CCJ

Guest blog by Nathan Eddy, Interim Director of the Council of Christians and Jews, taken from the 22 January CCJ Newsletter

Holocaust Memorial Day, observed across the country on January 27th, will be unique. A year ago, I remember queueing in the rain to get into Methodist Central Hall in Westminster for the national ceremony and seeing friends and colleagues there. This year we gather in front of laptops, tablets and phones to remember, to hear stories of survival and loss, and to be together. And HMD is different this year for another reason; last year, the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, was the last major anniversary at which survivors will likely be present. We now enter a new era of commemoration, with new ways of remembering, educating and gathering together.

During lockdown I was helped by reading the poetry of a Holocaust survivor, Dan Pagis, whom I first encountered on a CCJ Yad Vashem seminar. Born in 1930 near the Bukovina area of present-day Romania, Pagis lost most of his family in the Shoah, was interned in a concentration camp, and emigrated to Israel as a teenager. There he learned Hebrew for the first time and, remarkably, became one of the prominent Israeli poets of his generation and a world expert in Medieval Jewish literature. Life went on after the horrific events he experienced as a young person, but haunting and ambiguous images fill his poetry. ‘I was a shadow’ — a tzel, in his Hebrew original — he writes in his poem ‘Testimony’. Yet perhaps the very act of sharing his testimony is his poetry’s power — at least, it is for me.

The theme this year chosen by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust is ‘Be the light in the darkness’. For survivors of the Shoah and other genocides, as was the case for Pagis, the shadows are present even in the light of liberation and a conflict’s ending, and this testimony of survivors can challenge those of us who want an easy ‘happily ever after’. As may be the case in the current pandemic, trauma changes lives forever. Yet there is a curious power, a healing power, in hearing testimony and reflecting on lives like Pagis’. The testimony of survivors can be a light in the darkness for us all, giving us courage to be a light in our communities today. That light will be shining brightly on Wednesday, encouraging and empowering us all.

Guest Blog from Esther Sills, Programme Manager for The Council of Christians and Jews

At the beginning of October the Jewish community are celebrating the High Holy Days.  These are “ten days of repentance” which include Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and the days in between, during which time Jews should meditate on the subject of the holidays and ask for forgiveness from anyone they have wronged.

This Sunday evening marks the start of the two day Jewish New Year festival Rosh Hashanah. The Hebrew word Rosh Hashanah translates as “the head of the year” and commemorates the anniversary of the world’s creation and the beginning of humanity[1]. The essence of Rosh Hashanah can be understood as both that of rejoice and introspection[2]. A time where Gd’s conception of society is celebrated but equally where the actions of humankind within that society are recalled and reviewed with sacred judgement. It is at this time of sacred judgement that deliberation upon the inauguration of humanity’s role is encouraged and both the manner in which one’s life has manifested in the year passed and the form in which it can manifest in the year to come is also reflected upon[3]. Many observe this time of divine appraisal with customs of prayer and symbolic practice. Special synagogue services are run by some throughout the day in which prayers for peace, blessing and of repentance take place. It is during these prayer services that many will sound the loud blasts of the shofar[4] (ram horn), a ritual which (amongst other purposes) serves as a wake-up call to one’s moral and spiritual conscious[5]. Throughout the festival many will also consume sweet foods, such as apples in honey, to symbolise the sweet New Year that one hopes to have.

This notion of internal contemplation and reflection, embedded within the theme of Rosh Hashanah, resonates with much contemporary salience. This is because as the shofar horn is sounded, and its loud blasts ricochet, an alarm is raised[6]. An alarm with a purpose which transcends that of mere auditory arousal. An alarm which serves to stimulate the confrontation of one’s own moral and spiritual doings: “awakening the slumbering souls that have grown complacent”[7]. This urgency of the shofar to address the values of passivity and complacency is very much applicable to today’s social context[8]. We live in a time of global moral crisis. Egotistical cultures of selfishness and ignorance plague society, and the neoliberalisation of human suffering is firmly placing blame and responsibility at the feet of the individuals in need. Humanity is bleeding. Yet we have manufactured this phantomic narrative which is systematically undermining the notion of universal moral duty and is, in turn, legitimising and perpetuating an ethos of moral complacency.

We must challenge this harmful social fiction that is extracting unity and proactive collective duty from the framework of societal healing. We must apply the message of Rosh Hashanah and awaken our spiritual and moral consciousness. We must, as the shofar does, “sound an alarm” [9] by proactively speaking out against the evils that are injustice and suffering. As it is only through such active nurturing of the collective good of humanity that one is able to “keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice”[10] and sub-sequentially construct a society which “acts justly and loves kindness”[11].

Wishing those celebrating a meaningful Rosh Hashanah and a year ahead that is filled with healing, blessings and peace for all.

Esther Sills

CCJ Programme Manager