Knocking on Ellul’s door
Where to begin. It’s been a fabulous summer and I am knackered! Not quite enough sleep!
Life seems to be a constant balance of opposing forces.
Our week started as Shabbat went out with the news that bodies had been found of hostages that had been murdered in Gaza. For so many Jewish families, we have sat with the unquenchable anguish of the last months wondering after our loved ones. This week we found out that Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Ori Danino, Eden Yerushalmi, Almog Sarusi, Alexander Lobanov, and Carmel Gat had been murdered just days ago at the hands of their terrorist captors.
Hersh, one of those killed this week, I feel connected to; he went to the high school in Jerusalem of one of my friends, the school that neighboured the Hartman Institute where I studied for 2 years. His mother Rachel was a teacher at Pardes, another institute of learning I visited a few times. Hersh’s face has now been stuck on our fridge for 6 months or more, just watching me as I prepared some breakfast or snacks for the kids. A young person I never met - we hoped and prayed that he would just come home.
A feature of these weeks and months has been, profound and unrelenting despair. A despair that has stretched across much of our small community.
With every act of terror, with every awful thing that we witness in our broken world, in part we hope, ‘sh’lo nida’, that we shouldn’t know such personal suffering and at the same moment wonder in the depths of our hearts, how on earth we would cope – if it was our brother, sister or mother.
Rachel and Jon, Hersh’s tirelessly campaigning parents spoke with such bravery, such eloquence and dignity. We send them and all those who have been bereaved in this brutal war, kindness, compassion, strength and our love.
And then I returned to the joyful, bountiful summer. I officiated a wedding yesterday by the river Thames near sunny Windsor. A fabulous day, a bustling and beautiful wedding. The day was all smiles and joy. The energy of celebration that is only really found at that heightened pitch at weddings. At the end of the ceremony a guy came up to me with a big smile but also with a slight trembling in his voice. We spoke partly in Hebrew and partly in English. He said, he loved the ceremony “but wished I had mentioned the hostages”. He said, maybe just maybe, if we all pray and focus our thoughts that we might be able to raise up our prayers to the highest of highs, to finally bring them home.
I felt ashamed, sad…I often feel in my rabbinic life that I take the easy route, low key, a middle path that dares not to challenge or bring the fire. I said to him, I relied heavily on suggestion (remez or allusions to) in the drasha that I did give, to “the challenges we face” and I assured him, that all of our hearts were breaking. I told him nevertheless he was right; I could have and should have called out their names, said in clarity that our hearts were broken and that we pray for the safe return of the hostages still in Gaza. I felt sick.
The drash (the take on our weekly Torah portion) that I offered was around trees, in the sight of some majestic river-side trees I spoke about how the lives of trees relates to our lives. ‘כִּי הָאָדָם עֵץ הַשָּׂדֶה’, the line from my Bar Mitzvah portion, Shoftim, a bemusing line, ‘is a human being a tree’. The line connects human life with plant life and asks questions of the vulnerability of both. It is from this one line we learn the fundamental principle from within the Jewish tradition of not needlessly destroying anything, especially trees.
More fundamentally however the connecting of human life and tree life tell us something about who we are. Just like trees we are rooted, rooted in tradition, grounded in the lives and wisdom of those who came before us. Just like the tree we are tasked to make positive effect on the world around us, to nurture, to shade, to bear productive fruit. Just like the tree, we grow in strength but we too have our life span when we will finally fall and return to the earth.
The image of the sanctity of the tree returns us the universal nature of life here on earth, our mutual dependence upon one another. However much we fight, however we despair in the humanity of the other, we breath the same air, we are rooted in the same soil and ultimately our strength is not ours alone but shared.
This month of Ellul that we are about to start is the run up to the Jewish New Year, ‘הַיּוֹם הֲרַת עוֹלָם’ ‘the birthday of the earth’, the day that we celebrate all life on earth. It is a time that we can draw away from the rollercoaster ride of live, away from life’s great diversity and see the unity and commonality of the life we live and re-commit to the protection of life in our world; human, animal and plant.
SHABBAT SHALOM
A NOTE TO YOU – this New Year is beginning at a pace. We are building new projects, bringing rich, passionate Jewish life to you – a Judaism which is accessible and non-judgmental, a Jewish life which is uplifting and meets you where you are at. I would relish your help, if you want to help me fundraise or have some great programme ideas or have some slick thoughts on our social media outreach. Drop me a line – hello@oliverspikejoseph.com
