New Year in a Dumpster Fire

What a year it has been…it's hard to fully commit to repentance and personal accounting when the world is upside down.

A ‘dumpster fire’ is one of my favourite Americanisms. An apt way of describing Jewish life in the last year.

The invocation for Rosh Hashanah for many families who place simanim (symbolic foods) on the festive table is that the year ahead should be ‘לְרֹאשׁ וְלֹא לְזָנָב’, ‘a head and not a tail’. Words borrowed from our Parsha two weeks ago, Ki Tavo [Deut. 28:13]. That would be nice, I can get behind that, please God that the year ahead should be not so back-to-front, not so dispiriting, disorienting and so full of fire and destruction.

A core part of this disorientation is our hostages still held in Gaza by Hamas. Rabbi Wittenberg drew attention to this in our Torah reading for this past week, ‘כִּי אֶת־אֲשֶׁר יֶשְׁנוֹ פֹּה עִמָּנוּ עֹמֵד הַיּוֹם לִפְנֵי ה אֱלֹקֵינוּ וְאֵת אֲשֶׁר אֵינֶנּוּ פֹּה עִמָּנוּ הַיּוֹם’, ‘with those who are standing here with us this day before our God ה’ and with those who are not with us here this day’ [Deut. 28:14]. I have always read this as a cross generational call to unity, that we honour and include in our tradition those who have passed, those who are not with us. This year, this verse is flipped on its head, speaking directly to our captives and our dead whose bodies have not been returned for burial.

I watched the BBC documentary last week ‘Surviving October 7th: We Will Dance Again’, about the Nova Music festival massacre of October 7, 2023. I would recommend it, a profound watching experience. With almost a year gone past, I had very carefully and deliberately avoided many images of that terrible day. In the immediate aftermath of October 2023, I mostly removed myself from social media, for self-preservation. The commentary on this documentary was that the production team wanted to make this film ‘watchable’, that is to say, hard hitting but attempting to moderate some of the horrendous images, with an intention to enable the viewer to get through the whole 89 minutes.

As a Jewish educator that has led trips to Poland and Auschwitz in particular, I have not seen scenes of such devastation and murder beyond the horrendous documentation of the Shoah, the Holocaust. The overriding message of October 7, and the making of this movie, is the way in which the victims and survivors felt so abandoned on that day, abandoned by the state, unable to protect or defend their loved ones. Never before since 1945, the end of the Second World War, have Jews been massacred at such scale.

May those killed be blessed and may their families one day find strength and comfort. May we live to see the miracle, soon, of the return of all of our captives.

Where from here? I am a changed man of this Jewish year, my politics have changed, I don’t know people of Jewish community who are not changed by this time. Our Israeli friends and cousins, alongside many in the Jewish community, always spoke of Jewish vulnerability, about an existential threat. Some of us from the younger generations never fully accepted this stance. Then October 7 came, reminding us that there is a strong minority in our world that would still happily shed Jewish blood at any opportunity. That conceptual leap between two world views has, I believe, caused much rupture in our Jewish community. 

I have some intentions for the year ahead; I hope they will help in support of each of us finding our way in this Jewish New Year.

Be powerful, be proud! Don’t listen too closely to the haters, let us all be our best selves, not held back by those who would celebrate our downfall; we have to stand proud of our community, of our faith and of our resilience.

The people of Israel need you, we are a diverse and disparate people, with politics from across the political spectrum. That is ok. Our diversity is our strength, our diversity can be our strength. If we have capacity to listen to one another, to accommodate and include, we will emerge in strength.

We can and we must hold on to our values and our desire that the State of Israel acts ethically and according to the aspirations of our Torah. What a brutal ethical dilemma of the generations to decide between our own survival and the humanity of our neighbours. These are the ways that our humanity and the humanity of so many in Israel has been absolutely tested in this year past. We have been part of a gruesome war of survival, facing enemies on every single front, a test of every single fibre of our being. We must continue to be a people who critique and question the essence of who we are, whilst abjectly refusing to give up on our quest for survival and thriving. We cannot and will not lay down to die so that another people can live; our humanity is worth nothing if we sacrifice our lives for its sake.

One of the most heart-wrenching lines of the documentary from Ziv Abud, who’s partner Eliyah Cohen remains captive in Gaza:  ‘אני הולכת לישון עם דמעות ואני קמה בבוקר עם דמעות’, ‘I go to sleep with tears and I awake in tears’. This has been our year…tears for all the violence and devastation, and yet, we must dance again. We must, in spite of the horror we are mandated to, plot a course forward of community, of celebration, of resilience and resistance. 

This year we partner in spiritual resistance with hostages, with the bereaved, with friends and family in Israel. Our job this year is to dig deep, where others may lack the strength, for us to find a place of reflection, of shift in our own spiritual sphere. We can do our small bit over these Ten Days of Repentance and in taking three steps on our own, perhaps we can be partners in moving the Jewish world and even the world beyond it forward again, towards peace and towards love between neighbours once again. 

Over these days, everything is up for grabs; our work is to make head or tails of our lives, what is up and what is down? This year more, that feat feels close to impossible but it is our mission to give it a go. 

Ultimately these days are our Chag, days also of rejoicing. Amongst the pain and sadness, it is so important to say, “we survived”, ‘שֶׁהֶחֱיָינוּ וְקִיְּימָנוּ וְהִגִּיעָנוּ לַזְּמַן הַזֶּה’, ‘Who has given us life, sustained us’ and please God that we should merit to live another year. That will be our strength, and in this year ahead, God willing we should do sommat good with the time we have!

Shana Tova 

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