How very satisfying it must have been for Moses to know that he had finished his work. There it stood the Mishkan, the portable desert Temple with everything done and ready – the screen erected, the courtyard ready, the holy of holies appropriately made, the vestments for the priests finished, the altar ready for its first sacrifices, the ner tamid ready to be lit. Even more so when, as we hear in the last words of the Book of Exodus the cloud of God covered the Mischan to signal that they had done it – made a place fit for God to dwell within.
Pretty much exactly the same words were used for the completion of Solomon’s Temple (1 Kings 8:10) – the cloud filed it and Solomon was able to bless the people knowing that he had completed the work that he had set out to do. The same words too were used when God completed the creation of the universe with man and women too created (Genesis 2). Vay’chulu ha-shamayim v’ha-arets v’chol ts’va’am. – Heaven and earth were finished and everything within them.
Everything finished. Except of course in all of these cases the end of the construction really signaled a beginning of a different kind of work. Everything that it will take to make the Mischcan effective, all of the worship structure, the sacrifices, the work of the priests, the Cohanim, the yearly calendar of Shabbat and festivals, the rituals around purity and keeping the Mishcan, and its permanent parallel the Temple, unpolluted by things which are not fit to be holy – a constant task.
So too for God, the universe, the earth, the living beings, humankind may well have been finished but then began the constant task of keeping it all working, and keeping it from destroying itself due to the space that Jews believe God left for our free will and our partnership in the task of truly completing the world, tikkun olam. No wonder the next words after Vay’chulu ha-shamayim v’ha-arets v’chol ts’va’am.are vayishbot ba-yom ha-sh’vi’i mikkol m’lachto asher asah. That God rested on the seventh day from all the work that had been done.
This was not just rest due to the extraordinary exertions of creation in the week just past but also rest before the hugeness of the task ahead of running the world that had been created.
In truth it is never really complete. In Midrash (Genesis Rabbah 11:6) a philosopher challenges Rabbi Hoshaya saying that if the world was completed then why was Adam not born circumcised. Hoshaya’s answer is that this is the nature of the world. Humankind needs to be God’s partner in completing all kinds of things, ‘whatever was created in the first six days requires further preparation, mustard needs sweetening, beans need to be soaked, wheat needs grinding, and man too needs to be finished off.’
I attended a conference organised by Simon Baron-Cohen on his insight that it was possible that the neuroscience of empathy might be an aid towards peace between Israelis and Palestinians. The conference brought together Israeli and Palestinian academics in the field and others who were not scientists but were working in the area of empathy. It was based on the hope that it might be possible to create “what is still lacking between the two peoples: an empathetic understanding of the “other” side that would allow for a lasting peace settlement.” (Jewish Chronicle 11/3/16 p12)
The conference was tough listening as we learned from MIT’s Emile Bruneau that the most empathetic people for needs of others within their own group of people can be proven to be the least empathetic for people in other groups on the basis that helping others could in their view damage their “own people”. It is the reason why the most lovely, kind people to their own folk can completely fail to be interested in getting to know anyone else. It’s tribalism.
Among many other interesting talks we heard the moving experiences of Palestinian sociologist Nawal Musleh Motut who brought Israelis and Palestinian families together to see what would happen if the Palestinians heard about the Shoah experiences of the families of the Israelis and the Israelis heard about the displacement or Naqba experiences of the families of the Palestinians, family to family. The experience was extraordinarily powerful and seems to have changed the orientation of both so that they feel now united in finding solutions having previously demonised the other.
This too will never be complete. Even if some kind of peace can be found it will also need work to maintain it. Somewhere some group will feel injustice which will break down empathy. At its root is a basic Jewish insight, which even challenges Moses’s feeling of completing the Mishcan. Rabbi Tarfon’s “Lo Alecha Hamlacha Ligmor” – you are never going to complete the task, “Vlo atah ben chorim l haibateil mimena” – but that does not give you licence to stop trying.
We are here in the peace of the Edgware and Hendon Reform Synagogue with absolutely no idea how Putin’s invasion of Ukraine using the Russian Army is going to turn out. We cannot know who will live and who will die, we cannot know if Putin will be deposed by his own people and become yet another tyrant disposed of in history by the triumph of right and the values of freedom. We cannot know if, by some horrendous and surely temporary triumph of evil, Putin will be able to take over Ukraine and subject our friends living there in the Jewish communities we support and among all the Ukrainian people to the rule of tyranny. We cannot know the complete picture. But we can know, in the words of a great Ukrainian Rabbi from Uman, Nachman of Bratzlav, two centuries ago, that
We have not come into this world
for strife and division
nor for hatred and rage,
nor provocation and bloodshed.
Rabbi Nachman teaches us is that we are here to know God, and of course we know God most effectively in our world by connecting with the souls of other people. By the empathy that was studied in Simon Baron-Cohen’s conference.
If you look on our EHRS website you will see the heartfelt video that Rabbi Alex Dukhovny sent us from Kiev last Shabbat from the bomb shelter he and 100 others have been stuck in. If you speak to our members Vivien and David Lewis you hear about the experience of Lena, Chair of the Odessa community who has fled her home to go to the countryside and counts herself lucky to have been experienced only one rocket exploding in the village she is now in. You can join the online services being led by Odessa’s Rabbi Julia Gris who had to escape to Poland due to the danger of being a Russian citizen, as she is again together with her community at least online.
Thank God that Shabbat gives us rest to restore ourselves to keep on with the task. The task though is very real and from where we are it is to turn our empathy into action. We need to continue to care for the people of Ukraine, care what happens to them every day. But that empathy needs to go further. Putin’s methods are that of a dictator, spreading total misinformation among his people, Goebbels like, so that they come to believe the lies. Not all of them: as many extraordinarily brave Russians have been protesting against the war however they can. So too have Byelorussians.
I have been impressed that the Reform communities of Minsk in Belarus and Moscow and their leaders have been publicly expressing their empathy with the people of Ukraine. I spoke yesterday with a Russian rabbi, working now here in the UK, Rabbi Igor Zinkov who told me about the pain that Russians who are disgusted with this war feel. He told me too about nasty attacks on Russian children at school here in London.
This is a struggle about principle. Will might and bullying win through or will human rights and freedom win? That struggle will never be completed, it will be a requirement of all humanity to always have empathy for those whose rights and freedom are threatened and always to be with them, whether in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Congo. This struggle does not stop.
Our Synagogue website front page will be kept updated with information on how you can help. Right now the help needed is donations of money for capacity in humanitarian and community building agencies to provide relief when it will be needed and the capacity for communities to recover and also preparing to welcome refugees should this war continue. When we know about other needs that we can help with they will be posted there.
Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav also said ‘The world is a very narrow bridge, and the basic principle is not to be afraid.’ With love and care for all who are suffering and the bravery to confront tyranny lets lead each other across the bridge to a better future day by day and week by week.
