Parashat Noach: The Same Language, The Same Words

The whole world spoke the same language, the same words (Bereishit 11.1).

Rashi: שפה אחת the same language — The Holy Tongue (Hebrew) (derived from Midrash Tanchuma, Noach 19).

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"Upon my tongues continual slanders ride, The which in every language I pronounce, Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.”

William Shakespeare: The prologue spoken by rumour to henry iv part two.

When I heard about the concert back in January, I immediately bought tickets.  After all, it’s not every day that one is treated to the sight and sounds of an artist with the musical pedigree of Graham Nash, former member of both The Hollies and of course, Crosby, Stills and Nash.  The icing on the cake being the addition of his friend Peter Asher whom he has known for over six decades.  It was even advertised as ‘Graham Nash - More Evenings of Songs & Stories with Special Guest Peter Asher’.  The location being the auspicious London Palladium and the event was nearly sold-out.

So off we went on the Northern Line from Edgware and made our way to the theatre, braving the rain in the process.  We took our seats and thoroughly enjoyed Peter Asher’s performance which (slightly misquoting the famous advertising slogan) ‘did exactly what it said on the tin’.

We were entreated to light-hearted stories, self-deprecating humour, songs and even the rare opportunity to hear Paul McCartney’s original demo of ‘World Without Love’, the famous number one hit which he had originally sung with his late lamented friend, Gordon Waller.

He completed his set by entreating us to sing the last verse of that song alongside him and the other two accompanying musicians.  Forty-five minutes of pure joy.  He left to a rapturous applause by the audience.

Following the interval, Graham Nash came on and played a couple of songs.  When it came to the third, he introduced it by telling us that his father had fought in the Second World War and this had influenced his decision to write the upcoming song.  He then started to talk about the fact that we now have social media and its connection to current conflicts.  He briefly referred to the Ukraine War (choosing not to mention anything about Putin) and proceeded to talk about Gaza, declaring that he believed that ‘the Israelis were committing genocide against the Palestinians’.  This was greeted by a rapturous clapping following, after stunned silence by boos, including from yours truly.  I turned around to Stephnie and told her that we were leaving.  We left the auditorium and met with a few people in the lobby which I believe were both Jewish and Gentile, all stunned and angry at the spectacle that we had just experienced.  When we spoke with the staff of the Palladium in the entrance hallway, they were shocked and told us that they couldn’t understand why so many people were leaving the theatre, granted that Nash was playing for another hour.

A cursory search for Graham Nash on Google comes up with the following:

Graham Nash is a proponent of peace through his music, activism, and social commentary, which often advocate for peace, social justice, and environmentalism.

That a so-called ‘proponent of peace’ felt the need to espouse an ancient antisemitic blood libel (being cheered on by an enthusiastic audience) is proof-positive to the dangers of what can happen when ‘the whole world speaks the same language, the same words.’  Not in the Plain of Shinar in ancient Mesopotamia (Modern Day Iraq) but in the heart of the West End of London.  5000 km or approximately 3,100 miles away.

The generation which built the tower is descended from the sons of Noach and is known as Dor Haflaga, or the ‘Generation of the Towers’.  Led by the evil King Nimrod, who infamously tried to have Avraham Avinu, the world’s first monotheist and our Founding Father, executed by throwing him into a furnace, led a campaign to ‘build us a city and a tower with its top in the heavens’.  In other words, to dethrone Gd.

Sixty years ago, on Shabbat, 22^nd October 1955, Rabbi Norman Lamm ztl, former President of Yeshiva University delivered a powerful sermon entitled, ‘The Generation of the Tower and a Towering Generation’ and I quote the following edited extract:

In this morning’s Sidra we read of the generation of Noah and the evil lives they lead.  Their punishment, as it is recorded in the Torah, was complete destruction – except for Noah and his family – in the Great Flood.  Following that episode, we read of another generation following in the footsteps of the first.  This is the dor ha’haflagah – the Generation of the Tower.  The people of this generation had evidently failed to learn from the tragic lesson that its predecessors had been taught.  They were a people marked by arrogance and haughtiness.

Remember friends, that the Torah does not describe merely poetic myths.  We have substantial corroboration of that episode from the science of archaeology.  We know that the Mesopotamians of about 3,600-3,800 years ago began to dwell in big cities and in them to build tremendous pagan temples.  These temples were constructed as high towers as a sign of the equality of the builders with the pagan gods they worshipped.  In their writings, some of which we still have, they boast to building into the heavens, even as is recorded in today’s Sidra.  (See Kasuto, Me’Noach ad Avraham, for all this information). 

At the turn of the present century, the very tower of which the Bible speaks was discovered, in ruins, by a German archaeological expedition.  It was clearly an impressive and imposing structure.  These tremendous towers served both to express and inspire these Babylonians to imagine themselves a superior race, a ‘herrenvolk’. Ultimately, the cities and the towers were destroyed and all further construction was frustrated.  If later today you will reread that part of this morning’s portion, you will observe the terrific sarcasm with which the Torah describes the entire episode.  Just one example: the name Bavel (or Babel or Babylon) given to that place by G-d.  This is a sarcastic pun, because the Mesopotamians themselves called their city Babel because in their language the name was derived from the words Bab-Ili, meaning the Gate of the G-d – or in the plural, Bab-Ilani meaning the Gate of the Gods (whence: Babylon).  However, in Hebrew the name Babel is similar to the root Balol which means ‘confusion’.  So the Torah tells us that what these mortals thought was their gate to their own goodness, was nothing more than the confusion of their poor minds…

https://lammlegacy.org/the-generation-of-the-tower-and-a-towering-generation-1955/#

These words could have been written in a contemporary setting.  How many people in the field of politics, media and entertainment, who see themselves as ‘Herrenvolk’ arrogantly peddle the lies spewed out by Hamas and its supporters?  Nash is just one example of how ‘arrogance and haughtiness’ lead to the perpetuation of comments that have not a single grain of truth.  The kind that led to the terror attack in Manchester earlier this month, where the same language of hate is used throughout the world.

To the point where even music, which has the power to erase the differences between nations and ethnicities, becomes itself a victim of this malaise.

And yet, Rabbi Lamm continues:

Despite the sarcasm and bitterness and ridicule which the Torah heaps upon this Generation of the Tower, the indictment of this generation is not complete.  Just compare these two generations, that of the flood and that of the Tower:  The Generation of the Flood was, with the exception of Noah and his family, completely and utterly destroyed; the generation of the Tower was not destroyed at all – it was merely punished by internal dissension and great exile and dispersion.  Why is it that the generation of the Tower was treated with such comparative leniency despite their sins of arrogance?

Our Rabbis gave us the answer, based upon a clue in the Bible itself.  Our Torah mentions vayehi kol Haaretz safah achass – all the world was one language, meaning of course that there was unity, cooperation, friendship.  And therefore, dor hamabul al yedei shehayu shetufim begezel lo nishtaira meihem pleitah, aval eilu al yedei shehayu ohavim zeh es zeh nishtayrah meihem pleitah.  There is something that can be salvaged from the Generation of the Tower, something of lasting and permanent value, and that is: love, friendship.

What our Rabbis got from this episode of the Generation of the Tower was that every generation can become a Towering Generation if it learns that love; that even if people are arrogant and G-dless and criminal, they can escape heavenly wrath if they will learn to love G-d’s creatures.  The only way of nishtaira meihem pleitah, of surviving a world of coldness and treachery and mass-production and bold projects which obscure the individual is through ahavah (love).

In this 21st Century in which we live, we are experiencing something that has not been accessible to our ancestors, that of a ‘common language’ which is spread throughout the world and a means by which to transmit this.  The language is, of course, English and the tool we use is the Internet.  Even though English is spoken by approximately 1.46 – 1.5 billion (which constitutes 18%) of our global population, it is regarded as the most spoken language (including non-native speakers).  The internet enables non-English speakers to translate the language into their native tongues.

It is the accepted ‘currency’ throughout the world’s air, sea and rail routes and even on the International Space Station (alongside Russian)!

We are truly at a time when historians will note that ‘the whole world spoke the same language, the same words.’  It is the just a case of which ‘words’ we choose to speak and what the impact of continuing to misuse this gift will have on how our communities both locally and internationally.

Sadly, despite the fact that we speak one common language, we are deeply divided.  Instead of harmony, we have disorder; instead of homogenous, we have heterogenous; instead of unity, we have dissension; instead of ‘Us’ we have ‘I’ and instead of tolerance, we have intolerance.  Instead of hate, we should have love for, as our Rabbis taught ‘all G-d’s creatures’.

As Abraham Lincoln famously said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Let us reframe the use of language to bring people together.  I have no problem with musicians or anyone else expressing a personal viewpoint in the appropriate location but the term ‘know your audience’ is as relevant in front of an audience who paid hard-earned money for a pleasant evening out, as a teacher standing in front of a class or a Rabbi delivering a sermon to his community.

If we can speak the same language with the same words and bring people together, we have proven that we are not the Dor Haflaga, the Generation of the Tower but one who builds towers of love, mutual respect and understanding between individuals, communities and nations.  Now there’s an idea for a song that we can all join in with, Graham Nash.

Shavuah Tov.

Yom Kippur: People of the Year - William (Bill) Shatner

His is a voice that will be recognizable to most people who remember the 1960s (and in my case, the ‘70s).

“Space, the final frontier.  These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.  Its five-year mission: To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

These are of course the words spoken by the actor William (whom everybody calls ‘Bill’) Shatner when he introduced the Star Trek episodes from the original series.

If you recall, over Rosh Hashanah I referenced Time Magazine’s famous annual feature in honouring someone they felt

"For better or for worse...has done the most to influence the events of the year."

Bill is the subject of this final ‘episode’ in my own series describing the people I have nominated to be my Yamim Noraim/Days of Awe ‘People of the Year’.  I will duly explain why I feel he deserves this award, particularly on Yom Kippur.

In 2005, the journalist Abigail Pogrebin wrote a fascinating book titled ‘Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk About Being Jewish’ (Broadway Books, New York) which described her interviews with sixty-two of America’s ‘most accomplished Jews’ (as per the dust jacket).  One of these was with William Shatner (pp 352-355).

His entry begins with the following paragraph:

Star Trek’s Captain Kirk used to recite the four questions and lay tefillin during morning prayers.  That’s difficult to imagine.  William Shatner’s image has never exactly been Jewishy.  He’s sandy haired and barrel chested – his bearing, at the height of his fame, was that of a classic leading man.  “There was a whole thing where people would say, ‘Funny you don’t look Jewish,’” Shatner recalls.  “The racial stereotype bothers me to this day.  I’m very sensitive to it; I find it offensive.”

Bill recalls how he hailed from a traditional home in Montreal which, though Conservative was, as he states, “Pretty much like Orthodox here (in the United States).”  His mother kept a kosher home, he had a bar mitzvah and, as I said, wore tefillin for a few years.  He also had to deal with significant antisemitism from the kids in his school.  He adds that he had willingly missed a school football practice because it was Yom Kippur with the result being that he was never able to regain his position on the team.  The author writes that,

‘He says he didn’t try to convince his parents to let him skip Yom Kippur services; he knew that by that age it was sacrosanct.  “It wasn’t a choice,” he says matter-of-factly.  “It was Yom Kippur.”

Bill’s most famous role, of course, is that of the aforementioned, Captain James T (for Tiberius) Kirk alongside his friend of nearly 50 years, Leonard Nimoy, who played ‘Mr’ (later to be promoted to‘Captain’) Spock’, the half-human, half-Vulcan science officer and first officer aboard the USS Starship Enterprise.  He was four days younger than Bill.

Sadly, Leonard passed away in 2015 and a year later, Bill published a memoir called ‘Leonard: My Fifty-Year Friendship with a Remarkable Man’ (William Shatner with David Fisher, Sidgewick & Jackson, UK).

Having read the book earlier this year, it moved me in a way that very few tomes have managed to do.

Leonard grew up in Boston and, like Bill, lived in a home where his parents kept kosher.  In fact, their upbringing was quite similar in that their parents were working class.  Bill’s father was in the shmatte/rag trade whilst Leonard’s was a barber.  They both came to the decision that they wanted to pursue a career in acting when they were eight years old.

It was not until July 1965, just over 60 years ago, that they encountered each for the first time on the set of a new futuristic science fiction series which was to be called ‘Star Trek.’  Bill doesn’t remember the moment they met and he writes that when they first started working together, although Leonard was ‘personally invested in the character, Bill ‘made the mistake of treating Spock with less than complete respect.  It was not a mistake I made a second time.’

The working relationship that was initiated back in those heady days of the mid 60’s developed into a deep friendship between the two like-minded individuals over the next five decades.  This was no doubt reinforced by the critical and commercial success of the motion pictures which began a decade later when Bill and Leonard revisited their roles over a twelve-year period in the six films which concluded with Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country in 1991.

At this point in the Drasha, you will no doubt be wondering why I have spent the last three pages taking you on a voyage to explore what seems like a ‘five-year-mission, seeking out old lives and space captains to boldly go where no Rabbi has gone before on Yom Kippur’…

Please bear with me just a little longer and all of this will (hopefully) make sense, particularly on this holiest day of our calendar.

Behind the ‘glitz and glamour’ of Hollywood’s brightest lights (million dollar special effects), lies a decades-long friendship between two proudly Jewish men.  One that no-doubt emanated from the values they were brought up with and shared both in their professional and private lives.  In 2013, after decades of heavy smoking (at one point, he got through two packs a day) Leonard was diagnosed with COPD, although the signs had been there since 2006.

Towards the end of the book, Bill writes:

I often think about friendships.  Our friendship.  All friendships.  The complexities that bring two lives together sometimes briefly, sometimes for almost a lifetime.  There are fleeting friendships and enduring friendships.  It is such an all-encompassing word, but it doesn’t sufficiently define the depth of any relationship.  There are so many metaphors that might be applied, but ours covered an ocean of time, and as in any voyage, between the calm seas we encountered moments of turmoil.  One of my greatest regrets is that Leonard and I were not as close as we had been during those last few years of his life.

He goes on to describe an incident where he made a film about the ‘many captains of the Enterprise’ and Leonard expressly stated that he didn’t want to appear in it.  Bill didn’t think that Leonard was being serious as this seemed so trivial and when a cameraman filmed him at a convention without Leonard’s permission, he got angry and refused to speak with his old friend again.

Despite Bill trying to reach out and apologise, attempting to heal the rift, Leonard never spoke to him again and passed away a month or so short of his 84^th birthday.

Bill writes how puzzled he remains, granted that they had flown together following the convention and Leonard hadn’t demonstrated any animosity or anger towards him.  However, for some reason only known to Leonard, he decided to cut Bill out of his life.

Bill wrote a heartfelt letter to his old friend letting him know how much he loved him in the hope that Leonard would have read this before he died.

In one of the final passages, Bill writes:

I think about Leonard.  I miss him.  Even when we weren’t in touch, he was always in my life.  And when I think about Leonard and all the adventures we had together, I remember his own lust for life; I remember his desire to explore and experience life in all its infinite wonders.  I think of his spiritual side, in which he never stopped searching for answers he knew he would never find.  I think of his generosity and his commitment for equal justice for everyone.  I think of his never-ending passion for the arts and his quest to nurture creativity in young people.  And I think of him standing in front of me, his palm held high, his fingers separated in the Vulcan salute, smiling knowingly.

I look back and the reflection I see is my own life…

I cannot think of a more appropriate metaphor that represents Yom Kippur than the friendship and love that these two men had for each other and how it sadly dissipated.

In the week (and if you are Sephardi, month) leading up to Rosh Hashanah and throughout the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah/10 Days of Penitence, we recite Selichot. The root of Selichot is סלח, from which we have the word ‘selicha’ which means ‘forgiveness/pardon/excuse’ and when you wish to say, “Excuse me (or literally forgive me)” in Ivrit, the term is ‘selach li’.

Chazal tells us that for Gd to forgive a person on Yom Kippur, he must first seek that forgiveness (also known as ‘Mechila’ in Hebrew) from his fellow human being.  If he asks three times and the response is not forthcoming, the onus shifts on the respondent to make the necessary moves to heal the wound.

The tragedy of Bill and Leonard’s relationship was that when Bill tried to apologise, to say ‘selicha’, Leonard was too angry to respond until it was too late for him to do so and the hurt that ensued followed him to his grave.

We are fallible and I am sure that every single person here can relate to the way both men felt and, in particular, the sense of loss that haunts Bill to this very day.  He wrote his book to help him heal and let the world know how highly he thought of Leonard.

Yom Kippur is the day when we ask Gd to forgive us for the slights that we have caused Him over the year.  Those occasions when we didn’t live up to the expectations that He has of us and by extension, we have of ourselves.  When, as Elton John famously sang ‘Sorry seems to be the hardest word’, we admit our guilt and stand in front of the Creator of the Universe on the holiest day of the year to say ‘Sorry’ or ‘Forgive me.’

Over three thousand, three hundred and thirty years ago, we committed the seemingly unforgiveable sin of creating a Golden Calf.  To call it an insult to the True Gd would be an understatement and yet, in His infinite glory, He forgave us and we realised that this was the case, when Moshe descended from Sinai clutching the second set of Commandments on the 10^th of Tishri – today’s date.

I chose Bill as my final ‘Person of the Year’ because he really represents the very essence of what it means to be a Jew.  Our pride, angst, shame and ultimately, innate desire to make amends, the qualities that define us.  And to paraphrase his quote about Leonard – our commitment for equal justice for everyone.

I feel that he should join Omer Shem Tov and the Israelis that I described in my Drashot/Sermons on both days of Rosh Hashanah.  These are not only my ‘People of the Year’ but also deserve a mention in everyone else’s list.  We need them to remind us of how blessed we are to call them our own (and I include Sawsan Kheir, the Druze Psychologist).  Each one in his or her own right represents the very best of us and just as importantly the imperfections that make us who we are.

On Rosh Hashanah, it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed.  Let us reflect on who they are and how they can impact who we are.  Because, one day, what you do might earn you a place on somebody else’s ‘Person of the Year’ list.

I pray that Hashem Yitzbarach, Gd Almighty hears our pleas, forgives us and grants our people a year of peace and healing both in the Land of Israel and in the Diaspora.  May we see the return of the hostages to their loved ones and the proliferation of wise and thoughtful decisions on the part of those who represent us on the world stage.

May you and yours be blessed with an easy and meaningful fast.

With the warmest of wishes from Stephnie, me and our children.

Chag Sameach and Gmar Chatimah Tovah. 

May it come to all of Israel.  

Amen.

Rosh Hashanah I: People of the Year - Omer Shem Tov

On 2^nd January 1928, Time Magazine inaugurated its very first ‘Man of the Year’ issue (The award is now titled ‘Person of the Year’). The initial recipient was Charles Lindburgh who had famously ‘made the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean on May 20-21, 1927 in his ‘Ryan NYP Spirit of St. Louis’

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This tradition has continued to the present day with the honouree being announced around the second week in December.

President Donald Trump was last year’s choice (and a glance at the list of runners-up is also worth checking out).

Time’s Wikipedia entry describes this edition as:

‘featuring a person, group, idea, or object that "for better or for worse ...has done the most to influence the events of the year".

With this in mind, I have decided to focus my High Holidays Drashot/Sermons on individuals or groups who have, paraphrasing this entry, ‘done the most to influence the events of my year’. All three of my Drashot are therefore entitled ‘People of the Year’.

Rosh Hashanah is our annual opportunity to both reflect on the year that has just ended whilst praying for a trouble-free future. As we read in the Unetaneh Tokef prayer at Musaph (please feel free to follow on Page 147 of the Routledge Machzor):

 

‘On the first day of the year (Rosh Hashanah) it is inscribed and on the Day of Atonement the decree is sealed, how many shall pass away and how many shall be born, who shall live and who shall die….’

Omer Shem Tov was kidnapped by Hamas on 7^th October from the Nova Dance Festival and held hostage in Gaza for a total of 505 days, of which 50 were spent 40 metres under the ground crouched in a tiny, locked tunnel cell in solitary confinement in pitch-black darkness for most of the time. He survived on a single daily biscuit and a little salty water.

On the first day of Rosh Hashanah last year, which equates with 3^rd October, he had been in captivity for 363 days or 11 months and 27 days. Whilst we were reciting Unetaneh Tokef in this beautiful Synagogue, Omer was imprisoned in a tunnel not knowing whether the New Year of 5785 would be his last.

Following the horrific attacks of 7^th October, the Board of Deputies initiated a campaign to have Synagogues ‘adopt a hostage’. My community of Staines chose Omer. For the duration of his captivity, we attached a photograph of ‘Our Omer’ to a seat in the prayer hall. We placed a framed picture bearing the hashtag ‘bring him home now’ on a table in the entrance hall in front of a pinboard where we displayed updates on his situation. Our members wrote emails to numerous MPs including Michael Gove and Kwasi Kwarteng who was the former Member of Parliament for Spelthorne. We prayed and prayed for Omer but were met with what seemed like interminable silence. Little did we know what would transpire.

On Shabbat, 22^nd February (which also happens to be my daughter Talia’s birthday), ‘Our Omer’ was released and we were overjoyed.

You can imagine our delight when we heard that he was going to be visiting this country in June. We were asked by Staines to represent the community and it was arranged that Stephnie and I would be the only people allowed to meet him (from amongst over a thousand attendees). JNF UK organised a special event at St John’s Wood Shul and they could not have been more willing to help and accommodating to our requests.

However, as we know, it turned out that for the first time in nearly 50 years, direct flights between Israel and Iran took place (I wish I could take credit for that line!) over a twelve-day period. Omer was unable to leave Israel due to the conflict.

Proceedings could have taken place online but being the kind of person he is, he decided to postpone his trip so that he could attend in person which he did in July.

We arrived early and were ushered into a room where Omer was sitting with his father, Malki and a documentary filmmaker, Yoram Zak.

You can see a video interview between Dana Zohar who organised the evening and Yoram at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfAP9OYvP1I.

I can’t adequately describe the emotions I felt when I met Omer. Words fail me, but the first thing I asked was if I could hug him and he willingly obliged! In fact, we talked and hugged at least three times. I presented him with a beautiful book containing copies of the emails I described as well as the photographs of the Synagogue (including his framed picture). He very kindly recorded a heartfelt video message for the members. I told him that to us, he was ‘Our Omer’ and that as far as we were concerned, we had adopted him for life!

Which brings me back full circle to Rosh Hashanah. On this day, Gd looks upon the  entire world and judges every living creature on its own merits. Chazal, our Rabbis tell us that He opens three ‘books’ – the first for the righteous, the second for the wicked and the third, for the rest of us who fall in-between the two. He measures out our good deeds against our transgressions (or in Hebrew terminology, Mitzvot and Aveirot) and He makes a decision that will impact our year.

‘On Rosh Hashanah it is inscribed and on Yom Kippur the decree is sealed…’

Last year, Gd made the decision to inscribe Omer Shem Tov and everyone sitting here today in the Book of Life. At the same time, He decreed that two people in this room would have their lives impacted by meeting a third. I wrote the following in my preface to the book we presented Omer which is taken from Pirkei Avot/ Ethics of the Fathers:

“Rabbi Shimon said, “There are three crowns: the crown of Torah, the crown of priesthood and the crown of kingship – the crown of a good name surpasses them all.” As you may have gathered, ‘shem tov’ means ‘a good name’.

When he was in captivity, Omer connected with Gd and had daily conversations with Him, calling Him ‘Aba – daddy’. He would start by asking Gd ‘how He was’!

 Since being released, he lays tefillin every day (except for Shabbat and Yom Tov) and in fact, the reason why we had to wait to meet with him was that he was doing exactly this whilst everyone around him was busy preparing for the evening.

He is an extraordinary human being in so many ways and meeting him has been inspirational. He has brought home to us the enormity of what has been taking place in almost two years of the nightmare that began on that Shmini Atzeret morning. Just as importantly, his courage and bravery in extremely challenging situations has been inspirational in a way that I can’t fully describe. That he happens to have a great sense of humour is all the more remarkable considering the trauma he has experienced.

Which is why, to me, Omer Shem Tov is my ‘Man of the Year’.

We are about to embark on a new adventure on the ‘good ship’ we call ‘5786’.

o   A year where we fervently pray that more Omers will return to their loved ones.

o   That Israel and the Jewish People will find the genuine and meaningful peace we are so desperate to achieve.

o   That our enemies will be judged on what they did and will be held accountable by both heavenly and terrestrial courts. May their evil plans and machinations against us be frustrated.

o   And finally, that someone as worthy as Omer Shem Tov becomes my Man of the Year for 5787.

There are many more individuals who have influenced me over the last year and I look forward to sharing their stories with you in the coming days! 

May we all be blessed with a happy, healthy and peaceful new Year. Shanah Tovah Umetukah to you and yours from Stephnie and myself.

Rosh Hashanah II: People of the Year - The Israelis

Yesterday I explained that this year my High Holiday Drashot/Sermons would focus on individuals or groups that, paraphrasing Time Magazine’s ‘Man of the Year’ award, have ‘done the most to influence the events of my year’.

Today I will continue this theme by describing five individuals and an extraordinary location that Stephnie and I encountered a couple of weeks ago.

In July, Stephnie noticed an advertisement in the Jewish Chronicle magazine, posted by the Technion UK charity, inviting readers to join them on a five- day ‘Solidarity Trip to Israel’.  Our curiosities were piqued by highlights such as:

·         Visting Meta, the parent company of Facebook

·         Meeting David Horovitz, the founding editor of the Times of Israel (which was the clincher for Stephnie who is a huge fan of his voice)

·         Touring an Air Force Base (which turned out to be IAI – Israel Aircraft Industries)

·         Meeting with IDF Combat Reservists and currently serving soldiers

·         Spending a day at the Technion in Haifa, Israel’s Institute of Technology, which is a world-renowned leader in the fields of hi-tech, medicine and engineering and also the country’s oldest university, and producer of four Nobel prize-winners to date

·         Spending an evening in a Druze village and so much more!

I have been blessed to have visited and toured Israel dozens of times since my childhood but I had never experienced a trip like this – Stephnie kept describing it as ‘Israel Tour for Adults’!  She didn’t have the benefit of attending a Jewish School and had only ever ‘toured’ Israel in her late teens on a ‘Christian Tour’ so this was an experience not to be missed.

It didn’t take much persuading on Stephnie’s behalf to ‘get me to sign on the dotted line’ as they say.  So, we set off on 7th September, our bags packed and the ELAL seats booked.

It’s not a spoiler to say that, on reflection, this trip has been one of the greatest adventures of our lives to date, both individually and as a couple.

I could literally spend hours describing our itinerary but as you’d probably like to return home before nightfall, I have chosen to share stories from the following people who have inspired me and given me hope that this New Year will hopefully be a better one than the twelve months that have preceded it.

If you’re interested in your own ‘virtual tour’ including videos, text, photos and 360^o photos, click this link, you’re in for a treat - https://technionuk.org/trip-album/

Most of the people we met began by describing what had happened to them on 7^th October, nearly two years ago.

Let me start by telling you about Netanel Afek.  He is a young Rabbi and father of five boys ranging from three-and-a-half to eleven.  He has extensive experience in education and training.

He described how he was literally pulled out of his synagogue and immediately joined his Northern Brigade Unit in and around the Gaza envelope protecting the area and preventing further terrorist attacks for two months.

He was then invited by the Army Rabbinate to join a special unit called ‘Yasar Darom 5645’ which undertakes the extremely challenging work of searching and recovering fallen soldiers and murdered hostages in Gaza.  He said that Israel does everything it can to bring them back.  Along with another soldier, he has spent, to date, 850 days in Gaza.  Netanel and his business partner have set up a programme called ‘Up to You’.  This enables hundreds of soldiers and their families, many of whom are bereaved and which also include those of the hostages to tell their stories to the world as part of their recovery therapy.

Then there was Lotem, a 46-year-old reservist and Battalion Commander (overseeing 500 soldiers), who explained the challenges he faces as a civilian having to balance his personal life and job as a business manager in a kibbutz whilst serving 500 days in the IDF in the last two years.

Lotem described, in candid detail, the sacrifices that he and other soldiers are paying (along with their families) to defend the State of Israel.

He told us that he saw Hamas using children to plant mines in a village in the hope that the IDF would shoot them and that they could be used as a PR tool against Israel.  The troops waited until the evening before dismantling the mines.  He followed this by telling us that a family (consisting of elderly members, adults and young children) went into a house to supposedly ‘collect food’ and when the troops entered, they found that the very same people had booby-trapped it.

These are but a few of the incidents that Lotem has had to contend with before he returned home at night to play with his young daughter.

One of the highlights of our trip was a visit to Ein-Al-Asad, a Druze village which happens to be the smallest in Israel with a population of only 920 residents.  One of its inhabitants, Wasim is studying at the Technion, following in the footsteps of his older brother.  He warmly welcomed our group to his village and proudly introduced his entire immediate and extended family to us.

On a balmy evening in the town square, we were introduced to my third ‘person of the year’. Dr. Sawsan Kheir, a psychologist and academic, told us about the horrific situation currently affecting her people in the Syrian Druze villages under the control of Ahmed Al Shaara, the President of Syria.  She explained that to date, 36 of these villages have been entirely eradicated in the province of Sweida in the south of the country with 789 people murdered.  The area has been under siege for two months and they have no access to humanitarian aid.  Over 228,000 people have been displaced and there have been many deaths due to the lack of medical aid.  She described the savage manner in which 100s of her fellow Druze were murdered but I will spare you the stomach-churning details.

Currently, 103 women and over 550 men are being held hostage and suffering all kinds of physical abuse (and this includes children).  No other country, except for Israel, has done anything to assist them and indeed, when she tried to come to their rescue, there was a global outcry.  Sawson is travelling around the world to raise awareness of the persecution of her people.  Sadly, the stories she related were very reminiscent of what we have heard regarding the events of October 7^th in the Gaza envelope.

‘Person #4’ is Jotam Confino, a young Danish Israeli journalist who has been living in Israel for the last seven years and writes for major outlets such as the New York Times and The Telegraph.  Post October 7^th, he has dedicated himself to trying to report the truth regarding the ongoing situation in Gaza.  However, he faces stiff opposition from his peers and editors.  He was particularly disappointed with the decline of journalistic standards since the start of the war.

He explained that there are five news sources currently based in Gaza and these are:

·         The ‘Gaza Health Ministry’ which as we know is under the full control of Hamas

·         NGOs (Non-Governmental Organisations)

·         Gazans

·         Fellow Journalists

·         The IDF

Of these, the first four are dedicated to providing misinformation, exaggerated truths and blatant lies to the media and politicians.  He told us that he believed that the IDF should allow journalists into very limited areas, such as the humanitarian zone and give them the option to risk their lives there without protection.  However, he explained that since Hamas controls every single element of what takes place in Gaza, Journalists reporting accurately would face everything from harassment to death if they chose to challenge their authority.

Jotam admitted that eventually he would have no option but to choose another career as he felt that his mental health was being significantly impacted by continuing on his current career path.

My penultimate person is Dr Eitan Yaakobi, a faculty member of the Computer Science Department at the Technion whose speciality is ‘Information Theory’ which focuses on methods that can be used to measure information.  This is broken down into two specific areas, that of communicating and storing data. 

He predicted that eventually humanity is going to run out of ways to both store and retrieve data, granted that our current technology may not be accessible in a century from now, both in hard format (e.g. Hard Drives and Optical Media such as CD’s, DVDs and Blu Ray disks) and online (such as Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive).  For example, who here now has the ability to play old VHS tapes?

His solution is to use our DNA to store the data, such as computer files, which he says would shrink it into the ‘size of a shoe box’.  Granted the number of cells in our bodies, the storage capacity would be limitless and crucially DNA lasts for millennia and it can be sequenced by currently available technology.

The know-how and ethics behind this idea is beyond the scope of the Drasha but to say that I was blown away by what he was suggesting would be an understatement! Although it sounded like the stuff of science fiction, this is actually taking place now, just not yet on a industrial scale.  This constitutes a paradigm in considering ways to advance the storage of data in the future.

My final ‘person’ is an organisation comprising of more than 5300 employees where Jews, Arabs and Druze work in complete harmony.  This is the Rambam Hospital (officially known as the Rambam Health Care Campus) in Haifa and its creation of the largest fortified underground hospital in the world.

During the Second Lebanon War of 2006, Hezbollah fired more than 100 missiles within a one-kilometre radius of the hospital.  Professor Rafi Beyar then Director and CEO decided that the hospital must never again find itself in such a precarious situation and set in motion the establishment of this truly eye-popping (if you’ll excuse the non-medical term) structure.

They built an underground hospital which also doubles up as a car park (remember first and foremost a hospital) and which is completely self-sufficient with its own generators.

It consists of three floors and was fully functional during Covid and the recent Iran War (including providing a creche for children).  It is 16.5 metres below the ground and 9 metres below sea-level.  Each floor is 20,000 square metres in area and each car parking space is wide enough to accommodate a bed and there is capacity for 2000 beds.

Following October 7^th, it took 36 hours to convert the car park into wards and once Hezbollah started firing rockets, the entire hospital relocated there for a month-and-a-half.  The structure is resistant against conventional and non-conventional rocket attacks and chemical warfare.  There are 24 fortified operating theatres which contain filters to sterilise and cool the air in each room.

These are but six examples of the extraordinary people, Jews and Gentiles whose pride in being Israeli is truly inspirational.

On Rosh Hashanah, Gd judges humanity on what it has achieved over the last year and what it aspires to do over the next.  Chazal, our Rabbis, tell us that before we can receive forgiveness from Hashem, we need to ensure that we have done everything we can in order to be pardoned by our fellow human beings.  The individuals I have cited, along with the staff at the Rambam Hospital, are dedicated to saving, protecting and enhancing the lives of their fellow countrymen and women (and in the case of Rabbi Netanel also respecting the dead), as well as treating neighbouring refugees from Syria.  This extends to finding ways to ensure that our personal, sensitive and meaningful data is stored safely in perpetuity.

The Journalists we met, like Jotam, are working in extremely difficult circumstances to present Israel’s case to the world and inform the outside of what is really transpiring in Gaza.  That they are being ignored, highlights why their voices need to be heard.  The world doesn’t know what is taking place due to their being silenced.

Through their unceasing work, Rabbi Netanel, Lotem, Sawsan, Jotam, Dr Eitan and the staff at Rambam try, and sometimes succeed, to shine a light that can help us navigate through the darkness that seems to be enveloping our lives.  May Gd protect and enable them to continue to do so over the next year and beyond.

There remains one more individual who has influenced me over the last year and I look forward to sharing his story with you on Yom Kippur.

Once again, wishing you and your loved ones a Shanah Tovah Umetukah, a happy, sweet and healthy new year from Stephnie and me.

Our Technion UK Israel Tour - 8. Shalom Israel

They say that all good thing must come to end and sadly, we've reached that stage.

My close childhood friend, Rabbi Shimon picked us up from the Moshav and we made a welcome journey to Stephnie's cousins' restaurant in Pardes Chana for a delicious sabich (look it up!) 

The journey back to Ben Gurion was smooth as was the usual balagan (which wasn't) and here we are sitting on the flight, waiting to fly back.

What a trip! It will take me a while to absorb it all but thank you for accompanying me on this journey. 

Am Yisrael Chai 🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱

Our Technion UK Israel Tour - 7. Shabbat with our Cousins

The trip being over, we have spent a restful Shabbat with Stephnie's lovely family in the Moshav. 

For 25 hours, I went Sephardi and even gave a Dvar Torah in Hebrew at the Synagogue over Seudah Shlishit!

This evening, we went to to a local mall and had some delicious shakes. 

Our Technion UK Israel Tour - 6. The Media and Wine Tasting

All good things have to end eventually and this morning saw us meeting for the last time as a group.

Our guest today was a Middle East journalist who is trying to report the truth in a sea of hostility and shockingly poor journalism on the part of the world's media. 

He feels justifiably disheartened and disappointed (and I'm stating this extremely mildly) by seeing the profession he loves descend into the biased, subjective and poor state that it has placed itself since 7 October.

He told us that anyone who tries to present a viewpoint that is not favourable to the Palestinians is silenced and ignored by their editors and colleagues. It made for a pretty depressing session.

We then completed our written feedback forms and provided our opinions on the week. Highlights and areas to be improved upon (of which there were vurtually none). This has been a fantastic trip and the organisers have set the bar extremely high for any other charity that chooses to run something similar.

It was then up to the top floor, in a lounge looking onto the pool that we had the pleasure of tasting a range of wines from across this country and hearing the extraordinary story of how Rivka and Sam Baum, an English couple with a little child have set up a winery in the Golan.

A wonderful end to a wonderful tour. 

Stephnie and I took a Gett cab to the train station in Arlosoroff and boarded a train to our current location, Moshav Maor, near Pardes Chana, where we are spending Shabbat with her lovely cousins.

Shabbat Shalom to you all! 

Our Technion UK Israel Tour - 5. The IDF and IAI

Our morning began on a sobering note. 

We heard from four young members of the IDF, two men and two women, one of whom was amongst the observers who were watching the Gaza border. Her friends were either killed or taken alive into captivity (and these included the extraordinary Agam Berger).

They are part of the IDF Press Corps whose job it is to communicate with the world's politicians, media and groups like ours and explain the IDF's actions. Not an easy thing to do on any count. 

We the travelled to the nearby Peres Center for Peace and Innovation. This is a pretty impressive museum with some seriously cool features including lifesize Israeli innovators explaining how they and their partners created technology we use such as the Flash/Pen Drive (Dov Moran) and Waze (Uri Levene). Many of these are graduates of The Technion. 

We watched a video in a recreation of Peres' study and even tried a VR Headset which suggested future innovations. 

Some other features made this a very interesting visit. 

Our coach then took us to the offices of the IAI (Israel Aircraft Industries) where we had lunch and had a presentation by a former high ranking IDF officer who presented a history of the organisation. We then visited some hangers, the first of which stores UAVs. What a privilege it was to view these. 

Another coach trip to the beautiful villa of one of our leaders and after some much sought downtime, we met with a middle-aged reservist who explained the challenges of trying to balance his home and professional  life with the hundreds of days he has been spending in Gaza on numerous tours of duty. It was another very difficult conversation. 

The evening ended with some light relief courtesy of a singer who serenaded us with Israeli songs. 

Our Technion UK Israel Tour - 4. Haifa

We are currently on our coach, heading back to Tel Aviv from a Druze village, 14 km from the Lebanese border. We were hosted by the members of the smallest Druze village in Israel. Our host is a graduate of The Technion and we heard from and met both him and his young friends. These are extraordinary people in every sense of the word.

To be honest, we are still trying to absorb the horrific reports about the situation at Suweida concerning the  recent massacre of the Druze by the Syrians and their current precarious state, all of which bears an uncanny resemblance to what happened in Gaza nearly two years ago. 

Our speaker was a former psychologist and current lecturer at the Technion who is a Druze lady with two young daughters.

It is truly barbaric. 

We drove there from the Haifa Dan Panorama where we attended fascinating lectures about technology to create alternatives to meat and an ingenious research project that is investigating the technology of using DNA to store data,  replacing current hardware such as DVDs, Blu-ray and other physical media. Extraordinary stuff.

We travelled there from the Rambam Hospital which was built the world's largest fortified underground car park which is also fully functional hospital ward on three levels and was built precisely for this purpose. This has to be seen to be believed! It was last converted from the former to the latter over the Iran War in June. 

We descended there having been entreated to a demonstration on how the hospital (and its Technion trained graduates) are creating 3D models to train surgeons to carry out complex operations. 

This was preceded by a fascinating talk by Professor Aaron Ciechanover who won the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research on uncovering new ways of understanding the way in which proteins work. 

And I haven't even talked about the fascinating lectures at lunch regarding the use of AI in medical research. 

We travelled to the hospital from the Technion where we watched an incredible presentation regarding its history and the scientific successes its graduates and professors have developed. 

And to think that we awoke this morning and made our way from Tel Aviv. 

Another extraordinary day on this extraordinary trip. 

Our Technion UK Israel Tour - 3. Jerusalem

We explored the breakfast room and discovered at home more delicacies.

Thank you.You really can't beat a hotel Israeli breakfast!

So today, it was off to the Kotel (Western Wall) for a quick visit and I was delighted to be back after three years, albeit too briefly. We went to Mount Herzl and after we visited the great man's tomb, walked to a new area which houses the graves of some of the soldiers killed in Gaza. To say this was heartbreaking is an understatement. On the way out, we talked with a man whose son had been under the command of one of the young reservists who lost their life. Words fail me.

We had lunch at the Herzl Museum near the entrance and from there, we went to a new museum at Latrun which told the stories of Jewish soldiers who fought in World War Two. It's fully interactive and really is a must-see.

Back to the King David Hotel and a talk by a young Rabbi whose job is to perform search and rescue operations in Gaza. What a special individual. He was accompanied by a religious reservist who told us about his experience in Lebanon. It was difficult to keep the tears back.

We then had a fascinating talk by David Horovitz of The Times of Israel. This was following Israel's strike on the Hamas Leadership in Doha. I wish it could have lasted longer but you can imagine how busy he is, granted what's going on.

Dinner at a milky restaurant within sight of the Montefiore Windmill and Mishkenot Sha'ananim here we stayed during my Semicha Trip in 2016. It was a lovely end to the day.

We then made the coach trip back to it hotel.

Another unforgettable day over.

Our Technion UK Israel Tour - 2. The Tour Begins

It's been a long day!

After a delicious breakfast overlooking the beach,we assembled in a conference room and met with the others in the group who were very friendly.

After an introduction by our organisers, Alan and Ida, we heard a fascinating talk by a journalist, Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman who is the Executive Editor of ILTV. She gave us a detailed update on the current situation (and of course, we later heard about the horrific terrorist attack in Ramot ).

We then travelled to Meta's impressive offices and heard about its technological vision and approach to AI. Fascinating.

We had lunch and after some more presentations had some free time to wander around Rothschild Boulevard.

This was followed by a trip to the Moovit Headquarters in Ness Xiona and an impressive presentation by Ziv Kabaretti, the company's Chief Productivity Officer. It's very smart tech.

Back to our hotel (and an emotional reunion with my luggage) to hear an amazing talk by Bigadeer General (Reserves) Professor Jacob Nagel who was one of the originators of The Iron Dome. His talk was captivating and covered areas including the recent war with Iran and his thoughts on the current situation. Totally absorbing.

A delicious milky dinner at a local restaurant capped off an extraordinary day.

Tomorrow...Jerusalem!

Our Technion UK Israel Tour - 1. The Trip

The alarm went off at 04.00 and despite our best attempts to ignore it, we knew that planes don't wait for passengers! The drive to Heathrow was straightforward.

So far so good.

In preparation for the early morning Selichot prayers next week, I was wrapped in my Tallit and tefillin at a shockingly unreasonable hour near to the departure lounge. My fellow Jews (who eventually managed to muster together a minyan) started arriving in dribs and drabs.

Our ELAL flight took off only 23 minutes late which actually isn't too bad and the journey was mercifully uneventful, except for the extraordinary reunion with one of the stewardesses whom we had known as a teenager a decade or so ago. The Jewish World is sooo small!

So far so good.

And then after we landed, it wasn't.

Baggage retrieval conveyer #5 should have delivered our two large pieces of luggage. Unfortunately, it only managed to do half the job. In short, my luggage containing all of my clothes is either still in London or somewhere over Europe!

ELAL were very understanding and gave me a goody bag containing socks, a toothbrush, pyjamas, deodorant etc).

A pleasant but longish taxi ride to our hotel. I had a great conversation with the Israeli Arab driver who proudly showed me his daughter's high school grades. She scored 100% in every exam she had taken.This man is a proud Israeli who has been able to educate his four children and build a good life for himself and his family in Israel. He was really happy to share this with me.  

The Dame the realisation that I actually have nothing to wear which led to a shopping trip around the Dizengoff Centre. I'm now OK for tomorrow at least.

The highlight of the day was seeing one of my oldest friends, A with his wife V, who took us out for dinner. Meat definitely tastes better here.

We also gazed in wonder at the total lunar eclipse and the blood red moon. It's not due for another seven years. 

And there we have it. Day 1 done.

I don't have many clothes but hey, it's amazing to be back here again.

I'm writing wearing my ultra smart ELAL PJs!

And they've sent me a text to inform me that my suitcase will be delivered to our hotel sometimes tomorrow.

Things can only get better, eh?