Parashat Bo: My Father's Exodus

 

In late September 1938, the infamous Munich Pact (or 'Munich Agreement' as it is formally known) was signed between Germany, Italy, England and France.  This granted Hitler the authority to extend German sovereignty over the Sudetenland, which saw Czechoslovakia surrendering some of its territory to its aggressive neighbour.

At the same time, in the port city of Antwerp, a confluence of events within our family led to my paternal grandmother being able to secure three visas for her, my grandfather and my father, who had just turned 10 to travel to New York.  My grandfather transferred some money to a corporation in the city which eventually allowed them to emigrate to the United States.

The situation in Belgium was not as precarious as it would turn out to be a year-and-a-half later.  Anti-Semitism was rife and my father had to endure taunts from non-Jewish fellow classmates on a regular basis.  My grandfather realised that they had to emigrate upon the invasion of Denmark and Norway in the spring of 1940.

My father recalled that when he told his classmates that he was leaving, they said, "The rats are leaving the sinking ship."

On 10^th April, aged eleven, he and his parents boarded the S.S. Westernland, a transatlantic liner which formed part of the Holland-America (Red Star) Line.  They were joined by hundreds of other Jewish refugees.  The ship docked at Dunkirk so that the area could be swept free of the mines that were scattered along their path and after two weeks, arrived safely in New York.  They did not know at the time that they had secured a passage aboard the last neutral ship that would leave Antwerp for the city before the invasion of Belgium on 10^th May.

Having disembarked, they were met by one of my grandfather's nephews, who took them to their first American residence in Brooklyn.  My grandmother left her parents behind and they were hidden throughout the war in France.  Miraculously, they survived and were able to join the family after the end of hostilities.

When my father and grandparents entered the United States, they spoke no English.

They were foreigners in a foreign land.  Refugees relieved to find refuge but understandably wary of what lay ahead.  It took my father and his parents five years to become naturalised although they were somewhat fortunate to have a few relatives already living in New York.

Stephnie and I have been watching a fascinating but deeply disturbing documentary series on BBC4 entitled ‘The U.S. and the Holocaust'.  It highlights in intricate detail the rise of Nazi Germany and examines how this influenced America’s isolationist stance throughout the 1930s and into the 1940s.

'The Land of the Free’ lovingly christened the 'The Golden Medina' by those immigrants who were fortunate enough to reach it, was anything but.

Slowly and surely, she closed her gates to our people, as witnessed by the horrific story of the S.S. St Louis.  You might recall that this was a ship which left Hamburg carrying 967 Jews on 13th May 1939 and was refused entry to North and South America as well as Canada.  It was forced to return to Europe and docked in Antwerp on 17th June (ironically predating the journey that my father's ship would take in the opposite direction).  254 of its passengers would end up being murdered by the end of the war.

In the USA, support for our people ebbed and flowed throughout the 1930s but with influential antisemites such as Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh and Father Charles Coughlin leading the charge hand-in-hand with the State Department, other Jews were not as fortunate as my family.  It is very conceivable that they could have well been passengers on ships like the St Louis instead of the Westernland.  Similar route, different year.  Another family, that of Anne Frank, who were desperate to emigrate to the USA were unable to do so when America closed her consulate in June 1941.

Returning to my own family, I wonder what it must have felt like for my father to be uprooted from the world he had grown up in.  He has often described how happy he was to leave Belgium and to this day, has no great love for the country, granted the racism he faced.  It must be akin to the feelings that were experienced by our ancestors when they left Egypt.

Of course, it is different in that the Bnei Yisrael had endured hundreds of years of slavery and were able to witness the 'strong hand' and 'outstretched arm' of Gd as He smote the Egyptians and bought the world's most powerful empire to its knees.  Pharaoh was not Hitler and once the Israelites had left, he did not carry out the atrocities that we recalled on Holocaust Memorial Day (and throughout the year), even though his chasing them to the Sea of Reeds was terrifying.  There are similarities in respect to the abuse that our ancestors endured from people who were stronger than they were and who singled them out because they were different.  Slave masters who beat them daily, who wielded power because they could.  They were forced to build supply cities.  Their descendants would be forced to scrub streets and then worse.  I cannot help but draw parallels between the exodus of the Jewish people and their journey into freedom with the experiences that my own family lived through.  This week's Parasha, coupled with Holocaust Memorial Day fills me with a deep sense of appreciation and gratitude to Gd that I am here to tell my father’s story.  It is unbearably painful to think that, unlike our ancestors in Egypt, there were millions of Jews who were not able to experience salvation and freedom as they could not obtain the visas that could have saved their lives.

The Egyptians too urged the people to make haste and leave the land... the people took their dough before it could rise, carrying it upon their shoulders in kneading pans wrapped in their clothing (Exodus 12.33)

There is one detail that I have not disclosed hitherto which inexorably links both journeys together, one from Egypt and the other from Europe.  One of the common denominators being matzah.  Before they began their trip, my grandmother packed food such as matzot and salami for the journey as they knew that Passover was imminent.  On board, she approached the ship's captain and told him (in Dutch as she had been born in Holland) that they were Jewish, needed to prepare for Passover and asked whether he could help them.  The captain who was a very decent man told her that one of the chefs was Jewish and he would assign him to assist them.  He would also allow them to use part of the kitchen and they would be given brand new cutlery, China and plates as well as vegetables, eggs, fish and any other food they required.

The ship eventually docked in New York on Thursday, 25th April - the first day of Chol Hamo'ed, a date which was not lost on my father or his parents. On the festival of freedom, they were now free from the tyranny of Nazi Germany.

Whether leaving Egypt or Belgium, my ancestors never forgot where we came from.

We all look forward to the time when we will be able to enjoy complete freedom, with the arrival of Mashiach, may he arrive speedily in our days. Amen.

Shavuah Tov

Parashat Shemot: Jewish Immersive Technology

 When I was a teenager in the 1980s, 3D films became the ‘new craze’ for a while.  They offered you the chance to experience a movie in a way that had not been possible for decades.  Filmmakers capitalized on the audience’s insatiable appetite for 3D films even if it meant sitting through tedious films (Jaws 3D anyone?) just to experience the thrill whilst simultaneously emerging with a mighty headache at the end.  There’s only so much torture my poor eyes could take peering at the screen, through flimsy cardboard ‘spectacles’ which housed red and blue filters.

After a while, interest dipped and 3D films quietly disappeared into the ether.

When they reappeared, a few decades later, the technology had improved and we donned more robust, clear plastic glasses instead.  At the start of the 21^st Century, it seemed as though every single film was being released in a 3D format, commensurate with the increased cost of viewing them.  This too ran its course and after the success of Avatar in 2009, the latest 3D excursion peaked and quickly faded away.

Interest in immersive technology did not disappear.  Although the 3D experiments proved to be short-lived, the notion that a person could immerse themself into a virtual environment, which also happened to be three-dimensional became more and more appealing.  Crucially, it also tapped into the public’s willingness to pay substantial sums to achieve this goal.

Virtual Reality headset kits, once thought of as too expensive to purchase, can now be found on Amazon for less than £50.  How many of us have been to museums and exhibitions and tried them on, only to be taken into environments that we would never have considered entering?

Immersive Technology is all around us, quite literally and some of its by-products are simply jaw-dropping.

Over the recent winter holiday, I experienced it in two different ways.  Firstly, I went to see the new Avatar film “The Way of Water’.  I chose to view it in a cinema that had a ‘ScreenX’ auditorium.  This means that the movie is projected on the screen in-front of you continuing onto both the left and right walls.  In old money, this is like ‘Panavision’ except that you are totally immersed in what is being displayed as your entire viewpoint is taken up by the scene before you.

Stephnie and I went to a fascinating new permanent exhibition called ‘Frameless’ next to Marble Arch.  You walk through rooms and are surrounded on all sides by images of famous paintings such as Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night Over the Rhöne’, Dali’s ‘The Persistence of Memory’ (the melted clocks), Munch’s ‘The Scream’ and Monet’s ‘The Water-Lily Pond: Green Harmony’ which are constructed before your eyes!  This is really something that cannot be adequately described and has to be seen to be appreciated.

I would suspect that you are probably trying to work out how all of this relates to this week’s Parasha.

When I was a child in school, although I had a fertile imagination, I found it extremely difficult to relate to my Chumash and Parasha lessons.  In the days before the internet and the ability to access any media available, we had films such as ‘The Ten Commandments’ and books that contained stilted photographs of biblical landscapes and monochrome diagrams, come maps.  How could I immerse himself into a pre-virtual reality world?  This was even before I discovered 3D.  How could the Torah speak to me growing up in 1970s Golders Green, a world away from the Biblical landscapes of ancient Israel, Mesopotamia and Egypt?

How can we, in the 21^st Century relate to Sefer Shemot?

The answer is less complicated than we think.  In fact, it’s there in front of us as we shall soon see.

Shemot, both in its form as a Parasha and as the second book of the Torah guides through a time period which began with the gradual enslavement of our people, through to the first year in the wilderness and the creation of the Mishkan, our proto-Temple.

It is a story that we have been told for as long as we can remember.  The infant Moshe is placed into a basket which is literally immersed into the River Nile.  From the outset, his existence is vulnerable, granted Pharaoh’s decree that all Hebrew babies be drowned.

As we know, he survives and grows up within the Palace walls as the ‘Prince of Egypt’.

What happens over the next decades, however, is where our immersive experience begins and it’s connected with the Jewish attitude to time.

Humans are governed by time.  It dictates the periods in the day when we can wake up; eat our meals; go to work; have meetings with colleagues; start and finish lessons on school; purchase items (although this is less relevant since the advent of e-commerce, where we can buy items online at whatever time we choose); go out for a meal or go to sleep at night.

Before we know it, weeks fly by and time itself seems to accelerate between fixed periods, such as seasons and years.  We talk about ‘losing track of time’ or ‘wasting time’ because we understand how important it is to us.  Although we are immersed in it, it sometimes feels as though that immersion is leading to drowning, where we feel that we are ‘running out of time’.

Judaism takes us out of the ‘water’ and as we read in Chapter 2.10, so does Moses’ name.

“And she called his name Moses (Moshe) – ‘va’tomer, ki min hamayim meshituhu’ – ‘because out of the water, I drew him’.

How can one immerse oneself in time, without losing track of it?

The answer is by making the ‘time count’.  Six days of the week can fly by, but when the        25-hour period that we call Shabbat enters, we pause and endow the day with a special sanctity.  For some, this can include coming to shul and joining in a service.  For others, it may revolve around the Friday night meal.  We don’t need 3D spectacles, Cinema X or Virtual Reality headsets to immerse ourselves into Shabbat.  We just need to take the time to enjoy the experience that it gives us.

As we read through the first few Parshiot of Sefer Shemot which detail first the slavery and then the Exodus, we will look forward to the ultimate immersive experience when we recall our ancestor’s lives in Egypt at the Pesach Sedarim.  The matzah, the maror, the charoset and the vegetables that we dip into salt water.  This is Jewish time.  This is our Immersive Technology.

Returning to my younger self, if I wanted to imagine what it must have been like to spend my last night in Egypt, I just had to stay awake long enough after the Mah Nishtana, to appreciate the Torah not only in three dimensions but also into the fourth, the one which includes food!

How do I immerse myself in time?

I follow the Jewish Calendar which takes me on an annual ride starting in Egypt over three thousand three hundred years ago; the Persian and Greek Empires (Purim and Chanukah); the Babylonian and Roman Empires (Tisha B’Av and the other associated fasts) and finally to the present day with the re-establishment of our wonderful state in 1948 and reunification of Jerusalem nineteen years later.  Let’s not forget the festival when we move our entire bodies out of our houses.  How much more immersed could we be?

And all this within the span of a lunar year.

Fads such as 3D come and go and salespeople will continue to do their utmost to convince us that ‘this technology’ is the best one yet.  As Jews, we can take a moment and share with them our greatest immersive invention – the Jewish calendar.

Have a fully immersive and peaceful Shabbat!

Shavuah Tov.

Parashat Vayechi: Biblical Leadership in the 21st Century

 Dedicated in respectful and loving memory of HaRav Avraham di Yitzchak HaLevy

Just over a month ago, on the 1^st December, I celebrated my 55th birthday.

One of the first thoughts that entered my mind after the shock of realising that I had reached my mid-fifties (they say that fifty is the ‘new thirty’ but I remain to be convinced) was the mathematical fact that I am now half the age that Joseph was when he died at 110.  His passing, at the end of this week’s Parasha also marks the conclusion of Sefer Bereishit.

More thoughts entered my mind.  Not only was Joseph 110 when he passed away, but so was Joshua, his great-great-great grandson.  Joshua’s grandfather’s grandfather was Ephraim, Joseph’s younger son.

Life is to a certain degree whatever we make of it.  We can flit through our twenties, thirties and even early forties hardly aware of what might come next.  After all, many of us are focused on two distinct strands.  These centre around our careers and finding a spouse.  For some, the former is easier than the latter.  For others, it is the reverse.  Blink for an instant and your twenties are a memory.  Blink again and you’re in your mid-thirties.  By the time you reach your forties, your eyes may require some assistance in the form of glasses to help you focus on what’s in-front of you after you’ve blinked.

And then you hit fifty.  Hopefully, you have a career to look back on, in whatever field of employment you found yourself pursuing.

55 happens and you think to yourself, “What have I achieved?”

What can I aspire to be?

Who can I look to as my role model?

You might have already chosen someone, but the thought that hit me squarely in the face was this.  I’m 55, Joseph and Joshua died at 110.  If in the unlikely event I happen to double my current innings and bow out at their venerable ages, what will they have taught me and is this relevant today in my lifetime?

My mind wandered and wondered and the vision that became clear focused on the similarities between these two peoples’ lives.  (With the help of spectacles, I should add…I am in my mid-fifties after all!)

Both grew up in difficult circumstances.

Joseph lost his mother at an early age and we know what transpired when he was seventeen.

His rise to power was anything but guaranteed.  Having raised the ire of his brothers through being the favoured son, they were about to kill him but fortunately abandoned that plan.  Thirteen years later, he rose to the position of Vizier of Egypt.

Joshua was raised as a slave in Egypt.  We know little about him until his name is mentioned in connection with the attack by the Amalekites on the Bnei Yisrael at Rephidim two months after the exodus from Egypt.  Moses asked him to ‘Choose men for us and go out and do battle against Amalek’ (in Parashat Beshalach) and we learn that he led the Israelites to victory which is a portend of what would take place in the future.  We can therefore assume that Moses’ had noticed Joshua’s leadership skills from an early age.

Joshua and Calev rendered themselves extremely unpopular when they justly opposed the other ten spies’ flawed reports of the Promised Land.  Both men narrowly avoided being killed (see Bemidbar 14.10 – ‘The community, all threatened to stone them to death but then the Lord’s glory was revealed to all the Israelites at the Tent of Meeting’).  Does this not sound familiar?

Joseph was responsible for bringing his family into Egypt whilst Joshua brought their descendants back into the land they had originally left centuries before.

Joseph took care of his brothers and Joshua looked after their descendants.  Joshua also ensured that his ancestor’s mortal remains were buried in Shechem fulfilling the final request that Joseph made shortly before he died as we read in the Parasha’s penultimate verse:

Then Joseph bound the children of Israel by an oath: “When Gd takes note of you, carry my bones up from this place.”

Two men who shared a familial bond and much more than that.  These are some of the greatest leaders our people have ever known.

We have been blessed to be led by many great Jacobs, Josephs, Ephraims and Joshuas since then.  The late Rabbi Sacks’ Hebrew name was HaRav Yaakov Zvi whilst our current Chief Rabbi, of whom we are also proud has just been knighted.  He bears the name of Joseph’s youngest son and we can heartily wish a huge Mazeltov to Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis!

One of Anglo Jewry’s greatest leaders in the late 20^th and early 21^st century, Rabbi Abraham Levy ztl bore the names of two of the patriarchs – HaRav Avraham di Yitzchak.  His name, alongside Rabbi Sacks and Rabbi Yosef Carmel shlita highlight the Biblical connection with my own status as a Rabbi as their signatures grace the bottom of my Semicha Certificate.

Rabbi Sacks, writing about Joseph states:

Every leader who stands for anything will face opposition…any leader elected to anything, or more loved or gifted than others, will face envy.  Rivals will say, “Why wasn’t it me?”  That is what Korach thought about Moses and Aaron.  It is what the brothers thought about Joseph when they saw that their father loved him more than them.  It is what Antonio Salieri thought about the more gifted Mozart according to Peter Shaffer’s play ‘Amadeus’.

Fortunately, Rabbi Levy did not have to endure the nightmare that was visited upon Joseph, Joshua or indeed Mozart!  He did however, like the Biblical heroes I have mentioned, demonstrate the fact that there are among us rare individuals who dedicate their lives to tangibly demonstrating their love for each and every Jew, irrespective of his or her religious belief and observance.  To Rabbi Levy, all Jews were equal and deserved to be treated as such.  Although he did not live until the age of 110, the majority of his 83 years (which incidentally matched those of my mother) were spent serving and leading our people.

Despite tremendous opposition from some within the Spanish and Portuguese Sephardi Community, he established the Naima JPS.  Their website bears the following message, part of which reads:

“It is with tremendous sadness that we regret to share the news of the passing of our beloved founder Rabbi Dr Abraham Levy OBE

Rabbi Levy was and always will be the heart and soul of Naima Jewish Preparatory School.

In his moving memoir ‘A Rocky Road’ (2017) he writes:

Against the persistent opposition, I took comfort from the following thought.  Every day in our morning prayers (just before the Shema), two of the qualities we ascribe to Gd are ‘oseh chadashot’ and ‘ba’al hamilchamot’, ‘Creater of new things’ and ‘Master of wars’.

Put the two together and you derive the idea that you can’t do anything new without stirring up arguments against it.  Some within the lay leadership of the congregation simply did not like the thought that someone they considered an employee had the nerve to do something without their blessing.  Some, perhaps, worried that it would distract me from my ministerial duties.  But there was the prevalent fear that I might fall flat on my face, that the school would prove unviable and end up a stain on the congregation’s good name.

In September 1983, JPS opened its doors to its first complement of pupils, fifteen girls and thirteen boys in a nursery and reception class.  It was an encouraging number.  For our motto, I chose a verse from Proverbs, “start a child on the right road and even in old age he will not leave.”

When I visited his son, Julian at the shivah, you could see the pride on his face when he mentioned the immense joy his father felt when he met the grandchildren of those children, who now attend the school.

He was the visionary who set up the Rabbinical (Semicha) Programme which had been discontinued when Jews’ College closed down at the end of the 1990s.  As Honorary Principal of the Judith Lady Montefiore College, he (in partnership with Lucien Gubbay, the Chairman) was instrumental in ensuring that my fellow students and I were able to receive fully funded extensive rabbinical instruction.  His remit was for the College to train open-minded and outward looking graduates to occupy traditional British pulpits, both in and outside the United Synagogue.  There were times during the rigorous course when many of us lacked self-belief in our abilities to succeed but through it all, Rabbi Levy always believed in us.

His gentle inspiring words and limitless support were always available.  When I enrolled on the course and began my studies shortly before my 46^th birthday, although I was understandably apprehensive, knowing that Rabbi Levy was our Principal was very reassuring.  We were later honoured to be gifted a copy of his memoirs which he personally signed for each of us.  His generosity knew no bounds.

Joseph, Joshua and Rabbi Levy are not the type of leaders who grace us very often and they continue to inspire, long after they have left their earthly forms.

Someone famously wrote:

I believe the children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way…

In his blessings to Israel at the end of this week’s Parasha, Joseph echoed the same sentiment.

Joshua, the student of our greatest Rabbi became the person who, with Gd’s instruction, brought us back to our land.

Rabbi Levy showed us how we too can lead the way, from the youngest child in his nursery to the oldest student in his Rabbinical College.  The wisdom he imparted to his fellow Jews and Gentiles will continue to inspire me for the rest of my life.

Yehi Zichro Baruch – may his memory be a blessing to K’lal Yisrael.

Shavuah Tov