So often in Jewish tradition, we are asked to recall human suffering in times of great joy. At a wedding ceremony, when the glass is smashed, we are reminded of the destruction of the Temple. We also pour wine from our cups in remembrance of the suffering of the Egyptians during the Pessach service. The Talmud teaches that if a wedding party meets a funeral procession, the funeral procession must step aside to allow the wedding pass. This tradition — to carry pain in times of joy — teaches us a lesson about the multifaceted nature of the emotions and how we can bring to any moment or experience.

Sukkot is no stranger to this balance. As we build, decorate and dwell in temporary structures for Sukkot during ‘zman simchateinu’ – the time of our happiness — we are reminded of our nomadic ancestors and asked to be mindful of how temporary all living structures can be. During the time of Sukkot, I think of those people who are homeless, particularly as the days get darker and colder. Accommodation was found for those in need during lockdown, but now many people find themselves back on the streets with little or no support. I also think of the tens of thousands of refugees who have been forced from their homes, to take terrifying journeys in search of safety often to find themselves turned away or left to survive in camps.

The incredible West End Musical, Come From Away, tells the story of how a small Canadian Province, Newfoundland, welcomed thousands of stranded travellers whose planes were redirected during 9/11. With no questions and very few resources, the people of Newfoundland opened their homes, schools, pubs and hearts to those travellers.

They not only gave them a place to sleep and food to eat but comfort and community during their traumatic experience. As much as we may want to, it is not up to us to solve the refugee and homelessness crisis by opening our homes (although there are charities that allow us to do that). The mitzvah of hospitality during Sukkot is a further reminder of the value of welcoming people in, rather than putting up barriers and pushing them away. Sukkot can move us to be part of the solution in any way we can.

This year, more than ever, we feel the impact of not being able to host in our Sukkot. With the law limiting social gathering to a maximum of six people, and the wind and rain compromising the structures of most Sukkot that were built, the mitzvah of hosting and gathering was hard to achieve. However, despite the reminders of suffering that surround us, and while we miss being together as a community, we can still experience ‘zman simchateinu’ — times of happiness.

During our service last week it was wonderful to hear how NLJC have enjoyed multicultural Sukkot services in years gone by. We also shared thoughts on who we would invite to our Sukkah if we ignored all laws of nature, science and society. It was lovely to hear of the people each of you would invite and to learn a little more about who is important to you.

This Sukkot and Simchat Torah, we tread that line between joy and happiness as we celebrate the changing of the seasons and the re-rolling of Torah. From death to creation, Deuteronomy to Genesis, great sadness and great joy

Rabbi Anna Posner

As I write, the calendar of our people is approaching its most sombre moment, the observance of Tisha b’Av, the 9^th of Av. It is the paradigm of lament in our tradition, and indeed, the book that is chanted to mark the observance is called Lamentations in English. Progressive Jews have been uncomfortable with observance of Tisha b’Av, at least in part because it laments the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Progressive Jews do not desire the restoration of the sacrificial cult in a rebuilt Temple, so Tisha b’Av has played a minor part in our calendar. But, like so many traditions of our ancestors, it is there, waiting for us to need it. And suddenly, unpredictably, we do.

Over the last few decades, we have become increasingly aware of “Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome,” and we have begun to learn how to deal with it. We are less familiar with the situation we are collectively experiencing these days, which was the subject of a recent webinar sponsored by the CCJ, the Council of Christians and Jews, entitled: Living with Lament: Resources for Faith Leaders in Time of Reconstruction. This is not just a trauma, which would certainly be challenging enough. It is a collective trauma – when a community or group is traumatised; in this case, the entire world. The Revd Dr. Carla A. Grosch-Miller taught that collective trauma can happen in two ways: a group contains a significant number of traumatised individuals and their pain radiates outwards; or something happens that impacts some individuals directly but primarily impacts the ways of relating of the group and the the group’s worldview in ways that threaten the lives of individuals. A group can also be traumatised by the response of others to events. There are a number of aspects of collective trauma, including feelings of powerlessness and helplessness, acute disruption of daily existence, extreme discomfort, and shattering of assumptions. These all sounded familiar to me, as I imagine they do to you as well.

Recent studies, cited by The Revd Dr. Grosch-Miller, have analysed the response to disasters into the following phases, without suggesting that they will or must occur, but recognising them when they do: the heroic phase, the disillusionment phase, the rebuilding and restoration phase, and the wiser living phase. I think we are just moving out of the heroic phase, when people do amazing things, powered by the fight/flight physiological response. This burst of activity helps the body to metabolise the flood of stress hormones. It might be followed by the disillusionment phase, which is characterised by exhaustion, low energy, tensions in the community that may become outright conflicts, hopelessness and the utter unpredictability of yours and everyone else’s emotions. We are most in need of supervision and support at this time and least likely to seek it out. The restoration and rebuilding phase is characterised by a general sense of moving forward, in a “two steps forward, three steps back” sort of way. And finally, what we may hope to see, though probably not soon: wiser living, when the grief of what has happened has been individually and collectively lived with and lamented, the struggle has been integrated into the story of the community and is no longer avoided, and the faithful remnant has settled into a new normal.

Rabbi Alexandra Wright of The Liberal Jewish Synagogue spoke about the Three Weeks and Tisha  B’Av: From Lament to Consolation. The Three Weeks is the period of mourning commemorating the destruction of the first and second Temples. The Three Weeks start on the seventeenth day of Tammuz and end on the ninth day of the month of Av. The ways in which our people have contextualised and institutionalised the impact of the destruction of the Temple can be revisited in the light of the losses we are suffering today, and this is particularly useful because, like today’s trauma, the destruction of the Temple was a tectonic shift in our people’s existence; to this day, all modern Judaism lives in the wake of that event. It is in our collective Jewish memory. The webinar noted that we are in this for the long haul. I think the “long haul” is what our traditions specialises in. Two thousand years of rituals, traditions and emotions attached to that ancient loss may help to guide us through this modern one, to a time of better, wiser living.

Rabbi Cantor Gershon Sillins

The Credibility Bookshelf

The Credibility Bookshelf is an artefact of the lock down. It is the bookshelf you see casually, perhaps inadvertently, arrayed behind someone who is speaking from an accustomed place at home, so the bookshelf is a glimpse of what he or she has read, is reading, will read. A few weeks ago, I recorded a reading with my phone in front of a bookshelf, and soon I got an email with the comment “I am sure that you have seen all the commentary about the new habit of looking at books behind Zoom speakers and crafted arrangements. Well, I am afraid I did look behind you at your books during your sermon. I didn’t recognise many of them, but I did spot Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. … I think he would have been delighted to know that his work could be spotted during a religious sermon.” This was a little embarrassing for me because, as I noted in reply, “I have to admit that, although I have some familiarity with the concepts, I have not read the book.”

Of course, I removed the Kant from my “credibility bookshelf” and now the books that can be seen on it are books I have read. And the process of looking through them has been like encountering old friends from whom you haven’t heard in some time. You remember that there was a wedding, but was it his? Or his brother’s?

When I leafed through some of the books I was struck by how unfamiliar they turned out to be – my memories of them were reduced to a few high points. I will have to read them again.

What were these books? There are too many to discuss in this article, but here are a few:

Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in 3 volumes. I was singing with a touring opera company out of San Francisco in 1980, and we spent as much as seven hours a day on a bus. It was a great opportunity to read things that I would never ordinarily have had the patience for. I remember virtually nothing of the book, except that I came to a gradual halt somewhere in the middle of the second volume. It’s still waiting for me to finish it.

The Collected Essays of George Orwell. I love the essay form, and I have every volume of the annual Best American Essays series, from 1986, on another bookshelf in the house. I enjoyed the Orwell essays a lot. What I remember most is the sense of the man himself that comes through each essay; I wanted to meet him.

Shirei Yerushalayim, by Yehuda Amichai. Amichai is my favourite poet, and I had the pleasure of seeing him present his work in person a few times. I also happened to sit near him at a concert in Washington DC. He was a formidable presence, and his poetry is well worth exploring. This collection, Shirei Yerushalayim, or Poems of Jerusalem, is a way to experience the amazing and unique city of Jerusalem, seen through Amichai’s powerful poetry.

Does God Have a Big Toe? Stories about Stories in the Bible, by Marc Gellman is a wonderful collection of modern midrash, stories that perhaps should have been in the Hebrew Bible but aren’t to be found there. These stories are great for young people, and adults can enjoy them as well. I wanted to use them for story-telling and couldn’t find my copy, so I bought another one. The copy I already had was, of course, sitting on the credibility bookshelf right behind me. So now I have two.

Life is with People, by Zborowski and Herzog, a sociological study of the shtetl, the little Jewish villages of Eastern Europe, which of course are now completely gone, having been erased along with their inhabitants in the Shoah. My mother came from one, from which she and her family left for the United States when she was a child.

Although the scholarship of this book has been superseded, it is a moving portrayal of a culture that informs much of what we think of as Jewish, and is for me a connection to my mother.

My credibility bookshelf is more than just a collection of books. I have described only a few of the books on it. Each one is a story, and each is also part of the story of my life. It is in some ways my autobiography, as I am sure your own book collections are for you.

Rabbi Cantor Gershon Silins

As I write this article, I am watching one of the presentations for the 2020 Liberal Judaism Biennial. What an experience! There has never been an event like this in the history of Liberal Judaism, and the entire world is going through an unprecedented experience. No one would have wished for the terrible pandemic we are passing through. We mourn the loss of life, the suffering of those who have been struck down by the virus and have recovered, the many who have been isolated from their families and friends, and the terrible economic loss suffered by individuals currently and in the future, as the recovery for which we hope moves forward.

But as many have noted, the experience has, ironically, also given us gifts that we couldn’t have anticipated. With all its deficits, the virtual world has allowed enormous numbers of people to connect, despite the physical limitations. This has played out in ways we couldn’t have predicted. The LJ Biennial is an example.

First of all, as of the last count I heard, upwards of 1,200 people virtually attended this Biennial, at least one from my High Holyday congregation in Texas, six time zones away. Attendees did not have the opportunity to meet in hallways or bond over dinner, but they did have the chance to connect with Liberal Judaism in a way they never would have in previous years. The professional staff of Liberal Judaism rose to the challenge of creating this Biennial in completely unforeseen circumstances. We joined together in Shabbat services, with the texts presented to us on screen as we sang, prayed, recited and meditated. The technical limitations of Zoom prevented us from combining our voices in song, but technology allowed us to create a musical fabric for the event that had its own charm, and it was easy to sing along in our homes. Everyone is thinking about the possibilities that this situation has created, and there is a strong sense that services and activities in the future will feature the inclusivity that we’ve discovered through technology. Liberal Judaism’s leadership decided to provide the Biennial free of charge, and it will be interesting to see how that decision impacts on future fundraising and the economic infrastructure of our movement. And if you haven’t taken the opportunity to donate, it’s a good thing to do.

The Biennial took place just before Shavuot, the festival that celebrates the giving of the Commandments. Until that point in the biblical story, the Israelites found out what God wanted when Moses told them. One of the revolutionary elements of the giving of the Commandments is that from now on, anyone could read them and have at least some idea of what God wanted (though millennia of commentary were to follow). As Marshall McLuhan famously said, the medium is the message – not the whole message, but inextricably linked with it. The medium that carried the Jewish message changed radically at Sinai (and many times since). It also changed radically with the coming of the pandemic and the technological tools that suddenly became central to our engagement with Jewish life.

I think that most if not all of the NLJC community attended the Biennial. Each of us will have some favourite moment (and some not so favourite ones as well, of course). If you missed one or more of them, they were recorded, so you will be able to catch up.

I was particularly moved by the two tributes, one to the former Chief Executive of Liberal Judaism, Rabbi Danny Rich, and the other to the former Chair of our movement, Simon Benscher. The larger theme of the Biennial was collaboration, and the presentations demonstrated it, as well as discussing it. Collaborations were featured that involved crossing boundaries: international boundaries, faith boundaries, ideological boundaries, and (in the case of the Lily’s Legacy project) the boundaries of time. Liberal Judaism has been my Jewish home since I arrived in the United Kingdom in 2011, and it was a lovely experience to celebrate and contribute to this Biennial, the likes of which we have never seen before and are unlikely to see again.

Rabbi Gershon Silins

As I wrote in last month’s article, the traditional theological position that the Torah was revealed quite literally in discrete words and letters, commanded by God to a people who are obligated to be obedient to God, was countered by a theology of religious naturalism. As Mordecai Kaplan saw it, human nature is endowed with an innate religious impulse; religion flows naturally out of the everyday activities of human beings and their communities. For Kaplan, there was first and foremost a Jewish people, and this people created its religion. The question arises, though, that if revelation is accessible to human intellect, then what is so special about the Torah? Kaplan was aware of this problem. The Torah is unique, he says, because it is ours: Israel’s characteristic and cumulative vision of the best we can imagine for our lives. Other communities have their “truth,” and we have ours. The Torah deals with ultimate questions of human existence in a global fashion. And its answers, which arise out of human nature and are not divine commandments, come from Israel’s collective life over the millennia.

But these two approaches to Jewish theology – the traditional view that grants complete and unquestioned authority to the Torah on the one hand, and religious naturalism on the other – are both incomplete, and some argued that they are equally dissatisfying.

A middle ground was developed over the early years of the 20th century, principally by Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929) and Abraham Joshua Heschel (1915-1972). Rosenzweig, working with his friend and colleague Martin Buber, saw revelation as the outcome of an “I-Thou” relationship (to use Buber’s terminology) between the personal God of the Bible and the biblical community, and then with any human being who is willing to enter into it. It is a mutual relationship, but it does not reveal any form of behavioural code; it doesn’t tell us what to do. There is no commandment, just a relationship of mutuality and meaning. The Torah is not, says Rosenzweig, the revelation, it is Israel’s response to revelation. Neither Buber nor Rosenzweig thought that law and commandment are part of the content of revelation, but Rosenzweig believed that the idea of “being commanded” is in itself part of the nature of the revelation. Buber disagreed; for him, God’s love for Israel is all that is needed to inspire Israel to live in a certain way.

Abraham Joshua Heschel’s version of this middle option is different. He accepts the personal, transcendent God of the Bible, but he insists that God is totally beyond human thought (and in this, he is a theological heir of the medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides). We can never “know” God or describe God in any adequate way. So, for Heschel, the worst thing one could think is that our theological concepts are literally true or even adequate. The Bible is itself a human interpretation of some primal revelation that is beyond human comprehension. Judaism thus reflects “a minimum of revelation and a maximum of interpretation.” The source of authority is not the words we read in the text, but Israel’s understanding of the text. But despite a philosophical scepticism, Heschel takes very seriously the legal system that has developed out of the text.

Both Rosenzweig and Heschel reject both the traditional view and the religious naturalistic view, but they disagree with each other as to what was revealed. For Rosenzweig, what was revealed was God’s presence in an intimate, commanding (though not legislating) relationship with the Jewish people. For Heschel, the Torah represented God’s will for Israel, though not as some kind of blueprint to be followed, but rather our ancestors and our own understanding of what the Torah contains. The Torah is uniquely authoritative, not as the explicit word of God but as a response to (Rosenzweig) or expression of (Heschel) God’s concern for Israel, and by extension for humanity.

In their different ways, they avoid some of the theological problems of the traditional and the naturalistic views. But even so, pluralism, historical development and ambiguity are inevitable.

With freedom from the traditional, authoritarian view comes responsibility – and anxiety.

And that anxiety is a familiar place for modern people like us who seek some kind of authentic relationship with our tradition, without the framework of revelatory certainty on the one hand, or Jewish law that must be obeyed on the other. But, I would argue, this uncertainty and anxiety give us more, not less, of a reason to engage with our tradition. We can find it in the “myth” that Neil Gillman sees as central to the ongoing theology of the Jewish people. The Jewish myth (which we know to be a myth but still find a compelling way to organise our understanding of the world) is embodied in our practice and our texts. It is our way of meeting a world that might otherwise be nothing but chaos without meaning. The Jewish myth is not in any sense objectively true, but it provides a framework of meaning that is a step beyond the straightforward understanding of what is true. For me, I suppose, it is the uncertainty and the argument themselves that are the most compelling aspect of Jewish engagement, and what I enjoy the most about studying it.

Rabbi Gershon Silins