Harvest of our Dreams

Yom Kippur Minchah Sermon, 5768

by Rabbi Alexandra Wright

This is always a difficult time of the day.  Not quite the end of Yom Kippur, not yet ready for the first stars signalling the end of the fast, still deep in the moment of confession, of unconscious memories surfacing gently like the ripples and tiny bubbles made by a fish as it courses its way through dark waters.  Ah – the fish, ha-dag ha-gadol – the great fish of the Book of Jonah, prepared by God to swallow the prophet.  What kind of a fish is it that swims through the deep awaiting the arrival of a prophet?  The midrash tells us that this fish was prepared, appointed for a particular time by God during the six days of creation, just for this moment, as though to teach us that among the foundations of God’s world, the very pillars on which our existence rests, are God’s mercy over His creatures and at the same time God’s relentless will demanding justice, justice, always the pursuit of justice in the world.  But the fish is the mother’s womb as well, the place of safety and withdrawal, the place of loneliness and isolation.   In the belly of the fish, Jonah finds a place to regain his balance, to put himself again in God’s good books.  He was miserable, he called out to God, he recognised that God had cast him out, now he would look again to God’s holy Temple, now he would pray and reach out to God, now he would recognise his folly and say: “Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their true loyalty.  But I will sacrifice to You with grateful voice; what I have vowed I will pay.”   He makes a promise for the future and perhaps he makes it in good faith, but perhaps also he makes it in a spirit of complacency and delusion still unable to see that he is the one who has paid attention to vain idols, he is the one who clings to the folly of abandoning God – he together with the Ninevites in their sinful state, with the sailors and their idolatry.

Three days in the belly of the fish sitting around unproductively with little to show for his career as a prophet.  When was it that his work began – perhaps the fourth day, and then three days walking into Nineveh to pronounce his five-word warning in Hebrew: Od arba’im yom v’Nineveh nehepachet – “In forty days, Nineveh will be overthrown.”  This morning, for those of you who were in the Family Service, I mentioned that this was the fourth year I had led High Holyday services at the LJS and drew a parallel between these past three years and the law of Leviticus which prescribes that the fruit from new trees in the first three years of their growth must not be harvested.  The Torah prescribes that any growth must be set aside for jubilation in the fourth year and only in the fifth year and onwards is it to be harvested.  There is a little bit of rough comfort in this Levitical law, because, if I can stretch the analogy a little further, what one sows in the earth often remains hidden and occasionally comes to very little and I guess that is no less true of the sowing and sometime reaping that a Rabbi does in a congregation.  If we pursue the parallel, then this fourth year should be the year in which the fruit of our endeavours as a partnership is “kodesh hillulim” – “set aside for jubilation”.  But I’m not really sure what that phrase means.  Kodesh of course comes from a root meaning ‘holy’ and in that sense it does mean “to set aside” for a special purpose.  Hillulim is an unusual form of the verb derived from the root hallel which we know best as meaning to “praise” or sometimes to “rejoice”.  So, for example, the Hallel in our liturgy, sung at the Pilgrim festivals, is composed of a series of Psalms of praise, exhorting creation to praise God, to sing his praises, to rejoice in the blessings we have been given.   The only other occurrence of hillulim in this plural form comes in the Book of Judges (9:27) which speaks of the Shechemites going out into the fields to gather and tread out the vintage of their vineyards and then to celebrate rites of jubilation before entering the temple of their god, where they held a pagan vintage celebration.   I think that interpretation might be somewhat questionable in these portals.   Out of context, however, in Leviticus, it isn’t clear what the connotations might be of hillulim, whether the fruit is, at it were, celebrated in the fourth year, or is simply set aside, perhaps devoted to God as an offering.   I’m not sure that this is the year for noisy celebration.  In some ways, the harvest remains meagre.  Austerity measures, budget reductions and cutting our cloth make for a more subdued marking of these festivals and perhaps we should understand this phrase, at least, in our congregational setting, to refer to a waiting period, a preparation for the future and what the future might promise. 

And that means, waiting another year or two before reaping any harvest of what we have sown together.  New trees are often vulnerable and at the mercy of ill winds and icy rains.  It takes years to put down roots, and to see those roots strengthen in the earth which itself must change to make room for them. 

Perhaps though, that is the first indication of the harvest.  There is a kind of adaptation, a slow-moving dance that takes place between Rabbi and congregation as they get to know each other, until they become almost part of each other.  An interaction must take place, a building of trust, an ability to change and adapt, to find a place for the new on both sides, an accommodation with the old.  But the real test is the yield and the harvest.  What is it that we can produce together?  What fruits shall we grow?  In three years time, we shall celebrate our centenary and, as I mentioned this morning, that will give us the opportunity to celebrate one hundred years of our existence.

It is a platitude to say that we live in very different times from those who founded and joined this synagogue at its inception.  In some ways, they were very clear that they wanted to provide a different kind of synagogue for their members – philosophically and religiously.  Montefiore certainly was clear that orthodoxy was not compatible with those who accepted the Torah as a historical document, as the product of the environment in which it was written.  And both Montefiore and Lily Montagu, while respectful of tradition (Lily Montagu always walked to and from West Central Synagogue on Shabbat afternoon in order to avoid offending her orthodox parents) understood that Liberal Judaism had to be prayerful, its rituals had to have meaning and significance.  And both felt utterly committed to the future survival of Judaism.

The upheavals of the twentieth century, especially the Shoah,  the establishment of the State of Israel and the rise of fundamentalism, which in Jewish terms doesn’t simply mean literalist interpretations of Jewish texts, but – if I can put it in this way – a fundamental shift away from an integrationist model of existence towards segregation and rejection of the non-Jewish and indeed non-orthodox Jewish world, all these things and more have utterly blown away the assumptions and hopes that our founders had at the beginning of the last century.  In the first years and decades following the foundation of this synagogue, not only did it have to move premises to accommodate an ever growing congregation, but it spawned other congregations both here in London and in other major British cities.  It inspired immense loyalties and that seems something to build on constructively, while at the same time assessing what our needs are for the twenty-first century.

And here are my dreams of the harvest that we will reap together.   Last year we planted a little seed, actually it was Alex Cowan a member of this synagogue, a disability consultant for Jewish Care who came up with the name Crystal Clear Service.  She wanted our services to create access on every conceivable level – physical, emotional, intellectual – to all our members and non-members.  What began has a tentative step has taken root.  We have held two Crystal Clear services in partnership with the Jewish Deaf Association.  And this morning, in the Montefiore Hall, it was such a privilege to welcome Sue Cipin, the Executive Director of JDA and Susie Lithman Romeo, the palantypist who made our service accessible for those who neither lip-read nor have British Sign Language.   This week I bumped into a representative from the Jewish Association for the Mentally Ill (Jami) to invite them to participate in our next service which will be held in November.  Our Crystal Clear services, which have been borrowed by other synagogues, symbolise for me the direction our spiritual and prayer life can take in this congregation.  Fully accessible to all our members, with language and ritual which is clear and meaningful; participative, relaxed and one of an array of services which are tailored to suit the needs of different groups and individuals.  Recent research has shown that the 18-35 group enjoy more services that are shaped for their needs. In a synagogue our own size, with educated lay-readers, we should be able to provide choice and draw in more of our members and their friends.

And that leads me to the second seed that I would like to see take root and grow more vigorously – Jewish learning.  It always surprises me at the beginning of the academic year how full and lively our Religion School is, with new younger children joining our classes and a new influx of parents joining the congregation seeking Jewish education for their children.  And when you are about younger children, there is a wonderful energy and thirst for knowledge.  My own class of twenty 11-12 year olds whom I teach before the service on Shabbat morning are already gasping to talk about their beliefs and to ask so many questions.  Here are our young people wanting to place their daily lives, their family relationships and friendships, their work into a spiritual framework, who feel, in fact know, that Judaism has something positive to teach them in their search for meaning and happiness.   And what of their parents and those who have ceased formal education in our community?  I wonder whether we place an equal value on Jewish education for ourselves as we do for our children.  What could we accomplish in partnership with an organisation such as Spiro Ark?  How can we encourage our own members to reach out to explore Jewish texts, history, observances, the way our tradition has shaped itself in relation to the historical trends of wider society?

And the third seed?  Our young people.  How do we follow up the exciting climax of Kabbalat Torah?  How do we ensure that you are prepared in your meeting of other faiths or no faith at university?  How do we give you leadership skills to provide what you need and want Jewishly at College?  How do we keep in touch with you to let you know that this, your home community, cares for you and wants to reach out and keep in touch?  And when you return to London with or without partners, what do we do to draw you in again, to involve you in the Jewish intellectual, social and political life of this community?  We waste too much time talking about what we would like to do.  This is the most urgent project, the one which will require investment of time, money and ideas.  It requires the help and support of those who have completed their studies and want to come back to create links with different charities with World Jewish Relief for example, with Tzedek, with the Jewish Forum for Human Rights and many others.  Our work isn’t only religious, it must also be political, social, ethical.  Without practical consequences, religion remains half-baked. 

That is why Jonah provides such a deeply human model for our behaviour.  He sits, he waits, he contemplates, he prays, he reflects.  And then he acts – into the heart of Nineveh to pronounce God’s warning and to create some change in the world.  And then again beneath the shelter of the gourd, he sits, he waits, he prays, he reflects…..  And then?  We must write the next page for ourselves, for surely if Jonah is a model of hope, then he will act again, and again and again.  And that is us – let us sit here for a little longer, let us wait and contemplate and pray and reflect.  But then, let us act and soon behold the harvest of our actions.

Rabbi Alexandra Wright

The Liberal Jewish Synagogue