MESSAGE FROM RABBI REBECCA
I wanted this week to share the words of our member Elijah Michael, writing for him and his brother, Benji. I’m immensely proud of his eloquence and what he shares with us. Shabbat Shalom to you all.
This is my take on what it’s like being black and Jewish. This is the same for Benji also.
In an article by the Jewish Chronicle in 2019 about the experience of young, black Jews – which is my demographic – the common theme throughout was that they experienced ignorance but not necessarily racism and I’d argue that is the same for myself. 99.9% of my experience of being black in the Jewish community has been positive and uplifting. However, there have been cases which need to be addressed. One remotely ignorant comment that I’ve become almost numb to is “you don’t look Jewish”. I don’t perceive it as explicit racism, but I do regrettably perceive it as the internalising of the racist trope that all Jews are hook-nosed, no taller than 5’5″ and engrossed by the prospect of vast monetary wealth. It also reflects an imaginary idea that I’m not typically Jewish by a specific ‘standard’ simply because I’m a person of colour, which is rather ridiculous. Another I come across is “do you play basketball?” which I’ve received from a few of the older members of the congregation. Whilst it is a racial stereotype, I am aware that in the context of the scenario they weren’t intending any offence and most likely meant it as a compliment and I am also conscious that this is as much attributed to my tall height (6’2″) as it is to my skin colour. They shouldn’t be chastised for it, but educated as to why that is offensive and how it resembles an unpleasant cliché that pigeonholes me based on my skin colour.
Often I find myself sticking out in most Jewish settings throughout life; whether it be JSoc, school or synagogue and the only thing I ask is that I am treated as a normal human being. I have noticed that there is a certain glamour associated with my skin colour and often when I mention to another Jewish person that I am also a Jew, a tumultuous delight about me ignites in them. 1 in 2 Jews in Israel are of colour and you are as likely to come across a person of Ethiopian descent with a yarmulke on their head as you are a Chasid with a streimel. Black Jews are not the unicorns they’re often perceived to be and it is something that needs to be made more of.
It must be said that in light of the recent events of America, it fills me with pride that the Jewish community – regardless of sect or domination – has rallied in rigorous support of the black community and the black Jews within the community in the face of racism rearing its ugly head again.
And Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Kushite woman he’d married…(Numbers 12:1) This moment our Torah portion Be’ha’alotecha may or may not have been early racism. Or perhaps it was something entirely different. Either way it gives pause.
We know we WANT to be doing – and this is what we WILL be doing – working with Citizens UK calling for the living wage for all essential workers, many of whom come from BAME backgrounds, this is a start. Please watch out for and join in this. If you want to donate these charities are doing essential work in the community. 100 Black Men of London mentors young leaders. Mama Youth Project provides training courses for enabling new faces and backgrounds into media positions.
But now what we SHOULD do is take a step back and LEARN and READ. Angela Davis wrote; It is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist.
This week I started to re-read Toni Morrison’s Beloved. I also just ordered The Good Immigrant: 21 Writers Explore What It Means To Be Black, Asian, And Minority Ethnic In Britain Today edited by Nikesh Shukla, so critical to understand the lives of those settling in this country.
I am thinking of how we as a community can engage with this work of seeing and calling out racism around us so all live with dignity and justice. But first I am listening and I am reading. This is Jewish work for us.
We know this is not new. There have been countless occasions of racist brutality in the US and truthfully here too. There is a new energy and attention now. Albie Sachs, veteran anti apartheid campaigner and South African Constitutional Court Justice, spoke this week on anti-racist protests to PM’s Evan Davies.
See it , he suggested, not just as a duty but as an opportunity. I loosely quote; As you fight for human justice, you become more human and more just. This is our Jewish work now, this is the Jewish story. Not looking for parallel experiences of anti Jewish rhetoric and offence but rather to be concerned with our neighbour.
Look at this essay Religion and Race written by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel in 1963 at the height of the Civil Rights protests . But it could be this week.
People are increasingly fearful of social tension and disturbance. However, so long as our society is more concerned to prevent racial strife than to prevent humiliation, the cause of strife, its moral status will be depressing, indeed.
Equality as a religious commandment means personal involvement, fellowship, mutual reverence and concern. It means my being hurt when [a black person] is offended. It means that I am bereaved whenever a [a black person] is disfranchised.
Shabbat shalom
Rabbi Rebecca
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The poet John Keats thinks of Ruth’s nostalgia in his Ode to a Nightingale. But the way we are taught, Ruth was not homesick; she was looking forward and she was desperate to be accepted and included and welcomed. Although born a Moabite she becomes an Israelite and is the ancestor of King David, who came into the world because of what Ruth creates in her loyalty to her mother in law Naomi and finding Boaz her second husband.
Everything changes, Naomi (pleasantness) becomes Mara (bitterness) and back to pleasure again. Ruth was a stranger, desperate for acceptance and finds home and family. Famine ends, a baby is born and a Moabite (the most despised tribe) becomes an Israelite. Everything shifts just like we recognise nowadays when things change and we have second chances. We are always looking forward to what may be.
This, just like Pesach, will be Shavuot (meaning literally weeks) with a huge difference. The 49 days we have marked since Seder night culminate for us tonight with Shavuot; service and study and, I guess, acknowledges the changes we have moved through. And how most of us spend our lives looking to be known, recognised and accepted. The wonderful attendance at our services, learning, discussions and morning meditations attest to that.
This year our ‘Shavuot with a difference’ on zoom just like Seder was, includes welcoming Rabbi Rene Pfertzel & Kingston Liberal Synagogue to our study evening tonight. And tomorrow we will join Rabbi Margaret Jacobi & Birmingham Progressive Synagogue for Shavuot morning service. I anticipate all of it to be special.
We have some fabulous sessions tonight – do join us even if you have never fancied Shavuot before.
Wishing you Chag Sameach, a joyful Shavuot.
Rabbi Rebecca
Rafael, my youngest son and I visited Rome last Autumns. Such memories feel a life time ago. We cycled part of the Appian way. It was idyllic as you can imagine but the most extraordinary sight for us was a stone set at the edge of the Appian cobbled path outside an old villa-engraved with the names Barich Zabda Valerian Akiva…Our guide, not knowing who we were, enthusiastically told us the name was Jewish attached to the slave holder’s. As a former slave so keen to be noted, seen and counted he had paid for the stone and his engraved name before he died. And centuries later Rafael and I saw it and noted.
I think of this now this Shabbat as we begin BaMidbar /Numbers the fourth book of Torah opening with the census of the people. The taking of the census is potentially dull -a list of names. “Take a census [S’u et rosh–literally, “Lift up the head”] of the whole Israelite community.” The word s’u is only used when the intention is to indicate greatness [that is, holding high one’s head]. (Nachmanides on Numbers 1:2) The census demonstrates that it’s each individual that makes up a community. Rabbi Louis Jacobs z’l taught us rabbinic students at Leo Baeck College and wrote in his Torah commentary of BaMidbar-lists of names may seem dull but in actual fact when you read the phone book-rather like a census-each Brown/Smith or Cohen contains their own stories and individuality. Italian commentator Sforno of the 15th c anticipated him“According to the number of names…” For at that time, every one of that generation was designated by his name, which indicated and reflected stature and character. (Sforno on Numbers 1:2).
We have survived as we have from our founders’ hope at the beginning of the 20th c. And through these extraordinary weeks that see all of us over 800 of us gathering this weekend…Being counted is critical. Being seen and being part of. LJ has grown and developed by recognising all who count themselves as being part of this community-we’ve expanded who counts from Biblical times. Each individual ameliorates our movement and we are greater together than just the sum of our parts. We know that showing up for each other and our values is the ultimate way of being counted. Showing up to be counted. Lily Montagu, our founder, anticipated this moment of us gathering as communities within Liberal Judaism this weekend;
there is no reason why we should be unhappy about the future, since the best people will always look for the best in life and get together in search of it’ (Rose 1959).
Rabbi Rebecca Birk
Rabbi Rebecca writes:
Stay Alert
It’s been such a curious message for us to digest and figure out since Sunday, in light of physical safety during the Corona virus. We passed through Lag B’Omar, 33rd day of the Omer that signifies a break in solemnity due mostly to the Talmudic narrative that the plague Rabbi Akita and his students suffered, lifted that day. *
COVID 19 hasn’t lifted for us. Perhaps we are moving into the next stage but it certainly hasn’t lifted. I watched the extraordinary #Hospital films of the Royal Free’s response to Corona. It is still very real, weeks on even now. BBC news night continues to relay information about foolish steps taken and not taken that may have accelerated deaths in Care Homes and other sectors. Being aware and engaged by all, is this staying alert?
I underhand that as essential, not just for our own safety but for other’s as well. We are reminded often of this way of being in Jewish tradition.
Leviticus (ch.19) calls for such vigilance-Do not stand by the blood (suffering) of your neighbour. Deuteronomy will echo that (ch. 22) ostensibly about returning lost animals but ending with the brilliant imperative You must not remain indifferent.
I’ve observed this week the images of golf courses and Garden Centres opening whilst those in low paid essential work are back on London transport in packed conditions. Is this staying alert, observing the class divide? The fact that we are all experiencing the same pandemic but how we are touched by it differs radically?
This week, friends, my rabbinic duties have been wide ranging; preparing and teaching a class on the Shema and what beliefs bind us as Jews, sitting in Marilyn and Neil Branston’s driveway on a distanced pastoral call trying to load ZOOM onto their computer, navigating through a mourning familiy’s anguish and leading the very private funeral and warm and expansive Shivah for the much loved Betty Robinson, delivering food from many of you to the new Food Bank in North Finchley and to an isolated young refugee on East End road who has been left without support. And then the Homeschool here at my kitchen table and the varied moods of resistance, disappointment and diligence that come to it. I’m only too aware of the varied moods and energies of my 20+ meditative shacharit attendees. It’s not easy this even for those who are safe, well and protected from the front-line and the concerns for feeding and keeping families safe.
Perhaps this is what staying alert is. And taking a break for Shabbat, no matter how your week has been is essential to mark the distinctions we so need.
Dean and I are looking forward to seeing you for Shabbat Resouled and our Shabbat morning service.
I wish you all Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
Rabbi Rebecca writes:
This week is Tzaria-Metzora, the double portion of the Leviticus describing infectious disease. It couldn’t resonate more strongly.
I love the way we are all trying to make sense or learn from what is happening. Why wouldn’t we search the past and literature for echoes?
In 1947, having just emerged from fighting in the World War II French underground, Albert Camus completed and published his novel, The Plague (La Peste).
The story creates and imagines a contemporary-day outbreak of the Bubonic Plague in a small and rather ordinary Algerian town, Oran. The hero, Dr Rieux, looks after the victims every day, until the disease passes, after many, many have died.
So Dr Rieux’s tale, the book concludes, “could not be one of final victory. It could be only the record of what had to be done and what assuredly would have to be done again in the never-ending fight against terror… by all who, while unable to be saints but refusing to bow down to pestilences, strive their utmost to be healers.” (My italics)
The message of the book is bleak but uplifting; the plague never dies, really, and with people, “There are more things to admire than to despise.”
How can this not sound familiar? Especially when Camus describes a city overrun, hospitals running out of beds and health care workers lacking basic equipment, and larger spaces required for the dying and then dead.
I studied La Peste in French class at school when I was 16. I was moved then and I am moved now. But more so by the backdrop of rereading this. And that it’s true with people, “There are more things to admire than to despise.” And it’s true that many of us, not just our doctors, nurses and carers, by refusing to to bow down to pestilences strive their utmost to be healers.
There is nothing romantic about what we are going through now. At the beginning we thought ‘we were in this together’ but time has confirmed that is not so. There is a palpable difference between those on lower incomes bearing the virus. Quarantine in a garden with rooms for all the family is a far cry from what many are experiencing. But all is relative.
For many, it has brought out unusual resilience and kindness, and a desire to reach out. Camus’s observation of life in quarantine resonates but so does his observation when the plague ends that all people crave ‘human love’. I’m determined to capture that craving for ‘human love’ and make it a palpable through acts of kindness and public calls for justice.
That is what I am thinking on now.
Rabbi Rebecca
Here are a couple of thoughts for the week, from Zoe Jacobs and Megan Greene.
Message from Rabbi Rebecca
I am loving what everyone is sharing online and in their Postcode Groups at the moment. As well as shopping, these uplifting snippets of books and stories nourish us in these times.
Member Marilyn Branston shared this from Leo Rosten’s book “Captain Newman, M.D”. She writes [it’s a ] really wonderful novel about a psychiatrist treating soldiers returned from combat in WW2. I believe a film was made of this novel many years ago, and if ever you wanted to obtain a copy (used, probably) you’d be well rewarded”.
At the very end of the novel, Captain Newman and a couple of his friends are taking a well-earned rest on a sandy beach, and musing about the tragedy of the war and the human cost of it all.
Newman tells the following story:
“My father once told me a story I always think of when the going gets rough…It’s about Destiny. Destiny came down to an island, centuries ago, and summoned three of the inhabitants before him. ‘What would you do,’ asked Destiny, ‘if I told you that tomorrow this island will be completely inundated by an immense tidal wave?’ The first man, who was a cynic, said, ‘Why, I would eat, drink, carouse and make love all night long!’ The second man, who was a mystic, said, ‘I would go to the sacred grove with my loved ones and make sacrifices to the gods and pray without ceasing.’ And the third man, who loved reason, thought for awhile, confused and troubled, and said, .Why, I would assemble our wisest men, and begin at once to study how to live under water.’”
Adapting seems to be critical at the moment. Managing these new conditions with ease and even flexibility. I think many are sacrificing so much – our children and young people are giving up long held hopes and promises. UJIA has officially cancelled Israel Tour this year, I know it feels small fry for some of us but many of our 16-year-olds raised through their youth movements know that their rite of passage visiting Israel after GCSEs was as certain as the exams themselves.
It is no small thing to lose all of that and to do so graciously and without hysteria or even self pity. Not one to feel the plight of our advantaged young people, I do so here for this. I commend our Youth movement LJY-Netzer and its members for managing the disappointment so well. It bodes well for their future.
We have focused on the Serenity Prayer in this week’s Morning Meditation; the ability accept what you can’t change, the courage to change what you can and the wisdom to know the difference.
I’m telling the young people I speak to and see ‘Gam Zeh Y’avor’ this too will pass and good will be ahead.
Shabbat Shalom
Message from Rabbi Rebecca
At some point in the 1650s, the French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal jotted down one of the most counter-intuitive aphorisms of all time:
‘The sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he cannot stay quietly in his room.’
Oh my goodness how this resonates this week.
I don’t usually find myself agreeing with Piers Morgan but his plea this week made me smile, it was along the lines; Britain you haven’t been asked to go fight in the trenches, you’ve been asked to go home and watch telly…
Why is this so hard for us?
It is strange.Those who have had an ambivalent relationship to technology are now wholly dependent on it. Those of us who rely on the charismatic visceral nature of face to face encounters are now having to create something different and create it pretty swiftly.
Dora is just coming out of Corona Virus symptoms we think, so we are all self isolating. I am leading a Shiva tonight via Zoom. A new but not unpleasant experience. Services this Shabbat will be virtual for us all. I am constantly, with Zoe, thinking of ways to bring us together even through Pesach, to separate Shabbat from other days, and to clear out chametz, all whilst we are alone in our kitchens and living rooms.
For those who wake with anxiety and fears, perhaps try to look ahead just next week rather than beyond and into the future. I think in my own spiritual practice and indeed life’s work there is something for me about surrendering control, and goodness is this one great lesson in that!
Be in touch if you need me. I am on phone and email constantly.
Shabbat Shalom
Rebecca
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