2 Religions, Separated by 1 Messiah (My Dorchester Abbey Sermon)

As a Rabbi, I feel incredibly honoured to have been invited to speak to you today by my dear friend David Gifford, and I want to thank you all for the opportunity to speak to you today.

My training to become a Rabbi involved time in England, Israel and America. While in the United States, I was introduced to Winston Churchill’s humorous observation, that Britain and America are ‘two countries divided by one language’. As I consider the relationship between our two religions; I wonder if I could adapt his words and claim that we Jews and Christians, are two religions divided by one Messiah.

At the core of our two traditions we share the Five Books of Moses, we both adhere to the 10 Commandments as centrally instructive, and we all believe in the one God. The major difference, at least originally, appears to be over the question of the Messiah.

Rabbi Irving Greenberg, who was a keen advocate of interfaith dialogue, suggested that we Jews and Christians should stop worrying about our different beliefs in the Messiah. And when, in the future, the Messiah eventually comes, we can simply use the popular chat up line: “Do you come here often?” to find out if this is his first or second visit.

For Jews there has been a hope and expectation that a Messiah will one day come to earth, and on that day the world will be redeemed by God. This was such an important belief within Jewish tradition that it was included in the 13 articles of faith articulated by arguably the greatest Rabbi of all time, Moses Maimonides, he claimed: ‘At the end of days, an anointed one will come redeeming those who wait for God to save.’

However, over the years the Jewish expectation for the Messiah to arrive has diminished. And while the door is opened in anticipation every Passover for a messenger to announce the coming of the Messiah, very few really expect to find Elijah standing at the door. This lack of belief in the immanent arrival of the Messiah was such that a popular story developed.

In a small Russian Jewish village, the community council decided that they should pay a poor Jewish peasant, one ruble a week to sit at the town’s entrance, to be the first person to greet the Messiah when he arrived.
The man’s brother came to see him, and was puzzled about why he had accepted such a low-paying job.
“It’s true,” the poor man responded, “the pay is low. But” he added, “the job is permanent.”

Whether the Messiah is coming for the first or second time, both of our religions share a belief that the Messiah will one day come, and together we wait for that day.

If you will permit me a moment, I would like to offer my rabbinic understanding of the passage which was read today from the Book of Acts. The people around Jesus appear eager to experience the re-establishment of the Kingdom to Israel, or at least to know when it might be. I am sure all of us would like to witness the coming of the Messiah, and if not witness it; at least know when to expect his arrival. But to this request Jesus responds: ‘It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority.’ There is frustration that the date is not for humans to know, but there is also consolation as God will be responsible for sending the Messiah at a specific time in the future.

This situation is not so different from the one we find ourselves in today. We believe that the Messiah will come, but we have no idea when that coming will be. The challenge is what to do while we wait.

And to this the passage offers us a telling response. The two men dressed in white, standing beside the people, instruct them: ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven.’

I understand these men as telling the people, stop looking up at the sky waiting for the Messiah to come down to you. The Messiah will come, but waiting passively for his arrival will neither accelerate his coming, nor make the world worthy for him to redeem it. These two men recognised that the danger of the messianic ideal was that people would wait passively for the saviour, rather than working to help save themselves and the world in the interim.

While we wait for a Messiah to come, we cannot be absolved of our responsibilities to the world in which we are currently living.

In the first century Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, who is generally considered to have been the saviour of Judaism when the Second Temple was destroyed, taught: ‘If you should happen to be holding a sapling in your hand when someone comes to tell you that the Messiah has arrived; finish planting the sapling, and only then go and greet the Messiah.’ There is an element of caution over false messiahs, but more significantly there is a reminder that even with a Messiah we have an obligation to the world in which we are living.

One of the most important ideas which Reform Judaism highlighted within Jewish tradition is the concept not just of a Messiah, but of a Messianic Age. This idea suggests that rather than waiting for a Messiah to come down from Heaven to save us, we should be working to redeem this world, and make it a world fitting for a Messiah, rather than a world which requires a Messiah.

In both of our religious traditions we have many texts which tell us about what the redeemed world will look like. In Judaism, one of the central prayers, the Aleinu, paints a picture of what God’s kingdom on earth will look like: ‘Soon let us witness the glory of Your power; when the worship of material things shall pass away from the earth, and prejudice and superstition shall at last be cut off; when the world will be set right by the rule of God, and all humanity shall speak out in Your name, and all the wicked of the earth shall turn to You.’

With the picture of what the redeemed world looks like, we need to listen to those men of Acts who told us to stop ‘gazing up into heaven’ and instead we need to work today to redeem our world.

In Judaism this idea of working to make the world a better place is given the term: ‘Tikkun olam’ translated either as ‘healing the world’ or ‘repairing the world’. When we look around at the world in which we live, it is clear that this world is not perfect, this world is not complete, this world needs our help. And in this way we are called upon to be active in making the world a better place rather than waiting for a Messiah to save us.

The idea of repairing the whole world may at first seem rather daunting, but we are not called upon to complete this work on our own. Instead we are simply asked to play our part and to help in the way which we are able to. No two people in this Abbey can repair the world in the same way because no two people are the same. We have to consider our individual skills, our passions and the way in which we can make a difference.

Together our small individual actions will accumulate to have an impact beyond what we initially could have imagined. Within Judaism there is an idea that the observance of every good deed matters and the Rabbi I mentioned earlier, Moses Maimonides, used to say; imagine the world is balanced on a scale between good and evil. With a single action you have the power to tip the scale for good and for evil.

Like Moses we may not see the Promised Land towards which we are journeying, but as the Rabbis of old taught, lo alecha hamlacha ligmor, velo atah ben chorine lehitpatel mimena – It is not your duty to complete the task, but neither are you free to desist from it.

As Jews and as Christians, we can be the builders of a Messianic Age.
We can be the masters of our destiny.
We will not wait for the world to become a better place; we will begin the work of making our world better.
The wait for a Messiah can encourage passivity; the need for a Messianic Age can be a call to action. We, collectively, need to hear the call, and we need to respond!

And perhaps when we have taken responsibility for making this world a better place, maybe then the Messiah will come down to help us in our task. While we Jews and Christians wait for the Messiah to come we need to be active in making his job easier. We need to create a world which is not crying out in need of a Messiah, but rather a world which is worthy of God’s anointed.

Preaching at Dorchester Abbey

On Sunday I was invited to preach at Dorchester Abbey in Oxford (www.dorchester-abbey.org.uk - it is a truly beautiful Church and well worth a visit if you are in the area). This was the first time I had been invited to speak in a non-Jewish religious service, and I was deeply honoured; especially as this service was also honouring my dear friend David Gifford, the CEO of the Council of Christians and Jews (www.ccj.org.uk). The community was so very welcoming, and I look forward to visiting again in the future.

Here are three observations:

1. Taking a moment for a private blessing, amongst the clergy, before we began the service was a very powerful experience for me. The blessing allowed us to mark a break in time between the rushing around to make sure everything was ready, and the beginning of a religious service. I certainly entered the prayer space in a different frame of mind as a result of the moment the clergy shared together.

2. The music was magnificent. Dorchester Abbey has a wonderful choir, and having the opportunity to sit alongside them, served to really elevate my prayer experience. Having been back in England for the last 2 years I have not heard prayers/hymns/anthems sung in English during services, and I really do feel the experience of singing in one's native language is very powerful. And perhaps we should consider singing more English prayers in the British Reform Movement - just a thought. My favourite piece of music was 'For the Beauty of the Earth' by John Rutter, (you can listen to a version of it here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaMkj4_H8WM).

3. I know I am not the first Rabbi to preach in a Christian service, but it was a first for me. And it is a wonderful statement for how far Jewish-Christian relations have progressed in the last 50+ years that Rabbis may preach in a Church, and Reverends may preach in a Synagogue. We are two different religions, but we do both spring from the same root, and the opportunity to pray together, learn together and simply talk together is so very important. Signing the book at the Abbey which records all preachers who have given sermons there was especially meaningful, as I wrote Rabbi alongside my name, and wondered about what my great grandparents would have thought about this experience.

I guess the last thing to say is thank you to David, and the Clergy and community of Dorchester Abbey (and my mum for coming with me).

I will be posting the sermon I delivered tomorrow.

Extracts from my farewell sermon

On the 3rd June I delivered a sermon at the farewell service for Micol and me at West London Synagogue. If you would like to receive the full sermon please send me an e-mail.

A colleague recently shared with me the anecdote that: ‘Non-Jews leave, but don’t say goodbye; while Jews say goodbye, but never leave.’ Having researched this matter a little bit further, I discovered something called “The Jewish Goodbye”. It's when you start your goodbyes and end up walking out the door a minimum of 30 minutes later. The amount of time increases exponentially depending on how many other Jews there are in the room.

With this in mind, the goodbye which Micol and I are beginning are going to be really Jewish; for as we have our farewell service today, we will take almost four more weeks to actually leave. I guess that with a congregation of over 1600 Jewish families, an exponential time increase is only to be expected...

In this week’s Torah portion amidst a whole range of commandments and instructions we receive the words of the Priestly blessing. These words which we use to bless our children, to consecrate a marriage and to conclude our services, are found here first. We ask for God’s blessing, protection and grace, before asking God, with our final words, to grant us shalom – peace and wholeness.

This Torah portion feels especially appropriate for our farewell service. As a child, sitting in the pews, often down there on the left hand side, I received these words as a blessing from the Rabbis of my youth, Rabbis Hugo Gryn and Jackie Tabick. And as a Rabbi myself, I have taken my place upon this bimah, sharing these words with my community, as they were once shared with me.

The Priestly blessing was articulated in the Torah as a way of linking us to God. But on another level it serves as a way of linking us to each other, to generations who went before us, and generations not yet born. These words have been an ever present for our people since they were given to us in the Torah.

The beauty of this blessing is not just in the words, and not just in the connection to other generations; there is a beauty in the intimacy which it envisages. We ask for God not just to bless us, but we ask for a moment where we can see God’s face. God’s face will be lifted up to us, and God’s face will shine upon us. Only then, with the experience of God, face-to-face, can we conclude our service, taking that moment with us as we leave the comfort of the community.

As we prepare to say Shalom to our time at West London Synagogue, I certainly feel that in saying goodbye we will be less whole, leaving behind a community which has become our family. But we take with us hundreds of shining faces who have become a part of our lives and we are more complete because of the relationships we have formed.

Yet, at the same time, shalom is not forever! While today we say shalom, as ‘goodbye’, we look forward to saying our shalom of ‘hello’ in the future. The Priestly blessing returns each time we come together in the synagogue for a service, and just like the priestly blessing we look forward to returning in the future. And so I will end with these parting words: Shalom Chaverim: ‘Hello friends’, ‘Goodbye friends’ and ‘Peace friends’.

Two Minutes of Torah: Naso (Numbers 6:1-21) - Living Life to the Fullest

Growing up at West London Synagogue one of the songs which was very popular in my youth was about five constipated men in the Bible. The song began with Cain, who was not able; he was followed by Moses, who took two tablets, then Bilaam, who couldn’t shift his ass, Samson who brought the house down and Solomon who sat for forty years. Each verse played with an element of that character’s story to imply a trouble with bowel function. Like many young boys at the time I was most fascinated with the character of Samson. With his flowing hair and superhuman strength, he was the Bible’s answer to He-Man (sorry if that reference dates me), and I was intrigued by this Biblical superhero.

It was only later in life that I began to realise that this man was actually a far more complex character than I had ever imagined. Samson turned out to be a far more flawed character than I had ever realised as a child. What I also learnt was that Samson is often considered to be the Bible’s most famous example of a Nazirite (even if he was not particularly good at adhering to the laws which accompanied that status).

In this week’s Torah portion the laws for the Nazirite are given by God to Moses. This person utters a vow to become a Nazirite (something that Samson never did) and are then committed that, ‘they shall abstain from wine and any other intoxicant’ (Numbers 6:3), ‘no razor shall touch their head’ (Numbers 6:5) and ‘they shall not go in where there is a dead person’ (Numbers 6:6). These three obligations form the bulk of what it meant to be a Nazarite, and were observed for a fixed period of time.

At the end of a person’s time as a Nazarite (they would specify the time when making the vow) a number of sacrifices were required. ‘The priest shall present them before the Eternal and offer the sin offering and the burnt offering’ (Numbers 6:16). While one may expect sacrifices of celebration and praise of God, it is striking that amidst the Nazarites sacrifices was a sin offering. This requirement makes it clear that the Nazirite way of life was not required, or possibly even desired, by God, and so needed an offering of atonement at the end of the period.

For us the presence of the sin offering may serve as a reminder that Judaism is not a religion which expects its adherents to ‘afflict’ themselves or live in a monastic way to serve God. Instead Judaism is a religion which wants us to celebrate life and to enjoy life to the fullest. We do not need to follow the excesses of Samson, but we need to find a way to enjoy living our lives. The Nazirite sacrificed his or her full enjoyment of life for a set period of time, and was required to atone for this sin.

We no longer have the Priestly system to make the Nazirite vow, but we can ensure that we live our lives in such a way so as not to require a sin offering at their conclusion.

Two Minutes of Torah: Bamidbar (Numbers 1:44-54) - The Equality of Numbers

At the moment we are conducting a survey of our West London Synagogue young adults so that we can try to gain some insight into how successful our programme of events has been (so far the results do look good). I have been told that there is a magic number we need to aspire to, which will give us a significant enough sample group to make some statements based on our results. The survey is anonymous, and so all I can look at is numbers on the screen. Each person is a number. I know their gender, year of birth and a variety of other facts about their religious upbringing and their Jewish involvement, but I do not know who they are. In replacing names with numbers an element of each person’s identity is lost.

In reflecting on people becoming numbers the song from Les Miserables comes to mind as Javert and Jean Valjean sing against each other. For those of you who are not familiar with the musical, Jean Valjean was a prisoner who escaped and Javert is the man who has taken on the task of finding him. As they sing together Javert keeps asserting the Jean Valjean should be known by his number 24601, suggesting that he is unworthy of having a name, remaining an eternal prisoner in his eyes. In contrast Jean Valjean asserts his name rather than accepting the label of a number. In this way, when we think of people as numbers it is often in situations where people are imprisoned or considered unworthy of having a name.

This week’s Torah portion is all about numbers (hence the English name of this Biblical book) as Moses and Aaron conduct the census. God’s initial instruction to Moses was: ‘Take a census of the whole Israelite company by the clans of its ancestral houses, listing the names, every male, head by head’ (Numbers 1:2). While the instruction requires the listing of names, the names are not given and instead we receive a set of numbers.

After going through the numbers of each tribe we read the conclusion: ‘All the Israelite males, aged twenty years and over, enrolled by ancestral houses, all those in Israel who were able to bear arms – all who were enrolled came to 603,550’ (Numbers 1:45-46). Considering this only accounts for the adult males, one can only imagine how many Israelites actually left Egypt, and what their caravan must have looked like as they journeyed through the wilderness.

While we may feel uneasy with the idea of recording people as numbers rather than by their names, there is an equality which comes from the process of the census. Apart from tribal affiliation there is no distinction made between any of the men who were counted. We know nothing of them as individuals, there is no distinction between rich or poor, powerful or weak; they are all Israelite men.

What is also significant is the fact that each man counts and is counted.