What a Parashah we have this week: one big drama after another. Our Torah reading today from Chapter 11 describes one of the toughest moments in Moses’ leadership, and he had many. People complaining yet again about how much better their lives were in slavery back in Egypt!
It tells us that the journey to the promised land wasn’t so easy. The Israelites had had enough, God had had enough and Moses too, had had enough.
Our Torah reading starts with God becoming angry at the people’s complaints and a fire going around the camp until Moses prays to God on behalf of his people and the fire stops. Just as one crisis was averted and people could reflect on what had happened another one started. The Israelites joined the riffraff among them and started complaining about the lack of meat. People had had enough of manna!
Now tell me, have we changed at all in the last three thousand years? I don’t know about you but I love complaining and have my ancestors to blame for that! But then after complaining we get on with life and so did our ancestors regardless of how difficult their lives were. But this time the Israelites didn’t or maybe couldn’t stop complaining.
And just a few verses later Moses faces another crisis. But this time Moses didn’t or couldn’t cope with it and became very distressed. He delivers one of the most distressing emotional outbursts calling the Israelites a burden and asking God to kill him.
What does God do? We all can learn from God in this instance: God does not over react, God responds. God knows that Moses is a good leader and if he speaks out of order, he must have had enough. God appoints 70 elders specifically to share Moses burden. If not the people, then their leaders were there for and with Moses.
So the obvious learning for us is regardless of how good a leader is, they need support, every great leader needs his team and good people, volunteers, who care.
And indeed we learnt the lesson from our ancestors. For us, Jewish people, being there for others and involved in community life is second nature and the input of the effort of our volunteers have often far reaching consequences even though they might not be always aware of that.
Many of you know that more than five million Jews lived in the Pale of Settlement at the beginning of the 20th century. After centuries of discrimination and antisemitism from the highest levels of Russian society, including the Tzars themselves, many Jews ended up living there in poverty.
Baer Ratner, Lithuanian Talmudic scholar, commented in 1906 saying that “Fully 80% of the Jewish population of Vilna do not know in the evening where they will obtain food the next morning.” At the cheap eating house in Odessa 400 dinners were provided daily, over 150 without charge. The Jewish charitable societies, organised and supported by the Jews, supplied poor students with clothes, soldiers with kosher food, the poor with free medical treatments, poor brides with dowries and orphans with technical education.[1]
The plight of the Jews changed after the Soviet Government took over the Russian Empire. Jews had food but were denied the freedom of religious and Jewish cultural expression.
I was born in Minsk in the Soviet Union. I remember those famous stories about Jewish refuzeniks and many courageous people from the West who braved the Iron Curtain and visited the Soviet Union or who organised help for the Jews trapped and discriminated against in the Soviet Union.
How wonderful it was for me to join this community where some of the members were so involved in the refusniks work and later on in the twinning work with the emerging progressive communities in the post-soviet countries.
I can imagine that to Rabbi Debbie’s grandfather Michael Sherborne or Linda Khan, the work they were doing seemed hopeless and endless at times but people like me, a few generations later, were inspired by their actions, by their commitment to their fellow Jews who they didn’t know and many of whom they never even met.
I also met last year members of the Jewish Youth organisations at the time who were smuggling into the Soviet Union tallitot and siddurim. It was wonderful for me to have an opportunity to say thank you to them and that I am here today, a Jewish girl from Minsk, becoming a Rabbi was also possible because of their courage.
In Mishnah, in Pirkei Avot, Rabbi Tarfon wisely says: “It is not our responsibility to finish the work but neither are we exempt from it.”[2]
Ahead of the national volunteers week I would like to say a huge thank you to all the volunteers in our country but in particular in our community. There were more than 170 000 charities in the UK as of last year. So much good work is done for very worthy causes in our country.
And we, as a community on Kol Nidrei appeal and through the work of our Winter Night Shelter and as individuals support various charities both in the UK, in Israel and abroad. Most of Israel’s budget goes on defence so the country heavily relies on our donations to provide social care to those members and families who need it.
Many of our members care about various causes and support them by dedicating their money and their time to many charities.
And our community is a charity too. Our work and continuity of our community would not be possible without each of you being there for the community in so many different ways on a daily, weekly, monthly or annual basis.
We have more than 150 volunteers on our books as we have so many different groups out there for our members and beyond. And I am sure we could do with another 150!
It was really heart-warming and inspirational for me to hear last night at our volunteers dinner after the Friday night service how much more so many of our volunteers get back from doing their mitzvot for others.
And I would like to use this opportunity to say on behalf of my colleagues and all the staff members to all our volunteers past and present, to our Honorary Officers past and present, to so many of you who have been involved with our community for many years in different capacities and those of you who just got involved in the recent years: thank you, without you, our community would not be what it is today.
Thank you for sharing your time, the most valuable commodity of our days, your passion for our tradition and the commitment to our community. Thank you for being such an inspiration to so many of us and our young people in particular.
I would like to finish with a good story and piece of advice, which Moses would have appreciated and we all, current and future volunteers, can learn from:
During his first service leading the community, the new rabbi noticed an older congregant walk over to the synagogue president and demand rather loudly that the air conditioning be turned down because it was too cold.
The president nodded kindly and took care of it.
Just a few prayers later, the same congregant asked the president to have the air conditioning turned up because it was too hot.
Not long after, it was too cold for the congregant, and then too hot, etc. all morning long.
The president always nodded kindly and took care of it.
After services, the new rabbi said to the president, “I was very impressed with your patience in handling the individual who kept complaining about the air conditioner.
“It’s no big deal. We don’t have an air conditioner.”
[1] Martin Gilbert, Jewish history atlas, p.72.
[2] Mishnah, Pirkei Avot, 2:16
