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Korach 5768 - 28 June 2008
For most of my childhood, my family belonged to Brighton & Hove New Synagogue; and right through my childhood - you'll appreciate the kind of child I must have been - I wondered how long it could stay ‘new'. More than fifty years after it was established, it has now changed its name to Brighton Reform Synagogue. Similarly, Glasgow New Synagogue celebrated its 75th anniversary this year by becoming Glasgow Reform Synagogue. Not far from here is a sister congregation by the name of Middlesex New Synagogue. It's been New for almost 50 years now.
The Labour Party first used the term New Labour in the early 90s, a few years before coming to power. In Henley's by-election this week, I suppose New Labour seemed a little less ‘new'. Mind you, when New Amsterdam became New York in the 17th century, who'd have know how long that would still be ‘new'!
We have a study group in this community (perhaps no longer new) that meets to study a chapter from the Book of Kohelet, Ecclesiastes, before the service on the last Shabbat of each month, so they met this morning. There are lots of great verses in Kohelet, but one phrase in particular has become something of a Jewish expression. As it happens it appears more than once, but never quite in the form that has become the expression. Here it is. Eyn chadash tachat ha-shemesh. Literally it means ‘there is nothing New under the sun'. Eyn chadash tachat ha-shemesh.
So when I refer to our new siddur, this prayerbook that we have been using for over a month already, I wonder how long it will still be ‘the new siddur'. There has been lots of discussion about its new features, what's different from the last siddur, but also what's new and wasn't in the old book at all. Some of it really is new (at least for now) and some of it is just new-to-us, being the reintroduction of some older piece of liturgy that wasn't on offer in our last prayerbook.
Some of the language is new. In particular, publicity of the siddur launch in the media has focussed on the language about God. The Lord is gone and the Eternal is here instead, though after two years of the draft siddur, that perhaps is already less new to us in this congregation. There are all sorts of reasons why ‘Eternal' or occasionally ‘Living God' are better, more accurate and faithful translations of the Hebrew yod-hay-vav-hey four-letter name of God, but that's another sermon. And indeed the point has not just been about the language for God, but the kind of God that we imagine we are praying to.
And that is precisely the idea that Sam took from his Torah portion in choosing his deliberately challenging study passage this morning, the poem by Jewish War Poet Isaac Rosenberg. The poem that Sam found, The Female God, suggests a dethroned, ancient God that reminded Sam of God in his Torah portion. That biblical God furiously punishes Korach and all those who had rebelled against Moses and Aaron's leadership. He wipes the 250 rebels out with an angry fire and the earth swallowing them up, and then starts on another 14 000 sympathisers with a special plague. The plague is only halted by Aaron offering incense spices to God. Who is this Biblical God? I can't help quoting Richard Dawkins, "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, meglomaniacal, sado-masochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." ... OK, Richard, put like that, I guess the concept of God portrayed in the Bible has His bad side!
But that is not an image of God we should try to emulate. Nor, I should stress, is it the kind of God I pray to. The Bible is also full of ever-loving, caring, universal, positively commanding and inspiring images of God. And Judaism would never stop at Biblical imagery for ways to conceive of God. Our texts are our cultural starting point, but we don't just read them blindly. For centuries, midrash has played with the text and expanded on it, reinterpreting it to speak new truths in every age. The biblical text is a rich place to start, but if it's not a completely inappropriate expression to use, we have never taken it as Gospel! Most people today, and our own Jewish philosophers over the centuries, have wrestled with different ways to imagine or speak of God, whether they have an obvious Biblical basis or not.
Eyn chadash tachet ha-shemesh. Even a new God is not new. We just re-imagine God from time to time.
Let me share with you one of my favourite lines of midrash. It appears in at least three sources, the earliest going back nearly 2000 years. It has God saying "When you are My witnesses, I am God. When you are not My witnesses, I am [as it were] not God." God - this midrash suggests - can only exist through us, through our behaviour, in the way that we envision God, in the way that we make God real.
God is a way of thinking about the world. It's not about being true or false, just as a poem is not true or false. It just is. Some poems are better than others, just as some concepts of God are better than others. And different people have different tastes and preferences anyway.
A poem by Ludwig Pfeuffer. You may know him better by the new name he took, Yehudah Amichai.
I declare with perfect faith
that prayer preceded God.
Prayer created God.
God created human beings,
human beings created prayers
that create the God that creates human beings.
In every age we will create new prayers. In every age we will create new prayerbooks. In every age we will invent new ways of imagining and addressing God. Yet eyn chadash tachat ha-shemesh. There is nothing new under the sun, and beyond our images and prayers, God is God who is, was and will be. V'hu hayah, v'hu hoveh, v'hu yihyeh.
Whether we call Him (or Her) ‘the Lord' or ‘the Eternal', God remains God. And no matter how much we reform our siddur, it is good to remind ourselves that we are still on the same religious adventure that our ancestors embarked on. In every age, in whatever language and form, it is the same God we seek to address.
Over these last weeks, I have pointed out a few ‘Radlettisms' that have appeared in the new siddur. So now let me tell you about one little battle that I lost. Depending on your background, you may know that Ein Keloheinu as we sing it (and indeed as we sang in our old siddur) is not quite the same as it appears in an Orthodox Ashkenazi siddur, where there is a sixth verse. After five verses - (1)There is none like our God, (2)Who is like our God, (3)We thank our God, (4)Bless our God, (5)You are our God... the extra verse in the Orthodox siddur is actually a perfect verse for a Reform liturgy: Attah hu she-hiktiru avoteinu l'fanecha et k'toret ha-sammim, You are the One to whom our ancestors offered fragrant spices. It's true, the final verse is not part of the original composition. (It doesn't follow the pattern of the first five, though having an extra verse does actually make most of the tunes fit better without needing to repeat!) But my real reason for wanting to include it in our new siddur was not musical, but theological.
The God to whom Aaron offered spices in today's Torah portion; the Eternal whom we address in the prayers of our new siddur - it is still the same God. Eyn chadash tachet ha-shemesh. As I said, the line didn't make it into our new siddur, not even in ‘optional blue' but I'll let you into a secret. As I put it earlier, ‘The Lord is gone and the Eternal is here instead' and even if you accept that there are all sorts of reasons why ‘Eternal' or occasionally ‘Living God' are better, more accurate and faithful translations of the Hebrew yod-hay-vav-hey four-letter name of God, perhaps you're someone who still misses ‘the Lord' just a little bit. Well if you look carefully at the translation of eyn keloheinu [later] you'll find that - for good reason in fact - the old ‘Lord' is still there!
Another Yehudah Amicahi poem:
"Eyn keloheinu, there is none like our God!" - we pray
"Eyn keloheinu, there is none like our God!" - singing in full voice
and He does not respond. And we raise our voices further and sing
"Mi cheloheinu, who is like our God?" - but He doesn't move
or turn towards us. And still we add in fervent prayer
"Attah hu eloheinu, You are our God!" - perhaps He will remember
us now? But He remains unmoved, not even
turning to us with unfamiliar, cold eyes.
And then we stop singing and laughing, and whisper to Him
and remind Him of something particular, something small,
"Attah hu she-hikrivu avoteinu l'fanecha et k'toret ha-sammim
You are the One to whom our ancestors offered fragrant spices"
perhaps He will remember now?
(Like a man reminding a woman of their ancient love:
Don't you remember how we bought those shoes
in that little shop on the corner when it was pouring with rain
outside and how we laughed?)
And it seems as though something is stirring in Him and perhaps He remembers,
but the Jewish people have already gone.
Our Jewish task, that for any religious life, is to take the texts and traditions of our heritage, to apply our own sense of ethics and morality, of reason and intuition, of God's voice in our time, and to make a meaningful life in the universe as we best comprehend it today. On your Bar Mitzvah, that is a task you begin to take on for yourself.
...
With each new day, may the Eternal God to whom our ancestors offered fragrant spices, guard and protect you, and each of us, so that we may always be blessed to find something chadash tachat ha-shemesh, that which is new under the sun.
Ken y'hi ratzon, may this be God's will, and let us say Amen.
Rabbi Paul Freedman
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