The words I am going to read are nearly 1000 years old – but they are still as fresh as the day they were written, somewhere in Spain:
My heart is in the east, and I am in the west–
How can I find savour in food? How shall it be sweet to me?
How shall I render my vows and my promises, while yet
Zion lies beneath the fetter of Edom, and I am in Arab chains?
A light thing would it seem to me to leave all the good things of Spain —
Seeing how precious in my eyes it would be to behold the dust of the desolate sanctuary.
These words were written by the poet, physician and philosopher Judah haLevi. He was born in Tudela or maybe Toledo in Muslim Caliphate ruled Spain around the year 1075, an extraordinary man whose 450 published poems have inspired Jews for a millennium and whose Kuzari was a major leap forward in Jewish philosophy, based on the arguments set before a King who wanted to decide whether to become Jewish, Christian or Muslim.
This week Judah HaLevi’s opening line ‘My heart is in the east and I am in the west’ rings true for every diaspora Jew who cares about the peoples of Israel, as she sustains continuous bombardment from Iran, at war with Iran, enduring rockets and missiles from the Houthis in Yemen and still deeply engaged in Gaza. It certainly does for me.
When Judah HaLevi says ‘how precious in my eyes it would be to behold the dust of the desolate sanctuary.’ He could not for a moment imagine what has happened in the late 20th and 21st century to the land of which Jerusalem is the centre. If he could have sent spies like Moses did in our Torah portion to spy out the land he would have seen, growing since the 1880’s and an independent Jewish state since 1948, cities, bustling and beautiful, the Israeli culture that has evolved from the amazing world Jewish melting pot of Mizrachi, Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews living alongside with Muslim and Christian Arabs, 7 million Jews, 2 million Arabs. He would hear the Hebrew of his poetry having become a rich spoken language bringing Jewish ideas and values into everyday vocabulary, and he would hear the Arabic in which he also wrote spoken on the streets and written on all the road signs. He would have been astounded by the dramatic landscape which he could only hazily imagine, from Mount Hermon in the North, to the Negev desert in the South, the Mediterranean coast in the west and the rugged hills leading up to the Galilee, and Jerusalem in the East. He would have seen tech expertise, a thriving economy, agricultural innovation, world class Universities and health care, Judaism as the religion of a nation, an army ready to defend the state, and islands, too few but yet real, of coexistence between the Jews and Arabs of the country.
His heart would indeed have been in the East but a heart which can brim with pride, not always but often.
Israel is of course now in deep crisis. The crisis of war, deaths and woundings of her citizens, destruction of property and deep uncertainty as to where this ends. We also know that Israel is inflicting such tragedy on others in her defence and this is deeply disturbing to so many of us. We, today, a Jewish community in Edgware, London thrown together by it just being Shabbat, by Josh’s bar-mitzvah, by needing to be with others today, are connected by heart strings to Israel.
We are connected with people there. Family and friends who are spending night after night in the shelters and safe rooms. The app on my phone from the Israeli home front warning system which I used when I was in Israel on our Synagogue trip in December and still have connected, shows me how often every day I would have had to go into the shelter in Tel Aviv. Today we should have been welcoming Ayala and Yael, two young women from the Leo Baeck High School in Haifa who were due to spend two weeks with our community but cannot leave the country. Today Rosie Hai, daughter of our members Steve and Susanne Lazarus and granddaughter of our members Alan and Marilyn Lazarus, should be with her husband Shlomi and very young children Rafael and Mila in their apartment building in Ramat Gan. It was destroyed on Wednesday at 7 in the morning by an Iranian missile while, thank God they were physically safe in the shelter. Over the week we at EHRS have sent messages of care and concern to those we know as a community and we know how much this has meant to them. You will see some of the responses on the back of the Shul sheet this week.
We are connected with communities in Israel. Connected with those communities which share our values and want to build an Israel which works for peace, for co-existence, religious pluralism and choice in Jewish practice. We are connected with those who care deeply for the families of the hostages still in Gaza Hamas captivity. We are connected with the brave hearts in Israel who stand up for the Jewish values of the State as expressed in the declaration of independence. Every Reform Synagogue in Israel has a copy of the Declaration of Independence on its wall to remind us that a Jewish state must be suffused with the best in Jewish values.
With heart in mouth, we are connected with the politics of Israel. Rabbis are not politicians and are not experts on what any Israeli government should do, especially at times of crisis. It is tough to feel fully informed of the aims of any particular government but it is not unreasonable to judge them by their actions and the actions of their leaders. This synagogue and our Movement for Reform Judaism supports Israel as the Jewish state, and supports or criticises each Israeli government depending on what it does to support the values for which the State was founded.
What can we do when our heart is with Israel today? We are not powerless, just as Joshua and Caleb worked hard to persuade the Israelites, out in the wilderness, that they had a choice to get into the land so do we have a choice to be truly supportive today.
We can support the people of Israel. Send that message, make that call to your friend, business contact our family member in Israel. Let them know you care. It really matters. On Thursday night at 19:00 Rabbi Debbie will be hosting a Zoom connecting us directly with the people of Beer Sheva who suffered a devastating attack on their hospital so that you can speak with them.
We can support the communities of Israel. Our Week Ahead, our Synagogue e-mail and The Israel page of our Synagogue website are giving a number of suggestions for causes which are helping right now in this crisis – the fund to help people bombed out of their apartments in Tel Aviv, organised by Beit Daniel Synagogue, Leket, the Israeli food bank, Magen David Adom, needed as much as ever, the UJIA Israel emergency fund, the Missing Families forum still helping those whose loved ones are captive in Gaza. Find a cause that moves your heart and give to it this week.
We can support our own knowledge of this difficult situation. No one news outlet, or even less opinion based media, has the full picture of Israel. The situation is immensely complex with a mix of real existential threat to Israel and questions of political opportunism. There are so many paths the country could go down. We don’t live there and we do not have the right to say for sure that we know what Israel should do – but we need to be advocates for Israel in all of its complexity, helping our fellow Brits to understand what the country has to cope with. We need to consult multiple media outlets to get to an understanding of the truth.
Above all we must not lose heart in Israel. She needs us and in the world as it is, we Jews need her. The 20th century and Jewish life of millennia showed that we need a country to call and enjoy as our ultimate home, just like all peoples.
Judah HaLevi did make it to Israel. After a tough journey from Spain, through Egypt legend has it that he made it to Jerusalem in 1141. He died there and is said to be buried either in Jerusalem or maybe in a Northern Israeli town. His heart was, for eternity, truly in the East.
