The opening verses of this week’s Torah portion (Numbers 17:1–7) are a masterpiece of the Torah’s redactor. One can read them as a cliffhanger — assuming you are unaware of the conclusion — because the weight of opposition to the leadership of Moses and Aaron was substantial, both numerically, 250 are reported, and in renown. Even when one knows the outcome, the ground opening to swallow the 250 and then a plague killing 14,700, as the torment sown among the Israelites was indeed considerable, the magnitude of the revolt is maintained.

One can also take the passage light-heartedly. There are comic elements contained within it. The protagonists who proclaim against each other, rav l’chem — “you have gone too far” — at the conclusion of their challenge and counterpoint, appear as if in a Monty Python sketch, flapping their hands at each other without laying an actual finger on the other. In addition, we have an incensed God whose punitive anger seems to be — dare we say it — switched on and off by the offering of incense.

Yet whilst some commentators understand the motivation of the challenge to be from a selfish, power-hungry bunch of notables, it would be naïve to ignore the nature of the challenge as lacking foundation. A society governed by a “holy” authoritarianism that lacks division between state and a particular religion is liable to challenge. The response is repressive, whether we understand the crushing of opposition to have been wrought by the Divine or human hand.

Moving on to our alternative Haftarah, a famous Talmudic story known as the Oven of Achnai (JT Mo’ed Katan 3:1, 81c–d; BT Bava M’tzia 59a–b). It provides the closure of any debate that society should be governed by human beings able to call on a Divine Arbiter.

Whilst one can get lost in the legalese of a dispute concerning the ritual purity or impurity of an oven, we note that the vital verse from Torah quoted by Rabbi Yehoshua is from the Torah portion, Nitzavim. We use these verses at Yom Kippur. In Nitzavim, every individual of the Israelites for all time stands with purpose and hears: “It [the Torah] is not in the heavens.”

In the words of Gwynn Kessler (The Torah: A Women’s Commentary, Post-Biblical Interpretations, Nitzavim 5, CCAR Press and Women of Reform Judaism, 2008):

“Despite miraculous evidence supporting the oven’s purity, Rabbi Yehoshua sides with the majority of the sages in declaring the oven impure. In doing so, he asserts that the Torah belongs to humanity (or at least to the Rabbis) here on earth—not ‘in the heavens.’ Miracles and even divine proclamations cannot overturn a community’s ruling. Thus the Talmud teaches that although the Torah was given by God, it remains ours to interpret.”

It remains so today. In every kehillah kedoshah — sacred community — everyone is nitzavim, the ones who stand to interpret Torah. There are those who interpret Torah through study, those through prayer and those through action; and of course many of us interpret Torah through a combination of the above.

This morning, we specifically acknowledge, thank and celebrate all those in our kehillah kedoshah who are nitzavim, standing for the purpose of actuating Torah: the mitnadvim, the volunteers and carers in our community.

I have been greatly influenced this past month or so by a book I picked up in Margate Bookshop — a big recommendation from me, both the book and the shop.

Lifeboat at the End of the World: A Volunteer’s Story, by Dominic Gregory, that I subsequently found was a Radio 4 Book of the Week, is a gem for so many reasons. I will speak more at other times about small-boat crossings, borders and refugees, which are key parts of this book about the Dungeness Lifeboat.

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution works against the tide, the trend of society. In the case of the Dungeness community, Gregory, a lifeboat volunteer himself, writes:

“Trev told me that as kids they used to slide down its banks on old fishing pallets. Back then almost everyone on Dungeness was involved with the lifeboat in some way or another. It was what they did. Nowadays hardly anyone living on the point volunteered any more. First the school closed and after that the fishing fleet all but collapsed. Since then the reactors of the nuclear power station had been commissioned then, half a century later, decommissioned; even the former mission hall — once used as chapel and bar, where locals gathered for carol-singing at Christmas — had been turned into an expensive holiday let. Dungeness had always been a hard place to survive; today was no different. Yet somehow, through it all, Stuart Adams continued to nurture his motley congregation so that the lifeboat would launch when she was needed.”

Volunteering one’s time has, for many, been worn away by the challenges many have faced in keeping — to further the metaphor — one’s own head above the water.

However, where individuals are bound in community, despite all the challenges, individualism is no match for the efficacy of community. Gregory notes a conversation with another fellow volunteer, Roger, who said:

“Fishing communities, especially net-fishing people, are essentially communal.

Most of the work is shared and co-operative. There is trust and interdependence.”

The power of community, and as Roger continues within those communities, he reflected:

“So who would need fences?”

Whilst the nature of volunteering and caring may shift over time in any community, as it has done in our own, the foundations remain the same and underpin what our kehillah kedoshah is shaped around. I would hazard that when we ask all who volunteer and care formally or informally in our community to stand up, nearly every one of you will rise. That includes those employed by the Synagogue. The mitnadvim — volunteers and carers in our community — enable us to serve you. And founded on the example of the first Rabbi of this Synagogue, we schlepp with the best!

Our investment in volunteering and caring for the community is based on our love for others and, quite rightly, on the blessing that we receive when we do so: the flush we feel when we have given of ourselves. For some it is natural, a human impulse. For others it comes through our prayers and/or study of Torah.

Still more, when we sense that the world is a little more in balance, a sense not only of social action but of Tikkun Olam, a mystical sense of acting towards the restitution of our world. This sense of the Divine in our lives is what brings the kedoshah, the holy, to our kehillah, community.

The love that we bring in community has the power to do as Roger, the volunteer lifeboatman, suggested through his community, asking the question:

“So who would need fences?”

When we share the love within our community with others, we bring something that the world needs right now: a society of communities that come together in love.

May this service of acknowledgement, gratitude and celebration bring us even closer together in love, so that in turn we have the confidence to reach out to others and feel others and other communities reaching out to us in love.

Amen

A Blessing for Our Volunteers and Carers

From Siddur Lev Chadash

Eternal God, we come before You surrounded by members of our community. With them we share our happiness, and it becomes greater; our troubles, and they become smaller. May we never be too mean to give, nor too proud to receive, for in giving and receiving we discover You, and begin to understand the meaning of life. Let us not separate ourselves from the true strength of our community: the experience and wisdom of old people, the hopes of the young, and the examples of care and courage which sustain us. Give us an open mind and a generous heart to welcome those who need us, and to admit Your presence into our daily life.

Today, as we acknowledge the huge influence and impact of volunteers and carers in our Kehillah Kedoshah, we thank God for the wisdom and skills imbued in them and their devotion and loving-kindness in exercising them to the benefit of others.

Amen