All languages have words which are impossible to translate into another language – Yiddish and Hebrew have many. Now if I said that someone is a gantse macher you’d know what I mean? Someone with their finger in every pie, who makes things happen. Translate it from the Yiddish? Well it means big maker and that’s meaningless.
If I said that someone is a nebbish, you’d know what it means, but it’s not translatable, except you know you’re not one! Mazal tov, Hebrew for good constellation of stars! But that’s not what you mean when you shout mazal tov at a wedding. There is another Hebrew word like this that is pretty much untranslatable but used a lot in Israel – it’s ‘davka.’
Davka – as in ‘it’s really cold today but davka I am going to enjoy an ice cream’ or ‘everyone in shul likes to dress casually nowadays but davka I am going wear a smart suit for Shabbat’. That’s two very mild uses, but davka is such a powerful word in Hebrew because it describes an essential aspect of Jewish resilience.
5784 was a quintessentially davka year, and I would like tonight to share why, and why it matters. On October 7th 2023 Hamas acted murderously to traumatise, terrorise, and try to destroy not only the 1200 people who they murdered and 250 whom they kidnapped, but the whole spirit of the Jewish people in Israel and worldwide.
In the first two acts of terror Hamas supporters succeeded, they murdered, assaulted and kidnapped. In the third they failed and davka will always fail. For about a week, until October 15th or so last year, people avoided shul worldwide, they kept their children away from schools if they were Jewish schools, Jewish communal activities were sparsely attended. Then davka kicked in – thank God.
And I mean thank God, because this is what it means to be a people who lives in covenant/ Brit with God through thick and thin. The possibility of attacks on Synagogues increased, but davka from October last year many more of our members were willing to volunteer for security at Shul and Jewish events, still not enough at times, but many more than before. It became harder to be Jew at work, at school, but davka our activities at Synagogue became busier and even better attended, 150 children and parents regularly at ERHS’s Shabbat Stay and Play, nearly 200 children attended the Kaytana summer camp over the three weeks this year. At EHRS, talks and classes , together groups and more thrived this year. Davka it was good to be with the community and as you will experience at the EHRS Fest next Sunday, it will remain so into this year ahead.
Rabbi Debbie in her Rosh Hashanah sermon talked about the Shabbat service a couple of weeks after October 7th which was full and so emotional, and indeed we have come together for many more like this. Our Cornerstone class for conversion to Judiasm did not fall apart after the Hamas attacks on Israel, davka the opposite happened. It’s now one of our most active and sizeable groups for years as people who wanted to return to their family’s Jewish identity or join the Jewish community lishma, for its own sake, came to us and other Synagogues this year.
Actually don’t be surprised. It is baked into the Jewish soul, this way of behaving. It’s why Judaism is resilient. It starts in Torah – when our people were forced to be slaves to Pharaoh they did not throw off their Jewish identity davka they became the tribes of Israel and established the beginnings of Judaism as they crossed the wilderness to the Promised Land. An example of davka that we read every year as a Haftarah (for Parashat Behar, Jeremiah 32:6-27) reports Jeremiah the prophet, just as he knows for sure that the Babylonians are about to invade Israel and exile its population, buying a piece of land in Israel to symbolise that he is certain that our people will one day return. If you are in property you’ll know that that’s either very clever as land values are depressed for a time, or completely foolish as you will never be able to sell it!
Many communities throughout the centuries, for example in Krakow, Frankfurt and Hebron have come to celebrate a special local Purim, a festival of delight, after they had got through a time of being attacked or persecuted. They remember the disaster by davka creating a Purim like time of happiness for future generations.
Our liturgy on the High Holy Days is suffused with davkas though we may not recognise it if we don’t know the history of our prayers. The Aleynu, which ends every single Jewish service but was originally recited only on the High Holidays, stresses that we can have hope that the world will be set right with the rule of God, that justice will prevail, that superstition and prejudice will not be for ever blocking humanity. It was written according to most sources in the Babylonia in the third century, when the Temple had been destroyed and Rome ruled Israel, a time when Jewish values were barely impacting the world. But davka – at that time and ever since then we prayed for a hope of a better future.
Another prayer with a harrowing story but a davka existence is Untaneh Tokef, which we will hear tomorrow afternoon at the Musaf service as we did on Rosh Hashanah. It was likely written before year 600. It became well known and part of our liturgy because of the legend of Rabbi Ammnon of Mainz who was tortured nearly to death in the 1100’s by people trying to get him to give up his Judaism and convert to Christianity. He recited the prayer as he died and from then on, so the legend goes, Untaneh Tokef was included in our High Holidays liturgy. It says that however ephemeral human life many be, who knows who may live and who may die this year, our holiest values inspired by God will davka always live on.
Perhaps the holiest value of all is Kiddush Ha Shem, another untranslatable word literally meaning ‘making God’s name holy or sanctified’. In our previous Machzor, completed in 1985, in the shadow of the novel availability of testimony from the Shoah, the Holocaust, the Kiddush HaShem section of the Musaf service was all about martyrdom. That of the Jewish rabbinic martyrs during the Hadrianic Roman persecutions, Rabbi Akiva, Chananiah ben Teradion and fellow Rabbis and teachers. Then it turned to reflections on the death of those who were the victims of the Nazi Holocaust and others who gave their lives to uphold their Jewish principles.
You can see this language in the plaque which stands here in our Synagogue – remembering the six million who gave their lives for the sanctification of God’s name.
But in our 2024 Machzor we have legitimately and authentically broadened the definition of Kiddush Ha Shem. In the words of Rabbi Arthur Waskow (Machzor p352) ‘A deeper theology might take it that God’s name itself becomes still more holy when human beings act to affirm the teaching of what that holy action is.’
And so many of our readings in that part of the service which we used to call the Martyrology and which we now simply call Kiddush HaShem, are life affirming, about a goal directed life, about commitment to peace, justice and truth, about care for others and environmental responsibility, about feeling connection to the human family. We remember our martyrs and we also remember and inspire our doers. So now that plaque whilst remembering the victims of the Shoah also bears witness to the fact that our Synagogue is full of the second and third and even fourth generations of families that the Nazis failed to wipe out – still Jewish, still affirming God’s name. It’s davka in action again.
One of the children of our EHRS community Jake Marlowe z’’l was murdered at the age of 26 by Hamas at the Nova music festival where he was a security guard. His family have this week dedicated a Magen David Adom ambulance in Israel to Jake’s name. In Jake’s name, for years to come, davka, life will be saved.
Our Synagogue Israel solidarity and learning trip in December this year is going ahead because davka this is not the time to stay away from our brothers and sisters in Israel.
Our EHRS High Holy Days appeal with ten very good causes asks for your support because even when the cost of living is a challenge for so many of us it is davka exactly the right time to give so that we can, for example, help feed the hungry with Leket, provide relief for the impoverished through our EHRS Community Needs Fund, bring support to the abused through Jewish Women’s Aid and build shared communities for Jews and Arabs with the Friends of Leo Baeck Haifa. Even in this toughest year Sergio Della Pergola at the Hebrew University has found that the world Jewish population has davka grown to 15.8 million (Jewish News 10/10/24 p 18)
Being true to Judaism has to mean that in the toughest times we not only stay Jewish but stay committed to Jewish values. This is why as well as supporting all in Israel we have compassion for Gaza and Lebanon’s civilians as they suffer the terrible effects of terrorist organisations operating from amongst them. We continue to care for our community and for people around us, for example ensuring that our EHRS Homeless Shelter is as open to Muslim clients as anyone, without discrimination. And we hold onto hope that Israel and her neighbours will find a way to peace under the leadership of a government that is dedicated to that task.
Davka, when terrorist organisations take murderous action to crush the spirit of the Jewish people – we rise. We aim in this year for the Kiddush ha Shem of Israel at peace, with the just needs of Israelis and Palestinians together met, and proud Jewish communities like ours around the world contributing to the societies in which we live.
