A-Z OF JEWISH VALUES -

E FOR ENTHUSIASM

A great storyteller died this week. David Kossoff, actor and broadcaster (and many years ago he was a friend of our family in London). You may remember the relaxed intimate way in which he used to his Bible stories on radio and TV. In this sort of style…

“The people were afraid and ashamed. God’s own finger had written those laws, it was said, and his revenge for their building the Golden Calf would be dreadful…

But God was not thinking of revenge. He was re-thinking the whole project of teaching this people to deserve to be his chosen.

So he called on Moses. ‘No revenge’ he said ‘the promise about giving them a beautiful land to live in, still stands.

But they must learn to live humbly and quietly, and obey my laws. I will give you another set of tablets and an exact design for the tabernacle to keep them in. Everyone shall contribute to its making…

At every place it will be the centre of the camp, and - of the peoples lives. Above it, reaching to heaven, I will set a cloud. When the cloud moves on, the people will move on. Not until.

All this was done and the people followed the cloud and journeyed on…. But the people lost faith, and - grew full of fear, and anger against Moses.

They held meetings full of madness! ‘Let us choose a leader’ they screamed, ‘and go back to Egypt'

Moses wept. But the Lord tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Moses’, said God, ‘I brought them out of slavery, I drowned their enemies in the sea. I gave them food and drink in the desert. I showed them miracles. And still they have no faith in me.’

Moses waited. God sounded more sad than angry. ‘Moses’, said God, ‘take them all back to the wilderness for another 40 years. During that time the lessons will go on…their children shall enter the land, not they.

And so it was, not even Moses , lived to enter that promised land.

But, a little before he died, God gave him a sight of it from a nearby mountain. Even after 40 years, his eye was bright and his vigour unimpaired. Imagine! Still energetic and clearheaded after all those years in the wilderness, training the children of Israel to be fit for the land of promise.

It needed a marvellous man to stay with them at all, after the way they’d let him down.

And Moses was. A marvellous man. In fact never since then, it is said, has there been a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom God knew face to face.’

David Kossoff: storyteller extraordinaire. We’ll never see his like again.

His life provides a background for my chosen subject this morning which is enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm means an engrossing interest in something. David Kossoff’s obituary in the Times called him an ‘evangelist’. He would never have accepted the title.

David Kossoff was a man who threw himself heart and soul into everything. He was not unacquainted with the sad side of life. He and his wife Jennie experienced the depths of tragedy when their son Paul, guitarist with the rock band Free, died aged 25 following years of drug abuse. If there was any evangelism in his father it was that: a one-man fight against the scourge of hard drugs. He performed hundreds of one-man shows against drugs in schools around the country. And David himself fought a battle against cancer to the end of his life.

He didn’t describe himself as a religious person. Though there was a kind of spirituality about him. In many ways he was characteristic of the Anglo-Jewish gentleman: understatement; downplaying the spiritual. His enthusiasm was for charity, especially children’s charities.

It’s his Bible stories that fascinate me. The engagement he had with them and created through them.

If there is one book of the Bible which commands our total engagement it is the Book of Esther, the Megillah. Year by year the carnival atmosphere in our Purim services increases in crazy intensity. We’ve had Megillah Miming and this time we had a mock Tommy Cooper act with hats. I have to say, the tiny turn-outs are discouraging, extremely discouraging. It’s only the spirit of the Megillah with its overstated fantasy which gets you to overcome it. To appreciate Purim you have to appreciate the fantasy. And to have the secret of Jewish survival which is a sense of humour. To lose that is serious.

There are different kinds of enthusiasm. Look in an etymological dictionary under ‘enthusiasm’ and you’ll find it comes from a Greek word meaning ‘to be inspired or possessed by a god’. And so it came to mean: prophetic frenzy, religious emotion even misguided religious emotion.

‘Enthusiast’ used to be a pejorative word for overstated religiosity. By the 17^th century it came to mean any kind of rapturous or passionate eagerness.

The enthusiasm of Hassidic Judaism is highly extravert. It’s called Hitlahavut, literally burning with fervour, with zeal. Talk about burning. The enthusiasm of Aish Hatorah (literally the Fire of Torah) is catching on in Manchester – it’s pulling in a lot of our young people.

There’s undoubtedly a huge contrast between the atmosphere of a shtiebl in North Manchester and a Reform Shul such as ours. Can there be such thing as ‘quiet contemplative enthusiasm’? I wonder if enthusiasm is actually a value for us. It must be so at some level, because we get annoyed about the opposite of enthusiasm; apathy.

I think we have to do something to up the level of enthusiasm – for everything we do. Enthusiasm is related to enjoyment.

What do we enjoy most? I would say from observation: it would seem to be each other’s company. Our most popular events are family services – though we have to work hard to keep up the momentum, the senior members lunch was hugely popular and successful as was the first meeting of our social group Reva.

What we have to think very carefully about is the Jewish element in social events which we run here. We are a little bit afraid of the Jewish element- in case it puts people off.

But it’s the Jewish element that we’re here for! And those who want the Jewish element, if they can’t get it here, they will go elsewhere because the social element you can get anywhere.

It’s very much people that creates the interest. And whilst we may say it’s quality not quantity that counts, sheer numbers do help. It also helps to have a bit of charisma, but it doesn’t have to be overdone or gushing. The quiet sincerity of a David Kossoff goes down well. I’ll never forget his version of charisma. He ended telling the story of Samson with the words: "And Samson, giving the performance of his career, brought the house down."