TFTW Archive 2024 April

Shabbat Tazri'a

12 April 2024

Dear Members and Friends,

I am deeply conscious that in the last six months our services and sermons, our conversations, and encounters with each other have been about the war between Israel and Gaza. I find myself living in a deep maelstrom of fear, sadness, shame and pride. Fear for the future of the region, fear of an imminent attack by Iran against Israel, sadness and horror at the number of those who have been killed, who are bereaved, injured and traumatised in Israel and Gaza; shame when I consider Israel’s so-called leaders and their lack of vision for the future; pride in those individuals and organisations who are searching for a non-polarised ‘third narrative’, in which there is a way forward for Israelis and Palestinians to live peaceably next to each other; dismay that school children, students and others in the West are subjected to hateful remarks and bias by individuals and groups taking up a polarised cudgel on behalf of one group or another.

Underneath my desk, on a narrow shelf, I keep copies of the concordances, dictionaries and biblical texts that I consult most frequently when I prepare sermons or teaching. Some have lost their covers; their spines have come loose over the years as they are dragged from shelf to desk week after week. But also, between the Hebrew dictionaries and texts, are slim volumes of poetry – Hebrew and English. And there are times when, if the weekly parashah fails to yield a glimmer of hope or vision, a poem will come to mind and there is comfort and hope in seeing twelve or fewer lines, elegantly printed on pages yellowing with age at the edges.

One such volume contains selected poems by the Russian born poet Ra’hel. Ra’hel  Bluwstein, known only by her first name, was born in Russia in 1890 and moved to Palestine when she was just nineteen years old. There, she spent two years on a training farm for young women, before moving to France to continue her studies in agronomy. The First World War left her stranded in Europe and she moved to Odessa and worked at a children’s refugee home. It was here that she contracted tuberculosis. She returned to Palestine in 1919 but became too ill to work and died at the age of 41. Ra’hel is considered the ‘founding mother’ of modern Hebrew poetry by women – the first woman knowingly to express herself in poetry since Deborah the Prophet.

This is her poem Etz Agas - ‘Pear Tree’ in which she explores how the yad aviv ba-kesher ha-zeh, translated here as ‘conspiracy of spring’ awakens the individual who, throughout the winter months, has stubbornly held on to their burden of grief:

                             Conspiracy of spring –

                             a man awakes and through the window sees

                             a pear tree blossoming,

                             and instantly the mountain weighing on his heart

                             dissolves and disappears.

                             O you will understand! Is there a grieving man

                             who can hold on stubbornly

                             to a single flower that withered

                             in last year’s autumn gale,

                             when spring consoles and with a smile

                             presents him with a giant wreath of flowers

                             at his very window?

I have watched, over these past few weeks, how the tall tree, outside my own window, has released its green catkins and unfurled its leaves, and see how their very greenness reflects a new kind of light, no longer the grey morning light of winter, but brighter, lighter, in all senses of the word, heaving away the weight of these past months.

To hold on stubbornly to grief, to remain caught in a stormy, relentless tide of trauma and fear, diminishes our capacity for life, for gentle joy and hope. Pesach is our festival of deliverance and hope – let us pray fervently for some relief from war, for lightness of being, for peace.

Shabbat shalom,

Alexandra Wright

Shabbat Chol Ha-Mo'ed Pesach/Seventh Day Pesach

26 April 2024

Dear Members and Friends,

How did we get here? In a moment of cruel irony on the eve of Pesach, this country passed the ‘Rwanda Bill’, giving the green light to send ‘illegal’ asylum seekers to Rwanda. The bill is deemed to be a deterrent to the individuals who take their lives, and the lives of their little ones, into their hands, by coming to the UK on small boats. This, says the government, will disincentivise people from coming here, knowing that they will be deported to Rwanda.

But I wonder if the Prime Minister was at all aware of the words he used when the Bill was passed: ‘We introduced the Rwanda Bill to deter vulnerable migrants from making perilous crossings…. The passing of this legislation will…make it very clear that if you come here illegally, you will not be able to stay.’

I am imagining one family leaving their home on the night of Passover – a woman pregnant with her second child, a young child by her side, a father desperate to leave a country where his life and the life of his family are constantly in danger. They take little with them, just enough for a simple meal of flat bread during the first few days. Perhaps a few belongings. There are others fleeing a tyrannical regime in a nation where armed groups rampage through the countryside, causing violent clashes; where there are grotesque humanitarian violations, devastating incidents of gender violence, abduction of children and displacement of millions of people. What kind of environment is this to raise a child, with little or no education, no possibility of meaningful work, where women and children are at risk of rape and other desecrations?

This escape is no simple journey. There is a perilous sea between the country of their birth and freedom. They know it will be hard – finding somewhere to live, learning a new language, trying to cope with a foreign culture. And they know they are vulnerable as wanderers, especially if they have been subjected to persecution or torture.  

Others have made equally perilous and lonely journeys – children who arrived in this country on the Kindertransport, not knowing when or if they would see their parents again; Ugandan Asians who arrived by plane, and Vietnamese refugees by boat. More recently, I think of an Iraqi Jew, his father murdered, his mother dead, stripped of his statehood and threatened with deportation. After several years in limbo, unable to work, dispersed from one side of the country to the other, with little money, he was given Leave to Remain and a measure of his dignity and pride slowly began to return as he found work and was able to contribute to the life of this country. I often think of this young man and the too many years of his life, wasted, unable to find ‘resting-places calm and deep’ (Wordsworth, Song for the Wandering Jew), and pray that he has found a measure of contentment in the country he now calls home.

It is a source of shame that this country now provides no safe or legal routes for refugees to apply for asylum – there are too few resettlement places and family reunification laws are severely limited.

Like the Israelites crossing the Sea of Reeds, for whom a miracle occurred, asylum seekers put misplaced faith in criminal people smugglers; they pray that the boats will be robust and the sea tranquil during their crossing, that a benevolent people will welcome them as willing workers in this country, that education and health care for their children will create a safer environment.

It is precisely because we are the children of people who escaped from Egypt and crossed the sea into the desert, who struggled to achieve freedom for ourselves, that we are pained when we hear the words - oppression, persecution, exile and deportation.  The ‘Rwanda Bill’ makes us smart with shame; we ache for a society that is kinder, fairer, that restores dignity to all human beings, that takes the lessons of Pesach – emerging from servitude and embracing freedom – with the responsibility and seriousness they demand.

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach for the Seventh Day of Pesach on Monday.
Alexandra Wright
 
Please join us on Sunday evening, 28 April for Erev Seventh Day Pesach at 4.30pm to hear Lord Dubs speak about ‘Refugees: Past and Present and Looking to the Future.’ Click here for further information.

And on Monday 29 April at 11.00am, please help us make up a minyan for the Seventh Day of Pesach, the day on which the Israelites left Egypt and crossed the Sea of Reeds.