TFTW Archive 2024 June

Dear Members and Friends,

Today marks eight months since October 7^th. Eight long, exhausting and anguished months of bereavement and heartache, waiting for news and release of hostages, of Israelis displaced from their own homes in the north and south of the country.  Eight months of destruction in Gaza, tens of thousands killed, children orphaned, homes, hospitals and schools pulverised.  And still no solution, no political resolution that either side is willing to grasp.

Why does it seem so obvious to some that cessation of hostilities is the only thing that will lead to the release of the hostages, which must surely be an absolute priority for Israel? How are families coping with the knowledge that daughters, sisters, mothers are most likely being violated on a daily basis? How are they clasping on to hope that sons, brothers and fathers will one day return to them?

In eight months, we have tried to celebrate the cycle of the year – Chanukkah, Purim and Pesach, and next Tuesday evening and Wednesday, we will come together to celebrate Shavuot, the festival of revelation. Each festival brought with it the thought that perhaps this cycle would bring a change, a measure of hope. The lights of the Chanukkiyah would illumine the darkness, Purim would bring a light-heartedness that would lift our spirits, and Pesach would see freedom for all who had been abducted and taken captive and a release from the suffering of endless bombardment on both sides.

Yet, each of these festivals has been marked in ways that have been muted, in the shadow of darkness and the violence of war. Our hearts have not felt free to rejoice, to give thanks, to express gratitude. The message of our festivals ‘to dispel the darkness of prejudice and hatred, to spread the light of liberty and love’ are like tiny drops of rain falling on parched and stony ground, where nothing can grow, nothing blossom.

And yet, surely, there are places where the continuous and persistent actions of individuals do make a difference. I was present this week at an event organised by Yachad, the British Jewish organisation that works to advocate a political resolution to the conflict – Israel, alongside an independent Palestinian state.

Four speakers addressed a full audience: Magen Inon, who will be our guest on Erev Shavuot, Tuesday evening 11 June, a London-based Israeli father of three children and a teacher who holds a PhD in philosophy of education, spoke about honouring the legacy of his parents, peace activists, both murdered in their village near the Gaza border on October 7^th.  Two Palestinian speakers sat on the platform with him, Hamze Awawde, from Ramallah, a conflict resolution expert, committed to programmes that bring together Jewish Israelis and Palestinians and, joining us virtually, Rula Daood, the Palestinian National Co-Director of Standing Together (Omdim B’Yachad), a progressive grassroots movement that mobilises Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel against the occupation and for peace, equality and social justice. The fourth speaker was the Labour and Co-operative candidate for Leeds North-West, Alex Sobel, of Israeli heritage, and who believes firmly in a political resolution.

Members of Standing Together, Jews and Palestinians, can be seen protecting Gaza aid trucks from settler attacks, and this week, in their purple gilets, they stood among Jewish extremists in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem during the annual flag march on Jerusalem Day, preventing school-age marchers and others who had been bussed in from religious establishments in Israel and  settlements in the Occupied Territories, from targeting Palestinians, their homes and businesses.

To listen to Magen speak about how he and his siblings sat shiva for one day in Nazareth following the death of his parents, because of the deep connections his parents had with Palestinian residents there, and because they could not travel to Israel, and to hear the work of Standing Together, speaks to me of hope and the possibilities of resolution.

Next week, at Shavuot, we will read the Book of Ruth. Two women – one an Israelite, one a Moabite, stand at the heart of this story.  The enmity between the people of Judah and Moab throughout the Torah is legendary – the Moabites descended from the incestuous relationship between Lot and his daughter, the Moabite king who would not allow the refugee Israelites to pass through his country to reach the Promised Land, a people who repeatedly declared war on Judah.

Yet in the Book of Ruth, a family from Judah goes to live in Moab to escape a famine, and when Naomi, as widow and bereft of her two sons returns, her Moabite daughter-in-law accompanies her, marries an Israelite and becomes the great-grandmother of no less a figure than King David.

We cannot give up on our support of Israelis and Palestinians who are working to create something new and different, with actions that transform embedded enmity, hatred and radical extremism into the values of the Book of Ruth - kindness, compassion, generosity, partnership and love.

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach,
Alexandra Wright

Please join us to listen to Magen Inon and Vadim Blumin on Erev Shavuot, Tuesday 11 June – full programme for Shir L’Shalom (A Song for Peace) here.

And on Wednesday morning 12 June at 11.00am

Children’s activities led by Caroline Hagard from 11.00am

Dear Members and Friends,

Today, I accompany a friend to see her surgeon following a serious diagnosis, my third visit with her, although she has had many appointments and treatments since I first went with her. As we wait for the doctor to call us, she shares the most recent letters she has received, that seem to confirm her worst fears – that radical surgery will follow the painful treatment she is currently undergoing.

I write down the questions she wants to ask the doctor – what were the results of my most recent scan, do I really need this surgery, how will it affect my life? I am reminded of our first visit to another hospital. Another long wait until we are ushered into a small consulting room with a young surgeon who announces the diagnosis and tells her that nothing can be done, no surgery, no treatment – ‘this will considerably shorten your life.’

I am scribbling down the surgeon’s notes but leave out those last words. How does one take in a diagnosis such as this, with such little hope offered. We leave the hospital, both shell-shocked by the bleak outlook of this diagnosis.

There is a second visit to another doctor. Sunshine blazes through the windows of an upper floor as he begins to speak about the options of treatment. As we leave, my friend says she feels ‘lighter’ and more hopeful.

Now several months and seven cycles of treatment later, with all the side-effects of swelling and pain, we are sitting together in the consulting room opposite the surgeon who has written to say surgery will follow her treatment.

He is a small, serious man, an academic, his desk bare, except for a neat pile of notes awaiting his next patients, and the notes relating to my friend. He waits patiently as she asks him about the outcome of her scan and whether major surgery will be necessary.

And then he leans forward and says in a low voice: ‘The cancer has completely gone.  You are in remission.’ And because it is so unexpected, because that too is hard to absorb after everything she has been told, it takes a moment to absorb this news. ‘It is,’ says the surgeon, ‘very rare. But you have responded well to the treatment.’

At home, I turn to this week’s parashah, B’ha’a lot’cha, and the story of Miriam’s illness, ‘stricken with snow-white scales.’ I read of Aaron’s helpless words as he turns to Moses, begging him to intervene in this cruel tragedy and Moses’ five words urging God to heal his sister: El na r’fa na lah – ‘O God, pray heal her!’ (Numbers 12:13)

Miriam is healed, or at least re-admitted into the camp after a seven-day period of quarantine, during which the people have halted their march and await her return.

I ask myself, what is the effect of prayer? Can it help those who are sick and the loved ones who are involved in supporting them? The prayers that we utter as a community, the formulae we recite daily or weekly as we come together on Shabbat? Or the private prayers – ‘O God, pray heal her!’ or ‘Give me strength’, or ‘Why, O God, have you let this happen?’

We know that the words of our prayers are not magic spells that will send away a disease or prevent the very worst from happening. But prayer – words, the outpouring of feeling, allow something else to take place. As Ann Brener writes in her essay on ‘Prayer and Presence’:

‘Prayer can be used … to cut through what is superfluous and to address the essential concerns of those whom they seek to help. Whether in the words of traditional liturgy, through spontaneous outbursts of emotion, or in silence, prayer can be used to harness pained voices, to clarify direction, to affirm values, and to enable connection with the Holy.’

It isn’t always easy to pray at critical times of illness or distress – sometimes our turmoil and bewilderment are too great to be able to express our grief or loss.

In the parashah, I notice that it is Aaron and Moses who speak, Miriam is silent throughout – m’tzora’at – ‘stricken’ not only by her disease, but by shock and by shame, for her illness is seen as a punishment for speaking out against Moses’ wife. There is no prayer on her lips.

We are changed by the trauma and uncertainty of illness; we are not the same people as we were before. And if we can pray, perhaps we can allow that ‘conversation’ with an unknown Presence to penetrate to the still centre of our being, articulating our deepest thoughts and feelings, opening up to us an unknown future, not with paralysing fear, but with hope and knowledge that although we cannot control what will happen to us, we can shape our responses to suffering.

Shabbat Shalom,

Alexandra Wright