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 bright sun to snow and ice.
We commemorate a great deal at Purim, which takes place a month before Pesach. And we are also commemorating 80 years since the end of World War Two, International Women’s Day, and many others.
One such commemoration is the annual Rabbi Jonathan Sacks Memorial Lecture which took place on Tuesday evening in London.
This year’s speaker was former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Rowan Williams of Oystermouth, who is also co-chair of our Anglican Jewish Conversation Group.
On March 1 in Shul we had the rare opportunity to celebrate three important 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 on your exodus from Egypt.” Amalek affects us all personally. This is important. It’s not just history; it’s now and it’s us.
March 8 was also the birthday of the late Jonathan Sacks and I thought about 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 a great meal and introduction to Haifa.
Instead, the entire meal was spent discussing the Church of England and my opinion on whether it was worth having a dialogue with them, as had been requested by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. I thought not, for a number of reasons, but Rabbi SY wanted to do it and so went ahead. It wasn’t plain sailing and he often shouted at me when things went wrong. Chief Rabbi SY kept me informed of progress and even asked me to write an article with him on the subject for the Church Times.
I think the main thing for the Church in terms of how it approaches Jewish-Christian dialogue is to seek to learn from Judaism, to work with us and not against us. This was understood by the two greatest Popes of our own era, Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul, who worked for many years with Chief Rabbi Shear Yashuv.
In July 2008, Rowan invited Jonathan Sacks to address the Lambeth Conference. Later that year, Pope Benedict invited CR Shear Yashuv to be the first rabbi to address the Cardinals at the Vatican.
In his own 2008 Lambeth address, Rabbi Sacks concentrated on the meaning of ‘covenant’ which he differentiated from ‘contract’. Contracts are safeguards that can be broken. Covenants continue forever. In Judaism, our covenant with G-d means that we have a shared world of values. ‘Contracts benefit, but covenants transform.’ Contracts offer a ‘win win’ situation, while covenant is a promise on both sides ‘to give’.
This is the true nature of G-d’s covenant with the Jewish people. From Noah and Abraham onwards. This became the covenant of people, Torah and Land, with Land coming first. This covenant is why we continue to exist 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 whenever I could. There I encountered the young Dutch scholar, Rabbi Dr Nathan Lopez Cardozo, who introduced us to the subject 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 life of Rabbi Shear Yashuv Cohen.
This book shared a publisher with Rabbi Cardozo and that is how Rowan got to know 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 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, at the present time, Esther has to use her own resources to outwit the wicked Haman, who like Hamas today, wants to eradicate the Jewish people, while not forfeiting her own life.
Just as G-d didn’t appear to be around in Treblinka and Auschwitz, G-d doesn’t appear at all in the book of Esther. And yet her story increases in relevance every year and especially for children at Purim.
On Tuesday Rowan spoke of “covenants of faith, through the practice of faithful attention”. He implied that Judaism and Christianity could be “two interconnected perspectives that take us further”.
And this was the gist of a letter I received a few years ago from John Sentamu, then Archbishop of York. In response to grave concerns about the ongoing and often violent antisemitism in evidence in the north of England, and especially in the Greater Manchester Diocese, he wrote that Christians can’t do it on their own and that they needed the Jewish community to carry out 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 need for Jews to constantly 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, together with faith leaders and a carefully-chosen group of sixth-form students.
After two months Jonathan and Rowan reconvened the students for a time of reflection on their experience. To their consternation, the lessons 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 not be beastly to each other. Playground tactics. Not simply disappointing, but tragic. As Dara Horn says: “People love dead Jews.” Not only that, but they take dead Jews for granted as the norm, love celebrating them and regard living Jews as an anomaly, barring us from going about our daily lives and especially banning us from the city streets when Hamas (ie Haman) marches take place.
Sadly, in this country there are no Esthers to stand up and be counted. The Jewish community is dutiful, very observant, like Noah, and not 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 be dramatically fewer resources for Cardozo’s rebellion.”
This is not only about the Jews’ incredible contribution to society, not least of all in classical music, “but about the basic character of Jewish witness to the claim of the holy in the ordinary material of life.”
“Listing the Shoah along with other atrocities means letting the Jewish identity be reduced to another example of randomly persecuted victimhood” and we have “to insist that … our attention is directed to living Jews as well as dead ones; that is the nature of life that Judaism has modelled in its covenanted existence.”
And this is the point in his address where Rowan tackles the most urgent question affecting the Jewish community in the UK today.
“The debate about the planned [Holocaust] memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens suggests that there remains in some quarters a real and worrying cloudiness about the focus of the scheme, with some of its non-Jewish promoters speaking as if it were a monument to genocide overall, or, rather oddly, linking its location to a celebration of inclusive and pluralist British democracy. No shortage of work still to do in this debate.”
But as Rabbi Cardozo states and Rowan reiterates, “Redemption does not 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 is there for hordes of others less informed who are likely to be crushed and bewildered by the inadequacy of the whole experience.
However, on Tuesday, at the same time as Rowan was expressing these thoughts at the Jonathan Sacks memorial lecture, a trio of splendid women in the Lords outlined all the reasons the project should not go ahead in VTG.
One mentioned the real danger of flooding in the area; another was concerned with possible death and injury through lack of safety devices in the underground bunker.
Former Commons Speaker, Baroness Eleanor Laing, was magnificent in her support for the Jewish community and her desire to see the most beautiful memorial possible be established, of the right shape and size, and in the right 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 in the West Bank. He was 13 and was stoned to death while hiking. The other was the son of a famous rabbi and Hamas have not returned his body for burial.
How they could speak to us out of their grief was almost impossible to fathom. But the words mentioned in dealing with the trauma we Jews have been going through in the last 17 months are chaos, community, choice, creativity, commemoration, consecration and celebration. These are the 7 ‘c’s.
I myself have much to be grateful for in life. I am grateful to my parents who survived the Holocaust and encouraged argument around 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 opportunity to live in Jerusalem for a year where I was introduced to the work of Maimonides.To those who have enabled me to teach Hebrew and related subjects and who have attended my classes.To the very few bishops and clergy who know that it is always better when Jews and Christians work together. To those who enabled my younger daughter’s pregnancy to end well with a safe birth on July 4th (Entebbe Day), despite having lived in four or five different places during the last 17 months.
I am grateful that my friend, Chief Rabbi Shear Yashuv Cohen of Haifa, went ahead and worked with the Church regardless of my concerns. And I am grateful that Rabbi Cardozo now plays his part in 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, in the House of Lords, and people in every sphere who, thankfully, want to celebrate and defend Jewish life rather than death; the contribution of Jews rather than their destruction; and who desire a covenant not of ‘cohesion’ but of creativity and fidelity.
It’s more than just having your back. It’s trying to understand what we’re all about and working together with us to do G-d’s will. For as Rabbi Tarfon said in Pirke Avot: ‘You may not be able to finish the job, but you have to give 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 will!
