European Judaism

We celebrate in this edition two closely related events. The fortieth anniversary of this journal is a remarkable landmark, particularly given the short-lived nature of intellectual journals within the British Jewish community. That it is still around is a tribute to the commitment of a few dedicated editors and supporters, in particular Albert and Evelyn Friedlander, who between them in earlier years did almost everything from editing, to maintaining mailing lists, to posting and packing to storing large quantities of back issues in the basement of Westminster Synagogue. One reason for the survival has been the readiness of our publishers, Polak and van Gennep (1966–87), Pergamon Press (1987–93) and Berghahn Books (1994–) to support a journal with a small but influential circulation. In each case it was a particular individual who made this possible: in the early years Johan Polak, who is recalled in a memoir by Jackie Senker, the widow of Michael Goulston, the first managing editor; Dr Elisabeth Maxwell who persuaded Pergamon, one of the publishing companies of her husband Robert Maxwell, to take it on; and Marion Berghahn, who accepted it in the early stages of her own publishing venture. (Further background is recorded in an editorial in the Spring 1994 issue.) Without their recognition of the significance of such a journal and generous support it would have long since joined the ranks of other short-lived experiments.

Mercifully the destruction of the European Jewish communities was not total, and at the close of the conflict about 20 per cent of the original population remained to face the future. In some countries, such as France, a high proportion of the total population survived, while in Britain the community was totally spared. Russian Jewry, though continuing its prewar isolation and despite losses from the German occupation, still lives on as a numerically substantial part of the Jewish people. The troubles in North Africa and the Middle East have forced an immigration from those areas into the European continent.

Memory is a traitor. Forty years is a short time in human history, but the attempt to remember exactly what happened in the past is fraught with problems. The clearest incidents are often the most trivial. What we really want to remember remains obscure. So my memories of the early days of European Judaism may not be entirely accurate. As the wife of the founding editor, Michael Goulston, I was fully occupied with running our household and caring for three small children. I did not participate in the meetings where Michael discussed his vision for the journal with colleagues. For this memoir I have had to rely on my memories of day-today conversations with Michael about his hopes and dreams, leafing through early issues of the journal, a chat with Lionel Blue, sadly one of the few survivors of the original Board of Editors, together with recollections of my own role.

European Judaism celebrates its 40th year of existence, but 'European Judaism' still does not exist, and it is doubtful whether it ever will. There are Anglo-Jewry, French Jewry, Jews in Germany (NB, not deutsches Judentum), Dutch and Italian Jewry, etc. But there is no European Jewish identity, nor a European Jewish intellectual life. And that is to say that the Jews of Europe have a minimal impact on the Jewish world. Today, as forty or fifty years ago, or even more so, there are two centres of Judaism in the world: North America and Israel. Of course, European Judaism is not to be blamed for this state of affairs, for the nationalisms of Europe's Jewish communities. It is impossible for a journal to shape, on its own, intellectual history. But maybe we could have made a bigger effort and have had some impact trying to do so.

Forty years later, I am asked – as a rabbi, a psychotherapist and, I suppose, as a longstanding (and, I now realise, embarrassingly frequent) contributor to the journal – to offer an overview of the way in which the theme of Judaism and Psychotherapy has been reflected within its pages over these years. And as I look back, imagining that this topic emerged only during the 1980s when three editions of the journal were dedicated to it, I open up again that first edition, from the summer of 1966, and read how Leslie Shepard, in his text Religion and the Affluent Society, is already writing about the shadow side of 'modern society' where 'the sweets have lost their flavour. There is fear, loneliness, frustration, emptiness, bitterness and despair. The psychoanalyst hears more of these things that the priest …' (Vol. 1, No. 1, p.13).

In the early years of European Judaism, these colloquia (possibly following the pattern established by Commentary) were a distinctive feature. Re-reading the six of them is both moving and thought-provoking. But do these colloquia themselves still have anything to offer? Can we learn from what took place? Should we attempt to replicate the format? What follows is partial rather than systematic and the reflections follow personal interests rather than being judgments on quality.

Since the mid-1980s, interfaith issues have been arguably the major theme of European Judaism. Public events reflected in these pages have been commented on from an interfaith perspective. President Ronald Reagan's visit to German war graves in 1985 provoked a bitter Jewish-Christian argument about forgiveness after the Holocaust. The humanitarian crisis in Bosnia in 1993, the massacre in Hebron in 1994, Rabin's assassination in 1996, the millennium and the 9/11 terrorist attacks all provoked much comment. The back issues of this journal must be regarded as a major resource for the modern history of dialogue between Jews, Christians and Muslims. Few of the articles were written specially; nearly all are conference papers, recorded speeches or reprinted from other publications. In spite of that, the editors have managed to capture all the big events and issues.

The tasks that Rabbi Baeck sets out for us are the text and context for our conference. His own contributions to the science and study of Judaism, his focus on aggadic literature, a dialogue with Christianity and a vigorous defence of Judaism's covenant with the living God will inform and guide our deliberations throughout the four days. Each day will deal with a thematic aspect of the challenges and tasks facing Progressive Judaism while the conference as a whole seeks to engage us all in a debate about our future in the light of our own spiritual and intellectual inheritance.

Unwillingly and unwittingly, Jews have become 'icons' in Europe's new commemorative pluralist democracies. They have now set the standard for national commemoration of specific historical wrongs, for victimhood, for public visibility, for community organisation, for the right to multiple loyalties, and for a position that one can call selective national belonging; in brief, for real but also highly symbolic power. The main challenge Jews will be facing in the future will be that of making sure these 'iconic' rights are spread more globally in a setting of greater collective justice. But Jews, more than any other group, can also set the limits to too strong an identity pursuit. I believe there is an urgent need to recast a common belonging inside our respective countries and societies. The pendulum has swung too far in the direction of sanctified specific identities. The time has come to move it back toward a more moderate centre. Commemoration should lead to reconciliation, overcoming of the past, and healing, not to exacerbated identities. And Jews, precisely because of their iconic quality, now hold the keys to such a swing back. Otherwise we should not be surprised if Europe's Muslims follow the Jews in the path of declared victimhood, selective belonging, even disintegration through an implicitly hostile reading of the larger society outside.

In This People Israel, Leo Baeck observed that Jewish vision 'looks backward and forward simultaneously', that 'nothing exists solely for itself. Everything has its predecessor and its successor, its ancestry and its direction.' Judaism 'only knows relationship and totality'. Rabbi Baeck observed that while the Greeks viewed the past as 'historia, "investigation"', Judaism speaks of 'toldot, "generations"'. There is a sense of connection that binds the Jew to the past, even as it bids us as Jews to consider the present and look to the future. As we seek to hear the commandment of the living God in our own generation, we acknowledge our debt to the past as we simultaneously affirm our responsibility to ourselves and to generations yet unborn as we seek to leave our posterity - our toldot - a worthy legacy. Revelation is captured and God experienced in the ongoing moments of life and the deeds that the individual and the community perform. I am grateful to Rabbi Baeck for the model of his life and the insights and nobility of his teachings. They inspire and direct me – however imperfectly I act – as I struggle with the challenges of life.

There is a long essay entitled "Leo Baeck in Terezin" which, as far as I know, first appeared in The Face of God After Auschwitz, the first volume of Ignaz Maybaum I ever owned, published under the auspices of RSGB in 1965. The essay seems to have been prompted by the not widely acknowledged ambiguity with which Baeck was received in London in the period up to his death in 1956. For most, Baeck was a saint. For some, however, his affirmation of the western philosophical tradition in Terezin constituted a humanistic betrayal. The Maybaum essay acknowledges the criticism. However, it is, ultimately, not only a stout defence but gets very close to Baeck's essence. What Maybaum argues is that when Baeck lectured in Terezin, he was not engaging in secular, humanistic education. Nor was he dismissing the Greek and German heritage but using it as religious protest. Because, even in Terezin - Baeck affirmed, says Maybaum, 'Truth - like the world - is the creation of God' and 'Truth, morality and love are the creation of God' and '… those who walk forward towards the kingdom of God are not taught by philosophers to do so; they are sent on this journey by God'.

On the hundredth anniversary of Rabbi Leo Baeck's birth, in the year 1973, Rabbi Joachim Prinz of Livingston, New Jersey, who had been his colleague in Berlin, gave a two-part radio interview devoted to his fellow rabbi. Always provocative, Prinz began by trying to deflate what we might call the myth of Leo Baeck's sainthood. According to Prinz, Baeck was not beyond reproach: he could say rather harsh things about people; he could be evasive in conversation – and he was a terrible preacher. But Prinz also recognised that although Baeck was not above human failings there was something extraordinary about the man: he seemed to derive all of his strength from his faith; it was his piety, for example, that made him courageous enough to tell the Gestapo he would not appear before them on Shabbat. And when he did appear on weekdays, the authorities found it impossible to degrade him. There was an inner dignity in Baeck that was inviolable. Sitting with him, Prinz, testified, was 'being in the presence of spirituality' - more so than sitting together with Martin Buber.

I hope it will be clear that in the point I am about to raise, I am not quarrelling with Michael's paper, and – while I do not in principle repudiate Joachim Prinz's effort to 'deflate what we might call the myth of Leo Baeck's sainthood' – that is certainly not my purpose at present. I would rather explore briefly the aspect that Michael identified in the first part of his presentation as central to Leo Baeck's legacy for us as progressive Jews: 'the unconditional divine commandment to do that which is right' – the divine command that 'leaves no room for ethical opportunism', the command that may require 'an utter subjugation of the self ', making one ultimately responsible to God and only secondarily to human beings, and that 'precludes obedience to any secular authority that contravenes God's will'. This sounds extremely noble and admirable. But how is it supposed to work for us? How are we to know what it is that God is commanding that requires such absolute obedience and sacrifice of self at a difficult moment? Clearly, as a progressive Jew, Baeck did not believe that God's will is to be discovered through the study and analysis of the ancient authoritative texts of the Jewish religious tradition. That is the Orthodox position that he did not accept. If God commands us today, it must be not in a message to be discovered in ancient texts but in a direct address. But what does this actually mean?

As a religious person, I believe that the evolution of species is the greatest sacred drama of all time. It is a purposeful process. There is a One within and behind the great diversity of life that seeks to be discovered, that has aimed all along, however imperfectly and stumblingly, to bring about the emergence of a mind that can know it, articulate it, and strive toward the moral greatness that will fulfil its purpose. I prefer to think of that One in immanent terms, a Being or lifeforce that dwells within the universe and resides in all its forms, rather than a Creator from beyond who forms a world that is 'other' and separate from its own Self. Within the few millennia that we call human history, the evolutionary process continues unabated, as ideas, images, and conceptions of the gods or God or the life-force grow and change with the times. This evolutionary approach to the history of religion will form the background for my treatment here of Jewish views on the subject of God, which I seek to address in the combined roles of scholar/historian and contemporary believer/struggler/theologian.

I have been given the task of responding to this gift, this dream-work, and in starting in this personal way I am taking my cue from our speaker, who also began by opening out for us his own personal theological stance. It was, and is, the prism through which everything else is to be viewed. And because the light that he shone on to our theme was, and is, refracted through this personal prism, it deserves particular attention. It seems to me that this prism has several planes.

In this essay I wish partially to portray one aspect of the gradual dissolving of the clear-cut polarity of religious identity in Israel of the past three decades. The former dichotomy, which presented orthodoxy, identified with Torah study, faith and religious observance, on one side, and secularism, as the inverse identity of orthodoxy, on the other side, is changing. In order to demonstrate it I will present a collage of Israeli poetry, liturgical music and popular songs.

In the footsteps of Hermann Cohen, 'the idea of humanity in the correlation of the unity of God', Leo Baeck rises out of the experience of the First World War beyond being the Nebenmensch to become the Mitmensch, who lives forever with the Divine Mitleid, compassion. God must love the poor man, since man ought to love his poor Mitmensch, fellow man (p. 15 in Leo Baeck, Teacher of Theresienstadt). In 1922, Leo Baeck expressed this new awareness of correlation in his unique language, the 'twofoldness', in his extraordinary, beautiful essay 'Mystery and Commandment': 'There are two experiences of the human soul in which the meaning of his life takes on for a man a vital significance: the experience of commandment; or as we may also put it, the knowledge of what is real and the knowledge of what is to be realised …' This twofold experience could also be called humility and reverence. Humility is the feeling for that deep and mysterious sphere in which man is rooted, and reverence is man's feeling that something higher confronts him, and whatever is higher is ethically superior and therefore makes demands and directs, speaks to man and requires his reply, his decision. The true expression of this twofoldness is faith and social action, as Leo Baeck expresses at the end of This People Israel: 'What was confused becomes definite; clearly pre-empts what had been confused,' and 'The man of this earth works for something to come into being which this earth itself does not give.' And the great hope, that this is achievable, that tikkun olam is never an illusion beyond our grasp, is given ever again in the birth of a child.

This afternoon I would like to do three things. First, to say something about how I became involved with social issues; second, to raise some questions; and third, I would like to suggest some principles which I believe should be integral to progressive Judaism. Let me start with a bit of history.

The thesis I would submit to you this morning may be somewhat surprising: it is that the task of the rabbinic programme at Leo Baeck College is impossible. We have a five-year programme of study. What do we want to accomplish with our students by the end of this period? What kind of training do we believe that our rabbis will require for meeting the needs of the progressive Jewish community, and the general Jewish community in the next generation? What follows is an outline of what I believe is required.

As congregational rabbis, or in any other role, those gathered here have taught, guided, supported and accompanied people through all the stages of their lives; shared their times of joy, and been quietly or actively present, often for long periods, in times of sadness or tragedy. This is self-evident, and each individual rabbi, has an endless series of stories to tell. But the collective effect is quite overwhelming. So what is needed to enable us to continue this task, this vocation, to empower those who come after us?

I want to say something about the various roles many rabbis are now expected to fulfill. I hope that, by doing so, the question of what might be needed to train the students for these tasks may become clearer. Who, then, is involved in the Torah service? I have come up with ten roles.

The shock and sorrow of Rabbi Jacobs's passing bring with them the great sadness of the end of an era. As my colleague Rabbi Chaim Weiner said, we could always feel Rabbi Jacobs was there before us, or stood behind us, with his immense knowledge and authority. He made us safe, as a parent makes a child feel safe. Now he's departed from us, and with him are gone his learning, teaching, wisdom and his humour, his great tolerance and his impassioned integrity.

Seder

Under

Flesh on paper

Atlanta

Parcheesi

Light at dawn on the morning of September 17th, 2002

Stones i.m. Yehuda Amichai

The English Country Cottage

Simeaon D. Baumel, Sacred Speakers, Language and Culture among the Haredim in Israel, Berghahn Books, 2006, 232 pp. £75, ISBN 1-84545-062-0