly this time, we have gathered, just as they once did, to celebrate this day.

Yet, this Erev Rosh Hashanah is not only a celebration.

We meet here on the 25th anniversary of the World Trade Centre attacks. September 11th 2001, a quarter-century ago, forever changed the world. 

I remember coming home from school to see that now iconic footage of the Twin Towers falling live. My mum stood, ironing shirts, transfixed by rolling coverage on the BBC. She said: “there will be bombs dropping somewhere tomorrow morning.” She had a tone of detached fear. 

Terror, I suppose, is the word.

A few days later was Rosh Hashanah. Rabbi Alexandra Wright preached. In her sermon, she summarised the mood:

“The sickening fear that refused to dissipate, the disbelief and unutterable shock of seeing those elegantly poised silver towers, knifed by the steel of two airliners, buckle slowly, almost gracefully, crumbling, shattering into a million pieces amidst a plume of lethal dust and smoke, held back for a little while any contemplation of the global implications of this attack.

“But by the following morning, a voice of anger, outrage and retribution had been discovered. America would avenge the deaths of its thousands. Retaliation would be bitter-sweet comfort in its hour of loss.”

Rabbi Alex was sadly proven right. A month later, the attacks on Afghanistan began. That war lasted twenty years. Subsequent wars followed in Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, Lebanon, Pakistan and Syria. Some say we are still living through the same war.

Immediately following 9/11, there was a climate of fear.  If even New York were vulnerable, anywhere could be attacked. 

We in Britain feared for how we might be hurt, and we feared for the hurt that our own country might inflict on others.

In this climate of panic, there was another message that cut through, too. Televisions re-ran the message of Mr. Rogers. “”Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”

The speakers directed us to think of the heroes that day in New York. The firefighters who rushed towards danger. The first responders who came to the scene. The nurses and paramedics who treated wounds.

These are the same people mentioned in the Mishnah of Rosh Hashanah where we learn about the team of volunteers that called the new moon. Because Rabban Gamliel didn’t just create legal exemptions and special protections for the new moon volunteers. 

He extended Shabbat privileges to midwives, firefighters, sentinels, and anyone who needed to take swift action to counteract a disaster. He made a halachah for the helpers, to say that their helping mattered more, even than Jewish law.

“Look for the helpers,” that was the message. Find strength and comfort in all the people who run towards disaster with the sole goal of helping others.

Realising that his voice was needed once more, Mr. Rogers came out of retirement to record a message for the post-9/11 world. Rogers, a Presbyterian minister, used a Jewish concept to anchor his message: “tikkun olam”; healing the world.

He said:

No matter what our particular job, especially in our world today, we all are called to be repairers of creation. Thank you for whatever you do, wherever you are, to bring joy and light and hope and faith and pardon and love to your neighbour and to yourself.”

This was a message to everyone. 

The work of being a helper did not just belong to those who did exceptional professions, but to anyone willing to do the right thing. Anyone who came forward with a volunteer spirit to address a problem was a helper. 

The message to look for helpers has recurred many more times since September 11th 2001. In 2018, a terrorist shot up the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, killing 11, and injuring 8. The neighbourhood where the attack took place, Squirrel Hill, had been home to Fred Rogers.

Tovia Jacobs came from the same neighbourhood, and was a student at Yeshiva University. He penned a profound reflection on coming as a Jew from this place, inspired by Fred Rogers, and wanting to find helpers. He acknowledged, in particular, the Muslim organizations who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Synagogue within a few days of the attack. “The helpers were definitely there,” he said, “each acting as a small vigil candle in the darkness.”

This year, that message has reverberated in my brain once more. Look for the helpers.

Tonight, I want to retell the story of this last year, not as one of victimhood and fear, but one that has been profoundly shaped by helpers.

Last Yom Kippur, there was an attack on Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation in Manchester. The leadership of this synagogue carried out the necessary risk assessments and made the brave decision to stay open. The Synagogue Protection Group understood that we needed to change how we do shul security, and stepped up to the plate. So many members, through their volunteering, ensured our community flourished in proud defiance of hatred.

In the weeks after the attack, we were inundated by gifts of flowers and messages of support. We made a notice board purely to showcase all the words of solidarity we were receiving. Some people called the synagogue office, just to say they were thinking of us, and to let us know that we were their neighbours, and that they cared about us. A man came round and, to my surprise, handed me an anonymous cheque to help with our increased security costs.

On the first night of Chanukah, after the attack at Bondi Beach in Australia, we received so many messages of support. The local MP, Monica Harding; the Council leader, Andreas Kirsch; the mayor, Noel Hadjimichael, and several dignitaries immediately came round to support us. We received visits from all of the local police services. Some of the police then came in the evening to our Chanukah Party, danced with us, and ate doughnuts.

When there was an attempted arson attack at Finchley Reform Synagogue, all the faith communities of their area immediately came together to stand as one. Cantor Zoe Jacobs, FRS’s spiritual leader, said at the time: “We are extremely grateful for the solidarity of our neighbours, local police, and politicians. They help us remember that we are always a community who would choose to build bridges rather than walls.”

When there was a stabbing attack in Golders Green, the local vicar, Reverend Joe Moffatt, and the council’s faith worker, Marina Payen, called and asked what we needed. I said we needed a public show of support. They said: “then that’s what we’ll do.”

That weekend, all the faiths came to stand together against hate outside the Bentall Centre in Kingston. The mosque promoted the event at Jummah prayers on Friday. Some of the churches stopped their Sunday services to join us. We were surrounded by Kingston’s community representatives and faith leaders. I looked around and thought: “I am so glad the Jews are outnumbered here.”

In Kingston, we are blessed with exceptionally strong civil society, positive neighbourly relations, and a culture of collaboration between the faiths. 

So, yes, there have been stories this year that I need not repeat. But there are other stories that we should be telling again and again. Stories of the helpers.

We have seen them. And we need to keep looking out for them.

We look for the helpers because, when we feel scared, they give us security.

We look for the helpers because, when our faith in humanity is tested, they restore it sevenfold.

We look for the helpers because, when we’re not sure what to do, we know we can follow them.

All across this city, this country, this world, there are people who have decided that hatred will not win. They are determined to stamp out the scourge of bigotry and intolerance. They are building a world based on love and diversity. 

There are those, now, who are scared and confused, and looking for helpers. 

They are looking for you. So find that helper within yourself.

In Antiquity, when the Temple stood in Jerusalem, the New Year wasn’t declared until the helpers arrived. Then, when they had confirmed that they had seen the new moon, they lit a torch on the Mount of Olives to say that Rosh Hashanah had begun. 

And everywhere across the Jewish Diaspora that they saw a burning pyre, they’d light their own bonfire, to let the whole community know that this was the beginning of the year.

Today, let us each light the fire within ourselves that we will be numbered among the helpers.

Let us set up the beacon from this synagogue that says we will promote tolerance, liberty, and compassion.

Let us look out and see all the many other flames, shining bright in the darkness, coming from every place that believes in the vision of a shared society.

And, as we look out at the sea of lights in the darkness, let us say: a new year is here.

Shanah tovah.

Erev Rosh Hashanah 5787

social justice · spirituality · theology

One God, No Masters

levtaylor

We are, all of us, sparks of the divine.

There is something within each of us that is holy. 

We are more than moving limbs and functioning organs. We have a quality that cannot be reduced to DNA, or psychology, or narrative. 

There is something about a person that makes them who they are: more than their physical experiences, and more than our experiences of them. 

It is a feature that we can’t perceive by touch, sight or smell, but we know it is definitely there. It is the unfathomable essence within a human being that glows invisible and breathes without lungs and animates without moving.

This property cannot really be named, but it has been known in English as soul, spirit, or lifeforce; in Hebrew as neshama, ruach, nefesh.

There is something unique about life. And, if anything deserves to be called sacred, it is that.

In Judaism, we call it “the spark of the Divine.” As if God were one burning bonfire in which all of us were the flames. As if, inside every one of us, a candle was lit before we were born and cannot be extinguished after we die. 

There have been moments in my life when I have truly felt it. When I have seen the sacred spark in myself and realised, in a way I still cannot explain, that I am made in God’s image. 

There have been times when I have truly seen the sacred spark in others. Not just that another person was special or lovable, but infinite: that, qualitatively, their true essence could never be contained. 

I hope you have felt this at times too, or already know it to be true, because I want to talk about how radical this concept is.

If you truly believe, as I do, that we all have sacred souls, how could it ever make sense for one person to be better than another? 

In the light of God’s majesty, the divisions of gender, race, nation, and physical characteristics look like pale imitation of reality. Our bodies are real and diverse, but our spirits have a reality that is incomprehensibly more real and more diverse.

The Divine Spark within us comes from the Source of all Truth. And because God has implanted it within us, every life is equally, completely, and unassailably holy.

Every human spirit is remarkably equal. Not because each one is in some way alike, but because each one is infinitely different. 

In this week’s haftarah, the Prophet Isaiah proclaims: “O Eternal God, masters other than you have ruled over us, but we only remember your Name. Those others are dead and lifeless; sunken beings who will never rise. You, O God, have wiped them out and obliterated their memory.”

Who are these other masters? And why can God destroy them so decisively?

We might be tempted to imagine this as we do the Pagan pantheon, where one god comes in and destroys the others, as the Titan Cronus usurped his father, Uranus, only in turn to be vanquished by Zeus. 

But this is not a myth of many gods. In the Jewish understanding, there is only one God. So who else has ruled over us?

Midrash Tehillim says that this is referring to Nebuchadnezzar, the tyrant of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Nebuchadnezzar ran colonial campaigns throughout the Middle East, suppressing all revolt, and establishing himself as sole dictator over the Levant. In 586, Nebuchadnezzar besieged and ransacked Jerusalem. He bulldozed Solomon’s Temple, conquered the Land of Israel, and carried away its leaders as captives. 

According to our tradition, Nebuchadnezzar demanded that the Israelites he had imprisoned bow down to idols. They refused. Nebuchadnezzar heated a furnace to seven times its regular temperature and attempted to burn the Israelites alive. But, by a miracle, God saved them, and the three pious believers walked out from the fire unscathed.

In this understanding of the text, there is only one True Ruler, and that is God. The lords who attempt to subjugate others are men. Sure, they may be able to win some wars, defeat some people, and make some people bow down to their will. But, ultimately, they are mortal.

Their lives are nothing in the span of God’s eternity. Their empires are worthless in the expanse of God’s universe. They are lying to themselves and others that they can be anything but dust and ashes. 

Only one being is immortal – that is God – and all are equal in the Eternal One’s beneficent eyes. The rulers of the world can never conquer us in a way that truly matters, because our spirits belong to something greater than their meager understanding.

If we deeply internalised this sanctity of every life, our entire world order would seek to function. Consider what it would mean to believe in the profound equality of every soul. How could anyone take more than they need from society, or abide for anyone else to have less? Surely nobody would ever be able to kill another and there would be no more wars. 

How would we have borders and checkpoints, when no human being can own the earth, because everything is God’s possession? Nobody could ever dominate or govern another.

And, in truth, if we truly got rid of all borders, states, laws, militaries, and inequalities, civilisation would fall apart. Society, as we know it, would cease to exist.

Well, good, said Rabbi Avraham Yehuda Heyn. He was one of the leading intellectuals among the Chabad Chassidim in 20th Century Ukraine. He taught that Judaism was a rejection of hierarchy, force, and inequality. We wrestle against the strong arm to make everyone strong and uproot weakness. 

He outlined a view of the world that would upturn all order. Absolute equality for everyone in everything. Complete refusal to participate in states or war. The abolition of all classes, and the levelling of all people.

Avraham Yehuda Heyn was part of a cohort of rabbis from Eastern Europe, profoundly educated in Talmud, as well as the modern thought of Tolstoy, Nietzsche, and Kropotkin. There were many like him, in the 19th and 20th Centuries, who believed that the only logical conclusion to Judaism’s insistence on the sanctity of life was freedom and equality for all. In his recent book, No Masters but God, Hayyim Rothman calls this ideology of strictly Orthodox mystics “anarcho-Judaism.”

This idea may sound radical, and even intimidating. You can feel that it belongs to the heady days of a time when Jews were becoming free and anything felt possible. It belongs with the revolutionary optimism of mystics in another era. It is bold.

And yet: it is hard to honestly believe what we do – in God and the sanctity of the spirit – without arriving at some pretty bold conclusions. 

Think seriously about what it would mean to say that we are all holy embers. To say that we are sparks of the divine.

As if God were one burning bonfire in which all of us were the flames. As if, inside every one of us, a candle was lit before we were born and cannot be extinguished after we die. 

Breathe life into the flames. Give fuel to the candle. And, perhaps, something within us all, will set this world ablaze.

Shabbat shalom.

judaism · sermon · theology

If you don’t fancy killing pigeons, you’re probably a Progressive Jew

levtaylor



Have you ever done something wrong, completely accidentally, with all the best intentions, and, feeling ashamed and repentant, thought to yourself: “that’s it, I better go kill a pigeon.”

Of course you haven’t. Because as an astute reader of Torah knows, if you have committed a sin, you need to sacrifice at least two pigeons. A goat for serious misbehaviour. A bull, if you really messed up.

This week, we enter the Book of Leviticus, an impressive catalogue of sins and sacrifices. This third book in the Torah cycle, called in Hebrew Vayikra, acts as a directory for priests.

Here, you can match up any misdeed or lifecycle event with the appropriate sacrificial animal, and it comes with a handy recipe book for how to make the meat smell nice enough that God forgives you.

(Bit of oil… bit of incense… bake for three days in a smoke oven…)

We leave behind the great moral myths of Genesis. We leave behind the inspiring liberatory narrative of Exodus. And this, too, is where we leave behind Orthodox Judaism.

If you are an Orthodox Jew, the only problem you can see with killing a pigeon to atone for your mistakes is that you don’t have a Temple to do it in.

In the Koren Sacks Siddur, the Orthodox daily prayer book, you will find petitions to be recited every day that God rebuilds the Temple in Jerusalem, brings back the hereditary priesthood, and restores the sacrificial cult.

Finally, if I make an accidental mistake, I will be able to fulfil the Torah’s command that I should splatter a bull’s blood and entrails all over a table.

Frankly, I don’t know how our friends further up the Thames have managed to go so long without enacting this sacred duty.

At its best, the rebuilt Temple of Orthodox Judaism involves some kind of mystical descent of a palace from the clouds at the end of time. At its worst, there are Jews currently hoping to blow up the Al Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount and replace it with a gaudy pillared Roman-style shrine.

I’m not going to get into the geopolitics of why that would be a terrible idea. My area is theology, and I can tell you now, that from a religious, moral, spiritual, and ethical perspective, bringing back any kind of Temple would be a terrible idea.

Even as a metaphor, the yearning for Temple Judaism is an abrogation of responsibility, a refusal to engage in the real world, and a fantasy that blood can avenge wrongdoing. We cannot tolerate this idea on any level, whether real or abstract.

It is hard to overstate what a fundamental difference this is between Progressive and Orthodox Judaism. Opposition to rebuilding the Temple is central to Progressive theology.

In 1885, American Jews came together at the Rodef Shalom Synagogue in Pennsylvania and signed up to their foundational document: the Pittsburgh Platform. This decree has influenced how Progressive Jews see our religion ever since.

In it, they declare: “we expect no sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron.” From the outset, we have believed that the synagogue has permanently replaced the Temple.

The author of the Pittsburgh Platform was an inspiring rabbi, named Kaufmann Kohler. Born in Germany, he became America’s preeminent Reform scholar. If you’ve ever dipped into the Jewish Encyclopedia, you’ve probably read something written by him.

Kohler wrote an introduction to Jewish theology that dealt thoroughly with how we Progressive Jews should understand these Temple texts. They were, for their time, a tool to help Jews gain moral understanding. The rituals and sacrifices showed us how to take responsibility for our thoughts, and even our conduct.

But, over time, we outgrew pigeon slaughter. We moved on to the world of rules and structures created by the early rabbis. And now, in our modern age, we are still moving forwards: so that we will do the right thing without being bound by old laws.

That’s what the progress in Progressive Judaism means: progressing from the age of slaughter through the age of laws towards the age of morals.

It’s not that we should discard the laws, or even the stories of slaughter. We should be like students who learn more through our schooling- at each stage, we retain what we learnt earlier, but we refine it, and we realise that some of our earlier ideas were too simplistic. Wanting to rebuild the Temple is like wanting to go back to the crayons of nursery school.

Throughout the moral education of humanity, we received hints that this was where we were going all along. In the Book of Proverbs, written when cattle murder was the normal way of dealing with guilt, it says: “To do what is right and just is more desired by the Eternal One than sacrifice.”

Throughout the books of the prophets we are repeatedly assured that God is far more interested in our moral conduct than in how much fat we can burn off the bones of a lamb.

Centuries later, when the early rabbis were busy codifying all their laws, the midrash explained why the Torah would say this. Sacrifices could only happen in the Temple, but you can do good deeds anywhere. Sacrifices can only atone for mistakes, but with good deeds you can repent for what you did wrong on purpose. Sacrifices only last a short while, but righteousness can endure forever.

At every stage of its development, says Rabbi Kohler, we Jews were a priestly people. Even in the days of animal sacrifice, we were always trying to demonstrate how to live with knowledge of God and concern for morality.

So, says Kohler, our mission on earth is to constantly be a beacon of moral behaviour. If we forfeit that, even for a moment, we will cease to be worthy of being called God’s people.

The idea of rebuilding a Temple isn’t just a dead end: it is a reversal of history. It takes us backwards from reason to superstition. It is the most retrograde step from our understanding of animal suffering to treating God’s creatures as subjects for abuse. It is abhorrent.

And I think most people know that. I honestly believe that, if we asked the vast majority of our friends and family who attend United or Federation synagogues if they think we would be better off with a cult of butchery based in Jerusalem, they would be repulsed by the concept.

In that case, they do not believe in Orthodox Judaism. Mazel tov, they’re Progressives already! Come through our doors, come celebrate with us, come pray with us!

You can leave your fantasies of pigeon massacres at the door. Come and be God’s priestly people.

Come and be a Progressive Jew.

Shabbat shalom.

sermon · spirituality

It’s not just what you see, it’s the way that you see it

levtaylor

During prayers, I find my mind wanders- or rather focuses. It sees things it otherwise wouldn’t.

The details of the space I am in suddenly interest me in new ways. I, who live in a world of words, suddenly find myself in a world of space: physical and embodied.

Look around: what do you see?

Perhaps a more pertinent question is: how do you see it? In a synagogue, walls are not just walls. Ceilings are not just ceilings. Curtains are not just curtains.

Every inch of space buzzes with meaning, crying out for interpretation.

For months, we have looked at this space with a certain set of eyes. For the Council, commissioning a new sanctuary, they have looked at the room with eyes of possibility. For the team responsible for the redesign, they have been looking at the space with the eyes of architects, artists and technicians. Those who were accustomed to this space have perhaps looked at it with nostalgic loss, knowing that their familiar sanctuary would be transformed.

I want to invite you now to look at this space anew: through the eyes of a believer.

In 539 BCE, Cyrus the Great permitted the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their Temple, which had been destroyed in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. A generation of exiled elites returned and remade their holy space.

The books of Ezra and Nehemiah are dedicated to explaining what happened in those formative years.

Ezra recounts the dramatic unveiling ceremony for the new Temple. He says that, when the elders of the generation saw the new Temple, they began to cry, while the young cheered out in jubilation.

Seventy years they had been held captive. Seventy years they had not seen their holy mountain.

For the old, this was a place they never dreamed they would see again, certainly not within their own lifetimes. For the young, this was a place that had only existed in myth and psalm.

What a moving experience it must have been to witness it.

So, I invite you to come to this building with the eyes of exiles. True, our four weeks in the next door hall do not quite compare to the seventy years the Jews spent in Babylon.

Nevertheless, soak it up, because it is a marvel to enter after a period away. Absence surely makes the heart grow fonder, and I know I had missed the beautiful serenity of this synagogue.

Yet the commentaries on the book of Ezra believe that the elders were not shedding tears of joy. Rashi says they were, in fact, crying for the Temple they had lost. The First Temple, he says, was even bigger. Solomon’s Temple was enormous by comparison.

This is an interesting proposition, because it is almost certainly not true. We do not have any archaeological evidence to suggest there was a First Temple, still less a bigger one with wider foundations. By all accounts, it is far more likely that the First Temple was smaller and more frail.

Yet, Rashi is right that the elders could truly have believed the old Temple was bigger and grander. When they last saw it, they would all have been infants.

My primary school’s doors were enormous wooden structures that towered over all who entered them… until I returned as an adult and realised they were just doors.

There may be a part of you that looks back with wistful nostalgia at the old sanctuary, dilapidated though it was. This is natural: in our synagogues we find safe spaces that ground us in our youth. Adjusting can be hard.

So, this is an invitation: try to look at this space through the eyes of a child. Try to feel the comfort and wonderment that you did in your youth.

When Ezra returned and rebuilt the Temple, he sought to recreate all that was best in the one that had stood before.

Like us, the Jews dedicated and blessed their Second Temple in the month of Adar, between the festivals of Purim and Pesach.

They brought in what they had preserved from the last Temple: cleansing bowls and musicals instruments. Where they could not repeat, they replicated, weaving curtains and priestly garments.

In Solomon’s Temple, there had been a permanently lit flame above the altar, symbolising God’s eternal presence with the Israelites.

When the exiles returned with Ezra, they relit the pyre, to show that, while they had left the Temple, God had never left them.

After the destruction of the Second Temple, the Jews installed in their synagogues a ner tamid, an everlasting light. Through this emblem, the flames showed that God’s light was not only in every time, but also in every space.

So, look at our light, with its memorial to the Shoah, and see how this same flame has burned for 3,000 years, linking us to hundreds of generations of worshippers.

But do not stop there, or you may be tempted by conservatism.

After the Temple, our rabbis reinvented every ritual item so that they could have new homes in the synagogues.

The Ark that contained the Two Tablets of the Law became the ark that holds our Torah scroll. The breastplate and crown that the priests wore became adornments for Torah. The sacrificial altar became the bimah from which Torah was read.

In every object, you can see the theological creativity of our people. You witness the myriad ways in which we constantly reinvent and reanimate our traditions.

So, look at the details of this sanctuary and embrace all the ways that our artists and architects have participated in that great tradition of innovation.

Everything contains the holy sparks of what went before. Every spark is breathed new life by the creatives who recreate it.

You, too, can fill this space with life, as you bring your own meanings to it.

Come to this sanctuary. Come with the eyes of an exile; the eyes of an elder; the eyes of a child. Come with eyes that are ancient and new. Come with eyes that have seen thousands of years and still look to the future.

Then bring those eyes back out into the world – and see what needs to be done.

Shabbat shalom.


sermon · theology · torah

Purity or justice

levtaylor

Let’s start with a question.

An adult couple accidentally runs over their pet dog. Instead of burying their dog in the garden, they take it home, cook it in the oven, and eat it. 

Here’s the question: have they done something immoral? 

Most of us will have an instinctive reaction: what that couple did was disgusting. We will feel some revulsion.

But whether you think it was morally wrong will depend on how you see the world. It will depend on your moral palate. 

This was what was demonstrated by the Jewish-American psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, in his popular book, The Righteous Mind.

Haidt sought to find out why it was that caring, rational people could disagree so profoundly on moral issues. Why was it that America was so polarised? There, people fight furiously about issues like abortion, guns, and marriage, as if they have no common moral basis.

Haidt argues that we do have shared moral bases, but our morality is more like the palate on our tongue. “We humans all have the same five taste receptors, but we don’t all like the same foods,” he says. “It’s the same for moral judgments.”

We have, he says, five main taste receptors: care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and sanctity. 

If you are an educated person who lives in an urban area of a Western capitalist country, you are likely to feel that the couple who ate their dog did not do anything morally wrong. You’ll be disgusted, sure, but you might not think that they violated any kind of moral rule.

That’s because, in these cultures, people have a moral palate that puts a big emphasis on ethics of care and harm. If nobody was hurt, then there’s nothing immoral.

If, however, you live in a close-knit community of farmers, you are far more likely to say that the couple who ate their dog did do something morally wrong. That’s because those cultures have a strong sense of sanctity and taboo.

Both of these systems are ways to help people get on with each other. In a busy metropolis like London, you need to be able to live and let live, because if you can’t tolerate diversity, society will fall apart. In a tribal farming community, like ancient Israel, you need to have strong social norms to protect people.

Both these impulses – care and sanctity – come from a deep, ancient social need. 

Since humanity’s beginning, our survival has depended on our ability to care for our most vulnerable members. How would we have lasted a single generation if not for looking after the young, the old, and the vulnerable?

From the start of civilisation, we have also needed to be able to express disgust. It comes down to the most basic distinction between excrement and edibles. We need to tell each other: “this food is poisonous; this disease is contagious; this behaviour is dangerous…” Without clearly agreed boundaries and taboos, we would quickly perish.

It is worth holding these two tendencies in mind – care and sanctity; purity and justice – as we approach our readings for this week.

Our Torah portion goes into minute detail about how to do proper sacrifices, how to lay out the Temple, and who is supposed to do what in religious services. To us, the attention to detail might seem absurd.

But remember that this is part of a group of people’s moral palate. This is their sense of the sacred. Messing it up, from their point of view, would be ethically disastrous. It would be similar to eating the family pet. 

No wonder, then, that the prophet Ezekiel opens the haftarah by telling the Israelites “if they are ashamed of all they have done, make known to them the design of the temple.” Failure to get it right, says Ezekiel, is a serious sin.

There are two great moral impulses in Torah: justice and purity. This trend appears throughout the whole Scripture: contradictory, competing moral voices speak through our books.

The voice of justice tells us about care and compassion. It tells us about fairness and redistribution. The voice of justice charges us towards more equality and more freedom. Justice says that a society is only as strong as its weakest members.

The voice of purity tells us about how to keep holy things sacred. It tells us what the boundaries are on sex, so that we do not cross them. The voice of purity tells us not to eat octopus and not to mix linens. Purity makes sure everything is kept in its proper place, so that society can function, and people feel safe.

The voice of purity might feel less relevant to us today. We celebrate the prophets for their concern for the most vulnerable, because it fits so well with our ethics of care. We see ourselves in the narratives of the exodus because they chime with our moral intuitions about freedom from slavery. Laws on architecture… feel less like big moral issues.

That’s because what the big taboos and boundaries are can change a lot between time periods. 

When I was growing up, one of the big focuses of popular disgust was gay men. There was a long period when the media was seemingly obsessed over sex between men, especially in public toilets. This was the full gambit of taboos: waste and excrement; sex between the wrong sorts of people; and blurring the boundaries between public and private.

I think that is why some of the things that cause people moral disgust today just don’t bother me. I have had to push through a society telling me I was disgusting, and unlearn that contempt towards gay people. Now, the other sources of disgust just seem like passing fads. 

Knowing that has helped me understand where others are coming from.

I find Haidt’s ideas about moral palates really helpful for thinking through why sometimes it’s hard for people to agree. My ethical taste buds are highly attuned to care and fairness, but I don’t get much flavour from sanctity, and I can barely taste authority. 

Please do not think that one of these is left-wing and the other is right-wing. There are plenty of conservatives deeply motivated by wanting to make sure people are cared for and that distribution is just. There are just as many socialists who want to ensure the purity of the Marxist tradition, and to live in a world without contaminating ideas or contaminating people. 

What we morally feel is not just about ideology, but about all the factors in our cultures and upbringing that make us need to focus on certain values.

So, this is my advice. The next time you encounter someone that you really disagree with, try not to assume they are evil or weird. Think back, instead, to this Torah portion. Maybe what is just a building to you is somebody else’s Temple. Maybe what really triggers one person just doesn’t impact you.

Haidt’s goal, when he did this study, was to make it possible for people to talk to each other across divides. I don’t want us to become like America, where some issues cause massive wedges between neighbours. 

So let’s try listening to each other, and hearing each other’s worldviews.

Shabbat shalom.

judaism · sermon

What do Jews look like?

levtaylor

A woman on a train walked up to a man across the table. “Excuse me,” she said, “but are you Jewish?”

“No,” replied the man.

A few minutes later the woman returned. “Excuse me,” she said again, “are you sure you’re not Jewish?”

“I’m sure,” said the man.

But the woman was not convinced, and a few minutes later she approached him a third time. “Are you absolutely sure you’re not Jewish?” she asked.

“All right, all right,” the man said. “You win. I’m Jewish.”

“That’s funny,” said the woman.” You don’t look Jewish.”

This classic Jewish joke actually highlights a good question: what do Jews look like? I am often told either that I do look like one, or that I don’t, and when I ask what it is… nobody ever wants to tell me! Whatever the reason, people have in their minds a picture of a Jew.

As it turns out, this isn’t altogether a new thing. Indeed, this week, we read about the clothes for Aaron and his descendants of the priestly caste. They have a strict identifying uniform.

Linen headdress, sash and and robes. A metal encrusted breastplate. Ephod, urim, tumim, incense. Aaron looks holy. Aaron looks like he stands out. Aaron looks… Aaron looks a lot like the Tabernacle he serves.

Aaron is to dress in the same white linen that we are told covers the Holy of Holies. He is to wrap himself in yarns of crimson and turquoise, just like the sashes that decorate the sanctuary. He is framed in gold like the Tabernacle’s curtain rails. He must wear a breastplate encrusted with stones representing the twelve tribes, just as the stones were ritually placed at the major resting points of the Israelites. 

Aaron is the Tabernacle in miniature. He is a microcosmic representative of the function he serves. The clothes he wears even assist in atoning for the Israelites’ sins, just as a sacrificial altar would.

Aaron dresses like what he does. He says: I am going to do holy things, and I require holy garb to do it in.

What a contrast with the Megillah we read just yesterday. In the book of Esther, there is an initial threat to the Jews. Haman, their wicked adversary, stomps through the city and plots Jewish mass murder. But Esther, our triumphant hero, foils the plot and overturns the decision. Now, instead, her uncle Mordechai will stomp through the streets of Shushan.

The Book of Esther draws our attention especially to what Mordechai was wearing on his horseback gallivant. “Mordecai left the king’s presence in royal robes of blue and white, with a magnificent crown of gold and a mantle of fine linen and purple wool.”

What does Mordechai look like? He looks just like a Persian palace. He has the crown and clothes of a king. He has the horse of his vizier. He looks like the empire. He looks like his enemy.

Having adopted the outfit of the oppressor, Mordechai soon acts like one. Under his instruction, the Jews go off on their own rampage, killing Haman, his sons, and 75,500 of their supporters. What Haman had planned for Mordechai, Mordechai did to Haman.

In Reform Judaism, we often gloss over this awkward ending, but it is very important. Victims given power can become no different to their persecutors. Here, the Megillah wants to slap us in the face with that fact. Look, it says, Mordechai looks just like everything he set out to oppose!

There must be a lesson in this for us. If we can look holy and we can look like oppressors, we have to think carefully about how we appear. 

Perhaps, then, I am right in my decision to always wear a collared shirt and suit jacket when I come to preach on Shabbat. After all, these clothes show that I’m serious and taking the services seriously. 

Ah, but the trouble is, arms dealers, politicians and tobacco lobbyists also wear suits. Aren’t I just dressing up like them, mimicking the clothing of 21st Century professionals, and subconsciously siding with them?

Perhaps, then, I need to switch to jeans and a t shirt? Oh, those haven’t been subversive since Tony Blair got out a guitar and rebranded the country as “Cool Britannia.” Mark Zuckerberg goes to work in jeans and a t-shirt, I’d hardly be making a different point.

Maybe I should copy our friends in Gateshead. After all, if I wear a black hat, long coat and beard, nobody will doubt that I’m Jewish. The people who stumbled to tell me why I looked Jewish before will now have a very clear answer.

Only the trouble is Haredim just dress like Eastern Europeans did 300 years ago. Theirs might fit someone else’s stereotypes better, but there’s nothing more authentic about it. Besides, I’m not convinced I’d look any less oppressive to a great number of Progressive Jews.

So how do we stop ourselves looking like our oppressors? In honesty, I think a Jew only looks like our enemy when we are determining what Jews should look like. When we stereotype, we repeat prejudices. When we gatekeep people for their clothes, we play into classism and prejudice. When we set out an image of a Jew, we exclude and hurt others. Deciding who looks Jewish is the least Jewish thing we can do.

So, what does a Jew look like? Open arms. An open heart. A broad smile. Curious eyes. A face that says, welcome, you are welcome here. A Jew looks like someone who knows that Jews look like everyone. 

Shabbat shalom.

story · torah

A rock-eating worm built the Temple

levtaylor

This is the story of how the Temple was built.

This story comes to us from the Talmud. It was copied from the Mishnah. It belongs to the folk legends of King Solomon that may have predated it by some centuries. This is an old story. I sincerely doubt whether any of it ever happened, but I assure you it’s all true.

This is the story of how the Temple was built by a rock-destroying worm. When King Solomon decided to build the Temple, he brought up entire stones from the quarry. He wanted to carve those stones without swords. He knew there was only one way.

Somewhere in his kingdom there was a rock-destroying worm called Shamir. This monster was created at the very beginning of time, during the six days of creation in which light and darkness were separated and the first trees were planted. 

Some say the Shamir ate stones for breakfast; chewed through the hardest granite, making passageways like the holes in Swiss cheese. Some say it could cut through the rocks with only its gaze: a laser-like stare that sliced solid metal. Whatever were its methods, Solomon knew he had to have it.

In fact, the only way to catch this creature was to find something really soft. You had to wrap it up in cotton wool and barley bran. These materials would be too gentle and the Shamir would have no way of chewing through them.

Yes, this is all in the Talmud. This is our tradition. And if you feel like this rock-gobbling worm is far-fetched, I hope you will forgive me if I tell you that Solomon captured this creature by tricking the King of the Demons.

Solomon knew that Ashmedai, the world’s greatest demon, lived in the bottom of a pit on the top of the world’s tallest mountain. And the pit was filled up with gallons of rainwater that the demon swallowed whole every day, then waited for it to refill. 

Solomon sent his servant up that mountain and into that pit. The servant drained the pit of its rainwater and filled it again with fortified wine.

You might think that the King of the Demons would not fall for such a simple trick, and you’d be right. Ashmedai scoffed at the wine-filled pit and refused to drink from it. But days passed and the monster missed his gallons of water. Oh, he became so parched. Eventually, he gave in and took several enormous mouthfuls of the wine. 

Within moments, he fell fast asleep. Solomon’s servants tied him up and carried him back to Jerusalem. When Ashmedai woke up on the Palace floor, he roared at Solomon: “is it not enough that you have conquered the whole world, but now you must imprison me too?”

“I promise you,” said Solomon. “All I want is one creature. The shamir. The worm that eats through stone. I need it to build my Temple for God.”

Ashmedai sighed, and he replied: “I do not own the shamir. It belongs to the ministering angel of the sea, who has entrusted it to the wild rooster. Together they hide in the uninhabitable hills, where the rooster guards his eggs.” 

I’m quoting to you from the Talmud directly here, so you know that what I’m telling you is true. 

When Solomon knew where to find the wild rooster, he covered its nest with transparent glass. Seeing that it couldn’t get in, the rooster brought over the shamir to bore through the rocks. As soon as he’d seen the monster, Solomon knocked the chicken off of the nest and ran to collect his prize.

According to our tradition, that is how the First Temple was built. Overseen by Solomon, the King of the world, accompanied by Ashmedai, the King of the Demons, a stone-chewing worm carved out every brick. It snaked through all the pillars and ate at every rock. After years of winding through the granite, Solomon’s Temple was complete.

So, why did the Talmud come up with such a tall tale? Can it be that our rabbis really believed the Temple was built in such a fantastical manner? Somehow I doubt it. But nevertheless, I am adamant that this story is true. At least, I think it tells us something important we need to know.

Our rabbis were answering a textual problem. The Bible told us that King David was not allowed to build the Temple because there was too much blood on his hands. He had fought too many wars, subjugated too many peoples and built too much of his empire on the labour of others.

Only Solomon, whose name in Hebrew is cognate with peace, was able to overcome the violent tendencies of his father and build a Temple that would truly be fitting for God. How could he build such an edifice without getting blood on his hands?

When our rabbis imagine the construction of the Temple, they picture it as it ought to have been. No wars are fought to secure land. No natural resources are exploited to gain the raw materials. No workers are hurt in the making of the building. All that happens is a natural process, where a worm that would eat rocks anyway works its way through the stones to build God’s home.

The only people vaguely harmed are a demon who got drunk and a rooster that was knocked off its perch. This is the dream of how the Temple should have been made. It was created in complete peace and harmony with nature. 

By encouraging us to inhabit this fantasy, the Talmud draws our attention to the harshness of reality. Even the greatest and most noble civilisations are built on violence. Cities, skyscrapers and the highest cultures are all products of real graft. Human beings do interfere with nature. We do exploit workers. We do plunder natural resources and we do secure territories through war.

When we imagine a world where rock-destroying worms can carve out our accomplishments for us, we know that we are imagining something impossible. But the nature of Talmud is to challenge us to do impossible things.

The Talmud asks us to picture a different relationship between human beings, nature, and civilisation. In a world where the climate is being damaged in unspeakable ways, such imagination is required of us again. Humanity is at a juncture when we must completely rethink how to use resources and what kinds of civilisations we build.

That is what makes it true and that is why it still speaks to us today. The Temple was built by a rock-eating worm. Perhaps one day, we will build the world that way again.

I gave this sermon for Edgware and Hendon Reform Synagogue, Parashat Terumah, on 20th February 2021. For the sources, look at Sotah 48b and the sugya beginning in Gittin 67b

judaism · sermon · theology

What we make true on Earth, God makes true in Heaven

levtaylor

What we make true on Earth, God makes true in Heaven. The Tabernacle was built according to the dimensions of the world. And the world was built according to the dimensions of Heaven.[1] This is what the Zohar, our mystical text tells us.[2] What does this mean?

This week’s parashah describes the raw materials of the Tent of Meeting: blue, purple, and crimson yarns; the ephod made of gold, blue, purple, and crimson yarns, and fine twisted linen; sheets of gold and cut threads to be worked into designs.[3] The Torah tells us precise measurements for precious metals: 29 talents and 730 shekels of gold; 100 talents and 1,775 shekels of silver.[4]

In the kabbalistic system of the Zohar, these are not only the dimensions of our Tabernacle, but a blueprint for the universe and a mirror of Heaven. Is this, then, the makeup of the universe? Does it, too, have crimson yarn and twisted linen and talents of silver?

No. That is not the nature of this text. The Zohar is not an Ikea assemblage manual, but a work of Jewish mysticism. Its concern isn’t with the physical arrangement of the world, but with the esoteric secrets underpinning it.

The Zohar was compiled as a commentary on the Torah in 13th Century Spain by Rabbi Moses de Leon and has circle.[5] This text became the central canonical text of Jewish mystical theology, known commonly as kabbalah.

Only within the terms of the text itself can we understand how the Tabernacle had the dimensions of the world and the world had the dimensions of Heaven. First of all, please understand that, by Heaven, it does not mean the cartoon of clouds in the sky where baby-angels play on harps. Nor is it talking about the afterlife. In this context, Heaven is the ‘Upper World’: the place beyond our understanding where God lives. It is not so much a physical space as it is a ‘divine realm’.

The dimensions of Heaven, then, were not physical, but were divine qualities. The Zohar notices a connection between the qualities with which the Tabernacle’s architect was endowed and the qualities God employed to create the world. God appoints a man named Bezalel ben Uri to oversee the creation of the Tabernacle. God tells Moses: “I have endowed him with a divine spirit of wisdom, understanding and knowledge.”[6] Elsewhere, in the book of Proverbs, we learn: “The Holy One founded the earth by wisdom; God established the heavens by understanding; through God’s knowledge the depths burst apart, and the skies distilled dew.”[7]

These, then, are the dimensions that the world and the Tabernacle held in common: wisdom, understanding and knowledge. The qualities needed to create the world were the same as those needed to create the Tabernacle.

In the context of the Zohar, however, these terms take on an even deeper significance. In this world of mysticism, wisdom, understanding and knowledge are not simply creative faculties, but are part of a divine reality beyond what we can see.[8]

In this view of the world, there is an aspect of God called the ‘ein sof’ – that which is without end; the part of God that is limitless and incomprehensible. From this Infinite Unknowability flow ten sefirot, attributes of God’s self. They filter down into the knowable universe, to the level of the Shechinah – God’s dwelling-place in the human realm.[9]

At the highest levels are three sefirot – keter – literally meaning ‘crown’, but fundamentally associated with God’s infinite knowledge; chochmah, meaning ‘wisdom’, which holds the archetypes of all things that must come into being; and binah – ‘understanding’ – in which is held the undifferentiated model of creation.[10] Knowledge, wisdom, and understanding: these are the highest rungs of the emanations of God’s presence. These are the qualities with which Proverbs tell us God created the world. These are the qualities with which Exodus tells us Bezalel ben Uri was endowed when he came to create the Tabernacle.

The Tabernacle, then, was not a physical blueprint of the universe, but a spiritual one. It was comprised of the same mystical dimensions that also went into creating the world. Each of these was some part of God’s creative power. Through these, God’s creative power is manifest in Heaven, the world and the Tabernacle. They are acting as a form of creative power, transcending space and yet utterly active in it. Through this analogy, we understand that the world, Heaven and the Tabernacle are not just created, but are constantly creating, and being created.

That may all sound very difficult to understand, but it has significant implications for us. If the Tabernacle, the world and Heaven share a common creative blueprint, then what was done in the Tabernacle was replicated in Heaven. Thus, the Zohar tells us: “The Temple [the successor to the Tabernacle] was an abode of peace for the worlds […] so that the actions below could be united on the model of the world above.”[11] What they made true in the Temple, God made true in Heaven.

From this, the Zohar makes an even more audacious claim. It tells us that, in Heaven, God studies new interpretations of the sacrifices in the name of Rabbi Shimeon bar Yochai. It tells us that, even though God does not need to eat or drink, out of love for the Jewish people, God eats and drinks with us in Heaven.[12] Because of the deep connection between this world and the world above, God is able even to suspend the laws of the universe to replicate what we do on Earth.

What does this mean then for us, modern Jews, for whom the synagogue has permanently replaced the Temple? I would like to think that, just as the Temple was once a mirror of Heaven, our houses of meeting are today, too. When we gather together in community, some profound unity is recreated in Heaven. When we sing in unison on Shabbat mornings, new blessings and prayers are created in the World Above. When we read about the dimensions of the Tabernacle in this week’s Torah portion, those creative faculties that once created the world are the Temple are put into action once more and, through them, entire new worlds are made possible.

Sometimes it is easy to feel like our actions have no impact. The Zohar gives me hope. If what we do on Earth is replicated in Heaven, our actions cannot fail to be meaningful. When, here, we strive for a better world, that same campaign ignites in the upper echelons of the universe. When, here, we celebrate love, birthdays and the lives of our congregants, the Heavenly hosts are brought closer together in solidarity with us. Our kindness, our optimism, our compassion in this world are mirrored on a cosmic level.

The teachings of the Zohar may be complex, but their result is simple: We live in a world that shares its dimensions with Heaven. We are tasked with the spiritual health of the entire universe.

What we make true on Earth, God makes true in Heaven. So let us strive to create Heaven on Earth.

Shabbat shalom.

Kabbalah_Art_-_Diamond_Painting_Kit_grande
Kabbalistic art

I first wrote this sermon as an essay for a class at Leo Baeck College on Kabbalah. I adapted it for use and delivered it at Birmingham Progressive Synagogue on 7th March 2020.

[1] Zohar II, 220b-221a

[2] I have relied for translations and interpretation on Tishby, Isaiah. The Wisdom of the Zohar: An Anthology of Texts (Vol III), trans. David Goldstein (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 909-930

[3] Ex 39:1-3

[4] Ex 38:27-28

[5] Scholem, Gershom G. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Shocken Books, 1946), pp. 156-159

[6] Ex 31:2-3

[7] Prov 3:19-20

[8] Laenen, J. H. Jewish Mysticism: An Introduction (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), p. 46

[9] Laenen, pp. 46-48

[10] Laenen, pp. 48-49

[11] Zohar II 241a

[12] Zohar III, 241b

judaism · sermon

The Tabernacle or The Temple

levtaylor

When Israel Mattuck, Britain’s first Liberal rabbi, went on holiday, he used to spend hours visiting the churches and cathedrals wherever he was. His biographer, Pam Fox, writes endearingly about how much it used to annoy his family.1

I really relate to this. There is something quite wonderful about seeing how others pray. From the mosques in Turkey and southern Spain to the cathedrals in France and Italy, I’ve never found a holiday partner I couldn’t frustrate by dragging them into every little religious building I see.

These buildings communicate messages about what believers make of their religions. The last time I was here in the Three Counties, I sat with my boyfriend in Gloucester Cathedral and we listened to Saturday night evensong. The organ roared through the cavernous building, as if to remind us how terrifying God could be. I went away from the service feeling stirred in a way synagogue services rarely make me feel, and I wondered what parallels there were in our practice.

Perhaps part of the appeal of these spaces is that we have no Jewish equivalent. There is, after all, no such thing as Jewish architecture. What does a “Jewish building” look like? What are its features? Beyond a mezuzah on the doorpost, very little ever identifies a space as Jewish.

In part, that is because of history. Forever a transient people, we have rarely invested in plush buildings, knowing well that our communities were so wont to move and change. In the medieval synagogue in Barcelona’s Calle, the only distinguishing feature is that the wall protrudes slightly onto the cobbled street so that worshippers can face east. It has had no problem being repurposed variously as a home, a factory, a cafe and a museum. The site of the synagogue in Lincoln, dating back over a millennium, was only recently repurposed by its Liberal Jewish community. And, still now, it’s really just a very old room.

Yet even today in modern Britain and the USA, where Jews have lived comfortably for some time, there is little that can be identified as Jewish architecture. The Liberal Jewish Synagogue in St John’s Wood is identifiable by its Greek columns. Temple Emanu-El in New York looks indistinguishable from a Cathedral. Even modern Israel has developed no architectural style for its religious buildings. The places where I have prayed in Jerusalem seem no different to shop front shtiebels. For some reason, we have an aversion to creating Jewish buildings.

This casts an interesting light on this week’s parashah. Here, we read about the Israelites’ instructions for building a Tabernacle. This was a giant portable tent in the desert, where the freed slaves would come to offer sacrifices and experience their God. What a space it must have been! Every precious metal is enumerated; the finest kinds of wood; fabrics dyed in the hardest-to-find colours of crimson, purple and blue; goats’ hair and dolphins’ skins. We read about the incenses and it’s as if we can smell them wafting through the sacred space.2

This Tabernacle in some way must have mirrored the First Temple. In our haftarah, we read of King Solomon’s building of the Jerusalem Temple.3 About 30 metres long and described in glorious detail, this was the central focus of the Israelite cult for around 400 years.4

One of the great debates between Liberal and Orthodox Jews in the last century was which one preceded the other: did the Temple come first, or the Tabernacle? For Orthodox Jews, who treated the Bible as a historical account of the journeys of the Israelites, the Tabernacle must have come first, and been a blueprint for the Temple that would later follow. For Liberal Jews, who accepted the conclusions of the historians of the time, the myth of the Tabernacle was constructed later, when the Temple already stood, as a way to justify the religious centralisation brought about under Solomon.

As it turns out, we might both have been wrong. It is unclear whether Solomon’s Temple ever really existed. We have no archaeological evidence for it.5 There have been attempts to prove that such a space existed, but these have all been exposed as hoaxes. That doesn’t mean it definitely didn’t exist – lack of evidence is not evidence of lack, and Jerusalem is a notoriously difficult place to do archaeological digs. But we can reasonably suspect that Solomon’s Temple may have been a myth.

One of the things that was most missing from these heated debates in the last century was that the Tabernacle and the Temple were fundamentally different places. The Temple had attributes that would have been impossible for the Tabernacle to have: fixed foundations, windows, stone quarries and multiple rooms. The Tabernacle, by contrast, was a mobile, portable space, that had to be lifted and reassembled regularly as the Israelites went about their journeying.

Through their different architectural styles, the two spaces communicated fundamentally different messages about the nature of God. The God of the Tabernacle was transient, travelling with the people as they came out of slavery and wandered in the desert. It had no fixed home and could speak to people wherever they were. The God of the Temple was fixed in one place. It had a home and its worshippers needed to travel from all the surrounding towns to pray there.6 One God was national; the other universal.

At the heart of these debates between Liberal and Orthodox Jews was an issue that was far more theological than it was historical. Orthodox Jews needed to believe that God had pre-ordained the Temple because they wanted to see a Messianic Age in which it was rebuilt. They maintained that our God was still a national God who would one day return to live in Jerusalem. Liberal Jews needed to exercise doubt because, for them, God was transcendental and Judaism had no central home.

This brings me back to the question with which I first began: why is there no such thing as Jewish architecture? Perhaps it is about much more than historical circumstance or artistic predilections. Perhaps it tells us something deeper about how we see God. Our God, like us, is rootless and unchainable. Our God, like us, reveals its nature more through loving deeds than through material accomplishments.

As a community, we move regularly from one place to the next. We spend our services variously in Ledbury, Ross, Up Hatherley, Gloucester and across the Three Counties in each others’ homes. Let us rejoice in this fact. We are, like our forebearers in this parashah, wandering Jews. We are, as our Liberal rabbis would have hoped, physically demonstrating God’s transcendent mobility. Every house and community centre we enter becomes full of the richness of tradition and, for the time that we are there, is transformed.

There is no such thing as a Jewish space because every space where you find Jews is Jewish.

temple emanu el
Temple Emanu-El in New York

 

I gave this sermon on Saturday 29th February 2020 at Three Counties Liberal Judaism for Parashat Trumah

1 Pam Fox, Israel Mattuck: Architect of Liberal Judaism

2 Ex 25

3 1 Kings 6

4 BT Bava Batra 3a

5 Finklestein and Lieberman, The Bible Unearthed

6 Mishnah Sukkah 4