It is hard to know where to begin after the week that has just passed… the land which our Torah puts so much effort into caring for continues to dominate our news cycles with pain and anguish and now also murders that spread thousands of miles around the globe. And while it has been impossible to escape so much human pain this week, my thoughts keep being drawn back to late October 2020. It was a Saturday night, and Lexie’s mum, Tracey, was on the end of the phone, distraught that a second lock down had been declared and would start in just a few days, meaning Josh’s Bar Mitzvah, the next Saturday, wouldn’t have even the small number of guests we’d hoped for. As we all scrambled to figure out how on earth we could give Josh the best Bar Mitzvah experience possible, we grappled with the realities of what it means to care for the vulnerable among us, and to create meaningful lifecycle moments together.
We were able to create a last minute week day Shacharit service, with plenty of social distancing, and Josh’s guests could enjoy the Shabbat proceedings over our live stream. It wasn’t quite what you’d all imagined it would be, but it will probably make for a more interesting story!
I think there are fascinating parallels between Lexie’s portion, which she leyned so beautifully this morning, and the communal response to the challenges of lock down, which seem almost like a bad dream now. And perhaps there are some nuggets on how to deal with life’s challenges more generally.
In Parashat Behar we hear about the ancient observance of Shmitta, or the Sabbatical year, the wise understanding of the ancient Israelites that you can’t endlessly demand resources from the earth (or indeed from ourselves) without allowing for time to rest and rejuvenate. It was no easy feat to observe. You couldn’t farm the land in any way and were only permitted to pick what you needed for your family for one day at a time, and only from what grew without our interference. To achieve this, communities would undoubtedly have had to work extremely hard in the year before Shmitta fell to stockpile food collaboratively, ensuring all would have enough for the leaner times. And during the year itself, it would be in everyone’s interest to share the produce of their own trees and land with their neighbours and vice versa, so that one’s diet might be as diverse as possible, and to help resources stretch through the year. This was also a way of reminding people that nothing ever really belongs to us, especially when it comes to land and produce. Observing Shmitta on your own would be really challenging. It is a model that not only asks us to care for the earth and her resources, but that also asks us to care for one another in real, practical terms, even though it might be an absolute pain to do so.
I had the privilege this week of officiating at the funeral for a member who was almost 103 years old. I remember calling her to wish her a happy birthday on her 100th birthday and she was remarkably clear, jolly and chatty. This became even more remarkable to me this week when I discovered the tragedies she had walked through in life, from losing her first husband, a kindertransport survivor at 48, to losing both her children before her own death. Her granddaughter and her nephew mentioned to me how she managed to carry on when they questioned her about all the tragedies she had lived through. Her philosophy was ‘I can’t change what was, and I don’t know what tomorrow will bring, so I will try and do my best with the day I have been given today’. In many ways this is the sort of philosophy that the Shmitta year relied on; you could only harvest what you needed for the day you were in, and worrying about tomorrow wouldn’t help. You could prepare for tomorrow alongside your community in the year before, and hopefully that would help, but the element of living for today could have been a very deliberate way that the torah tried to encourage the societies of ancient Israel to live for the moment, and to look after one another.
Today both Lexie and Serena are taking their place in the Jewish community. You have both chosen to step into this way of life. I hope it will be a huge source of support and meaning to you. Sometimes it will mean you being there to provide for others, and sometimes it will mean those others gather around to walk through life’s ups and downs with you. These are not easy times we are living through, but perhaps there have rarely been simple, easy times, and Judaism has spent thousands of years trying to establish systems and mechanisms through which we prepare ourselves, look after one another, and build societies that are just and caring.
May we all be blessed with just enough nourishment and emotional resilience for today, and a community that will walk with us from today into a future we will build together. Cain Yehi Ratzon, May this be God’s will, Venomar, Amen
