Shakespeare said it powerfully (in Twelfth Night): “Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.”
Truth is nobody is born great, few actually achieve greatness, and even fewer have greatness thrust upon them. Despite this, in some perplexing inscrutable way, we Jewish people have had greatness thrust upon us. We have produced some of the greatest minds, stirred the world with some of the greatest spirits, changed the world with some of the greatest ideas. We have produced prophets who spoke truth to power and moved us with their magnificent and translucent words; poets, writers, musicians, and scientists who enchant us to this very day. We have transformed the world not through the “idea of our power, but through the power of our ideas.”
Yet there is a price to pay for this exceptionalism, and good reason to be frightened of it, for we have also experienced the world’s longest and greatest hatred .
And right now we are so very vulnerable, once again experiencing a tsunami of hatred, violence, and toxicity directed at us. We are living through a time of tectonic change, from climate danger to democracy under siege. And at times of change we Jews always make great targets, easy pickings for those who choose to ‘other’ us rather than face their own fragility and faults, their own fears and pain.
As James Arthur Baldwin incisively put it:
I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hate so stubbornly is because they sense that, once it is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
It’s never been easy to be a Jew, to stand up and be different in an indifferent world. And right now, it is excruciatingly difficult to stand up and say: “Here I am, Hineni, an unapologetic and proud Jew”; and even harder to declare: I am unmistakably an audacious and uncompromising Zionist, my colours are blue and white!
Ironically, we are living not only at the worst of times, but also the best of times. We would not be experiencing this worst if it weren’t the best. That for the first time in thousands of years we have a land of our own, sovereignty and independence, a country that has achieved a miracle of greatness in a very short period of time. Simultaneously we are equal citizens across the world, leading and contributing to the Diaspora communities and countries we inhabit in ways that Jews, for thousands of years of ghetto and persecution, did not have the privilege.
Over the past two years I reflected over and over again, how do we navigate these worst of times? How do we maintain a sense of hope and resilience in the face of such naked hostility and insidious intent? And how do we do this as a people charged with a moral vision to protect the vulnerable, to bring charity, compassion, and justice into the world? How do we do this when faced with the contemptuous cruelty and nihilism of our enemies on the one side, and on the other side the deeply flawed religious extremism which is strangling and threatening the very basis of modern Israel. The kind of extremism and fanaticism that destroyed the second temple.
I know what sustains me in times like this and what has always strengthened me during the personal challenges I have had to face in my life. It’s the teachings of that remarkable and, in some ways, inscrutable educator, Moshe Rabenu, the marvellous, maverick, and mighty Moses!
Over the last months I’ve been reading and re-reading his words in the Book of Deuteronomy. They speak to me so powerfully because here is Moses just before his death, at the cusp of liberation for his people, on the eve of their entry into the land of Israel. He wants to give them a message that they can carry with them into the future. A plan that will protect and future proof them. A philosophy that will hold them as they enter into a land of uncertainty and a history of unpredictability. He knows that they will always be small, tiny, and vulnerable people. He knows they were born for greatness.
He also knows the land that they are about to go into will never be stable, permanent, and secure – not only politically but also geographically. Unlike Egypt, it would not have a natural supply of water, it’s not part of the fertile crescent. Life in Israel would always be one of insecurity, never knowing in advance whether the rain would fall or not. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks asserts: This is the nature of Jewish faith, not security, but the courage to live with insecurity, knowing that life is a battle, but that if we do justice and practice compassion to the great and small, the powerful and the powerless alike, this vulnerable people is capable of great even astonishing success. In Egypt the source of life was the Nile, where you looked down to see what sustains you. In Israel the source of life is rain, where you simply have to look up!
So, what does Moses say to his people facing an unknown and unpredictable future?
He gives them two specific instructions which encapsulate Jewish history and Jewish destiny. The one is called Hakhel and the second is called Sefer Torah.
Hakhel, which has nothing to do with hukking or Jewish guilt, refers to the command to assemble. Kahal – all the Israelite men, women, children, and converts, to hear the reading of the Torah by the king of Israel once every seven years.
It was the only event that required the attendance of every Jew, reminiscent of the historic moment when our nation stood at Mount Sinai, when every member of our nation was present when God lovingly gave us the Torah.
The second commandment was for each Jew to write or have written for them (or contribute to the writing of) their own Torah scroll. In other words, internalise these teachings as a way of eternalising your future.
In these 2 mitzvot or instructions are incorporated or encrypted the essentials for Jewish survival. It’s a collective call to connect to community through the Torah wisdom of the ages, and an individual charge to be a person of value in your age and at every stage of your life.
Hakhel – stand together as a people with a Torah in your hands. And to thine own self be true!
The tectonic events of the last two years are challenging our people in a way they have not been challenged since the Shoah, and that other destruction of our sovereignty and the Temple some 2000 years ago. More than a political crisis, we are facing a spiritual emergency. Jews across the world are in a state of shocked disbelief. Most of the people of Israel are in a state of suspended grief. We are all so traumatised, defensive, and distressed.
At times like this, it is hard to think coherently, to have moral clarity, and to find the strength to hear out the other side. It’s excruciating to live with perplexity. To hold two truths at one time that our people are under attack, and yet to somehow feel compassion for the desperate people and especially the children of Gaza. As my friend Leah Justin puts it: Morality is not a zero-sum game.
One person’s humanity doesn’t justify another’s affliction.
We don’t diminish Jewish suffering by seeing the suffering of Palestinians.
In this poisoned atmosphere where morality itself has been weaponised by our enemies, and even by some of our friends, can we subject ourselves to moral self critique? After two years of war, says Yossi Klei Halevi (who cannot be dismissed as a convenient lefty), we need to ask ourselves hard questions about Gaza’s hunger crisis and if the Israeli government couldn’t have done better to prevent the accusations of deliberate starvation. And we need to ask the difficult questions: did the IDF do its best to live up to its high and noble moral purpose? And on Gaza – what was the government’s plan? And will it positively embrace the Trump model of post war Germany rather than the Roman destruction of Carthage that Smotritch and Ben Gvir championed?
He adds there are those among us on the right and on the left who have no questions. One camp insists on our total innocence – Israel can do no wrong – and another critically adopts the liables and lies of our enemies. We are now facing some of the most morally complicated dilemmas in our history and one dimensional voices must not be allowed to determine Jewish discourse. And how do we do this in a poisoned atmosphere with the risk of inadvertently reinforcing the campaign of hatred and lies of our enemies?
At times of crisis, binary thinking, simple black-and-white, can be comfortable and comforting. But it is precisely now that we need to engage in what we have always done best: to argue with passion, to debate with decisiveness, to hold and respect both sides of the debate. It’s on every page of the Talmud, Judaism is an extended argument. It does not silence dissent, but rather dignifies it. It’s part of the very texture of democratic freedom, something that Israel has until now always prided itself on. A free society depends on the dignity of dissent.
For three years, there was a dispute between the schools of Shamai and Hillel. The former claimed the law is in agreement with our views, and the latter insisted the law is in agreement with our views. Then a voice from heaven announced: these and those are the words of the living God, but the law is in accordance with the school of Hillel because they were kindly and modest and studied their own rulings and those of the school of Shamai, and were even so humble as to mention the teachings of the school of Shamai before their own.
We dare not stay silent and we dare not imperil our people.
It takes moral courage to stand up and say to the religious extremists, and to our fellow Jews and the people of Israel who have closed their eyes to the agony of Gaza – this is not the way of the Torah, this is not the morality of our people, this is not what God wants of us. We are fortunate to have the power and the capacity to protect ourselves, and so we should be against those who wish to annihilate us. We are also fortunate to bear the awesome responsibility that ultimately “it is not a power and it is not physical strength” that defines us as a people, but rather it is “by the spirit of God”. Not the idea of power, but the power of the idea. This is what our greatness is about. If we are born to anything, if we can achieve anything, if we can have anything thrust upon us… It is this.
Oh my people, you have had the good fortune to be marked by greatness, to have stood at Mount Sinai, to be part of a people chosen for greatness, who have reached out and touched eternity. Dig deep into yourselves, painful as it may be, for nothing really worthwhile comes without a cost. Embrace your destiny with determination. Reach out towards greatness, reach up to it with pride, principles, and passion!
Rabbi Ralph
Today’s Challenge for Tomorrow