Yom Kippur Sermon: Extremism
- rabbirobynashworth
- Oct 3
- 10 min read
Let’s, together, step back in time to join the Israelites in the wilderness. We’re going to visit them just after the golden calf had been built and, as a consequence, devastation had been wrought on the people by God with some three thousand people killed. We are situating ourself just at the time when Moses privately implores God for mercy following the wayward act of his people - the story of which we will shortly re-tell in our Torah Service.
Let your eyes pan across the wilderness and focus in on one tent, in the corner are two young women, huddled together and talking, while the rest of their family sleeps.
‘I don’t know how they can sleep’, whispered Tirzah.
‘They are exhausted’, said Noah, looking over to her family.
Tirzah takes Noah’s hand. ‘You’re shaking’.
‘I know. It was terrifying. The rage, the blood. How can we ever make it out of the wilderness with such things happen?!’
‘I’m glad we followed Miriam and didn’t give our jewellery to Aaron to build the calf.* Miriam and Mum were right not to join in. Building an idol! Don’t they know anything! Such divisions. Such violence.’
‘You can always trust Miriam. She’s so strong and kind. I would follow her anywhere. Maybe she’ll compose another song about the calf.’
‘Can I tell you something?’ Tirzah asks.
‘Of course.’
‘You know who I’m not so sure of - Moses. He’s just always so quiet. He’s not like Dad who is so decisive, and loud. Moses is always asking questions, pondering, wandering. I mean, where even is he?’
‘He’s pitched his tent outside camp. You know he likes the quiet. Maybe it’s from his days of shepherding - out there in nature, alone, no burdens. Sounds wonderful. Miriam says he’s to be trusted, so I trust him, even if he is a little strange. She says he’s quiet because of his stutter, and that he can speak to God. That’s what she says he’s doing now, talking to God, asking God to forgive us all, to be compassion. He must be brave to do that.’
‘Yeah, I guess. Can you imagine him living in the Egyptian courts all those years ago - all that gold, all the food… Imagine giving all of that up for this?’
‘I know, Tirzah’, said Noah, stroking her sister’s hand, ‘let’s sleep, it’s late.’
The eagle eyed amongst you would have noticed that our two main protagonists, Tirzah and Noah, are two of the Daughters of Zelophechad, who in turn, will implore Moses and God to use their compassion and sense of justice in relation to their father’s inheritance. I’m not sure this modern midrash would pass the Bechdel test - which requires a work to have at least two women, who have a conversation with each other about something other than a man. But, I’m going to put it to you, before we read the foundational text of Moses’ conversation with God, that Moses was no ordinary man. In fact, many scholars have posed the question, as Jennifer Koosed does, ‘[d]oes Moses embody the masculine ideal or is he a failed man?’**
A failed man - what does that mean? Well Moses was neither fully Egyptian nor Hebrew. He married a non-Israelite woman, Zipporah, and named one of his children after his complex, unmoored identities - Gershom - ‘I have been a stranger in a foreign land’ [Exodus 18:3]. Moses resists categories and fixed identities. He also, remarkably, blurs gender lines. In some ways he is a maternal figure, which maybe makes sense as he was brought up by a group of diverse and strong women. A few examples - in Exodus 34 (just after our reading today), Moses is veiled which is, according to the scholar Rhiannon Graybill, a ‘predominantly feminine practice’.*** Not convinced? Let’s turn to Numbers 11:12-15 where Moses exclaims the following to God:
Did I produce all these people, did I give birth to them, that You should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom as a caregiver carries an infant,’ to the land that You have promised on oath to their fathers? Where am I to get meat to give to all this people, when they whine before me and say, ‘Give us meat to eat!’ I cannot carry all this people by myself, for it is too much for me. If You would deal thus with me, kill me rather, I beg You, and let me see no more of my wretchedness!”’
And in Deuteronomy 5 (24:27) Moses is addressed using feminine language - וְאַ֣תְּ ׀ תְּדַבֵּ֣ר אֵלֵ֗ינוּ - ‘and you (feminine form) spoke (feminine form) to us’. Moses certainly does not reflect the hegemonic ideal of masculinity typical of the Tanach. It is through Moses ‘failures’, his refusal to be firmly labelled as a Hebrew or a ‘typical bloke’ that he subverts what is expected of him. The amazing re-imagining of the Exodus story - the book ‘Moses, Man of the Mountain’, by the writer Zora Neale Hurston, describes Moses as a ‘transgressor of boundaries’ and puts these words in his mouth - ‘I don’t want to be anybody’s boss. In fact, that is the very thing I want to do away with….the scared people do all of the biggest talk.’****
Maybe this background helps explain the sisters’ concern about Moses’ strange leadership style, the fact that he resists being the ‘boss’. He is unsure, emotional, intimate with God, overwhelmed easily, fragile even - so different to what we may understand a leader to be. Maybe I am romanticising Moses, but I don’t think so! He is flawed and expresses his vulnerabilities. What I am certain of is that he is not an extremist. Perhaps we would have expected the leader of a free people to be surer, more-outspoken.
Given what he saw and experienced we could have expected him to be an extremist. Indeed, Moses is something of an exception in the Tanach because there are a lot of extremists in there - here are two: Pinchas (who was so incensed at seeing an Israelite man with a non-Israelite woman that he took a spear and stabbed them through the belly [Numbers 25:6-8]); and the prophet Nachum, whom I mentioned last night, verse 2 of chapter 1 reads ‘The ETERNAL is a passionate, avenging God; GOD is vengeful and fierce in wrath. GOD takes vengeance on opponents, And rages against foes’. As the current definition of extremism reads:
Extremism is the promotion or advancement of an ideology based on violence, hatred or intolerance, that aims to:
(1) negate or destroy the fundamental rights and freedoms of others; or
(2) undermine, overturn or replace the UK’s system of liberal parliamentary democracy and democratic rights; or
(3) intentionally create a permissive environment for others to achieve the results in (1) or (2).*****
These texts and ideologies of violence, hatred or intolerance are uncomfortable, painful to hear and may explain even more my obsession with Moses as a non-extremist leader. For earlier this year, for I think the first time, I saw into the eyes of a man lost to extremism and it was terrifying. I have never felt as close to death as in that moment. And given today, Yom Kippur, is about facing our mortality, I want to re-visit that moment with you. I was on a rabbinic trip to Israel.******
We visited the West Bank and were standing on the ruins of a Palestinian village, Zanuta, a few months earlier home to 250 people and now destroyed by nearby settlers. A few moments into our visit a man, a Jewish settler, arrived in his truck, racing down the hill. I remember thinking, he’s got so close to Rabbi Rene Pfertzel (now rabbi of Maidenhead Reform Synagogue), and then I realised, as the driver reversed, he was aiming to hit him. The driver then kept driving towards each of us - we jumped over rocks and he kept coming, quickly turning to chase us. He drove up to our Palestinian driver, still in the van, spitting at him. He drove at a pregnant member of our party. Eventually after he came back a second time, we left. I remember, clearly, his smirk as he drove towards me.
He followed us down the road and nearly ran us off the road. We made our way to the second Palestinian village, Umm Al Khair, which recently made the news as a Palestinian man was killed by settlers, Awdah Hathaleen - in fact, he was the one who welcomed us into his village and poured us teas as our hands shook from the trauma we had just experienced.******* We kept saying to each other - but we’re Jewish. That seemed to be the most shocking thing - we were wearing kippot, obviously Jewish, but we were still targets. That afternoon it was our kippot that drew more attraction and violence from Jewish settler kids who whilst spitting on nearby Muslim men, and kicking Muslim women, threw eggs at us in Hebron calling us Reform traitors.
And we’ve all read the news stories of members of the Israeli Government who espouse extremist views. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, now sanctioned by the UK government, said: ‘Nobody will let us cause two million civilians to die of hunger, even though it might be justified and moral, until our hostages are returned.’******** Unless we think he has the hostages foremost in his mind he also, in a radio interview, said “we have to say the truth, returning the hostages is not the most important thing’. The Hostage and Missing Families Forum, which represents the relatives of the majority of those held captive, said in response to Smotrich that they ‘have no words this morning except shame.’*-
Now I know that Judaism is not alone in having extremists. We know, all too deeply and painfully, the harm caused by extremists from pogroms, the inquisition, October 7th, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Nazis.
With extremist governments and atrocities happening across the globe, these dangerous ideologies exist in every culture and time. Maybe some would say, we have enough problems, why draw attention to Jewish extremists? Perhaps I’ll begin to answer this rhetorical question with a few words from one of my favourite science fiction writers, Octavia Butler:
‘To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears.
To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.
To be led by a thief is to be offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen.
To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies.
To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.’*--
So firstly, we must examine Jewish extremism because we must make sure we know who we are following and what for. Secondly, as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of our most profound teachers, wrote, ‘few are guilty but all are responsible’*--* or as the Babylonian Talmud records, kol areyvim zeh ba-zeh, the entire Jewish people are responsible for one another [Shevuot 39a]. Thirdly, and most importantly, we must recognise and protest Jewish extremism for what it is - an aberration and misunderstanding of Judaism - because we all run the risk, through our trauma and fear, and the very real harm done to us, to be seduced or comforted by these extremists’ answers to complex problems. We know there is a thin line between experiencing and articulating our suffering we see and falsely believing that people different to us are the problem.
Even closer to home, Nick Lowles, from the charity Hope Not Hate which works tirelessly to expose and oppose far-right extremism, was recently interviewed about the rise in far-right groups in Britain. He said, this is nothing new, far-right tropes have been present for decades and they play on, as he writes:
this feeling that nothing’s working, the political parties have failed. They make promises they don’t keep. There’s no difference between them. You can have all sorts of national pledges, it means nothing to people on the ground. They look at the world around them and they just see things crumbling. All that can be true, without changing the fundamentals that, Most people do not want to see internment camps, do not want to see women and kids dragged out of the country, refugees sent home to their deaths. There is a basic decency among British people, they don’t want all that. Rather than getting despondent – which is easy, at the moment – we’ve got to mobilise, we’ve got to get active.*--**
Let’s return to Moses, and our Torah readings today. In our first reading we will hear Moses’ intimate conversation with God and we can reflect on his non-extremist, vulnerable style of leadership and how desperately we need people like this leading us, for using Butler’s words, if we are led by people full of curiosity and integrity, we will follow in curiosity and through integrity. Our second reading, from the book of Leviticus champions the stream of righteousness and justice which runs as vital thread through our texts as an antidote to any extremism or warped understanding of God or Judaism. This is ours to celebrate and live. Here's an extract:
You shall not pick your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger: I יהוה am your God.
You shall not render an unfair decision: do not favor the poor or show deference to the rich; judge your kin fairly.
Do not deal basely with members of your people. Do not profit by the blood of your fellow [Israelite]: I am יהוה.
You shall not hate your kinsfolk in your heart. Reprove your kin but incur no guilt on their account.
You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against members of your people. Love your fellow [Israelite] as yourself: I am יהוה.
Let us follow Moses, our flawed and principled role-model and leader, and these values of Judaism which uplift holiness and ethical behaviour. May we be led by Jewish values and not fear; by courage and not insecurity; with curiosity and not defensiveness; with honesty and not denial; being practical but not despairing nor naive; with love and not with hate; not succumbing to extremism but Judaism and her teachings. As we stand facing our morality this Yom Kippur may we reject death-promoting ideologies and choose life, again and again.
Ken Yehi Ratzon - May this be so.
*Pirke deRabbi Eliezer 44 (45).
** Koosed, J. L. 2017. ‘Moses, Feminism, and The Male Subject’. In: Sherwood, Y. Ed. 2017. The Bible and Feminism: Remapping the Field. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.223-234.
*** Graybill, R. 2015. Masculinity, Materiality, and the Body of Moses. Biblical Interpretation. 23, pp.14.
**** Hurston, Z. N. [1939] 2009. Moses, Man of the Mountain. New York: Harper Perennial, pp.70 and 81.
*-- https://www.instagram.com/p/DIJk3OIubJO/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MTk5YXA3YTlucDIxZA== A good excuse to start following the Black Liturgies Account.
*--* Heschel, Abraham J. The Prophets: An Introduction. 1. 20. [ed.]. Harper Torchbooks 1421. New York: Harper and Row, 1969, p.6.
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