Tonight was Kol Nidre night, 5782. We didn't even observe Kol Nidre night last year because of the COVID danger. There was no vaccine then, and we stayed home while the plague stalked the streets unhindered - the whole world, in fact. It was the first time in my 67 years that I had witnessed such a thing - and I dare say, in a great many generations. In fact, had there ever been a time in history when Jews had decided that it was too dangerous to commemorate this awe-inspiring occasion? In times and places of persecution they may have commemorated the day surreptitiously, defiant, in secret, driven underground but yet determined to observe the day. Had Jews ever decided, without persecution by a human enemy, not to gather in traditional groups of at least ten men and to observe the day, all over the world? I don't think so. Last year was a first. A tragic first. I wonder how many people thought about it that way.
On the night of 5 December 2018 our beloved old shul at 31 Arthur's Road, Sea Point, burned down. I remember the morning after the fire, standing in the front yard of the shul, doing the morning service with the burned wreck of the building towering above us, some of the roof timbers still smouldering. A light rain was falling and a terrible atmosphere pervaded the small group, some of us praying with prayer books which we had brought from home because so little had been salvaged from the building and the damage assessment had not even begun yet. It was a shocking blow to the small community. To me it felt like a funeral. And yet, even then, even with the smouldering timbers still evident, pledges of money were coming in for the rebuilding of the shul. That wasn't just grief: it was hope, defiance, determination: we knew that there would have to be a long period of reconstruction and recovery, the risk that the community would lose hope, that individuals would melt away and join other shuls over time, that by the time the reconstruction was complete there would no longer be a community to occupy it. We faced a long exile. I could identify with the exiles who went to Babylon, and another generation who were dispersed by the Romans, and prior to that the 400 years of the Egyptian exile.
I had to meditate on that: the prospect of a mini-exile. Would we, could we hold out? - Or would we just fly apart in broken fragments and never come together again? A fearsome thought. An unthinkable thought - here, in this the great 21st Century with all it's technological progress and expertise, were we about to be torn apart by a most brutal and ancient phenomenon, an exile? Really? Of all things?
Well we didn't fall apart. Those secret and ancient forces which had held Jews together over 3 000 years, were apparently still operating: we went into exile. As a group. And we stayed together, and we maintained our traditions and our practices. We never faltered and we never missed a beat and that amazing sense of community did not die. In fact, it may have made us stronger. Even though the Arthur's Road shul was not in Arthur's Road, it survived. In a real-life re-enactment of the Pesach story, we wandered around - and then, still as a group, when the time was right, we came back.
Cometh the time, cometh the man. We had our own modern-day version of Moses who worked like a demon with his typically difficult group of fractious Jews. He innovated, he negotiated, he motivated, he urged, jostled, encouraged and drove the operation, and all the while a new shul grew steadily upon the ruins of the old. How much more symbolic could this get?
But fate wasn't done with us yet. There was another wave coming - different in nature but perhaps more fearsome in it's potential for destruction. Even before the reconstruction was completed, even before we could have a single prayer service in the "new" shul, COVID-19 crashed down on us, and another form of destruction stared down at us. But this time, it wasn't just tearing bricks and wood apart: it took lives, and a wave of fear and helplessness preceded it. Our exile was extended, but this time it was worse. This time we couldn't just move our prayer services to another location. This time, we'd have to stop them altogether. There was only one precedent for this menace: the Spanish Inquisition, with Jewish congregations shattered, individuals praying secretly in cellars, seldom getting together in proper minyanim. And it wasn't just a momentary thing: it went on, and on, literally tearing at bodies and souls, the good and the bad and the indifferent falling and lying together, brought down by an invisible enemy who might appear anywhere at any time, and us, having no weapons to counter it.
Eventually the new shul stood there, splendid but unoccupied, and it appeared that we might have built a monument to emptiness - the ultimate symbol of despair and failure.
And then last night, on Erev Yom Kippur, we entered our shul to use it for its first big service. And in so doing, we drew another important historical parallel: on 5 December 2018 Beit Midrash Morasha burned down; on Tishá bÁv, 70 CE (Shabbat 2 August 70 CE), the Romans destroyed the second temple. On 7 June 1967 Israel recaptured the Old City of Jerusalem in the 6 Day War - and last night, we “recaptured” Beit Midrash Morasha! These are big moments! We should remember them!
And then at the pre-ordained time, a small number of congregants shuffled in - not the usual large, august, excited and well-turned-out crowd with the usual hullabaloo which precedes Kol Nidre - but a small, quiet, somewhat tired-looking group, bearing an air of defeat, preparing to get the show on the road.
A memory came into my mind. Somewhere I have a recording produced by the BBC from an old newsreal - American soldiers coming to liberate the prisoners of a Nazi concentration camp at the end of WWII. The soldiers were greeted at the gates of the camp by a rag-tag group of emaciated prisoners who already looked as if they were more of the next world than of this one. Their slumped shoulders, haunted, sunken eyes and skeletal bodies clothed in rags, said more about their condition than words could do.
And then this ghostly company drew themselves up, took in a deep breath, and in faltering, hesitant tones, they began to sing the Hatikva. Their voices grew stronger as they went along, their stature changed as they stormed into yet another verse. Some of them didn't know the words and they hummed. I didn't recognize some of the words myself and I wondered if they were singing an earlier version of the Hatikva that I was taught, or if they just lost their way. No matter. They went barrelling along, their confidence and volume growing as they did so.
And at the end, some particularly enthused soul sounded out the defiant chant, "Am Yisroel chai! Am Yisroel chai!" ("The Nation of Israel lives!") And indeed, these rag-and-bone figures came together and proclaimed their defiance, and they lived.
And so I refocused myself on the little group of Jews praying before me.
© HARRY FRIEDLAND
2018
