Jewish academic and Hebrew scholar Irene Lancaster reflects on divine purpose and human resilience.
During the festival of Sukkot (Tabernacles) we read the Book of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes). This starts with its very famous verse, according to the King James Bible translation; 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.' This saying is attributed to King Solomon himself, the rich, powerful and wise ruler of Israel, whose crowning achievement was the building of the First Temple.
But, immediately after the end of Sukkot, after the festival of Simchat Torah (Joy of the Torah), we embark immediately on the renewal of the synagogue reading cycle with Bereshit (Genesis). In Chapter 4 of that Book, we learn about the first humans to be born naturally, i.e. Cain and Abel. What does Abel signify? His name is exactly the same as the word translated as 'vanity' in Kohelet ('hevel'), which still reverberates in our heads from the final festival of the year, Sukkot, the Ingathering of crops, people, and humanity.
Words change their meaning throughout the ages. And nowadays vanity means something else. What 'hevel' actually connotes though is the futility of a puff of wind, easily blown away. This is what King Solomon is depicting in the Book of Kohelet which he is reputed to have written at the end of his life.
Judaism is therefore all about dealing with failure. What do we do when things go wrong, often terrifyingly wrong, when, in fact, your whole world falls apart?
Our greatest Jewish leaders were not Solomon, but actually Moses and David. Moses, the greatest Jew of all time, didn't get to cross over into the Promised Land. However, at the end of the Book of Devarim (Deuteronomy) which we have just read, Moses is given a panoramic vision of the far future from Mount Nebo, right at the top: 'and the Lord showed him the entire Land', including 'all of the land of Judah as far as the furthest sea [i.e. The Mediterranean].'
The rabbis, however, interpret the word for 'sea' (yam) as 'day' (yom). So, instead of inheriting the Land, Moses is granted a fleeting vision of past, present and the furthest future. He is in fact a true prophet.
As for King David, who started, like Moses (and not like Solomon) as a humble shepherd, every day people plot against him, from his siblings to his favourite children. Every day he fights endless wars and is betrayed by his closest counsellors and trusted staff. And then, he doesn't even get to build the First Temple. But what does he achieve? He is the writer of the incomparable Psalms, which are the mainstay of the Jewish prayer book.
But Solomon, the powerful, the wealthy, the successful, the wise, the builder of the First Temple, isn't he also a failure? Having written the Song of Songs in his youth and Proverbs in middle age, now he is left with that feeling of anomie translated by the popular French existentialists as 'nausea', an emptiness beyond emptiness, the realization that we are nothing, merely 'hevel'.
Solomon must have realized that at his death, the kingdom would be divided in two; he hadn't managed his heritage properly. And the Northern Kingdom was lost forever. In 722 BCE that kingdom was conquered by Assyria and the Jewish people forcibly dispersed among the other peoples and prevented from practising Judaism.
In 586 BCE the Babylonians, which had destroyed Assyria, now conquered Judah, the Southern Kingdom, uprooted the monarchy, despoiled the Temple, then destroyed it completely and took the remaining Jewish people into exile.
But then, up stepped the Medes and Persians and in turn destroyed Babylon, which like Assyria is no more. Cyrus the Persian takes a new approach to conquered peoples and permits the Jews (among others) to return to their Land and rebuild their Temple, as long as they remember who's boss. The rebuilding of the Temple and the Jewish people themselves is done under the auspices of two new kinds of leader, Ezra and Nehemiah, with the full encouragement of the Persian monarch.
Ezra is first and foremost a scribe and then a priest - in other words, a teacher leader. Nehemiah chapter 8 recounts how the people are gathered to hear and also fully understand the Torah, not in a Temple, but in an open space. The Torah has pride of place, and Ezra the scribe stands on a wooden platform, specially made for the occasion (v 4). In verse 8, it is recounted that they not only read the Book of the Torah, but also interpreted as they went along until everyone, men and women alike, understood not only the words themselves, but their meaning.
Thus was the start of biblical exegesis, which was developed by the Men of the Great Assembly and then the Pharisees (whose very name means 'interpretation'), until the culmination of this practice in the rabbinic tradition which is still developing in our very own day. This is why in Jewish tradition, every living rabbi believes they owe a debt of gratitude to the Pharisees as the ones who interpreted the Hebrew Bible for us and kept it alive (this perspective of the Pharisees is quite different from the Christian one).
Cyrus is regarded as a messenger of G-d, a kind of Messiah for the Jewish people. He did not act out of love for either the Jews or Jewish teaching, as he attests himself in a stele inscription. But, just like a certain contemporary power-monger who may spring to mind, Cyrus believed in the 'art of the deal.' Jews, among others, may be permitted self-government in their own ancestral land, and may even rebuild their Temple, as long as they remember who's boss!
Finally, though, around 500 years later, in 70 CE, this Second Temple is also destroyed. The Persians have been defeated by the Greeks. The Greeks have been defeated by the Romans and the Romans destroy the Second Temple and torture the Jewish people.
In 325 CE, however, exactly 1,700 years ago, Emperor Constantine, decides that the relatively new religion of Christianity might be incorporated into his worldview, to his advantage, so he converts and in fact the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea which he convened in 325 is being celebrated this year.
This year 2025 (5786) is also a seminal year for the Jewish people, not least for the Jews of the UK. We in Manchester have experienced the first pogrom on British soil since the 13th century, when in 1290, King Edward, having conquered Scotland and Wales, was the first European monarch to get rid of the country's Jews, who had arrived in waves, starting with the Romans, and then with William the Conqueror in 1066.
Edward drowned a number of Jews in the Wash as they were trying to flee, but he is regarded as a successful monarch, to believe most historians! Jews were absent from Britain until 1655, when another powermonger, Oliver Cromwell, agreed to allow some back, mainly Sephardim from Spain and Portugal, living in Amsterdam.
Cromwell was also regarded by many as a kind of Messiah. He also didn't like Jews or Judaism, but he also understood the art of the deal. Plus, he was imbued with the teachings of the Hebrew Bible, at least those that accorded with his own goals. So he often described himself as the biblical Joshua or Gideon, both of whom appear in the Book of Judges. He thought that the new Jews would be able to help him in his wars against Spain, with their language and other skills.
Moreover, many of Cromwell's supporters knew Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic, including the great poet, John Milton. On a formal visit to Westminster Abbey, I was actually asked, without any notice, to translate two letters that Cromwell's secretary had written to his wives after their deaths, both in Biblical Hebrew! Luckily, I managed OK.
But since 1655, though things have certainly not been easy for Jews in these lands, nothing has compared to the nightmare that has befallen us for the last 30 years, starting with Tony Blair's open-ended immigration policy, worsening after 9/11, for which 'the Jews' were often blamed, and culminating with the recent nightmare on our streets, in our universities, religious institutions, schools, the NHS, the unions, political parties and the law-enforcement brigade, not to mention much of the mainstream media.
On Thursday 2 October, when we were all fasting either at Shul or at home, my friend Melvin Cravitz, was brutally murdered by a Muslim of Syrian descent who came as an immigrant to Britain before acquiring British citizenship, and who was known to the police already over other non-terrorist matters, who desecrated Jewish life and a Jewish synagogue on the holiest day of the year.
Towards 7pm I was still fasting at home, when I was visited by an Anglican friend, who stood there as white as a sheet and asked me if I was OK. I thought Israel had been destroyed. When he told me what had happened, I was shocked of course, but not surprised.
I'm grateful to him, because, after the fast, I switched on my phone and had hundreds of emails and text messages from around the world. Both sons-in-law from Israel had told me to ring immediately; rabbis from the USA who I hardly knew, congregants from American synagogues whom I'd befriended in zoom calls during Covid. And many from the UK. Some were absolutely distraught when I wrote either that night or after the Shiva call, which for operational reasons was held at our shul, and people realized I actually lived in Manchester and around 10 minutes walk from that Shul, which is situated in the nearest shopping centre.
It is no secret that the atmosphere fostered by much of our leadership in politics, academia, the NHS, education and unions, together with the lies propounded by much of the media (with notable exceptions) and the immigration of large numbers of people who clearly hate Jews yet are appeased by the police and other law enforcers, led directly to the Manchester synagogue attack.
The police were in evidence for a few days after the pogrom. And on the day of the Shiva at our Shul, there were police, security personnel, special branch and the Met. Now? They're all gone - no doubt till it happens again, and again, and again. Why did the rabbi of Heaton Park, whose role is to offer support to his congregants and lead them in prayer, have to protect his congregants and his Shul with a 'dad's army' of volunteers, rather than the police? The answer is that far too many people seem to 'love dead Jews - living ones not so much.' And even when it comes to the Church, sadly, every time there has been a Muslim terrorist attack, the Church leadership in Greater Manchester have made unhelpful comments to put it kindly.
Meanwhile we were determined that life must go on. With the encouragement of our own rabbi I held our normal fortnightly Christian-Jewish zoom dialogue group in our Shul sukkah, with someone zooming in from Israel. This was a lovely occasion, as we embarked on a new section of the prophet Isaiah, starting at chapter 13.
One of the most poignant images from this Sukkot time, when all the people should be gathered together at harvest time, was a photo of the final living hostages crossing over into Israeli territory at the very moment that Air Force One landed at Ben Gurion Airport. After meeting hostage families at the Knesset, President Trump spoke for just over an hour. And what a speech it was. Just like Cyrus and Cromwell before him, Trump also understands 'the art of the deal' and even wrote a book about it.
There is no such thing as 'soft power'. Power has to be hard, otherwise it melts into the nothingness of the biblical Abel. But power can then permit, if not love, peace and happily ever after - all fantasies at best - maybe positive alliances of the brave and the true. Cyrus and his heritage eventually died out, as did Cromwell and his heritage, when the monarchy was restored to Britain not many years later. And even President Trump won't go on forever.
However, each of these three power brokers teaches us a great truth: without power, Israel and the Jewish people will be destroyed. Without the power of the teacher, the playground bully will destroy everything, and the weak will go to the wall.
In a memorable chat between Lord Charles Moore, biographer of Mrs Thatcher, and Bishop Richard Chartres, formerly of London and convenor of her funeral where he also spoke, they reminisced about her life and death, with her 100th anniversary falling on October 13th, the very day of the hostage release and the Trump Knesset speech.
Lord Moore stated that Mrs Thatcher's attitude to life was almost Jewish. Duty is paramount. Success, money and flourishing are good things, and not evils as so many believe. Lord Chartres said that without the purpose and unity of a flourishing democracy, anarchy will ensue, and then tyranny. To hold everything together, we have to celebrate what we have in common, including shared songs, he added. How true!
This is what Israel understands so well. In Psalm 126, which has replaced the other psalms we recited, now that the living hostages have been returned, two years after captivity, we read the following lines: 'When the Lord brought back the captives to Zion, we were like dreamers ...' However, these words can also be translated as 'When the Lord Himself accompanied the captives on their return to Zion ...'
It is for the Jewish people as if G-d Himself accompanied the hostages back to their home on Monday 13 October 2025, erev Simchat Torah 5786. President Trump and his immediate entourage have acted as G-d's instrument. They will go down in the annals of history as helping to ensure the continuity and flourishing of the Jewish people. Cyrus, Cromwell and President Trump might not be cosy or cuddly and, in addition, they work by their own rules. But above them all is G-d, for whom the sublime instrument of protection is the humble Sukkah, the fragile Tabernacle of Peace, as we step forward from our sukkahs and out of the year 5785 to the beginning of 5786, according to the Jewish calendar.
And we have just learned that this year the Jewish population of the world has just reached pre-Holocaust numbers, and also, for the first time, there are now more Jews living in Israel than in the rest of the world combined. Truly a new beginning. As the Israeli song says, a 'new day will rise, as G-d saw ... that it was very good.'
