Reviewed by Rabbi Dr Raymond Apple
Emeritus Rabbi of the Great Synagogue, Sydney

One of the best known Jewish photos of the 20th century shows a little boy of eight wearing a beret and a grin. The boy is Lulek, the son of a Polish rabbi, Moshe Chaim Lau. Against all odds, Lulek survived the Holocaust under the protection of his older brother Naphtali (Tulek), who brought him to mandatory Palestine and saw him rise to greatness as Israel’s chief rabbi.

Lulek had little enough to grin about in 1945 – no parents, no home, no idea of what the future would bring. He could not read or write. The Bible says, “And the child was a child”. Lulek was a little boy who had hardly had a chance to be a child. To this day he is scared of trains, boots and dogs, and of anyone screaming “Schnell! Faster!”

There was a Russian prisoner called Feodor who made earmuffs for the little boy in the camps, stole potatoes and made soup for him. Not till 2008 did Rabbi Lau discover that Feodor’s two daughters were still alive in Russia; the rabbi arranged for them to visit him in Israel and he nominated the Russian as one of the Righteous Among the Nations.

Rabbi Lau is now one of the greatest exemplars of the long roll-call of Jewish genius. Those who knew his father testify that his son shares his amazing gift of eloquence. Australia has vivid memories of Rabbi Lau’s spellbinding addresses in its midst and can hardly believe that his mastery of English came out of his efforts as an adult to learn the language. In Israel of course he is admired as a lucid, inspiring expositor in Hebrew.

The harrowing wartime story of Lulek cannot be encapsulated in a few sentences for the purpose of a review. One has to read the book, sometimes over and over again, and to stop trying to hold the tears back. The early days in Eretz Yisra’el also cannot be encapsulated, though this time the rabbi has re-evoked his eight-year-old grin as he recalls learning to be a child and recounts episodes that are not without their droll humour.

Rabbi Lau disarmingly assures us that the book is not an autobiography and does not attempt to document his distinguished rabbinical career, starting in a poor district of Tel Aviv and reaching its inexorable culmination as Israel’s Ashkenazi chief rabbi, chairman of Yad VaShem, and holder of the Israel Prize and the French Legion of Honour.

It is not only Shimon Peres and Elie Wiesel, distinguished friends who have written forewords to the book, who have met and been influenced by the author. His path has crossed those of monarchs, popes and presidents, and played a sometimes crucial role in the events of modern history. Israelis – even those who have no time for God, the Bible or Jewish observance – secretly or openly admit that they respect Judaism more because of Rav Lau.

Lulek has come home.

Everyone should read his book.

A. This is an urban myth that I have been hearing for years.

It is certainly the case that according to the Torah, a person should not have tattoos made in his or her skin (Lev.19:28), but tattoos do not prevent a Jewish burial. When recently asked whether a person with a tattoo could have a Jewish burial, I answered, “Only if they were dead!”

Obviously an obscene or idolatrous tattoo can be a great embarrassment while the person is still alive and every reasonable means should be sought to remove it. At the very least it should, if retained, be kept covered up by your clothing.

All this shows how important it is not to get involved with tattoos from the start. In a sense it is a reflection of the verse in the Ten Commandments about visiting the sins of the fathers on the children; in this case it is the actions of a person at one stage in their life affecting them in later years. There’s a good rule of prudence not to do something today that you might regret tomorrow.

A. I was always taught that Moses was punished for what seems like a relatively minor sin because everyone was watching, and there is a principle of “noblesse oblige”.

What this means in modern terms is that orthodox people ought to be extra careful and scrupulous to ensure that no-one can criticise them. Every time that someone with an orthodox beard or hat is deemed to have acted unethically, it damages the reputation of the whole of orthodoxy, and by extension the whole Torah community, so that people say, “If this is religion, it’s no wonder I don’t want it!”

I can’t judge whether the Israeli government, the media and the public are ganging up against ultra-orthodoxy, but if the charedim have that perception they have to be so squeaky clean that no-one can point a finger at them. The Bible says of the Torah (Prov. 3:17), d’racheha dar’chei no’am v’chol n’tivoteha shalom, “Its ways are ways of pleasantness and all its paths are peace” – and giving an example of this principle is the best way to give orthodoxy a good name.

Israelites crossing the sea, from the Venice Haggadah, 1609

Maybe she didn’t see with her eyes but with her mind, and she perceived more than Ezekiel did. Impossible, you say? Did she have a better mind than Ezekiel… or Isaiah, or Jeremiah?

Maybe this isn’t what the Midrash is saying at all. It is telling us that the maidservant did not see ideas or arguments, but real facts.

There are two ways to God. Those who work with the intellect see (or perceive) the arguments for the existence and presence of the Divine; the maidservant encountered Him, not as an entity or Presence but as a caring reality. For her the question was not so much, “Does God exist?” but “Does He care?”

Manna was really a magnificent miracle. For forty years it sustained the Israelites in the desert. Not for a day did God leave us to be hungry (though the ungrateful people complained nonetheless). This must be one of the things that the Amidah has in mind when it thanks God for the miracles “which are with us every day, evening, morning and noon”. But can there not be a symbol somewhere to remind us of the miracle?

In truth there is. Think of the two challot that have pride of place on the Shabbat table – a weekly reminder that on the sixth day of each week the Israelites collected a double portion of manna, one for Friday and one for Shabbat. And the challot are covered before being cut and eaten, recalling the layer of dew that covered the manna each day and kept it fresh, though this is not the only explanation for the challah cover.

We appreciate the logic in the choice of this month, but we often fail to notice that the command to place Nisan on a pedestal and celebrate the redemption of the Israelite slaves was given whilst they were still in Egypt in a state of bondage. The Exodus event had not yet happened, but they were already told to celebrate it. It is not simply that the slavery was visibly winding down and the people’s release was inevitable.

The Torah was not just thinking pragmatically but spiritually. Its message was one of faith: “Know that God has heard your cries and will redeem you and protect you!”

It would be a terrible anticlimax if the time of bondage came to an end and the people were left to pick themselves up and fend for themselves. There was a Divine promise: they would march boldly out of Egypt, cross the sea and move into the future with the Almighty smiling upon them and holding their hands.

According to the Midrash (Ex. Rabbah 19:6), it was like a king who arranged a banquet for his friends and told his servants, “Unless the invited guests show my seal on the invitation card, they cannot enter”. Thus God said to the Israelites, “Unless you possess the sign of Israelite identity you cannot eat my paschal lamb”.

The Midrash goes on to say that the uncircumcised elements who accompanied the Israelites immediately sought to be circumcised, and God took each one, kissed him and blessed him. One could suggest that whenever there is a party everyone wants to be there, and that’s how to explain the whole episode.

But the Midrash is probably saying something much more serious, that being Jewish brings with it both agonies and ecstasies. People who did not go through the times of suffering cannot hope to enjoy the times of fulfilment. It seems something like the Biblical law of the Sabbath (Ex. 20): “Six days shall you labour and do all your work, and (if you have carried that out) the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God”.

There are, for example, many well-intentioned Christians who say they would like to take part in a Jewish Passover celebration and of course we admire their good will, but a person who has not lived through Jewish history cannot possibly really appreciate the full spirit and meaning of the Seder celebration.

A. These are some principles that I would propose:
1. Synagogues should not ask members about their sexuality.

2. They should not debar a homosexual from being a member, or from being counted to a minyan or receiving an Aliyah.

3. They should however object if a person uses synagogue involvement in order to make a statement or promote a militant cause.

Jewish teaching prohibits many kinds of activity but it still expects the people concerned to participate in and maintain Jewish observance. It deals with acts, not ideations; people’s minds think of many forbidden things but what creates a problem is if they act upon the thoughts.

It is concerned at any form of sexual (including heterosexual) obsession, and indeed at all forms of obsession (including money, status and violence). It is also concerned at any form of selfishness and self-centredness; it sees (heterosexual) marriage as balancing the self and the other, and using this balance to construct the future.

A. Judaism has always had its priests, poets, prophets and pedagogues, its masters and mystics, saints and sages, charismatics and characters. The destruction of the Temple replaced the kohen (priest) with the sage, later called the rabbi.

Some rabbis were also kohanim or poets. Some had a prophet-like quality. But their chief characteristic was not lineage but learning, not poetry but pedagog.

Rabbinic ordination, s’michah, the “laying on of hands”, linked every rabbi with Moses, the first rabbi. The original s’michah lapsed, but the rabbi was the scholar in residence, the student, the teacher, the exemplar of Torah.

At first rabbis did not take a salary. They were scholars who followed a range of trades and professions. Hillel was a woodcutter. Shammai a builder. There were blacksmiths, bootmakers and even a gladiator. Only in the 15th century did a salaried rabbinate develop as a reluctant concession to the conditions, but the rabbinic emphasis was still academic. Rabbis were scholars and teachers, writers and judges. Few were preachers in the modern sense.

With the 18th century came a new type, the Chassidic tzaddik. The masses in Europe felt alienated by rabbinic intellectually. They needed motivators and inspirers. There was a tug-of-war between rabbis and tzaddikim and their respective followers, until a modus vivendi recognised that both were imperiled by the same Haskalah.

About a century later, German Jewry developed the Rabbiner, moulded both by traditional texts and the modern intellectual challenge. Anglo-Jewry for its part created the minister, usually called Reverend. He looked, dressed and acted like a pastor. He had preaching and pastoral skills, but he often lacked halachic knowledge.

The post-Holocaust era has seen a resurgence of halachic study as the keynote of rabbinic leadership. In some circles, this is unaccompanied by general education, but usually the rabbi learns to unite the terminology of the Talmudic text with the idiom of the modern intellectual. In many cases the rabbi is also a minister, but the rabbi prefers to be a rav, and the community is thirstier than ever before for the tradition to which the rabbi is the key.

There were times when you could not recognise the rabbi from his appearance. He looked, dressed and acted like a pastor. A beard is still not the universal adornment of every rabbi. Nor does black have to be the dominant colour of his garments or hat.

So how do you recognise a rabbi? There is a Hebrew phrase, tzurat harav, “the shape of a rabbi”. In some cases it is a physical, visible characteristic. More important is the moral tzurat harav, the rabbi who earns respect for Torah by his integrity and way of the life, and the intellectual tzurah, the rabbi who knows who does not know it all, the rabbi who may be learned but, more importantly, is constantly learning – a Talmid chacham, not a finished product.

Moses & Pharaoh's magicians (Gerard Hoet, 1728)

In the end, as we all know, the magicians had to give up the struggle, told the king that they were battling a higher power (“It must be the finger of God!”: Ex.8:15) and the plagues took their course.

An ancient contest, but history repeats itself in the idiom of every generation. Our version is the battle between character and charisma, between logic and magnetism.

In a synagogue I knew they rejected an applicant for the post of chazzan, not because he was insufficiently pious or learned or could not sing, but because a different candidate had more television presence. What have we come to if we want the magicians more than Moses?