Death... and Life

My thoughts in this entry are on death and dying for two reasons. I have attended commemorations to mark the Holocaust, and next month the Dying Matters Coalition will promote greater national awareness of the needs of patients requiring palliative care.

The Mayor of London hosted a touching ceremony at City Hall. On display were violins that had been retrieved from the concentration camps and carefully restored. When played, they brought to life a message of hope for that lost generation, as well as our own.

The Holocaust message is universal and it crosses generations. At Northwood's commemoration, our rabbi, Hillel Athias Robles, spoke of a "factory of murder".

For progressives, tradition rather than modernity was subject to scrutiny. Looking back on the past century, and looking ahead, I think that modernity will become more of a problem. Modernity produces great advances but also unprecedented evil. Humanity has always had tools, but we now have the technology to enslave and destroy on a vast scale. Some of this technology is visible, but much of it is imperceptible and all the more powerful.

Nothing compares with the Holocaust or other genocides since. But the systematic and almost robotic nature of the killing gives us pause for thought about small and pervasive ways modernity cuts us off from one another. And gradually dehumanises our response so that we too, now, ignore the suffering of others.

Liberal Judaism supports the Dying Matters Coalition because in confronting issues about death and dying, it can appreciate all the more what makes life and living special. Understanding the suffering of others connects us, and is the ultimate engagement. Judaism has always valued the life-cycle, and the responsibility that each generation has for another. In recent years we have rightly seen growing importance attached to sustainable communities. We increasingly face a challenge in promoting caring communities.

Rabbi Alexandra Wright led the first ever community blessing at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue. It was a joyful experience to watch twenty children being blessed. The children, who range in age from a few months all the way to seven years old, were given for the first time their Hebrew names. Speaking to students after World War 1, Leo Baeck recalled the teachers and students who had died, and listed their achievements. But his final words were put to the students who had survived, "An earth goes, and an earth comes, but the generations of mankind endure for ever."