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Y O M K I P P U R 2 0 0 9 - Rabbi Steven Katz
What are our first impressions as we walk into Hendon Reform Synagogue. As we first walk in we see on the left hand side a Holocaust Memorial Wall with the names of just some of the Nazi’s deathly concentration camps lit up by the image of fire. The wall is a memorial to the six million Jews, their lives, their laughter, their hopes, their dreams, their talents, their potential which perished at a time when madness and murder triumphed in the world. Abba Kovner’s beautiful instruction is highlighted – “Our memories are their only known grave.”. It is a Jew’s duty, a Jew’s mitzvah for all time to learn, and then to tell of the Jewish life that prevailed and indeed flourished in C/E Europe before Hitler and the where, when and how it was brutally ended – The “why” is an elusive mystery beyond all human comprehension.
As you look ahead you will see showcase on the left with a large silver chanukiah, a reminder of a time 2000 years before the  Shoah when an earlier attempt was made to extinguish the flame of Jewish life, prayer and practice and to stifle religious freedom. But the flame was preserved by the courage of the Maccabees. If you now look in the right hand showcase you will see a seder dish and matza plate whose symbolism takes us back even further, three and a half thousand years ago to Egypt when Pharaoh stripped the Jew of his personal dignity and physical freedom, a time however, when God through Moses restored both dignity and freedom to Jew and Jewish life. Look a little further and you will see kiddush cups, havdala candle and besamim (spice) box resonating Shabbat. Shabbat goes back to the beginning of time itself, the creation story. Shabbat is a time step off the treadmill of our working routine and redefine ourselves as members of a family, a community. We all long for big, better and more, some persue those goals relentlessly, remorselessly, seven days a week. On Shabbat we declare an armistice in the materialistic battle to have more and focus on the spiritual task to be more – better parents and children, better spouses and siblings, better friends, better Jews. When we walk into our synagogue, Hendon Reform Synagogue, we are reminded that we belong to this spiritual journey, this engagement with God and Israel, a journey that reaches back 4000 years, a journey across oceans, deserts and time zones; a journey incorporating the deepest troughs of human suffering – slavery, conquest, exile, blood libels, deportations, forced deputations, expulsions, inquisitions, ghettos, death camps – Haman and Hitler, Titus and Torquemada, Crusaders and Cossacks but a journey also that has witnessed the very peaks of spiritual experience and expression – a relationship, a covenant, a brith, of mutual privilege and responsibility, a brith forged 4000 yeas ago between God and Abraham; freedom from slavery and rescue at the Red Se, engagement, dialogue, revelation with God at Sinai. Biblical prophets thundering messages of social justice with words placed in their mouths by God, Talmudic rabbis who strove to develop Jewish law by making Torah find expression in the everyday and every place, Jewish poets and philosophers of Spain’s Golden Age who found new ways to inspire love of God and develop Jewish theology, Hasidic rabbis who in spite of gut wrenching poverty and omnipresent persecution in 18th century Poland rediscovered and reformulated the Jewish passion for God, morality and spirituality. Zionist pioneers who refused to succumb to a new, virulent venomous mutation of anti-semitism in 19th century Europe and planting with their feet, their hands, their belief, their determination the seeds of sovereign Jewish State of Israel. And Reform rabbis who for the past two hundred years have sought to add intellectual integrity and moral sensitivity to the cavernous treasure chest we all Judaism. Abraham, Moses, King David, Isaiah, Rabbi Akiva, Maimonides, the Bal Shem Tov, Herzl, they have all signed our Jewish identity card, shaped our DNA with their names, their insight and their foresight. This message, this lesson is on the walls and in the showcases of our shul, it is writ large in the sifrei Torah and our Bible, and it is taught in our Nursery school, our cheder, our adult classes. And the lessons find a spiritual expression in the hands and committees working in, with and through our shul.
The shul, our shul, is part of this Jewish journey that can nourish and sustain. This is the impression we are endeavouring to impart to those who walk into our shul.
But wait a moment, if you look at the showcase on the left you will see at the back a fragment of a Sefer Torah. Look a little closer and you will see that it has been slashed, desecrated with a razor. It was rescued from a burning synagogue of Bialystok in 1941. At least 800 Jews had been pushed into the synagogue before it was set on fire. Historian Martin Gilbert takes up the story. “The Germans forced further victims to push one another into the burning building” A sea of flames engulfed the whole area. The synagogue is the custodian of Jewish learning and living and our enemies know that, which explains why the synagogue is always the first victim of any assault on Jewish Life. In just 48 hours during Krysallnacht of November 1938, the Nazis desecrated every single synagogue throughout Germany and Austria burning many of them to the ground. Some years later the Communists of the old Soviet Union sought to strangle Judaism suffocating Jewish life, by firstly closing synagogues the length and breadth of the country. Our enemies recognized that the synagogue is the heart and soul of the Jewish people; the source of our communal strength and our religious faith. Sadly, tragically, the synagogue is still threatened. Mercifully not by our enemies, no Jewish community outside Israel finds itself in existentialist danger but by Jews. A full one third of Anglo-Jewry has not affiliated to a synagogue. Imagine if a third of current British tax payers were to disappear. The poor, the sick, the elderly, the schoolchild, would be denied respectively food and home, a hospital bed, accommodation, education. The country would collapse in a heap of collective despair and deprivation. The remaining tax payers would have to pay even more of their hard earned money to support and strengthen the country. The primary role of the synagogue is to support and sustain the Jew and Judaism. As Rabbi Harold Schulweiss has observed, whereas our grandparents came to shul because they were Jewish, our grandchildren come to shul to become Jewish. In previous generations children acquired their knowledge, appreciation, love of Judasim from their parents. Few parents today have the knowledge and confidence to fulfill that role. Entrusted to the synagogue is the task of providing Jewish children with a Jewish education, the very oxygen of Jewish life itself. When the air stewardess gives instructions to passengers what to do when the oxygen masks drop on the plane, she will tell them first to put the mask over themselves, not over the children’s faces. Not giving the oxygen masks to your child first contradicts very parental instinct, but you first have to ensure your own survival in order to be able to save your child. In the teeth of this relentless recession many are having to reassess their priorities and for some Jews shul affiliation is readily surrendered. The Jew may say, and I have met some former congregants “If I pay my £50 I can still daven on Rosh Hashana/Yom Kippur”. To take that option is to show your children, your friends, that Judaism is not worth strengthening, supporting or even saving because your severing of shul affiliation is weakening the institution which for generations has provided the oxygen for the Jew to learn and live a Jewish life. Moreover, let me say to the Jew who contracts into Judaism, synagogue life, on only Rosh Hashanah/Yom Kippur. You are hurting the very institution that often facilitated your chupah, your baby’s blessing, and your child’s bar/batmitzva. The institution that gave you the joy of a wedding day surrounded by the warmth and wealth of Jewish tradition and ceremony, the institution that permitted you to stand on the bima with your newly born baby and express a prayer of gratitude in the heart of your community. The institution that taught, prepared your child for bar/batmitzva to stand on the bima, read from the Torah and so connect with 40 generations of Jews. All of this you were able to enjoy, savour, because other Jews who often had experienced these s’machot some years earlier had maintained their shul affiliation. If you are healthy you cannot tell the Chancellor of the Exchequer you do not want your taxes directed to the National Health Service, and therefore should pay less tax; if you do not have children at school you cannot tell him you do not want your taxes directed to schools, and therefore should pay less tax. If you are not yet a senior citizen you cannot forbid him to direct your contribution to pensions, and therefore should pay less tax. We are part of a country, Britain, with privileges but also responsibilities to the whole country to ensure that it is a safe, prosperous caring society. To give up on shul affiliation is to give up, to surrender, to abort your care, your responsibility for the physical and spiritual wellbeing of the Jewish community. Recent discovery has revealed a common gene among all kohanim. I, in all due modesty, discovered long before in terms of genetic research that all Jews have a “K” chromosome, we KVETCH, we complain, we gripe, we moan. There is a story of the waiter in a kosher restaurant who asks guests if the meal is satisfactory. “Not bad, but not enough bread, just two slices” is the response. The next day, same question, this time the guest is given four slices of bread, but again complains it is not enough. The following day they put on six slices and again he isn’t satisfied. Finally, the next day the owner tells the waiter to take the whole loaf, cut in two and give it to him. Asked how he like the meal this time, the guest says, “There you go again, back to the two slices”. Some here may have a kvetch with our shul, with me, or our Board of Management, and your kvetch may be wholly justified and for this on Yom Kippur, this Day of Atonement, I apologise. But your lack of shul affiliation is diminishing our ability to provide for others, the environment, the infrastructure and the extended family which gave you some of your most meaningful and memorable Jewish experiences. But talk to us; tell us how we disappointed you or failed you. Let us as a shul at best try to make amends, to make right what we did wrong and at least to apologise to you personally. But this is Yom Kippur and I need to be honest and to tell you if I am disappointed in you or you have failed the Jewish community. I would urge you to restore your shul affiliation, not simply as an act of altruism, but for your benefit as well as that of the shul. Harold Kushner in this book “Who Needs God” put it this way. “Our place of worship offers us a refuge an island of caring in the midst of a hostile, competitive world. In society that segregates the old from the young, the rich from the poor, the successful from the struggling, the house of worship represents one place where the barriers fall and we all stand equal before God. It promises to be the one place in society where my gain does not have to mean your loss.” Too many join a shul and expect instant scratch card spirituality and satisfaction. It cannot give this. You need to involve yourself. Many organizations challenge members to bring one member, but I would like to challenge each Jew here. Just bring yourself; bring yourself to join one aspect of shul life. Make a decision to come once a month to a Shabbat morning service or to the bimonthly Erev Shabbat Chavura meal, or to join the Caring Group befriending a housebound or vulnerable congregant, or join the shul’s social committee make friends , raise money for needy causes. I assure you that your involvement will make a difference in your life and in the life of the shul. I hope your shul experience over these 10 days of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur has reminded you that you belong to a special people with a special heritage. Involve yourself in your shul and see and meet these people and your heritage face to face, and so let yourself be enriched not just for a year but continually throughout the year and beyond.
Rabbi Steven Katz
September 2009
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