If not now, when?

In six weeks from now,  Carm, Nava, Eitan and I will be moving to Jerusalem. Our plan is to live there for the next two years, in order to see how our lives can be enriched from the experience.

Our reasons for making this move at this time in our lives are as follows:

1. For many generations, the Jewish people had no state of their own, which brought about a great resilience in our people, but also led to same great catastrophes. We feel blessed to live in a period of history where Jews can exercise their right to self determination in the form of a state, and we very much want to be a part of this special moment in the epic history of our people.

2. The modern State of Israel is very much a part of the answer to our “Why be Jewish?” question. We don’t want our children to have a Jewish identity based on victimhood, and antagonism against the world because Hitler killed their ancestors. To quote Haim Watzman,"Our history, tradition and culture are rich and powerful and provide adequate reason to want to be a Jew and an Israeli even if Hitler had never been born and the swastika never had reigned.”

My hope for the future is that my children grow up and be people who think “I’m a Jew because the Jewish people produced the Bible whose stories and poetry have become the common heritage of mankind…..I’m a Jew because of my people’s ethos of learning, argument and dialogue, because of the Talmud, midrashim, and thinkers ranging from Maimonides to Spinoza and Yeshayahu Leibowitz….I’m a Jew because my people preserved its language and culture through centuries of dispersion and reestablished and recreated them in the modern State of Israel” (Source: Jews despite the Holocaust)

3. As cultural Jews who embrace humanistic expressions of religious identity, we acknowledge that Israel (closely followed by New York, which we also considered for this adventure) is one of the best places on earth to be a secular Jew. Living in a state whose history is bound up with the history of the Jewish people, whose principal language is Hebrew, and whose main holidays reflect its national mission is a blessing for us. Knowing that in less than a year from now, our children will be singing, playing and of course arguing with each other in the same language in which the Mishna of Rebbi Yehuda, the poetry of Amichai and the lyrics of Alma Zohar are written is a dream come true for us.

4. When Israel was founded in 1948, the Declaration of Independence aspired that the state should be one that is “open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; fostering the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants”. The wish of the founding fathers and mothers was that Israel would be “based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”

Looking at the Israel of 2017, whilst it is possible to observe many aspects of this vision as being realised, there is a still a long way to go. This year marked the 50th year under which the Palestinian people have been living under IDF military occupation, that has denied them basic rights of freedom and self determination that our own people celebrate each year on Yom Haatzmaut. Furthermore, Israel’s current government has alienated millions of Israelis and diaspora Jews from religious Judaism by giving power to an Orthodox Rabbinate that has long ceased to interpret halacha in a manner that serves the interests of the majority of Israelis. The policies of the government have also exacerbated economic inequality, with Israel’s child poverty rate now surpassing that of Mexico and Chile. When Israel becomes our home, we hope to join with the many progressive forces in Israel that are working tirelessly to reverse these trends in order to help the Israel of today realise the vision of her founders.

5. This move is an opportunity we can best offer our children while they are young, and while we are all open to adventure. Acknowledging the significant differences between an Australian and an Israeli childhood, we hope we can offer them the best of both. We are blessed to have grown up in a loving and supportive community in Melbourne, filled with amazing friends, family and the incredible Shira Melbourne and Kehilat Kolenu - קהילת קולנו communities which we will both miss greatly. We hope that leaving for a while will give us greater perspective on what it means to be an Australian, which is also a country that to has an unreconciled past.

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Thanks to everyone in advance for all your support, guidance and advice as we embark upon this journey. 

--

אם אין אני לי, מי לי? וכשאני לעצמי, מה אני? ואם לא עכשיו, אימתי?
If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
But, If I am only for myself, what am I
And if not now, when?

Neilah 5778: The Final Drasha

How would you act if you believed today was your last on earth?

It’s a question I have been thinking more about this year than any other time in my life.

The initial trigger that sparked this thought that hasn’t left my mind for the past three months was reading the book Thirty Days about the wonderful Kerryn Baker, who was loved and admired by many people in this room here tonight.

Thirty Days

When I went to Mark’s book launch two months ago, I initially didn’t buy the book, thinking that even though I wanted to know and understand the story, reading it in full detail would be too confronting in that it would bring up memories of the loss of my father when I was 21.

As fate would have it, a week later the book appeared on my bedside table, after Carm had borrowed a copy from a friend. 48 hours later, I had finished reading the entire testimony.

The key questions of the book that I’d like to explore in this drasha is:

“Is it possible to live everyday as if it were your last?”

This often heard cliche heard at so many simcha’s and graduations in our community, is seemingly a goal to which many aspire, yet how many people take a moment to actually internalize what it means to truly live each moment with the full awareness that death could be imminent?

The question asked in the book is similar to that posed by the Days of Awe

Babylonian Talmud, Rosh HaShanah 16b

שלושה ספרים נפתחים בראש השנה:

אחד של רשעים גמורים

ואחד של צדיקים גמורים

ואחד של בינונים.

On Rosh HaShanah, three books are opened: one for the thoroughly wicked, one for the thoroughly righteous, and one for the intermediates. The thoroughly righteous are immediately inscribed and sealed for life. The thoroughly wicked are immediately inscribed and sealed for death. The intermediates hang in the balance from Rosh HaShanah until Yom Kippur. If they are found worthy, then they are inscribed for life. If not, then they are inscribed for death.

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Which brings to today and this moment of Neila. According to the Talmud, our lives now hang in the balance, with just over an hour left until our fate will be determined based on our actions of the past year. This is why  we annulled our vows at Kol Nidre last night, lest we go to the grave having made a promise or commitment which we will be unable to keep.

Rabbi Laura Geller, writes in The Torah of our Lives
“Yom Kippur is a day lived without bonds, without the obligations created by our vows and oaths. On Yom Kippur what matters is that we stand naked and alone before God. We are disembodied souls, confronting the reality of our mortality.  Yom Kippur is a symbolic encounter with death. We are supposed to refrain from life-affirming activities – eating, drinking, bathing, making love, and adorning ourselves. Because leather is viewed as adornment, we are instructed to take off our leather shoes, to stand barefoot, resembling the shoeless corpses we will someday be. We are to wear white; with some even wearing a kittel, which is the white garment in which we are buried.”

On the other hand, as much as Yom Kippur is the most awesome day of our lives, it’s also a bit like the hearing a Leonard Cohen tune at shira, where everyone knows in advance that it will come, but is always pleasantly surprised when it appears.

This is affirmed by none other than Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi who disagrees with the other sages,  stating in the gemara that:

“For all transgressions that are stated in the Torah, whether one repented, or whether one did not repent, Yom Kippur atones.”

Yom Kippur as a day of joy

For this reason, the last Mishnah in Ta'anit declares that "there were no more joyous days for Israel than the Fifteenth Day of Av and Yom Kippur." Also, Yom Kippur --like all the other festivals of the Jewish calendar-- has the power to cut short and even entirely cancel the mourning period of a mourner because of the national festive nature of the day as one where all forgiven.  

So perhaps the appropriate greeting for this day shouldn’t be “gut yontef” but rather, “chag sameach” or  “only 24 hours to go, see you in the book of life.”

So, ladies and gentlemen, if this is true, what we have come here to do today, is all part of an act, the final play in a cosmic narrative. Part of an elaborate imaginative exercise of teshuva that affirms the words of our other Rebbe, the late Leonard Cohen Z”l who stated in his holy lyrics:

“Everybody knows that the dice are loaded

Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows”

As someone who experiences Judaism as less about covenant with God and more about infusing rituals with meaning, I’d like to practice what I preach in the last few minutes of this drasha, by imagining for a moment that this may be the last drasha I will ever give.

If I only had five minutes left to live, to say the most important words, to the most important people in my life, many of whom are in this shul right now, what would they be?

Before I answer this question, I’d like to tell you about something I shared with my partner Carm after reading Thirty Days. I finished the book on a sunday morning, when as luck would have it, both our young children were sleeping at Nana’s, a rare occurrence in our lives.

I told Carm how I felt about the book, and about how I didn’t want to wait till I had cancer or another illness before telling her some truths about my life. At first she said, “you are being too intense, let me have a shower and breakfast, after which we can talk.”

Half an hour later, we sat around our kitchen table, in our very quiet child free bubble which was only to last two hours, and I began talking, and  Carm began typing. Everything I said to Carm, and she said to me went into a google doc, a shared record of what we want, when we do face our real Neila, our final hours, without the Book of Life lying safely on the other side.

The doc begins with me telling Carm how I want to die. I tell her that there is no need to hide me from the world, that anyone who wants to visit should be welcome. I tell her than if euthanasia is legal, I’d like to die peacefully at a time of our choosing rather than suffer through the agony of a painful death. I also tell her that I’d like all my organs donated so that my death can be a gift to save as many lives as possible. I tell her that at my funeral, I want men and women to sit together, despite the mechitza and whatever rabbis says it is forbidden. I list all the people I’d like to speak at the funeral. Finally, I tell her how I’d like my children to be raised in my absence.

Unlike many parents who say, “whatever they choose that makes them happy will be good” I want my children, Nava and Eitan, to be reminded throughout their lives that their purpose on the short time they have on this earth is to do more than find joy and gladness.

I wanted it to be known that I share the view of renowned psychologist Martin Seligman who says that meaning comes from belonging to and serving something beyond yourself and from developing the best within you.”

As a teacher, I see the unintended consequences of a culture that places the desire for happiness before the obligation of community service every day in ever growing rates of anxiety and depression that are at close to all time highs in 2017.

I wanted Carm to write down, that when it comes time for my children to choose the path in their lives, that if I am no longer around to be a part of this conversation, I’d like them to choose a direction leading them towards relationships, professions and religious rituals and communities that enable them to make our world a better place, even if this may appear to come before their own immediate needs for happiness. This is because I believe, that true happiness, can only be found in a life that is filled with meaning.

After 40 minutes of typing, each sharing with each other our wishes and thoughts around the future, we both felt  comforted, and whole. It’s a moment we felt very close and affirmed the importance of having difficult conversations with those whom you love.

I started this drasha by asking, “How would you act if you believed today was your last on earth?”

I know my answer to this question. If today was my last day on earth, I would spend it with my close friends and family, sharing stories, hearing about their lives, avoiding small talk by asking big questions, having meaningful conversations, and above all, singing together. What better a way to have a last day than that.

My hope for the people in this shule, is that at the end of this Yom Kippur, before you go to sleep tonight, you are able to take a moment to find the people most important in your lives, either those in this room, or those in your home, or those at the MCG, and take an hour to tell them how you want to be remembered, and the teshuva you want to do.

Life’s too short to wait until cancer or another tragedy plucks the life out of us mortals before we have filled the time we deserve to have on this earth to be with those we love.

Mark wrote recently on his author page, “'Stop just assuming you have a full lifetime to do whatever it is you dream of doing.' This indeed is the challenge of Yom Kippur.

To face our inevitable deaths together as a collective, yet to die with as much grace and dignity in which we lived.

May we all be granted the gift of being stamped in the book of life.      Shana Tova

Drasha delivered at Shira Melbourne, Neila 2017

The fifth question: Songs of Songs and the Book of Ruth

Written By Yossi Sarid in Haaretz, April 1, 2007

Rejoice, rejoice in the good news: Spring is here and Passover is on the way. And I too rejoice when Nissan, the month that was once the first of the Hebrew calendar, arrives, and with its vernal beauty steals the joy of the still-blustery Adar - though we are all commanded to rejoice during that month. The joy of Nissan is double - both departing for freedom and departing from winter.

I have revised my tastes in Bible a number of times over the years; a kind of weakness of taste, a sort of capriciousness of temperament that is characteristic of transitional seasons. Today I am almost certain that I have formulated my position: The Song of Songs and the Book of Ruth are my favorites, and that is final.

These are two books of a subversive character, and both of them always bring up the question of how they succeeded in the first place in entering the collection of Holy Writ. How were they given canonical status? Were such writings collected and redacted nowadays, it is doubtful they would be awarded this status. Quite possibly, the Song of Songs would be left out because of its eroticism and the Book of Ruth pushed out because of its ethics. But we shall write about Ruth at length at the end of the counting of the Omer, when the holiday of Shavuot arrives.

Ruth and the Song of Songs are the most Land-of-Israel books that I know of, then or now. When the question arises of whether there is such a thing as Israeli literature, and not just Israeli writers, these two books are the decisive answer: Indeed there is such a literature. Reading and delighting in them is possible anywhere, but the writing could have taken place only here, in Bethlehem and Jerusalem, among the fields and vineyards of the beloved land of our fathers.

I once suggested to our Interior Ministry that it rely on the Book of Ruth to establish the rules for obtaining citizenship in this country, and now I am suggesting to the Tourism Ministry that it use the Song of Songs to attract tourists in love. And Bar Refaeli, with little marketing effort, can play the role of "For I am lovesick." As everyone knows, the Song of Songs is attributed to King Solomon, but according to modern research, the text was shaped many years after his reign. Not only historically, but also from the literary perspective, it is difficult to accept Solomon as the author, as in his palace harem he had a thousand women, whereas Shulamith's love for her beloved is unique and exclusive. The lord of a thousand women does not qualify for a love experience that is so focused and for longings that are so distilled.

Today the prevailing assumption is that the anthology of love songs was not written by a single hand but rather by various authors in various periods, although a rereading reveals perfect stylistic and thematic unity.

The Song of Songs is a subversive book in biblical, conservative and traditional terms, so much so that the sages had to interpret it as a kind of allegory. Not a beloved and a lover, not a shepherd and a shepherdess, not Shulamith and her beloved, but rather a love affair between the community of Israel and God. Rabbi Akiva, of all people, who held the Song of Songs to be more sacred than the other books of Scripture apart from the five books of Moses and the Prophets, is recorded as having said that "anyone who warbles the Song of Songs in drinking houses and makes it into a kind of ditty has no portion in the world to come."

Those sages always had to spoil our fun. Why do they do this to us? What did we ever do to them? Happily for us, this exegesis, which was aimed at preventing desecration, did not make a deep impression on creative inspiration. Generation after generation had its say and transmitted material, and there isn't a single line that has not been put into the mouths of flesh-and-blood lovers. There isn't a single poem in the Song of Songs that has not been sung by the young in spirit, who, in the breezes of the night and the day, imagine themselves as shepherds and shepherdesses, black and comely, tanned swarthy by the sun; this is their sensual fantasy.

The allegory argument in this case is rather funny and far out. Even God Himself would not be grateful to the great leaders of Israel and their exegetes if a trace of the human remained in His image. What is it they want to tell us, the sages of blessed memory - that their God is not only merciful, but also libidinous, and that the community of Israel, for its part, is particularly interested in the thighs of the Holy One, blessed be He, which are "as pillars of marble." He swoons over her most intimate parts, "the rounding of thy thighs," "thy belly is a heap of wheat" and "thy two breasts are like twin fawns," and he dreams of climbing into the palm tree with the help of the branches thereof and her breasts as the clusters of grapes. As for her, she will nestle him between her breasts, his left hand under her head and his right hand embracing her.

God shows up all of a sudden, and with no prior warning in any other reference, knocks on the door, his head filled with dew, on his locks the drops of night, removes his coat, washes his feet and is ready; and she rises to open the door, her heart moving for him, her hands and her fingers flowing with myrrh on the door handles. She too is ready.

Good God, what is happening here? Has the landlord gone crazy? How is it that we hadn't previously known such a human God, so similar and equal to us? Neither did He know that He was like that, until his emissaries and exegetes told Him. The Song of Songs is customarily read on the Sabbath of the Intermediate Days of Passover, between the first and the seventh day. There are those who also read it on the closing holiday, and even a few who end the seder night by reading it. I very much recommend this custom, and I think it should spread. The Song of Songs is a much better read than the Passover Haggadah, which is an eclectic text that stops at every station in time, like a slow train that takes on more and more freight.

Because the Haggadah is a wide-open text that has not been zealously guarded in every generation, it has been infiltrated by a mix of biblical verses and bits of legend, prayers and hymns and just plain songs. With its educational mission ("thou shall tell thy son on that day"), the Haggadah is ostensibly also aimed at children, and perhaps first and foremost at them, so as to instill in all four kinds of sons the story of the Exodus from Egypt, to make them like it and to educate each according to his needs. But while the Song of Songs only charms, the Haggadah is also scary, like Grimms' fairy tales. When the Haggadah pours out its wrath, it does so on young and old alike. Alongside fine and interesting sections, there are a number of baffling and boring parts. No wonder many families postpone the worst and have the meal first so that slumber will not fall on the eyelids of the tender Jewish infants.

Therefore, I recommend that another question be added to the traditional four: How is this night different from all other nights? On all other nights we read only the Haggadah; on this night we also read the Song of Songs, wherein the songs are better than wine and verily, even the fleshpots.

Rosh Hashana Drasha 5766: Race, Racism and the Creation of Mankind

When you woke up in the morning today, many of you put on your nicest clothes in honour of the chag and began your journey to shul. As you walked down Balaclava Rd, you wished Shana Tova to the people you passed, and exchanged hugs and reminisced with friends not seen for some time. One thing you may not have done, is wish someone ‘Happy Birthday.’ Many of us don't realize that the reason we are here today is to mark the birth of two people.

Two people, initially created as one, born of no parents, with no religion, separated from each other at birth. They walked the earth 2000 years before the first Jew was born, and 2500 years before we were proclaimed a people at Mt Sinai. Their names were Adam and Eve. According to the Midrash (Vayikra Rabba 29:1), today is their birthday.

The words ‘Hayom Harat Olam,’  “Today the world was brought into being” mark the creation of the first human soul. The Talmud asks in Masechet Sanhedrin, "Why was only a single specimen of man created first? To teach us that he who destroys a single soul destroys a whole world and that he who saves a single soul saves a whole world;  Man was also created alone so that no race or class may claim a nobler ancestry, saying, 'Our father was born first'; and, finally, to give testimony to the greatness of the Lord, who caused the wonderful diversity of mankind to emanate from one type. And why was Adam created last of all beings? To teach him humility; for should he ever become arrogant, let him remember that the little fly preceded him in the order of creation." – Talmud, Sanhedrin viii. 4-9)

The Yalkut Shimoni 1:13 elaborates on this idea by stating God formed Adam out of dust from all over the world—yellow clay, white sand, black loam, and red soil. Therefore no one can declare to any people that they do not belong since this soil is the source from which we all emerged.

There are more texts in this vein which go to great lengths to express the idea that all mankind is descended from one Adam, a being who was neither male nor female, whose body held the potential to be a vessel for all future genders, races, and possibilities of human identity.

This principle, that all mankind originates from one, exists in many faiths, and is also enshrined in the pre-amble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which recognises the “inherent dignity and inalienable rights of all members of the human family.”

The first article of this declaration which has been endorsed by almost every nation on earth states, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

The Guinness Book of Records describes the Declaration as the world's "Most Translated Document." Even though it is not legally binding, the Declaration has been adopted in or has influenced most national constitutions since 1948 and served as the foundation for a growing number of national laws and international laws.
Sometimes I read it to my children as a bedtime story.

That said, in spite of this desire for mankind to be colour blind, articulated in both Jewish and civil law, so many events have occurred in the past year to show the opposite is true. I’d like to explore cases from two different countries that will be familiar to many of you here today.



Twenty years after Nicky Winmar famously lifted his jumper and declared ''I'm black - and I'm proud to be black!'' the response of Adam Goodes to a racist taunt from a 13 year old girl has now become a defining moment in Australian race relations. The day following the incident, Goodes explained his response:
“It's not the first time on the footy field I've been referred to as a monkey or an ape. It was shattering. This week is a celebration of our people and our culture. Last night, I was able to make a stand for myself and say racism has a face, and it’s a 13-year-old girl, but it's not her fault.
She's 13, she's still so innocent. I don't put any blame on her. Unfortunately it's what she hears, the environment she's grown up in that has made her think it's ok to call people names.” 

A year later, Goodes was honoured with the title of Australian of the Year for his activism against racism. Whilst he was honoured by many, a small minority started booing him at AFL matches, the trauma of which led to him taking some time out of football in August this year. Amongst a great deal of commentary about this, I was incredibly moved to read these words of Wiradjuri journalist Stan Grant in the Guardian:
“I may be overly sensitive. I may see insult where none is intended. Maybe my position of relative success and privilege today should have healed deep scars of racism and the pain of growing up Indigenous in Australia. The same could be said of Adam. And perhaps that is right.  But this is how Australia makes us feel.
Estranged in the land of our ancestors, marooned by the tides of history on the fringes of one of the richest and demonstrably most peaceful, secure and cohesive nations on earth.
The “wealth for toil” we praise in our anthem has remained out of our reach. Our position at the bottom of every socio-economic indicator tragically belies the Australian economic miracle.
From childhood I often cringed against my race. To be Aboriginal was to be ashamed. Ashamed of our poverty. Ashamed of the second-hand clothes with the giveaway smell of mothballs and another boy’s name on the shirt collar. Ashamed of the way my mother and grandmother had to go to the Smith Family or Salvation Army for food vouchers.”

I have met with a number of inspiring elders over the past few years through my participation in the Yorta Yorta Beyachad program at Mount Scopus. These moving words of Stan Grant are not new to me, and underlie how far we still need to travel as a nation before the aspirations of our anthem  are realised.

The country I’d like to explore next is an ocean away from us, but very close to the hearts of many in this room. From 1948, its government had the dubious reputation of being one of the most racist in the world. I am speaking of South Africa. A country ruled by the British or Dutch since the arrival of Jan van Riebeeck in 1652 until the end of apartheid in 1994. Being one of what sometimes feel like a minority of Jews in Melbourne who is not South African, the history of this country has always fascinated me. Earlier this year, I had the privilege of visiting this most beautiful and challenging of places as a guest of Limmud South Africa.

Before my visit, most of what I knew about the country was based on memories of watching the Power of One and the 1995 Rugby world cup with many South African school friends who ate Biltong and lived in Doncaster. I remember the symbolism of Mandela wearing the once hated springbok jersey, and seeing the now multi-racial rugby team win over New Zealand. It was an incredibly inspiring moment demonstrating the power of reconciliation.

Like many Australians, I also heard many stories about Nelson Mandela, who seems to occupy a special place in the western imagination together with Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr as being one of the greatest champions of non-violent resistance, forgiveness and transformational leadership.

A month after Mandela was elected president in 1994, he famously said of his people, “Each of us is as intimately attached to the soil of this beautiful country as are the famous jacaranda trees of Pretoria and the mimosa trees of the bushveld – a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world.”

Last week, I re-watched the final minutes of the 1995 rugby world cup where South Africa defeated New Zealand. The first thing the Australian commentator said when the final whistle was blown was; “It's Over. A triumph for the rainbow nation.” This made me think, Is South Africa a Rainbow nation? 20 years after the end of apartheid, has it finally overcome its demons of history? Was this nation that categorised all of its people into black, white and coloured for so many years, able to implement the idea in Talmud Sanhedrin, that we are all created equal and are all from the same source?

On one hand, I found many examples to answer this question in the affirmative. Most striking was my visit to Constitutional Hill which is the site of a former Johannesburg prison that incarcerated hundreds of black and white members of the ANC, three of whom went on to become Nobel Peace Prize laureates. Today it is home to the highest court in the land. The Constitutional Court enforces what is arguably one of the most progressive constitutions in the world.  Not only does it guarantee the traditional civil rights such as the right to vote, free expression, the rights of association and assembly, but also important social rights such as the right to clean water, health and to be gay or lesbian without being discriminated against. It ruled in favour of same sex marriage in 2005, passed strong laws against the death penalty, and has even tried a deputy president whilst in office. This court was an incredible prize to all who participated in the struggle for liberation.

Visit to the Constitutional Court with former prisoner Alan Fine

However, just outside the court, there were signs all over the city saying “Johannesburg says no to Xenophobia". These were a reference to a spate of racist attacks against foreigners in South Africa from Zimbabwe, and Congo, Somalia and Mozambique. 7 people lost their lives to this violence in April 2015.

The issues that motivated those who perpetrated the violence against the foreigners included competition for jobs, commodities, housing and nationalism. Clearly in these cases, even though both the victims and perpetrators shared the same skin colour, there was enough difference within the ethnic identities and lived reality to bring them to such tragic consequences.

In addition to this phenomenon of xenophobia, the #RhodesMustFall movement which successfully lobbied for the removal of the Cecil Rhodes statue from the University of Cape Town this year has generated much discussion around the issues of white privilege in South Africa. These have included strong debates about the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) initiative, which gives preference to Black and Coloured South Africans in the awarding of government contracts and university places, as well as the strong feelings of alienation by black students who are still learning in courses where Afrikaans is the language of instructions such as Stellenbosch University.

In light of these issues, of all the descriptions that are used to describe the South African people today on their journey to liberation, ‘a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world’ are not the words I would choose.
Even though we have only explored two countries today, stories about social, political and economic equality based on race can be easily found in almost every country on earth. With this in mind, I’d like to share a simple hope for the coming year 5776.

Many people of conscience throughout the world would like our planet to return to being a Garden of Eden without racial discrimination, but before that can happen, we need to acknowledge the legacy of racism, the privilege that some races still hold over others and the tikkun required before we can again return to an idea we are celebrating today on the creation of the first human. 
May we all one day live in a world that is colour blind, where a person is judged by the content of their character and not the colour of their skin.

Shana Tova

Neila Drasha 5774 - What if God would answer our prayers?

This is a drasha I shared with the Shira community in the moments before Neila, 5774. It imagines what prayer would be like if it was a dialogue, rather than a monologue. The following letter imagines how I would like God to respond to our prayers.

Imagining God’s Letter to the Jewish People

My Dear Children of Israel,

Over the past 24 hours, you have praised me, cried out to me, begged for forgiveness and sought atonement from me and your neighbours. What an honour to share this day with you. To be the address for your teshuva, for your desire to be a better a person.

Intoning and enumerating your sins, you have beaten your right fist into our left breast no fewer than 860 times. Ashamnu, bagadnu, gazalnu…

But I say to you now, in the last hour of this shabbat shabtot, the holiest of holy days, enough.

No more guilt. For the last hour, abstain from guilt. True atonement has nothing to do with guilt, and everything to do with responsibility.

Please stop feeling guilty

For not being the parent you wanted to be,

For procrastinating too much before you achieved the things to you wanted to do

For criticising your friends and family without suggesting alternatives on how they could do better

For criticising your politicians with too many suggestions on how they could do better

And perhaps, for some of you, not taking the time to do teshuva seriously.

Instead of feeling guilty, please take this last hour on this most holy of days, to focus on responsibilities. Let the beautiful singing that pervades this room, be the backing track to your meditation and reflection on the responsibilities you’d like to take upon yourself in the coming year.

Will you take responsibility for being more generous in the way you give tzedakah?

Will you have more time for your family?

Will you speak less lashon hara?

Will you think more carefully about all of my 613 mitzvot before you accept or reject them?

Will you engage more honestly in your work?

Will you give more freely of your time to those who need it most?

These questions are for you to answer.

My Dear Children of Israel,

In the past year, far too many of my creations having been doing things in my name, which I am not happy about. In my name, people have advanced the cause of racism, intolerance, sexism, homophobia, war and xenophobia. Those who advance these causes in my name, forget that I have created all of you in my image. With equal rights, and equal dignity. Shaming your fellow human in my name, shames me. Loving your fellow creation, honours me.  

--

The siddur you are all holding in your hands, please use it wisely in the next hour. From what I have heard so far, this holy book is filled with adjectives about me. How great, wonderful, mighty and powerful I am.  So many times, I have heard you describe my 13 attributes of mercy

That I am gracious, compassionate, patient, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, assuring love for a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin, and granting pardon.

These words about my nature are true. I am forgiving and want you to succeed in doing teshuva.

-

However, I also wanted to let you know something else which isn’t included in the siddur. I know that your teshuva will be incomplete.

I know that many of the promises you will make today, will be broken. After all, why else would so many of you come to shule last night to annul your vows during Kol Nidre?

I created you in an imperfect way, with free choice, to choose good and to choose evil. To choose to kill and to choose to heal. To weep and to laugh, To mourn and to dance.

To acquire and to lose, to be silent and speak.

I gave you the ability to gas people in Syria, to be blind to the suffering of the asylum seekers and strangers in your midst, to ignore the hungry and the homeless, and to use violence on far too many occasions when words would have sufficed. I gave you the ability to commit unimaginable crimes and also to stop them. I have given you all the ability, on each and every day, to be a perpetrator, victim, bystander and upstander.

Every day, I look at the world and I see what’s going on. I don’t need google to find out. Because I am the only one who knows more than google.

I am acutely aware of your cognitive dissonance. Of the many occasions when your actions don’t match your ideas and beliefs. On this day, I forgive you for that too. As long as you can promise me that after today, we have an agreement, that you want to be better.

Better parents, better children, better partners, better citizens and better humans.

Whatever happens in the coming year, irrespective of whether you create more obstacles or making the choices necessary to overcome them, please remember, that I will always love you.

We are created in the same image. Sometimes broken, sometimes while, but always deserving of love.

-

I understand that many of you in this shule are fans of the Canadian prophet I sent you many years ago. One Mr Leonard Cohen. He was one of my better creations, so I can understand why you like him.

There is a song of his which I have heard from the floor of this room, which no other congregation has shared. If it be your will. If I could sing one line back to you, it would sound like this.

Now it is my will, that I speak no more

My voice will now be still, as it was before

From this broken Hill, all my praises you did ring

Now it is my will, for you to sing.

Gmar Chatima Tova

A Moral Dilemma: Asylum Seekers

Here’s a question I have been thinking about since Kevin Rudd announced the PNG solution for asylum seekers who arrive on our shores seeking protection.

 

If a victim of violence came to you asking for help, would you?

A: Welcome and support them in the hope that they will never be a victim again

B: Tell them you can’t help them, because someone else is also suffering on the other side of the world

C: Send them to the poorest guy in the street, and tell them to ask for help there.