Rabbi's Sermon 8th March / 8th Adar 5785

Z"L HY"D

In these years, I have officiated several funerals and preached several times that, to honour those who are not with us anymore, we Jews add two letters after the name of the deceased person, z”l zain and lamed, and that these two letters mean zikhrono/zikhrona livrakha, "may his/ her memory be a blessing".

It's the Jewish way to honour the memory of the deceased. Whether Reform, Liberal, Orthodox, Ultraorthodox or whatever, we celebrate our beloved in the same way. Adding these two letters to their names and turning their memory into a blessing and inspiration, trying to learn from them and looking at their lives as an example, etc. etc.

This is what we Jews do. Always and for everyone? No. In fact, when we commemorate the victims of terror, such as in the case of Tsachi Idan and his daughter Ma'ayan, we do not add ׳ל; ז we do not say, "May their memory be a blessing."

We say Hashem yikom damo שקמםיוהד( ) for a man, or שקמםיוהד( ) damah , for a woman. And it means: "may God avenge their blood".

I know, I know. In the UK, in Western Europe, in this civilisation built upon Christianity, there is the stereotype of the revengeful Jew, or of the tribal Jew, according to which we worship "the God of the Old Testament," that Patriarchal dictatorial, revengeful figure, which is patterned along the Greek god Chronos.

Well, to say it politely, this is complete rubbish. The despotic "God of the Old Testament" is a product of Christian polemics (and a bit of envy, but that is for another sermon)

When we Jews say, "may God avenge their blood" we do not advocate vigilantism. We do not take the law into our own hands; we are not the evil settlers who roam around the West Bank killing Arabs like the cowboys killed Native Americans: a product of Left-wing imagination.

No. With this expression HY"D, "may God avenge their blood", we express our hope that God will bring justice: to us, to the families of the victims of terror; to the community, or the communities, that have been wounded; and to Am Israel.

"May God avenge their blood" means that we trust God will intervene, that Divine justice will happen, and that the memory of the murders won't fade away with time.

It is not, I repeat it clearly: it is not, a praise of vigilantism, of taking the law into our own hands etc. Which is completely forbidden by our faith. One of the first commandment of ours indeed is to set up courts of justice.

By adding z”l HY"D, to the names of Tsachi, of Ma’ayan and other victims of terror, we express a significant Jewish value, an essential element of the Jewish worldview.

Not all the deaths are equal.

To quote Rabbi Meir Soloveitchik, to whom I owe a large part of the inspiration for this sermon: we Jews do not say, like that man on the cross, "Forgive them because they do not know what they are doing."

When a man opens a can of Zyklon B and pushes it into a room full of naked and unharmed Jews, that man knows what he is doing.

When a white supremacist enters a synagogue armed with heavy weapons, opens fire, and murders the worshippers, mainly elderly people, he knows what he is doing,

When a commando of Arab terrorists attacked the synagogue in Rome, packed with children, on Shemini Artzeret, and killed a 2-year-old toddler, and wounded tens of Jewish worshippers, they knew what they were doing.

So, when a Hamas commando killed Ma'ayan Idan, who had just turned 18, and kidnapped her father, Tsachi, to keep him chained and tortured for months, they knew what they were doing.

It is offensive to expect from anyone a reaction such as "Forgive them because they do not know what they are doing". The Nazis, the white supremacists, the Palestinian terrorist of every denomination, they bloody know what they are doing.

This is the reason for the three letters we add to the names of Tsachi, Ma’ayan, the Bibas family, and Oded Lifschizt. They did not die of a cold. They were murdered by terrorists, by antisemitic terrorists.

And I know, I know. I am aware of the current cultural atmosphere. I read the Guardian, and I watch the BBC. So, I know.

They condemn Islamophobia (and rightly so); they condemn homophobia (and rightly so); they condemn chauvinism (and rightly so). They denounce the patriarchate; they condemn transphobia; they condemn white supremacists; they condemn every racism (and rightly so).

They condemn every racism. But they explain antisemitism. They contextualise antisemitism.

We are the only minority who are told and lectured about who our real enemies. And, more often than not, we are told that we worry too much; how lucky we are, so many good people care for us.

Every racism is condemned. Antisemitism is explained.

But there's nothing new about that. In history, every time antisemitism raises its ugly head, there is always some contextualisation.

Antisemitism in the Soviet Russia? Well, that was the international politics, the Cold War; Israel made the bad choice of becoming an American ally...

Antisemitism in the Arab world? Well, Israel has forced itself on the Arab population and caused the dispossession of who-know-how-many Palestinians... the massacre of Iraqi Jews was horrific, but one should understand and contextualise it.

It was -after all! - motivated by good intentions: solidarity for the Palestinians! And who knows -some people actually teach that-perhaps the Zionists have instigated the mob against the Jews... They quote Soviet historians... Shamefully, in this city there are people who teach and preach this offensive nonsense.

Even Nazi antisemitism is contextualised, and sometimes explained and, in between the lines, minimised; evoking economic disparity, mentioning the disproportionate presence of Jews in German banks (another legend); "contextualising" the spike in anti-Semitic propaganda because of the 1929 crisis, and other blah blah blah about capitalism, colonialism, exploitation and on and on. That's the masterpiece of Marxism. Minimising the Holocaust by blaming capitalism.

So, the horror is diluted. What about the mob who attacked the Jews, who looted Jewish houses, who took advantage of systematic discrimination, who made the trains run in time? They did not know what they were doing. It was because of capitalism.

Sorry, no. This is not the game we Jews should be playing; in fact, we do not. The victims of anti-Semitic terror deserve to be honoured and remembered by making clear that the antisemitic beast murdered them.

We learned it on this Shabbat, Shabbat Zakhor. We have a special Torah reading for this, Antisemitism raises its head at every generation.

It happens in its pure evil form -like Amalek. Or in the form of Amalek's descendant, Haman, who could not bear that one Jew, Mordechai, was more brilliant than him. And on such a basis, he built a worldview and a policy to implement, an extermination policy, to be precise.

That is what HY"D, reminds us. All the dead are equal; but not all deaths are the same.

When someone falls victim to Amalek, we must remember it correctly. Every year, on Shabbat Zakhor, today we recognise the cruelty of Amalek and its determination to erase us Jews.

This is not a product of the Jews' paranoid imagination. This is not a social construct related to capitalism and colonialism. This is not Zionist propaganda to persuade you to move to Israel.

It is just reality. Amalek exists; Evil exists.

There are dead to be remembered turning their memory into a blessing, by saying z"l. And there are deaths for which we trust Divine Justice to act, even if it is really, really so hard here and now, when we think to our beloved and cannot restraint the tears from flowing.

We will remember Ma'ayan. We will remember Tsachi.

HY"D דיד" ה Hashem Ykom Damam.

Rabbi Dr. Andrea Zanardo, PhD