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I added many screen shots to this post over a period of months and am dispensing with most of my introductory observations so that the reader can cut to the chase, as it were.
It is never up to date as every day brings new material .
As before, I emphasize it is the way that Israel is criticized that is problematic. One can hardly even call it criticism. Often, the language segues seamlessly into classical antisemitism.
I thought we had left all this behind in the twentieth century.
Albert Camus said:
… le bacille de la peste ne meurt ni ne disparaît jamais, qu’il peut rester pendant des dizaines d’années endormi dans les meubles et le linge, qu’il attend patiemment dans les chambres, les caves, les malles, les mouchoirs et les paperasses, et que, peut-être, le jour viendrait où, pour le malheur et l’enseignement des hommes, la peste réveillerait ses rats et les enverrait mourir dans une cité heureuse.*
…the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen-chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.
During the Kishinev pogrom at Easter 1903, a mob armed with kitchen and farming implements burst into the cottage of Yehezkiel the Presser. Approaching Yehezkiel with his hatchet raised, Bogdan took the time to ask him a question: ‘Who killed Jesus?’
Yehezkiel’s wife and daughters had climbed out on to the roof and he hoped that they might make a getaway, so he played for time.
‘First of all,’ he said, ‘I think the answer to your question is the Romans. That Pilate, he was the one. All right, I know he wasn’t happy with the judgment. I know he went full Lady Macbeth with the washing of hands. You can blame the burden of governance if you like.’
Bogdan’s response came quickly as he swung his hatchet.
‘You killed Jesus,’ he said.
‘Here’s another thing,’ replied Yehezkiel. ‘The events you’re referring to, they’re not recent. By my calculations, they happened – what? Eighteen hundred and seventy years ago. Well, I’m fifty three, Bogdan. I wasn’t there. You know that as well as I do.’
‘Christ killer,’ answered Bogdan. ‘Child murderer.’
‘Believe me,’ Yehezkiel assured him, ‘I have every admiration for Jesus, whom you call Christ. It’s just a pity he didn’t write it all down himself because those biographers, you know, one of them says it’s Thursday and another one says it’s dinner time. Four evangelists, forty opinions. So I hear. But this was all far away, as well as long ago. Wonderful climate, they tell me, in the Holy Land. Not like Bessarabia. Brrr. The winter we had. Have you got cherries yet in your orchard? No? Well it’s early days.’
Bogdan was now inches away. You might say that he eyeballed Yehezkiel but he was so much taller, he would have had to crouch to do any serious eyeballing.
‘Admit you killed Jesus,’ he advised Yehezkiel.
I’d be lying if I told you Yehezkiel didn’t consider saying it. Who knows? Bogdan might then spare his life. Or not. The point was, Bogdan had brought a crowd with him and Yehezkiel didn’t want to give them the wrong idea, so he said, ‘This I did not do.’
Bogdan then deployed his hatchet so thoroughly that Yehezkiel had no opportunity to say ‘Shema Yisrael’.
He died. By some miracle, his wife and daughters got away.
*
You can no more say ‘This isn’t about Israel’ than Yehezkiel could say ‘It isn’t about the crucifixion’. Antisemites tend to be be the adjudicators of what this is about. You can say ‘The Romans did it and besides, I wasn’t there.’ You can say that Israel doesn’t bear all the guilt and besides, I’m not there. Or you can say, as some do, ‘Israel has all the power and bears all the guilt so I repudiate it.’ Historically, those who converted were allowed to live. If you are living and working in a milieu where Israel is considered the supreme evil, you might think that the right thing is to cut yourself loose from its rocky embrace.
You might decide that the New Testament supersedes the Old Testament and that converting is the righteous way. I’m the first to agree that the Christian scriptures are beautiful; well, second, if you count Yehezkiel; third really, because of Rabbi Lionel Blue. In the medieval disputations, there were Franciscan and Dominican friars who in childhood had benefited from an education at the Talmud Torah but, following conversion to Christianity, became fierce adversaries of Jews and Judaism.
Apostasy happens in modern times too. Israel Zolli who was the Chief Rabbi of Rome in 1945 was baptized and chose the name Eugenio in honour of Pope Pius XII, a controversial pope if ever there was one.
Renouncing and denouncing Israel is not quite apostasy. You can make a religious case against Zionism, as Neturei Karta and others have done.
This is where I get controversial. When you denounce Israel, Eugenio Zolli is watching with approval. Pablo Christiani and Nicholas Donin extend their ghostly hands to you. And maybe – but maybe not – Bogdan lets you live. But do we want their reprieves?
As for me, I’m a voter, like everyone else; the decisions of the Israeli government and the UK government are not my decisions and not necessarily what I voted for, but I want to be able to express pride in the two countries which are, in a sense, my two parents: England, the land of my birth and Israel, who engendered me.
Rarely a day passes without someone – and very often it’s someone declaring their support for Mr Corbyn – without someone saying to me ‘But what about Israel. They did this and they do that and you’re complicit.’ It’s a fact that I’ve only ever been called a murderer since opening a Twitter account.
In one way, they are right. They say that this question of Labour antisemitism is all about Israel, and it is. In the way that the Kishinev pogrom was about the crucifixion, Labour antisemitism is about Israel. From their point of view, Zionism is the πρῶτον κινοῦν ἀκίνητον or primus motor, the uncaused cause of many ills.
I don’t buy that.
Post script 10 April 2019
It looks as if Mr Netanyahu has just won a fifth term as Israeli Prime Minister. I’m sorry that a more centrist politician won’t be forming a government for numerous reasons including hopes of peace, a more liberal agenda and also because of the opprobrium attached to Bibi in the UK, the country where I cast my own vote. I doubt though that the anti-Zionists would like Benny Ganz any better. Either way, I refrain from adding ‘Zionist’ to my Twitter bio. Why should I give Bogdan a GPS tracker to my account?
I’m accustomed to elections being disappointments. Barring the early wins of Tony Blair and Barak Obama, they never seem to deliver what I want. Come what may, I do feel bound to Israel and to Britain, both of them; for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, as long as we both shall live. ב”ה
A second post script, 4 June 2020. Someone on Twitter last night tried to prove his left wing (and, as it happens, IRA) credentials by calling me ‘apratheid [sic] supporting, innocent killing, Jesus murdering, uuuuuuuuultra [sic] right wing fucking filth’. I’d annoyed the man by blocking him. What can one do? Not much. Hopefully, while that’s going on, someone else is getting away over the roof.
Apologia Pro Screen Shots Meae
Posted on: July 17, 2018
This blog has been almost entirely on biblical subjects, give or take a post or two. The less than catchy name of the blog, Neviim Tovim means ‘good prophets’ and is taken from the prescribed blessing before reading aloud in the synagogue a text from the prophetic books.
For the last year or maybe eighteen months, I’ve been observing some of the closed online Labour forums and reporting, mainly through Twitter on the copious antisemitism I see there.
I have watched, during the leadership of Mr Corbyn, an intense outpouring of demonisation and hatred towards Israel from supporters of the Labour Party and on online Labour sites. There is no respite from this outpouring, never for a day and seldom for an hour.
This week, the Labour leadership’s tweaking of the IHRA definition of antisemitism has been so controversial that all but four Labour MPs voted against the changes at their PLP meeting. A miracle occurred in that rabbis of all denominations came together to sign a letter in the Guardian, urging the Labour Party to drop the changes.
The amendments to the definition, as proposed by the Labour leadership, make it acceptable to equate Israelis with Nazis, to deny the right of Israel to exist and to demand a higher standard from Israel than from other countries.
The sixty or so stalwarts of Jewish Voice for Labour, also comprising Free Speech on Israel, have been accepted by Mr Corbyn as representative of Jewish opinion. They are fiercely anti-Zionist and dismissive of most of Anglo-Jewry’s fears of Labour antisemitism, which they say are based on a political agenda of defending Israel right or wrong. This agenda, they say, has caused Jeremy Corbyn to become the target of concerted Jewish action which, in their view, is designed entirely to silence criticism of Israel.
So we always come back to Israel, even if we are as ‘Meh’ about the Jewish state as David Baddiel declared himself to be.
On Labour forums, arguments run like this. Israel kills Palestinians for sadistic sport. They target children and pregnant women in particular. They prevent goods from passing through to Gaza, thus causing starvation and genocide. They desire territorial expansion as far as the Caspian Sea. They suborn or bribe the governments of the West, especially the USA and the UK. They have secret lobbies in industry and they own international banking cartels.
It is some years since I studied the rise of Nazism and the reason why I am up to date with these theories is that I read Labour forums every day. These are sometimes closed forums and one has to assure the administrators that one is loyal to Mr Corbyn. Membership of the forum I currently belong to is around sixteen thousand. There are some larger forums than these, but I have been ejected, after disputing the above perceptions of Israel. Silence is golden.
Now, we come back to the matter of Jews. Rarely will the members of the groups express hatred of Jews as such. They speak of the influence and power of the Rothchilds, the Bauers, the New World Order, Bilderberg, Illuminati, the Elite, the Puppet Masters. They select Jewish individuals in public life, MPs, actors, celebrities and assert that they are paid propagandists for Israel. If one of these notable persons speaks of Labour antisemitism, they are said to be in the pay of Israel. If a member of the forum disagrees, the response is that they are in the pay of Israel. If a member of the forum agrees with an MP like Chuka Umunna, who is very supportive of the Jewish community in our struggle against antisemitism, they are said to be paid Tory Zionist trolls. The animus towards MPs like Tom Watson and Jess Phillips is horrible to behold. Any politician who admits that Labour has a problem with antisemitism becomes a hate figure on the forums. This is even true of Jon Lansman who is less than ‘meh’ about Israel.
Esteemed figures on the forums are George Galloway, Ken Livingstone, Ken Loach, Chris Williamson, Dennis Skinner, John McDonnell (not as much as you’d think) and of course The Absolute Boy himself (as much as you’d think).
Memes are posted constantly, often displaying leaders like Mandela, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, accompanied by anti-Israel texts of uncertain provenance. Equally favoured are pictures of Jewish individuals with a quotation to the effect that the concept of antisemitism is a ruse used by Jews to gain unfair advantage.
Now, I’m working towards my conclusion and the one and only screen shot which will accompany this post.
On the forums, there are very many pictures showing human suffering, accompanied by texts explaining that Israel is the perpetrator. Images may be taken from newsreels around the world. Occasionally they are clips taken from feature films. The suffering person is always said to be a Palestinian while the one inflicting the suffering is said to be Israeli, or, on days when the members are particularly emboldened, Jewish.
No one likes to see such images and they arouse great anger on the forums. Comments get posted, likening Israelis to vermin, Nazis and monsters. Sometimes it is mentioned that they have had this capacity for evil since time immemorial: the Rothschilds and the Jewish bankers causing the two world wars for financial profit; Mossad managing the assassination of President Kennedy, the sinking of the Titanic, the slave trade and of course the crucifixion. The Israelis, you understand, because these Labour supporters are not antisemitic and anyway, someone will explain almost daily, semites are Palestinians and Jews are European colonialists – the Khazars.
At last came the straw that broke the camel’s back, where I’m the camel. There was a thread supporting the boycott of Israel on the basis of Israel’s unparalleled wickedness. I posted a link to an article about Israel’s assistance in the international operation to rescue the boys trapped in a cave in Thailand. I braced for the abuse which would follow.
It didn’t follow. The Administrators had deleted my link. It was not considered appropriate for the eyes of the forum’s members.
I did not question this. I keep fairly quiet in these groups; I keep my head down and I’m still there. I use the name Galil Perssimann. Watch this space.
Post script. I was ejected from Labour Party Forum today, 16 August, having engaged on the subject of antisemitism. A link to this blog was produced, followed by the sentence above, where I reveal the name I use on the forum. I feel a little like Andy Dufresne after he came out of the sewer. In any case, it was a fair cop.
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Deuteronomy 27: 9 – 26 Ki Tavo
This event takes place towards the end of the forty years in the wilderness and in the last days of Moses’ life. Moses prepares the Israelites for their new life after his own death, in the promised land, under the leadership of Joshua.
He then delineates a ceremony of blessings and curses which will take place after the Israelites have crossed the Jordan, at which time Moses will no longer accompany them. The leadership will have passed to Joshua. The tribes will be divided into two groups. Six tribes are to stand on Mount Gerizim, to the south, and pronounce blessings. The other six are to stand on Mount Ebal, north-east, and pronounce curses. The tribes sent to Gerizim are Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph and Benjamin. The tribes who have the unfortunate job of presiding over the curses are Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan and Naphtali. The curses are spoken by Levites who anathemize those who make graven images; those who treat their parents badly; those who move a neighbour’s landmark; those who lead the blind astray; those who subvert the cause of widows and orphans; those who sleep with their father’s wife, with their sister, or their mother-in-law; those who have sex with an animal, those who commit physical assault in secret, paid assassins and those who do not adhere to these commandments.
There are twelve curses, matching the number of the tribes.
Mount Ebal is in biblical Shechem, now Nablus on the West Bank.
There are several questions raised by the text and not answered. Why are the curses issued from Mount Ebal, which later became the site of an Israelite altar, constructed from stones? Why are the blessings from Mount Gerizim, which later became the Sanctuary of the Samaritan sect?
Some commentators – Samson Raphael Hirsch for example – reasoned that Gerizim was fertile and Ebal rugged. In the thirteenth century, Nachmanides noted that as Gerizim, was to the south, it was at the right hand when one faced east to pray. It’s also suggested that the southern position of Gerizim placed it in the territory of Judah while Ebal stood in what was to become the Northern Kingdom.
As for the Samaritan view of the sanctity of Gerizim, this is somewhat backed up by a passage in the Dead Sea Scrolls version of Deuteronomy, which says:
When you have crossed the Jordan, you shall set up these stones, about which I charge you today, on Mount Gerizim, and coat them with plaster. And there, you shall build an altar to the Lord your God.
The verse in the Masoretic text, that’s the chumash you may have in front of you, and in our Sefer Torah, says:
And when you have crossed over the Jordan, you shall set up these stones, concerning which I command you today, on Mount Ebal, and you shall plaster them with plaster. (Deuteronomy 27:4)
Then there’s the question of who were Samaritans. The name comes from Shomrim, meaning keepers or guards, just as the geographical area of Samaria is called Shomron in Hebrew. They claim descent from the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh and split with mainstream Israelite observances by locating their sanctuary on Mount Gerizim. At that time, the period of the judges, the official sanctuary was in Shiloh. The Samaritans have their own version of the Pentateuch, written in a script resembling palaeo-Hebrew and containing mostly minor but numerous variations from our Masoretic text. We don’t know the age of the Samaritan pentateuch, but some of these variations occur likewise in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Greek Septuagint, so it’s old, perhaps from the time of the Second Temple. The Samaritans don’t count the prophets or the hagiographa – the Ketuvim – as scriptural. They just have the five books of the chumash.
Now there’s another question without any definite answer, relating to this Torah reading. How were the tribes divided? What did it signify, if your tribe was doing the blessings from Gerizim or the curses from Ebal? It seems to me that the tribes doing the blessing, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph and Benjamin are the A list, with the possible exception of Issachar. Those standing on Mount Ebal are Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan and Naphtali. The tribes of Dan, Naphtali, Gad and Asher were descended from Jacob’s concubines, Bilhah and Zilpah. Reuben and Zebulun are the oldest and youngest sons of Leah. It is also interesting that the descendants of the Ebal tribes are less notable than the royal, priestly and messianic issue of the Gerizim tribes.
According to my counting, twelve curses are to be uttered on Mount Ebal and, as you will hear, a dozen times it is repeated that all the people will say Amen. Their peoplehood is expressed in the unity with which they accept the Torah of Moses and shun the ways which are forbidden, cursed. As you know, the word ‘amen’ is connected with the word for faith, emunah, but it has traveled a long way, as it appears in the Greek of the New Testament and is used in Muslim prayer with the same meaning. I find there is something a bit magical about the word Amen. Listen to it, as it’s repeated in out Torah reading, from Deuteronomy 27.
published in The Journal of Progressive Judaism, no 7, November 1996. Author: Gillian Gould Lazarus as Gillian Gould
FAUDA פאודה فوضى
Posted on: May 15, 2017
SPOILERS included
Fauda is an Israeli television series first broadcast in 2015, about an Israeli undercover operation in the West Bank, specifically aimed at a wanted Palestinian terrorist. It’s now available on Netflix. Languages are Hebrew and Arabic and the actors are Israelis and Palestinians. The series was popular among both Israelis and Palestinians.
The characters are well developed so that no one is portrayed without humanity. Acts of kindness occur as well as acts of violence. The brotherhood of men at arms is shown to be sometimes profound and sometimes illusory. Many characters are vengeful, some hot-headed, some manipulative, some cautious. Many are driven by fanaticism and we can understand why. The antagonist is a Hamas leader whose innocent brother was killed – collateral damage – on his wedding day. The protagonist’s brother-in-law was killed brutally at the instigation of the terrorist. All the women are anguished due to the roles played by their loved menfolk.
I watched, on the edge of my seat, because, as with all good drama, it was easy to feel the fear and imagine the pain. One could feel pity, if not empathy, for the beautiful bride whose groom is shot by Israelis; the Israeli agent whose girlfriend is blown up in a Tel Aviv bar by the grieving widow; the Israeli captured by Hamas, the philanthropic doctor, the elderly sheikh who blesses the terrorists and is ultimately killed by the Israelis; the Israeli captain who drives the action and talks on the phone to his children about burgers and ketchup. At the soft centre of the story is a love affair between the Israeli protagonist and the Palestinian doctor who does not know that he is an Israeli agent. He seems to fall in love with her even while practising the deception.
The series depicts acts of brutality but also unlikely friendships across the Israeli-Palestinian divide. Are the handshakes and amicable conversations entirely specious? I don’t know, but would like to think they are not. After all, the production team and actors worked together on the most sensitive of subjects, with brilliant results and the series is a success on both sides of the divide.
It would be quite possible for Israeli viewers to see the Israeli characters as righteous and likewise for Palestinians regarding the Palestinian operatives. This is to the credit of Lior Raz, writer and lead actor, who, with the rest of the cast, created rounded, realistic characters.
Fanaticism is always a topic of interest in fiction and drama, and also in our Tanakh. Who is more fanatical than Abraham, prepared to slaughter his son in obedience to God’s word? Fanatics fascinate, while their acts are questionable. Watch them from the edge of your seat but do not emulate them. Don’t emulate Abraham avinu, at least, not in terms of his fathering skills. In my view, Abraham’s finest moment was when he said ‘Shall not the judge of all the earth act justly?’ (Genesis 18:25) He was arguing with God, on behalf of the inhabitants of Sodom, in case there were righteous people among those destroyed.
This Abraham is our father, not the problematic dad of Ishmael and Isaac.
In Fauda, both Doron and Abu Ahmad are motivated by revenge and their perceptions of justice, to the extent that they are not deterred by collateral damage.
There is always collateral damage and only three people got out of Sodom alive. It would appear that God did not find ten just people there to save. The matter is not alluded to after Abraham’s intercession.
May 2017
Haazinu, Deuteronomy 32
Posted on: October 14, 2016
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For a man who was slow of speech and meeker than anyone alive, this is quite a speech, where Moses addresses the Israelites on the last day of his life. Haazinu hashamayim meaning ‘Give ear O heavens,’ are the opening words of the penultimate sidra in our scroll. Moses does not speak of himself at all, except to say, ‘I speak’ and ‘I call,’ for this long poem which comprises his speech is a song of praise to God. Moses refers to God as Tsur, meaning rock, Elyon, meaning the highest and Avicha kanecha, your Father who made you. Many of the sayings in this portion are familiar from our liturgy. The poem invokes the infidelity of the Israelites, contrasted with God’s faithfulness and justice. The people of Israel are called Jacob and Yeshurun, meaning ‘the upright’ in the sense of upright morality, yet Moses accuses thrm of being wayward and provocative. Nevertheless, he says, God shelters them beneath His wings.
This poem in Deuteronomy 32, is called The Song of Moses. You might be reminded of Shirat ha Yam, the Song at the Sea, in Exodus 15, which is sometimes called the song of Moses and Miriam. There are other songs in the bible – notably the Psalms of David, but also Deborah’s song in Judges and Hannah’s in 1 Samuel. Jonah sings a song of praise inside the whale. The Song of Songs is an entirely poetic book of the bible, attributed to Solomon but Jeremiah also has a song book, much more mournful in tone: the Book of Lamentations.
Some of these songs do not mention the life and situation of the putative singer and would not look out of place in the book of Psalms.
The Song of Moses takes place on the final day of his life but these are not his last words. Like Jacob, he blesses the individual tribes before his death in a speech which begins with the words ‘Vezot ha berachah – And this is the blessing.’ After he has finished speaking, God sends him to the top of Mount Nebo and shows Moses the promised land, which he will never reach. Moses dies there on the mountain, and thus the fifth book of the pentateuch is brought to a close. On Simchat Torah, we shall be reading the last part of Vezot Haberachah, right at the end of Deuteronomy, as we conclude the cycle of Torah readings, before beginning again at once with Bereshit.
October 2016
They Come Back for Yizkor
Posted on: October 10, 2016
Yom Kippur 2016/ 5777
For afternoon study at XXXX XXXX Reform Synagogue
While the Yom Kippur mussaf service is going on, there’s room for the whole congregation in one hall, but when we join the main service for Minchah, the numbers gradually increase so that, by the time Yizkor starts, both halls will be filled, more or less to capacity. People who, for one reason or another, leave the synagogue during the course of the day, tend to come back for Yizkor, the service for remembering the dead. Some have been bereaved this year, others in years past and some come supported by families, perhaps their children, most of whom, we might reasonably hope, have not yet experienced bereavement.
Mourning, loss and remembering play a great part in our lives, as does the certain knowledge that our own days are numbered.
The comfort of believing that we’ll be reunited with our loved ones after death is not available to many of us, these days, even though, every time we recite the Amidah, we say that God revives the dead,.
Our synagogue has a Minhag Group, open to all members, where all aspects of our religious customs come under discussion. One topic which came up, time and time again, because members raised the subject, was the way we handled bereavements and yahrzeits, in synagogue services, for example, before kaddish and in the form of notifications: community email and notice board. There was sometimes a question of which mourners would be named. ‘Father of XXXX,’ would be typical at a yahrzeit, but what if the member isn’t in shul for the yahrzeit? Or, he’s in shul, but wants us to mention that the deceased was grandfather to his children or grandchildren, who are not in shul? Usually, the shaliach tsibbur will read all the names gladly.
Is the feeling which makes the reading of names important different from the feeling that makes us erect a tombstone, light a yahrzeit candle or visit a grave?
Are these questions connected with memorializing, rather than grieving, or is there an overlap? Do social norms influence the way we remember? People sometimes weep when the name of their loved one is read out before kaddish, so it must happen that the respectful ritual of the yahrzeit interacts with the painful sense of loss.
How do we memorialize? With prayers, tombstones, donations; a newborn child of the family may be named after the deceased. We speak of those we have lost, look at photos, movies, voice recordings, if we have these mementos. We research history and genealogy. We value things which belonged to them and things they valued. We feel the loss and, if we lose someone close to us, our lives are never the same.
Psalm 103 tells us that life is short and lives are forgotten, sooner or later. We know this is true for us, as well as those who have gone ahead. How do we want to be remembered, if indeed we expect to be remembered? Some of us contribute to science, the arts, education or the well-being of humanity. Some of us have children. Some of us write wills.
At the Bafta and Oscar award ceremonies, every year now, they play a montage of images of those from the film industry who died in the past year. The names and professions are written underneath the smiling faces. Some are world famous, others are cameramen or costume designers, whose faces most of us don’t recognize. The music accompanying the montage of images adds to their poignancy.
There is a memorial fountain in Hyde Park to Princess Diana. Rabin Square, formerly Kings of Israel Square, in Tel Aviv is named in memory of Yitzhak Rabin. The very famous have airports named after them – not just Kennedy, De Gaulle, Ben Gurion, Indira Gandhi, but Marco Polo and Leonardo da Vinci, and also John Lennon, John Wayne and George Best.
There are prescribed prayers for entering a cemetery, including mechayah hametim. In the El Male Rachamim, we pray for the peace of the soul of the departed; that God will shelter them eternally and bind their soul in the bond of life.
Is the survival of the soul taken for granted in these prayers, or is it a liturgical convention, to speak as if death were not the end of life?
If we are not convinced of a supernal afterlife, is the nature of memorializing in this world even more important?
While I was writing this, an item came on the news about Jo Cox, the murdered MP, and the work she was doing to support a volunteer civil defence organization of neutral, unarmed Syrians, called the White Helmets. It was said that the White Helmets rescue people from danger without ascertaining who they are, or what side they’re on. It seems to me that, if they save lives, and Jo Cox effectively supported their work, that would be one kind of everlasting memorial.
By the next time I open this document, I have read that the White Helmet organization has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. It has also been referred to by those who oppose it, as a wing of Al Qaeda. The truth or falsity of this assertion cannot make an iota of difference to the way Jo Cox is remembered. Or can it?
Can we even know what will be memorable, what will have a good outcome and what will be ephemeral, a candle in the wind, as they say, or a flower of the field?
As for ‘everlasting to everlasting,’ me-olam v’ad olam, we invoke it in our liturgy, but, for many of us, it’s just an expression, the poetry and metaphor of prayer.
In death as in life, good intentions can be lost and legacies compromised, but those we loved, we remember with love as long as we live.
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I never take much notice of the Eurovision Song Contest, least of all the songs, but I sometimes watch the voting, with some slight interest in how countries often vote in clusters. The Balkan countries back each other and the Danes and Swedes seem to have a reciprocal arrangement, while the UK and Ireland give each other a bounce on the voting board, as if Gerry Adams had never existed.
The strange thing is that neighbouring countries are as likely to go to war across the border as to appreciate each other’s musical artistry.
I wondered how it would have worked in biblical antiquity. After all, the Ammonites and the Moabites were related to Terach, same as Abraham, and even the wicked Amalekites were descended from Isaac, via Esau.
As for the Canaanites whose land is spied out by Moses’ agents, would they bestow their douze points on the Israelites, or take revenge on them by giving everything to the Jebusites, the Amorites and the Hittites?
The spies Moses sent into Canaan brought back disheartening reports of giants inhabiting the land, but they’d noted that it was rich and fertile and they coined the phrase, ‘a land flowing with milk and honey’.
The word supposed to mean giants is Nephilim, fallen ones, suggestive of fallen angels, in other words, beings possessed of supernatural power. Everyone was afraid, except for Joshua and Caleb, who were convinced that they could gain the land by conquest. As usual, the people blamed Moses for bringing them out of Egypt, where they said they’d been better off. You can imagine how they would have been ready to give Egypt all their points in the North East Africa Song Contest.
The people were so rebellious that God said to Moses, ‘How long will this people despise me?’ and was about to smite them with a plague, only Moses pleaded with God, on behalf of the Israelites. God then replied ‘Salachti kidvareycha’ – ‘I have forgiven, according to your word.’
However, that generation of Israelites wandered forty years in the wilderness and never reached the promised land, with the exceptions of Joshua and Caleb, who had not despaired or rebelled against God.
Joshua would go on to enjoy good relations with a Canaanite woman called Rahab, who sheltered Joshua’s Israelite spies before the Battle of Jericho, described in the book of Joshua. In Midrash, Rahab is a beautiful prostitute, or possibly an innkeeper, and these midrashic versions are quite romantic because Joshua marries Rahab, even though she’s a Canaanite.
The people across the border – what are they, enemies or neighbours? And can they sing?
written on the day of an EU Referendum in the UK, 23 June 2016
We need to talk about Ken
Posted on: April 29, 2016
Sermon to XXXXX-XXXXX Reform Synagogue on 30 April 2016
When I heard Ken Livingstone yesterday, doing the rounds of the news channels, I thought he must have gone too far, even for his admirers, and that he was bringing himself and his party into disrepute.
I underestimated the number of people seeking to justify Ken’s loose assertion that Hitler promoted Zionism in the early 1930s.
Like thousands of others, pro Ken and anti, I started googling the Haavara Agreement, which is readily found on Wikipedia and therefore cited by Livingstone’s online supporters, especially if they want to say – and they often do – that there is a natural affinity between Nazism and Zionism.
I wanted to get an idea from Jewish and Israeli historians of the alleged collaboration with the Nazis, and whether it was used for the purpose of aliyah, immigration to Palestine. I read that the Haavara Agreement allowed Jews to escape from Germany to Palestine in return for paying a ransom to the Reich. I read also that there were some in the Yishuv movement, which aimed at Jewish settlement in the land, who prioritized emigration from Germany rather than supporting an anti-Nazi boycott. They made choices which were either pragmatic or collaborationist, depending on how you look at it, but Jews who got to Palestine were much more likely to survive.
In a comparable way, the Jewish leaders of the wartime Judenräte, the Jewish Councils in the ghettoes, were forced to have dealings with the Nazis governors. How this worked varied from ghetto to ghetto. In Warsaw, the Chairman of the Judenrat committed suicide, rather than fulfil quotas for deportation, whereas the Chairman in Lodz strove to fulfil the quotas, arguing that those remaining in the ghetto would be allowed to live. With the advantage of hindsight, we know he was wrong.
It’s widely observed that at the present time, if someone wants to discredit Jews, the first and least controversial move is to discredit Zionism. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it was the fashion to use racist pseudo-science against Jews and, then, in the twentieth century, Bolshevism, Capitalism and World Domination. Bolshevism has bitten the dust, but we are still accused of global domination through international banking and conspiracies. When I read about these Jewish conspiracies, I feel like asking why I’ve never been invited to one.
I must admit to using the key word Talmud in a Twitter search, which is asking for trouble. What comes up? Nothing about the kashrut of certain ovens for Passover use, you can be sure ( Bava Metzia 59b). Instead, antisemitic geeks cite passages from the Talmud which appear to promote all kinds of criminality and perversion. They sometimes show the text in Hebrew, which is a marvel since they often have inadequate command of English. Hard work goes into their posts and sometimes hard work goes into refuting them.
I am uncomfortable with the idea of hard work being necessary to refute Ken Livingstone or those others, who never admit that they or anyone is being antisemitic.
Yet I know that all history and all scriptures are in some way compromising. When violent passages in the Qur’an are cited to indicate the inherent violence of Islam, it cuts no ice. We have, and tend to reject, unenlightened passages in our own holy books. Even in our sidra today, Acharei Mot, there are far too many animal sacrifices for comfort.
For me, the crux of the matter is how to respond when moral ambiguities of Judaism or Zionism are highlighted by those who seek our harm, if indeed we should respond at all. It seems as if being well-informed about our own history and our literature ought to help, but information never seems to settle the questions.
I don’t have an answer but I think we can usually discern when somebody means us harm. If somebody hates a Jew because of the alleged massacre at Deir Yassin, or a Muslim because of ISIS or a Christian because of the Inquisition, then it isn’t because they’re well-informed. When Ken Livingstone cited the Haavara agreement, it was to put Zionism in the same ball park as Nazism, and not to disseminate knowledge.
Reading this through a year later, on 4 April 2017, I think I was too mild about Ken. Possibly I imagined that he might row back from his provocative statements. During the last year, he has made a crusade of voicing opinions about Hitler’s alleged sympathy for Zionism. It hardly needs to be said that Hitler first wanted Jews out and very quickly wanted them dead. Zionists wanted Jews out and alive, which, b’ezrat Hashem, we are.
Neviim Tovim, blogs by Gillian Gould Lazarus 