ESTMINSTER Volume X No.1 UARTERLY January 2019 Henry Layard's image of Nineveh Nineveh - That Great City Inside Rwanda The Khazars Israel Zangwill Lifecycle events Westminster Welcomes its New Members Inside this issue Bryan & Lorraine Lewis Nicola Cohen Sarah-Lou Morris Olivia Leland & Van Chappell From the Rabbi 3 Ronda Fogel Esther Leon Nineveh - That Great City 4 Sam Feller & Andrea Carta Samuel & Nina Wisnia Sayings of the Rabbis 5 Robert Emdin Inside Rwanda 6 Charles & Maria Samek Denisa & Michael Sofaer Jobs People Do 7 Daniel & Manizeh Rimer The Khazars 8 Avital Mashian Danny Strauss & Sunny Iyer Hebrew Corner 9 Dalya Rothschild Jewish War Heroine 10 Births Jewish Genealogical Society 11 Raphael - a son for Michele & Roberta Raba on 1st November Israel Zangwill 12 Infant Blessings Sasha, Jake & Emilia Hammerson on 15th September The Legacy of the Psalms 14 Theo Lawrence on 8th December Poetry Page 15 B’nei Mitzvah Visiting Sinai 16 Max Peel on 29th September Daniel Orton on 6th October Moses: A Man for All Seasons 18 Alex de Kare-Silver on 13th October th Book Review 19 Sofia Stalbow on 17 November Obadiah the Proselyte 20 Marriage Blessing David Barnet & Safa Choudhury on 19th August (in Italy) A Mediaeval Synagogue 21 Amusement Arcade 21 Death Justine (Joy) Bryer on 11th November Editorial 22 Condolences Letters to the Editor 22 We offer sincere condolences to Education Report 23 Alan & Daniel Weiner on the death of their mother Nora Ohrenstein on the death of her aunt Lesley King-Lewis and Lisa Villiers and their families on the death of their mother and grandmother 2 From the Rabbi exploring Ashamnu was interesting in a prescriptive and dismissive assertion several ways. Rich, sensitive research that ‘this is not the true Orthodox way’. into its meanings and context was Essentially being a progressive Jew is shared. Views changed. We decided that taken to be a fixed identity which the experiencing of an act is part of the necessarily entails ruling certain things process, and so we all did the Ashamnu out (many portions of Torah, our sacred together in our Services, and then we canon and many rituals, both personal gathered feedback. and collective, become anathema). The community has also explored On the other hand, the one that I changes through more streamlined unashamedly care about, is a Judaism processes. Last year we initiated pre- that embraces certain values which bring A man walks by a dark alleyway in Service gatherings on a Saturday with them red lines; those values which Belfast. As he is approaching, a voice morning to get to know the Service - and are gender egalitarianism (equal says sharply from the alleyway: ‘Are you each other - better, and to consider ways religious rights for men and women), Protestant or Catholic?’ ‘Have mercy on in which our services could be ever more education and participation (we regularly a poor Jew’, the man tremulously participatory and meaningful. In one of invite people to own their own Judaism responds. ‘Hmm, Jewish! - but are you a the first gatherings, somebody asked, rather than surrendering authority to a Protestant Jew or a Catholic Jew?!’ ‘Well if the Amidah is a standing prayer Rabbinic or priestly caste) and we now In the Jewish world too, there is why do we not stand for it?’. Finding no recognise that part of the pursuit of sometimes a tribal and divisive obsession compelling answer, the group in the meaning, of education and participation, with denominational labels. ‘Yes, but room decided to try standing for all of it is the experience and not just the what sort of a community are you really? (or at least almost all of it) and we have discussion of aspects of Judaism. This Are you Reform independent or are you done so since. A community wanting to form of progressive Judaism embraces a Orthodox independent?’ make changes, based on informed plurality of practice and opinions, of conversation, experience and occasional cultural Jews and committed We sometimes put others or ourselves in experimentation, is a proud model of daily religious Jews - providing that the a denominational box, explaining that we progressive Judaism. values of egalitarianism, education and do not do or believe something because participation are not being attacked. we are a particular sort of Jew. I believe We have discovered that Reform and our conversations, and indeed our Liberal Judaism have developed. In Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was Judaism, will be more interesting if we exploring the Ashamnu, we found that born into a learned, elite Chasidic family. openly explore substantive commitments almost every prayer book in the world, He experienced a range of settings in and values, rather than using vague from Liberal to Orthodox, now includes which he did not fit into the box - a general identities as an assumed it. For those who identify as progressive traditional yeshiva education, the shorthand for unclear, frozen points of Jews, being progressive entails being University of Berlin, and the view. able to change, and that sometimes Wissenschaft, the faculty of the Reform means returning to elements that were Rabbinical School, HUC, for five years, The foundations of our evolving once discarded. Reform Judaism is not and then JTS, the Conservative independent identity are our diversity Reformed Judaism: it is an ongoing verb, Seminary. The question of Torah min and our welcoming, non-judgmental an exploration, rather than a complacent, Hashamayim, Torah from heaven, had approach. Our founding principles, laid complete assertion. Indeed, Liberal and long been used as a divisive issue, to ask down in 1961, strikingly begin with ‘Our Reform Judaism, both in the UK and in people if they believed unequivocally in aim is to create a Synagogue which will America, have returned to some the divine giving of Torah or not, to put be an instrument for the pursuit of important traditional elements over the them in a box. Rabbi Heschel taught us religious truth’. Our independent last decade: there is more Hebrew - and that before we argue and exclude people identity has given us an exciting ability to there is a more open exploration of ritual over whether Torah comes from heaven focus on the pursuit of truth, rather than and mitzvot. or not (whatever that means) we need to on its presumption. We are explorers, first experience Shamayim min Our Community, as an independent willing to change and try out new things. ha’Torah, heaven from the Torah. synagogue engaged in the ongoing At our last Yom Kippur Service, we tried pursuit of truth, could stand out as a out the Ashamnu confession, a short great example of a certain form of open alphabetic expression of attitudinal and Judaism. There are two contradictory behavioural errors. It is not yet in our versions of progressive Judaism that are prayer book, so we used an insert card, competing right now in the world. One and after an overwhelmingly positive states that ‘As a Liberal/Reform Jew we feedback, it will now be included in our do x and we most certainly do not do y’- Rabbi Benji Stanley final version of the book. The process of which could be seen as just the reverse of 3 Around the World ‘in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, of canals bringing water down from the Nineveh - did Sennacherib, King of Assyria, come hills (it was from one of these that Jonah That Great City up against the fenced cities of Judah and took up his vantage point) and an took them.’ The Assyrian king’s greatest aqueduct took the water around the city achievement in his capital was the to wherever it was needed. More than a magnificent palace he built within the hundred thousand people lived within the walls of the city. Its plans have been walls (the Book of Jonah mentions recovered in the course of the 120,000), and some scholars believe that Sennacherib archaeological excavations that have the so-called Hanging Gardens of King of Assyria taken place over many years on the site. Babylon were actually part of 705-681 BCE It was of a vast size, built on a foundation Sennacherib’s Nineveh - no evidence of limestone, with eighty rooms. The shows exactly where they were. enclosed area had more than 100,000 inhabitants (maybe closer to 150,000), a vast sprawling about twice as many as Babylon at the time, placing it among the largest metropolis, the wonder settlements worldwide. The Reading the Book of Jonah on Yom of the Middle Eastern documentation includes many pictorial Kippur, we are reminded of a great and records, accounting for every step in the world wonderful city, the capital of the kingdom construction, including the carving of of Assyria, Nineveh. The city’s size, and statues - one huge statue needed forty- When Ashurbanipal inherited the by implication its splendour, is four men to tow it into place. On the Assyrian throne, the Empire began to mentioned three times in the story, and walls of the palace were depictions of decline, though he was in fact a great but indeed it was a wonder of the Middle battle scenes, and the spoils of war, cruel fighter. In 616 BCE Nineveh was East, featuring in many accounts of the retribution against prisoners, of which attacked by an alliance of Assyria’s vassal kingdom, and in many illustrations, both Sennacherib wrote concerning his states including those of Babylon, contemporary and of a later time. conquest of Babylon, ‘Its inhabitants, Chaldea, Persia and Medea. After bitter Nineveh was situated on the Tigris, in young and old, I did not spare and with fighting the city was sacked and most of it present day Iraq, not far from the modern their corpses I filled the streets of the destroyed; its people were either killed or city of Mosul, where the ruins of the city’.