Sermon: Pekudei – Never Really Finished
Written by Writings & Sermons by others — 15 March 2016
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 (GR 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.’
When I left for my Sabbatical on December 7th it felt like something really had been completed. The day before had been the opening ceremony for Alyth and Finchley Reform’s Shofar Day Care Nursery at the Sternberg Centre. Our Bezalel had been Martyn Gerrard who supervised the building of this wonderful place. The walls were painted in the right bright colours, the climbing frames were erected, the sensory room was ready to function, the cots were ready to receive the sleeping children, the rather special slide down to the children’s loo to encourage the children in training was fitted – and Peter Levy and Director Sharon Lee affixed the mezuzah to the door.
But of course that was just the beginning of the next part of the work, getting the children in and happy and settled. Through my Sabbatical I had the delight of regularly going to Shofar to visit and help with Kabbalat Shabbat, seeing the first 35 children enjoying themselves at their new weekday home. We have much to do to ensure that Shofar helps families to find long term Jewish life through our Synagogue. This work, will of course never be finished but it was very satisfying to have the achievement of opening Shofar after three years hard work recognised in a lovely article and report in the Jewish Chronicle last week.
The major projects of my Sabbatical are also in theory completed Yet, again, they also merely point the way to the next work that I will need to do. The Movement for Reform Judaism Draft Rosh Hashanah Machzor is written and pretty much ready for printing this summer for our Synagogues to use for our services this High Holy Days. Yet too as soon as this is used we will need to hear the feedback that the Synagogues, including Alyth which will use it, give to us, who have produced and edited it, so that we can make sure the book form Machzor, to be published in 2018 is as good as possible.
I also completed the text of a book of my own, called Thirty Six Words, about the value of Judaism as a route to enable us to be people with concern and action for the world as a whole, it being, in the words of Isaiah (49:6), “too small a task for us to raise up the tribes of Jacob when we have the potential of being a light to the nations.” Of course finishing the writing is not really a completion, it is the beginning of the task of finding an audience, readers for the book and trying to put the principles that I advocate into action, let alone getting the publisher to get it out on time.
My Sabbatical was also about learning, reading, improving my Hebrew through Hebrew poetry study with a teacher, some delightful visits to anthropology museums for personal interest, and time in Israel.
I also had the chance to attend 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.” (JC 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 their needs 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 of Palestinian sociologist Nawal Musleh Motut who brought Israelis and Palestinian families together to see what would happen in 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.
Thank God that Shabbat, and Sabbatical gives us rest to restore ourselves to keep on with the task.