MY SITE
Remembering5/7/2023 --by Rabbi Margaret Last week, unusually for me, I was up at dawn. It was April 25th, ANZAC day and I decided that if I wanted to get to know about Australia I should be at the 6am service in our local memorial garden. So I joined other people walking in silence and by 6am the garden was full. There were veterans, young people and children, all waiting respectfully under the stars in the darkness. The service was Christian and it took me by surprise. On Remembrance Day in Britain, although the service is basically Christian, other faiths are involved and there is a sensitivity to their presence. In Britain, whilst Remembrance Day for some is still about national identity, I think for most people now it is about remembering with sorrow ‘the pity of war’, in Wilfred Owen’s phrase. There is also a belated but growing recognition that it was not just British men who died in the World Wars but men from Africa, the Indian subcontinentand other parts of the world. ANZAC day seemed to be very much a national day, remembering specifically Australian and New Zealand troops who died in vast numbers on the first day of the attack on Gallipoli. The attack has become significant in the story that Australians tell, as exemplified by this quote from the National Museum of Australia: "On 25 April 1915 Australian soldiers landed at what is now called Anzac Cove on the Gallipoli Peninsula. For the vast majority of the 16,000 Australians and New Zealanders who landed on that day, it was their first experience of combat. By that evening, 2,000 of them had been killed or wounded. The Gallipoli campaign was a military failure. However, the traits that were shown there - bravery, ingenuity, endurance and mateship – have become enshrined as defining aspects of the Australian character." https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/gallipoli-landing I am still realising that Australia is a young country, though ancient too. The same can be said of Israel, and coincidentally, Yom HaAtzmaut, Israel Independence Day also fell last week. However, this year, the celebration felt muted. Israel is a divided country. It always has been, but that is now more evident than ever. The Israeli Government seems determined to overturn some of the checks and balances and that respect the rights of non-Jews and non-Orthodox Jews. Thousands have turned out to demonstrate and make it clear that is not the country they want to be in. The future of the country feels uncertain and it seems to be moving away from the ideal of equality for all citizens enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. I often recall the saying of the Talmud that the Second Temple was destroyed because of sinat chinam, groundless hatred. National identity is complex and changing. Britain, too, is having to redefine its identity now it no longer has an empire and it is proving a painful process, with the country turning in on itself and becoming insular and xenophobic. How we remember affects how we think about ourselves. Last week I saw one way Australia remembers. This week I have been learning about another way of remembering at Uluru, formerly known as Ayers Rock but now acknowledged as a sacred site for the First People. It has proved fascinated and thought provoking, and something I may return to.
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Leave a Reply.Rabbi Shoshana Kaminsky has been the rabbi of Beit Shalom in Adelaide, South Australia for the last sixteen years. She's very happy to be serving Birmingham Progressive Synagogue for the next three months.
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