A statement from our Principal following yesterday’s tragic events in Manchester
Read a statement from our Principal, Rabbi Professor Deborah Kahn-Harris, following yesterday’s tragic events in Manchester.
This year as we head into Sukkot, the fragility of life that we normally commemorate through the ritual act of living (or at least eating) in that most ultimate of temporary dwelling places, the sukkah, many of us will be thinking less of our ancient Israelite ancestors wandering in the desert and more about the ever present precariousness of our own lives and the situation of our hostages in Gaza.
Following yesterday’s despicable attack on Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester and the loss of life of two members of the community alongside several seriously injured, many of us will be reeling with the certainty that the worst can and did happen here in the UK. This country which is our home is not as safe this morning as it was yesterday morning. We are all feeling more vulnerable, yet again, than we once did.
At the same time on Tuesday, on Sukkot itself, we will mark two years since the terrible atrocities of 7 October 2023 and the war it has spurred. Forty-eight hostages remain, though many of them may already be dead. Thousands of other people are displaced and many innocent civilians have died. The situation remains deeply concerning and profoundly uncertain. Talk of a possible ceasefire is in the air, but, as I write these words, as yet nothing is confirmed.
The book of Ecclesiastes, which traditionally we read on Sukkot, offers us a type of wisdom – some might even say of the Existentialist variety –to help us navigate our world. That sense of existential crisis the book embodies, to me at least, speaks well to the moment in which we find ourselves. Kohelet, the narrator of the work, tells us that ‘there is nothing new under the sun’.
A sad reflection that what we are living through is part of the ever repeating cycle of human experience. Our historic moment may seem particularly cruel or challenging, but it is not unique. Yet Kohelet also reminds us that ‘A season is set for everything, a time for every experience under heaven’ [Ecc 3:1]. This passage, perhaps the best known of the book, goes on to detail the many things that happen in the world – from birth and death to weeping and laughing to silence and speech – culminating in the final verse of this section, ‘A time to love and a time to hate/a time for war and a time for peace’ [Ecc 3:8].
For this Sukkot let us do more than pray, let us work together to find a pathway to move out of the cycles of hate and war so that very soon we can move into the time for love and peace.
Rabbi Professor Deborah Kahn-Harris
Principal | Leo Baeck College