Chad Gadya in a World of Violence

 My dear friend and teacher, Rabbi Josh Kulp, lead author of the Schechter Haggadah has published something very special this year – it’s a collection of hopeful and profound extracts from early and pre-state Israeli Haggadot. He wrote, in introducing them that he Pesach to be a time of optimism and hope, and Mah Nishtanah – a different night, not talking about hostages and Gaza and Iran again.

I understand that,

But, Misken Ani – so I’m going to do the other thing. And if you came to Shul today hoping for the Rabbi to talk about something other than hostages and Gaza and Iran. I’m sorry. If it helps, I don’t think I’m going to mention the words again. Or maybe I will once.

I want to talk about Chad Gadya

In part because it’s my favourite Pesach song,

In part because it’s the song that most reminds me of – you know all the stuff that’s going on out there.

In part because I don’t get to share more thoughtful stuff around the time we are singing Chad Gaya at Seder Night. Everyone just wants to sing a good song and go home.

Chad Gadya is old, not quite as old as the rest of the Seder – most of the rest of the Seder is at least 1800 years old, but it dates back at least 500 years, which has to count for something.

 These are a couple of pages from the famous Prague Haggadah of 1527. I went for the page where you start drinking the wine and dipping the Marror and breaking the Matzah - it’s always the dirtiest page in my Haggadot - and I’m delighted to see nothing has changed in some 500 years.[1] So the Haggadah finishes - and then there’s an extra page. And there, in a different script are the lyrics of the Chad Gadya, both in Hebrew-Aramaic and Yiddish.

By 1590 it’s appearing in the properly printed pages of Haggadot in Prague and elsewhere.[2] So it’s definitely older than that. Rabbi Yedidya Weil wrote in 1790 that he had “heard that they found this song… safeguarded and written on a parchment at the Beit Midrash Rokeah in Worms [dated to 1406]  and it was decided that it will be sung on the eve of Passover for all generations to come.” 

 

And it’s part of a folk song tradition which includes “There was an old lady who swallowed a fly,” in which progressively bigger and more dangerous creatures and things gang up on smaller creatures and things until, well the world feels – in Hobbe’s phrase “nasty brutish and short.” The moral of the song seems to be that the way to survive in the world is be bigger, badder and the person that no-one fancies their chances in taking on.

Makes for odd reading in this time.

In my own thinking about this song, this year, I’ve been moved by something written by the veteran pro-peace Israeli activist, Mickael Mannekin[1]

“Once, I decided to read [Chad Gadya] backward; perhaps I would find a hidden lesson. We know God is good, and the angel of death is terrible. If we read the story backward, I thought, we could learn something about justice and retribution for the unjust. The unjust attack the just, so God retributes. I got stuck quickly. I understood that the Jewish butcher was good. But what did the cow do wrong? Drink water? Does that make water just for putting out fires? All the fire did was burn a stick. And if the stick is justice, that makes the dog injustice. If the dog is unjust, that makes the cat just. And if the cat is just, he’s right to bite the goat. But didn’t the goat come first? So much for restoring justice!

I then read the story forward, and things got worse. If the goat did no wrong, in this thesis and antithesis story of justice, the angel of death is well within the line of rational thinking on justice. Then what does that make God?

While preparing for Pesach this year, [said Mannekin] I started seeing Chad Gadya in a new light. Since October, many have been focused on trying to understand the root causes of violence. Unsurprisingly, each “side” in this conflict sees themselves as the victim. Violence is therefore either justifed or inevitable. To restore justice, one needs to go back to the origin. There lies pure good, they suggest.

There are many problems with this notion. One that particularly bothers me is how it erases or minimizes the pain of the other. Our side’s pain is never-ending. Their side is “contextualized.” In our hyper-ideological modern world, this outlook is present on all sides of the political map. Chad Gadya points to the futility of this exercise. Sure, God is good, and the Angel of Death is evil. But sometimes, a stick is just a stick, and a cat is just a cat. They are all part of a tug-of-war that, more often than not, has no coherent explanation and doesn’t make sense. Sometimes, there is no original sin, and no grand narrative — just violence.”

Ahhhh

The other piece that is providing me with insight in this awful year, was translated by Dr Saul Maggid[2] from the book Herut – freedom, by the early C20th Rabbi, Aaron Shmuel Tamares. Tamares published this in Bialistock just three years after the Kishinev pogrom of 1903.

All of this [the story of the Exodus] can be used to explain the final plague in Egypt, in which God executes death [to the first born of Egypt]. This judgment was deployed by Godself, as the Haggadah explains: “I passed over the night, I, and not an emissary.” This seems odd as God could have enabled the Israelites to wreak vengeance on the Egyptians. However, God did not want to even show the Israelites how to use the power of the fist, even in a moment of defending themselves against the evil ones. This is because, at that moment, while they would indeed be defending themselves against the aggressors, in the end they would have become aggressors.

Therefore, God took great pains to prevent the Israelites from enacting any vengeance against the evil ones; so much so that he prohibited them from even witnessing it. Thus, the [violent] act was deployed “in the middle of the night” in the darkest hour of the night. God also warned the Israelites not to leave their houses, all to separate them from this destructive act, even to witness it passively.

…

In fact, God prohibited Israel from witnessing God’s violence to prevent the violence that is within Israel to be released. Because once that violence is released there is no longer the ability to distinguish between the righteous (the innocent) and the evil (the guilty), and the one who is the defender (the recipient of violence) will become the aggressor (the perpetrator of violence). 

“And all of you should not leave your houses until the morning” (Ex 12:22)….that you should not become the destroyer. This means that by distancing oneself from participating in the vengeance against Egypt one is prevented from unleashing the destroyer (violence) that is within you.”

Maggid adds

One cannot destroy Pharaoh by becoming Pharaoh. Normalcy cannot come at the price of this lesson. Because if it does, Tamares proclaims later in this essay, “all of human civilization is in peril.” A world of Pharaohs is not desirable. Nor sustainable. Violence does not redeem. It only enslaves.

That’s the problem I have with the utterance I hear from some, in the context of the whole Gaza, Israel, Iran thing – there, that’s my one last utterance.

Some say, that in the Middle East it’s a dog eat cat eat goat kind of a place, and the only thing that ‘works’ is the sort of I’m tougher-than-you-and-if-you-come-at-me-I’ll-come-at-you-harder school of life as articulated in the Chad Gadya.

And I have both a Michael Mannekin problem with that – that if I see violence as either justified or criminally unjustified I’m going to contextualise my suffering as entirely without justification and contextualise my violent acts against the other as entirely justified and the outcome is just more violence.

And I have a Aaron Shmuel Tamares problem with that – that if I allow myself to partake in the violence, even, I think, if I become a supporter of that violence, I become the very thing I’m trying to get rid of in this world.

 

For me, there are two reasons I love the song – its politics, its theology – of course I love the animal noises, we all love the animal noises, I’m wrestling with something deeper, I hope than animal noises. I love the story as a cautionary tale and ultimately hopeful.

When I say it’s a cautionary tale, I have in mind the great Israeli poet, Yehuda Amichai who wrote this poem,

 

An Arab shepherd is searching for his goat on Mount Zion

And on the opposite mountain, I am searching

For my little boy.

And Arab shepherd and a Jewish father

Both in their temporary failure.

Our voices meet above the Sultans Pool

In the valley between us. Neither of us wants

the child or the goat to get caught in the wheels

of the terrible Had Gaya machine.

 

תַּהֲלִיךְ

הַמְּכוֹנָה הַנּוֹרָאָה שֶׁל חַד גַּדְיָא

The song, the articulation of the Chad Gadya machine that we all understand all too well is about the necessity of dreaming NOT to call into the Chad Gadya machine. It’s an articulation of a way not to be not to dream.

It’s nursery rhyme as antihero.

The sort of story you share with small children to get them to find a different way to behave. It’s brilliant at doing that. I love that about the song.

And then there is the last line. Chad Gadya comes with a tiny sliver of hope baked in. In the end of the song God comes – Vatah HaKadosh Baruch Hu. The ultimate winner in Chad Gadya isn’t the angel of death. It isn’t ‘brutish, nasty and short,’ it’s God, source of love and compassion triumphing over a world in which – and I have some serieous questions for God too - but God triumphs over the angel of death.

Again, Amichai sees the song, I think, the same way.

אַחַר כָּךְ מָצָאנוּ אוֹתָם בֵּין הַשִֹיחִים

וְקוֹלוֹתֵינוּ חָזְרוּ אֵלֵינוּ וּבָכוּ וְצָחֲקוּ בִּפְנִים.

Afterward we found them among the bushes,

And our voices came back inside us

Laughing and crying.

Chad Gadya is an antihero song, it’s persuading us to look for another way, less our goats and our children fall into the machine again.

Its message is hope.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure we’ve learnt that correctly, we might need to have another go, another seder, tonight.

Chag Sameach

---

[1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kNhiqgFP5NB3CCJaPn9VgArCJ8X5vM_T/view?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR2yL59Qvnr4KA-3Y3lmQNfG5_iZhJFsYTDKGL9LNpKDHMmzXNlUEXqb-RA_aem_AfHjvvqiHQ1E9bplrf5AU85JmG6pch5v47dmhnrknHPafu2rno6LG-XceFPdZmqiHYr7GI0R78ZX8YYHIx0Apu2m

[2] https://juliezuckerman.substack.com/p/pre-passover-special-edition-let?r=qfnu&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR0mSjsa5BpUzucMDd3qiDf4r5uC2w2embJmJ4M0WQge_sRnmB0ELGVgnro_aem_AZ9DRXM0-YwG6Jyir5ukuqgmxIkFqLbfmH06NOpMuIaRwEgzEgdCrRUdWcaIA4XvyZZMJ0G6gkrV1J1dVRcyRl0H&triedRedirect=true

Pesach in a Time of Conflicting Emotions

 

(hat-tip to Rabbi Yael Ridberg for sharing this pic on her FB feed)

For many, and I include myself, the heartbreak felt at the loss of life and liberty of Israelis on and after October 7^th, sits alongside pain for the destruction and loss of life visited on Gaza. Over the past six horrid months, I’ve been informed, by some, that I shouldn’t feel the pain for the losses in Gaza and by others that I shouldn’t feel pain for the losses in Israel. There’s a line in Bereishit Rabba that comes to mind. God tells Abraham to “take your son, your only son, the one you love, Isaac.” The Midrash interpolates a conversation, imagining Abraham’s love not only of Isaac but also of Ishmael. “I have two sons,” says Abraham, “They are both the only son of their respective mothers.” And then, in one of the greatest lines in all rabbinics, Abraham utters this rhetorical question – “Eit Techumin BeMayay [roughly translated] Are there limits to my heart?”

 

There are perhaps, surprisingly, many moments for a conflicted heart to find a meeting place in the rituals of Passover.

 

The most obvious is the spilling out of wine as the plagues are chanted. There are other reasons in the tradition, but the one that speaks most clearly to me is that we diminish the wine in our overflowing cups because of the suffering of others. Rabbi Dr. Eduard Baneth (d.1930, Germany) connected this tradition to the tradition of not reciting the full Hallel at the Yom Tov services at the end of Pesach. Those sacred days are associated with the Children of Israel crossing the Sea, but Yalkut Shimoni (Emor, paragraph 654) cites the verse in Proverbs that counsels, "Do not rejoice at the downfall of your enemy" and so only a ‘Half Hallel’ is recited.

 

The eve of Pesach, this year, Monday 22^nd April, is the Fast of the Firstborn, another ritual that is predicated on the religious call to experience empathy with, even, enemies. The firstborn of Israel – and I’m one of them – are called to fast in sympathy with their fellow firstborn, murdered by the Angel of Death on that fateful night so many years ago. Traditionally, instead of a fast a Siyum is presented on a Tractate of Talmud. I’ll be teaching this year on the completing Baba Metzia. But as I teach, I’ll be feeling the conflict of a heart. All are welcome to the Siyum, of course, firstborn and otherwise – 8:30am in our regular Zoom room – www.tinyurl.com/nlssalon.

 

Even the very food we eat holds conflict resonance - the bread of affliction is the same as the bread of our freedom. The lettuce - the original bitter herb before horseradish came to the table - was chosen for its combination of both sweetness (the leafier parts) and bitterness (the root-ier parts). The same goes for the Charoset - sweet to eat, bitter in terms of what it reminds us. 

And finally, a tradition that dates back, at least, to a manuscript Haggadah from 1521 Worms. There, alongside the verses “Shfok Chamatcha – Pour out your wrath,” are verses calling on God to “Pour out your love on the nations who call upon your name.” That’s not a call to love those who wish us harm – that’s a different story. But it is an expression of broad heart, even, and perhaps most especially, at our own moments of vainglory.

 

Pesach holds more than an unbridled celebration. Judaism demands more than narrowness. The human heart can feel conflicting emotions at the same time; the pain of the self and the other especially. In fact that might be the very test of the humanity of our heart.

Chag Sameach

Passover in a Time of Captivity

  

Passover feels, this year, haunted. It’s one thing to celebrate freedom when we are full of the joys of freedom. It’s another when there are hostages and fresh memories of Iranian drones and Gazan terror.

There are many Seder supplements, additional readings and ideas that are filling my inbox; so many that a Cantorial colleague has collected them here. I encourage anyone struggling or looking for a way to hold this multi-valent time well to explore.

At the New London Communal Sedarim, and at my home Seder, we will take part in the Seder Seat For A Hostage campaign.   More information here https://bod.org.uk/sederseat-sajbd/

 

In my own thoughts about freedom and Passover this strange and bitter year, I’ve been reflecting on a basic truth of all Jewish rituals. It’s something I realised while staying in a farmhouse several years ago when the cockerel woke me up with its growing at 4am, despite it being pitch black outside. The cockerel continued to crow at ten-minute intervals through the pre-dawn and into the afternoon. The incident that prompted my realisation was the ancient blessing, instituted to be said every morning, where God is praised for giving the “cockerel the ability to understand the difference between day and night.” As I struggled to get back to sleep, and throughout the day, I realised that cockerels don’t have the slightest clue about the difference between day and night. I realised also that the ancient Rabbis would have known that and that, therefore, the blessing that suggested God endowed this annoying animal with a level of understanding it did not possess was not a statement about the world as it is, but a statement about the world as they wished it to be.

 

The same, I think, goes for every prayerful utterance in our faith, especially the prayers about peace and triumph of the decent and the punishment of the wicked.  We pray as an act of aspiration, not description.

 

The Seder itself came into existence just as the Temple was destroyed, with Roman oppression and murder all around. We’ve sung of our deliverance from slavery as we’ve been plunged into exile. We’ve sung of our emergence into freedom during the darkest of times. This isn’t the first time we’ve had to reach toward a hope for the world and our place in it, rather than reflect on a bitter reality. In fact, this state is our norm. In other Passover rituals, we blur how we have always sung of freedom against a backdrop of pain – “This is the bread of affliction,” we say in this Zman Cheroteinu – Time of our Liberation.

Freedom and slavery have always, for us Jews, been closely interwoven. Pain and hope have always been co-conspirators at Seder. And Od Lo Avda Tikvateinu –I have not yet lost hope. In fact, it’s the experience of sitting at a Seder table, with family, friends and strangers alike that most keep that spark of hope alive.

May it be that way for us all.

 

And may all of Israel – and the hostages most especially – come to know true freedom speedily in our days.

 

Rabbi Jeremy

 

The Donkey of Our Enemy

Been another hard week.

Marked by the pain, continued pain for Israel, continued pain at the levels of antisemitism in this country.

We had a Council meeting this week and I took the opportunity to gauge where our Council thought I should be speaking out. A couple wanted me to speak more about antisemitism.

I abhor antisemitism.

I don’t accept that London or this country is becoming a no-go area for Jews. The phrase sticks in my throat a little, I think it’s deliberately alarmist and I don’t like it. But it’s hard now, I know it is.

And I feel, in myself, a gentle increase in the sorts of protection I take for myself – the times I go out wearing a cap over a Kippah. Tiny increments which add up.

So what to do?

And what about that other thing that’s going on in my mind, and in my heart. This space exists for the other in all this.

The Muslims of this country, who are subject to disturbing attack, sometimes from high levels of political leadership, from which comes no apology and no accountability. It’s very disturbing. To my Muslim cousins, preparing for Ramadan, I wish Ramadan Mubarak – even at, particularly at these sensitive times. If you hate antisemitism, and I hate antisemitism – you have to hate anti-Muslim hatred. You can’t be in favour of selected hatred of one group of people by another group of people.

And so too, I feel this pull in both directions when it comes to Israel and Gaza. My heart breaks for the families of the hostages, for the families with sons and daughters serving in strange plains of battle, who never thought that their military service, or reserve duty would consist of having to go door to door through the rubble of booby trapped Gazan tunnels in search of terrorists and hostages. It’s inconceivably awful.

But my heart breaks too for the millions of people in Gaza facing intense deprivation and for the Gazans who are mourning a loss of life that is staggering – even as much as I distrust Hamas as a reliable source for how many have been killed – it’s staggering. And I can’t handle the maths.

I can’t handle having to work out how many Gazans on a scale of responsibility for the acts of 7^th October from none to considerable , how many of those Gazan lives is it acceptable for Israel to be responsible for killing based on the numbers of Israeli lives killed or taken or wounded or in pain. My heart doesn’t allow me to do that kind of maths.

 

And the verse that went through my mind as I was trying to think through how to respond to the appalling acts of antisemitism here and the deeply painful loss of life there is one we read a couple of weeks ago.

כִּֽי־תִרְאֶ֞ה חֲמ֣וֹר שֹׂנַאֲךָ֗ רֹבֵץ֙ תַּ֣חַת מַשָּׂא֔וֹ וְחָדַלְתָּ֖ מֵעֲזֹ֣ב ל֑וֹ עָזֹ֥ב תַּעֲזֹ֖ב עִמּֽוֹ׃ {ס}        

 

If you see the donkey of your enemy lying under its burden and you would be tempted to refrain from helping it, help it!

It’s a brilliant image – here I am making my own way along and I see this donkey struggling, and the Torah knows what goes through my heart – that this is not only not my problem, but it’s my enemies problem, and the Torah knows I will be tempted to refrain.

Taazov Imo – don’t walk by.

And I know, there’s a Talmudic dicta that in the name of Rabbi Shmuel Bar Rav Yitzhak in the name of Rav, that says this only applies to an Israelite enemy – it doesn’t mean the enemy on the other side of the border.  But that’s not the only voice in our tradition that shapes, I think, the way we need to – we still need to – treat the donkeys of our enemies regardless of who that enemy is.

Midrash Tanhuma Mishpatim 1:2

R. Alexandri explained it as follows: Two mules are being led along a road by men who despise each other. Suddenly, one of the mules falls to the ground. As the one who is leading the second mule passes by, he sees the mule of the other man stretched out beneath his load, and he says to himself: “Is it not written in the law that If thou seest the ass of him that hateth thee lying under its burden, thou shalt forbear to pass him by; thou shalt verily release it for him (Exod. 23:5)?” What did he do? He turned back to help the other man reload his mule, and then accompanied him on the way. In fact, while working with him he began to talk to the owner of the mule, saying: “Let us loosen it a little on this side, let us tighten it down on this side,” until he reloaded the animal with him. It came to pass that they had made peace between themselves. The driver of the mule (that had fallen) said to himself: “I cannot believe that he hates me; see how concerned he was when he saw that my mule and I were in distress.” As a result, they went into the inn, and ate and drank together. Finally they became extremely attached to each other.

 

The point is that taking care of the donkey of our enemy is how we build our way out of enmity towards something that is not just filled with violence in one direction begetting greater violence in the other, begetting greater violence back again and back again.

This is Rebeinu Bachya, the thirteenth century commentator of Zaragossa talking about a parallel verse – yes we get more or less the same instruction twice in the Torah

The promise contained in our verse is that if you assist your enemy with their falling donkey they will eventually appreciate you and become אחיך, “your brother.” When you assist them they will forget the “hatred” between you and only remember the bond of love that unites brothers. (on Deut 22.4)

 

I know, that Midrash and that commentary are a little twee. I know it’s harder, this awful millennia old conflict between Israel and those people over that border. But the dynamic of hate in one direction driving more hate in the opposite and on and on until tens of thousands lie dead cannot be the greatest calling of our time.

Here’s another verse, one with chilling, for me, implications for our time.

אִם־רָעֵ֣ב שֹׂ֭נַאֲךָ הַאֲכִלֵ֣הוּ לָ֑חֶם וְאִם־צָ֝מֵ֗א הַשְׁקֵ֥הוּ מָֽיִם

If your enemy is hungry, give them bread to eat;
If they are thirsty, give them water to drink.

(Prov 25:21)

And I know the dicta that reads the verse about study – if a person is hungry for Torah bring them to the study hall. But that’s not the only voice in our tradition that shapes, I think, the way we need to – we still need to – treat our enemies in their hunger and in their thirst.

Rebeinu Bachya again, in a comment on how Abraham sent Hagar away from their tent – with a container of water, shares this

) One may view the fact that Avraham provided Hagar with bread and water as an allusion to something that he foresaw concerning the future when his descendants would be oppressed by the Arabs. He foresaw that the Ishmaelites would hate the Jews more than any other nation on earth hated them. Avraham was careful not to deny Hagar and Ishmael the necessities to ensure their survival, something with which Jews provide even their enemies. He modelled himself after Proverbs 25,21 “If your enemy is hungry feed them bread; if they are thirsty, give them water to drink.” (Genesis 21:14)

 

Rabeinu Bachya didn’t understand this verse, from Proverbs, as only applying to Jews. He understood it to mean, if you are caught in a cycle of hatred and fear, even if you know that that hatred and fear is millenia old and even possibly hard baked into a sort of religio-ethno-something, you still give your hungry enemy bread and your thirsty enemy water.

Rav Moshe Amiel was born and educated in the great Yeshiva communities of Eastern Europe, before fleeing Nazism in 1936 to become Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv. In his essay,

Justice in the Jewish State According to the Torah, he remarkably cites a Christian scholar in total agreement, when discussing this verse, of ours, from Proverbs

"If your enemy is hungry, feed him bread, and if he is thirsty, give him water" (Proverbs 21:21). And the Christian scholar Kornaval comments beautifully on the verse "You shall not abhor an Egyptian because you have lived in his land" (Deuteronomy 23:8): "So, even for the kind of hospitality that the Jews received in Egypt after they tortured them with all kinds of hard and cruel labor and also shed their blood, the Torah commands them without hating the Egyptians and acknowledging them with gratitude because they lived in their country - if this commandment is not close to loving enemies, then I really don't understand the Hebrew language." And these things are ancient parts of who we are as Jews.

 

I’m not a military tactician. I don’t know the best way to bring the hostages out. I’m not on the front line, I know all these things, but I just failed to understand something on the radio yesterday morning. There was a discussion about a new port that the Americans are due to build on the coast of Gaza, and the plan is to check aid with Israelis in Cyrpus or something, and ship it into Gaza that way. And the speaker said, well, of course there’s a perfectly useable port, just 30 km north of Gaza in Ashdod, but … and well I understand the hatred and the anger and desire for revenge. But it’s not good. And, perhaps even more importantly, it won’t get us to a place where the sons of Abraham, the brothers who both have fallen donkeys at this point, get to re-find in one other our relative humanity.

We can’t keep going on this path, and the only other path – the one that leads out of this place, comes through being able, somehow, even in pain, feeling compelled to assist the donkey, even, of our enemy.

 

On the Public Stage - For the Release of Hostages and for Democracy in Israel

In September, and then again in October, I had the privilege of speaking to large crowds at two events in Central London.

The first, was a pro-Democracy rally where I shared this

And then, awfully,  just weeks later at a rally for the release of all the hostages, but particularly as a Shaliach for Noam Sagi whose mother (now released) was taken on the 7th October 2023.

Posting here for anyone interested

On Holocaust Memorial Day at New London Synagogue

This year Holocaust Memorial Day falls on Saturday 27^th January. 

I want to pay tribute to all those who have made this day such an important occasion in our national calendar. 

 

We are all invited to place a candle in our window at 8pm this Saturday evening. Iconic buildings will be lit up purple and there is a project to light 6 million ‘digital candles’ on billboards across the country. The iconic billboard at Piccadilly Circus will display portraits of Holocaust and genocide survivors in the lead up to this national moment. 

Registration to join streamed curated moments from the Holocaust Memorial Day 2024 Ceremony is open here https://www.hmd.org.uk/take-part-in-holocaust-memorial-day/ukhmd/ 

 

At New London, we will be reciting a Memorial Prayer in our services this Shabbat but deferring our major commemoration of Holocaust Memorial Day to next Shabbat, 3^rd February. Next week marks the 75^th Anniversary of the arrival in this country of our member Hannah Lewis MBE. Having survived the Holocaust in the Adampol, in the Labour Camp and in hiding, Hannah came to London – in part owing the actions of another New Londoner, Basil (subsequently Lord) Feldman, or blessed memory. The theme of HMD this year is the Fragility of Freedom and Hannah’s story – which she will be sharing from the Bimah – is a hugely important reminder of this fragility. It is also a privilege and an honour to be able to hear Hannah's story - I encourage all to make every effort to attend. 

In terms of age-appropriate or related concerns, Hannah will be focussing on her journey to London, not her direct experiences of the Holocaust as it surrounded her. We will have some more information available at the Synagogue regarding her remarkable story of survival. 

 

I want to, also, share with the community two other opportunities for engaging with this important time. 

  

The Most Precious of Goods is a theatrical performance of the French novella, translated and directed by Nicholas Kent with music from friend of the community, Gemma Rosefield (who has played cello at our recent Slichot evenings). Marylebone Theatre until 3^rd February (I’ll be there on Thursday 1^st) https://www.marylebonetheatre.com/productions/the-most-precious-of-goods 

 

Revenge: Our Dad the Nazi Killer is an extraordinary new documentary about two Australian brothers who investigate their father and uncle, Holocaust survivors, and whether they might have been responsible for the mysterious deaths of Nazi war criminals who fled to their country after the war hoping to start a new life and avoid persecution. Available to stream https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001vn46/storyville-revenge-our-dad-the-nazi-killer 

 

Rabbi Jeremy 

The Chanukah Giraffe

 

Chanukah has always asked the question – are you, as a Jew, willing to raise your head above the parapet? Right back in the earliest days, the heart of the Maccabean revolt was the refusal to shrug and fall in line when the surrounding society said, “Don’t be Jewish.” The Maccabees found this intolerable. And so, here we are. 

 

Two hundred years later, the Rabbis articulated rules for the placement of the Chanukiyah. Candles, they taught, should be placed, "outside the house, or in the window overlooking the public space". People needed to see that we were here, proud of who we are and what we stand for, and proud to be different. They added, “In times of danger, it’s enough to light on your table.” Sometimes discretion is nobler than valour, but this extension of the neck has always been a Shikul, something to weigh up. As Jews, especially as Jews of the Diaspora we have long been used to marking carefully ways in which we fall in line with the expectations of our surrounding society, or raise our heads above the parapet and prove ourselves as different – at this Christmasy time of year most especially. And now, here we are, with horror along the southern border of Israel, destruction in Gaza and tension on the streets of London. 

 

There is something remarkable in the Chabad-led programme to put up public Chanukiyot … everywhere. I have cycled past three this morning. My Chabad colleagues lead the way in refusing to back down; wearing the same clothes, and the same outward commitments to our faith, come what may. 

 

This Chanukah is both something tragically new and something that has re-raised the very essence of this festival to the surface. The essence of Chanukah has never been a cute story about everlasting oil. It’s always been that it takes a certain kind of bravery – and in the language of Rabbi Steven Bayar – the neck of a giraffe to make a difference in the world. Not a foolhardy stupidity – “in times of danger, light your Chanukiyah on the table and that’s enough,” – but a refusal to back down. Rudyard Kipling, no great friend of Jews, had it right. “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you … or being hated, don’t give way to hating.” 

 

And maybe, this is the real lesson of a flame. Candles, even ones powered by miraculous flasks of oil, need protection from the elements. They can’t be assumed to survive the wafts of societal pressure. A flame, and the heat, warmth, delight and inspiration we can derive from a flame, demands our effort. It has always been so. 

 

Happy Chanukah.