Slumdog Millionaire – “It’s all a muddle”
1. I saw the film Slumdog Millionaire this week. I came away with two enduring impressions.
2. First, unease at how much explicit violence and brutality is thought necessary to maintain the interest of a cinema audience today. Going to the cinema only rarely, it is easier to track the changes. Psychologists argue whether on-screen violence has any effect on real behaviour. The rest of us simply know as a matter of common-sense that of course it does. Desensitise people by exposure to graphic violence on screen, and you numb the sensitivities that preserve the Divine image in which each of us was created.
3. Secondly, the film portrays misery and exploitation on every side. The happy ending is a sugar coating added to the pill as an after-thought, and it is the only implausible part of the film. The rest, the inescapable wretchedness of millions of people’s lives, is entirely plausible.
4. None of this is new, of course. Dickens was portraying the lives of youngsters trapped into crime, prostitution, poverty and beggary many decades ago – and even he was merely continuing an ancient tradition of reporting though fiction what has been a timeless theme of reality. One of Dickens’ characters sums the whole thing up for us remarkably well, in a manner that has rarely been surpassed for accuracy and simplicity – Stephen Blackpool’s oft-repeated exclamation of ultimate hopelessness “It’s all a muddle”. A world in which the only people who seem to have the power to control their own and others’ destinies inevitably misuse and abuse that power, while for everyone else the world is a board-game on which they are the pieces, moved about at the apparently pointless whim of human and God alike.
5. In this week’s Torah reading B’shalach, the Torah explains that God could have taken the Jews out of Egypt by a short route, but He chose the longer one because He was concerned that if the Jews saw battle with the Plishtim they would return to Egypt. Baffling on many counts. (1) If God wants the Plishtim not to attack, He could arrange for that. (2) And if the Plishtim do attack and God wants the Jews to win, He could see to that just as he sees to victory over the Egyptians for them. (3) If God wants to stop the Jews returning to Egypt He again has a number of options – but given the manner of their leaving and their probable reception, return was probably not high on their list of survival strategies.
6. There is the usual range of ways of understanding all this. But to some extent, God has already explained what is going in when He told Moses in last week’s parashah that the exodus was being stage-managed for the purpose of creating the greatest possible impression of God’s powers on the world as a whole, for all time. The Jews are pawns in the game, and the game requires them to be set against the Egyptians and not against the Plishtim. The danger of returning to Egypt is not a danger of actual return, but a danger of returning to the spiritual mentality of the Egyptian culture: the aim of setting the Jews against the Egyptians is to enable the former to rise to the challenge of representing the cultural antithesis of the latter, a people of trust in God and of kindness to each other set against a people of trust only in human strength as epitomised by the successful exploitation of others’ weakness.
7. We are all pawns in God’s game, and sooner or later we all come to realise it. Even the exploiters reach a stage in their lives when they realise that their battle to control events is finally over, and that only God knows what comes next.
8. But there are two ways to be a pawn. One can recognise it from the beginning and submit, realising that it is only the choices that are left to me that matter, and that instead of struggling to expand the boundaries of my own power to control events around me I should concentrate on making the right decisions in relation to matters that appear to be “delegated” to me. Or one can resent the external control and struggle constantly against it, the futility of the exercise being masked by apparent successes from time to time when what God and I want happen to coincide.
9. Much of this week’s parashah is about the Jews’ struggle to understand the right way to be a pawn. And it is difficult: because sometimes the Torah tells me to submit – “God will fight for you, and you should just stay quiet” (Shemos 14:14); and at other times the Torah appears to encourage us to set ourselves targets of a physical kind and not just to rely on God to do the work for us. Getting the balance right is an eternal Jewish preoccupation. But although we will never be satisfied that we have got the balance quite right, at least we understand the aim of the exercise.
10. I will never understand why some people are born in an Indian slum to a life of poverty, easy prey for all kinds of miserable exploitation; any more than I will ever understand why I was not. We are all pawns in God’s game, and nobody asks me to understand it, or even to like it. All I can do is to submit to what I cannot change, and to concentrate on making good choices where I appear to be given the ability to change anything. Sometimes my path in the game will come so close to someone else’s that I have the ability to make theirs easier for them: when that happens I get pleasure from my apparent ability to help them, although in reality the help comes from God who put Pawn A into the path of Pawn B at the right time. So long as I don’t take my own part in it too seriously, no harm is done.
Did Sarah suffer from senile dementia?
1. The Rabbis tell us that the Matriarch Sarah – Soroh Imeinu – died the “kiss-like” death reserved for the completely righteous, where they slip almost imperceptibly from one world into the next.
2. But what was she like before her death? Did she go to sleep one night in possession of all her faculties and pass tranquilly to the next world in her sleep? Or did the transition take place over a longer period, and was it accompanied by a gradual loss of the intellectual faculties that tie us to this world as much as the more tangible part of the corporeal side of our personality? Did she gradually slip more and more “into her own world”, with less and less ability to connect with and understand this one, until she finally slipped altogether into the next?
3. Doctors tell us that dementia is becoming more common. This may be a function of the increased stress under which we live. Or it may reflect the improved ability of medical science to keep our bodies going longer. Probably it is a combination of many factors. But whatever its cause, it is a condition with which more and more people come to terms.
4. In an old age home somewhere in London lives a man, whose age would once have been thought advanced but is now nothing remarkable. Ten years ago, he was reknowned for his piety and his intellect. His learning was considered by those entitled to an opinion to rank him as one of the foremost Talmudic and rabbinic scholars in the world.
5. Now he sits in his old age home, often unsure what is going on around him, unable to remember many things that one needs to remember in order to function effectively in this world and to look after oneself. And I sometimes hear people mention him and add something like “isn’t it a shame, when one thinks what he was?”
6. Depending on precisely what they mean, they are either right or terribly wrong. When a wise and active scholar ceases to be able to use his or her brain in the way they once could, it is indeed a shame – but for us, not for them. We lose the benefit of their wisdom and intellect, which was once such an important Divine blessing for us. We would have lost it, of course, had they simply died: but it is more frustrating for us this way, seeing their faculties wane gradually, and seeing them alive and well physically but no longer able to give us the help and guidance that we so desperately need and at which they once excelled. And if it is frustrating for us, how terrible must it be for those close to them emotionally – their relatives and close friends.
7. Of course, though, we must try to control our grief in the same way we do when a person simply dies. The Rabbis explain the small letter used in the word describing Abraham’s grief when Sarah died by the fact that not too many tears were needed to be shed for her, since her life had been sucn an unalloyed blessing to her and those around her, so that joy and not grief was the more durable emotion to be associated with her forever. That is true of a person whose contribution has been great, whether it is brought to an end suddenly by death or gradually by disease.
8. And if by “what a shame!” is meant “what a shame for them”, it misses the point completely. The man I speak of was once a great soul and a great mind. His mind is no longer great, but his soul shines out all the more brightly for that. We are not normally privileged to see the purity of a soul while it is still bound to this world: on rare occasions we are privileged to see what decades’ dedicated practice of the Torah can make of a person’s moral and spiritual instincts – so that long after they are able to control much of their behaviour by the intellect the ingrained characteristics of love, gratitude and concern (all Divine attributes) shine out of them and make them a source of wonder and inspiration to all who see them.
9. We too easily mistake the mind for the soul. A person may be a brilliant intellect, a charismatic, dynamic speaker, a charming personality, and spiritually inert. Brilliant Talmudic dialectic is a thing of this world, not the next: it can be used to guard and develop a person’s soul so that when the intellect fails the soul shines out in all its original purity – but in itself it is spiritually neutral.
10. Of course, dementia brings moments of mental pain, anguish and confusion; just like other physical diseases. And when we see them we feel a sympathetic distress. But, again, that may sometimes be our problem, not the person’s. If a friend who once knew me well no longer recognises me, that upsets me – but I must not make the mistake of thinking that it necessarily upsets him or her; or that it is their problem rather than mine.
11. Thinking of the increasing incidence of dementia makes me want to pray. Not “Dear God, please don’t let me suffer from dementia before I die”. But rather something a little more confused along the following lines: “Dear God, please help me to use the mental faculties I have while I can still control them, so that when I stop being able to control them, whether that happens before I die or when I die, they have done their bit to make the real me – the soul and not the brain – something that you and I can rejoice in; and, please, if I am to go through a period of inability to control my mind before I die, help me to use it in the meantime to put the “real me”, whatever that is, into sufficient shape to ensure that those wh0 are close to me do not have to suffer the pain of being ashamed of me”.
Charity in the Credit Crunch
1. This Thursday the Agudah rabbonim have called a day of prayer on account of the continuing and deepening impact of the recession. With so many local families and institutions in financial difficulty, the rabbis urge us to pray for Divine compassion.
2. At the same time, they remind us that those of us who are still blessed with jobs and sufficient incomes should be giving what we can to communal institutions and other tzedokohs.
3. The concept of the tithing of income derives from this week’s parashah; at the end of a conversation between Yaakov and Hashem (Bereishis 28:20-22). Yaakov says to Hashem, in essence, “if you are with me on my journey, give me food and clothing and bring me home safely, then I will give back one tenth of whatever you give me”.
4. A strange way to talk to God. Striking a bargain with God in this peremptory fashion is strange enough to begin with. And to promise to pay the donor for a benefit conferred by agreeing to return one tenth of the benefit is strange enough to be going on with; how should that convince the donor to give?
5. The practice of tithing is a recognition that everything belongs to and comes from God. If we recognise the Divine origin of everything we have, we can turn to God with confidence and trust, and ask Him to continue His blessings; by promising to use them for good (a concept which includes, but is not limited to, setting a part aside for others) we are trying to make ourselves fitting recipients.
6. In hard times when we are confronted by financial difficulties on all sides it is that much easier not to take our material blessings for granted; if realising our blessings encourages us to give increasingly generously to various causes, encouraged by the increased importance and potential impact of a small amount of money in troubled times, we can see why the rabbis have always stressed that the perfect Messianic world is more likely to emerge out of troubled times – nothing is more likely to lead to it than an enhanced sense of our responsibilities to each other and the importance of sharing our blessings.
Happy Big Bang Day
1. It is very exciting that scientists have managed today to begin a challenging and long-awaited experiment into the nature of matter. Here are a few random thoughts generated in my mind by this morning’s launch of the protons.
2. First, it is worth saying again that there is no conflict between religious belief and scientific experiment. Indeed, the reverse is the case. The psalmist urges us to consider the magnitude and wonder of God’s work of creation, something that we can do more and more effectively the more science reveals to us about it. The Chofetz Chayim explains that the more we appreciate the nature of the creation, the more we can perceive the magnitude of its intended purpose. The founder of our religion, Abraham, came to his revolutionary belief in a single God by examining the nature of the universe, albeit that he had only his own senses to use to conduct the examination.
3. Secondly, there appears to be a possibility that when this morning’s experiment is continued to the collision phase the resultant explosion will destroy the world. Mildly troubling, but much less so to a religious person than to a secular scientist. The rabbis advise us to live each day and each moment as if it were our last – because it always may be. Easier said than done, of course: but at any rate the addition of one more possible reason why my life may end at any moment adds little or nothing to the importance of aiming to be ready at all times to give an account of my life.
4. Thirdly, the experiment demonstrates both the futility and the value of science. Scientists hoping to be given the meaning of life by colliding a couple of protons are likely to be disappointed: nothing that science has yet achieved (evolutionary theories included) has been successful in discovering, nor is there reason to expect that it will be successful about discovering, anything about the “why” of the world as distinct from the “how”. A search for the “why” by flailing about in the universe perpetrating random acts of molecular violence is likely to be futile. But application of increased knowledge of the “how” (evolutionary theories included) to advance our understanding of how we can develop and improve the world, in a partnership with God, to the welfare and benefit of everyone in it, is always of the utmost value from a religious perspective.
Smacking children – a Jewish approach
1. A few days ago considerable attention was given by the British media to the case of a father who, angry at his daughter’s unruly behaviour towards neighbours, slapped her face in an attempt to shock her out of her ways. The daughter complained to the police, who cautioned the father.
2. The Jewish attitude to corporal punishment is often summarised by reference to the verse in Proverbs (13:24) “He who spares his stick hates {often translated as ‘spoils’} his son”. The implication is that failure to discipline children is not in their interests.
3. Of course, some explain this verse as purely metaphorical, referring to the concept of discipline in general and not specifically or exclusively to physical punishment.
4. Clearly, it is open to people to interpret the verse literally or metaphorically. But even those who interpret it literally ought to be aware that read in a slightly different, but still literal, way it can be seen as imposing an important constraint on those who believe in the importance of physical punishment.
5. Read the verse in the following way (which classical construction of Biblical Hebrew readily permits): “Who is it who must spare his stick? One who hates his son”. It then comes to remind us that corporal punishment should be administered neither in hot blood – at a time when one feels animus against the child of a kind that might cause one to hit out either in the wrong way or for the wrong motive – nor in too cold blood (ie so long after the incident as not to appear to the child to be reasonably connected to the incident).
6. What worried me about the reported incident was the suggestion that the punishment had been a slap around the face delivered in anger. It is never right to hit a child when angry, nor in my opinion is a slap around the face an appropriate form of corporal punishment. Discipline must be delivered when the parent is calm and in control, and in a form which is effective but dignified both for the parent and for the child. The purpose of corporal punishment should not be to relieve a parent’s feelings, nor to cause the maximum pain: in my experience when effective at all – and it is not effective or appropriate with all children or for all purposes – it is unnecessary to cause real pain, and the smacking is a purely formal – but sometimes extremely effective – operation.
7. It is certainly true that failure to discipline ones children effectively does them real harm and amounts to a failure to exercise the responsibilities of a parent: but as always, there are right ways and wrong ways.
Publish and damn – Trial by Jewish Chronicle
1. One might hope for high standards of journalism from the Jewish Chronicle, or at least basic observance of the Jewish laws of permitted and non-permitted speech.
2. In this week’s issue the Jewish Chronicle reports that a man has been charged with a very serious sexual offence. The man is named and enough details given of the case to be likely to cause him to be stigmatised by many who read the article. He is accused by a boy, whose name is not given for legal reasons.
3. For all the Jewish Chronicle can possibly know, this charge may be a complete fabrication. Stranger things have happened. The man may be acquitted when tried, or the charge may even be dropped before that. Yet the stain of the accusation in the eyes of the prejudiced will follow him to the grave: thanks to the Jewish Chronicle.
4. In Jewish law, there is no excuse for the publication of what is presently an unsubstantiated accusation – to do so is mere loshon horoh – culpable gossip.
5. Of course, there are occasions when the public or a section of it requires to be warned about a danger even in the absence of a conviction: but this would not be the way to secure that end, which requires to be achieved with care, sensitivity and judgment.
Zimbabwe, Rwanda and Mount Sinai
1. On Shavuos we tell the children that Mount Sinai was chosen as the place for giving the Torah to the Jewish people because, being the lowest of the surrounding mountains, it represents humility, an attribute required for receipt of the Torah.
2. But there is another aspect to this symbolism. If we all set out to climb Mount Everest, we will all reach different points before giving up: only a very few will reach the summit, from which they will look down on the rest of us with the self-satisfaction born of having achieved what the rest of us could not. But if we all set out to climb a small hill, we can all make it to the top: of course, some of us will have to give others a helping hand, but one way or another we can all make it and reach the summit together.
3. Torah is intended to be a lifestyle that is realistically attainable by everyone. If it becomes a set of standards that are so demanding – whether financially or in terms of time or other commitments – that in practice only a very few can meet them, we know that we have gone wrong. Judaism is not about setting high and exclusive targets so that I can look down on all those who fail to meet them: it is about travelling together, on a spiritual journey from which nobody need feel excluded.
4. When I hear about terrible and inhuman things happening around the world, such as the recent genocidal violence in Rwanda or the present intimidatory violence in Zimbabwe, I worry about the numbers of people involved in making it happen. There will always be resho’im – wicked people – and for obvious reasons many of them will choose to wield political power. But if ordinary people were imbued with ordinary standards of human decency, the few resho’im would lack tools to carry out their wicked plans. It is the moral and ethical vacuum inside thousands of ordinary people that enables them to be corrupted into tools of other people’s wickedness.
5. It should be literally impossible for one person to beat another with sticks until he is bleeding on the ground. It should be literally impossible for a group of soldiers to be incited to rape a group of women in a village. Our education and cultures around the worldwide should make it simply beyond the range of activity that an ordinary human being will permit himself or herself to undertake.
6. To have enclaves of people leading conspicuously holy lives is not a reflection of the Torah as given on Mount Sinai, a mountain representing universal attainment of basic spiritual goals. If religion is failing to set basic standards of universal morality that protect each of us from our worst sides and from corruption by the relatively few actively wicked minds, then religion is failing to achieve the task for which the world and it were created.
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