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'THE
WELFARE OF THE NATION'
John D. Rayner
This Sabbath is traditionally known as Shabbat hn-Chodesh, which means
that it is the Sabbath before the month of Nisan.‘
The month of Nisan has always held a special significance in our tradition.
Chiefly because it is the month of the Exodus and hence of Passover. But also
because in the Babylonian calendar which our ancestors adopted during the
Exile it was in fact the first month of the year, which produced the paradox
that the Jewish New Year then fell on the first day of the seventh month.
Indeed, the retrospective influence of the Babylonian calendar can be seen
already in the Exodus story, as related in the twelfth chapter of the book of
Exodus, which is traditionally read on this Sabbath from a second Scroll. For
'This month shall be
there God says to Moses and Aaron:
mm
to you the beginning of months‘ (v, 2). And it is no coincidence that the date
set for the erection of the Tabernacle, according to the regular Sidra for this
Sabbath, is, once again, ‘the first day of the first month' (Ex. 40:2).
In addition to all that, the Mishnah (RH 1:1) informs us that the First of
Nisan is D’D'7D5
mm, 'the New Year for Kings', meaning that the years of a
king's reign are counted according to a calendar in which Nisan is the first
month. And it is this aspect of the matter which will lead us presently to the
subject I would like to consider with you this morning.
As we all know, the Hebrew Bible is ambivalent about the institution of
monarchy. On the one hand, it was only with the greatest reluctance that the
prophet Samuel acceded to the clamour of the people for a king 'like all the
other nations' (1 Sam. 8:5). On the other hand, a monarchy, vested in David
and his descendants was established. On the one hand, the Bible, as in our
Haftarah, writes admiringly about the fabulous wealth of King Solomon,
which he seems to have lavished in about equal measure on the Temple and
on his own palace, and which left the Queen of Sheba breathless. On the
other hand, the book of Deuteronomy sounds a stern warning that the king
must not amasptoo many horses or wives or silver and gold (17:16f) - all the
things which King Solomon had done with a vengeance. And of his many
successors who ruled over Judah and Israel in the ensuing centuries, all but a
very few are judged to ‘have done evil in the sight of God'.
So when we listen to the ongoing debate about the future of the British
monarchy, we have to ask ourselves what relevance, if any, these divergent
o'wn feeling is, once again,
strands of our tradition might have.
ambivalent. In theory, there is no possible way in which a hereditary
monarchy, or any other kind of hereditary privilege, can be justified. But in
practice, the British monarchy, like many other well loved absurdities, has, at
least in modern times, done very little harm and a great deal of good.
Therefore the only real question is whether that is likely to remain the case.
And to that the answer must surely be: 'It depends.’ It depends on how the
institution will in future be conceived, perhaps restructured and above’all
exercised. And therefore any Jewish judgment on the British monarchy must
surely be expressed in the conditional, just as it was in our Haftarah when
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you will walk before Me, as your father David did,
wholeheartedly and uprightly...then I will establish the throne of your
sovereignty...'(I Kings 9:40.
And that could have been the end of an unusually short sermon but for the
fact that I wanted to bring to your attention another, related subject. For the
fact is that, whatever the form of government under which we Jews have
lived, as long as it has not been unconscionably oppressive, we have always
felt a strong obligation of loyalty to it. And one way in which we have
verbally expressed that sentiment is the ‘Prayer for the Royal Family', as we
call it in Britain, or the ‘Prayer for the Government', as it is called in
said to Solomon:
'If
republican countries.
The general idea underlying such a prayer goes back to the prophet
Jeremiah, who wrote to his fellow Jews in Babylonia: ‘Seek the peace of the
city to which you have been exiled, and pray to God on its behalf, for in its
peace you will find your peace' (29:7). Ieremiah's message was reinforced by
one Rabbi Chanina who is quoted in the Ethics of the Fathers as saying: ‘Pray
for the peace of the government, for but for 'the fear of it people would
swallow each other alive‘ (3:2).
That the idea was taken seriously is confirmed by sporadic evidence of Jews
praying for the emperor in Roman times (Philo, Flacc, 7:49, 6:129, 9:329) and
in the age of the Crusades (BS. Jacobson, The Sabbath Service, pp. 2841’) and
again in 14th-century Spain, where, according to the great Sefardi prayerbook
of that time, known as Safer Abudarham, it was 'customary to bless the king,
and pray to God to help him overcome his enemies‘ (p. 136).
A version of such a prayer travelled from Spain to Amsterdam, and from
Amsterdam to London, where it appeared in 1890 in the first edition of the
prayerbook known as Singer‘s after its translator, the Reverend Simeon
Singer, Minister of the New West End Synagogue. Here, in his translation, is
the text.
He who
giveth salvation unto kings and dominion unto princes, whose
kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, who delivered his servant David from the
hurtful sword, who maketh a way in the sea and a path in the mighty waters may he bless, guard, protect, and help, exalt, magnify, and highly aggrandize our
Sovereign Lady, Queen Victoria, Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, and all the
Royal Family. May the supreme King of kings in his mercy preserve the Queen
in life, guard her and deliver her from all trouble, sorrow and hurt. May he
subdue nations under her sway, and make her enemies fall before her; and in
whatsoever she undertaketh may she prosper. May the supreme King of kings in
his mercy put compassion into her heart and into the hearts of all her
counsellors and nobles, that they may deal kindly with us and with all Israel. In
her days and in ours may Judah be saved, and Israel dwell securely; and may the
Redeemer come unto Zion.
What
find so striking about this prayer is that it is entirely motivated by
enlightened self-interest. The petition is that the Queen should 'deal kindly
with us and with all Israel.’ There is not a word about the well-being of her
non-Jewish subjects. However, only a few years later that imbalance was
partly redressed. For in 1898 there appeared the Fifth Edition of Singer's and,
I
3
same
year, the Fifth Edition of the prayerbook of the West London
Synagogue; and in both of these there is a subtle but significant change. No
longer is the hope merely that the Queen and her counsellors will ‘deal
kindly and truly with all Israel' but also ‘that they may uphold the peace of
the realm' and ‘advance the welfare of the nation‘.
Nevertheless the prayer still ended on a particularistic note, with the plea
that judah should be saved; and Israel dwell securely, and that the Redeemer
might come unto Zion. But in this respect, too, a change was made, though
not until the 15th edition of Singer's, which came out in 1935. It was then
that Chief Rabbi Joseph Hertz amended the conclusion to read, referring of
course to King George V: 'In his days and in ours, may our Heavenly Father
spread the tabernacle of peace ban ’3W1"'73 by, over all the dwellers on earth;
and may the redeemer come unto Zion.‘
What these changes clearly show is a progressive enlargement of sympathy
and concern from the Jewish community to the nation, and from the nation
to humanity. And in the latest version of the prayer, in our new Siddur, we
try to bring out the interrelationship of these Concentric spheres by saying:
‘May we all help to fashion in this country a society that excels in freedom
and justice, tolerance and compassion, so that it may be a force for
righteousness and peace in the life of humanity.‘
So now it is much more than an obsequiou's plea that those who rule us
may be kind to us, coupled with the passive hope that the redeemer may one
day come to Zion. It is a self-respecting assertion of our obligation, because we
are Jews, actively to promote the values of our heritage in the life of this
country, so that it may set an example to other countries, and so that we and it
together may help to bring redemption to the whole human family.
in the
'
Liberal Jewish Syna ogue
Shabbat Va- ak‘hel- ‘kudei
16th
arch, 1996