Hebrew scholar and Jewish academic Irene Lancaster reflects on Purim and Jewish-Christian dialogue.
Purim starts tonight and in Israel lasts till Monday. Based on the Book of Esther which we read tonight and tomorrow in Shul, we remind ourselves of G-d’s continued presence through the actions of human beings, even when His name isn’t mentioned.
At the sound of the name of wicked Haman we shake our greggers and make a hell of a din. We dress up often to look ridiculous and have street carnivals. Music and food abound. And the weather can range from shiny sun to snow and ice.
We commemorate an incredible deal at Purim, which takes place a month before Pesach. And we’re also commemorating 80 years for the reason that end of World War Two, International Women’s Day, and plenty of others.
One such commemoration is the annual Rabbi Jonathan Sacks Memorial Lecture which took place on Tuesday evening in London.
This 12 months’s speaker was former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Rowan Williams of Oystermouth, who can be co-chair of our Anglican Jewish Conversation Group.
On March 1 in Shul we had the rare opportunity to have a good time three necessary markers – Shabbat, Rosh Hodesh (New Moon) Adar and Parshat Shekalim.
On March 8 we read Parshat Amalek, the ancestor of wicked Haman -specifically the passage from Deuteronomy 25: 17-19: “Remember what Amalek did to you personally on the road, as you were all coming out in your exodus from Egypt.” Amalek affects us all personally. This is vital. It’s not only history; it’s now and it’s us.
March 8 was also the birthday of the late Jonathan Sacks and I thought of Rowan’s upcoming talk and wondered what he would say.
In October 2006, Jonathan’s teacher, Chief Rabbi Shear Yashuv Cohen of Haifa, son of the Nazir of Jerusalem, invited me for a Shabbat meal. I didn’t know him and had only just arrived in Haifa. He lived down the road, and I looked forward to an incredible meal and introduction to Haifa.
Instead, the whole meal was spent discussing the Church of England and my opinion on whether it was price having a dialogue with them, as had been requested by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. I believed not, for a lot of reasons, but Rabbi SY desired to do it and so went ahead. It wasn’t plain sailing and he often shouted at me when things went mistaken. Chief Rabbi SY kept me informed of progress and even asked me to write down an article with him on the topic for the Church Times.
I feel the fundamental thing for the Church when it comes to the way it approaches Jewish-Christian dialogue is to hunt to learn from Judaism, to work with us and never against us. This was understood by the 2 best Popes of our own era, Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul, who worked for a few years with Chief Rabbi Shear Yashuv.
In July 2008, Rowan invited Jonathan Sacks to handle the Lambeth Conference. Later that 12 months, Pope Benedict invited CR Shear Yashuv to be the primary rabbi to handle the Cardinals on the Vatican.
In his own 2008 Lambeth address, Rabbi Sacks focused on the meaning of ‘covenant’ which he differentiated from ‘contract’. Contracts are safeguards that might be broken. Covenants proceed ceaselessly. In Judaism, our covenant with G-d signifies that we have now a shared world of values. ‘Contracts profit, but covenants transform.’ Contracts offer a ‘win win’ situation, while covenant is a promise on each side ‘to provide’.
This is the true nature of G-d’s covenant with the Jewish people. From Noah and Abraham onwards. This became the covenant of individuals, Torah and Land, with Land coming first. This covenant is why we live on as a people and are prepared to fight for our Torah and our Land. That way we keep the covenant intact.
While on family Sabbatical in Jerusalem over 40 years ago, I encountered a theological seminary on my street and decided to attend each time I could. There I encountered the young Dutch scholar, Rabbi Dr Nathan Lopez Cardozo, who introduced us to the topic of Jewish thought. Years later, in January 2017, at Cambridge University, Rowan Williams hosted the book launch of my English-language version of the Hebrew biography of the lifetime of Rabbi Shear Yashuv Cohen.
This book shared a publisher with Rabbi Cardozo and that’s how Rowan got to learn about his work and spoke about his interpretations of Torah and Halakha during last Tuesday’s lecture.
According to the rabbi’s interpretation, “Noah’s religion is most convenient and carries no responsibility …. The homo religiosus par excellence. His is the ark of total obedience.”
Rabbi Cardozo contrasts Noah’s passivity with Abraham’s propensity to argue with G-d. I actually have written about this in my Christian Today review of Rabbi Cardoza’s book, ‘Jewish Law as Rebellion’.
In Genesis 18, Abraham argues with G-d over the fate of Sodom. Similarly, this present day, Esther has to make use of her own resources to outwit the wicked Haman, who like Hamas today, desires to eradicate the Jewish people, while not forfeiting her own life.
Just as G-d didn’t seem like around in Treblinka and Auschwitz, G-d doesn’t appear in any respect within the book of Esther. And yet her story increases in relevance every 12 months and particularly for kids at Purim.
On Tuesday Rowan spoke of “covenants of religion, through the practice of faithful attention”. He implied that Judaism and Christianity could possibly be “two interconnected perspectives that take us further”.
And this was the gist of a letter I received just a few years ago from John Sentamu, then Archbishop of York. In response to grave concerns in regards to the ongoing and sometimes violent antisemitism in evidence within the north of England, and particularly within the Greater Manchester Diocese, he wrote that Christians can’t do it on their very own and that they needed the Jewish community to perform G-d’s Will. He cited our own two dialogue groups as examples of this transformative working together.
In his own address, Rowan acknowledges the necessity for Jews to continuously reaffirm their (our) distinctiveness, “not reduced to an abstract universalism”. And this brings me to the crux of my article. For Rowan then led onto the trip he and Jonathan had led in 2008 to Auschwitz, along with faith leaders and a carefully-chosen group of sixth-form students.
After two months Jonathan and Rowan reconvened the scholars for a time of reflection on their experience. To their consternation, the teachings of Auschwitz had not been learned. The students couldn’t connect the Shoah with the Jews of Europe. All was generality. Let’s all get on together and never be beastly to one another. Playground tactics. Not simply disappointing, but tragic. As Dara Horn says: “People love dead Jews.” Not only that, but they take dead Jews with no consideration because the norm, love celebrating them and regard living Jews as an anomaly, barring us from going about our each day lives and particularly banning us from the town streets when Hamas (ie Haman) marches happen.
Sadly, on this country there are not any Esthers to rise up and be counted. The Jewish community is dutiful, very observant, like Noah, and never prepared to argue for G-d’s truth.
Rowan takes this all on. “The mass slaughter of Jews is historically something different from genocide in a general sense, or the killing of other minorities … Without Jewishness, there will likely be dramatically fewer resources for Cardozo’s riot.”
This isn’t only in regards to the Jews’ incredible contribution to society, not least of all in classical music, “but in regards to the basic character of Jewish witness to the claim of the holy within the peculiar material of life.”
“Listing the Shoah together with other atrocities means letting the Jewish identity be reduced to a different example of randomly persecuted victimhood” and we have now “to insist that … our attention is directed to living Jews in addition to dead ones; that’s the character of life that Judaism has modelled in its covenanted existence.”
And that is the purpose in his address where Rowan tackles essentially the most urgent query affecting the Jewish community within the UK today.
“The debate in regards to the planned [Holocaust] memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens suggests that there stays in some quarters an actual and worrying cloudiness in regards to the focus of the scheme, with a few of its non-Jewish promoters speaking as if it were a monument to genocide overall, or, moderately oddly, linking its location to a celebration of inclusive and pluralist British democracy. No shortage of labor still to do on this debate.”
But as Rabbi Cardozo states and Rowan reiterates, “Redemption doesn’t spring from where we seek it, but often from situations where we expect it the least.”
If Auschwitz didn’t work for our brightest and best, what’s there for hordes of others less informed who’re prone to be crushed and bewildered by the inadequacy of the entire experience.
However, on Tuesday, concurrently Rowan was expressing these thoughts on the Jonathan Sacks memorial lecture, a trio of splendid women within the Lords outlined all the explanations the project shouldn’t go ahead in VTG.
One mentioned the true danger of flooding in the realm; one other was concerned with possible death and injury through lack of safety devices within the underground bunker.
Former Commons Speaker, Baroness Eleanor Laing, was magnificent in her support for the Jewish community and her desire to see essentially the most beautiful memorial possible be established, of the fitting shape and size, and in the fitting location.
Last Sunday, in preparation for Purim I attended a zoom meeting on trauma. Two of the speakers have lost children to murderous Palestinians, one within the West Bank. He was 13 and was stoned to death while climbing. The other was the son of a famous rabbi and Hamas haven’t returned his body for burial.
How they may speak to us out of their grief was almost not possible to fathom. But the words mentioned in coping with the trauma we Jews have been going through within the last 17 months are chaos, community, selection, creativity, commemoration, consecration and celebration. These are the 7 ‘c’s.
I actually have much to be pleased about in life. I’m grateful to my parents who survived the Holocaust and encouraged argument across the table.To my uncle who survived Auschwitz and loved Maimonides.To my secondary schools which encouraged languages.To the gift of musicality which brings joy and connection.To the births and lives of my two daughters in Israel.To the chance to live in Jerusalem for a 12 months where I used to be introduced to the work of Maimonides.To those that have enabled me to show Hebrew and related subjects and who’ve attended my classes.To the only a few bishops and clergy who know that it’s at all times higher when Jews and Christians work together. To those that enabled my younger daughter’s pregnancy to finish well with a secure birth on July 4th (Entebbe Day), despite having lived in 4 or five different places throughout the last 17 months.
I’m grateful that my friend, Chief Rabbi Shear Yashuv Cohen of Haifa, went ahead and worked with the Church no matter my concerns. And I’m grateful that Rabbi Cardozo now plays his part on this scheme of things and as Abraham said in Genesis 18: ‘If only 10 are found there….’
There are 10 or more in parts of the Church, within the House of Lords, and folks in every sphere who, thankfully, wish to have a good time and defend Jewish life moderately than death; the contribution of Jews moderately than their destruction; and who desire a covenant not of ‘cohesion’ but of creativity and fidelity.
It’s greater than just having your back. It’s trying to know what we’re all about and dealing along with us to do G-d’s will. For as Rabbi Tarfon said in Pirke Avot: ‘You may not give you the chance to complete the job, but you’ve gotten to provide it a go.’ Or as Rowan said to the Jewish community on retiring as Archbishop, citing Holocaust Paul Celan survivor, ‘Count me in’. We have and we are going to!
