The Movement for Reform Judaism

My friend Rabbi Jeffrey Newman is very attached to the word ‘synchronicity’. It’s a trendy term I’ve never quite understood but stands somewhere between chance and fate. Synchronicity suggests that events that I would tend to regard as mere coincidences are a little bit more than that.

Some time last year, my assistant Philippa said to me that she’d fixed the date for the Shabbaton at Milton Keynes — May 13^th. “May 13^th?”, I said, “I can’t do that. It’s Shabbat Cup Final”. “So?”, said Philippa, who bears the brunt of trying to control my diary. “So”, I said — not wanting to admit to a faith undiminished by a quarter of a century of shattered hopes — “it’s bound to affect numbers. There would be people who felt torn between the shul and the match”. With that subtle gesture that indicates that the boss is the boss but the boss is an idiot, Philippa went back to the drawing board and that’s how today was settled on.

As I was stationary in the road works on the M1 last Sunday evening on the way back from Villa Park, I smirked as the exit for Milton Keynes reminded me of that incident. What foresight. What synchronicity.

On Monday, I made my point to Philippa with characteristic good grace and subtlety and then turned to an email from Shulamit, setting out the three scroll readings for today. It suddenly dawned on me for the first time what today is in the Jewish calendar. It’s the Shabbat, the Sabbath, between Yom Ha’Shoah, Holocaust Memorial Day and Yom Ha’Atzmaut, the celebration of Israel’s independence. I went cold. Scenes from Fawlty Towers — “Don’t mention the War” — flashed before my eyes. Could there be a more tactless choice of date to hold a Shabbaton devoted to interfaith and, in particular, Jewish/Christian/Muslim relations, than today. Was this Philippa’s revenge? Was this the reverse of synchronicity?

And then I realised that it isn’t the reverse of synchronicity at all but true synchronicity — whatever the word means. For there could be no Shabbat better suited to demanding that we face up to the real issues that confront the three Abrahamic faiths at the beginning of the 21^st century than this one. Those two words, ‘Holocaust’ and ‘Israel’, take us far beyond polite cups of tea to the issues which define why the three siblings, Judaism, Christianity and Islam constitute a painfully dysfunctional family from whose dysfunctionality humanity suffers every day.

Before I do mention the War — both of them — a little note of preface. It’s highly significant that the Jewish calendar, which is largely reflective of events long, long ago in history — the Exodus from Egypt, the Maccabees and the Greeks — already includes the Shoah and Atzmaut, which are events of our own lifetime for the more mature people here. They’re already seen as part of the Jewish story, as part of our religious history — integral to Judaism and its theology rather than just external political events. What precisely they mean in religious terms — that’s one of the great contemporary questions.

But now to the Holocaust, the Shoah. There is no doubt that the Shoah, the murder of six million Jews in Europe, encapsulates everything that is disastrous in the relationship between Jews and Christians. That isn’t to say that the death camps were planned and manned by the Church, which is clearly not the case. It’s not to say that there weren’t Christians who were tested by the Holocaust and who passed the test. Of course there were. But the Nazis fed on and were sustained by two millennia of sibling rivalry, of triumphalism and supercessionism, of prejudice and stereotyping which meant that even in the very heartland of Western civilisation and culture, barbarity and hatred could rule.

Two years ago, I might not have given this sermon, certainly not in this blunt and direct form. After all, there have been many indications of significant progress over the last sixty years. Only a few months ago, we were celebrating the anniversary of Nostra Aetate, that great statement of the Catholic Church addressing the past and moving the relationship between Catholics and Jews to a new and far better level. In this country, the Council of Christians and Jews — to which my friend Eric Allen has made such a distinguished contribution — and sixty years of solid grass roots work have done so much to reconcile the first two children of Abraham.

But rising tensions in the world have begun to test those newly forged relationships. I recall a study that was undertaken of the Council of Christians and Jews recently which revealed a tendency for Christians to think that issues anti-Semitism have been largely resolved and it’s now time to move on to the more pressing issues of Christian Muslim relations. Whereas Jews found it hard to see that any progress had been made at all and wondered why CCJ had not, in sixty years, been able to eradicate 1900 years of tension.

And then came the apparently obscure and trivial issue of Caterpillar and the Church’s investments in an American company that sells bulldozers to Israel and we were back to national headlines with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks at odds and dark mutterings about anti-Semitism in the Church and Jewish paranoia.

What I think it revealed and why I’m speaking as I am today is that a great deal has been achieved — much misunderstanding has been corrected, a lot of responsibility for the past has been accepted, worthwhile friendships and cooperation formed. We’re not as far back down the road as some feared but we’re not as far along it as we might have hoped.

In fact, I’d define the position that we’ve reached as follows. There is an enigmatic exchange to be found in Hasidic literature. It goes like this: “Do you love me?” “Yes”. “Do you know what causes me pain?” “No”. “Then you don’t really love me”. We’ve reached a decisive and challenging point on our journey of reconciliation. The point at which we have to take that decisive step and ask what it is that causes the other pain, which is a way of saying, “What does it feel like to stand in the shoes of the other?”.

We’re an odd people, we Jews — prickly, scarred, full of angst, desperately few in number, yet glorious and not quite sure what to make of our glory, frustrated and wonderful at making chicken soup. Christians who wish to take the process of sibling reconciliation forward have now to try to see the world from a Jewish perspective. And Jews, so concerned about setting the record straight and defending themselves and so suspicious of Christians and Christianity, have to make the novel — for us - attempt to see the world through Christian eyes and feel Christian pain as well as Jewish pain. We need to make the effort of imagination and empathy to stand in the shoes of the other. Only then can we begin to talk about the love that ought to exist between brothers and sisters.

Last week was Yom Ha’Shoah and next week is Yom Ha’Atzmaut, Israel Independence Day. The Jewish religious calendar has connected the two seismic 20^th century events which are so formative in the journey of the Jewish people and in Judaism. But what the connection is between the two days, the two commemorations, the two historical events is very far from clear and I for one am deeply suspicious of all of the facile attempts to make the connection. But what is clear is that if the Shoah represents the consummation of the Jewish-Christian tragedy, Yom Ha’Atzmaut forces us to confront the unfolding tragedy of the disintegration in relations between Judaism and Islam.

Eric and I have a very good friend, and dialogue partner of more than ten years standing, a Muslim academic called Ataullah Siddiqui. We were together a couple of weeks ago at the large and hospitable Islamic Centre at Markfield near Leicester. I was very much affected by a passage in our dialogue.

Ataullah was talking about an extended visit he’d just paid to India and he was horrified at a particular aspect of change. A decade ago there was no anti-Semitism in India. Anti-Semitism is essentially a function of Christian society. Jews lived in India for centuries without experiencing any kind of persecution.

By the way, the Jewish experience throughout the Muslim world has been a largely positive one. Yes, we were never granted equal status, yes there were episodes of violence even in the golden age of Muslim-Jewish relations in Spain, yes Jews in the Ottoman Empire suffered disabilities. But I mention the Ottoman Empire because many Jews left Christian Europe for the Ottoman Empire in the 15^th and 16^th centuries because life was much more tolerable there and remember that the Ottoman Empire once covered huge swathes of Europe, Hungary, Austria, the Balkans — a legacy that we too often ignore and forget. The Jewish experience of Islam has a very positive dimension.

But back to Ataullah Siddiqui and the change he witnessed in India. Ten years ago, he said, Jews were Jews, Israel was Israel and America was America. Only weeks ago, he witnessed mass demonstrations against the Danish cartoons, demonstrations which manifested as protests against and hatred for the Zionist American entity and the Jews. He challenged people and not one had ever met a Jew, they only knew that the Jews are responsible for all the problems of the world. Ataullah was shocked.

Ataullah added that Muslims in Europe are part of the modern western world whether they like it or not and that they’ve contributed significantly to the culture of the modern western world. He was clear that the overwhelming majority of European Muslims want exactly the same things for themselves and their families that Jews and Christians want. In fact, the history of Jews and Muslims in England and the nature of the two faiths constantly remind him and me of just how much Jews and Muslims share.

I asked Ataullah the dread question about Israel and he replied that of course Israel has the right to exist, a right granted by the United Nations in 1948. The only issue, he said, are the borders.

And yet, we all resonate with and shudder at Ataullah’s observations about the change in India over the last decade. The desperate and intractable problem of Israel Palestine has been exported world wide, bringing about the anomaly of anti-Semitism between Semites, a mythology incidentally learned from Christian communities in the Middle East in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. It has brought about a terrible, terrible deterioration in the relationship between Jews and Muslims at a time when we have never needed each other more and could benefit so much from common history and each other’s experiences. But we mustn’t despair, there is much to do.

By and large I’m not very impressed with religious leaders who, on the national and international stages, inevitably become politicians. I think that they offer very little hope. The real hope rests with ordinary Jews, Christians and Muslims, who as Ataullah said, are all part of western society and want pretty much the same things for themselves and their children. What hope there is, rests with places like Milton Keynes and with people like the Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Bahais, who do not have to play politics, or slavishly follow party lines or bow to extremist threats.

Which is why, today, is so full of synchronicity — whatever it may mean! For it’s enabled us to move beyond politeness and platitudes to the real issues which trouble us all, issues so acutely highlighted by Yom HaShoah this week past and Yom Ha’atzmaut this coming week. Children of Abraham — we share so much, we fight so disastrously. We need individual by individual, family by family, local community by community to rediscover that what we share is everything and what divides us only destroys us all. We must pray together, eat together and open our hearts to each other — as we are today."

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