150th ANNIVERSARY OF MANCHESTER REFORM SYNAGOGUE -
ADDRESS BY RABBI DR TONY BAYFIELD
JACKSON’S ROW, 23rd FEBRUARY 2008, 17th ADAR 5768
SIDRA KI TISSA
I stand before you this day, a staunch West Ham supporter. One of the great spiritual moments of my life happened just a few weeks ago when my beloved team thrashed Manchester United for the third time in a row. So traumatised were many United supporters that I worked with others to set up a counselling line for those in deep distress. It’s still available today. You dial 0800 212121.
Why on earth has he put his life in jeopardy? It can’t possibly have anything to do with today’s sermon!
Well, actually it does.
I’ve been re-reading Bill Williams’ account of the birth of Reform Judaism in Manchester 150 years ago and what is abundantly clear is the tension between Manchester and London. Reform had emerged in London a few years earlier – though Manchester was to be first with a purpose built synagogue. The first Minister of the West London Reform Synagogue, David Woolf Marks, tried to prescribe the terms of Reform in Manchester and he was told in no uncertain terms what he could do with his prescription. Manchester would do what Manchester would do and, despite assertions by the Jewish Chronicle to the contrary, Manchester Reform Synagogue emerged not as an offshoot of West London Synagogue but as an autonomous congregation which set a pattern that British Reform has followed ever since.
Marks, incidentally, having come from the North West (Liverpool), served West London for 69 years, a record that Rabbi Silverman, originally from North West London, is, he tells me, determined to break.
The emergence of Reform in Manchester, as many of you know much better than me, was a characteristically Jewish process not just in terms of the ‘down-to-earth-North/effete-South’ divide. It wasn’t theological but had much to do with sociology, the self-perception of those involved and personalities. It involved an emergent Manchester Jewish middle class; new immigrants from Europe whom the community wanted to Anglicise yet protect from Christian missionary activity; and, perhaps decisively, the arrival of Jewish textile merchants from Germany where Reform had been born. It involved some extraordinary personalities, battles between those personalities and the lay leadership and a power struggle with the orthodox Chief Rabbi in London, another example of London-Manchester tensions resolved in Manchester’s favour.
Which is why, as a North East Londoner, I’m genuinely proud and honoured to have been invited as your guest this morning. The British Reform Movement has only been a Movement in name since 2005 and only since 2005 has it had someone designated ‘Head of the Movement’. What that symbolises is that our agenda has changed. We have moved beyond a preoccupation with the parochial to see that, whilst not neglecting the local, we have a significant national and regional role to play. The community that is most important, indeed decisive to that role outside London, is Manchester Reform Synagogue, Jackson’s Row, this historic community here today.
Rabbi Silverman has already expounded brilliantly on the Torah portion but I want to take you back to it for a moment, not just because I’m a rabbi and that’s what rabbis do on Shabbat morning, but because the story of the golden calf is decisive in identifying the role of Jewish communities, particularly major, historic, city centre communities in the 21st century.
The story of the golden calf is an affirmation of what Judaism is all about (and how easily we betray and forget our founding, world shattering vision) that God is One, beyond representation, is the embodiment of the ethical and commands us to pursue the just and the good. It’s an overwhelming, iconoclastic vision that has spread throughout the world. A vision, an understanding of incalculable importance the spread of which, the responsibility for which, has not been ours alone. Has not been ours alone.
It lies at the heart of our sibling faith Christianity and also at the heart of our sibling faith Islam. Today, there are 2 billion Christians in the world, 1.2 billion Muslims and just 14 million Jews. The meaning of those statistics is really something to puzzle over but they carry with them an unarguable, unquestionable message, a divine message from the One, the Invisible, the Holy/Wholly Ethical.
Siblings. Working in the Jewish world, I’ve occasionally come across families which don’t quite reflect the ideal portrayed in so many Victorian pictures. I’ve heard of the occasional broiges, the occasional family quarrel. Therapists use the phrase dysfunctional. But nothing can touch or compare with the archetypal dysfunctional family, the Abrahamic family – Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Consider this. The Archbishop of Canterbury attempts to address more than 1300 years of Christian-Muslim conflict, uses the phrase sharia law and the world comes down on his head. Last week I was talking to a man called David James, not City’s ex-West Ham goalkeeper but the Bishop of Bradford. He told me that he’d thought that he had the most challenging job in the Church of England. “Now I know”, he said, “that it’s only the second most challenging”. Jewish-Muslim relations were actually considerably better than Christian-Muslim relations. At least until the beginning of the 20th century. But they’re now in such a disastrous state that, despite this being a civic service and despite Rabbi Silverman’s conviction of the importance of the interfaith agenda, we both suspect that there isn’t a single Muslim here this morning [although actually there was a Muslim interfaith representative, I was delighted to discover].
As for Christian-Jewish relations – we all know how that most intimate of relationships has been over much of the last 2,000 years. You may have noticed my fleeting reference to the agenda of the Jewish bourgeoisie of Manchester in the 1830s and 40s – to Anglicise Jewish immigrants but protect them from Christian missionary activity. As Christian armies went off to the Crusades in the Middle Ages they attacked and destroyed the communities of Jewish infidels in Europe – on their way to shed the blood of brothers and sisters in the Holy Land.
We are – Jews, Christians and Muslims – the most dysfunctional family in the world. Indeed, the increasing attacks by secular fundamentalists on us are prompted by the behaviour of Jewish, Christian and Muslim fundamentalists the world over, people who violate everything that religion stands for and threaten to destroy the good name of religion forever.
Truly, I fear for the future of religion and I fear for the future of societies in which Jews, Christians and Muslims cannot relate to each other as decent, humble human beings should, let alone as siblings bound by shared insights into God as the embodiment of the ethical and holding common values of justice and righteousness should.
I want at this point just to say a few words to those of other faiths who are not Jews Christians or Muslims and who are here today. In emphasising the Abrahamic family ties, I am in no way disparaging other faiths or ignoring their importance. Indeed, I’m very aware that the Hindu community in Britain has behaved in a model way and yet been given less attention precisely because society has greater anxieties about others. It’s my acute embarrassment that drives my emphasis on three faiths who share so much in terms of scriptures, stories and beliefs yet cannot control their arrogance and jealousy, fear and suspicion. What comes next is for all the faith communities of Manchester with absolute equality and respect.
There are, as I’ve already said, only 14 million Jews in the world – we are less than ½% of the population of Britain and fewer globally than the population of Mexico City. Yet, we are commanded l’taken olam to repair, to mend our shattered world. Any shred of common sense, any pragmatic view should tell us that we Jews cannot do that on our own. We are commanded to be a blessing to all the families of the earth and we can only be a blessing by engaging with them. That pragmatic observation, I believe, discloses the universal revelation of the 21st century. Namely, that no religious group however big or however small can respond to God and fulfil its particular mission unless it relates to other faiths. Building co-operative relationships, even more than respecting the dignity of difference, is the imperative of our times. It isn’t a marginal matter or an individual matter, it’s the theological and ethical imperative today.
150 years ago, when Manchester Reform Judaism was born, the focus was essentially internal – on the needs of Jews from a variety of backgrounds. It was about the concerns of immigrants and how to respond to the modern world. All completely understandable and appropriate. 150 years on, the agenda has shifted focus as the community has moved on and as the world has changed.
Today, the agenda is about wresting back our faiths from the fundamentalist reactionaries and deadly fanatics who’ve hijacked them, substituting golden calves for the invisible God of goodness and justice. It’s about how different faiths can recover their humility and make space for the truths of other faiths. It’s about self-criticism and identifying what is best about us that we can share and contribute. It’s about nailing our colours to the mast and working together for the good of society and the globe.
That isn’t to say that faith communities like Jackson’s Row should not be concerned about their own members, their welfare, their future. Nor is it to say that all Manchester Reform Jewry, north and south, should not share in the new agenda. But it is to say that the oldest congregation, the City Centre congregation, the Jewish cathedral, has a special role. Both symbolically and physically, this community is uniquely placed to focus and lead the whole of Manchester Jewry in playing its part in healing the dysfunctional Abrahamic family. And working with all faiths to make Manchester a model society in which those of all faiths and none are dedicated to building a diverse yet collaborative community which continues the best traditions of civic society in Manchester and further enriches them with the experiences of faith communities, old and new.
It is thrilling to know that Manchester Reform Synagogue is not moving (physically) but moving (functionally, spiritually) and will soon build a new City Centre synagogue on this site which will better meet the needs of a historic community and which will also seek to play a full part in the development of the civic, social and religious life of Manchester in these challenging times. In so doing you will also be playing a crucial leadership role in the life of the British Reform Movement, ensuring that it is no longer Manchester versus London but Manchester and London.
I know that the Reform community of Manchester is, like me, small but perfectly formed. The challenge is far from small, it’s huge. But I’m absolutely convinced that, led by Rabbi Silverman and the lay leadership, you will not only rise to the challenge but succeed and take the historic contribution of this community to a new level. You will succeed because neither Jewry nor the wider community can afford for you to fail.
May it be our will as it is God’s. Amen.
Rabbi Dr Tony Bayfield
Head, Movement for Reform Judaism