This High Holidays I'm Challenging the 'Modern Jewish Sacred'

My new post is published at Patheos

Here's the opening:

We are entering the Jewish High Holidays. A period of reflection, of repentance, of returning to God. In Hebrew we call it 'teshuvah'.

Built in to the Jewish religious calendar is the assumption that every year we will lose our spiritual way and will need to find a way back to all that is Sacred. That period of 'returning' begins with the Jewish New Year and culminates with Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) ten days later. It is not only a time of individual repentance, it is a time of Jewish communal contrition.

But what happens when we enter the New Year of 5776 (September 13th) and realise that the Jewish Sacred is itself lost and wandering?

In past centuries and millennia it was easy to define the Jewish Sacred.

God was sacred. So much so, that even his name could not be spoken or written.

God's creation, and in particular human life, was sacred. We all held within us the spark of the Divine. 

The Holy of Holies, the inner sanctuary of the Tabernacle where God dwelt during the Children of Israel's forty years in the desert, was sacred.

The inner sanctuary of the First Temple where the tablets of stone containing the Ten Commandments were kept, was sacred.

The Torah, with its commandments for building and maintaining a God centred, just society in the Land of Israel, was sacred.

The rabbinic commentaries that helped us to interpret the Law and apply it in places far away from The Land of Israel, were sacred.

As Jews dispersed, the sacredness of Time replaced the sacredness of Land as we made holy the Sabbath and the annual cycle of festivals, liturgy and prayer.

Righteous acts were sacred as we fulfilled the commandments to protect the weakest and most vulnerable among us.

But what is Sacred for Jews today? And is it worthy of holiness?

Confronting the Modern Jewish Sacred

I've just returned from two weeks travelling around Israel and the West Bank with my family.  We met with Jewish Israelis as well as Palestinians, both Christian and Muslim.

As we travelled, listened and talked, the Modern Jewish Sacred revealed itself to us....

Read the full post here

Jonah and the Elephant

I hadn't seen my old friend Jonah for two years. The last time he had turned up he occupied my sitting room couch, seaweed still in his hair, and flicked through the TV news channels while throwing verbal darts into my bleeding Jewish heart. We had not seen eye to eye on much. Now, with his annual afternoon outing on Yom Kippur approaching, Jonah was back.

This time he was looking in my fridge and flipping a coin in one hand.

Hamas [Flip] ISIS [Flip] Hamas [Flip] ISIS [Flip] Hamas [Flip] ISIS.

Your back!

You've nothing in the fridge.

You're my favourite Prophetic book and my least favourite Prophet. Still, it's good to see you again.

I'm looking for Israeli celery, or Israeli dates, or Israeli anything. You don't have any.

You won't find any. I'm boycotting.

You're a crazy, self-hating Jew who deserves utter contempt and ostracising.

Now don't hold back, will you.

I say it how it is.

It's better than suicides, hijackings, kidnappings, rockets and stones. And without doubt more effective than John Kerry.

Your BDS friends are Nazis dressed in T-shirts and trainers. Jew hatred for the chattering classes. It's 1938 all over again.

I didn't expect to convince you.

Your fridge has nothing worth eating. It's as empty as your head.

So why the honour of another visit?

I'm a soft touch for a lost cause. I thought the Ninevites were bad but I was proved wrong. Perhaps you are salvageable too.

Of course, your prophetic calling draws you to people who don't know 'their right hand from their left'.

Well that would certainly describe you.

I think I know Hamas from ISIS though.

They're all the same. Child killers the lot of them. Networks of Death.

That's far too easy and it helpfully avoids the root problems.

At least we found the terrorists who murdered the three teenage boys. Some justice at last.

A trial would have been nice.

Not necessary now. And a huge saving to the Israeli tax payer.

All very convenient.

You're an apologist for terror.

I thought that was you.

I read your blog posts over the summer. The usual lefty claptrap. "We're not innocent, we can't play the eternal victims, the IDF are responsible for the killing". I grow bored of your self-righteous carping. I'm amazed anyone is reading your stuff.

If we are all so innocent, why did God give us Yom Kippur?

Don't be clever. It doesn't suit you.

I was in shul on Rosh Hashanah.

Me too. Shona Tovah!

So you've left behind that whole running away from God routine?

Don't try to be funny. That doesn't suit you either.

I can't help it. Your story is funny. The running away, the giant fish, the whole thing is comic.

I'm a serious man. The world is a serious place.

I thinking, may be this year you could switch the giant fish for an elephant. We had one in the shul for Rosh Hashonah. It would work even better at Yom Kippur.

Now you really have lost me.

Well, I was sitting there listening to the rabbi's sermon wrapped in my black and white tallis, and there, right beside her as she started to speak, was an elephant wrapped in a giant black and white kaffiyeh.

A women rabbi!

Don't get me wrong, I liked the sermon. She had ISIS on her mind and reminded us how religion can be radical and revolutionary in good ways and bad.

They let women give sermons?

And the elephant listened silently.

Rabbis should stay clear of politics.

She even mentioned that Judaism can display some negative traits. A bit edgy, I thought, but she brought it off and nobody walked out. But the elephant was there for all to see. If only they had eyes.

Who needs more ignorant pundits. It's an abuse of the bimah!

I suppose taking a stand on Gaza is too risky. Guaranteed to upset someone. If not everyone.

Exactly. Morality is too important to be left to the clerics.

We can agree there. They are fatally compromised. I can't believe they don't see the elephant.

So you really want to swap my fish for your elephant. Then what?

Who knows.

What are you expecting from Yom Kippur? You want to start a Jewish intifada or something? A Jewish Kairos moment for Palestine? And you thought I was funny!

I suppose I'm hoping that the sound of the shofar might just be enough to blow down that great big Separation Wall we have in our heads. The wall that stops us seeing the truth.

Do you think a man could be swallowed by an elephant?

If we can fit a huge wall in our heads, why can't an elephant swallow a man?

You really have lost the plot haven't you? And I'm looking in this fridge and I'm thinking you really do need to go shopping.

If the elephant could start talking that would be even better. Something about the real meaning of 'returning' could be fitting.

Hamas [Flip] ISIS [Flip] Hamas [Flip] ISIS

And then when he spews you out you could swap scarfs as a sign of mutual solidarity. The elephant gets the tallis and you get the kaffiyeh. It could be a lovely moment.

Hamas [Flip] ISIS [Flip] Hamas [Flip] ISIS


And then the coin dropped to the floor and Jonah was gone.

Jonah on the couch - inside the mind of the reluctant prophet

The Days of Awe were approaching and I was thinking about Jonah.

I've always had a soft spot for the story of the reluctant Hebrew Prophet who shirks his mission, runs away to sea and is famously swallowed by a giant fish.

We read his story in the synagogue every Yom Kippur afternoon as a parable of forgiveness and God's love for all of his creation. When Jonah finally makes it to that great city of Nineveh he still doesn't care much for the job he has been tasked with - telling the sinful Ninevites to repent. He can't get his head around the idea that God should care a jot for this people who "do not know their right hand from their left."

I can never quite decide if the story is a comedy or a tragedy. Here he is, centre stage, the man who tries to run away from God. As if God only looks down on Israel and to get out of God's sight all one has to do his hop on board a boat from Joppa and travel west to Tarshish. Jonah, with his Israel-centric view of the universe, is comic and absurd even before the business with the fish.

One thing is for sure, he remains unimpressed by God's mercy even after he is spewed onto dry land by the fish for a shot at redemption.

The Book of Jonah is certainly prophetic but the prophet himself is something of a ethical disappointment. He has little in common with his next door neighbour in the Hebrew bible, my good friend Micah.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, much appreciated!"

I looked up from the notebook in which I scribble ideas for this blog - and there in my living room was the fishy man himself.

Jonah had occupied my couch. With threads of seaweed still in his hair, he was reclining across the full length of the sofa, his legs sticking over the armrest. In his hand he was holding my TV remote control and flicking through the news channels on mute.

"So you think I'm just some Hebrew comedian do you? I don't buy this interpretation of yours. And I don't see any theology degree hanging on the wall either."

What are you doing in my home?

"You believe in a universal God, a God for all, and for all time. Why should you be so surprised when scripture turns up in your front room? By the way, what year is this?"

What year do you think it is?

"I can't decide. I'm thinking 1938, or perhaps 1942. No, maybe 1948, or 1967. I always liked 1967. When we put an end to those Auschwitz borders."

It's September 2012. It's Yom Kippur soon. Is that why you're here?

"How do I know? I expect you need some sense knocking into you. That's usually why I seem to turn up in strange places. By the way, it must be 40 years since the Munich Olympics, I hope you said a few prayers and stood silent for the murdered Israeli athletes?"

The campaign was all a little too politicised for my liking. It felt like an excuse to remind the world about Palestinian terrorism and Jewish victimhood. Emotional blackmail at an international level. It left a nasty taste. The athletes deserved to be remembered but not at the expense of any kind of honest acknowledgement of what has driven the conflict for 100 years.

"Your kind are so soft. Your compassion is out of all control. Palestinians, Bedouins, African immigrants, Iranians! You put everyone ahead of us in the line. You'd prefer we were squashed to a pulp before raising a figure to protect your own people."

I always thought the point of your story was the importance of a universal ethic of compassion.

"What's the point of compassion for your greatest enemies?. Nineveh was the Third Reich of its day. How much compassion do you have for the Nazis (not to mention their cattle)?"

You're right, it's a pretty tall ask. But at least we could make a start on climbing the ladder.

"You're crazy! Who wants to be the most ethical people in civilisation's graveyard?"

So where does that leave us? What's the point of being Jewish?

"Survival is the imperative. After the Holocaust, it's the 614th commandment. I read that somewhere."

And how does that play itself out today?

"We sideline the Palestinians. We keep the Americans wrapped around our little finger. We build what the hell we like in Judea and Samaria. We keep Gaza under lock and key. We make sure Iran knows who is boss in the Middle East."

And how long do you think we can keep this up before too many people start to ask about human rights as well as Jewish rights?

"As long as we can play the eternal victim, we'll be just fine."

In the big fish, when you thought all was lost, you sounded very different. You called out to God and said: 'They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.'

"A later insertion by the rabbis. Not a true reflection of my point of view. That whole prayer, in the belly of the fish, was the kind of defeatist attitude that suited us in our exile. Weak diaspora mentality designed for keeping in with the locals."

You know, I'm beginning to feel attracted to that whole running away thing you did back then.

"Fine by me. We could do with fewer Jews like you with your naive questions and hypersensitivity. But now who's trying to run away from God?"

Not from God, definitely not from God. Away from reckless power, away from a tribal self-obsession, away from a mad perversion of Judaism that's turned nationalism into a Golden Calf. We are the ones who no longer know our right hand from our left. In fact, our whole moral compass has been sent into spasm at the very moment we think we have found our collective redemption.

"Nice little speech. You and your friends can go back into exile. See if anyone notices."

I'm not planning to hide like you or wait for the storm to blow over. It's not a passive exile I have in mind. I'm grabbing the Hebrew covenant and rescuing it from oblivion - one blog post at a time! If I can open a few Jewish eyes to what's being done in the name of Judaism and the Jewish people then that will be a start.

"I see those murderous terrorist friends of yours in Gaza are still firing rockets into southern Israel. Anything to say?"

Are we really so very innocent? Do we really have not a single thing to answer for? Have you noticed how many more of their children than ours have died across the years? Yet we are the ones who are told to be fearful and feel eternally threatened? Can we never afford to express just a moment of self-reflection or, God forbid, some self-criticism?

"I'll see you on Yom Kippur then?"

Well, we certainly both have much to atone for in our own ways. You've done too much. I've not done enough.

"I've no idea what you mean. I have a clear conscience."

I thought you might say that. You know that's the biggest problem! We can't even see what we are doing. Delusion and denial on a grand scale! And you know, you are right, I was wrong about you being a comic character. Without doubt, your story is tragic. And now, you can get off my couch and hand over the TV remote, I would like my living room back!

"You can have your living room and the remote. I have bigger fish to fry."

And with that the man with the seaweed hair was gone.

Happy New Year/Shonah Tovah! And may we all be written in the Book of Life.