Friday 23 December 2016
Thought for the Week
Rabbi Alexandra Wright
Liberal Jewish Synagogue
The majority of those assembled in the circular prayer hall in the woodland section of Cheshunt Cemetery for the funeral of the late Rabbi Lionel Blue OBE, were Rabbis. Lionel was an only child, born in the East End in 1930 and brought up partly by his Russian born grandparents. The family, who gathered round his coffin to recite Psalms and prayers, to laugh and to weep over the death of a man whose life experience had given him humility, understanding, wisdom, knowledge and a rare and witty sense of humour, were his colleagues with whom he had worked, the students and disciples whom he had taught, his friends from other faiths and members of the Jewish Gay and Lesbian Group, to whom he had been a loyal and courageous friend and inspiration.
My first memory of Lionel was sitting in a class he taught - a mixture of Prayer and Spirituality and Comparative Religion. For all other classes, the bibliography included Hebrew or Aramaic dictionaries, Hebrew concordances, a Hebrew only Bible, Hebrew commentaries, guides to learning Talmud and books on Jewish history. For Lionel, we had to purchase the Hindu scriptures - the 700 verse Bhagavad Gita, the Qu'ran and Julian of Norwich.
There were probably only three or four of us in the class; we were tucked away in a tiny corner room of the Sternberg Centre for Judaism. Lionel would arrive somewhat late, sit down and speak - in the gentle, melodic tones we used to hear on Radio 4's Thought for the Day. He spoke directly of his own experience - the questions he had as a child - 'where does God live?' How he had felt 'locked out' of his religion, how every time he felt he had managed a portion of his life, it seemed then to run away from him. Where and when God had spoken to him - on the underground, on stony roads, in the humdrum comings and goings of ordinary people in suburbia. 'Once you begin God-spotting in the Jewish suburb, you see Him everywhere. There is nothing His presence has not touched or moulded.'
He admired observant, traditional Jews - the men and women who paid attention to every aspect of their lives - what they wore and ate, how they prayed. How in a home, a corner of a wall would be left unplastered - a reminder of the destruction of the Temple - 'it reminds them even in their affluence that this room is part of a passing show, and that real home is elsewhere, not in another suburb, nor even in another country, but in another world.'
There is something both poignant and appropriate that Lionel died in the week before Chanukkah - our own festival of light that coincides this year with Christmas. It was Lionel who was breaking down the barriers between our own faith and others, who was speaking about the similarities and differences of Judaism and Christianity, long before others turned it into an academic study.
The Talmud records an argument between the two famous schools of rabbinic thought - Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel. Beit Shammai insists that eight candles should be lit on the first day of Chanukkah, one candle removed on each subsequent day, the lit candles representing the days still to come of the festival. Beit Hillel argues that one candle should be lit on the first day of the festival and an additional candle added for each of the days that have passed.
D'ma'alin b'kodesh v'eyn moridin - The reason given for this is that 'we raise up in matters of holiness and we do not lower.'
In everything that he saw and spoke about, in the mundane and trivial, the material and humdrum, Lionel found a means to speak of holiness, to raise up and exalt, to shine light into dark places. 'Things which seemed important fade into shadows and insignificance. Dark areas light up, and incidents which were small or rejected begin to glow - and become the land-marks in my life.'
No passport is required to pass from the human world into God's domain, he wrote. 'Jews try to earn their way to heaven, by patching up the world, and making it work.'
That is what Lionel did throughout his working life. He patched up the world; he repaired the tears in people's hearts, he comforted us, he lifted our spirits and brought a ray of light into the world. With great humility and an astute and attentive eye for the small things in life, he never neglected the labour demanded by the Master of the house. May he find his reward in the world to which he has gone.
Thought for the Week
Rabbi Alexandra Wright
Liberal Jewish Synagogue
The majority of those assembled in the circular prayer hall in the woodland section of Cheshunt Cemetery for the funeral of the late Rabbi Lionel Blue OBE, were Rabbis. Lionel was an only child, born in the East End in 1930 and brought up partly by his Russian born grandparents. The family, who gathered round his coffin to recite Psalms and prayers, to laugh and to weep over the death of a man whose life experience had given him humility, understanding, wisdom, knowledge and a rare and witty sense of humour, were his colleagues with whom he had worked, the students and disciples whom he had taught, his friends from other faiths and members of the Jewish Gay and Lesbian Group, to whom he had been a loyal and courageous friend and inspiration.
My first memory of Lionel was sitting in a class he taught - a mixture of Prayer and Spirituality and Comparative Religion. For all other classes, the bibliography included Hebrew or Aramaic dictionaries, Hebrew concordances, a Hebrew only Bible, Hebrew commentaries, guides to learning Talmud and books on Jewish history. For Lionel, we had to purchase the Hindu scriptures - the 700 verse Bhagavad Gita, the Qu'ran and Julian of Norwich.
There were probably only three or four of us in the class; we were tucked away in a tiny corner room of the Sternberg Centre for Judaism. Lionel would arrive somewhat late, sit down and speak - in the gentle, melodic tones we used to hear on Radio 4's Thought for the Day. He spoke directly of his own experience - the questions he had as a child - 'where does God live?' How he had felt 'locked out' of his religion, how every time he felt he had managed a portion of his life, it seemed then to run away from him. Where and when God had spoken to him - on the underground, on stony roads, in the humdrum comings and goings of ordinary people in suburbia. 'Once you begin God-spotting in the Jewish suburb, you see Him everywhere. There is nothing His presence has not touched or moulded.'
He admired observant, traditional Jews - the men and women who paid attention to every aspect of their lives - what they wore and ate, how they prayed. How in a home, a corner of a wall would be left unplastered - a reminder of the destruction of the Temple - 'it reminds them even in their affluence that this room is part of a passing show, and that real home is elsewhere, not in another suburb, nor even in another country, but in another world.'
There is something both poignant and appropriate that Lionel died in the week before Chanukkah - our own festival of light that coincides this year with Christmas. It was Lionel who was breaking down the barriers between our own faith and others, who was speaking about the similarities and differences of Judaism and Christianity, long before others turned it into an academic study.
The Talmud records an argument between the two famous schools of rabbinic thought - Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel. Beit Shammai insists that eight candles should be lit on the first day of Chanukkah, one candle removed on each subsequent day, the lit candles representing the days still to come of the festival. Beit Hillel argues that one candle should be lit on the first day of the festival and an additional candle added for each of the days that have passed.
D'ma'alin b'kodesh v'eyn moridin - The reason given for this is that 'we raise up in matters of holiness and we do not lower.'
In everything that he saw and spoke about, in the mundane and trivial, the material and humdrum, Lionel found a means to speak of holiness, to raise up and exalt, to shine light into dark places. 'Things which seemed important fade into shadows and insignificance. Dark areas light up, and incidents which were small or rejected begin to glow - and become the land-marks in my life.'
No passport is required to pass from the human world into God's domain, he wrote. 'Jews try to earn their way to heaven, by patching up the world, and making it work.'
That is what Lionel did throughout his working life. He patched up the world; he repaired the tears in people's hearts, he comforted us, he lifted our spirits and brought a ray of light into the world. With great humility and an astute and attentive eye for the small things in life, he never neglected the labour demanded by the Master of the house. May he find his reward in the world to which he has gone.
