Sermon: Shabbat Shuva/Ha’azinu

Written by Rabbi Colin Eimer — 30 September 2020

Some years ago my wife and I went for a short break to Fuerteventura, in the Canary Islands. Wandering around the main town, quite by accident we came across a house, now a museum, where a man called Miguel de Unamuno had lived. I’d heard of him before that but hadn’t known that he lived on Fuerteventura. The only thing I knew about him was related to an incident I’d read about long before then, which had made him something of a hero in my eyes.

Unamuno was a novelist, poet and philosopher. From 1900-1924 he was Chancellor of Salamanca, one of oldest universities in Spain. Opposition to the dictatorial government of Primo de Rivera led to him being exiled to Fuerteventura in 1924. In 1930 he resumed his post as University Chancellor. He died in December 1936 as Spain was on the slide into civil war.

The incident in question happened in October that year. A conference at the university brought together speakers from across the political spectrum, including one of Franco’s generals, Millan d’Astray. His motto was “Viva la Muerte,” “Long live death.” One of his followers shouted it from the audience and Astray repeated it. Unamuno got up to address the students. “Just now I heard a senseless and necrophilious cry: ‘Long live death!’ That idea is repellent to me. General Astray is a war invalid. And soon there will be more of them if God does not come to our aid.” At which point Astray interrupted, shouting “Down with intelligence! Viva la muerte! Long live death!” Unamuno responded: “That which the Fascists hate above all else, is intelligence. The general and his like might win because they have brute force on their side – but they will never persuade.” Turning to Astray he said: “To persuade requires what you lack: reason and right. I consider it futile to exhort you to think of Spain.” Unamuno sat down. He was effectively removed from his position in the university and died 2½ months later. (Hugh Thomas, “The Spanish Civil War,” Penguin 1965, pp443-4)

Unamuno had described the General as ‘necrophilious.’ In psychiatry, ‘necrophilia’ is a perverse pattern of behaviour in which death, corpses and the like induce feelings of intense sexual excitement. Unamuno wasn’t making a statement about the General’s sexuality, but about his basic orientation in life – that he loved death and hated life. Erich Fromm, the psychoanalyst, uses the word, like Unamuno, to describe a character trait. (Erich Fromm, “The Heart of Man,” Harper, New York 1964, pp37-61) ‘Necrophile’ means, literally, ‘lover of death, of dead things.’ Its opposite is ‘biophile’, ‘lover of life and living things.’ Fromm talked of these two basic orientations in human life and how, in some people, the balance tips towards the necrophilious.

Necrophilia blocks growth, damages creativity, the development of potential and so on. Necrophilia stifles life, narrows it, drags it down. It’s the over-protective parent who stifles the creative urge in their child – not consciously, to be sure, but stifles it nevertheless. It’s the partner who constantly puts the other down, in public and in private, making them feel small and inadequate.

In the Tenach, King Solomon, faced with two women, each claiming to be the mother of a new-born baby, has to decide who is the real mother? How does he do it? – with a classic biophile-necrophile test. “Cut the baby in half and give each woman half.” The true mother, the biophile, the lover of life, is prepared to give up her child rather than see it killed. The impostor, the necrophile, prefers to have a properly divided dead child than a living one. (I Kings 3: 16-28)

This biophile-necrophile spectrum suggests an interesting way of looking at attitudes – in ourselves, of course, as well as in others.

We are almost at the end of Deuteronomy. These concluding chapters speak to us about the life-choices that are put before us: between life and death, good and evil, blessing and curse – culminating in the admonition “u’va’charta ba’chayyim” “therefore choose life” (Deuteronomy 30: 11 ff) which we will read on Yom Kippur afternoon.

Clearly there are some people for whom life is no longer something they want to choose – because of unbearable pain, unremitting hopelessness and despair, incurable illness or disease and so on. But they’re not, fortunately, the majority. So who, in their right frame of mind, wouldn’t choose life? I don’t imagine it’s a choice that even strikes us as one we need to make. So at one level “u’va’charta ba’chayyim” seems like a rather silly suggestion.

What might ‘choose life’ mean, then? What is it that we are really being asked to choose? Maybe there’s a clue in the words connected with choosing life.

“See, I set before you life …. and death; good …. and evil, blessing …. and curse. On the one side, life, good and blessing; on the other, death, evil and curse.

In normal times, this time of year would be one where we engage in self-examination and introspection; some self-judgement of who and what we are. It’s a time when we are asked to examine our lives, to see where they are heading, and to try and get some grasp on how much our way of living, our attitudes, reflect a true love of life: in how we live with those around us – at home, work, school, socially.

Who could have imagined, last January, that I would be standing in this empty synagogue and you would be in your homes watching on a screen? Who among us cannot feel anxiety levels rising as we have seen, this past week, those graphs with a rising curve of Covid cases and deaths? I had a dentist’s appointment in town on Wednesday. It was the first time I had been on the Tube since February. Even what were the most quotidian, mundane of activities just months ago: going to the cinema, getting on that Tube, schmoozing with colleagues in the office; shopping, school, whatever – now call for thought, preparation, even decision: “is it really necessary that I do this?”

It seems almost too trite to end by saying “’choose life’ in all we do.” It may be trite, but because something is trite doesn’t make it any less true or important.

There is a clue in the Hebrew. It’s “choose life” in translation but the Hebrew really says “u’va’charta ba’chayyim,” “choose into life.” Making that choice requires each and every day an act of commitment, of placing ourself into life, something about valuing life which requires real active engagement.

May we have the strength to be able to continue to do this, even in the times we are living through.