Thought for the Week

Shabbat Naso

Dear Members and Friends,

I spent part of this week accompanying a delegation of Israeli Rabbis from Rabbis for Human Rights (RHR) to meetings at the House of Lords and the Board of Deputies. The four Rabbis, Avi Dabush, Executive Director of RHR, orthodox ordained Rabbanit Leah Shakdiel from Yerucham, a development town in the Negev, Rabbi Dahlia Shaham from Haifa and Rabbi Dana Sharon, Director of the Rabbis Network for RHR, were in the UK to address congregations over Shavuot and meet up with individuals from different organisations.

With the evening sun shimmering against the Jerusalem stone in our Sanctuary, Rabbi Avi connected our visit to the London Central Mosque and St John’s Wood Church, which took place before our Erev Shavuot service, to an interfaith march that had taken place earlier on in the week in Jerusalem as a counter-narrative to the Jerusalem Day flag parade which often involves large groups of Jewish Israelis marching through the Muslim Quarter of the Old City. You can listen to Rabbi Avi’s D’var Torah here.

After they had addressed around ten synagogues throughout Shavuot, I joined the Rabbis at the House of Lords where we met with the Bishops of Southwark, Gloucester and Chelmsford. All had recently returned from Israel and the West Bank. On Wednesday, the Rabbis met with the President of the Board of Deputies, Phil Rosenberg and invited him to be part of their work when he was next in Israel.

RHR’s membership is drawn from across the denominations – orthodox, conservative, progressive rabbis – all of whom see Judaism, our religious heritage, as inseparable from morality. Their work is driven by profound Jewish values of justice, dignity and equality. Human rights lie at the heart of their day-to-day advocacy, education and direct action.

They provide a ‘protective presence’ in areas of conflict, particularly during the harvest season, by accompanying Palestinian farmers, helping them with their olive harvest. While in London, Rabbi Avi described how a group from RHR had gone to help farmers pick apricots. While with them, the army had approached them and told them to move away as they were 200 metres from a settlement. No, they said, you need a warrant. In this way, they fended off the army and Palestinian farmers were able to glean their harvest.

In Israel, RHR advocates for the rights of asylum seekers, migrant workers and other marginalised populations; they provide significant education in schools and synagogues, and particularly in pre-army preparation programmes, before recruits begin their training.

Their visit was a heartfelt plea to all of us to urge for an end to the war, for the release of the hostages, for the delivery of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza. The gap between war and peace, said Rabbi Avi, is much smaller than the gap between the status quo of ‘managing the conflict’ and peace. And in those words, and many of the words that were spoken by the Rabbis this week, I drew hope and inspiration.

Managing our own conflicts here in the UK, dealing with the anger and sometimes hatred that have been directed against our own communities have resulted in exhaustion and highly defensive reactions. Sometimes it feels as though Israel is in the midst of its 100-year war. And sometimes, I ask myself, is this the darkest time of the night before dawn comes?

As I think of that tiny gap between the destruction and devastation of war on the one hand, and peace on the other, I pray that Rabbi Avi is right. That our prayers and the determination and action of our colleagues in Israel, can extinguish the burning hatred, revenge and terror and bring what R.S. Thomas describes in his poem of hope the ‘warm rain/That brings the sun and afterwards flowers/On the raw graves and throbbing of bells.’

Shabbat Shalom,

Alexandra Wright