Rosh Hashana Sermon, 5768

by Rabbi Andrew Goldstein

One of the most popular books published this year includes the claim “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction:  jealous and proud of it, a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynist, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” 

Many of you will have recognised the rantings of Richard Dawkins in “The God Delusion” and, in truth, many of his adjectives of scorn could be aimed at the Torah portion we have just read.  Taken out of context Abraham looks either simple or uncaring, God cruel and malevolent.  A stream of other books this year took up Dawkins gospel:  “The Atheist Manifesto” by Michael Onfray, “God is not Great” by Christopher Hitchens, “Against Religion” by Tamas Pataki.  The opening of the floodgates of such anti-religious fervour is partly due to the rise of fundamentalism across the globe.  Yet the crusade of authors mentioned seems to me so often as unreasonable as the religions and religious tenets they condemn.

One commentator, Barney Zwartz, I read whilst in Australia in July put it this way: “One might easily picture Dawkins as a puritanical preacher, prowling and peering into living rooms to make sure no one is up to sin, such as teaching religious faith to their children.  That’s ‘child abuse’.  Dawkins claims:  if my book works as I intend it, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down.”

I must say such quotes remind me of the attempts in communist states to forbid religious teaching and membership.  Indeed others claim that this new militant atheism is brought about by the fact that religious belief seems to be remarkable persistent, belief in God just will not die, and religious adherence & belief is on the increase in the world, except in Western Europe, most notably Great Britain, and its tempting to ask if the abandonment of traditional religion in this country has made for a more happy, just, fair, secure society;  I know what I think.

Look, there is no doubt great evil has been done in the name of religious belief.  We could join Dawkins in condemning the Taliban and other Muslim groups who believe it their religious duty to impose Sharia law and Koranic thinking not just on Afghanistan or Israel, but Britain and the whole world.  The born again Christian fundamentalists who can justify from their reading of scripture the hounding out and even murder of a doctor who performs legal abortions.  The Jewish settlers on the West Bank so convinced that God chose them and gave them divine right to live on that land…and so on.  But it’s not difficult to also identify the Taliban as mere bloodthirsty power mad thugs, the second as urban fascists and the West Bank settlers as selfish middle class bigots who want a better standard of living despite the cost to the general public or the local inhabitants.   The claims of all three fundamentalists are just not shared by the majority of religious believers.

You could go on to join the Dawkins team in quite rightly pointing out the endless wars and mass persecutions provoked by religious zealotry  for hundreds of years now…yes and intra-religious battles  over different understandings of what the same God both sides believe in actually said to them.  And often I do hear the claim that religion is the cause of all the suffering in the world.   But then:  Stalin is said to have killed 42 million people and it certainly was not in the name of any god but himself.  Hitler, by comparison a minor killer; Pol Pot, Genghis Khan: don’t blame religion as the source of all evil; it really is too simplistic a charge.

Of course it’s no wonder I stand up for religion:  it’s been my chosen profession these past 42 years.  On my first Rosh Hashanah with this congregation (held I believe in West House, Pinner) I can’t recall if I read the Torah, but I suppose I did, though I know it was not the Akedah, the binding of Isaac, because this mornings reading was considered by the early Liberal Jews to be too problematic, too primitive:  how could God ask a father to sacrifice his son etc.   But over the years it has become one of my favourite religious texts, and I’ve collected an anthology of interpretations on it.  You see I see it as one of the first religious challenges the founders of our tribe made in the development of post primitive religion.  Abraham setting out to do what his society expected a father to do:  sacrifice to the gods his most precious possession, his first born son.  Yet on the way or at the last moment realising he could not believe in a God who demanded such a thing and so he threw away the knife, and made a fundamental statement that the God he was following demanded not death, but life.  The preservation of life the prime demand of his God, the core value of the religion that would eventually be developed in his, Abraham’s name.   And if Professor Dawkins would accept my invitation to attend High Holyday services with us at NPLS, I would tell him:  it doesn’t matter if my interpretation is the standard Jewish interpretation or not, whether God ever ordered Abraham to set out or the angel to drop the knife, the whole point is, we read the ancient story, its part of our tradition and it begs us to seek out the good and inspiring, reject or wrestle with the harmful ways of seeing the story.  Seek life and rejoice that Isaac lives. And you see Professor if you will only stay around & open your eyes and your imagination, let the story lead you to ask:  “and what about Isaac?”  Surely the poor boy must have been damaged by his experience…nearly killed by his own father.  And let that question lead you to ask:  what harm do we do to our own children…yes in our very own day.  Religion should be courageous and ask: what sort of society are we putting up with in Britain where children shoot or stab other children, and where parental neglect is not only in poor areas, but well off homes as well.   And what about Sarah?   Her absence from the story makes us ponder the position of women in society.  And the 2 servants left behind with the donkey ask why do we allow class distinction?  And we could even learn from the ram and let its fate make us question the sad role the animal kingdom plays in the dining room of our lives.  You see, such questioning is really the stuff of real religion.  And embarking on the religious journey need not be stultifying and destructive, for most it can be challenging and exciting and life enhancing.  We can ever seek new lessons from and play out all the parts in the drama of our religious texts.

My favourite Modern Hebrew poet Yehudah Amichai puts it this way:

“Anyone who rises early in the morning is on his own.

he gets himself over to the altar –

he is Abraham,

he is Isaac, he’s the donkey, the fire,

the knife, the angel, he’s the ram, he is God

And I’d say to Prof. Dawkins:  come back on Yom Kippur.  And you will hear other stories that if you open your heart and mind, without prejudice, will make you think. Listen to the Torah portion that will tell us we have free will.  We are not robots, God’s playthings doing what we are told to do, no we have free will and can choose to do good or evil, but the very purpose of our religion is to try & persuade us to do the good.  And then you will hear our Prophet Isaiah’s description of what God wants of us and in the afternoon Leviticus makes it clear: care for the oppressed, the lonely, the poor, the disabled, love of neighbour, a just society; it goes on.  And Jonah will teach us to care even about the welfare of foreign nations, even our enemies.  And all this in the name of a caring, loving, compassionate God, angry only when we make war and cause pain and suffering to our fellow human beings.

And if God is a delusion, so be it; God’s teachings, the teachings of our tradition make for better human beings, a better society, a better world, and this is not a delusion I could prove it to be true. And Dawkins, you should spend time with a community like NPLS and see the caring that goes on, the bereavement support, the intellectual stimulation, the education, the giving to charity, the working for society in so many ways.  And yes the sense of belonging, of purpose and the fun we and our children have…and you could see this in so many synagogues, churches, mosques, temples all over the world.  Choose to see the good religion accomplishes, it will far outweigh the evil done in its name.

And so I may have read the Akedah for the last time to this congregation, and I must thank the Czech Torah scroll from which I read it. It was the same scroll from, I believe Kolin, that I read in 1966 and in 1979, which led me to give my second most effective sermon, that started our quest into then communist Czechoslovakia. For this scroll and the others led me and Sharon and many members of this congregation on so many journeys, and each one has proved the value of religion and of being Jewish.  It led us to seek to enhance the lives of neglected Jews in Czech and Slovaks republics, in the Ukraine (& Misha Kapustin rang yesterday to send his greetings from the Crimea), yes and in time to Hungary and recently to Romania too.  And the journey has certainly enhanced the Jewish identity of this congregation. Yet I know that wherever Sharon & I may be next Rosh Hashanah we can take the Akedah with us and once again embark on its inspiring journey, and know that God will be with us as God has been with us these past four decades.  And we will have confidence in the rabbi who will stand here next year and lead you to seek our new meanings to our ancient story that unites us with Jews down the ages and in all places.

Rabbi Andrew Goldstein

Northwood and Pinner Liberal Synagogue

Rosh Ha-Shanah 5768