Ajex Service 5770 Rabbi Aaron Goldstein 13 November 2009

This Sunday marks the 75th Annual Remembrance Ceremony and Parade. The ex-Servicemen and women will fall in at Horse Guards Parade before marching to the Cenotaph at Whitehall for a memorial service.

At the time of the World Wars, it must have seemed inconceivable for those who survived them, to see the year 2000, let alone 2010. Yet here in our midst today, though afflicted by time, are those who remain true to their word, never to forget their fellow men and women who fell in battle, who were seriously injured and of course all those who have kept the memory alive who have died in subsequent years. Today, the mother of one of our members died at the age of 101. Her death today brought home to me the fact that this country now no longer has the presence of vets from the First World War, and yet time has not faded our memory of the tragedy of that war, the horrendous scale of loss – historians estimate that over 20 million people were killed - nor the immense courage of those who fought in it.

Yet what rings in my ears are the words of one of the last British veteran of the Western trenches of World War One, Harry Patch. He despaired at the nature of war and sadness that the war that President Woodrow Wilson described as, “the war to end all wars,” did not end them. We are now left with his words to reflect the terror of what he experienced. He said, “If any man tells you he went over the top and he wasn't scared, he's a damn liar.” The words another vet who died this year, Henry Allingham, were far more graphic: “To understand the hell of war you had to be there - the imagination doesn't stretch that far...standing there in 2ft of rat-infested water, in mud-filled trenches - terrible, terrible hardship... living in the ground, infected with lice, waiting to go over the top and probably be mown down... It was a disgrace to be there - the men in the trenches were the ones who won the war, poor devils.”

The imagination does not stretch that far. It is impossible for us who never experienced it, to conceive of the inhumanity of being in such a situation. And now we cannot talk to those who have had to live with the images of what they experienced throughout their lives. And so I make no apology tonight for having thus far focused on the First World War. Yet we are left with their words, their accounts, their self-deprecation and denial of hero-worship citing those who fell as the real heroes. 

AJEX has as an objective, the “remembrance for the sacrifices of the past.” This AJEX and its members do, involving us, the next generations as well, throughout the first part of November. AJEX has an objective, to provide “help for those in need in the present.” This AJEX achieves though care to the injured, providing dignity through residential care and through financial assistance. AJEX has as an objective, “education for the future.”

This final objective is now more vital than ever. Our young people will never know a veteran of the First World War. Although our country is still at war and we think of those still serving our country in Afghanistan, this war is remote to us, geographically and in our lack of participation. There are characteristics that we would all wish to recall as shining beacons of humanity, “the veterans stood as totems of a vanished age of self-sacrifice, loyalty and honor [that some say acts] as a living rebuke to the more self-centered mores of contemporary society.” However, no veteran would wish their descendants to go through the horrors that they suffered, just as some of you will have had to do. Glorious people are found in war but war is not glorious. War is not humane, less still an aspiration that we understand God to have had for us to use our lives for.

The American poet e.e. cummings wrote:
“when god decided to invent everything
he took one
breath bigger than a circus tent
and everything began

when man determined to destroy
himself he picked the was
of shall and finding only why
smashed it into because.”

This year, we, each and every one of us has an opportunity to devote ourselves to foiling those who would wish to violate the why by smashing it into because. Those who seek to misappropriate the legacy of the veterans, of previous wars must be thwarted. Let not one utterance from the BNP that seeks to claim the honour of the dead and survivors be unchallenged. Let not one

This year, AJEX has had the foresight to widen its message by working in partnership with Mitzvah Day. We must take this example to forge alliances of all decent human beings to insure that there is no justifiable requirement for the BBC to give the BNP airspace. There are questions to ask of our society today, but we must not allow them to be smashed into because.

Let us thank God for the life that each one of you has been gifted just as we grieve for all those who lost their lives and still do on battlefields. May their memory and the work of your lives be examples to all who come after to seek God’s plan through life, never through war. May we come to annually commemorate this occasion with AJEX for 75 years to come, in peace.

Amen.