Chol Hamoed Pesach 5770 Safeguarding our children in the wake of the crisis in Catholicism Rabbi Aaron Goldstein 3 April 2010

A Chasidic tale is told, holding in mind the words from the megillah for Pesach – Shir ha’Shirim, the Song of Songs: yishakaynu minsheekot pih-hu – He kisses me with the kisses of His mouth (Song of Songs 1:2).

Before the Baal Shem Tov became known as a tzaddik he worked as an assistant to a teacher of small children. One of his duties as a bahelfer (an onomatopoeic word if ever I heard one!) was to escort the pupils to cheder and back home again (one guesses the precursor to today’s ‘walking buses’). And on the way home, he would give each child a kiss – out of love of a fellow Jew.

In later years his disciple Reb Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezritch, once said: “If only I could kiss the Sefer Torah with the same love that the Baal Shem Tov used to show a little child who had begun reciting his aleph-beit.”

This simple tale of the delight that the Baal Shem Tov held for those who were beginning their journey in life towards understanding God’s Will through the words of Torah, reflect how I have felt on many an occasion. It welled up inside me as young children in Prestatyn, in Hay-on-Wye, in Dublin and Luxembourg and Todmorden, those of our own Community who come from outlying areas - some who even travel all the way from France - stumbled their way in varying states of proficiency, through their Bar or Bat Mitzvah portions: Children who, without the outreach work of Liberal Judaism would never have had the opportunity to express the discovery of their Jewish identity.

It has welled up inside me each time I have qwelled at the children in our cheder, when they sing with such enthusiasm in a Tza’aka service or in our regular services, when I walk into classrooms and hear them sounding their first Hebrew letters, words and prayers; and when I engage in discussion with our Kabbalat Torah class of how the young people apply their new-found Jewish knowledge and identity to secular life. And with adults at our annual Hebrew Crash Course, our Access to Judaism classes and the text study courses led by Rabbi Hillel, I get that same sense. I would like to kiss them all in the spirit of the Baal Shem Tov walking his chattering pupils home from Cheder, practising the sounds and thoughts that are evolving from the seeds placed in them from their homes, their teachers and from a spark placed in them by God.

And yet I cannot.

I cannot, because of a set of rules that I hold equally dear, indeed are essential to modern practical rabbinics – that of safeguarding all those we come into contact with, be they children or adults, strong in body and mind, or weakened from early or late years or by illness. I hold these rules dear for the protection of my congregants and, out of good sense and practice and I admit, out of fear, for myself and Rabbi Hillel.

The horrendous crisis in the Roman Catholic Church, one hopes and prays, will witness priests the world over, soul-searching and asking of their Lord and their God, for fresh salvation not born not out of secrecy and hiding but out of revelation. A revelation that their service of God is achieved through transparency, open debate and reform.

It would be all too easy to demonise Catholicism at this time. With their backs against the walls, many are coming out like prize fighters, lashing out at pretenders to their authority, either will skill and guile but most often with ugly side-swipes. The recent analogy drawn with anti-Semitism reviles and offends us; and yet we do a disservice to the process at hand that holds a possibility of purifying that religion if we seek to hold all accountable. I know from my Catholic friends - deep believers - that they have their concerns for many of the tenants of their faith. They need to be supported to liberalise their faith. And let us not say that it is only Catholicism that faces issues of improper, sometimes illegal behaviour amongst its leaders or adherents.

Quite rightly, the Vatican and its tentacles of authority that reach out across our globe, must hear the cries for real atonement, in word and deed that this horrific abuse demands. There is something rotten at the core of Catholicism at this time. Yet let us reach out to our local Catholic Churches and their congregants, to support them in moving to a place where they can once more feel the love of their Lord and their God.

Our children, indeed all of us, need to be loved. We need to feel the love of humanity and the vast majority, even if felt at brief moments in life, need the love of God, however they might define that feeling. We all need to find ways to express the love expressed in Shir ha’Shirim, the Song of Songs, through the Baal Shem Tov and all who are tzaddikim, those who express their and God’s love in righteousness. We are all in a time of discovery, one which seeks a balance that a new set of moral standards demands of us. Our legal system is still struggling with the balance of individual human rights. Let our voices of support, of sense, and of love be heard. And through us, may we all feel God’s love for us.

Bless our children, O God, and help us so to fashion their souls by precept and example that they may ever love good, flee from sin, and revere Your word and honour Your name.

Amen.