On Sunday afternoon, I stood with my back to the National Gallery facing Nelson’s Column. Trafalgar Square was bathed in a sea of blue and white flags fluttering in the light breeze. The speakers, whose faces I could not make out, came onto the stage and one by one, fighting back tears, related their heartbreaking and shocking testimonies, describing their experiences on Shabbat 7th October. How they had lost loved ones, either through being murdered or seeing them dragged away into the hellhole that is Gaza. Many of those who bravely tried to defend their families, friends and kibbutzim were massacred by an overwhelming and unbelievably cruel foe.
As one of
the speakers was tearfully informing us that her brother and his family had
been amongst the more than two hundred people kidnapped, I was handed a poster
that just happened to display their details under a large bold white-on-red
headline marked ‘Kidnapped’. Reading the
events in the news hadn’t hit me yet. Standing
alongside thousands of Jews, listening to both our Israeli and English brethren
telling their stories and our chanting, “Bring them home” brought home to me
the enormity of what had happened.
Whilst I
was trying to process what was going on in terms of what had happened, what
could be done to bring them home alive and how vulnerable I felt as a Jew in
the United Kingdom, I had a thought. All
of us in Trafalgar Square, most of whom I assumed were Jewish, were descended
either biologically or spiritually from one single couple, namely Avraham and
Sarah (or Avram and Sarai is they are known for the majority of this week’s
Parasha).
I believe
that all of us standing, weeping, applauding and chanting recognised that
something very special was taking place for a brief moment in our long, shared
history together. In this hour of
darkness, we set aside our differences and spoke with one voice.
Avram
knew what it meant to live in a hostile environment. According to the Vilna Ga’on, he was forty-eight
years old when the Tower of Bavel was built and the resultant dispersion that
we read about at the end of last week’s Parasha occurred. The Ramban tells us that Noach died ten years
later, so it is very possible that Avram would have heard from him, about what
it felt like to live amongst evil people.
To be different to them and of course, how he had been saved through
building the Ark.
The
Midrash tells us how Avram’s arch-enemy, Nimrod, who was incidentally the
architect of the doomed tower project, tried to have him burned in a furnace. Avram, despite everything, held firm to his
revolutionary belief in the existence of a single Deity, much to the fury of
Nimrod whose belief system was deeply entrenched in idolatry.
Avram was
different and we are different.
Gd tested
him ten times with the ultimate challenge of having to sacrifice his son. He passed the test despite the odds. We, his descendants, have had to face the
most barbaric, sadistic nations in the history of the world who wished to
destroy us and we too have survived these tests.
But what
was it that made Avram (and of course his beloved wife) the archetypal role
models that eventually led to the birth of our nation?
Rabbi
Sacks tells us that the secret of what made Avram different lies in the very
first verse of this week’s Parasha when Hashem told him to:
“Go from your land, your birthplace and your father’s
house to the land that I will show you.”
He was
instructing him to leave behind everything that had shaped him to that point.
“Why?” asks Rabbi Sacks.
“Because people do conform. They adopt the standards and absorb the
culture of the time and place in which they live – “your land”. At a deeper level, they are influenced by
friends and neighbours – “your birthplace”.
More deeply still, they are shaped by their parents and the family in
which they grew up – “your father’s house.”
He continues by explaining that Gd wanted Avram to be different…for the sake of starting something new, namely a religion that eschewed power and the symbols of that power as represented by idolatry.
As Gd
later tells him:
“I want you to teach your children and your household
afterwards to follow the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just.
Avram understood
how important it was to stand up for justice, irrespective of how unpopular
this would make him. To throw away
everything that you’ve been conditioned with, to accept in the name of seeking
the path of truth, is a very Jewish thing to do. Whilst there are many (in the media and in
politics as well as our sworn enemies) who conveniently set aside the events
that took place a few weeks ago to set their own agenda, we refuse to
compromise on what we believe is to be right.
We have
sadly learned to our great personal detriment the result of what transpires when
we try to avoid fighting evil - if we accept the arguments of those who do not
have our best interests in mind and compromise on what we know is the right
thing to do.
There are
those who wish us to quietly conform to their lifestyles.
They say
that Shechita is barbaric and that it would be kinder to the animals to kill
them in a more conventional manner. It
would also be less of a burden on our already stretched budgets.
In the
same breath, they claim that brit milah, which we read about in this week’s
Parasha, deprives a child of the right to choose as to whether they wish to be
‘mutilated’. Why not just give it up so
that our boys won’t be different to those of our friends.
It would
be so much easier for us if we stayed in our metaphorical lands, birthplaces
and fathers’ houses.
The
German Jews tried to do that in the 19th century by assimilating at
a huge rate. Yet, with regard to Nazi
ideology and the Final Solution, it didn’t make a jot of difference when it
came to who ended up in the gas chambers.
Stalin
wasn’t too bothered by whether or not Jews identified as such when he exiled
them to the Gulag and Hamas didn’t check out the religiosity of the people it
either killed or kidnapped less than a month ago.The thread that links us back
to the very first Jews (even if they weren’t called by this name at that time)
is the same one which keeps us bound together.
A refusal to compromise on pursuing justice despite those who wish to put
barriers in our way.
Many of
us keep kosher to differing degrees and sometimes not at all. There are those who choose not to circumcise
their sons but when it comes to identifying as Jewish, in whichever format
works for them, they are the first to stand up and be counted, because we, like
Avram and Sarai before us, understand what it means to take the ‘right and just
path’. When it comes to giving charity, our
hands dig deep. When legitimate refugees
need legal support, how often do we hear of their representatives bearing Jewish
names? Our hospitals and universities are
filled with Jewish doctors and professors and don’t get me started on how many members
of our nation have won Nobel prizes!
We went
to Trafalgar Square because we knew we needed to be there. For us.
Not for the world. For those in
Israel who were suffering, whether or not we knew them. We travelled through the streets of London
knowing that there was possible danger ahead because we knew that standing up
and being counted as Jews was more important than cowering in the face of
danger.
We are
giving and giving and giving to charities inside and outside Israel because we
know the fundamental role tzedaka plays in our national psyche. We have an innate need to help the families
of those who were killed, wounded or kidnapped irrespective of their political
leanings or religious affiliation precisely because they are Jews, like us.
When a
Gentile takes the bold move to convert to our religion, his Hebrew name becomes
‘ben Avraham’ and hers ‘bat Sarah’, which means, ‘The son of Avraham’ or the ‘daughter
of Sarah’. This is not by accident. It is a testament to the extraordinary
decision a single couple chose to take, when they stood out from the crowd and,
despite the extreme hardships they endured (as described in three Parashiot
that cover their lives), did not compromise on their mission to change humanity
and draw them away from idol-worship to creating an environment that promoted
chessed, kindness to all and one that recognised a single G-d.
In 15.4,
Gd takes Avram outside and tells him:
“Look at the heavens and count the stars,
if indeed you can count them…that is how your descendants will be.”
Looking at the blue stars on those white backgrounds and human stars in all their shapes and forms on Sunday afternoon helped me realise that we are the culmination of that prophecy - the progeny of Avram and Sarai in the very heart of London. We are their children – we are different – In short, we are Jews.
Shabbat Shalom.
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