Sermon: Poachers Turned Gamekeepers – Toldot 2010

Written by Writings & Sermons by others — 11 November 2010

Many of you will know that the Kadimah Summer Camp, run by the Youth Department of Liberal Judaism, had a profound influence on my life.  I enjoyed two summertime weeks of the most stimulating Jewish environment imaginable at Kadimah 6 times as a child and then eight times as a Madrich or leader – the last time in 1994, when I reckoned I was becoming a little long in the tooth compared to the younger Madrichim. – but not before at Kadimah 1989 I met and became rather keen on a certain Nicola Angel – a fellow Madrich who was the Youth Club leader from South London Liberal Synagogue.  A year later Nicola and I married and so in a few week’s time we will celebrate our twentieth wedding anniversary.

So you can see that I have a lot to be thankful for from Kadimah as do the tens of thousands of other children who have benefited from their two week’s intensive Jewish experience at Kadimah and the Reform movement summer camps Shemesh and our own Alyth camp, Summer Maddness.  Every year I continue to encourage all Alyth children to go to Jewish summer camp and continue to persuade parents that giving their children the gift of a fortnight at Shemesh or Summer Maddness Summer Camp is among the best things that they can do for their Jewish development.  I also try to support those who are there by spending at least a day at the camps each year.

Last week I spent in Israel with 20 children of our community, all aged 12 and on their way to becoming Bar and Bat Mitzvah.  We had wonderful time, beginning our week in Haifa at the Leo Baeck Center and travelling and learning through Israel, from Akko in the North, to the desert around Arad in the South, from Jerusalem, the Kinneret and the Dead Sea in the East to Tel Aviv and Jaffa in the West.  We learned from a renowned Talmud Scholar in the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem, a Beduin musician in a tent at the top of the Aravah, the Chariman of Kol HaNeshamah Reform Synagogue and from the stones themselves of the Southern Wall of the Temple.  The young people were fabulous, wide eyed and beautifully behaved for almost every minute of the whole week.  But one of the Alyth Madrichim who led our trip with me, and who did so with such dedication and skill told me that when he was their age he would have been serious trouble.

This is because many of the best youth leaders in the Jewish World as elsewhere are essentially poachers turned gamekeepers.  The horror of twelve is so often the one who can really communicate with and empathise with the children at the camp when he or she is nineteen.  I well remember that I had enormous trouble as Madrich with one particular young teenager who has gone on to be the most effective Youth Leader I know, inspiring other by his example and now helping to build the next generation of Alyth young people through his musical skills.

How then, as we read today the portion of Esau and Jacob was Isaac to know which of his sons was the ideal person to take on the mantle of the patriarch and lead Judaism forward into what was, we must remember only its third generation since Abraham?  On the face of it he chose the oldest – expecting Esau to be in front of him ready to receive his blessing in the story that ends the portion of Toldot.  On the surface of the famous story where Jacob jumps in ahead of Esau to receive his blind father’s blessing Isaac was duped, deceived by Rebbekah’s stratagem to replace Esau with Jacob – in which Jacob was a willing accomplice going along with his mother’s plan.

Many of the Midrashim, in which the Rabbis of old gave their understanding of the narrative, do not take it this way.  Since Jacob was later to play such an important role as the father of the twelve tribes of Israel, the Rabbis clearly felt uncomfortable with any idea that Isaac’s blessing of him was obtained by chance deception.  They did this by interpreting the story that we heard in such a way as to suggest that the events were part of a divine plan or alternatively that Isaac was a willing accomplice as well to his own deception – having decided some time ago that Jacob rather than Esau would be his ideal successor. Those who take the divine plan line suggest that Isaac’s blindness was brought about by God so that Jacob could stand before him at the proper time and receive the patriarchal blessing. One midrash has the angels crying tears of dismay at the point that Isaac was bound upon the altar by Abraham in the Akedah story which we heard last week. The Angel’s tears fell into Isaac’s eyes as he looked upwards from the altar and prepared his eyes for later blindness.

Those who suggest that Issac knew very well what was going on hang their suggestion on hints they discover in the text. For example Jacob refers to God having helped him to hunt quickly when he brings what is meant to be game for his father to eat so quickly. Esau was meant to have spurned God and so surely, these Rabbis argue, Isaac knew at that stage that it was Jacob not Esau who stood before him.  With his other senses perhaps sharpened up due to his blindness – has it ever concerned you Isaac fails to recognise through his sense of taste that Rebeccah has substituted young goat for gamey Venison, that he thinks that he hears Jacob’s, not Esau’s voice but allows himself to be convinced that it is not so, that he touches Jacob but allows himself to be fooled into thinking that goat hair is the same as human hair, finally as Rashi summarises Isaac smelled Jacob – and there is no smell more offensive that that of washed goat skins – but Isaac let himself be persuaded that it was a pleasant smell that he was smelling – that of a field on a Spring day. Surely Isaac knew that it was Jacob and not Esau before him.

So perhaps indeed it was given to Isaac to know who his best successor as Patriarch of the proto Jewish people was going to be – though, as we will see in the coming week’s Torah portions – Jacob will be presented as a deeply flawed character who when he is presented to Pharaoh by his son Joseph will say to him “few and evil have been the days of my life.”

But this is not how it turns out when you are trying to bring up good Jews in our world beyond the stories of the Torah. I no more know than anyone who out of the many many children that I have and continue to be privilege to know and teach and lead in my work will be among the true, sincere and active bearers of the Jewish heritage. I cannot be like the Rabbis of old suggested Isaac was and be able to create circumstances in which I can guarantee to pass on the mantle of Jewish leadership to the next generation.  For example it can be that the children who put in the most polished performances on the Bimah at their Bar or Bat Mitzvah turn out to be the ones who then take little interest in Judaism from then onwards – whilst the faltering reader can be the one who really carries Judaism in his heart and soul. North London is strewn with ex-Hasmonean Grammar boys – brought up to know Judaism inside out who have cast our religion off as an irrelevance to their lives whilst Jewish girls brought up with a convent education have remained secure in their identity and are among those who make Judaism effective in their lives and the lives of their families.

As a Rabbi and as a community we can only give of our best to each of the young people who are Jewishly educated through our hands. We cannot know who will be the committed Jews, the one’s who help to forward the Jewish mission to bring about a better world through participation in community according to our Jewish forms of observance and ritual. Perhaps the poachers will turn gamekeepers and the jewels will lose their lustre. Because of this it is absolutely crucial to my mind that we as a community and I as a Rabbi do our best to keep, develop and deepen our relationship with those who have grown up in our community well beyond religion school age and well beyond Bar and Bat Mitzvah. We need to ensure that there is an open and welcoming door here for those who have grown up here built from great memories and a love of the Alyth community and many different ways for them to find their way back in – from our Youth Singers to our GCSE classes, from our Social Action corps to Hadracha (youth leadership training), from our Teen Talmud Class to building connections between young people and adults in our community.

We have to keep thinking about our future.   We need to plan for the future of all of our young people as Jews.  Like Isaac who dug wells to ensure that water flowed for his family and who blessed his son who could carry forward his tradition we need to create the conditions which will enable our children’s Jewish lives to grow beyond our own.

Keith Kahn Harris, Britain’s most accomplished Jewish social researcher is coming to Alyth on Tuesday night to speak about exactly this.  Keith’s book Turbulent Times, published this year, charted Anglo-Jewry’s previous preservation strategies so that we understand where we have come from in the past century.  He then writes about Anglo Jewry in the twenty first century, identifying the shoots that will, if nurtured make for a rich Jewish future for us and our children.  Come and hear him, think about what he is saying and what it might mean for us – and feel welcome to argue with his ideas.  Isaac knew that it was his responsibility to build for the future – it is ours too.