Lech Lecha 5772 Greece and Stepping Back Rabbi Aaron Goldstein 5 November 2011

Bat Mitzvah of Nikita Knight

“If someone is pushing you the thing to do is to take one small step backwards.”

A traditional Jewish understanding of the mitzvot, the commandments of the Torah, is that as God commanded it, so you should do. So when we heard Nikita read from the Torah this morning, “The Eternal One said to Avram, “Go forth from your land, your birthplace, your father’s house to the land that I will show you;” we might presume that Avram had no choice. He was commanded, he was pushed.

As the Torah provides the chronology, this is a rather bizarre command to give as it is located in Haran, a place where his father had settled having left Ur of the Chaldeans en route to Canaan. Therefore, God’s command sounds more poetic than actual, for Avram had already left his land  and his birthplace, if not yet his father’s house. The famous 12th century, Spanish although itinerant, biblical commentator, Rabbi Abraham ben Meir ibn Ezra - who focussed his exegesis on the peshat, the simple often literal reading of the text - suggests that God’s command must have come to Avram, not in Haran, but in Ur of the Chaldeans before he set off with his father, his nephew, Lot and his wife, Sarai.

In this reading, I hear the command as a crescendo, not as a push but as a pull on the intellect and emotion of the man we often call, our Father Abraham, the man who our legend has it, marks the birth of our People.

“Go forth from your land.” Avram decides to join his father, Terach on a journey that seems to have no reason.

“From your birthplace.” At the outskirts of Ur, did Avram look back and consider all that he was leaving behind? Did he take one small step backwards?

“From your father’s house.” Following Terach’s death in Haran, did Avram ponder his future? Did he think of going back to his birthplace, to what was known to him? Did he dwell on remaining where he was, in the place that his father had been unable to move from? Was he pushed by command? Did he take one small step backwards?

“To the land that I will show you.” I believe that Avram was pulled, drawn by a compelling commitment to complete the journey that he had begun. Gently, softly pulled, step by step, stage by stage towards a dream, a vision of something that might be better for him, better for his family, a way of life that would be good.

This week, I led an educational session at Watford Grammar School for Girls. It was at their now annual Holocaust Survivors Seminar that attracts hundreds of schoolchildren from across Hertfordshire. I showed the DVD produced by members of our Congregation, simply titled, “Kristallnacht: the Night of Broken Glass.” It includes the accounts of our members who experienced the horror of the night of the 9-10 November 1938 when the Nazis unleashed a wave of violence against the Jews of Germany and Austria. It was the night that the historian Martin Gilbert describes as the “prelude to the destruction of a whole people.” The anniversary of that night falls this coming week and I invite you to join our commemorative service on Friday night, the mitzvot being performed by members of our Congregation who experienced that night.

In my discussions with the group, we considered whether there were elements of our society today that we believed could lead to a turmoil that led to the suspension of democracy, the takeover of society by a vicious ideology and the destruction of whole peoples.

It was not difficult for the young people who had woken up in the morning to hear of more uncertainty in Europe and in particular Greece; dire warnings about the economy; red top newspapers making glib comments about other peoples, who them to perceive the warning signs.

As one girl said who had one parent who was originally Greek, it would be all too easy for her to be singled out for special treatment at such a time.

So we look for words of wisdom to draw toward a path that may seem frightfully narrow, at times even blocked. A path that is right and good.

 “If someone is pushing you the thing to do is to take one small step backwards.”

This week those words came from a stand-out line from an excellent interview by Kirsty Young for Desert Island Discs, with the crossbench peer and social entrepreneur, Lord Victor Adebowale. “I’m a 6 foot black guy from Wakefield who isn’t rich, didn’t go to Eton or Oxbridge, isn’t a lawyer – what the hell am I doing here?!”

He described the upbringing he and his siblings were given by his parents, immigrants from Nigeria at a time when Britain was deeply racist.  They were told, “Not to give in to other people’s expectations. We had inculcated in us, thank God, a sense of pride and equality. We were poor but we never went to school scruffy or dirty. We were taught to respect others. We were taught that if someone is pushing you the thing to do is to take one small step backwards, to be intelligent in your relationships with others.”

At this time when there is an echo of circumstances that led in the past to dread, fear and destruction, let us hope that Greece and all other nations in current economic and political difficulties are given the time to step back, before being drawn, pulled from a compelling commitment for good, into the future; a future that we pray is bright and full of support.

And when we feel ourselves tempted to ostracise others, to condemn, to criticise, let us take a gentle step back and consider our words and actions.

Our Rabbis once said, mitzvah goreret mitzvah, aveirah goreret aveirah – one good deed leads to another, one transgression to another.

Eternal God, grant us the wisdom and strength to know when to take a step back when we are pushed or inclined to think the worst of others in a situation. Vehyeh brachah – and it will be a blessing.