TFTW Archive 2024 July

Dear Members and Friends,

This Shabbat, after the reading of the Torah and Haftarah, a member of the community, or perhaps a family member of the Bat Mitzvah will step up to the bimah to read the Prayer for the Royal Family and the government. Without anticipating the outcome of the general election – I write this piece on polling day – it will have a particular significance, ushering in four years of a new elected government.

The concept of praying for the government can be traced back to the prophet Jeremiah, whose letter, sent from Jerusalem to the priests, prophets and elders of the exiled community in Babylon, urges them to ‘seek the welfare of the city to which [God has] exiled you and pray to the Eternal One in its behalf; for in its prosperity you shall prosper’ (Jeremiah 29:7). 

Its rhetoric is surprising. Surely the exiles would have expected the prophet to encourage them to think of Zion, their distant homeland and to pray on its behalf. But no, Jeremiah tells the Jews to create a life in Babylon: to build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat their fruit, to create a family life in the place to which they have been exiled. In a different time, he might have told them to do their civic duty and vote.

Fifty years later, Nebuchadnezzar dead, the Babylonian Empire defeated, the Emperor Cyrus issued his decree allowing the exiles to return to the Land of Israel and to rebuild the house of God – ‘so that they [the Israelites] may offer pleasing sacrifices to the God of Heaven and pray for the life of the king and his sons.’

On first reading, it isn’t clear which king is the subject of the people’s prayers – a Jewish king or Cyrus, the king of Persia. But there was no king when the Jews returned to Judah, only the governor Zerubbabel and so we must conclude that the people’s prayers were for Cyrus, himself.

This verse is the subject of a debate in the Talmud over whether Cyrus demonstrates altruism and generosity in his contribution to the sacrificial offerings in the rebuilt Temple, or whether his offer of young bullocks and rams, and lambs for burnt offerings, is a selfish gesture so that the Jewish people would pray specifically for him and his sons (bRosh Hashanah 4a).

A third source for our prayer for the government is a Mishnah in Avot given in the name of Rabbi Hanina, one of the teachers who lived in the last years of the Second Temple under Roman occupation: ‘Pray for the welfare of the government, for were it not for the fear it inspires, every person would swallow their neighbour alive.’

In the prayer that we recite every Shabbat morning, we are reminded, not of our fear of the government, but of the responsibility that rests on the nation’s leadership. We pray for a principled and ethical government, driven not by selfish or self-aggrandising motives, but by the desire to improve the well-being of our nation’s citizens – providing safe and nurturing nurseries for children whose parents are working, equal opportunities in education, the eradication of poverty and homelessness, prompt access to health services, including mental health support, addressing the climate emergency and crime, and giving dignity to bona fide asylum seekers by allowing them to work in this country.

May the new Prime Minister and all those elected to Parliament be inspired by a political ethic of righteousness, freedom, equity, justice and compassion. And let us pray for an end to war in all places where there is conflict and violence – may there be peace soon and in our time.

Shabbat Shalom,
Alexandra Wright

Dear Members and Friends,

I live in the suburbs of London and my road is often a rat-race during the rush hours of the morning and early evening. Yet a short cycle ride away is a farm – a place I remember from my childhood. Last Wednesday there were cows in the bottom of the field, and in another section, a pony and donkey. There are pigs who swill around in the mud and whenever I go past, I see children, young people, adults stopping to speak to the donkey especially. The animals come close to the fence and seem to enjoy the human encounter.

What language do animals speak? Do they speak? The serpent of Genesis – described as ‘subtle’ or ‘cunning’– is the first creature to open its mouth in the Torah: ‘Did God really say, ‘You may not eat of any tree in the Garden?’ You won’t die, he tells the woman.  ‘On the contrary: God knows that when you do eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing all things’ (Genesis 3:1, 4).

The serpent’s words were enough to cause 17^th century exegetes of the Bible to doubt that the Bible was the word of God!  Surely, God couldn’t have written speaking animals into the sacred, God-given text!

And then, there is Balaam’s she-ass. Note that she’s a female donkey. Balaam, who has been warned by God not to set out to curse the Israelites who are seeking safe passage through the land of Moab, saddles his ass early in the morning and sets out to keep these foreign refugees out of the country at the command of the king, Balak.

Along the way Balaam is surprised by his ass’s behaviour, swerving from the road, bolting into the fields, beating her and turning her back onto the road. Then as she stations herself in a lane between vineyards, he is humiliated as his foot is squeezed against the wall, and he beats her again. The ass finds herself trapped in a spot so narrow that she cannot move to the right or left. She lies down under Balaam and Balaam beats her with his stick.

This is how Balaam sees things – a stubborn, stupid donkey, that refuses to do what he tells her, an animal who seems to have a mind of her own, humiliates him, makes a mockery of him and incenses him to the point that he threatens to kill her.

But what is really happening?  What is it that Balaam is unable to see, but the she-ass does see? Suddenly, she – and not the prophet, magic-seer Balaam – is the visionary. She is the one who sees the angel of God standing before her with a drawn sword in his hand. She tries to turn aside, perhaps in fear, perhaps to pass him by and finding it impossible, and repeatedly beaten, she lies down under her master.

And then she speaks: ‘What have I done to you that you have beaten me these three times… Look, I am the ass that you have been riding all along until this day! Have I been in the habit of doing thus to you?’

This she-ass, as she is called throughout the story, is not the object of ridicule and derision we meet in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ when Puck transforms Bottom, the weaver’s head into that of a donkey. In this biblical fable, she is a symbol of humility, service and wisdom. It is her eyes who perceive the angel of God standing in the way. It is she who first lies down – bows down? – before the angel of God in acknowledgement that something transcending the ordinary is taking place.

This humble she-ass is the animated form of Wisdom and Understanding, personified in the Book of Proverbs, ‘raising her voice’, saying, ‘O people, I call to you; my cry is to all humanity…instruct your minds. Listen, for I speak noble things; uprightness comes from my lips; my mouth utters truth’ (Proverbs 8:1-7).

All living creatures touch something deep inside us. The individual who approaches the donkey in the field stands with simplicity and humility before this silent creature.  What is it in animals that can restore, heal, teach us the power of love, humility, justice, truth? Perhaps it is that we are simply ourselves, that we are allowed to see the world in different ways, in more gentle, more humble, more truthful ways, our sins forgiven, our tears wiped away; we are back on ‘the way of righteousness, on the paths of justice’ (8:20).

Shabbat Shalom,

Alexandra Wright