Stuff Gets Broken - And Then We Move On.

 

It’s wedding season, which is lovely, if you love celebrating love, commitment and Jewishly rich celebrations – which I do. It’s also proving a tense time for a number of the couples at whose weddings I will be officiating in the coming months. Who gets to stand where under the Chuppah, who  gets invited to which bit, who gets to make the decisions ... it’s proving stressful for many and I’m delighted to be largely excluded from the particularly vexed question of who pays. I tell all ‘my’ couples that stuff gets broken at Jewish weddings. Part of the reason, I believe, for breaking a glass at a Chuppah is to remind us that life in general, and wedding ceremonies are just one part of life, isn’t about perfection. It’s about dealing with a world that is often messy, uneven and, increasingly, lacking in clear well-defined norms and models that can be simply picked up and adopted to our ever-more complex contemporary social realities. Life, and wedding ceremonies, are ultimately about moving on beyond the brokenness.

 

And then I started to see reports of the wedding of the grandson of the Belz Rebbe.  25,000 Hasidim descended on the main square of the Belz district of Jerusalem to celebrate. If the list of canapés for a busy London wedding seems daunting, try catering for 25,000! Have a look on You Tube. I did and wondered at the sea of black hats dancing and singing, Bocherim perched high up and far away peering on through binoculars as the couple made their way through the rituals of a grand Hasidic wedding. I had the same fascination, admiration and alienation I often feel when I look in at Hasidic celebration, all arrayed in vast number, with deep commitment and an attitude to Judaism that I just cannot share. Then I was struck by something truly powerful. In an article in Haaretz one commentator pointed out that the last time a Belzer Rebbe celebrated the wedding of a grandson was ‘in Europe.’ The Belzer were all but entirely obliterated in the horrors of the Holocaust. After the Shoah what was once one of the most powerful of all the Hasidic dynasties was reduced to a handful of families. And now, less than 70 years later, the Belzer number in the tens of thousands, and they get to celebrate. Even after the brokenness they can move on. Any wedding is a celebration. Every successful marriage is a triumph of moving on beyond the brokenness. Emil Fackenheim wrote of this in his work, To Mend the World. After the rupture of the Holocaust, wrote Fackenheim, it’s tempting to imagine nothing counts, it’s tempting to consider every action is inauthentic and false. But this has never been the Jewish way. Even after the most horrific rupture known to humanity we have rebuilt. After every experience of brokenness we move on and dance again.

 

I will, on Shabbat, be speaking about these appalling attacks in Woolwich. I offer my prayers of comfort with the family of Lee Rigby, and the fiercest condemnation of his murderers.

 

Shabbat shalom,

 

Rabbi Jeremy

After Things Get Broken, We Move On

It’s wedding season, which is lovely, if you love celebrating love, commitment and Jewishly rich celebrations – which I do.   It’s also proving a tense time for a number of the couples at whose weddings I will be officiating in the coming months.   Who gets to stand where under the Chuppah, who  gets invited to which bit, who gets to make the decisions ... it’s proving stressful for many and I’m delighted to be largely excluded from the particularly vexed question of who pays.   I tell all ‘my’ couples that stuff gets broken at Jewish weddings.   Part of the reason, I believe, for breaking a glass at a Chuppah is to remind us that life in general, and wedding ceremonies are just one part of life, isn’t about perfection.   It’s about dealing with a world that is often messy, uneven and, increasingly, lacking in clear well-defined norms and models that can be simply picked up and adapted to our ever-more complex contemporary social realities.   Life, and wedding ceremonies, are ultimately about moving on beyond the brokenness.

And then I started to see reports of the wedding of the grandson of the Belz Rebbe.   25,000 Hasidim descended on the main square of the Belz district of Jerusalem to celebrate.   If the list of canapés for a busy London wedding seems daunting, try catering for 25,000 !   Have a look on You Tube.   I did and wondered at the sea of black hats dancing and singing, Bocherim perched high up and far away peering on through binoculars as the couple made their way through the rituals of a grand Hasidic wedding.   I had the same fascination, admiration and alienation I often feel when I look in at Hasidic celebration, all arrayed in vast number, with deep commitment and an attitude to Judaism that I just cannot share.   Then I was struck by something truly powerful.   In an article in Haaretz one commentator pointed out that the last time a Belzer Rebbe celebrated the wedding of a grandson was ‘in Europe.’   The Belzer were all but entirely obliterated in the horrors of the Holocaust.   After the Shoah what was once one of the most powerful of all the Hasidic dynasties was reduced to a handful of families.   And now, less than 70 years later, the Belzer number in the tens of thousands, and they get to celebrate.   Even after the brokenness they can move on.   Any wedding is a celebration.   Every successful marriage is a triumph of moving on beyond the brokenness.   Emil Fackenheim wrote of this in his work, To Mend the World.   After the rupture of the Holocaust, wrote Fackenheim, it’s tempting to imagine nothing counts, it’s tempting to consider every action is inauthentic and false.   But this has never been the Jewish way.   Even after the most horrific rupture known to humanity we have rebuilt.   After every experience of brokenness we move on and dance again.

 

The Rabbinic In-Tray - A Masorti Attitude Towards Non-Jewish Partners

 

 

I recently received the following e-mail (reworded a little to ensure anonymity).

What is a Masorti view on Jews with non-Jewish partners – and their partners.

My response is below.

 

--

 

My enquiry is really to find out the Masorti view on intermarriage. My partner is not Jewish and I no longer feel that I can go to the Orthodox Shul that I am familiar with. Is Masorti an option for me? I do not want to lose my Jewishness, but of course neither do I wish to lose my partner.....Perhaps I should contact Reform ? I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you for your time

 

--

 

Many thanks for being in touch.

You ask interesting questions.

 

Let me tell you a bit about how I engage with the issue of non-Jewish partners and offer a chance to speak or meet. I’ll speak personally, but you should expect something similar from the community I lead and the Movement I am part of.

               

I understand the problem of Jews marrying non-Jews from both Halachic and societal bases. Certainly it is far easier for two Jewish partners to create a Jewish home together, especially if and when there are children, than for an inter-faith couple. It’s also forbidden as a matter of Jewish Law.

 

I know there are Jews who fall in love with non-Jews and I know that for those people that relationship is good and hugely important.

 

I know that for many of these people falling in love with a non-Jew is not the same thing, at all, as giving up on Judaism and a good number of Jews, married to non-Jews – and even a good number of non-Jews married to Jews – show remarkable levels of commitment to maintaining and developing their own Jewish involvement and that of their children. I also know that many Jewish couples who fail to maintain let alone develop their Jewish involvement. Neither marrying ‘in’ or marrying ‘out’ guarantee anything.

 

As a community we have a number of families with one Jewish and one non-Jewish parent. We do our best to offer both parties to the relationship the warmest of welcomes. We do our best to educate any children of these families as well as we can. For what it is worth there is no question of denying aliyot and/or other kibbudim to members with non-Jewish partners. In general, as a community, we don’t go in for pointing fingers, calling names or behaving in a judgemental manner.

 

We also have a fabulous conversion programme. For non-Jews who have ‘thrown their lot in’ with a Jewish partner it’s invariably something that many think about, but there can be nervousness about discussing it. You should discuss it, and if you or your partner want to take that conversation forward, please have a look at

http://www.newlondon.org.uk/page.asp?page_id=16

And be in touch with me.

 

Is that helpful, at least to open a conversation?

If you are more interested in the community you should come for a Shabbat, or Friday evening meal, or we can arrange a meeting,

 

Very best wishes,

 

Rabbi Jeremy

 

Ruth & Game Theory

 

As I was thinking through this sermon, I pulled this book off the Shelf, Matt Ridley’s The Origins of Virtue. It’s a book I read nine years ago.

It contains the story of an experiment in game theory – the study of the decisions we make.

Suppose, says the academic Douglas Hofstadter a dilemma in which 20 people sit, in a cubicle with their finger on the button. Each person will get £1000 after ten minutes, unless someone pushes his button in which case the person who pushed the button will get £100 and everybody else will get nothing.’

Even a fool knows, Ridley notes, that the best result is not to press the button.

But if you are a little bit more clever you will realise that there is a high chance that someone else will press their button, so if you are a bit clever you should probably press your button before they do.

As a matter of Games theory, pressing fast is the way to go.

The risk reward balance demands it.

‘Don’t get misled by your morality’ writes Ridley, ‘that fact that you are being noble in cooperating is irrelevant to the question. What we are seeking is the logically best action in a moral vacuum – it’s rational to be selfish.’

Ridley wants us to feel the power of the logic of game theory,

I’ll come back to Dr Ridley, or Viscount Ridley later.

 

I knew I wanted to share something about this book because I am still thinking about the single moment in the entire Hebrew Bible which most stands most fiercely against this kind of game theory.

The moment, in the entire Hebrew Bible, which looks at logic, calculation and the rest of it and hurls it all away because of a strange, most human quality we call chesed - kindness.

 

We read the Book of Ruth during the Festival of Shavuot – on Thursday, forgive me for still being held in thrall by its foundational uncovering of what it means to be human.

 

Story –

Naomi has two sons, they marry and then they die.

Leaves three women, devoid of economic possibility, devoid of the possibility of a future – without a child to carry the name of the family onwards.

Give up on me, tells Naomi, head back to your own families. And one daughter in law leaves.

But Ruth doesn’t leave.

Naomi attempts, for a second time to push away and Ruth stops her.

Do not entreat me to leave you, or to keep from following you;

For where you go, I will go

Where you stay, I will stay;

Your people shall be my people,

Your God my God;

Where you die, will I die, and there will I be buried.

 

I’m in, says Ruth, I’m with you.

And the reward for this fidelity – I disregard.

This is the key point, for an understanding of Ruth.

When we do something for someone in the expectation of reward, or if we do something for someone because they have done something for us, that is all called reciprocity.

What Ruth does for Naomi has nothing to do with reciprocity.

What can I offer you? Says Naomi, even if I were to be with a man tonight, it makes no sense for you to wait for me to have another son for you to marry.

Where you go I will go – says Ruth.

I have nothing to offer you - Naomi.

Where you stay, I will stay – says Ruth

 

This isn’t reciprocity.

It’s the inverse of reciprocity.

Doing something for someone not only not in the expectation of reward, but in wilful disregard of what one might get back from the relationship.

This is love.

Love is doing something for someone with no thought as to the return, the reward, the ‘what’s in it for me’

This is the meaning of Hebrew term Gemilut Hesed – doing things for others out of a sense of kindness – phrase perfectly encapsulated by the translation – wanton acts of kindness.

To be Gomel Hesed is to be gratuitously kind.

Doing the kind thing above and beyond any supposed call of duty.

 

The Rabbis understood precisely how the Book of Ruth carries this relationship with kindness at it’s very heart in a Midrash, a commentary which plays with this supposed challenge in the book.

 

The book of Ruth, says Rut Rabba, contains nothing about ritual, nothing about forbidden and permitted. Why then was it written? To teach how great is the reward for gemilut hesed – wanton acts of kindness.[1]

 

Why would you do something for no reward?

The Rabbis consider Gemilut Hesed not just a nice thing to do, but a religious, a godly, thing to do.

Here is another Midrash, another Rabbinic teaching on gemilut hesed, from the collection Yalkut Shimoni

Anyone who is Gomel Hesed, it is as if they accept all the miracles which the Holy Blessed One has done since bringing Israel out from Egypt, and one who does not Gomel Hesed is like one who denies the existence of the Divine.[2]

 

That’s a stunning idea.

The idea that if you do something for someone with no thought for what is in it for you, when you do something out of love, out of a sense of Hesed you are in some sense accepting the notion of God,

who placed this possibility of love in the human soul

who justifies all acts of love in ways beyond human fathom

and who demands from us these acts of love.

 

Try this as a definition of God – God is the begetter of the possibility of Gemilut Hesed –

God is that which elevates our lives beyond the level of reciprocity.

I think that’s stunning.

That’s the God I believe in.

 

I began by mentioning Matt Ridley’s book The Origins of Virtue.

Virtue in Ridley’s book has nothing in common with Hesed.

Rather the book documents a sort of evolutionary principle which explains how humans and animals alike end up doing things which appear to be non-selfish.

The book documents how doing which appear on the surface to be non-selfish ultimately rewards and turns out to be in our best interests.

Ridley’s virtue involves acting selfishly, but with a slightly longer term perspective than one might at first expect.

The book is not theological, it’s not about love, it’s not about Chesed.

I mentioned I would return to Matt Ridley, he came to prominence in 2007 when he resigned as Chairman of Northern Rock Bank. That’s right they made an evolutionary biologist who believed the pursuit of self-interest was the same thing as pursuing virtue the Chairman of a bank.

And when it turned out that the Bank had done exactly what Ridley would have expected, and gone bankrupt and dragged half the city of London down in its wake, some were surprised.

Certainly MPs, leader writers and the rest of them were quick to point a finger at Ridley who resigned in disgrace.

But what else could one have expected.

If you confuse self-interest with virtue you can justify all sorts of economic lunacy.

I don’t mean to belittle self-interest. Of course it a necessary part of life.

And the book is certainly a terrific read.

 

It’s fascinating to understand why fish exist in schools.

It’s an extraordinary act of scientific discovery to unpack how meerkats work out how to avoid predators or how flocks of doves can fight off a hawk.

But these biological truths have nothing to do with virtue.

If you want to understand virtue you would do a lot better reading the Book of Ruth.

 

What can I offer you? Says Naomi.

Where you go I will go – says Ruth.

I have nothing to offer you - Naomi.

Where you stay, I will stay – says Ruth

 

The things we do for those we love.

The things we do for our children, for the members of our family, for our friends, even the things we do for mere acquaintances and most especially the things we do for the stranger in our midst, the things we do with no thought of reward, these are the markers of virtue.

 

This, Max, is the test of whether, as you grow and develop you will be a virtuous man.

Will you do things for others with no thought as to what is in it for you.

This is the test of virtuousness for all of us.

Gemilut Hesed is more than being nice.

Gemilut Hesed is the test of our humanity – the extent to which we, as humans -  beings created with a soul, beings created in the image of God -  transcend the life nasty brutish and short.

 

It’s one of the deepest and most central teachings of our faith.

When we look out at the world and you look to make decisions as to how to expend your energies and your resources, do we plot what is in it for me, or do we reach beyond the reciprocal, to the true level of virtue of love and Gemilut Hesed.

This is the test,

May we rise to meet it and triumph in the love and kindness we can pour into the world.

 

Shabbat shalom

 

---

[1] II:14

[2] Shoftim 64

Aharei Mot - The Spinoza Problem and David Hartman's Living Covenant

 

I read two books on holiday.

Both a great read.

Feel a bit like a school kids – doing a book report, but this is important.

Central to classic insight into the opening of this week’s Parasha

 

Acharei Mot – Aron called to go back in to the Holy of Holies, to perform divine service after the death of his sons.

Just a couple of weeks ago, after an unimaginable loss.

Divine response.

Get on with it.

Not allowed to mourn, not allowed to even show fear retunring  to the scene of every parent’s deepest terror.

Divine service trump personal emotion, personality.

Image of God as the oppressor, riding roughshod over the individual.

It ain’t easy to be holy, it takes sacrifice and surrender to some remote incomprehensible set of demands.

It ain’t easy, but actually it’s also downright unpleasant and if not immoral then resolutely unsympathetic in the most technical sense – uninterested in the pain suffered by the individual.

 

As a theology

At the heart of one of the most important works of C19 Christian and C20 Jewish thought

Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling.

Soloveitchik, Lonely Man of Faith, surrender

When God calls to Abraham to offer Isaac, Abraham’s role is to suppress his own feelings, whatever moral, ethical or certainly personal qualms and submit himself to his faith.

This is certainly what is requested / demanded of Aaron, but how representative is this tough, unsympathetic remote religious attitude as a marker of what Judaism is all about?

 

And this brings me to the first book I read on holiday.

Psychiatrist and author Irving Yarom – The Spinoza Problem

Novelisation of Spinoza’s life in Amsterdam, stunningly interwoven with the story of Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi ideologue.

Terrific book, but let me focus on this central idea.

For Spinoza, especially in Yarom’s hands, religion – Judaism, is just rough unsympathetic thing we recognise from demands made of Aron Acharei Mot – after the death of his two sons.

Remote, inaccessible, demanding with no attempt to meet or even care for the opinions of a mere mortal.

And Spinoza, in Yarom’s hands, rejects this Judaism. He rejects the superstition that locates religious obligation in some remote mystery.

Spinoza, in Yarom’s hands, believes that God couldn’t care less about so many of the things that the Rabbis of his own day demanded in the name of Judaism, he believed that the Rabbis were more interested in vouchsafing their own power and ability to control the mere mortals of the Jewish community they said they served, but in fact they manipulated to suit their own ends.

The Jewish community of Amsterdam in the mid C17 are subjected by Yarom to a Marxist read – they wield power for their ends, constructing a Judaism of strictness, closed-mindedness and demanding only submission.

Religion, Judaism, portrayed, by Yarom’s portrayal of Spinoza, is all about the remote, oppressive, unsympathetic imposition of expectations, riding roughshod over personal qualms, equivocations, morals and ethics.

 

I meet a lot of people who agree. And, perhaps not unsurprisingly the people who agree that the bleak picture painted by Spinoza is the nature of Judaism have very little to do with Judaism. Well they might turn up to Shul a couple of times a year. They might even keep current their membership of this community, but they will never let Judaism near their heart. Indeed why should they?

And if Spinoza could detect and reject the supernaturalism in the 1650s, then how much the more so we in this glitteringly post-modern, post-discovery of this that and the other contemporary society should also keep Judaism far from our souls.

If this is what Judaism is, then I reject it also.

But this isn’t what Judaism is.

Brings me to the second book I read on holiday.

Actually I reread it.

David Hartman’s ‘A Living Covenant’

He died only recently, just this year. This is Aharei Mot, so I reread the work as my own tribute Aharei Mot – after he passed away.

I last read this book in 1998 and re-encountering it I was struck by how much of what I still hold utterly central to my Judaism was inspired by Hartman.

 

Notion of covenant that interests Hartman is one which entails a meeting between God and Jew. God gets to make calls on us, and we get to make calls upon God. This isn’t a gift, it’s a sacred obligation.

Hartman reads the story of Noah against the story of Abraham.

Noah accepts God’s decree – God says will destroy, Noah should build an ark.

Noah builds the ark and watches on as God destroys.

For Hartman this is a failure.

Noah doesn’t get to be the father of Judaism.

The covenant made with Noah isn’t THE covenant which really, in Jewish eyes counts, determines and perpetuates the nature of Judaism.

Instead it’s Abraham who becomes the father and the one who defines Judaism. And it’s the covenant made with Abraham that defines the nature of Judaism.

Abraham who argues against destruction of Sodom and Gemorah

Abraham who walks in-front of God, in one Midrash cited by Hartman, Abraham who illuminates the way for a God who is stuck in darkness and can’t see without the leadership provided by the Jew.

Hartman collects a host of Rabbinic commentaries proving how dear this active, defining of what Judaism is, is to God.

Hartman takes his own teacher, Soloveitchik, to task. Soloveitchik who suggests that the offer of Isaac is the high point of Abrahams’ life – it’s more complex than that says Hartman, it’s not undiluted heroism, it’s dangerous and, if its possible to say such a thing, unJewish.

Hartman - The binding of Isaac ‘threatens covenantal adequacy because it seems to exclude ethics from religious consciousness’

And Judaism could never abandons ethics from the religious consciousness, it can never abandon the human, because Judaism is about a covenant – and that means humans and God meeting if not on equal terms, then at least both bringing of themselves to this conversation.

For Hartman, for me, Judaism is not narrowly about surrender to the remote supernatural at the total expense of the person.

It’s a debate, it’s an unfolding narrative, there is give and take on both sides.

 

Hartman tells the story of Tanor Shel Akhnai, God enters a debate between two groups of Rabbis and finds himself on the losing side.

This is what God desires

‘Talmud liberates the intellect’ says Hartman

It frees us to pursue the moral, the better, to keep refining and reshaping in search of ever more sophistication.

That’s what it means to be a Jew.

That’s what it means to be parties to a Covenant, as opposed to pansies,

The Jew is not some kind of Aunt Sally constructed to be the butt of divine capriciousness.

The failure of Soloveitchik is that he hasn’t taken enough notice of the human – the possibility, the insight, the potential which is surely God given – we are built this way for a purpose.

We are built this way to push, to improve, to create, innovate.

We are never to yield to the immoral, the unsympathetic.

The failure of Yarom’s Spinoza, by a similar token is he’s allowed Judaism to be defined by things he doesn’t believe in.

Judaism is great enough to handle Spinoza – to be fair Yarom captures this in a terrific scene when the Rabbi who is to place Spinoza in exile desperately tries to recruit him for a life of Talmudic study. It’s an attempt that failed, but it’s predicated on the basis that if Spinoza was able to find the space within Judaism for his own brilliance he could have been a force for renewal and growth.

 

Great problem Judaism has had with modernity is not that it can’t cope with modernity.

Of course it can cope with modernity, of course Judaism can thrive as it engages with modernity.

The great problem Judaism has with modernity is that hasn’t had faith in its own ability to cope.

This is what Hartman tries to address, time and time again.

Don’t allow Judaism to be painted as brittle, reliant on superstition and Marxist-style rabbinic power grabs.

Celebrate Judaism’s true soul – its innovative spirit, it’s power to regenerate in each and every generation, to remain current, vital and powerful.

That’s why we should let Judaism into our souls, to shape us and move us as we shape and move it.

That’s what it means to be part of what Hartman calls the Living Covenant.

That’s my message today.

Don’t allow Judaism to be painted as brittle, reliant on superstition and Marxist-style rabbinic power grabs.

Celebrate Judaism’s true soul – its innovative spirit, its power to regenerate in each and every generation, to remain current, vital and powerful.

 

When I took my fifteen year old copy of the book off the shelf I found a note I wrote to myself on the frontispiece.

I wrote it before I was a Rabbi, before I even began formal Rabbinic education, but I feel it as much today as I did then.

‘I am not prepared to have a theology which doesn’t allow me to be a Jew.’ I wrote in 1998.

That’s the point.

It’s also, for what it is worth, the life’s work of the founding Rabbi of this community, Rabbi Louis Jacobs of blessed memory.

It remains the core and heart of my own rabbinic endeavours. None of us should be ‘prepared to have a theology which doesn’t allow us to be a Jew.’

 

 

 

Shabbat shalom

 

To Be A Chazan / Hazan / Hazzan

In my weekly words, at this time, I am looking at the original meaning of three terms; Shaliach Tzibur, Hazan and Baal Tefillah. Last week's discussion of the Shaliach Tzibur can be found at http://rabbionanarrowbridge.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/how-to-be-shaliach-tzibur.html.

 

To understand the term Hazan, one needs to rewind to a time when Judaism was based around Temple service and the Priestly caste. In Mishnah Tamid ‘Hazan’ is the title given to the person responsible for assisting the Priests with their ritual garments and looking after the Temple utensils (some scholars say the term is related to the Arabic Khazin = treasure keeper). As Judaism evolves beyond Temple-based ritual, the role remains one of facilitation, rather than being the centre around and through whom all ritual service flowed. The Chazan was in charge of the lamps of the Synagogue (YT Shabbat) and was responsible for bringing out the Torah scrolls and rolling them to the correct place for ritual reading (M Sotah). 

 

The earliest references to the Hazan as prayer leader come in the post-Islamic Pirkei Rebbi Eliezer and the fringe/post Talmudic work Masechet Soferim (5th-6th Century). In its earliest and original  usage the term meant the servant of the community's ritual needs – it’s closer to the contemporary terms Shamash and Gabbai.

 

The point, I think, is this. The Hazan's job is to facilitate divine service performed by others. It's not to perform this service 'vicariously.' It's not to remove others from their own direct involvement in turning towards God. There are many different forms of leadership. The most holy of leaders, however, are not those who dazzle so mightily that they stun us into obeisance but those who draw out from those led more commitment, more integrity and more decency than we knew we possessed. The best leaders make us more than we thought we could be, not less. This is the quality of leadership we seek from our next Hazan.

 

 

How to be a Shaliach Tzibur

In honour of our guest Chazanim, this week and in two weeks time, I want to share what I understand by this beautiful and challenging role.

 

There are really three terms that are used in our tradition in describing this task; Shaliach Tzibur, Baal Tefilah and Chazan. This week I will focus on the first. Shaliach – from the Hebrew term for sending, or message. Tizbur – from the Hebrew term for community. The Shaliach Tzibur is the messenger of the community. The standards of a Shaliach Tzibur are detailed in the legal codes of our tradition.

 

The Shulchan Arukh (basing itself on a passage in the Talmud) states;

The Shliach Tzibur must be appropriate. What is appropriate? They should be free of sin, and there must never have been ugly gossip spoken about them, not even in their childhood. They should be humble and desired by their community. They must look nice and have a pleasant voice and they must regularly read from the Torah, Prophets and Writings.

The Mishnah Brurah adds:

They should be first into the Synagogue and last out, nor should they be foolish or frivolous, rather they should be able to speak of the needs of the community.

OH 53:5

 

It’s a list that is so impossible as to be almost humorous. Who could possibly cope with such a weight of expectation? ‘The Torah was not given to angels’ teaches the Talmud (Meilah 14a) in more understanding mood. An aim of perfection is a waste of breath. So it’s no surprise to see the Shulchan Arukh (following the Talmud) going on to say;

And if you can’t find one who has all these qualities, choose the best of the community in matters of wisdom and good deeds.

 

The point is that we should want to be represented by the best we can manage and being the best is not purely about singing prowess or even encyclopaedic knowledge of matters of ritual and liturgy. It’s about someone wise and kind and perhaps, most insightfully, ‘someone able to speak of the needs of the community.’ Rebbe Nachman of Breslav teaches that the Shaliach Tzibur has to collect up all the points of goodness in the community and array them before God. The Shaliach Tzibur has to become invested in the community as the community becomes invested in them.

 

As I wrote earlier this week, this is an important Shabbat for us. I urge the community to make every effort to come and be part of it; on Friday night and Sunday morning as well as, of course, Shabbat morning. Also, all are welcome at my home for the Seudah Shlishit – 5:30pm on Saturday. Then please share your perspectives on our candidates using the on-line survey, which will go live on Saturday evening, remaining open until midnight Tuesday.  http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/5STQFKR

 

Shabbat Shalom

 

Rabbi Jeremy