Ha'azinu

I don’t know about you, but on the days following Yom Yippur, the songs resonate in my head. I hum Avinu Malkeinu while I am brushing my teeth, making my breakfast and putting on my shoes.

It’s not surprising because Yom Kippur is a powerful day that imprints itself on us. Over and over, we resolve to be better people so that we might be be written in the book of life. We resolve to be better people so that ultimately, we will not just be written in the book, we will be sealed in the book. Gmar Chatimah tova we say. May you be well sealed. We sing a very different song today in Ha-azinu. In Ha’azinu, there is no is any Teshuva. There is no expectation that repentance by Israel will bring about a reconciliation with God.

Teshuva is a later development in Judaism and makes me once again so pleased to be a beneficiary of Rabbinic Judaism. I would rather believe that I have agency than believe that I am a victim of circumstances.

But let’s go back in time to listen to Moses’s final plea to Israel to hear his words. It is laid out as a 70-line poem. It is full of metaphors and the verses often rhyme. In it, Moses prophesies that despite all that God and Moses have said and done, Israel will abandon God, as they had in the past. God will punish Israel, as in the past, but never to the point of utter destruction. It warns that God will hide his face from Israel, and it contains these prophetic words:

‘The sword shall deal death without, As shall the terror within, To youth and maiden alike, The baby as well as the aged.’

In our long history, we have seen this happen. But I don’t believe the innocent children and old people are killed in terrifying circumstances because they are Jews who forgot God. I can’t square that circle today.

It’s interesting that Moses’s final plea to the people and his prediction is a poem because poems can express what can’t be said any other way. Poems use metaphors, and we need those to evoke something in the listener.

For example, if I say the word ‘cattle car’ in a poem and it’s read by a person who has never heard of the holocaust, they might see just see a train and they might see cows in the train, but if I say it to a Jewish person, they’ll probably see something very different. They’ll probably recall every horrendous account they’ve ever read of desperate people squashed into freight cars, without water or space to sit on the three-day journey from their village to a death camp. I don’t have to say much to evoke that. Here is a famous six-line poem written originally in Hebrew, by Dan Pagis. It is called:

Written in pencil in the sealed freight car

Here in this carload

I am Eve

With my son Abel

If you see my older boy

Cain son of Adam

Tell him that I

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If you don’t see the sealed freight car in your mind, you will miss the power of the poem. The effect is even stronger if you know that Pagis is playing with Yom Kippur liturgy, contrasting the writing (in the book of life) with the sealing in the freight car. The author of the poem knows that God hid his face from the sealed freight cars delivering millions of Jews to their death.

Eve and her son, Abel were alive then but on a journey to certain death. In our long Jewish story, we will soon take leave of the greatest prophet that ever lived. We will leave him standing on Mount Nebo and looking at the promised land from a distance. Moses is forbidden from entering it, but we are not. Soon we will continue to the next chapter in our long history of those who survived. Our story is not just written in pencil on a sealed freight cart, but also in ink on parchment and on our hearts with songs.

Yom Kippur - Viddui

We will shortly be saying the viddui or confession. We will beat our hearts with our right fists while we confess to our many sins together. Together, we will confess our sins from the general like wickedness and arrogance to more specific sins, like robbery, slander and contempt for teachers and parents. With each beat and confession, we will communally take that awareness of our errors to heart. We will be confessing our character flaws and our less than perfect behaviours, together.

As a child, I would consider whether or not I had done those sins or not. Extortion- not me, rude to parents- oh yes me. As an adult, I would like to think I’m wiser now. I know that it’s not about me and my sins, it’s about us and our sins. And together, we certainly cover off all of these sins as a group effort. But I still struggle with the list of sins with deep feelings of shame. I can think less of myself as I read the list. I often think less of myself anyway. And I know that’s not useful either.

So how do we let the Viddui liturgy help us? If Viddui or confession is the first chapter in process of Teshuva, how do I start this essential task? How do I get to end up serving God out of love rather than fear?

Here’s a possible clue. Before we say the Viddui prayers, we say something striking. It is from Deuteronomy 30 and it says ‘and God will circumcise your heart and the heart of all your descendants to love the Lord your God with all your heart’ וּמָ֨ל יְהֹוָ֧ה אֱלֹהֶ֛יךָ אֶת־לְבָבְךָ מוּל means to circumcise. Like a Brit Milah where a baby’s foreskin is cut way. It’s also in Deuteronomy 10 where it says מַלְתֶּ֕ם אֵ֖ת עׇרְלַ֣ת לְבַבְכֶ֑ם ‘You shall circumcise the foreskin of your heart’

What does it mean to cut away the bits of your heart? What are the superfluous bits? What is the process by which the heart becomes free of its tattered bits of extra skin? What is the unprotected pure heart underneath the heart’s foreskin?

I think the metaphor is pointing to something about the process of becoming our best selves. It’s not about more. It’s about less. It’s not about more effort and more resolutions to do better. It’s not about more covering up the fact that we are all cracked. It’s about less thinking about those personal stories that haunt us. It’s about letting go of our need to tell the same old story about ourselves over and over again and less desire to meet impossible standards. It’s about stripping back and returning to factory settings. By circumcising our hearts, we might see what we are part of, by default. The Ein Sof that includes us and is bigger and wiser than any of us, if we are down on our knees to see it.

Rav Kook describes repentance as returning to one’s true self. He believes the basic nature of each individual is good. For Rav Cook, when we sin, we are walking away from our better nature. By turning away from the wrong behaviours, we disown them and return to our self - the kinder and better nature that is truly us.

Perhaps. I prefer this framing from a friend of mine who is an artist. Avigail says: Teshuva is like peeling back the dirty masking tape on a painting to reveal the bright white paper underneath.

Unlike Rav kook who believes we peel away the sins and reveal the better state underneath, she says we get to a blank slate underneath. Because that is where the work happens in an endless process of self-re-creation. Beneath our vision of ourselves that we paint one way or another, good or bad, is a place perpetual opportunity. Un-encrusted by habits of thought, we are free to choose better again and again.

Viddui is a means to an end, and that end is to let the communal confessions of our sins circumcise our hearts.

Viddui strips us down to glimpse at the blank paper underneath.

It is the process by which we have to forget our perfect offering, and see our fault lines where the light can get in. We are cracked here and here and here, but at any moment, we can create a better picture.

Let’s get to work.

Pinchas

For Ha kol Olin Shabbat morning

Hello, Shabbat Shalom. I have volunteered to say a few words about our Parasha today. But before I say anything about Pinchas, I need to say a word about a word. The word is: ‘mutable’ and it’s flipside ‘immutable’.

Mutable does not mean what I do on Zoom when the speaker is boring, although sadly I must admit I do mute because I have a short attention span and thanks to modern technology, tedious people are now mutable. Unfortunately for you today, that option is not open to you. So if you have a nap for the next five minutes, I will understand. I will try to keep it interesting though.

This is what mutable means in the academic world – it’s the word for things that can change over time. The opposite of mutable is immutable which means unchanging over time or unable to be changed. I came across this concept a few years ago when I read a fascinating book called What’s Divine about Divine Law by Christine Hayes. In it, she shows that for the ancient Greeks, divine law has to be by definition- rational, true, universal, and immutable. Divine law doesn’t change for the ancient Greeks.

While in the Torah, on the other hand, divine law is divine because it is grounded in revelation with no presumption of rationality, conformity to truth, universality, or immutability. In our tradition, the law can change. And change it often does. There are three powerful examples of that capacity of the law to change in the parasha today. I’ll start with the most obvious one…

Machlah, Noah, Chaglah, Milkah and Tirtzah, the five daughters of Tzelophchad of the tribe of Menashe, want the existing divine law of inheritance to change. They ask Moses that they be granted the portion of the land intended for their father who died without sons. God accepts their claim, changes are made to the divine law and are incorporated into the Torah’s laws of inheritance. That is mutable divine law in action in the Torah itself.

But for me, the more interesting example of the mutability of divine law comes earlier in the parasha, with the very problematic story about a zealot called Pinchas who drives his spear though the belly of Zimri while he is having sex with Cozbi, the Midianite woman. Bravo! Lives are saved and Pinchas is blessed by God. I’m just guessing here that no-one here is comfortable with this story. Luckily, we are not the first Jews who need and want to rewrite the Torah precedent expressed here. The rabbis of the Talmud in Sanhedrin 81 and 82 are extremely critical of Pinchas and his zealous ways. They decide that halachically Pinchas acted on his own and without court sanction. Strangely for the rabbis of the Talmud, they don’t debate it. They say it categorically.

Specifically they say that if Zimri, the victim had turned around and killed Pinchas the Zealot in self-defence, Zimri would be declared innocent in a court of law. Secondly, the Talmud narrows down the permitted zone and rules that if Pinchas had killed Zimri and Cozbi just a moment before or after they had sex, he would have been guilty of murder.

Thirdly, the rabbis of the Talmud say that had Pinchas consulted a Bet Din and asked whether he was permitted to do what he was proposing to do, the answer would have been a clear no. Absolutely not. The permission for zealotry expressed in the torah today is withdrawn in the Gemara.

It clearly states, an individual cannot execute a death sentence without a duly constituted court of law, a trial, evidence and a judicial verdict. Killing without due process is murder. Halachically today, an individual cannot commit murder even to save lives. Don’t even think about it. With techniques like this, the rabbis of the Talmud change the divinely mandated law in many places in the Talmud, and God laughs. Times have moved on and the locus for law is not in the sky anymore but amongst the people. <

> The other change we can see in the Parasha today is that we no longer do the festival sacrifices described. Not the sheep or the rams or the cows with their roasted smell that is so pleasing to God. The last change is in leadership. Moses empowers Joshua to succeed him and lead the people into the promised land. <

> The parasha is about transitions in law, in leadership and in practice. Change in Jewish life is like a glacier, moving slowly and continually. Occasionally, you catch a glimpse and see the changes for yourself in your own lifetime. When I was growing up, there was a belief that women had to sit upstairs. The only time we ever came downstairs to the men’s section was for our en-masse bat mitzvah ceremony, where batches of girls wearing white were processed twenty at a time.

But change is sometimes maddeningly slow and there are still people today who believe women’s voices cause Erva or licentious or are an embarrassment to the community and as such they may not daven or leyn for the community. Strange I know, but I’m sympathetic because we’ve all experienced for ourselves how closely embedded habit is to justifications of what can’t ever possibly change. But habits become normal, and luckily today, due to the courage of a few people in the room here today to make the necessary changes, women are welcome to participate fully in Ha Kol Olin and Assif.

One final thought, the most fascinating part of our whole story is what doesn’t change. The immutable part that remains intact that has to be experienced rather than explained. Here we all are reading and discussing parashat Pinchas, saying the shmah, and davening Musaf, as we have for thousands of years. When we return the Torah we have to the Ark, we will sing and I will have a little catch in my throat, sometimes so much that I can’t say the words out loud…

עֵץ חַיִּים הִיא לַמַּחֲזִיקִים בָּהּ. וְתמְכֶיהָ מְאֻשָּׁר: דְּרָכֶיהָ דַרְכֵי נעַם וְכָל נְתִיבתֶיהָ שָׁלום: הֲשִׁיבֵנוּ ה' אֵלֶיךָ וְנָשׁוּבָה. חַדֵּשׁ יָמֵינוּ כְּקֶדֶם:

The last line comes from the end of Lamentations or Eicha where we say: ‘Take us back, O LORD, to Yourself, and let us come back; Renew our days as of old.’

Isn’t it extraordinary that we’re still grasping to that tree of life, we’re still yearning to return to the source of it all, we’re still wishing for good days like the old days. We still see ourselves as part of the Jewish journey that began so long ago and continues into an unknowable future. Shabbat shalom

Eighth day of Passover

Heaven on earth Today is the eighth and final day of Pesach in the diaspora where we live. Starting with the first Seder eight days ago, we’ve gone on a journey from embittered slavery in Egypt, then on a bumpy road to freedom that took us across the Red Sea, to Sinai and ultimately to the Promised Land. Is there any further to go? The Haftorah today says yes and points to a vision of a perfect future for all living creatures.

The haftarah today is taken from Isaiah. It contains some of the most well-known verses in all of the Tanach.

Firstly, who knew while doing Israeli dancing, we were dancing to the words of Isaiah?

וּשְׁאַבְתֶּם־מַ֖יִם בְּשָׂשׂ֑וֹן מִמַּעַיְנֵ֖י הַיְשׁוּעָֽה Then there’s the line we say as part of Havdalah and Hallel that we sing together in harmony as part of the Seder כִּֽי־עׇזִּ֤י וְזִמְרָת֙ יָ֣הּ יְהֹוָ֔ה וַֽיְהִי־לִ֖י לִֽישׁוּעָֽה׃

It also includes this famous metaphor for the days of the Messiah where: ‘The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together’

I love this unfashionable observation from Rabbi Norman Lamm who notices that in paradise the wolf dwells with the lamb, and not that they become the same species. It’s just that in paradise, the wolf will be less rapacious, and the lamb will not be victimized. He says: ‘Unity is worthy only when it does not imply uniformity; harmony is a good when it does not insist upon homogenization. We must strive for oneness without insisting upon sameness.’

Kimberlé Crenshaw, an American civil rights advocate, says something similar: ‘Treating different things the same, can generate as much inequality as treating the same things differently.’

Isaiah continues his vision of paradise. He says nothing evil or bad will happen in my holy place because “the Earth shall be filled of knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea”

Maimonides likes that line so much he ends his massive Mishneh Torah with it. He believes the point of the law is to create a more equitable and peaceful world. Paradise for Maimonides is a peaceful place where he can get on with the business of knowing God.

Paradise for the Baal Shem Tov is another seder but this time with the joy of matzah soaked in water. (Gebrokts). In fact, today on the eighth day of Pesach, many Hasidim relax some of the dietary restrictions of the first seven days and they gather for a special meal called a se’udat mashiach (the messianic feast). Thanks to an innovation from the fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe in 1906, this seder also features four cups of wine. This meal complements today’s haftarah, which looks forward to the messianic era as a time of universal peace, that you’dd expect after four glasses of wine.

That’s the lesson of the eighth day of Pesach. To remember to go from slavery to heaven on earth by seeing that we are free in every moment. When we’re dancing to shaftei mayim be sason, to liberate ourselves from fear of how we look and to dance like no one’s watching. When we’re singing ozi ve zimrat ya at shul or at our seders, to liberate ourselves from fears of sounding imperfect and to sing our hearts out. When we’re talking to friends and family, to liberate ourselves from thinking about saying the right thing and really listen.

Paradise for me is forgetting my fears about sharks and to give myself over to enjoyment of swimming in the ocean. Paradise for me is remembering there is only God, and I am part of that oneness, and so is everyone and everything else. Paradise is when I know that nothing bad can happen in this place because we are all completely filled with knowledge of God like the waters cover the sea.

Shabbat Shalom

Postscript. After I said this in shul today, John Schlapobersky came over to me and told me he was comforted by these words from Isaiah that he would read when he was imprisoned in South Africa for his anti-Apartheid activism. He understood that although imprisoned, he was free. I am looking forward to reading his book When They came For Me.

Terumah

I remember going to visit a newly designed synagogue in Mainz in Germany around the time we were building the new New North London Synagogue. It was an architecturally impressive and highly conceptual building, but I particularly remember looking at the seats which were designed around the concept of God’s name and thinking that that just wouldn’t fly in our shul where the seats are built around the concept of comfort of sitting.

Today we look in detail at the building of holy spaces. Moses’s Mishkan (sanctuary or Tabernacle or tent) in the parasha, and Solomon’s Beit Ha Mikdash (Temple) in the Haftorah.

Let’s start at the very beginning with the building of the MIshkan. It starts with God telling Moses to: ‘Tell the Israelite people to bring Me gifts; you shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart so moves him’

It’s an entirely voluntary operation and the people are overflowing with enthusiasm to get involved and they bring precious gifts generously. Then God says: ‘And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.’ וְעָ֥שׂוּ לִ֖י מִקְדָּ֑שׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּ֖י בְּתוֹכָֽם׃ It’s not just any random sanctuary though. It has to be made ‘Exactly as I show you’. The parasha goes into specific details of layout and the angels and the curtains and the poles and it is all oriented towards the Aron or Ark that has something in it. אֵ֚ת הָעֵדֻ֔ת אֲשֶׁ֥ר אֶתֵּ֖ן אֵלֶֽיךָ So, at the core it has the Eydut or testimony or pact as Sefaria translates it, in an ark, with two gold cherubim and curtains and poles that you don’t take out because this project is continually on the move.

As Rabbi Norman Lam comments, ‘it’s a cooperative project, the women weaved, the men build, the labourers laboured. it was a community undertaking. There was an overflow of enthusiasm, an unparalleled and unsurpassed outpouring of love for this sacred project.’ Sounds lovely, and Rabbi Lamm and others wax lyrical about how the sanctuary was made and what we can learn from it.

The construction of the sacred space described in this week’s Haftorah is less popular with the commentators.

In the Haftorah, we have moved from a mobile sanctuary, a tent essentially, that is carried on poles around the desert to a permanent one in Jerusalem that is made out of stone. The Haftorah starts with king Solomon making a cruel move. He imposes forced labour on the people of Israel and uses oppressive task masters to ensure it is all done. No crafting, volunteering or loving outpourings here… וַיַּ֨עַל הַמֶּ֧לֶךְ שְׁלֹמֹ֛ה מַ֖ס מִכׇּל־יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל Look at the word ‘Mus’

That word is also used in Exodus 1:11 for what the children of Israel suffered at the hands of the Egyptians where it says: ‘So, they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labour’ וַיָּשִׂ֤ימוּ עָלָיו֙ שָׂרֵ֣י מִסִּ֔ים

Despite its grandiosity or perhaps because of it, the first Temple of Solomon is soon destroyed, and another is built later by Herod which is more grandiose and seemingly more permanent. Later it too is destroyed.

Our synagogues now mirror the Mishkan of the desert, and the Temples of Jerusalem. We now orient ourselves to the Ark here and we keep our sifrei torah in them. We pray instead of sacrifice. We build synagogues in all sorts of shapes and sizes, as any tour through European cities like Mainz shows. The huge old hulks of massive destroyed synagogues like the Oranienburger strasse synagogue in Berlin are particularly tragic. They are testimonies to lost communities that must have once thought they were forever when they were built. From mishkan to temple to synagogue, always orienting to the words of God. And for me personally, from sitting upstairs in the grand Marais Road shul in Cape Town to this intimate room that I thought was my forever space.

But things change all the time. Honestly, I haven’t been to shul in ages. I understand there are many people who are struggling like me to return to our public holy spaces. It’s not just that they are under threat and under fire. The lockdown changed something in me about public spaces and that includes spaces like these. I don’t know what comes next. I miss being part of a community of shared meaning, and I know that to have that again, I have to show up week after week, with a sense of generosity. No one is giving it to me on a plate.

The work is to show up, and to start building; one prayer, one conversation and one fish-ball at a time. I am comforted from reading today’s Haftorah, that more than the building that is holy, what counts is in the space between us all when we are communally oriented to the word of God.

Today that is with you, here, now.