The Movement for Reform Judaism

I've never been a great fan of Ballack and when he joined Chelsea, it just confirmed my prejudices. 

His predecessor, who gave his name to this week's sidrah (Torah portion), was a thorough no good and his side-kick, Balaam makes me nervous as well.  I don't know how you react to gentiles saying extremely nice things about Jews.  I start feeling uneasy.  But then I'm responsible for The Sternberg Centre in Finchley, the largest Jewish complex in the country and I freely admit, like most Jews, to having a large complex.  

In fact, Balaam doesn't just say nice things about us once but four times.  The best known is that ‘hymn of praise' which includes Ma tovu ohalecha Ya'akov, How good are your homes, Jacob, your residential properties, Israel.  I preached about that at the Conference before last and it seems to me that there's a phrase in another of Balaam's utterances which is also very interesting and worthy of consideration today.

In Numbers Chapter 23, Balaam, sent by Balak to curse us, delivers another cliff-top endorsement: ‘Look at them.  There are so many.  They look so impressive. I can't curse them.  May I die the death of the upright.  May my fate be like theirs'.  But he also says:  Hen-am l'vadad yishkon, u'vagoyim lo yitchashav.  The standard translation is: "[Camped down] there is a people that dwells apart, not reckoned among the nations."  Which is not an obvious compliment, certainly not of the same order as Ma tovu, what a fine property portfolio you have.

"A people that dwells apart, not reckoned amongst the nations". 

Interestingly, Gunther Plaut - whose translation that is - says in his Torah commentary that his own translation isn't correct¹.  That struck me as a trifle bizarre, so I went to the last word in contemporary scholarship on Numbers, to a translation and analysis by an American professor called Baruch A Levine² who, judging by his name, may just be of Jewish origins.  Levine discusses what the first phrase - "A people that dwells apart" - might mean and then says of the second phrase: "The second hemistich of verse 9, in particular, is one of the most elusive in all of Scripture".  I take that to mean that the second half of Numbers Chapter 23, Verse 9 is very difficult to understand.  But it's not beyond Professor Levine, who argues that the whole verse has Balaam looking down on the encampment, observing the Children of Israel arrayed as far as the eye can see, unit by unit and tribe by tribe, and he sees a self-sufficient fighting force, a force which needs no alliances with Balak or anyone else to conquer the Promised Land.  Levine proposes the translation: "It is truly a people encamped apart, and unallied with other nations."

Plaut admits that something like that is the historical meaning of the verse but he says that's not how it's been understood over the last 2,000 years and therefore persists with: "A people that dwells apart, not reckoned among the nations".

How has it been understood over the last 2,000 years, I asked myself and got out my Rashi³, Ibn Ezra⁴ and Nachmanides.  I've a particular affection for Nachmanides which has absolutely nothing to do with anything that he ever wrote.  Many years ago, when I was a young congregational rabbi, I led summer study weeks for children of the North West Surrey Synagogue.  I was assisted by an even younger man called Jonathan Black who provided us with seemingly banal songs which actually stayed in the memory long after the more earnest details of the activities that I had designed had vanished.  I can still hear him strumming his guitar and singing "Maimonides, Nachmanides, were two great Jewish men.  They were stars of the Golden Age⁵, they'll never live again".

In fact, Nachmanides (Moses ben Nachman or Ramban) lived in Christian as opposed to Muslim Spain in the 13^th century and was a great mate of King James I of Aragon.  I'm not sure quite how much of a mate King James actually was because in the year 1263 James set Nachmanides up to have a public debate or disputation with a Jewish convert to Christianity called Pablo Christiani.  Nachmanides won - a remarkable achievement since victories in Barcelona even then were as rare as hen's teeth - Judaism and its doctrines held their own and James even gave Nachmanides a nice pressy for having done so well.  But the whole thing was a put up job by the Dominicans and Franciscans and poor old Nachmanides, in his late 60s, was forced in the end to quit Barcelona and fled first to Jerusalem and then to Acre⁶.  There, in his 70s, he completed his commentary on the Torah including the following comment on Numbers Chapter 23, Verse 9.  Nachmanides says:  "The meaning of Balaam's words is that just as I see Israel now dwelling alone [and here he quotes a text from Deuteronomy, 33:28] ‘so will Israel forever dwell in safety, the fountain of Jacob alone' ... for no nation will ever prevail over Israel and Israel will never become assimilated to the nations"⁷.

No nation will ever prevail over the Jewish people and the Jewish people will never become assimilated to any other people.  "Assimilated" is the translation adopted by Nachmanides expert Charles Chavel⁸.  The Hebrew is ‘sheyitpol' - covered over by, obscured by, absorbed by, an appendage to.

As so often happens with bible commentators, Nachmanides was reflecting his own experience.  Of living as part of a Jewish minority in Christian Catalonia; of living in Jerusalem shortly after it had been sacked by the Vandals; of living as part of a small Jewish community in Acre.  It isn't a proto-Zionist⁹ statement and it's not a statement of nationalist independence.  We are a people who want to dwell alone, he's saying, in the sense of being secure and safe from attack; we are a people who want to avoid being assimilated, absorbed by the other nations of the world amongst whom we live.  That's how Nachmanides understands Balaam's awestruck words, the prophecy he would have liked for his times even if it wasn't the prophecy that Balaam actually offered. 

Security and the right to be distinctively ourselves wherever we live.

The Guardian has a website called Comment is free and numbers of people have blogsites within Comment is free.  Including me¹⁰.  A few weeks ago, the editor of Comment is free emailed me and asked me to blog about the 350^th anniversary of the resettlement of the Jews in England.  I decided to ask the question:  "Has Jewish life in Britain over the last 350 years been good for Britain and has it been good for us Jews?"  This is part of what I posted:

There are currently 24 Jewish Privy Councillors (Peter Goldsmith QC, Michael Howard QC, Harry Woolf QC), 8 Hereditary Peers (4^th Baron Rothschild), 44 Life Peers (Michael Levy, Julia Neuberger, Robert Winston), 22 Members of Parliament (Margaret Hodge, Oliver Letwin), 43 Fellows of the Royal Society (Nobel Prize Winner Aaron Klug, Leo Kornberg), 26 Fellows of the British Academy (Eric Hobsbawm, Claus Moser, George Steiner), 5 OMs (Anthony Caro, Tom Stoppard) and 4 Companions of Honour (Lucian Freud, Harold Pinter).  If we throw in a spot of history, 6 Jews have been awarded the Victoria Cross and industrial and retail names which owe their origins, success or survival to Jews have included Marks & Spencer, Montague Burton, Granada, ICI, GUS, Amstrad, Dixons, Halfords, Grand Metropolitan Hotels, GEC, Tesco and Shell¹¹.

I went on to suggest that there are two possible views that you could take of that information.  One, that Britain really has benefited from its tiny - never more than 1% of the population - Jewish community.  Or two, that it only goes to prove that Jews take over wherever they go.  The people who respond to my Guardian blog entries are, by and large, a pretty eclectic lot.  But no one took the bait. 

We're not a race, we're a people who are constantly welcoming newcomers

A few days later I was sent a piece by Charles Moore, a former editor of the Daily Telegraph headed, "How Cromwell Gave us Joan Collins and Other Luminaries".  Mr Moore listed Benjamin Disraeli, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Yehudi Menuhin, Peter Sellers, Nigela Lawson, Sid James, Ali G, Max Perutz, Ernst Chain, Carl Popper, Isaiah Berlin, Sir Philip Green, Sterling Moss, Jacob Epstein, Rachel Weisz (niece of Reform Movement President Sir Sigmund Sternberg by the way) and many more.  He then said, "I have named individual Jews deliberately because, though it is always dangerous to generalise, even favourably, about race, it does seem to my gentile eyes that there is more prodigious ability and energy per Jew than per the rest of us".

I cringed at that.  We're not a race, we're a people who are constantly welcoming newcomers.  Actually - back to the opening lines of this sermon - because I don't myself understand what that extraordinary litany of names signifies, what the unbelievable list of Jewish Nobel Prize Winners in the Jewish Year Book indicates and such is my Jewish complexity and insecurity, I can't cope with that kind of gentile praise. 

Back to my blogsite questions: Has it been good for Britain, 350 years of Jews great and ordinary (if ordinary Jew is not an oxymoron)?  Of course it has.  Which is, of course, not to suggest the absence of unsuccessful Jews, anti-social Jews, objectionable Jews and downright shameful Jews.  In a previous incarnation I was Chaplain to a Jewish Approved School and later visited the graduates in a range of penal institutions!¹²  Of course we have our fair share of the ordinary and the worse.  But net contributors?  I don't think most people would argue.

But what about us?  Has it been good for us?  Back to Balaam and Nachmanides:  secure and safe from attack, unassimilated, unabsorbed by the people around us, still distinctively ourselves.

Secure and safe from attack.  In 350 years we've never been subjected to the kinds of horrendous assault, the murderous violence to which many other Jewish communities, particularly in Europe, have been subjected.  We've endured prejudice and attacks - even today there is no other minority community in Britain that has to maintain the level of security that we do.  But we have rolled back disabilities, achieved virtually equal status and rights (I'm not sure if Prince William is allowed to marry a Jewish Princess or not), found prosperity and won every opportunity to live our Jewish faith and Jewish lives as we choose.  Nachmanides would certainly observe that no one has prevailed over us and that we are living in safety certainly as compared with the past.  But Nachmanides went on to say that we seek to remain ‘unassimilated' to the nations - unabsorbed by the people around us, still distinctively ourselves.

And that's the real nub of the question ‘Has 350 years of life in Britain been good for us Jews?'. 

There have never been that many of us in Britain - as I said before, we've never exceeded 1% of the population.  In absolute numbers we peaked around 1950 at 390,000 and according to the 2001 Census we are now 267,000 out of a population of 60 million.  Charles Moore, in his Telegraph article says the key to Jewish success has been our acceptance of civil power and secular law (dina d'malkhuta dina, the law of the country is the law¹³) and our refusal to try to impose our religious beliefs on British society.  It's an explicit dig at Muslims.  But by eschewing, on the one hand, a supremacist agenda and also by rejecting, on the other hand, the model of dwelling alone in the sense of seeking to live separate lives; by seeking integration, living as part of, we have exposed ourselves to the allure of an increasingly secular society with a long track record, up until the last 50 years, of assimilating, of absorbing minorities without trace¹⁴.

Most British Jews have integrated fully into British society but the line between integration - living fully within or, as I would prefer it, living in creative maladjustment with, society¹⁵ - and assimilation is a perilous one.  Those on the margins of our tiny community are even more vulnerable than those who are physically, culturally, socially or emotionally at the centre.

Some of the postings on my blogsite were extremely interesting.  There was a wistful, plaintive one from a Muslim saying that he wished his community could become as integrated as the Jewish community. 

There was a posting from an immigrant of unstated background saying that she had absolutely no wish whatsoever to pass on her cultural background to her children and she couldn't understand why anyone would.

And there was a posting from somebody who said I had made some interesting points but it was clear that integration was better than separation because, even if integration led to assimilation and absorption and loss without trace, it was the individual's decision.

With the latter point I agree but the implied shoulder shrug is not one I can make. 

I don't know whether you recognise the phenomenon in yourself but there are passages from books and texts which have a huge hold on me, which speak to me and to which I return again and again.  One such text is a piece from a great early compilation of comments and commentaries on biblical verses called midrash Rabbah¹⁶.  Commenting on the first verse of Genesis Chapter 11, the point at which Abram enters the story of humankind, the point at which Abram is told to leave the family home in Haran¹⁷ and go on the journey that is the beginning of the Jewish story, there's a brief comment which really resonates with me.  ‘Before Abraham (and Sarah) got their call, when they were still in Haran, what was Abraham like?', asks the Midrash.  ‘He was like a bottle of perfume with a very tightly fitting, screw-top lid stood in the corner of the room.  Once he set off on his Jewish journey, once he got out there as a Jew amongst the people of the world, the lid was off and the perfume wafted out'¹⁸. 

That's why, for me, aloneness meaning separation, living parallel lives¹⁹ would never be an option even if it were the only sure route to Jewish survival.  And also why, for me, Jewish survival is a driving imperative - because being a Jew is worthwhile, even if it's smelly!.

It occurred to me recently that perfume, especially good perfume, is extremely complex, made up of lots of different ingredients which each contribute in their own particular way to the overall effect.  Back to the philosophers and scientists, the writers and the painters, the musicians and the business people, the politicians and the shop keepers, the heroes and the peacemakers, the philanthropists and the therapists, the comedians, the actresses, the doctors - and even the lawyers - whom Charles Moore and I listed.  The great and the good and the ordinary people.  Those who make dramatic contributions and those whose contribution is known only to their families and their friends.  Those who maintain Judaism as a religion and those who struggle, angst, can barely manage questions let alone answers.  Those who find their Jewish identity meaningful in terms of family history and family life.  Those who understand Judaism as above all an ethical system and a prophetic quest for social justice.  Those who've done well and now wish to give back.  Those who express their Jewishness through commitment to Jewish culture.  Those who feel most deeply at home amongst Jews and those who seek to make common cause with those of other faiths.  Those who want to serve God, those who want to change the world or repair it²⁰ and those who are content to try to live their lives as menschen²¹.  There are many, many ways of being Jewish and of finding meaning and purpose in Jewish identity.  Yet they are all components of Judaism and without each and every one, not only would the Jewish world be poorer but so would the society in which we live.  It's not to claim superiority to say that we have something of worth to contribute which, as my grandmother would have said, schmeks-a-pleasure.  Only to read the past and the present with honesty.

There's a famous story that the late Rabbi Hugo Gryn used to tell against himself.  A congregant was leaving West London Synagogue early when she bumped into a congregant arriving very late.   The latecomer said anxiously, ‘Has Rabbi Gryn finished his sermon?' ‘Yes' came the reply ‘but he's still speaking'.

I haven't got very much more to say but I haven't quite finished my sermon either.  Good for society.  Good for our community.  It isn't quite enough. 

The Parent says to the child: ‘I mean you well.  I wish you well.  I will protect you as far as I am able.  I will guide you as far as I can.  But it's up to you to take up the challenge of the world and do your best.  Take up your own mysterious destiny. Take up your life and find in it meaning and purpose. Take up the cause of acting for the good.' 

Here we are, encamped in Gary Lineker country, women and men, children and adults, old and young, gay and straight, born Jews and Jews by choice, believers and agnostics, community leaders and those less involved, lovers of Jewish learning and practical volunteers, ethical and social activists and lovers of Jewish culture, some many of those things and some (almost) none at all. 

There, up on the cliff, stand Balaam and Charles Moore.  Telling us that we've got something worthwhile, that we are of value.  I cringe at the terms in which they put it but they're not wrong.  Have faith.  Each Jewish journey, each life, each destiny, each struggle for meaning and purpose, each act of pursuing the good is worthwhile.

Rabbi Tony Bayfield, June 2006

Footnotes

These are not meant to be the kind of scholarly footnotes that people add to lectures and articles.  They are meant as a spot of signposting to help people reading this written version of an extended sermon.

^1. The Plaut commentary was published by the American Reform Movement in 1981 but, mysteriously, hasn't yet replaced the older, orthodox Hertz in many of our congregations.  Maybe Plaut, being only the 2^nd largest, needs to try harder!

^2. The Levine volume is part of the contemporary, scholarly Anchor Bible series.

^3. Rashi was a French bible commentator and scholar who lived in Troyes at the end of the 11^th century.  He was also a wine merchant.  I have always thought that would have been a nice profession to combine with my rabbinate.

^4. Abraham Ibn Ezra was a 12^th century. Spanish poet, philosopher, physician and bible commentator.

^5. Golden Age is the name given to the period during which Jews lived and flourished in Spain under Muslim rule - a period which came to an end with the Christian re-conquest led by Charlton Heston aka El Cid.

^6. Now Akko, in the north of Israel on the coast and famous for its shell fish.

^7. It's interesting to see how Nachmanides brings in the quotation from Deuteronomy where the word ‘alone' also appears in parallel to the word ‘safety', thereby allowing him to interpret ‘alone' in Numbers 23:9 as meaning ‘safely' or ‘securely'.

^8. In Charles Chavel's definitive translation of Nachmanides commentary on the Torah (5 volumes).

^9. It would be a complete misunderstanding to read Nachmanides as a 12^th century Zionist saying we need a land of our own.

^10. If you Google Commentisfree you can find my blog site and the article to which I am referring.

^11. The information all comes from the 2006 Jewish Year Book.  The information about ‘Jewish businesses' comes from an essay called British Jews: Their Biographical Record by Michael Jolles ppXIII-XV.

^12. The Jewish Approved School was called Hayes Industrial School, later Finart House School.  Its most famous old boy was Two Gun Cohen who became Sun Yat-sen's bodyguard.

^13. This is a famous principle of Jewish law.  It is in Aramaic, the language of the 3^rd century Babylonian rabbi Samuel.  It is why, for instance, a rabbi will not officiate at a wedding if the couple are not already civilly married unless the chuppah is also a civil ceremony (with a marriage secretary from the synagogue present).

^14. A classic example is the Huguenots, the French Catholics who fled to this country in the 18^th century.  They were welcomed, absorbed, assimilated so that all that is left are some telltale surnames and a chapel in the East End of London which later became a synagogue and is now a mosque.

^15. The phrase creative maladjustment is one I wish I had coined, but didn't.  We owe it to Eugene Borowitz , the greatest Reform theologian of our time (he teaches at the Hebrew Union College in New York).  What it means is that we are fully integrated into society yet still give primacy to the Jewish prophetic tradition of working for social justice, exposing its absence and challenging the abuse of power.

^16. Midrash Rabbah, the Great Midrash, is the best known of all the collections of midrashim, commentary or exegesis of the Bible, verse by verse.  Its contents go back as far as the first and second centuries of the Common Era.

^17. Genesis Chapter 11.  Lech lecha ...

^18. Midrash Rabbah Bereshit 39:2.

^19. This is the current vogue phrase which goes back to the riots in Burnley and other places and to the report into them which warned of the danger of communities not connecting with each other but living separate, parallel lives.

^20. We Jews talk about repairing the world (Lionel Blue uses the phrase, ‘patching it up').  The origins of the phrase lie in Jewish mysticism (Lurianic Kabbalah) with the concept of the creation of the world and broken vessels which contained the Divine light - the Hebrew is tikkun or Tikkun olam.

^21. Yiddish.  The German means ‘men' as in Schiller's Ode to Joy.  The Yiddish means something very powerful but hard to express in English.  A mensch is a person who behaves with decency, integrity and kindness - someone who ‘pursues the good' by embodying it in their own personality and behaviour.

Nachmanides commentary on Numbers Chapter 23 Verse 9

רמבן במדבר פרק כג פסוק ט

(ט) כי מראש צורים אראנו. הטעם בעבור שהעלהו במות בעל לראותו אמר מראש צורים ומן הגבעות אני מביט ורואה אותו, כי ישכון לבדו ואין עמו גוי אחר שיחשב הוא אליו, כמו שיתקבצו עמים רבים ואומות שונות להיות מחנה אחת, אבל אלו כולם תורה אחת ומשפט אחד להם, וגוי אחד הם, וישכון בדד בשם יעקב וישראל, ועל כן הזכיר פסוק זארה לי יעקב וזועמה ישראל, כי הזכיר להם שמם הנכבד ושמות אבותם לאמר שהם עם לבדד, ושמות נאות להם מאבותם, כי בלק לא היה מזכיר לו שם ישראל, רק אמר לעיל כב העם יצא ממצרים, כמתנכר בהם שלא ידע אותם שהיה כפוי טובת אביהם. והכוונה לומר כי כאשר אני רואה אותו עתה שוכן לבדו, כן ישכון לעולמים, בטח בדד עין יעקב, והוא יהיה לראש לעולם ואין אומה שתתגבר עליו, ולא שיטפל הוא אליהם:

  Join the Debate - Questions You May Like  to Consider

Here are some questions that I hope the sermon asks.  Please comment on whichever questions you like, and I hope, engage with other people's responses as well as my question.

1.  How do you feel about fulsome public praise of Jews by Gentiles?  What do you think your feelings say about yourself as a Jew?

2. How do you account for the apparent over-representation of Jews amongst contributors to (Western) thought, culture and society?  What do you make of the Moses - Jesus - Marx - Freud - Einstein - Rachel Stevens sextet?

3.  The sermon argues the case against seeking separation.  Does that have any relevance to Israel, its separation fence and the role it sees for itself in the Middle East?

4.  "Those on the margins of our tiny community are even more vulnerable than those who are physically, culturally, socially or emotionally at the centre".  What does this mean to you?

5.  The penultimate paragraph reads as follows:  The Parent says to the child: ‘I mean you well.  I wish you well.  I will protect you as far as I am able.  I will guide you as far as I can.  But it's up to you to take up the challenge of the world and do your best.  Take up your own mysterious destiny. Take up your life and find in it meaning and purpose. Take up the cause of acting for the good.'   What does that mean to you?

6.  The last word of the sermon is ‘worthwhile'.  For whom?

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (1)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

"Do not add or subtract any commandments from Torah"
written by a guest , September 02, 2006

Appreciate this web site for interesting
idea exchanges. Question: The above mitzvah
appears at least twice in the Torah,however,Reform Judaism (CCAR) has
often taught Jews may or should disregard
many commandments including any related to
the Jerusalem Temple and even Kashrut has
been questioned and recently accepting
homosexuality among Rabbis and members???
Please explain, assuming the Torah is
G-d given or G-d inspired the basis of
such subtractions. Thank you and La Shana
Tova to all. One people/One G-d/One Torah/
One Israel!
Michael Eisenkraft
Mtrust18@aol.com