A Jewish Response: 2 Notes and 2 Pockets by Rabbi Colin Eimer
This week we wanted to share a thoughtful and powerful sermon by Rabbi Colin Eimer given on Saturday 24th May, on a Jewish response to the difficulty of the moment we are living in.
“I’ve only had a standing ovation once in my rabbinic career. And, of all things, it was for a sermon. In 1982, Israel was fighting a war in Lebanon and had occupied Beirut. We came home from Rosh Hashanah services to learn of a massacre in two Palestinian refugee camps, Sabra and Chatila. It was perpetrated by Christian militia, but with the knowledge of the IDF. On Yom Kippur, most of my colleagues spoke about the shock we felt about what had happened, and about Israel’s tacit involvement in it. I understood that standing ovation as saying something like I had managed to express what many were feeling.
For many years I taught practical rabbinics at Leo Baeck College. In one module, we discussed sermons. One of the real turnoffs, for me, I said, is a sermon which begins, “as we read in the Torah this morning…..” There are quips about sermons: “a sermon is like a bicycle wheel - the longer the spoke, the bigger the tire”; “giving a sermon is like drilling for oil - if you haven't struck after 5 minutes, stop boring.” But, more seriously, I repeated something one of my teachers taught, “a sermon should comfort the troubled and trouble the comfortable.”
But just what is a sermon? If nothing else, it should be the thoughts of a committed, educated Jew speaking out of Jewish teaching on a theme or an issue which we are bringing with us into this place. It’s not political commentary on what's happening in the world: you have, presumably, had enough of that in the media during the week. Anyway I’m no more qualified to speak about that from the pulpit than any of you. So if I do address contemporary issues it has to be from some sort of Jewishly-educated perspective. I learned from my teachers - Rabbis Lionel Blue, Sheila Shulman, Dow Marmur, Hugo Gryn – that a sermon should challenge us in our customary, habitual way of thinking. Occasionally people tell me they talked, even argued, about my sermon over lunch that Shabbat. For me, that’s a sermon which has fulfilled its function.
I came into this part of the Jewish world from the United Synagogue for a number of reasons. I went to one of the great Jewish schools of North-West London at the time – the mid1950s - namely, Christ’s College Finchley. Among my fellow pupils was the late Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, as was Rolfe Roseman, and many other Jewish boys who, unlike me, went on to become famous, or rich, or both. I received a fairly good education there, but came to find what I learned there was increasingly at odds with what I learned in my synagogue cheder. It was one of the factors that led me to move away from the synagogue.
Among the things that attracted me to this part of the Jewish world was learning about Prophetic Judaism. As the name suggests it is the Judaism derived from the prophetic books of the Tanach, the Hebrew Bible: the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel; the 12 so-called minor prophets. The biblical prophets weren’t soothsayers or fortune tellers; they didn't cast the runes, read tea leaves or look into crystal balls and foretell the future. As described in the Tanach, they were reluctant mouthpieces, loudspeakers, for God. They looked at society as it was, at what they saw around them, and, speaking in God’s name, said: “as a consequence of what I – I God - see now, this and this will happen.” They were fearless critics of the priesthood and the kings. They spoke out against fake religion and mock piety; they railed against the injustice of their time, advocating for the poor, the weak, the widow, the orphan, the defenceless. Not surprisingly, they were often reviled and oppressed, even imprisoned for their words.
That prophetic dimension was an absolute revelation for me. The idea that ethical and moral behaviour was a fundamental Jewish imperative was enormously attractive.
Of course it was always there in Jewish teaching. Sadly though, I seldom, if ever, heard it from the pulpit or in the cheder of my childhood synagogue. The emphasis seemed to be mostly on doing the right thing ritually – keeping kosher, Shabbat and festivals and so on.
And on that Yom Kippur in 1982, as on every Yom Kippur, we would have read a haphtarah from the prophet Isaiah in which he castigates the people: don’t think that fasting and 24 hours of prayer are what God wants, if you don’t also fight injustice, free the oppressed, feed the hungry, clothe the naked and so on. (Isaiah 58.)
In short, the prophets were reminding people of where their moral compass should be pointing in terms of ethical and moral behaviour.
And that’s the difficulty I and many of my colleagues are having as we try to find the right words to address ourselves to what is happening in Gaza.
A colleague suggested borrowing something from Simcha Bunam, one of the Chassidic masters. He said that we should see ourselves as having two pockets, each with a piece of paper. On one is written “I am but dust and ashes”; on the other “I am created little lower than God.” In other words, I am nothing – or I am everything. Simcha Bunam said we need to hold on to both pieces. If we only look at one or the other we go wrong. For Bunam the struggle was how to hold on to both at the same time, finding some sort of balance in life.
I wondered what would be on our contemporary pieces of paper? One would have Gaza, humanitarian aid, civilian deaths, landscapes reminiscent of Berlin in 1945, Ben Gvir, Smotrich, settler violence. While on the other would be: October 7th, hostages, the right to exist and to exist within secure borders, antisemitism posing as anti-Zionism, and – after last Wednesday evening in Washington - we might add the names Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lushinsky.
If I only look at the ‘Gaza’ piece of paper, what sort of Jew am I – how can I not think of Israel, of my people? Yet if I only look at the piece with October 7th, hostages and so on, it’s the same question: what sort of Jew am I – how can I dismiss or ignore the suffering in Gaza?
I am told that if I criticize the Israeli government in public I am giving ammunition to Israel’s enemies, or, worse still, I am some sort of traitor who wants to see the end of Israel. The government and the land are not the same nor are; the government and the people the same: over 60% of Israel’s population is saying just that. I wonder what the world out there makes of Jewish silence in the face of the suffering in Gaza? Does that not give ammunition to others?
The poison Hamas released into the world on October 7th is beyond belief or comprehension, as is their continued cynical manipulation of aid, their continued ignoring of the suffering of their people. But that cannot be a reason for withholding aid. It doesn’t help Israel. Every atrocity hardens feelings while, in the meantime, the starving continue to starve, and justice continues to elude those who seek it: be they Israelis or Palestinians.
Looking back all those years, responding to Israel’s incursion into Lebanon seemed much more straightforward. We know how complex truth is and how important responding to those truths is; and how difficult it is to hold on to two, often conflicting, truths at the same time. But if we can’t, then it seems we have to resign ourselves to what is happening now being the norm for the future.
43 years on - how to speak now? what to say? That’s been a rabbinic dilemma but of course it’s only mine for the purpose of this sermon. For it is a dilemma which belongs to us all, demanding an ethical, a Jewish response from us all – from me, and from you, and from you, and from you”.
Shabbat Shalom
For those who are looking for a way to act, please see this petition from Yachad to PM Keir Starmer about UK action to end the war in Gaza.
https://secure.yachad.org.uk/page/172039/data
If you would like to donate, NIF is raising money for humanitarian aid to people in Gaza.