Sermon: Mattot Masei – “Building an Ever Living People”
Written by Writings & Sermons by others — 22 July 2017
Today in the World there are 14 ½ million Jews [Jewish Year Book 2016]. Had the Shoah not happened there would have been 21 perhaps 22 or 23 million of us. We are a small people. But resilient and with a contribution to make to world in every era.
Just how small the Jewish people is is well illustrated by the Chinese census. There are 100 times more people in China than Jews in the world. The Chinese population is 1.4 billion. But there may be a few more or a few less. The Chinese government accepts a counting error in the Chinese census of 1.8%. They must, as there are many Chinese in the course of migration or in unauthorised housing who can never be accessed to count. That is over 25 million people. So you could say that the number of Jews in the world is around half of the counting error on the Chinese census.
It makes you question the four ambitions that the late Elie Weisel said he set out in his mind when he began his career as a journalist having survived the Shoah, [according to Rabbi David Wolpe in HaAretz 20/11/13] Creating a State of Israel, keeping alive the memory of the Shoah, freeing Soviet Jewry and maintaining Jewish continuity. The first three, he said, have astonishingly been accomplished. Can this small people really achieve the fourth – continue Judaism when there are so few of us?
A Jewish academic in 1948 asked the same question, soon after the answer might have been no – due to the Nazi murder of so many Jews. Simon Rawidowicz (1897- 1957) is best known not for his major academic works, but for a rather playful article that he wrote titled “Israel – The Ever-Dying People.” Rawidowicz’s point was simple: virtually every generation of Jews has feared that it was the last. As early as the Mishna and as late as early-modern Europe, he found numerous examples of Jews who were convinced that, as Chicken Little put it, “the sky was falling,”, that Judaism and the Jewish people were heading for the exit from humanity.
Many Jewish conversations last a long time. Should Judaism engage with the world around it or be sheltered from it, of which today’s Reform-Orthodox debate is our manifestation. Should we live in our own territory as a light to the nations or contribute to the repair of the world by establishing Jewish communities worldwide – the question of Israel and the Diaspora today. Should we learn only from Jewish sources or bring into Judaism knowledge from everywhere – the Yeshiva- University question, that was once the question of Hebrew wisdom and Greek wisdom which landed Maimonides a thousand years ago in such trouble with more restrictive Jewish authorities. Jewish questions are asked over centuries and quite often millennia, and perhaps the health of Judaism depends on them never being finally answered.
Simon Rawidowicz’ question – “Are we dying?” has been asked since at least the Second century. He quoted a passage from Mishnah Sotah (9:15) which suggests that we have always been dying!
“When Rabbi Joshua died, goodness departed from the world. When Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai died, the splendour of wisdom left the world. When Rabbi Akiva died, the glory of the Torah ceased.” And so on. The deaths of these Second Century rabbis, some in terrible and tragic circumstances, marked the end of an era, the demise of qualities which, the Mishna seems to suggest, could never be restored. But they have!
Rabbi Daniel Gordis notes [Jerusalem Post November 21st 2013] that two thousand years later (as well as during the interim, of course), Rawidowicz says, the same dynamic continued. Y.L. Gordon, perhaps the finest poet of the Haskala (Judaism’s Enlightenment), asked, “For whom do I labour? Who… will tell me that I am not the last poet of Zion?” He, too, believed he was the end.
“But, of course, goodness did not depart from the world when Rabbi Joshua died, and wisdom did not cease with the passing of Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, [and despite Rabbi Akiva’s death we studied Torah today]. Nor was Gordon the last of the great Hebrew poets; even as he was writing his cri de coeur, not that far away a young man was growing up by the name of Haim Nahman Bialik whose poetry and prose are the backbone of modern Hebrew literature.
What Rawidowicz seems to be saying, though he never states it explicitly, is that key to the secret of Jewish survival has been precisely this worry that we are disappearing. It was the fragility of Jewish life that kept Jews focused on doing whatever was needed to ensure that somehow, against all odds, there would be subsequent generations of Jews who would worry that they, too, were the end of the chain.”
The difficulty is that Jewish continuity is an immense journey, stage by stage, with no easy solutions. Judaism does not survive by conquest, by quick fixes like military victories over other peoples as Islam once grew, by weight of numbers as Christianity can fairly claim, by the wealth of a worldwide cultural endowment, like the Cathedrals, the Hindu Temples, the grand mosques.
The Jewish journey through history is step by hard won step, some remembered some half-forgotten, some grand and some small. From the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 that eventually led to the flowering of Kabbalah mysticism in Safed in the sixteenth century to the expulsion of Jews from some German province in the thirteenth century that resulted in the establishment of Judaism in some area of Poland that became a shtetl where your great grandparent may have come from. From the publication of Maimonides Guide for the Perplexed which reconciled Judaism to Arabic philosophy to the self-publication of the memoirs of a Kindertransport child which tell the future generations of a family where they came from and the source of their hard won Jewish identity.
The Torah portion Masei starts with just such an expression of the Jewish journey. As the Book of Numbers turns to clearing up the journey of the Israelites from Egypt to their Promised Land the portion begins with a list that we never read in this Synagogue because we think it would be too boring. [Numbers 33] In the middle of the list it goes like this: And they moved from the desert of Sinai, and camped in Kibrot-Hattaavah. And they departed from Kibrot-Hattaavah, and camped in Hazerot. And they departed from Hazerot, and camped in Ritmah. And they departed from Ritmah, and camped at Rimmon-Perez. And they departed from Rimmon-Perez, and camped in Libnah. And they moved from Libnah, and camped at Rissah. I could go on – in the passage at the start of the portion Massei Moses lists 42 stages of the journey – some grand like the parting of the Red Sea and the arrival at Sinai, but the majority half forgotten – what happened at Libnah and Rissah? Where even are they?
Jewish continuity is within the small person to person journeys – just as much as the great achievements of our people. The trouble with Elie Weisel’s fourth ambition is that we can never know that it is happening. Creating a State of Israel, keeping alive the memory of the Shoah, freeing Soviet Jewry and maintaining Jewish continuity. Number four just quietly happens day after day.
This tiny Jewish people does not die – even if we always question how we are going to survive. Our Torah portion also tells us the answer to this question – and tells us how to make the answer the wrong answer. It is there in the passage from Numbers Rabbah 22:9 that Rabbi Josh selected as the Haftarah for the Kollot minyan this morning.
Remember when Emma read us in the portion that the Reuben and Gad tribes agreed to come to the help of their fellow Israelites so that they could make it into the Promised Land? The tribal leaders said that they would come to help for certain, as soon as they had built sheep folds, safe enclosures, for their sheep and cattle and cities or places to live securely for their children.
The Midrash notices that a few verses later, when Moses accepts their offer he reverses the order: First build those cities for your little ones and folds for your sheep. (Numbers 32:16,24) The Reuben and Gad tribes agree with Moses’s wisdom.
This is why Judaism continues and there is no other way. This is how our traditions enhance the lives of our people. This is how our values benefit the world. This is how we are, thank God, not the last in the line. We as a Jewish people make sure that the first thing we do is to build for all our community’s children. One of the wonderful things about a good Synagogue like Alyth is that it is a place where young people can be safe and thrive. They can learn and create friendships. They can get to know all generations beyond their own close families, they can participate in the enthusiasm of the young and the wisdom of the old.
That is because, before we enrich ourselves with temporary wealth, like the flocks of the tribes, wealth which we will never be able to take with us when our lives end, we build for our children. We build synagogues, we build learning, we build Jewish values. These live on beyond us and make sure that the Jewish people continues from generation to generation as long as we build with ambition and determination to do our part to make the next part of the Jewish journey happen.
Simon Rawidowicz didn’t mean that we are an ever-dying people. Even in 1948 he meant the opposite. If we do what Moses told us and build for our children first then we can be proud that we are the next stage in the journey of an ever living people.