x
3&8
‘
Mo
TIME TO EMBRACE HUMANITY
7“
Earlier this week I had the privilege of representing the Jewish community atna
national service in Westminster Abbey‘celebrating the 900th Anniversary of Domesday
§995,(§§d this morning I would like to share with you a train of thought which ran
through my mind as I watched the ritual. But first let me set the scene.
The AngloJSaxon word 'dome', like the Hebrew word gig, means 'judgment', so that
Domesday corresponds to 293 ha—din, 'Day of Judgment', a term fami;iar to us as one
of the designations of the Jewish New Year
as I don't need to tell
Fesfisyfié;nogrb
you, Domesday was in fact the name given to €]survey of England which was carried
out in 1086 by order of William the Conqueror. It was an astonishingly thorough
surveyfi: enfuriatingly so from a native pqinb of vieél As the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
laments, "it is a shame to relate" that not “ohé ox nor one cow nor pne fiig...was
there left out."] What is even hove astonishingfithoughais that t
(two-volume
inventoryELWhich is the single most important source of English history, has been
preserved through all the centuries and can be viewed today in the Public Rceord
Office in Chancery Lane.
[Eben I arrived in the Jerusalem Chamber to robe, one of the resident clergy told
me: "Today everybody's wearing everything!" And I soon discovered what he meant,
foé]since Domesday Book became the foundation of local as well as national govern—
ment in this country, those present included not only the Speaker of the House of
Commons and the Lord Chancellor, but hundreds of Lord Mayors and Mayors wearing all
the glittering robes and emblems of their offices and éreating a veritable blaze of
Mind you, the vestments of the clergy were hardly less resplendent,[§nd
certainly put me in the shade with my simple black skull cap and tallit, though
colour.
in order to enter into the spirit of the occasion, I decided to add for good measure
my red—and—gold doctoral hood from the Hebrew Union'College;]
With the other visiting clergy, who included a priest from Bayeux, the place of
the tapestry depicting the Norman conquest of England, I found myself eScorted to
the left-hand side of the sacracrium, while the resident clergy, as well as the
Queen Mother, were seated on the right{] There were the usual fanfarés, hymns,
anthems and prayers; two readings, not from Scripture, but from medieval chronicles,
“one read in Latin, the other in Anglo-Saxon; and an address by Dr. G.H. Martin, Keeper
9f Public Records, who brilliantly summarised the whole history of DomesdayaBook in
about ten minutes.
_,—/~” <_WV A ~ «,,_,_L “_v{
.2\wr A “M? f. _,_,,.4H ; J'N‘fl, my —'
r
>t
11
¥
'
‘
w-
m"
'
“
Brackzkok PaSsmget4'o‘be~\Aelz~I-cd'
“"““—'LEONBAECKCOLLEGE
‘
“7‘
“‘
1""
.«J-L‘
~
‘
'
‘
~
L
_ 2‘-
The whole ceremony was magnificently planned and executed,[és only the English
‘know howZIand created an extraordinarily powerful sense of history, of past and
present coming‘together in‘a single, almost tangible reality; ggd.§11 the more so
because Westminster Abbey was already in existence when Domesday Book was compiled,
having been founded by King William’s predecessor, Edward the Gonfessor. And as I.
sat there, watching, I asked myself: "Is it EX histofy?
I part of ii and is it
Iém
part of me?
What, in fact, am I doing heréj":17
It was of course a Christian service, and that alone set mé apart [bot only because
I was the only ma;e in the place with covered head but because when it céme to the
‘
prayers everybody there knelt except, for different reasoné, the Queen Mother and I.
Indeed, the Christian character of the service raised the qfiestion Whether I should
have been there at all. As to that, I have always obseryed the general principle that
I will gladly participate in an inter-faith fiervige 6r attend a Christian one; but in
recent times I have come to think that when @he service, though Christian, is a
national one, and when I am only‘ asked to walk in the procession, tfiat degree of
participation is permissible, and it would be unneceésarily and undésinably stand—
offish to refuse such an invitation. So, yes, as a non—Christian I was an outsider}
but‘since Christianity is the religion of the gqeat majority of our fellow citizens,
o
I could not really rgéent the fact that a national commemoration in the national
1‘
shréne should take a Chriétian r3: feel entirely excluded oh that account.
‘
‘
l.
My feeling of involvement was also helped by the presence of a large Jewish element
in the liturgy. Two ofl thg pymns, for instansg’é were paraphrages 9f Psalms frqm our
Hebrew Bible; thé Opening Prayer concluded with the Psalm versé, "Except the Lord
b uild the house, their labéur is but lost that builq it; except the Lord keep the
city, the watchman waketh but in vain"‘(127:1); and the anthem was a superb arrange—
ment byhilliam Boyce of the famous passage from the 28th chapter of the book offlob
beginning "Where shall wsidom be found?" So even the liturgy, though Cfiristian,
contained its own reassuring acknowledgement that wisdom is to be found, to no‘
small extent, in Judaism.
But religionléuitéléfiart, could I identify myself with the celebration of English
7
H
history? [Ebout that, you will understand, I and others like me are in a peéuliar
and paradoxical positionfl On the one hand; since I was not born in this copntry,
my roots are not in it, and‘I can't easily put fiyself in the'shoes of those
you
E;
whose families have livéd here for genefiations. On the othér hand, those offius who
came to Ehxs country as refugees tend, for that very reason, to feel an extra degree
«‘
_ 3 _
E‘
Sometimes, I daresay, We seem to
At any rate, I found myself quite‘
of gratitude, affection and loyalty towards it.
others amusingly sentimental in that regard.
able to lap up the patriotic feeling which the Abbey service generated, and the
+
tolerance shown to me there as a non-Christian dnly added to the feeling.
And yet I also found myself wondering about the interrelationship between the two
‘
strands of our Anglo-Jewish hefitage, which has not always been a positive one.
w
A1—
fihough the 13,400 manor—owne%s listed in the Domesday Book include a few with biblic—
al names, there is, according to Cecil Roth, no reason to suéfiose that any of them
were Jewish (History 2: the Jews 23 England, p. 269).
come over here from Normamfl shortly after that, énd in
a score or more of substan£ial communities up and down
waké of thé First Crusade, and especially the massacre
It is true that Jews did
sfifificienb numbers to establish
the country, but only in the
at Rbuen;
The spifit of the
Crusades poisoned the air of England also, and cbntributed to thé glimate which
produced the mob attacks on Jews in places such as York and led ultimately to their
expulsion from England by Edward I in 1290.
It is true that after their return
under Cromwell they suffefied little serious discrimination, but even so it took them
two hundred years to gain their full civic rights; and though, in the more recent
past, Britain has played an important role both in facilitating the ZibnisE programme
and in receiving Jewish refugees, we all know that in neither of these respects is
its‘record unblemished. And though all that is now a matter of the past, the know—
ledge of it must, I suppose, inhibit juét a little the fulness of our identification
with this country.
And what applies to our felationship with friendly, tolerant Bgitain applies with
,even greater force to our relationship with the non—Jewish world as a whqle [En three
déys' timé, beginning on Monday evening, it will be the Twenty—Seventh of Nisan, which
is coming to be generally accepted as 19E ha—Sho'ah, the day commemorating the Holocaust.
I am not altogether happy, I musfi tell you, about the choice of date; partly
because it is the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Rising and‘therefore tends to
glorify the few who resisted over against the great majority who Had no opportunity
to resist but who were no less honourable and whom we mourn just as deeply; pafitly
for the very reason commonly cited in its favour, that it precedes Egg ha-Atzma'ut,
because that carries with it the banal and even sacrilegious implication that the
State of Israel'is in some sense a compensation for the Holocaust; and partly because it detracts from our reinterpretation of Tish'ah 2:5! as commemorating recent
as well as ancient catastrobhes.
Nevertheless, I suppose he shall hafie to go élong
mm
with the now generally accepted date for Xgm_hé—Sho‘ah, and-if you feel so inclined
Arum.”
4
MA km 4% W a 4M4 Mm‘W‘mq
koJL‘h‘h
m»
«
E
t,
_ 4 _
you may wish tq mark the day, as is suggested, by lighting a Yahrzeit candle in
your homes. ‘At any rate, the mere mention of the Holocahst is sufficient to re—
mind us of the hostility towards us which we, as Jews, have experienced in the
Gentile world during the greater part of our history?
Not surprisingly, our reciprocal attitude to the Gentile world has also generally
been less than enthusiastic, and it is this subject, above all, which I pondered as
I sat there, in the sacrarium of Westminster Abbey. The history of it is extremely
complex [énd I won't even attempt to summarise it, except for one or two general re—
Judaism was fiercely intolerant of idol—
mar-ks] In biblical times:
’1 y;hostilg to the neighsgdring nations that practised it. But even
atry and:
then individual Gentile§ living as fesident aliens within the Jewish community were
usuaily treated decently and protected by Jewish law; and in the converse situation,
'
'
when Jews found themselves living as a minority in Babylonia, one prophet at least
‘I
am of course referring to
advocated a degree of acceptance of their host society.
Jeremiah and his famous letter to the exiles with its pufiEEPiiné; “Séek3the peace of
the city where I haQe sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for
‘in its peace you will find your peace" (29:7).
Nevertheless the anti-Paganism of the biblical period was carried over into the
post-biblical, and even intensified by the experience of Greco—Syrian and Roman
oppression. Attitudes, of course, varied. At their worst they probably compared
quite well with Greek attitqde to non-Greeks, Roman attitudes to non—Romans, and
Christian attitudes to noneChristians. At best; they were remarkably generous.
at;l§§flyere, indeed, fiorfm駧¥6ufip6sé§5(exbgfidéa’fropifpgjpefiégiiévéé wéll‘ééfghe
f
gpbiigéiigfis of Jewish Law, but in practigé there ofiérated é kind of equity
which ensured that they received fair treatment. It became, £9? instance, an accepted
{princip1e<that, though there is 39 strict requirement to maintain the poor of the
Gentiles, to visit their sick, to bury their dead, and so forth, we nevertheless
do all these things mipney dan'chey shalom, “for the sake of peace" (Git. 61afl
One of the most generous sentiments was expressed by the 4th—century Babylonian
rabbag’Jeremiah Ebot to be confused with his namsesake, the prophet of our Haftarah
who flourished a thousand years earlierilin a commefifiyfigm the kfi% VfiESS of our Torah
has
shéll live by them"
portion, about the divine commgndments "which, if y-yén d6,
(Lev. 18:5). yhe verse, heaempfiggggég, speaks not of Jews but of adam, human beings,
and he then quétes several other Scriptural verse with a similarly universal frame
Of reference.
In Isaiah, chapter 26, for instance, he points out, it does not say,
«4_
.5,
_5_
"Open the gates, and let the Priests and Levites and Israelites enter," but "Open
the gates, and the let the righteous nation (which may also be taken to mean '1et
the righteous Gentile') enter" (v. 2); and in the 118th Psalm it does not say, "This
is the gate of the Lord, the Priests and Levites and Israelites shall enter it," but
"the righteous shall enter it“ (v. 20).
And then he delivers the punch-linezihg
afilu nochri v'oseh 33 ha—torah harey g3 k'chohen gad0121"Therefore even a Gentile,
if he observes the Torah (which, according to modern scholars such as Herbert Loewe,
does not here mean the entire Torah but only the fundamental morality enjoined in"the
Noachide Covenant; see §_Rabbinic Anthology, p. 564), is the equal of the High Priest“
(Sifra 85b, Egg 86b as stated in the‘Anthology).
In the Middle Ages, moreover, it came to be accepted that Christians and Muslims
are not to be regarded as idolaters at all, and this led to a degree of permissiveness
in regard to‘cbfijbhéiélfiafid1éééiél relations with them.
But by that time the 01d,
negatives attitudes towards Gentiles had become Solidified, and were sometimes further
aggravated by the Crusades. [Bashi, for instance, who lived in France at the same time
as the Domesday Book and the First Crusade, interpreted Isaiah's marvellously genérous
prophecy, in Which he makes God say, "Blessed be Egypt My people, and Assyria tfiélwork
of My hands" (19:25), in such a way as to make the terms 'Assyria' and 'Egypt' refer
to Israel, after all!]
Of course Progressive Judaism has re-emphasised the universal strand in our Trad—
dition. But has that tendency yet gone far enough? That is what I wondered as I
sat there the other day, in Westminster Abbey. Yes, we say that we understand
Judaism universalistically. But what exactly do we mean by that? In part we mean
that Judaism can make itself at home anywhere on earth, even though the Land of
Israel holds a special place in our memories, our affections and our hopes. And in
part we mean that Judaism addresses itself to humanity,i£hat we therefore feel an
obligation to make a Jewish contribution to the life of humanity] and that we are
happy to accept as converts those Gentiles who may choose to join us.
‘But there is an even deeper question which ran through my mind in the Abbey: Do
.
we really and truly think of God as concerned, and equally concerned, with all human
beings? It often seems to me that we still think of synagégue worship as a private
conversation, conducted in thé 'fioiy Tongue“, betWeen the 'Holy Congregation' of
Israel and the Holy One, blessed be He, in which other peoples don't get much of a
look in. That is because the traditional liturgy hardly acknowledges their existence
~
_6_
$7,’;\(
‘
except in the context of the ultimate future of the Messianic Age, when "all who
dwell on earth shall understand that unto Him every knee must bend, and every tongue
swear loyalty." It is true that we, in the English Liberal Jewish movement; have
done something about that, by broadening the scope of some of the traditional prayers
with a phrase such‘as 'anfl all mankind', and by adding new firayers in that vein.
But other Progressive liturgies have not always followed, sometimes even reversed,
that trend, and we ourselves need; I think, to carry it a stage further.
What is required, I believe, is a Change of outlook which amounts to wh;t is known
~
~
Q; Th§:§§figéhp§fi§%y jargon as a 'paradigm shift'. Thé universe revealed by modern
akgggigage is
théaitiéfi are tobflber épéiéiezr,'*fi
§§§E,:Eh rmfiénfecfiiéhéAE?”bfi}7ofin
K ‘
"3.;t99
‘flvm
1.2:“.
~_F(
. ‘
““~fiw
A
merits?
(Ehe
éf'difiéfsé
interactiofi
culifibeé
~~9§§§§.§raaitlon§ f9§1§fip§g§§i§ginghe
;
1‘
-‘~\.,~A,
A A
If
too well—established, anfi the common fate of all humanity too afipa}ent,‘£fifiphe didr
~ W‘~~»—~?~-J‘‘
V
~
.\
view, which saw Israel as related to all other nations as holy is to profane, and
light to darkness, to.be any longer appropriate. Of course we have our own tradition,
which we cherish, find on the basis of which we believe ourselves to have a special
contribution to make to the world, but we can no longer see our§éiVés as standing
in splendid isolation 33g: against humanity. We are 2252 of humégity, just one
sectgqy of instruments within a universal opchestra that has need of us but trans—
cendémus.
That is thegfifiéigfif which came to me wigh a fresh clarity as I sat in Westminster
Abbey, and not least~as we sang the second stanza of the National Anthem§
Not on this land alofi‘e —
But be God's mercies known
From shore to shore.
Lord, make the nations see
That men should brothers be,
And form one family
The wide world o'er.
&mnD.mw
ShfltabAdrueylbt
3nimw,1%%
fie UbaalJaflshswnggue
St.Jtshbo¢
buxbn