Be the Letter in the Scroll: a Los Angeles Event

Alex Edelman, introductory remarks

Rabbi Pini Dunner: And I'm very privileged to be standing here this evening to participate at an event that celebrates the work, the teachings, the ethics, the ideas, the ideals of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks. And those of you who saw the little video that was produced by the Legacy Foundation will know that my own relationship with Rabbi Sacks goes back to when I was a child. We were neighbours.

We lived on Hodford Road. The Sacks family lived on Dunstan Road, which was just down the block and turn right, turn left, I think, actually. And his impact on us was huge.

And I think that I'm not unique in this way because I think all the people here, many thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people around the world would say exactly the same thing, that Rabbi Sacks has had a deep impact on them through his words, through his ideas, through his incredible ability to communicate ideas. 

And I always tell this to people, that there's a word in English which has been abused. It's the word publicist.

The word publicist today means that you try and act as a PR agent for whatever it is the person represents or you want them to represent. The word publicist in English, if you go back to the 19th century, means somebody who takes very complicated ideas and makes them understandable, discernible, appreciatable to a general public. 

Rabbi Sacks took the most complex ideas of Judaism, of philosophy, of the human experience and made them something that we can all digest, understand and appreciate. And repeat. And that is an extraordinary talent. And we miss that talent.

We miss Rabbi Sacks. 

And I'm glad that you are here at this event because we want the legacy of Rabbi Sacks to resonate and to echo here in Los Angeles, particularly at this moment in time when there's such division, such diversity, not all of it positive. And hopefully this evening can be the beginning of a legacy here in Los Angeles to make a difference, to make a change.

Now I'm going to ask your indulgence. We have 101 hostages who are still captive in Gaza. And I would like to say some Tehillim for them, if I may.

Tehillim

Fred Gluckman, Event Chair: So there are three messages that I'd really like to touch on quite briefly. One is connection. The second is appreciation. And then the third is invitation. Yesterday we read the portion in the Torah in which God and Abraham begin a conversationת that Rabbi Sacks notes will become “the context of the entire Jewish drama.”

From this direct connection between God and Abraham, we are encouraged over and over to live a life in which we connect with one another, contribute to one another, and act with respect for one another.

Rabbi Sacks taught us, called on us, to fill our lives with a common morality, to act properly and proudly in the name of God, to heal fractures in this world, and to all of us, to make an informed contribution to our story. 

He found a unique ability to weave together the contributions of all of our people, bringing life to his statement that “The Jewish people are the best storytellers the world has ever known because we are the story we tell.” 

It is true and shockingly obvious that we face an increasing number of open acts of anti-Semitism both globally and locally.

This reality puts an even brighter and more focused light on Rabbi Sacks' call for us to be the owners of that story. 

For this room, we are taking the opportunity tonight to connect based on our strong history and our unwavering commitment to our future. We do this not just for ourselves but as a positive contribution to the world at large.

Carrying this message forward, the Rabbi Sacks Legacy is dedicated to nurturing new scholars, creating impactful curriculum, and publishing widely to spread Rabbi Sacks' timeless wisdom. This work is essential in ensuring that his teachings continue to inspire and guide us and our future generations. 

As we continue this journey, I invite you to contribute to the Rabbi Sacks Legacy. Your donations will enable the expansion of initiatives that support and enable our community in meaningful ways. 

With a great degree of appreciation, I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to our major sponsors for the evening, George and Susie Fishman, who generously enabled us all to walk away with a copy of “A Letter in the Scroll” this evening. To Steve Fishman, to Rebecca Rothstein, to the Jewish Community Foundation, and to the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles, or if you're from Britain, Los Angelees. Please.

Our steering committee, Rachel Teller, Miriam Stern, Rabbi Pini Dunner, Judy Friedman, Anthony Siegel, and Jonathan Prince. Our production partners, Alec, Athena, and Jackson from Patchwork Pinata, and the Museum of Tolerance. Our community partners, whose names are here on the screen just behind me, and our incredible CEO, Joanna Benarroche. She's modestly, modestly shaking her head because she hoped I would not do that. 

And we are exceptionally grateful that Gila Sacks has joined us this evening as well. And to you, for taking the time to join this conversation.

With that, we invite you to be inspired as we laugh and learn that the talented Alex Edelman will keep us moving and keep us laughing and keep some spirit into the room. 

The insightful discussions with our panel of educators - Dr. Miriam Heller Stern and Rabbi Dr. Ariel Berger, and our panel of storytellers led by Jonathan Prince. They will share how they work to tell our story in schools and the entertainment industry on a global scale, portraying Judaism for its positive values and enduring contributions.

And our final invitation is for you to contribute to our story, the story of our people. To quote “A Letter in the Scroll,” and you'll hear this quite often this evening, “A letter on its own has no meaning. Yet when letters are joined to others, they make a word. Words combined with others to make a sentence. Sentences connect to make a paragraph and paragraphs joined to make a story.” Let us each add our letter to the scroll, benefiting ourselves, our families, our Jewish community and the world.

And with that, Alex Edelman. 

Alex Edelman: They're closing the curtains. Okay.

Everybody hang in there. Very nice. Next is the panel of educators.

You know it's going to be hilarious. A letter on its own, you can do stuff with a letter by itself. You never know.

X does lots of heavy lifting. You never know. All right.

And to hear more about letters, okay, I'm introducing the educators. A seamless transition. All right.

The first person on this educators panel is the author of “Witness, Lessons from Elie Wiesel's Classroom.” And they are the founder of the Witness Institute to Empower Emerging Leaders Inspired by Wiesel's Legacy. His work fostering innovative moral education and leadership is embraced worldwide.

Please welcome Ariel Berger. 

You come up first and then I'll introduce the other person. Elie Wiesel.

Very interesting guy. Right, Ariel? Yeah. Chose to live in Boston like me.

Don't know why. Don't know why I could have lived anywhere. All right.

The next person serves actually currently as associate professor and director of education at Hebrew Union College's Institute of Religion. Dr. Miriam Stern is a member of the inaugural cohort of the Mandel Senior Leadership Fellowship at the Mandel Centre for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis. The founder of Beit HaYotzer.

Oh, Beit HaYotzer? Oh my gosh. I didn't know that you founded that. My friend.

Okay. We'll talk later. A creative education initiative.

She's a scholar-in- residence at the Covenant Foundation and speaks widely on creativity in Jewish education. Please welcome Dr. Miriam Stern. 

Dr. Miriam Stern: Thank you, Alex, for the seamless segue.

It's an honour to be here this evening to be engaging in a conversation about the legacy of Rabbi Sacks and to start to explore how the next generation carries his work forward.

I can't help but be reminded of the first time I had the honour of meeting Rabbi Sacks many aeons ago. It was my very first job out of college at the Hebrew University.

And I was assigned to be his attache for a week, to take him around on a visit at Hebrew University meeting various professors. And I got to hear his little bits of debriefing, of his thoughts between meeting a Bible professor and a professor of philosophy. And I was just this, like, bright-eyed, potential academic fangirl, so excited, just taking in the wisdom as I took him around the university.

And not too much after that, I had the opportunity, by chance, to sit across from him on a bus with my then very charming boyfriend, Jonathan, who took it upon himself to lean across the aisle and introduce himself to the Chief Rabbi and say, “Hi, I'm Jonathan Stern.” He says, “Hi, I'm Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth.” And before we knew it, there was a conversation about biblical criticism, a promise that if he got engaged to me, he'd dedicate the book to us.

Not sure the book ever happened, but we were just so inspired by the ideas. And I know that everyone in this room probably has some essay or chapter or “Covenant in Conversation” essay that they've read that has inspired them with Rabbi Sacks' words. 

So we're honoured tonight to be in dialogue with Rabbi Dr - Rabbi Doctor, very complicated - Ariel Burger, who is a scholar and disciple of Professor Wiesel, a”h, another great giant whose voice we are endeavouring to bring into the future of the Jewish people.

And my friend, Dr. Burger - I don't know if I should call you Rabbi or Doctor - I think we're just going to go to Ariel and Miriam. 

Dr. Ariel Burger: My mother is not here, so you can call me Ariel.

Miriam: Amazing. I've met your mother, and I think she'd approve. So Ariel's work is to bring the legacy of Professor Elie Wiesel into the world. He runs an organisation called the Witness Institute, which has a fellowship for professionals across sectors to learn the skills of moral leadership and moral courage. And I'm sure he'll touch on that a bit in our conversation tonight. 

We wanted to take on this question, the core question of Rabbi Sacks' work - Why be Jewish? And how do each of us endeavour to become “A Letter in the Scroll?” So I know that the work had a profound impact on you earlier in your career.

Why don't we start there, of what the “Letter in the Scroll” means to you, Ariel? 

Ariel: Yeah, and we have four and a half hours, right? Yes. Okay. So that's our challenge. We have a lot to talk about. This is such a deep topic. And we will focus, and we prepared in order to focus.

My first encounter with Rabbi Sacks was actually secondhand. And it was a formative moment in my career as a teacher. 

I was teaching in Boston. I was teaching an adult education class, very high level, very accessible class for adults. And a student in the class, a successful lawyer, really brilliant guy, and very dedicated, involved in every Jewish organisation in the community, had been involved in his own Jewish learning for a very long time, probably in the top 5th percentile of the community in terms of engagement, asked to speak with me after class. And after class, he came over to me.

I said, “Mark, what's on your mind?” And he said, “I don't feel I'm ‘A Letter in the Scroll.”

And this was an astonishing moment for me because I thought, if this person who's so engaged feels that marginalised somehow, how must so many other Jews feel? And what can we do about it? 

And that became my first sense of an overt, explicit mission as an educator, which is the work of many Jewish educators in our communities, trying to make Torah and Jewish life accessible and inclusive. And as my career has developed, I've ended up doing that a lot in the Jewish community, but also outside the Jewish community.

And a lot of my work is now translating Jewish wisdom to non-Jewish audiences, in our fellowship and elsewhere. And so, it's not easy anymore to take the question ‘Why be Jewish?’ for granted or to assume as self-evident that Judaism is worthy of our attention. 

Of course it is to me, but the question for people who are encountering it for the first time, or with baggage, is a really important, legitimate question.

Miriam: So how can we start thinking about that question? And one of our goals for tonight is for everyone to walk away with a nugget, a gem, a big idea that you can take with you as the way that you tell the story of what it means to be Jewish, not just for you, but as a legacy for the Jewish people. So Ariel, tell us how you think about answering that question - Why be Jewish today?

And particularly given the news of not just the last year, but particularly the incredibly discouraging news that we're hearing from Amsterdam, from Stockholm. We're facing incredible challenges and living through a watershed moment in Jewish history.

I think we need to start articulating the story of ‘Why be Jewish?’ in different terms. 

Ariel: I agree. We need to dig very, very deep. We need to dig deeper than we have before, and we need to wake up in many ways. My starting point for all of this is that Judaism is a vehicle for blessing, to bring blessing to the world. And the question is, what kind of blessing, what kind of contribution does Judaism really make? 

And in my mind, based on biblical, rabbinic, and later Jewish teachings, and Rabbi Sacks' work and my teacher Elie Wiesel's work, I think it's pretty clear that one of the primary things is that Judaism is a way, a path of nuance, of depth, of wrestling with texts and ideas, and each other, and even with God, and with our host culture.

And Judaism functions often as a countercultural critique, and sometimes a corrective to the excesses or the unexamined assumptions or the fanaticisms of the culture around us, the culture in which we find ourselves. 

And one of the primary ways that functions, fanatics will often tell you - and usually in a humourless way, which is why it's so wonderful to have humour integrated into this programme because we need that so much, not only to keep going and to keep our spirits high, but as a salve and a reminder of what's possible beyond the bounds of what we're experiencing these days - They will tell you, fanatics will tell you, in a humourless way, that you have to make choices between competing values.

And Judaism often comes and makes this move, it's like a jujitsu move that says, no, the move you need to make, what's possible for you to say, is both ‘and’ or ‘and yet,’ and you can bridge different ideas. 

Miriam: That's our superpower, I think. 

Ariel: That's definitely our superpower.

Miriam: We can't make up our minds, so we just have to hold all the values in our minds. 

Ariel: That's right, you're both right. You know that famous joke, you're right, you're right, Rabbi, how can we both be right? You're right too, and everyone's right, so let's celebrate.

But it's actually a profound and very rigorous kind of methodology. And so there are three of those moves that we wanted to highlight tonight, that Miriam and I spoke about for tonight, that we think are really relevant, powerful contributions, specifically today, in this moment in American society and global society and the challenges we're facing. I'll name them, I won't elaborate yet.

The first is, in a world that tells us that we need to choose between familial or tribal loyalties and universal human commitments, Judaism asserts that we can live both. That's number one, the particular and the universal. 

Number two, in a culture that tells us that we have to choose between loyalty to tradition and heritage, or reject it in order to be a creative, or an artist, or an innovator, Judaism says no, tradition and creativity go hand in hand.

And the third is, in a world that tells us that in order to believe passionately and have moral conviction, and moral courage, and even sometimes moral ferocity, you have to stop listening to other people, and you have to attack and avoid and create echo chambers. Judaism says no, you can have conviction, you can have strong beliefs, and you can also be in dialogue with people who disagree with you. There's a way to do that, we have a toolkit for that. 

And these are profound contributions, and I can't think of three greater things that we need right now.

Miriam: So let's dig into how to be that ‘both-and’ kind of Jew, the person who can say this, and yet also that. So you started with blessing, the blessing of the particular, and how we can be a blessing for the universal. Let's dig into that a little bit more.

Ariel: So this begins at the beginning. This is in the very first, what we might consider the very first Jewish story, which is the story that was referenced earlier that Jews across the world read last Shabbat, where God says to Abraham, “Lech Lecha,” go forth, leave your land, your birthplace, your culture, your father's home, everything that has formed you, your schooling, everything you learned about the world, everything that acculturated you, leave it behind, you're starting something new. You're going to leave your culture and be different. You're going to enter into a new journey defined by difference. A new particular kind of path.

And right afterwards, we find a promise that in doing so, in leaving your culture behind, and in creating this particular thing, all the families of the world will be blessed through you. “VeNivrechu becha kol mishpachot haAdama.” 

A universal vision, a universal benefit of your particular journey. 

And we find this throughout Torah. We find this in the collective founding of the Jewish people at Mount Sinai, the particular and the universal come together again, and we find it throughout prophetic literature. We find it really throughout Judaism. Every time we find a mention of the particular, we find a mention of the universal. And there are many, many sources we could talk about - we don't have time - but it's worth looking into. It's a profound and exciting thing to discover.

And the message of this is that if we lose the particular, if we lose our particular Jewish identity and commitments, the journey dissipates, and the transmission of the message disappears. And if we lose the universal message, then we're betraying the ultimate mandate of Avraham's initial journey, initial path, which is to bring blessing to the whole world. 

How do we hold these tensions in practical ways? How do we balance our care for Jewish concerns and other concerns? Those are complicated questions sometimes.

But the assertion of the Jewish tradition, I think, very clearly is, this is a ‘both-and.’

Miriam: I think that you're describing a way of talking about Jewish pride that we often don't think about. We throw around the term Jewish pride in a very general sense, but the last Pew study said that 96% of Jews are proud to be Jewish.

I wonder what that would look like now, if the number has changed at all, given what we've been through this year. But to think about Jewish pride as being proud of being bold, being proud of answering the call of “Lech Lecha,” being willing to take that chart, chart that path that hasn't been taken by everyone else, that to me sounds like a mission that people can feel inspired by. 

Ariel: And it's without triumphalism, important to say. It's not a rah-rah Jewish because we're better. It's not superiority. It's a sense of service, a real sense of service.

And it also is not complacency. It's also not the acceptance of the idea that Judaism is some sort of self-perpetuating machine and that continuity is its own reason for being. 

Our children are asking us harder questions than that.

They're asking us, what is the real existential value of Judaism to the world in the free market of ideas? And we have good answers to that question, especially in “A Letter in the Scroll.” And we need to give them those real answers and not the older answers that I received often when I was growing up, which is that you do it because we did it, or tradition, or you do it because you have to. And it becomes a sort of house of mirrors.

Our children are expecting more than that. 

And fortunately, we have some good answers to those questions. 

Miriam: So that, I think, brings us to the second point that you shared, the second ‘both-and,’ which is how tradition also lends itself to innovation and how we carry both tradition and make the space for innovation and for innovative thinking and creative thinking.

Tell us a little bit more about how you think about holding those two values. 

Ariel: This is a dangerous one because, Miriam, you and I talk about this all the time and do a lot of work on this, so rein me in if you need to. But one of the challenges of modernity to the Jewish people was the idea that in order to join the community of nations and the larger conversation of the world, you need to leave your tradition behind.

And that was sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit. I've heard young people say, I am facing a choice between living a traditional life or being creative or being innovative. 

And I've heard people say, where is the innovation sector of Jewish life? There are some. You're involved in many of them. But our young people are asking for that. 

And the real core aspect of, I think, the secret of Jewish survival, really, is our ability to navigate tradition and to remain consistently connected to a recognisable path, that if Moshe, if Moses appeared today, if Miriam appeared today, if Abraham and Sarah appeared today, they would recognise certain things about our Jewish lives.

Other things they wouldn't, but there would be enough to say, ‘That looks familiar. This looks like it could be a descendant of what we founded, an extension, a continuation.’ And yet we've always managed to evolve and respond to the times in legal ways, in halachic ways, when we're talking about the invention of electricity or Internet or AI.

We're always developing responses to new technology, but also, I think, more profoundly in aggadic ways, in storytelling ways. We're understanding new trends in the world. And we're updating and evolving Judaism in our own understandings of the text to respond to that.

And that key technology is called Midrash, which is literally ‘seeking.’ And it's so important to the Jewish tradition that if you literally take a Torah Scroll and unroll it and count the words from the beginning, and count the words from the end, the point where they meet in the middle of the Torah Scroll is right in between the words “dorosh, dorash,” which means seek, seek, or sought, sought, that seeking, that seeking interpretation, that constantly innovating new understanding of the text is at the literal centre of a Torah Scroll. 

And so in a certain way, I'm an artist. I think of this as really central to my own Jewish identity. Judaism is an art form, and Torah is a medium, and interpretation is a paintbrush and a palette that we can use. 

And there's a beautiful line with this. There's a beautiful, beautiful Talmudic text that says, there's a verse that says, “Ein tzur keElokeinu,” there is no rock like our God. And the Talmud in Tractate Brachot says, it really, you should read it differently. You should read it as, “Ein tzayar keElokeinu,” there is no painter like our God.

Our God is creative. Our God is a Creator. And you see that God is sort of moody sometimes, and God is looking for attention for the works of Creation that He/She has created.

And there's a beautiful concept in Jewish mysticism that at Mount Sinai, God gave the paintbrush to the Jewish people and said, ’Now I want you to be the creators. I want you to interpret this tradition. You're going to own it. I'm not going to tell you what to do through prophecy at a certain point. You're going to have to figure this out using your best creative thinking, creative skills, and creative making. And you're going to be makers of this tradition in perpetuity.

That's your responsibility, and that's your power.’

Miriam: It strikes me that when we think about how to apply this to the world of education, often in education we think of innovation as something that is the opposite of tradition. Or we think of creativity as something that happens in the arts, that happens in art class, which happens on Tuesdays from 1.40 to 2.30, and then the rest of the week we're not creative, and we're certainly not creative in our Torah classes.

But what you're describing is essentially a very classic Jewish idea of chidush. We're supposed to innovate about our tradition. We're supposed to come up with new interpretations. We're supposed to be part of the midrashic conversation. We are supposed to write the next chapter of the story or paint the images, be the illustrators of that story, not just write it in the letters of the scroll. The beauty of the metaphor of the “Letter in the Scroll” is that there are so many different ways to write those letters. There's calligraphy. There's painting. We can imagine blocking those letters in lots of different ways.

I want to move us to that third element that you talked about. Part of the Jewish story is being connectors from our world and our tradition to the universal. 

And it's not always neat. Some of the work we do is very messy. You talked about some of that complication. Tell us about that third element, and then we'll close with a call to action.

Ariel: This is where we are, right? The world is in such trouble in terms of these issues of holding multiple positions, being in community with people who disagree. I'm aware that the important Jewish holiday of Thanksgiving is coming up, and a lot of people are nervous about having Thanksgiving dinner because there's that one uncle who's going to come and voted differently or whatever direction. I've heard many stories of explosive Thanksgiving dinners over the last several years.

Miriam: I've never been at one of those. 

Ariel: We needed liturgy for that. I think this is a place where we're really struggling as a society and as a human species.

There's a lot of rage, there's a lot of stridency, there's a lot of abrasive language, not only on social media but even in person, and there's a lot of echo chambers and there are a lot of reasons for this. 

But one of the contributions that Judaism is known for - and one of the central contributions - is that it is a methodology for arguing well and for dialogue and for seeking truth together in messy ways. 

And so, we have the Talmud, which always records the minority opinions. We have the celebration of questions throughout Jewish literature. We have the important call to us to say, ‘I don't know,’ which is something my grandfather told me when I was growing up a lot, in learning Torah specifically. Say, ‘I don't know.’

Learn from Rashi, who was so careful with his words and never used an extra letter in his commentary, but sometimes Rashi writes, ‘I don't know what this means.’ Why is Rashi saying that? Rashi is saying that to teach us to say, ‘I don't know.’ He's modelling that, that humility for us, that openness, that curiosity.

And so we have these tools, very practical tools, including the traditional way of studying, which is in chavruta, in a dayad, in a pair, which is often how Jews have studied throughout history - at least from a certain point on - where you're trying to destroy the other person's position from a place of love. And if you walk into many traditional study halls, batei midrash, you will see people yelling at each other. It looks like they're really angry at each other, and then they'll get up and high-five or fist-bump or hug.

They are in a shared search for truth, and they are kicking each other's butts in order to get there from a place of love. And we have ways of doing that. We have ways of asking hard questions. We don't have to retreat into our corners or become super aggressive and try to destroy the other person in an ad hominem way. 

And this is one of the things that I think about so much and work on with my students and my fellows a lot. How do we do this work? And it's not easy.

Some people are actually opposed to dialogue and coexistence work, for ideological reasons. They think that moderation is a sin. It is a sin against their kind of fanaticism.

But I think we have to reclaim, as an active, proud kind of approach, not as a concession. It's not about being nice and avoidant. We have a really robust set of tools for doing this hard work, and the world and American society really needs it right now.

Miriam: This is reminding me of the book that Rabbi Sacks published in the wake of September 11th, “The Dignity of Difference,” and the idea that we have to be able to hold those diverse opinions in one community. We have to be able to cross some of those lines, even when we have very deep cultural distinctions and differences. But crossing those differences is the only way for humanity to survive. And he was very clear about that. 

And at the same time, and yet, to be able to speak with conviction and moral courage to be true to who you are and not have to hide who you are is the essence of the work at the same time. You were talking about the interpersonal, and at the same time, we're also allowed to have those conversations with HaKadosh Baruch Hu, with God.

One of my favourite quotes from “A Letter in the Scroll” is that “To be a Jew is to have arguments with Heaven for the sake of Heaven.” We have to be able to work through what's hard about being human, what's hard about living in this world if we want to try to improve humanity and improve society. That's a very Jewish thing.

Ariel: It's the meaning of the word Israel. We sometimes forget. And if we're willing to argue with God, we should be willing to argue with one another in respectful ways, for the sake of the other.

And we should be willing to challenge authority and trends and consensus opinions when necessary, and it's necessary now. 

Miriam: I can't help but think of when Rav Kook, in his teaching about the Song of Songs, the fourfold song, and he flips the letters of Yisrael to Shir El. And so at a certain point, when the wrestling gets too hard, maybe we just have to live with music.

We have to try to make music, as you have always taught me. One of my favourite quotes that I always quote you, quoting Professor Wiesel, is that “When you run out of words, find a niggun.” 

Ariel: And the way that we actually engage with the letters in the Scroll on a regular basis is with song. We have to remember that every time we read the Torah in synagogue, anywhere in the world, we read it with Ta'amei HaMikra, with the trope, with the niggun, with the song, the melody. And the melody and the words together are a kind of wholeness. And it's interesting that the word for that is Ta'amei HaMikra, which means the taste, the taste of the text. To really make it tasty and bring it to life, it needs that melody. 

And one of the things Rabbi Sacks gave us was he gave us a lot of words and concepts in that translation, that elegant translation, but he also gave us a melody in listening to him speak. And it's a melody that stays with us when we hear it. It's a melody that we need and our children really need. 

Miriam: It's true. I remember having sat in his classrooms multiple times. He would always stop along the way, and even in a large group like this, he'd just kind of pause and lock eyes with someone and say, Are you with me? Are you with me? Does anyone remember that? It was just this great pedagogical tool to show you really care about the learners and you care about the audience. 

So to close, share with everyone a call to action. How can we walk away tonight? What should we be thinking about as we think about how each of us wants to be “A Letter in the Scroll” and how we are going to help our friends, our family members also be “A Letter in the Scroll”? 

Ariel: I want to share a personal thought, which is just something very much on my mind and heart these days.

We're obviously living through incredibly challenging times. Not unprecedented. There are many, many, many echoes and lessons, but each moment has its own character as well.

This is new for many of us in our generation, certainly for our children, waking up from a kind of dream of the island of sanity that we experienced here in America for many years. 

And in one respect, and in one respect only, the events of October 7th and all of the anti-Semitic incidents we've seen, including those in Amsterdam over the last days, are worse than the Holocaust. In one respect only.

And that is that all of these events are happening after the Holocaust. After ‘Never again.’ And after the world's supposed commitment to never allowing the oldest hatred to rear its head again.

It's happening again. 

And there's something profoundly unsettling and devastating about that. 

And yet, one of the things we know from reading Jewish history is that - and this has been pointed out by many historians, Jewish and non-Jewish historians, Paul Johnson writes about it, Gershom Shalom, in his study of Jewish mysticism writes about - every time the Jewish people have faced crisis and catastrophe, that has been followed by a new revelation and a new renaissance of Jewish life.

Every time. 

And so after the Destruction of the Temple in the year 70 of the Common Era, we had the creation of what we now know as Rabbinic Judaism. Judaism as we know it came from the aftermath of that perhaps-worst-of-all-disasters until the Holocaust. Perhaps.

Miriam: The Talmud, the House of Study, learning as the core of Jewish life as opposed to the Beit HaMikdash as the core of the Temple. 

Ariel: Synagogue. All the things we recognise as Judaism were invented then. After the expulsion from Spain, Gershom Shalom writes, this was the big renaissance in Jewish mysticism, the popularisation of ideas that had been hidden until then and that affected Jewish life until today.

And after the Holocaust, of course, the revelation of the State of Israel. 

Really important to say that none of these revelations in any way justify the catastrophes that preceded them. They can't. They should not. They must not.

The State of Israel does not explain or justify the Holocaust.

The popularisation of mysticism does not justify or explain or rationalise the expulsion from Spain. And even the invention of Judaism doesn't give us a rationale for the Destruction of the Temple and all the suffering that accompanied it. 

But it does tell us something really fundamental about Jewish life and what Judaism is and what Judaism does to us and for us. It's a machine for making us powerfully resilient and creative in the face of uncertainty and trauma and pain and darkness.

And we turn that darkness into light. 

We turn that suffering into song.

And that's what we do.

Now, I would much prefer it if we didn't have to have the suffering. And I don't think it's necessary for an artist to be a tortured artist to be a good artist. But this seems to be part of the shadow of Jewish eternity.

You know, the Jews have defied every law of history. It doesn't make sense that we're here. It doesn't make sense that there are Jews here,in this room or anywhere in the world.

It doesn't make any sense. There's no other example of this in human history. 

And anti-Semitism and the darkness is really a shadow of that eternity.

It also doesn't make sense. 

It's all part of some sort of story that's much bigger than human history and the rules that historians use to interpret it. 

So the simple call to action is to recognise that we are part of a story that started thousands of years ago that has defied all of the laws of history.

We're still here. We're still part of that story. It's unfolding.

And one of the beautiful things about “Letter in the Scroll” is that it makes the reality of inclusion no longer a nice thing. It's no longer a condescending nice thing that we want to include everybody. It's absolutely urgent and essential because we need every question, every idea, every story of every Jew in the world, in L.A. and Melbourne and Paris and New York and everywhere, in order to complete our Sefer Torah.

And so the call to action is learn, do more Jewish learning to become more empowered and help other people to learn, and then create and help us create the story. The main thing for all of us, I think, right now is keep going. 

Miriam: Thank you.

Ariel: Thank you, Miriam. 

Alex: How about one more warm round of applause for Dr. Stern, Rabbi Dr. Burger? 

I love Beit HaYotzer. I love the theatre of Dybbuk. It's so big. They do a Dracula, right? You guys do this weird Jewish Dracula thing.

It's very funny and interesting. There's going to be a quick... I say quick. It's eight minutes.

It's a video on the testimony to Rabbi Sacks' work and the impact of his teachings. It's burning it up on TikTok. It's a tribute to “A Letter in the Scroll.”

And then after that, there'll be a panel. And also, in the spirit of innovating, Gila is going to announce one new halacha at the end of the night. New law, different type of sha’atnez, I'm guessing, right? No black after Labour Day.

It's going to be halachically... Here's a brief video on “A Letter in the Scroll.” 

Rabbi Sacks (on video): I wrote a book called “A Letter in the Scroll” because our holiest thing is the Torah Scroll, which is the five Mosaic books handwritten, by quill on parchment, still to this day. And I think of meaning in Judaism.

It's just each of us is “A Letter in the Scroll.”

Now, all meaning is expressed in words and all words are written in letters, but a letter on its own has no meaning. So it has to combine with other letters to make a word, other words to make a sentence, other sentences to make a paragraph, and other paragraphs to make a story.

So I think Judaism, the meaningful life, the life worth living, is the life suffused with meaning. 

And I am a little element of that. But I have to join to others to make a family, and my family has to join with others to make a community, and the community has to combine with others to make a people, and that people has to connect with all previous generations to continue that story.

[Video continues, with people reading from “A Letter in the Scroll”…]

Rabbi Noah Farkas: Every Jew is a letter. 

Rabbi Pini Dunner: Each Jewish family is a word. 

Katie Schindelheim: Every community a sentence, and the Jewish people at any one time are a paragraph.

JJ Gluckman: The Jewish people throughout time constitute a story. 

Mark Feuerstein: The strangest and most moving story in the annals of mankind. 

Rabbi Noah Farkas: Rabbi Sacks, in an unparalleled way, understood the experience of the Jewish individual, what it means to walk through the world with all of the questions and uncertainty of modernity.

In a world where choice seemed infinite, in a world where words become cheap, in a world where ideas seem to be deconstructed, he understood all the questions each one of us have as we walk through and situate each and every one of us in an ancient tradition as well as a common destiny. 

[More reading…]

Eve Barlow: We have an ancient story to tell…

Rabbi Jeremy England: …but one that can never lose its impact, 

Jono Goetzman: …so long as human beings still search for meaning and relationship…

Miriam Anzovin: ...and graciousness at the heart of collective life.

Rabbi Adir Posy: So long as there are still those who see a palace in flames and wish to save it from the fire. 

Rabbi Pini Dunner: I am a Jew because knowing the story of my people, I hear their call to write the next chapter.

Eve Barlow: I did not come from nowhere. I have a past, and if any past commands anyone, this past commands me. 

Israel Bachar: I am a Jew because only if I remain a Jew will the story of a hundred generations live on in me.

Rabbi Israel Broner: I continue their journey because having come this far…

Rachelle Bracha Zarabian: …I may not let it and then fail. 

Jono Goetzman: I cannot be the missing Letter in the Scroll. 

Rabbi Pini Dunner: I can give no simpler answer, 

Israel Bachar: …nor do I know of a more powerful one.

[Not reading…]

JJ Gluckman: My “Letter in the Scroll” is ultimately how I present myself as the best Jewish version of myself to the world in everything I do. 

Rabbi Pini Dunner: I think every generation has a different letter, and every generation has a different paragraph. He hints at it.

Mark Feuerstein: We believe in leDor vaDor, from generation to generation. In every one of us is a world. 

Israel Bachar: Our role is to pass for the next generation a better understanding of the Torah and the relevance of the Torah to our daily modern life. 

[Back to reading…]

Jono Goetzman: I'm a Jew because I cherish the Torah…

Rabbi Jeremy England: …knowing that God is to be found not in natural forces, 

Israel Bachar: …but in moral meanings, in words, text, teaching and commands, 

Rabbi Adir Posy: …and because Jews, though they lacked all else, 

Eylon Levy: ...never ceased to value education as a sacred task, endowing the individual with dignity and depth.

Zack: I am a Jew because, being a child of my people, 

Rosa: …I have heard the call to add my chapter to its unfinished story.

Ezra: I am a stage on its journey, a connecting link between the generations. 

[Not reading…]

Natan Sharansky: Rabbi Sacks was a great friend. He was also a great teacher of all of us, of all the Jewish people.

And he taught not only about Judaism, about the role of Judaism. If we want to continue making this world a better place, we have to stick to our identity, to be “A Letter in the Scroll.”

[Back to reading…]

Rabbi David Stein: This, then, is our story, our gift to the next generation.

Natalie: I received it from my parents, and they from theirs, across great expanses of space and time. 

Miya: There's nothing quite like it. It changed, and today it still challenges the moral imagination of mankind.

Judah: I want to say to my children, take it, cherish it, learn to understand and to love it. 

Maya: Carry it, and it will carry you. 

Dr. Sheila Keiter: And may you, in turn, pass it on to your children.

Rabbi David Stein: For you are a member of an eternal people, a letter in their scroll. Let their eternity live on in you. 

[Not reading…]

The message that Rabbi Sacks delivered, is that we are a people who understood from its very first moments that education is the secret to our survival.

Rabbi Adir Posy: The way we add a letter to the scroll is figuring out some unique nugget of goodness, of knowledge, of inspiration that inspired us, and we then inspire others. 

So to the extent that we can learn and then teach, we have been able to add our letter to that scroll.

[Back to reading…] 

Israel Bachar: I am proud to belong to the people Israel, whose name means, 

Rabbi Pini Dunner: …one who wrestles with God and with man and prevails.

Eve Barlow: For though we have loved humanity, we have never stopped wrestling with it.

Elisheva Rishon: Challenging the idols of every age,

Israel Bachar: …and though we have loved God with an everlasting love, we have never stopped wrestling with Him, 

Rabbi Pini Dunner: …nor He with us. 

[Not reading…]

He had this idea that because there was a great particularity about Jews, and that we were the unique chosen people of God, that we had a universal message for all of mankind.

Elisheva Rishon: The purpose of a Jew is that we were chosen to make the world a better place. It doesn't mean that we are more special than anyone else, it means that we have the burden to bring light into this world, and that is our true purpose. 

Gila Muskin Block: We have this opportunity, this unique opportunity, to use what we have been taught to help make this world a better place, and if we don't do it, who will? 

Rabbi Pini Dunner: And all the hopes of humanity throughout time - no war, no destruction, we are all coming together, and our letter in the scroll is each of us making sure that that happens, sooner rather than later.

[End of video]

Alex: We are going to invite everyone who is silenced during that audio-visual gaffe on stage to repeat... There is a way to watch it online, and we'll figure it out by the end. 

So there is an entertainers’ panel. The scholar Kanye West insists that Jews run Hollywood.

Here are four examples. 

The moderator of this... I'm not going to list everybody's credits, I think it's unseemly. The moderator of this is Jonathan Prince, who has run “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” and is a really beloved and respected television writer. Jonathan, please come up. 

Leslie Schapira, who is a really dear friend of mine. I think it's more salubrious than any television credit.

The producer, the wonderful producer, and I'd say activist for peace, Peter Samuelson, and Jonathan very tactlessly asked that I join as well. So if you're sick of me, bad luck. All right, the entertainers’ panel.

It will be quick. 

Jonathan: Join us. Excuse me, I lost my voice. Cheering for the Dodgers at Temple Beth Chavez Ravine. My house of worship. 

Hello, all.

So Alex said that joke about Jews run Hollywood, and a lot of us hear it from our friends. Why aren't there more stories about Jews if the Jews run Hollywood? There's a good book, by the way, Neil Gabler wrote a book called “An Empire of Their Own, How the Jews Invented Hollywood.” It's an extraordinarily good book, and it was ignored when they opened the academy here in town.

But before we start, just a quick connection. Peter, Leslie, your connection to “Letter in the Scroll,” or Jonathan Sacks, Peter, you start. 

Peter: I think I may have met the young man who later was Rabbi Sacks before anyone else in this room possibly, because I met him in 1958.

I was seven, he was ten. We were among a small number of Jewish kids at St. Mary's Primary School in Finchley, Northwest London. And my contemporary, who I was close to, was Brian, the younger brother.

And I remember his heroic status when he came to school on a Monday morning wearing what looked like a Sikh turban. And we said, what on earth is that? And he said, “I was davening over the Shabbat candles and I set fire to my head.” So for two months, he was there with his Sikh turban of bandages.

And yeah, there we were. There was a Jewish quota enforced by the headmaster, Mr. Hudson, who I remember my mother saying that she had gone with her car and an umbrella and Mr. Hudson had come out. It was raining and he looked at who had shown up with protection for the heads of the kids and he said, “You Jewish mothers, och!”

Anyway, there we were. And in later years, my parents shared a back garden gate with the Sacks family behind the Finchley Road, and the joke between the two families was if the pogrom comes up, Hampstead Grove will go in through the garden into the Sacks’ and if the pogrom comes up the Finchley Road, you'll come in to the Samuelsons. 

Jonathan: Alex, I didn't hear your connection to “Letter in the Scroll.” When did you sort of come upon this as literature or is this recent? 

No, I actually, I hate to be earnest, but Rabbi Sacks came to my shul when I was a young person. He came to Maimonides in Boston and I had always, because that's Rabbi Rav Joseph Soloveitchik’s shul and I was raised with sort of Soloveitchik Judaism which was heavy on the sort of dialectic that Rabbi Dr. Burger and Dr. Stern were talking about. 

And so he came and gave this really beautiful and accessible speech and the second part is really important because most, with due respect to anyone who might be in this room, most rabbis are not very funny and accessible, and if you wanted to find writing as I was hungry for as a young person, on Judaism that was both deeply thoughtful about the world that it existed in and had fidelity to the tradition that it came from, your options were pretty much Rabbi Soloveitchik and some of the better Aryeh Kaplan stuff.

And so there isn't a lot of it and so Rabbi Sacks' book started showing up in our house and I read it very carefully and there was one thing that stuck out at me which was I was always told that anti-Semitism was an impossible problem to solve given that it's the world's oldest hatred and given how prolific it is and its convergent evolution in different places. But Rabbi Sacks said - I'm going to misquote it here - but the best hope for it was to communicate to others what the experience of being Jewish was.

And so I've always thought that's a pretty good pretty good guide for making Jewish work that honestly tries to communicate with the experiences of being Jewish, my personal experience, and so, yeah, sorry, that's a ramble but that's a complete history. 

Jonathan: Earnest works well for you, so go with it once in a while.

Leslie: These are very difficult stories to follow. I wish I had been asked first. 

Jonathan: Yeah, when did you meet Rabbi…? 

Leslie: Well, we also went to elementary school together.

So, I'm a newer student to Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks. I am, however, deeply entrenched in the world of Jewish philanthropy and Israel advocacy and I've had the pleasure of getting to know Jonathan and Judy Friedman over the last few months as we look to combat anti-Semitism in Hollywood. And so that's why I was invited here tonight and I've really enjoyed reading his book and getting to know all of you and hearing more stories. 

Jonathan: And Leslie, maybe a little bit about how we met. Let's talk about anti-Semitism in Hollywood a little bit because I think that story gets us into what Alex was talking about which is sort of fighting anti-Semitism by presenting Jewish joy if you can, so just a little bit about how we met. 

Leslie: Absolutely, so I'll just start by saying how we came to meet. After October 7th, the Writers Guild of America refused to condemn what had happened in Israel. Every major Hollywood union said something, the Writers Guild was ironically at a loss for words. 

There were a few of us who came together in different ways - I sort of joke it was like loss, we don't really know how we ended up on this specific island together - but all of a sudden there were these Zooms happening where there were a collection of writers talking about what are we going to do, what are we going to do in the guild what are we going to do in terms of this problem in Hollywood at large. And so we've I think accomplished some major things, including a Jewish writers committee at the WGA, other Jewish committees at the other unions and now an umbrella organisation called EAFA, the Entertainment Alliance to Fight Anti-Semitism,and I think it really speaks to what the Rabbi talks about in terms of the collective, what can we do together and finding that moral connectedness. 

Jonathan: And this Jewish committee there were other committees for other groups, correct?, at the Writers Guild? 

Leslie: Yes, for every other group.

Jonathan: Right, so gay and lesbian, black, hispanic, by the way all good, but there was no Jewish committee intentionally.

Leslie: Yeah, I mean I think for a long time Jews in Hollywood wanted to hide, they didn't really feel that they wanted to express or show any sort of Jewish pride. And it's actually one of my favourite quotes in the book is when Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks talks about how many Jews feel that being Jewish is quite ordinary but when you look at what we accomplished together it's quite extraordinary.

And I think that speaks to a lot of Jews in Hollywood. We're very - I don't want to use the word ashamed - but it's just not the first thing that we come out with, and I think that it's quite ironic when you think about how it can actually really inspire the stories that we tell and who we are. But for a very long time - I think maybe the tides are turning a bit now - but for a very long time I think Hollywood Jews have really put their identity in a corner. 

Jonathan: So let's talk about…. Alex brought up the notion of fighting anti-Semitism by presenting Jewish joy. Fred says “From Oy to Joy.” Alex - if you haven't seen Alex's show, it's on HBO, you should absolutely watch it. It's a spectacular way to talk about anti-Semitism in a joyful way, if such a thing is possible. Where did that come from from you, in terms of telling that story? 

Alex: You know, the truth is I've always been an anti-Semitism minimalist. What I mean is, I feel like I grew up in sort of East Coast Judaism where people saw swastikas in their crossword puzzles and I'm like, do you know how hard it is to make a crossword puzzle that's not a swastika? They should all be swastikas, it's like the easiest way to… and I was really interested in what an actual reckoning with anti-Semitism looked like, an anti-Semitism without victimhood.

And so I wrote a show that I thought would be distinctly… because that is the Judaism that I felt, which was really curious about anti-Semitism I'm very privileged to live in a world where by and large - like anti-Semitism of course is an enormous problem, we're living through a watershed moment, we're living through I joked earlier about unprecedented, it is unprecedented in my lifetime obviously, the moments of anti-Semitism we're living through now is ridiculous - but my understanding of anti-Semitism, I wanted to ask more interesting questions about it. So I wrote this show about going to a meeting of anti-Semites because I was really curious about it, and I've gone and people ask if I did it for material I went to go see Farrakhan speak a few months ago not for material, just curious to see it. I was the only white person in a room of like 13,000… people kept asking me where the bathroom was they thought I worked there - but I'm curious about - like I think every good bit of live theatre asks a question, which is what is our place in the world which is a question that really great writing about Judaism and Jewish identity asks, and of course came up in the earlier panel.

And so, I think examining, I thought it was a really good prism, this show might be a really good prism through which to examine that, and then I was surprised to find - I might keep this answer short. I thought it was a really good prism. It resonated with people who weren't Jewish, because people who weren't Jewish saw through that when it was divorced from specific victimhood, people saw their Greek identity through it they saw their Asian identity, through it they saw their identity as a Welsh person or an Australian or…

Someone came up to me and said that show felt like it was just for me because I'm from a family of musicians and I always wondered if it should mean more to me. And I was like, all right it's been a fascinating, wonderful, edifying experience.

Jonathan: Alex, as a content creator and performer you have some control over what you do.

Leslie, you get hired to be a writer more often than not you're not yet creator on shows. Peter, in addition to being a great film producer, Peter is one of the most philanthropic people I've met in my life, but you coming up, when you came to America, did you encounter people fighting against telling Jewish stories? Did you try to tell Jewish stories? What was your experience as a film producer?

Peter: I think it's a very epic moment because of the rise of anti-Semitism from both ends of the spectrum now. I think what it is finally doing in making go away is what the Rabbi used to say in the shtetl, ‘pepepe, kinderlach, keep your head down, maybe the Cossacks won't notice us it'll be fine, don't worry, look inwards.’ And I think if there is anything good - and God knows, it's difficult to find it in the rise of this all-of-a-sudden strange epic moment of anti-Semitism - I think it's that a lot of us including those of us in Hollywood have said, you know what, it's enough! We are not going to be quiet! 

You mentioned the Writers Guild. Let me mention my organisation, the Oscars Academy, which managed to build a 300 million dollar museum on Fairfax and Wilshire, and has an exhibit for every minority interest you could possibly mention. There was only one that the combined intellectual might in planning of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had not thought of, which was possibly to even mention the contribution of the Jews to Hollywood. Which is so mind-boggling we must have been hiding in plain sight.

I do believe… 

Jonathan: And that's been rectified, right? 

Peter: oh yeah, because people said, sorry to raise this 

Jonathan: we founded the place 

Peter: You know the slide you have on the beginning of every presentation that says we recognise that we stand on the sacred lands of the Tongva Native Americans and so on and so forth, well how about let's look at the founding fathers. I do believe that one of the astonishing areas of leadership skill of Rabbi Sacks was as a storyteller. And I think one of, you know, as a filmmaker, I'm always looking for everyone else's toolkit, you know, how did he do that? How did he make me feel empathy? What is that? And I think his gift among many was for the metaphor. And if you think what is this “Letter in the Scroll,” it's a fantastic metaphor, which he then upped himself and upped himself and upped himself and made it into a very complex but riveting moment, of talking about the individual Jews and what is their relationship to Torah and Talmud and so forth.

The other one I love is that he wrote about Moses bringing down the tablets and he said so let's talk about Steve Jobs. He has two tablets, the iPad and the iPhone, what is in common between them? I, I, I, I, and then he took that concept of I, meaning the individual, going inwards, and he turned it into a whole riveting metaphor about… 

Alex: It seems pretty tangentious now that you're being honest…

Jonathan: I want to ask about, so you heard earlier in the panel about the message so we're talking about the messengers. We actually are able to create paragraphs and stories that's what we do for a living all of us. So many of the stories we see on TV portray Jewish torture, “Unorthodox” comes to mind. Being orthodox is so terrible one must run away from it, it's awful, it's the worst thing you can imagine.

There are more current stories that are being told, there's a story about a good-looking Jewish Rabbi but it's called “Nobody Wants This,” so I do find that interesting to me. Leslie, you and I have talked about that so let's talk a bit about that, have you seen “Nobody Wants This”? Very good-looking Jewish Rabbi and a cute shiksa and what happens to that romance and I was highly critical of it.

Alex: I love it. 

Jonathan: I want to hear from both of you, you can talk about your criticism. 

Leslie: I understand why it's controversial. I understand why people might be sensitive to certain messages within it. I get it. This is what I want to offer. I think that we need to take a beat and look at what these shows are giving us, and appreciate the Jewish joy that's coming through. When we think about meeting people where they're at, most of the US, most of the world really doesn't know anything about who we are - our people, our community, our history. We really need to make things as accessible and digestible as possible so I feel like with “Nobody Wants This,” it's the number one show on Netflix, about a hot Rabbi! In my opinion, I think we should take the win and not throw the baby out with the bathwater. I'm sorry, I'll wrap this up really quick because I want to get your two cents on it. 

I think that we're a very opinionated people, we're very quick to critique, but I think before we jump to any conclusions, we should ask ourselves three questions: Are the wins greater than the losses? What is the intent of the creator? In this case it's Erin Foster who has been a great voice for the Jewish people and for Israel - which is no small feat in this industry…

Jonathan: But who did convert. 

Leslie: She did convert.

Jonathan: Even though her character didn't. 

Leslie: So far. 

Alex: What’s the third thing?

Leslie: The third thing is to have realistic expectations of what writers can do because we need conflict, we need characters to be flawed, so I think, all in all, taking those three things into account, I say it's a win for our people.

Alex: Why can't it just be a personal story? I don't know that every story has to represent every person. Jews are so diverse, they're so non-monolithic. My least favourite thing in the world people go, you must love Jackie Mason. I'm aware this will not be a popular opinion in this room. I hate Jackie Mason. I hate schtick. I hate the idea that all Jews are caught in this 1970s soup tureen in the Catskills. 

I think the idea that there are different types of Jews and different types of Judaism and that people should be able to tell stories in ways that they find authentic and compelling are great and I find quibbling over who should be able to… we have real anti-Semitism problems. What you did with the Writers Guild that is a really incredible thing. I think it changes the way people can talk about Jews. I think the Academy Museum expressing something around Neil Gabler's vision - the book is amazing, it's really fun, it's really important.

Some of the problems… the conversation around anti-Semitism… we used to have great anti-Semites - Henry Ford, Walt Disney… These were anti-Semites. Now we have degraded - Kanye, Kyrie Irving 10 years ago I understand. That's actually what I'm advocating for is a better class of anti-Semites. Just kidding…

I think these questions about whether or not a thing is socially acceptable sometimes… like you said, Erin's converted to Judaism. It's like when people talk about whether or not Jews should play other Jews. It’s like…

Leslie: I think we're saying the same thing that people are being too critical of it.

Alex: 1000% 

Peter: You're both right. In the spirit of Rabbi Lord Sacks, you are both right, and the overarching truth is that what we need to do - I think - in our space, is to create opportunities for non-Jews to walk in the shoes of Jews, and to understand what it is to be Jewish. And I think we haven't got anywhere near, for example, the sudden success of the black community. One of their sudden successes is that there are now black characters where their being black has nothing to do with their role in the drama.

Jonathan: Peter, one thing I was going to talk about, many characters on television wear a cross and they don't talk about their Christianity and they don't go to church. They just happen to be wearing a cross. You don't see many people wearing a kippah and it's not a story point. You don't see the story about the guy who is a dentist and it's a sitcom and by the way, on Friday night he lights candles, but that's not what it's about. We don't brand integrate Judaism that's not a part of what we do.

I'm going to bring up one old timey story, a show called “Thirtysomething.” You're all too young but it was a really beautiful show. Ed and Marshall did this show. They did a great episode. Ken Olin played a Jewish character and he had a baby boy - actually his wife did - and she was Gentile, and they argued about whether the baby would have a bris or not. And in this episode -  -the wife says to him basically - I’m quoting it terribly - ‘You're not that Jewish. You don't go to synagogue, you don’t really identify with Jewish, so why are we having a bris? What’s the point?’

And at the end of the episode, Ken's character decides, ‘I'm going to have a bris because not having one is a statement I'm not willing to make.’

And I thought, that's good storytelling, because that, to your point, could be Greek. it could be anybody choosing to not do something. Do you know what I mean? And that's an example… It's not a Jewish story but it's about someone who happens to be Jewish. 

Alex: It is a Jewish story, like you… 

Jonathan: I'm talking about the idea. Do we have to tell stories about Jews, or can we tell stories about people who happen to be Jewish and invite people into our experience in the back door.

Alex: But Jewish stories don't have to be about Jews… One of my professors in college is a wonderful Jewish writer named Nathan Englander. He's written incredible books, plays. He wrote a book called “What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank,” that’s currently one of the short stories, a play in London. 

He always said ‘Write what you know.’ People think it means if you're a farmer, write about being a farmer, what it means is, if you know humiliation, write humiliation, if you know striving, write striving. And to me, Jewish stories are about these universal problems. Like, if you know the tension between being informed by a traditional value, and what that means when it's set against a secular world that you also feel the need to participate in, that's Jewish. If you know what it means to please your family yet also chart your own course, that’s Jewish. These stories don't need to be about a shtetl, or someone who leaves the Orthodox community.

Norman Lear, a great television producer, writer, one of my role models, a lovely man, loved to talk about how he would transmute his Jewish values… he would always say, ‘I'm just another version of somebody else,’ and if I can find a way to communicate my problem through them… there are so many great Jewish stories that don't have a single Jew in them… 

Jonathan: They used to call that ‘Write Yiddish, cast British.’

Peter: And yet, Jonathan and I are working on a project at the moment called “An Infinity of Mirrors.” It's set between 1933 and 1944, in Berlin…

Alex: Anything happen at that time? 

Peter: There were a few things going on. We are casting at the moment. Can we cast the best actress for the Jewish female lead? Or does that actress have to be Jewish? This is a never- ending… because it's multifaceted. What will the audience think? What will Netflix and HBO and whoever think? And it’s also what do we actually think? And it's also an unresolved ‘wrestle with the wokeness’ at the moment and I don't know where it will come out for us.

Jonathan: I have two things I want to bring up before we wrap up. Leslie, the generation that's not on this panel are the content creators - I call them by that term because they call themselves - on TikTok and Instagram. Stories being told by people who don't have the bosses, the bosses that we have when we create something even on Broadway, but for a studio or a buyer. What about those stories and those storytellers?

Leslie: I think Alex might be better to talk about the social media world.

Jonathan: I want your opinion as a writer who does report to bosses and have rules. Would that be good for you? Would you be excited to write something for social media that didn't have those rules and regulations?

Leslie: Absolutely. I'm always excited to write Jewish stories. And anything that talks about our people. I will actually respectfully disagree with Alex. I don't think it's enough to tell stories about Jewish values without pointing a finger at the fact that this is who we are. We are so demonised worldwide and it is so public now, especially with social media, that it's working against us. I think we need to be proud if there's a character with a Jewish value let them be a Jewish person. I don't think we need to be disguised or try to mask our identity. I think we should try to be out there and live up to our name.

Jonathan: I want to share with you guys one problem. I've been in touch with the Writers Guild of Israel. They joined us in the beginning when we did this thing about the Writers Guild of America. I've been talking to some studio partners in Israel. A very real problem that's facing Israeli writers and producers is no one will buy their shows right now. There's an embargo, unspoken, against Israeli content. That is to say these are the people who brought us “Homeland” and brought us other shows that we love, that have been adapted or we put on, they cannot sell. 

We're actually beginning to put together a business model that we've laughingly called ”The Trojan Horse,” in which we as Americans are going to work with them. We're not going to tell people where we got the idea from, because it's theirs. And we're going to try to sell their shows here in the States with them, for them. I hope it works, but imagine this is a country whose entertainment is being embargoed. I was shocked, and these… ‘Paramount Studios’ of Israel, the two women who run it, were in tears, saying we can't make a living. They won't listen to a pitch.

And I don't think… that's… unprecedented. I'm not sure that's happened, I think maybe Hitler stole some sitcoms, but I feel like this is a moment in time in which we have to stand up loudly. And I keep going back to Alex, what you said earlier. I do think it's about joyfulness and I do think it's about positivity. And I think telling stories about how hard it is to be a Jew, and how tough it is, and boy, that Holocaust was a pretty nasty time, it doesn't help us at all.

Alex: I think sometimes people misunderstand the role of comedy, which is that comedy… Everyone knows the story about King Solomon's ring. He wants a ring that reminds him… that there are… to be sombre when good things happen and to be joyful… to understand… there's a yin yang to it and it says this too shall… everyone makes some of these fancy rings and then someone comes with a simple pewter ring and it says “This too shall pass.” 

And so I always think comedy addresses this sort of marbled element of our existence. It reminds us that people ask why Jews have such a presence in comedy and have always had a presence in comedy, it's because they understand that there's joy in sad things, there's light in terrible things, and there's dark in happy things, and no one understands that. 

My favourite joke - it never gets a laugh -

Jonathan: Oh good!

Alex: Yeah, fantastic, a really nice thing to possibly close on. It's from a paper about Jewish humour right after the Holocaust, and a man dies and he goes to Heaven and meets God, and they're chatting…, and the way I always tell it is that they're in line for frozen yoghurt and the guy looks to his right and God is like, “Oh God,” and He's like, “Hi Mark,” And he’s like “Oh such a fan, thank you for your words, wonderful , absolutely… 

And God's like, “Oh it's nice to meet someone who appreciates it,” and they're waiting in line and it's a little awkward and the guy says, “God, would you like to hear a joke?”

And God says, “Sure, I love jokes.”

And the guy tells God a Holocaust joke and God says, “Oh I have to tell you I don't find that joke funny at all.”

And the guy says, “Well I guess you had to be there.”

And no one ever laughs at the joke. But there isn't a thinking person in the world who wouldn't understand that it's a great joke, right? it's a novel in one… it addresses a human perspective perfectly, and sometimes people say, ‘Oh my God, I can't believe you joke about it.’

It's too important not to joke about it.

And so this idea of Jewish joy, I think sometimes people see it as a binary. There's the suffering parts of it and there are the joyful parts of it, but the truth is, the Jewish experience is that both things are marbled into the other, right? There's Jewish joy and Jewish suffering and there's Jewish suffering and Jewish joy. 

Jonathan: And That's why Tevye says, after the pogrom, ‘You say you're the Chosen People. Once in a while could you choose somebody else?’ and I feel like that kind of humour, out of tragedy, the pogrom, it destroys the wedding.

I'm getting the sign, the red light…

Leslie, thank you, yes, three things that we need to think about about being critical, I think that's important.

Please, if you haven't seen Alex's show I'm just going to promote him. I loved what you did and it's an interesting way to look at being Jewish.

And again, I want you to look at Peter Samuelson and look not merely at the work that he's done as a filmmaker, but his philanthropic work that has everything to do with the human condition, Jews and otherwise, and I'm really proud to be your friend.

And thank you Fred for inviting us to do this panel.

Alex introduces Gila Sacks

Gila Sacks:  Thank you Alex. I'm going to disappoint you with my lack of halachic innovation but you'll bear with me because it's technically about 6am for me, so that's my get out.

So I want to talk, as many people have this evening, about stories, because as a very recent arrival to these shores, I find myself in a city of stories, in the presence of eminent storytellers who know better than anyone the power of a story - to shape how we think, what we believe, of what we dream. And this evening we're celebrating a book which is above all, to me, simply a story. One story of what it means to be a Jew.

So I want to start by asking you a question. What are the stories you have told this past year since October 7th?

Let me tell you a little of the stories that I have been told this year, within my community in London, and my wider Jewish community around the world. 

I've been told stories of tragedy and courage, and stories of Jewish unity and peoplehood, the unimaginable bravery of soldiers and ordinary women and men who gave their lives to protect others, and the strength beyond words of those they left behind. The outpouring of chesed and tzedakah, people near and far desperately wanting a way to give, and a Jewish renewal filling our synagogues and community centres, elevating our prayers, binding us together with our fellow Jews in ways we hadn't known for decades.

I have been told in sermons and speeches and articles and blogs and around my table that this is what it is to be a Jew. To face enemies on all sides but to stand tall. To be misunderstood, vilified even, by those we thought of as friends as well as enemies, and yet to be united, to stand together, give together, pray together and defend ourselves together. To see the truth and call out the truth, and not to be afraid.

We have told the story of how our history and how it's playing out once again through us. Did you notice, like I noticed this past year, how quickly and how easily from October 7th, we managed to find the prayers that spoke to the moment? Within a matter of hours of the news breaking we stood together and we sang “Acheinu” or “Esa einai,” which describe our brothers and sisters in captivity and distress and cry out for God's protection.

Did you notice, like I noticed, just how much of our siddur and our machzorim are filled with ancient prayers which could have been written today, detailing our persecution, our suffering, and those who seek to humiliate and destroy us.

It turns out we had a ready-made language for this because we've been here before. This is our story.

And when the bombs were falling from Iran just before Rosh Hashanah and I stood in tears on the London Underground texting a friend “How can this be happening?” Her reply, meant with total kindness and empathy, was, “This is our story. This is always how it goes.”

That's been the refrain around my Shabbat table this past year.

Does that story sound familiar?

You and I live on opposite sides of the world and most of us have never met, but quite a lot of you I would have imagined will have told and been told similar stories - around your dinner table, in your synagogue, on your WhatsApp groups, and perhaps, just like me, you have been at times enveloped by the texture of them. All consuming like a tallit over our head and at times trembled under the weight of them. 

This history binds me. It is a story of which I am irrefutably a part. 

As Rabbi Sacks wrote in “A Letter in the Scroll”: “Several centuries of Western thought left us with the idea that when we choose how we live we are on our own. No facts defined our obligation. No history prescribes our roles, but we are part of a story. To be a Jew now, as in the days of Moses, is to hear the call of those who came before us and know that we are guardians of their history.” We are descendants of millennia of history, a history now suddenly so visible and so personal to all of us. 

But is that really the whole story of what it is to be a Jew? Is that the story Rabbi Sacks was trying to tell us?

Let's leave that story open in front of us for a moment, and turn to a very different story, because, with serendipity, we find ourselves at perhaps a perfect moment for a very different Jewish narrative. Our origin story as a people, sandwiched as we are today, as we heard, between Parashat Lech Lecha, which we read this past Shabbat and Parashat Vayera, which we will read this coming Shabbat.

Lech Lecha, where we meet Avraham and Avraham meets God, and Vayera, where Avbraham faces his greatest challenges. 

I want to suggest that the life and the story of Avraham is in many ways the antithesis of the story we are telling ourselves today, of what it is to be a Jew. 

Let's just pull out just three features from his life to illustrate this. Firstly,where does the story begin? Lech Lecha, leave. Rather than being bound up in history, Avraham is the archetype of one who leaves history behind. God tells Avraham to leave behind everything he is and knows and begin again - “Lech Lecha, meArzecha, miMoladatecha umiBeit avicha.” God doesn't simply tell him to travel to a new destination but very specifically tells him what he has to leave behind - his land and society, his birthplace, his father's house.

Rabbi Sacks explained that these are the forces that can limit our freedom. To whom and what do we attribute - or indeed blame - for us being the people we are. We say we are shaped by our society and the norms of those around us. By our genes, by the ways we were parented and taught. We are who we are because the world around us is what it is.

So to exercise real freedom and responsibility, Avraham must leave behind all these influences and excuses. He will no longer be who he is because of history. Lech Lecha. He will go forward for himself. 

Time for the ancients, Rabbi Sacks taught, was cyclical. The ongoing cycle of nature, the ongoing struggle between the gods, the rhythm of order then chaos then order restored. The Hebrew Bible was a radical break with this concept of time. The future could be different from the past.

“VaYeilech Avraham,” and Abraham went. He moved forward and he took a different path.

Secondly, where does Avraham then go on this journey? What does he do that represents that break with the past?

Avraham's story is defined by his willingness to challenge the world as he sees it. He is in a quite extraordinary moment in Torah, personally invited by God to challenge God's justice. Shall I hide from Abraham, that which I am about to do to the people of Sodom?

And he is famously the first man to argue with God for the sake of humanity.

As described in ”A Letter in the Scroll,” in what I think are my favourite pages that my father ever wrote, “Avraham's faith began not in wonder at the world, or wonder in the divine. Not with an answer but with a question. How can there be a God and also be evil? As the Midrash tells it, ‘How can there be an owner of the palace and yet the palace be in flames?’ The faith of Avraham begins with sacred discontent and refusal to accept the world as it is.”

And thirdly, Avraham's story is a story without an ending. His story begins with a promise of children and a Land, and yet time and time again just as this promise is about to be fulfilled, the story is subverted. He has to leave the Land, and time and time again so do his descendants. He waits almost a lifetime for a child and then has to send one away and almost sacrifice the other.

His story ends without the promise fulfilled. So does the book of Genesis, so does the whole of Torah end without Moses able to enter the Land. there is no closure in Torah and nor in the many books of the prophets that follow.

Writes Rabbi Sacks, “There is no other story quite like it. It breaks all the rules of narrative form. The Hebrew Bible is a story without an ending.” 

As Avraham's life demonstrated, in Judaism we are always in the middle of a story whose ending lies in the future. We live in the ‘not yet’ of history, a people who when asked ‘Has the Messiah come?’ will always say, ‘Not yet.’ 

Why do I pull out these three features from the life of Avraham, whose stories we tell this week?

Because very simply I think this is a counter narrative of what it is to be a Jew.

This past year, as perhaps at many times in our long and hard history, we have told ourselves that to be a Jew means to carry, and to carry on, a hundred generations of history. That some things are innate in what it means to be us - that we will ultimately be alone as a people, that we will suffer but that we will keep our faith, keep our solidarity, that we will survive, Am Yisrael Chai.

And we weren't wrong when we told that story but it's only half the story. Because that is not the story of Avraham, the founder of our faith and in whose footsteps we each walk. The epitome of one who is not defined by their history, or by their society, who breaks free of the cycles of history and charts a new path. Of one who cries out and challenges the world. Of one whose story simply refuses to have a neat ending, or any ending at all.

Stories are how we become the people we are. 

Alasdair MacIntyre wrote in his classic “After Virtue,” “I can only answer the question what am I to do if I can answer the prior question of what story or stories do I find myself a part.”

And so we must ask, each of us, of what story do I find myself a part? Can the story I tell my children be large enough to encompass these two truths of what it is to be a Jew? The story of our history with its cycles of suffering and survival, and the story of our calling, which call on us to move forward - “VaYelech Avraham” - to challenge, to change reality not be subject to it.

We are a part of both stories. They are both our inheritance.

“I am a Jew,” wrote Rabbi Sacks, “Because knowing the story of my people, I hear their call to write the next chapter.”

But this past year, I sometimes worry we have spoken as if the script has already been written for us. 

So remember your chapter is not yet written.

Our history calls to us but it doesn't write our ending for us.

Only you can decide the letter you will write in our Scroll.

That is the Jewish story, lived on in us. 

Thank you. 

Closing comments