Thursday 23 March 2017

Words from our Rabbi

The Book of Genesis tells us that when Jacob was on his deathbed in Egypt, Joseph brought his two sons to him. Jacob did not know who they were. He therefore had to ask Joseph “who are they?” (Genesis 48:8). Why didn't Jacob recognize his own grandchildren? Perhaps because they walked, talked and were dressed like Egyptians rather than Hebrews. Perhaps Jacob could not believe that these assimilated young men were his own grandchildren. When Joseph told him “these are my sons”, Jacob became very worried. 

According to a Midrashic story, at that point, the grandchildren said to Jacob "Shema, Israel. Listen Israel (Jacob's other name, given to him by the angel). Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad, Adonai is our God, Adonai is One." Jacob was so relieved to hear these words coming out of the mouths of the two ‘Egyptian’ boys, that he replied "baruch shem k'vod malchuto l'olam va-ed - praised be God's name for ever!" 

Jacob was a nomad, a shepherd, a man of the desert. He escaped from his father’s house and established his family and fortune in a far away land. He is used to a life of traveller and his roots in the land are very shallow. One day he is in the land of Canaan, the next day he is in Haran, in Canaan again and then he makes his final journey to the land of Goshen - to Egypt. 

Joseph is his favourite son, yet he is a completely different person. Joseph is not a man of travel. He is forced to make one long journey to Egypt as a slave and there he makes his fortune. Joseph plants deep roots in the land of Egypt. Even if we assume that, for understandable reasons, he was not that keen on meeting his elder brothers, he still makes no effort to make contact with his beloved father and his younger brother during the time of his service to Pharaoh. The ex-Canaanite slave becomes the second most powerful man in Egypt and there he absorbs the local culture. He adopts an Egyptian name – ‘ZAPHENATH-PANEAH’ and he marries an Egyptian woman, the daughter of an Egyptian priest. Yet Joseph is careful to give his ‘Egyptian’ children Hebrew rather than Egyptian names - Menasseh and Ephraim. 

His children were born in Egypt. They never had the chance of experiencing the nomad life of their grandfather Jacob or the early life of their father Joseph. For them perhaps these family stories of the promise of the land to their great-great-grandfather Abraham and the story of the binding of their great-grandfather Isaac sounded like fairy tales. I can just imagine that, as the children of the second most powerful person in the most powerful country in the world at the time, they could not comprehend the reality of living in a tent and they could not understand the usefulness of a promise of a small piece of land so far away from the safety of their palace. 

Yet the challenge of passing the Jewish tradition from Jacob to Joseph and from Joseph to Manasseh and Ephraim is a challenge that we face in every generation. I look at my own history and my own experience of learning my tradition in a small religious school in the city of Ashkelon in Southern Israel. There we obviously spoke Hebrew and we therefore could read the Bible and other Jewish texts at source. At that time, we only had the distraction of a single channel on TV and most of our play time was outdoors. My children live a reality that is completely different to the one I had at their age. They probably could not understand that it is possible to have a month, a week or a day without a TV, smartphones phones, Snapchat and Instagram (whatever they are!). 
The challenge that a parent, and indeed a congregation, faces in our world, is one of taking the history and traditions of our grandparents, our parents and ourselves and passing them on to our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. How can we teach them about the Holocaust if they did not חס וחלילה ‘ ,dna – ’ God forbid, will never live to experience it? How can we make Jewish ritual, study and prayer meaningful for them as it is for us? How can we ensure that they continue as a link in the chain of our tradition rather than the last one? 

We can obviously make the effort and send them to Ruach, our religion school, and to Jewish schools. We can make the effort and practice the ritual at home as a family. Yet, this is not enough and, in many cases, our children might resent these experiences and even feel that they are very alienated from it in the same way that Manasseh and Ephraim must have felt when they tried to make sense of the nomad traditions of their grandfather. 

We also need to ask why is it that many synagogues experience a drop in membership and that some do not have that many young adult members, while cultural and educational institutions such as Limmud have experienced an exponential growth over the past years. 

The first Limmud started in 1980 with around 80 delegates. 35 years later – Limmud ended this year with around 3,000 participants. But this is not the end of the story for Limmud. There are now over 80(!) Limmud communities in 44(!) countries around the world. There are day-Limmud conferences all over the UK, and there is a Glastonbury-style Limmud conference in the summer. 
Limmud is perhaps just one example of how grandparents, parents, young adults and children can bridge the gap between the generations and are able to continue passing on the tradition. Limmud is a great opportunity of instilling strong Jewish values – community, caring, volunteering, charity, creativity, worship and the study of Torah. 

Limmud has also become the melting pot of the Anglo-Jewish community. Limmud is a Jewish conference, run by Jews and for Jews. Yet you don’t need to have a Jewish mother, be a member of a synagogue or meet a certain criteria set by the office of the Chief Rabbi in order to aSend. 

Limmud delegates come from all denomina,ons and from no denomination. The spirit of Limmud is one of mutual respect and tolerance for all. Everyone has a chance to express their views, and everyone has the right to listen or walk away. The only potential limit imposed by the conference is the physical size of a room and the time of day when a lecture might take place.

As a congregation we need to ask ourselves – what can we learn from the success of the Limmud conference and how can we make the congregants of SPS benefit from it? 

Perhaps we should make it possible for our younger generation to aSend Limmud. Perhaps we need to enable Limmud-style learning and teaching opportunities for families within our own community. Perhaps we need to build on the spirit of volunteering and care that we already have in our community and instil these in our young. Perhaps we need to encourage in all our members the feeling that we can all have our share of Jewish learning, worship and practice. ‘LO BASHAMAYIM HI’- all these things are not in the heaven that only a God, or at least a Rabbi, can perform them successfully. These values are in our hearts and in our minds and we can therefore pass them to the next generation. In the process, we will no doubt also learn one or two new tricks from our young ones. 

Jacob passed his tradition to Joseph and Joseph passed this very tradition to his two children and they, in return, to their children. Each generation has a different experience of the world, yet the tradition has travelled across 3,500 years to our genera,on. We have the responsibility of passing this tradition to our children, and we must learn to do it in a way that will be meaningful to us, and will be meaningful to them.

Rabbi Yuval Keren

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