Often we Liberal Jews have been attacked because we “pick & choose” what we like of our religious tradition and reject things if they seem too difficult.  Thank God that this has been our attitude in the past; I hope we will continue to pick out the best and reject the worst and not just try to explain away the unfortunate.

Take this week’s Torah portion is a prime example of the need to pick & choose:  it contains the inspiring, the theologically unacceptable and the downright objectionable.  We are told about the fertility of the Land of Israel, the seven species depicted in our congregation’s Torah covers.  And this leads on to remind us to give thanks “v’sava-ta u’verachta” to give thanks for the food we are fortunate to have in abundance. Yet it also contains (Deuteronomy 11:13-21) the so called second paragraph of the Shema, which increasingly my colleagues feel the need to add into their prayers.  Long ago Liberal Judaism left it out because half of it is a repetition of what we get in the first paragraph of this essential Jewish prayer, but also because the theological equation:  keep the mitzvot & God will send you rain in due season;  serve other gods and God, in anger will shut up the heavens.  With the summer we are having I’m not sure where this leaves us in God’s good or bad books, but we must have done something wrong somewhere along the way. 

But the portion presents greater problems more relevant to the troubles of the week. As well as foretelling the bounty of the Promised Land, the portion say(Deuteronomy 7:16ff) “You shall destroy all the peoples that the Lord delivers to you, showing them no pity….The Lord your God will also send a plague against them, until those left in hiding perish before you.”  Yes this is in our Torah, and such passages will be solemnly chanted tomorrow in synagogues all round the world.  Please God not in Progressive shuls, though even here the trend seems to be to go for the traditional, not what makes Liberal sense.  For such passages are dangerous, because extreme fundamentalists can let them lead to extreme actions.

Such passages are surely behind the horrific murders and injuries caused by the masked gunman who blindly, and in blind hatred, opened fire on innocent teenagers at a Gay & Lesbian support centre in Tel Aviv, just as they were behind the murder of Yitzchak Rabin.  Passages in this weeks Torah portion that are read by ultra-Orthodox fundamentalists in support of their claim to eject Palestinians from their rightful homes and land.  (And by the way we, as a congregation, should feel pride that our Rabbi Hillel Athias-Robles has taken upon himself to organise national protests and a service of remembrance for the innocent victims in Tel Aviv).

A month ago I was in Berlin where 70 years ago, lets be honest, such verses of wiping out became the programme of a perverse regime.  But I was there for most uplifting reasons, in a most uplifting city…..which, as Chancellor Angela Merkel  addressing us said has done as much as possible to admit and make up for the wrongs done to the Jews in the Shoah. I was there for the annual conference of the International Council of Christians ands Jews, the main focus of which was the signing of a declaration: “The Twelve Points of Berlin”, committing Jews and Christians to further and intensify their dialogue in order to increase understanding and to jointly search for harmony and peace in our troubled world.  The Twelve Points replaces a document formulated in 1947 in the immediate dark shadow of the Holocaust urging Christian churches to reform and renew their understandings of Judaism. And, in the intervening years most of the major churches have responded positively to this challenge.  We think especially of Nostra Aetate and the sea change that Pope John Paul II brought to Catholic thinking and there were parallel moves in the Protestant world.  Blips and occasional misunderstandings, of course, but these only make the need to continue dialogue of ongoing importance.

The Ten Points of Seeligsberg were addressed to the Church.  The Twelve Points of Berlin have four challenges to Christians, four Challenges to Jews and four Challenges to their joint efforts.  Our local CCJ branch intends discussing the document in depth early in the new year.

The first two of the Four Points to Jews and Jewish Communities read:

• To acknowledge the efforts of many Christian communities in the late 20th century to reform their attitudes towards Jews.
• To re-examine Jewish texts and liturgy in the light of these Christian reforms.

In Berlin I was the Jewish presenter in a workshop addressing this latter point.  We Jews have been insistent that Christians remove from their liturgy sentiments offensive to Jews, and by and large they have done so, even if we are never sure where the present Pope stands.  Surely it behoves Jews to examine prayers in our traditional liturgy that denigrates Christians.  Yes they are there. The early morning blessing to be said on waking that thanks God “sh’lo asani goy… for not making me a non-Jew”. The blessing in the Amidah that reads in old English “Let slanderers have no hope and all apostates perish in a moment…”  The traditional opening to the Aleynu as said by Sephardim: “It is our duty to praise the Lord of all who has not made us like the nations of the earth….who worship vain and worthless things and pray to a god who cannot save.”  And I quoted other examples.  At the end an Orthodox Jew from Vienna attacked me for daring to question the traditional Jewish liturgy and for washing our problematic laundry in front of the non-Jews.  What was he doing at an ICCJ Conference?  So much for commitment to dialogue!

I could have referred to our Torah portion and to many other hateful passages contained in our Bible.  We too have work to do.  Just this week I heard from the new and excellent President of ICCJ Dr Debbie Weissman of a scandalous leaflet given out recently at some ultra-Orthodox synagogues in Israel; a commentary on the weeks Torah portion, containing several shameful attacks on Christianity.

We must pick and choose.  We must choose to reject the harmful and shameful passages in our texts and to oppose those who wish to take them seriously, even if out of context, for such is the way of extreme fundamentalist.  Yet in our rejecting, we must ever acknowledge the vast amount of good and the inspirational to be found in our Torah.  Let me end with Deuteronomy 10:12:  “And now, O Israel, what does the the Lord your God demand of you?  Only this: to revere the Lord your God, to walk only in His paths, to love Him and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and soul.”` and Micah’s comment on this charge:  “God has shown you what is good and what the Eternal One requires of:  to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)  If only the religious zealots of this world would pick and choose the good and reject the bad, heed Micah’s words, what a more harmonious, understanding, loving world this would be.

Amen