Opportunities for a non-palatable Judaism

A SERMON FOR ROSH HASHANA

There is a question I am asked every year, while Rosh ha Shanah approaches. “Why do we have Rosh ha Shanah in Autumn?” Such a question does not surprise me at all. For all the rest of the world, New Year’s Day is January 1st. A date that is far easier to remember (01/01) rather than “a day in September, or perhaps October, I don’t know exactly when I need to check with the Synagogue and remember that it begins in the evening and for some of us lasts two days”. Complicated, isn’t it? So I totally understand the question.

And I am prepared with not just one, but with two answers. The first is based on common sense and experience. In our society, we have multiple New Year’s Day. January 1st is when we change the digits in our calendar, but the new year day for taxes is April 6th. September 1st is the new year day for eligibility to start school etc. It should not be regarded as weird for the Jews to have their own New Year’s Day.

The second answer is text-based, hence perhaps more Rabbinic. According to the Mishna, in Ancient Israel, there were four New Year’s Days; the first of Nisan, two weeks before Pesach, was the New Year for the King, which means that the years in which a King ruled were counted from such a day; then there was Tu biShvat when trees were counted for tax purposes; and a similar deadline was on 1st of Elul, to count the animals for the same reason; and of course 1st of Tishri, today’s date, when the years were and are still counted. The other three dates are connected to the Kingdom of Israel, or to the Land of Israel because that was the place where trees and animals were counted by the tax officers. Therefore they have no validity in these days. While Rosh ha Shanah, the anniversary of the Creation of the World is valid all over the world and is the one that counts for us today when we are all over the world and the Kingdom of Israel is not in place anymore.

Yet the question makes sense. Why do we need a separate a date to mark the beginning of the year or, even, why do we Jews keep a separate calendar? Can we not go along with the rest of the world and count our years, and our days, according to the calendar followed by the majority of our co-citizens?

Imagine how it would be. While the rest of the world adobe trees with lights and decorations, we blow the shofar and count our sins. Then we all eat hyper sugary food. Honey cake for us, and mincemeat for others. And we happily send and receive “Seasonal Greetings” together with people of all the faiths in the world.

This weird fantasy has a name: assimilation. Perhaps no one has ever dared to propose it explicitly. At least not to my knowledge no one ever dreamt on moving Rosh Hashana to January 1st, but assimilationist tendencies have been present and vocal in Jewish history, with some effect on the liturgy. We all celebrate Chanukah, a minor festival, with more intensity than Shavuot, a major holiday, Biblically mandated. That is because when Chanukah approaches there is another festival around and we do not want to be left out. To my knowledge, there is not a goy equivalent of the cheesecake, so Shavuot remains exclusively Jewish. And not much attended.

But assimilation has not only an impact on the way we celebrate our holydays . In the XIX century there was a very articulate intellectual movement praising and encouraging assimilation. It was particularly active inside the Reform Movement, our Movement. Somebody even said that the Reform Movement had been founded out of the aspiration of Western European Jews to assimilate, to belong to the majority of their fellow co-citizens. If you look at the history books, you can see drawings and portraits of all these perfectly shaven Rabbis, proudly wearing the insignia of academic life. Victorian gentlemen, whose aspiration was to be accepted, assimilated indeed, into general society, of course in its wealthiest circles. And to be considered “gentlemen of the Jewish faith” just like their friend, or business partner, or member of the same club, was a “gentleman of the Methodist faith” or of the “Anglican faith” etc.

There was a price to pay to become assimilated Jews, or, as they preferred to say “Emancipated Jews”. To deprive Judaism of its national connotations, so that it could become a religious faith.

The general society was suspicious of the Jews. Especially in those circles in which the prominent families of British Jewry (they were called “the Cousinhood”), were eager to be admitted, Jews were regarded with suspicion of double loyalty. If we went to war with Austria, or with France, which side will the Jews be on? On our side or on the side of the enemies, given that there is such a huge Jewish population in that Country too? Those were the prejudices Jews had to face.

So in order to strip away these kinds of suspicions, and remove the obstacle of integration and assimilation, the first Reform Jews produced a liturgy deprived of reference to the collectivity of Israel, to the people of Israel, to the restoration of the Kingdom of Israel and so on. They translated many of the prayers into English; they banished all the references from the liturgy to the non-Jewish faiths.

Things have changed since then. Victorian England and Victorian Jewry are now part of history. Zionism has changed our self-perception. The sight of Jewish soldiers dancing happily and proudly in Jerusalem, after the military victory in the Six-Day War. have had an enormous impact in the way we Jews regard ourselves and are seen by the general society. We do not want “to assimilate” into a mainstream society anymore. We don’t try anymore to hide or minimise our cultural differences from our fellow co-citizens.

But yet, assimilationist tendencies are still around. Perhaps our aspirations are not to become members of the Golf Club anymore; either because Jews can now become members of the Golf Club, or because they have set up their own Golf Club, which in Brighton, I have been told, is far better than the one we are excluded. We rather seem to pursue a different kind of assimilation.

Think of the Kaddish for Gaza. The small crew of young Left-wing Jewish militants, who held a political demonstration against the State of Israel, under the insignia of Judaism, honouring the so-called victims of the Israeli Army, fully knowing they were terrorists. That has been the highest, or if you prefer the lowest, point, of a trajectory of assimilation. Those youngsters attend University and campuses where Jews are suspected of double loyalty, like in gentlemen circles during the Victorian age. In these places, in that intellectual environment “Zionism” is a dirty word. The common assumption is that “Zionist influences” are evil and weaken every kind of political struggle, that Muslims, women, Asians, LGBT etc are discriminated and marginalised because of a “Zionist” strategy. And all the Jewish students are suspected of being Zionists unless they prove otherwise.

In many Universities, Jewish students are under such enormous pressure, in the time of their life when they are thinking about their future careers, and building the necessary networks. Small wonder they want to detach themselves from Zionism and turn their Jewish identity, their Jewish belonging, their Judaism into something more palatable. If necessary, with a clamorous gesture such as saying Kaddish in memory of our enemies; and if they manage to infuriate “the Jewish establishment” (whatever it is) they are satisfied. After all, it is all advertising.

I personally know some of the students who took part in the Kaddish for Gaza demonstration. I interact with them on social media and on a more personal level. I am aware of under which sort of pressure they are living. I also know that some of them, over the last few weeks, have given up their membership of the Labour Party, where they were hoping to have an astonishing career, as the token good Jew (there is always a demand for good Jews…). They have realised they have underestimated the extent of the antisemitism there.

The pressure to assimilation that once motivated first generations of Reform Rabbis, to change the words of the liturgy, has the same strength and intensity of the current pressure, to get rid of Israel and condemn Zionism, experienced on campuses and in a consistent sector of the intellectual and political world.

We must stand up against such pressure.

Too many, in the Reform and Liberal world, have underestimated the violence and the intense hostility of antisemitism in the Far Left. Too many have deluded themselves, and taught our youth, that there was no antisemitism on the Left, just some misunderstanding on the Middle East, and once those were sorted, then Jews would have been welcomed by the Left, as precious comrades and allies in the work of Tikkun Olam.

It was not true. It had been a terrible delusion. We were not facing a friendly environment, with some minor disagreement regarding foreign politics, a place far away. There is antisemitism on the Left, like on the Right, and no reason to underestimate neither. But like our forefathers, who tried to make themselves acceptable into Victorian society, (and they were wrong), we have tried to make ourselves acceptable in those circles that ran part of the intellectual life in the UK.

We now have the opportunity to do teshuvah, to return and to correct our mistakes. In the Reform world, Jewish education, must have Israel as a priority, (aren’t we all looking at Israel, as a way to escape, if and when things go bad for us here?). Restoring the good, noble name of Zionism must be top of the list.

According to the Rabbis, the sound of the shofar must be similar at the beginning to sobbing and weeping and then become similar to a battle call. So while the most brilliant and sensible and intelligent souls of our youth sobs and weeps because they experience antisemitism, and the shattering of their dream of assimilation, may the sound of the shofar which we hear today, Rosh ha Shanah, become the sound of our unity and renewal.

Rosh ha Shanah 5779, Brighton & Hove Reform Synagogue