Joining the dots – Christian Today

Jewish academic and Hebrew scholar Irene Lancaster reflects on lessons from Abraham and the importance of something as small as a dot. 

What is a dot? It is a tiny marker. This is the topic of today’s article, based on a sermon given by the rabbi at Shul on Remembrance Sunday. 

This 12 months Remembrance Sunday coincided with Kristallnacht, when in November 1938, the Germans realized through research that nobody would stop them from carrying out a significant pogrom against their very own 2000-year-old Jewish community. And November 11 was Armistice Day.

The Shabbat reading was Vayera (Genesis 18:1 – 22:24): ‘And the Lord appeared to him [Abraham] by the terebinth trees of Mamre, as he sat on the tent opening in the warmth of the day.’

Abraham, aged 99, had just been circumcised as a part of the covenant with G-d – so quite an ordeal!

‘And he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing over/by him. And when he saw, he ran to fulfill them … ’

Abraham was in great pain, but hospitality to strangers got here first.

However (Genesis 18:9), the strangers asked: ‘Where is Sarah, your wife?’ An odd query from strangers. Who on earth were they? 

A clue is given by the primary instance within the Hebrew Bible of dots inserted above letters. These were added as cantillation markers by the early Massoretes. The dots are an indication. The strangers are special and Sarah is special. The strangers are angels (messengers from G-d) and Sarah will give birth to a toddler, miraculous at her advanced age.

And then there are the opposite dots, those utilized by the Germans in 1941 Amsterdam on their ‘Dot Map’. This map might be viewed on the Anne Frank Museum. As a results of these dots, wherever 10 Jews were domiciled together, they were rounded up. The Dutch Town Council willingly handed over to the Germans by utilizing dots the whereabouts of all their Jewish residents.

In the five years from 1941 to 1945, due to this fact, 90 per cent of Dutch Jews were exterminated. The Germans didn’t do it alone. In fact they obtained all the knowledge they needed to exterminate the Jews from the Dutch authorities who must have been protecting them.

Ironically, Anne Frank was spared at first, as there have been only eight of them in her hiding place. Later she was betrayed.

Why 10? Goebbels had done his homework. He knew the Jewish Bible, history and culture inside out and even visited Haifa, Israel, under the British Mandate in 1936. 

Goebbels, who had a PhD and was highly educated, knew in regards to the latter a part of the Genesis story, when Abraham visits Sodom with the three angels and tries to stop its utter destruction.

In tandem with later Nazi values, hospitality was strictly forbidden in Sodom, with dire punishments meted out for non-compliance. This reminds us of the tiny variety of righteous Gentiles who did attempt to help the Jews and were mostly exterminated along with them.

As you realize, in Genesis 18:23-32, Abraham argues with G-d, down from 50 to 10 righteous men. If 10 are found, G-d agrees Sodom could be spared. Alas, there weren’t even 10 righteous men and Sodom was destroyed.

Ten appears to be a number solid enough to give you the chance to affect the remainder of a population for good or evil – 10 is now the minimum number for a Jewish religious service (quorum).

So two tales of dots – the dots in Sarah’s story of fertility, childbirth and future generations; and the Nazi dots of the death and destruction of Isaac’s descendants. 

A dot can be a jot, an iota and the Hebrew letter yod, signifying 10 and the inspiration for all of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

A dot could be very easy to overlook, or to dismiss as a mere nothing, just because the Nazi mentality dismissed the Jews. But what about after we join the dots? What happens then?

Joining the dots leads us to grasp a situation by recognizing relationships between different pieces of data. This often results in a fuller picture of the larger picture and finding a pattern. 

This is why we’re enthralled by detective thrillers and whodunits. But we also join the dots on daily basis of our lives. We can see this pattern unfolding especially in the event of babies and toddlers. The realizations by babies and toddlers of the patterns of everday life are truly wonderful to behold.

Alas, this was not the case in Nazi Germany and additionally it is now not the case for the Jews of England. As philosopher Professor John Gray (not Jewish) stated in a lecture for Policy Exchange, after the Yom Kippur Heaton Park murders in Greater Manchester ‘antisemitism has change into normalized’ and there doesn’t appear to be an answer to this fact of life. Is Abraham alive and well in Manchester today? I feel not.

However Abraham was followed not due to his teaching, as much as attributable to the indisputable fact that he cared deeply and other people knew this. It is as much as us whether our country opts for the Sodom way of cruelty, death and destruction, or the Abraham way of service, hospitality and openness to those that are ready to affix.

Let’s hope that for the sake of the country, just as within the Genesis story, strangers opt to behave like angels, bestowing blessings on elderly, defenseless people, and searching for the positive patterns in life. The alternative shouldn’t be in heaven; it’s with us.