Our Civic Shabbat
This morning saw our second annual Civic Shabbat in the presence of a number of local dignitaries from the political world and from the religious world. The Mayor Cllr Sheila Peacock spoke superbly at the end of the service about the importance of Holocaust education in Haringey Borough and mentioned also how great it was that she could appoint me as her Chaplain. This was the first Jewish chaplain to the Mayor since 1965. We hosted our local MP Lynne Featherstone, the Deputy Lieutenant Rosemary Warne and our GLA Rep Joanne McCartney. It was great also to host the leader of the Bravanese community as well as a number of Christian leaders. The service went very well and the guests seemed as though they enjoyed themselves – in spite of our heating breaking down!
I am thrilled that we have continued with our Civic Service and really believe that it is an important part of our communal calendar. We can get to know personally local communal leaders and local religious figures and also raise our profile as a community with a view and that is passionate about its Jewish and Zionist identity. I am posting below my sermon which you can read – and if you have any comments, please do post them on this page.
CIVIC SERVICE SERMON 5774
Your Worshipful Mayor Cllr Sheila Peacock, Deputy Lieutenant Rosemary Warne, MP Lynne Featherstone, MEP, GLA Rep Joanne McCartney, Cllrs, Religious leaders (and we are very proud to be welcoming more leaders from different religious groups this year), Head of Police and all friends
We are delighted to welcome such an esteemed array of guests into the community. This is the second time that we have held such a Shabbat service for which we are immensely proud. And in Judaism, once something is done three times, it becomes permanent – so hears to next year!
At last year’s service, the Deputy Mayor was of course Cllr Peacock who was looking forward to the possibility of being Mayor at this year’s service. And here we are a year later. I know that the Mayor’s Jewish identity is extremely important to her outlook on life and she has been and is a great friend to the Jewish communities of Haringey Borough. I am delighted that over the last few years we have developed a friendship with you as Cllr and now for your third stint as Mayor. I also would like to thank you for appointing me as a Chaplain and most recently for introducing me to our friends at the Wightman Road Mosque, an introduction which has also lead to the presence today of the Chairman and Secretary of the Mosque.
I am also thrilled that our friends from the Bravanese community could join us today. It was over 6 months ago now that their Centre in Muswell Hill was burnt down and our community was extremely shocked by that. The Solidarity walk, which was such an appropriate way of showing support to that community was a great gathering of members of the public and religious leaders some of who are here today.
I want to remember at this time a member of my past who has often been a positive influence on me. My name is David Emanuel. My parents liked the name David and named my brother (who was meant to be the girl of course) Jonathan after the Biblical characters who were so close. But Emanuel is a name taken from my great Grandfather, Emanuel Mayersohn. He was a Minister for 40 years of a Jewish community of the town of Rastatt near Baden Baden in Baden Wurtemberg. He died in 1924 aged 74 and his three children escaped the dangers of the Nazi regime. One settled in Milwaukee and the other two in London. One of them was my grandmother. My great Auntie was the last of the three to leave Germany, doing so in 1939 not long before the outbreak of war.
But as my grandma died when I was 10 and my great uncle died in Milwaukee before I was born. It was my great Auntie who told me most about her father. And one thing that I most connected to was the memory that each Sunday, he would go for a walk in the Hills near to his home town with the local Parish minister. An image was being created of a peaceful existence in the early 20th century in Germany. One where there were possibilities for leisure time and holidays. One where dialogue existed with leaders of other religions. One where there was no freedom from anti-semitism, but there was less of a sense of fear.
10 to 15 years after my great grandfather died, and all had changed. Jews feared what would happen to their livelihoods, their homes, their families, their lives.
And on the night of the 9th November 1938, exactly 75 years ago, this hatred came to a head and exploded in a night of rage and killing which became known as the Kristalnacht, the night of breaking glass. There would be of course many worse examples of persecution of the Jews as well as other peoples. I have taken groups to Poland where we visit the death camp at Auschwitz. I recently went on a Synagogue group to Lithuania and Latvia where we saw where Jews were slaughtered and dropped into pits outside Vilnius at Ponary forest and outside Riga at Rumbula forest.
But there is something about Kristalnacht that touches and moves us. Maybe because we know that it was the start of greater atrocities. Maybe it concretized the fact that Jews now knew that they would live in fear. My great Auntie told us vividly of how 75 years ago she was cycling across the river in Rastatt near the Synagogue when she saw the Synagogue burning. I can’t imagine how she, as well as thousands of other Jews would have felt at this time.
But I should also mention another great grandfather. His name was Barnet Silverman, my father’s grandpa and he left eastern Romania in the early 1900’s to live in London initially and then in 1914 to Bristol where he is buried. And so 4 generations of that side of my family have lived as Jews in the UK, being heavily involved in Jewish life, and have not felt such fear and foreboding. Anti-semitism never goes away and finds a way of morphing into different forms as time passes so that it will survive the changing times. But we must also appreciate the acceptance that generally exists for the Jewish community in the life of the British Isles and appreciate that this has lasted now for a number of generations beginning at a time when we were fleeing the fear of Tzarist Russian Empire.
Being a stranger in a land that is not ours is a concept that we as a people have had to deal with throughout our history. When Abraham asks for a specific burial plot for his wife Sarah, he explains by way of introduction that he is a resident but also a stranger in the land that was then called Canaan. He is told by the leaders at the time that he should just bury his wife with everyone else. We won’t stop you burying her, just bury her in our grave sites. Abraham persists – he wants to live with those around him. But he wants to have his own specific site there for his own family.
In today’s reading, we find Jacob running from his home in Beer Sheva and having to fend for himself in the families original home of Haran where his uncle Laban attempts many times to trick him. Jacob has to learn how to deal with this reality. He is not at home and at times may be vulnerable to abuse. Joseph experiences the ups and downs of an exiled life in Egypt, rising from the pit of jail to the heights of leadership alongside Pharoah but ending in persecution of the children of Israel after Joseph’s death.
And so part of understanding the Jewish people, is to understand and empathise with the feelings of vulnerability brought on by a history which has undergone such a cyclical direction incorporating periods of calm, stability and growth as well as periods of destruction. In Poland in the 2nd World War, 3 million of the Jewish population were murdered – that same Poland in which in the 16th century the Jewish population has set up an almost autonomous decision making body and had seen an immense flowering of Jewish life. This vulnerability is what lead Ambassador to the UN Abba Eban after the 6 Day War to call the line that demarcated the West Bank as the Auschwitz Lines – he felt that a return to those lines in the late 60’s would signal the end of the Jewish state. It is what leads our Prime Minister in Israel to compare the threat of Iran to that of the German Nazi regime.
And in Britain we have seen immense growth in Jewish confidence over the last 150 years, let alone since the return of Jewish existence to England in 1656. The Jewish community is well represented. It is able to defend itself and it is even able to be a model to other smaller Jewish communities with regards defending Jewish rights. More recently many Jewish schools have been built which are able to combine creating intelligent, moral, ethical and societally aware pupils who are well versed in their Jewish understanding. A Jewish school does not mean one should escape responsibility for society; but supporting society does not negate the need for a faith school.
There I think two trends which are of concern to the Jewish community and certainly need thought.
Firstly we live in a post modern era where rights are placed as a clear priority above obligations. In my sermons over the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana I explained this issue in terms of the growing individualism of our society and how the individual decisions we make can come at the cost of being part of a community or family. Now a culture that respects the rights of all is surely one that should not be criticized outright – this is a good base for a society – it is a fundamental basis. Kristalnacht is a symbol of how our rights were stripped from us. But the present culture often looks down at a religious culture that is based on ancient traditions. My Judaism, as my community knows, is one that is open to what is modern and is not shut away from that world. But our Judaism is one that still has seep respect for traditional rituals. And so attacks on for instance ritual slaughter are seen as attacks on our religious life. Jewish people will often remind themselves and speak publically about how one of the first Nazi anti Jewish legislations was to ban the ritual slaughter of animals. And so a world that replaces the old with the new needs also to build a bridge to communities who respect the old and do not rush to replace it with the new.
And secondly there is the existence of Israel, a country dear to the hearts of the large majority of Jewish people who live throughout the world. A country that is so democratic that it sometime has found it hard to function politically. A country that has reached out many times to others around it in peace. A country that has suffered much through war and aggression in the shadow of the 20th century Holocaust. It does not always get things right. It makes mistakes. But given the state of war it has been in over the past number of decades, it has faced the same painful dilemnas and the same horrible situations faced by many other western countries. I am not sure that we can simply say that Anti Zionism is Anti-Semitism – that needs a lot of thought. But they can be the same. And one can wean from the other. When Israel is being vilified in a one sided manner without recognition of the failings of others, the Jewish community as a whole is hurt and feels attacked – and furthermore when these one sided attacks come from those of other faiths, it does not do any good to the cause of solid inter faith relationships.
But we need today to be positive. Society is finding it harder to relate to religious values and finds them threatening – so it seems obvious that religious groups need to work together to show a moderate, constructive and cooperative face of our relgions. And the reaction to the burning down of our friends the Bravanese’s community centre was wonderful. I know that Abubakar and the other leaders of the community felt so uplifted by the warmth they received from the different Jewish communities as well as the Christian communities. The Solidarity Walk that we organized 2 weeks after was a wonderful result of side by side cooperation between religions. It was a shame that it had to happen as a result of an attack – but many relationships have now been forged. And since many of the Bravanese Somali community live in Muswell Hill, I would urge the representatives of the Borough and Parliamentary bodies to ensure that as much as possible is done to help the Bravanese find a suitable new premises.
I want to end with an experience that is an echo of my great grandfathers and which paves the way forward. On the first Shabbat after the Bravanese centre had been destroyed, Abubakar, Abdishakur and Hamza came to my house in the afternoon to update me on how things were. We talked for over an hour on the Torah, the Koran and our common and less common religious experiences. It was uplifting for me – and my daughter Hodaya stood watching this experience in amazement.
That is what I want to give the next generation. That is what we can do when times are easier. Work together with other religions, for the betterment of our local society.
Shabbat Shalom