Hidden Roots, Rosh Hashanah sermon CEC 2024 Rabbi Sandra Kviat
“Can you hear it?
This is the place where the road ends, where the path bends from concrete and car screams and lights - into leaves crunched in kicks and warm forest nights.
Can you feel it? The sunlight that strikes in bright golden glows a light you so often have no time to know until you stumble on places like this - where you can rediscover the things that you miss…
-so lay back spin tight and stay for a while till the trees and the leaves and the beauty of the woods make you dizzy again - cuz this is the path where our thoughts bend - where trees come to life again…cuz this is a place where the woods now begin[1]”.
Beautiful words from the poem Hidden Woods by Holly McNish.
What is your favourite tree? I love a silver birch, with its white exquisite bark, and abundance of small leaves that rustles in the wind. There’s something about craning your neck to look up at a big old oak, stretching high into the sky, with its mighty crown in green or reds.
Jewish tradition is full of trees; there’s the tree of knowledge of good and bad, there’s the Tree of Life which if we just hold on to it, we are promised a life of pleasantness. We have to protect fruit trees even during a siege, and we are not supposed to pick fruits from a tree that is less than three years old. It even says in a midrash that ‘a [hu]man is a tree of the field’ (Midrash Sifrei Piska 203).
Trees are deeply loved symbols in Jewish thought but I’m not sure the symbolism is quite right. The thing about healthy trees is that they are not loners, when living without too much interference they live and grow in a community network. They support each other and even speak to each other, through a symbiotic fungi network, a bit like natural fibre optics, or as the forester and author Peter Wohlleben says, they use the ‘wood wide web’. They live connected to each other. Like Wohlleben this should make us ask;
“But why are trees such social beings? Why do they share food with their own species and sometimes even go so far as to nourish their competitors? The reasons are the same as for human communities: there are advantages to working together. A tree is not a forest. On its own, a tree cannot establish a consistent local climate. It is at the mercy of wind and weather. But together, many trees create an ecosystem that moderates extremes of heat and cold, stores a great deal of water, and generates a great deal of humidity. And in this protected environment, trees can live to be very old[2].”
Woodland trees in lightly managed forests are all connected. They might only be a few hundred years old, but the fungi network they are part of can be thousands of years old. They feel each other's pain, or sickness, they send warnings to each other of approaching pests, of draughts, and they support and send nourishment to trees who are struggling. They are so much more than the sum of their parts. The idea of a mycelium network connecting trees through their roots, linking them into a vast grouping is a very compelling image of what it means to be a community.
When groups start out they are akin to the theme song from Cheers- ‘where everybody knows your name’, but as they inevitably grow, like we have, from a handful of families to a fully fledged community, the sense of what community looks and feels like also changes. We are much more like a woodland, a forest of trees, connected through our roots, some closer to one another, some sending nourishment, others receiving, but all connected and listening through the Jewish mycelium network. The image helps us imagine the invisible threads that connect us to each other, no matter our family background, current life situation, or health.
Even if we do not know the names of the ‘trees’ who came to services this week, we are still connected. Even when we turn up and feel that we don’t know anyone here, we are still connected. Even if you haven’t been around lately or for a while, or don’t find meaning in a prayer service, we are still connected. If you need it, there is care, support, and conversation/nourishment. The connections and roots go deep.
Like trees in woodlands who feel each other's pain, we too have felt the awfulness of this year running deep in our root system; the fear, pain, heartbreak, anger, bewilderment, distress, anxiety, loneliness, and isolation.
It has been a year like no other. On the one hand our roots have been strengthened and people have looked out for each other, supported, and listened when we needed it. In the days, weeks and months after 7th Oct the Jewish mycelium network was there to comfort, we turned to each other and found strength in each other and the community.
On the other hand, so many suddenly found themselves all alone in the forest, unprotected from the strong winds of overt or unconscious antisemitism, or the harsh sun of indifference. Some felt it when people close to them did not understand the complex but strong links they might have with family in Israel, or with the country itself. When colleagues turned away or made us accountable for the crisis in Israel and Gaza. When our feelings about what is happening significantly differed from that of our families. Of people not realising the fear that a flag and demonstrations can engender for some of us. We have at times felt exposed, singled out, and alone.
And so we have been seeking allies, listening to other podcasts and news programs that might give a more nuanced view of the situation. We have sought out people who understand. Trying to find other trees at work to share the burden with, to feel less like a lonely oak. But even in smaller groups of friends or family we have had to be careful and guarded, for the risk of falling out has been high, with emotions at fever pitch. We have learnt to hold back, to censor what we say depending on who we are with.
We have also seen a rise in people seeking out community, realising that being Jewish is not something we can just do or be on our own. It is about belonging, being part of a group, giving shade, connecting and giving nourishment to the others in the forest. Antisemitism isn’t just what happens to other Jews, and hiding from it doesn't help in the long run. In the end it can come for any of us no matter how Jewish or not you feel, or whatever your view on Israel is. Only as a group, as Klal Yisrael, the whole community of Israel, can we highlight it and fight it.
And this is where we need to put the forest metaphor aside for a moment, in order to understand the complexities of this term.
Klal Yisrael is used not only to mean all Jews, but often to mean unity or solidarity. And this year has truly tested our understanding of this.
On the one hand we have needed the wider Jewish community more than ever, to protect us, to raise our voices, to comfort us. And the wider Jewish community has needed us. But within the idea of unity and solidarity also lies the risk of conformity, of a lack of diversity of opinions and voices. In a world that has become more binary, more black/white; it has been so much harder to hold more complex and nuanced positions. There are perhaps as many ways to understand the situation as there are Jews; so while still showing solidarity, we will not necessarily agree.
Rabbi Sheila Shuman z’’ll once taught our rabbinical class about being careful with the terms Klal or Am Yisrael. For within the sense of ‘unity’ also lies a potential drive towards conformity; to only treat one opinion as acceptable. For it is all too easy to use the term as a sledgehammer to stop change, adaptation, or simply the expression of different opinions.
‘Klal Yisrael’ has, and sometimes continues to be, used to undermine the drive for equality, inclusion of LGBTQ Jews, converts, mixed faith couples; for example, in the use of English in services (Heaven forbid), as well as in holding a diversity of opinion about the state of Israel or Israeli government “for it would undermine Jewish unity”, we are told, “to air our dirty linen in public”.
It has been an interesting, and yet sometimes challenging experience, to find ourselves as Liberals in common cause with groups of people whose worldview we perhaps may strongly disagree with in most other circumstances. And yet we find ourselves in common purpose in trying to make sure that other Jews are being protected, and that our views or positions are taken seriously. That is also what Klal Yisrael looks like, and it can feel quite uncomfortable sometimes.
Rabbi Sheila named the community she founded, which was the first one to openly welcome Jewish lesbian and feminist Jews, ‘Beit Klal Yisrael’. The Home for all Yisrael, for all kinds of Jews.
And she wanted it to be a dialogical community, as Rabbi Judith Rosenberry explained; where “truth/s that can only be arrived at through a multiplicity of other voices; A community that celebrated the existence of many and various voices engaging with and hearing one another, creatively, imaginatively, openly – but at the same accepting that each voice, each opinion, each argument could only ever contain partial truth, fragments, or different aspects of the TRUTH[3]”.
As progressive Jews we can and should have a healthy sceptical view of the idea of an all encompassing sense of Jewish unity but this year has also shown that we cannot discard it, as long as we remember that the forest of Klal Yisrael has many voices, engaging with and hearing one another, creatively and openly.
One of the big questions this year has been how we can or should celebrate anything in the shadow of disaster? The short Jewish answer is the Talmudic scenario of what happens when a procession of mourners on the way to the cemetery meets a wedding procession?
The answer is that the mourners take a few steps back from their grief, greeting the wedding group and recognising their joy, for above all, we are reminded, we choose life. And so too for us, even in the shadow of potentially more violence, fighting and war.
And that joy that we are grasping is the acknowledgement that this year marks the 13th year since a small group of families around Crouch End decided to become a fully fledged community. And so this coming year we will have a full year of celebrating our b’nei mitzvah as a Chavurah. There will be many varied events during the year, from an actual b’nei mitzvah party for the whole community, to Hebrew reading or leyning classes, to opportunities to explore Jewish tradition; all of this to come from January onwards, and all for our older teens as well as adults.
If you are nifty with a sewing machine or a needle, or paint brushes, or woodwork; or even if you just like thinking about the physical spaces we are inhabiting. You can help by making the artwork and designs for this, our communal space.
If you like physical challenges. There will be a ‘13 miles for 13 years’ in the summer, and you can help with organising and by fundraising.
If you like singing or want to work on environmental issues, or however else you want to connect within this community and across to the wider local communities in Haringey. You can help, for we know that we have to choose life. We have to choose to grow more roots and create connections. To use our thoughts, energy, and skills for the benefit of the wider local community, to strengthen bonds in the face of division.
One of the life affirming acorns that has grown into a tree this year, so to speak, is the Chesed-Connection group. A wonderful group of people who are checking in with those who are ill, or unable to leave their homes, or who have just had a baby, or a surgery, or a bereavement. They are the ones that will call to check in, who may leave a challah care package on your doorstep, who arrange food drop offs when needed.
One of the first things our chesed group identified was the need for a regular chance to meet others face to face, during the working day, to provide a space to just have a coffee and a chat; and hence you will have seen the ‘Coffee Meet Up’ was created for anyone in the community who feels like it, to just turn up. And it is going strong in its fourth month.
Another tree that has grown for several years now, but whose roots and shade has been lifegiving this year is the Haringey Multi Faith Forum, led by Bibi Khan from the Wightman Road mosque. The events and conversations that have brought faith communities together in spite of the pain we were all feeling, whether the Daffodil planting event, the Holocaust Memorial Day learning hosted in the mosque, the seder we held here with seven other faith communities represented, or the many events with police, and council officers, and the full spectrum of faiths from the most progressive to the ultra-conservative. In pessimistic moments this all can feel like window dressing, yet it's these relationships and all the little things we choose to do together that can help to make the biggest difference. These are also roots that we have to deepen, and voices we have to hear.
Rosh Hashanah asks us to take stock, to prepare us for a new year, no matter what may happen. It asks - What have you done this year that helped to grow more and stronger roots; how and with whom have you connected? And with hindsight, what would you like to let go of, or apologise for? In celebrating a new year it provides an opportunity to look ahead and to ask ourselves - Who or what would you like to connect with in the coming year? What new roots would you like to grow?
“Can you feel it? The sunlight that strikes in bright golden glows a light you so often have no time to know until you stumble on places like this - where you can rediscover the things that you miss…
-so lay back spin tight and stay for a while till the trees and the leaves and the beauty of the woods make you dizzy again - cuz this is the path where our thoughts bend - where trees come to life again…cuz this is [the] place where the woods now begin[4]”.