Adina Roth – Head of Jewish Life

In one of my favourite songs from the Broadway musical Hamilton, the Schuyler sisters sing “Look around, Look around, how lucky we are to be alive right now”.

In many ways, this song speaks to the experience of the Jewish community in Australia – as new immigrants wherever we go, people tell us “you are so lucky to be here, this is the best place in the world”. In High School assembly this week, we listened to Dr Russell Groener share his personal story about growing up during Apartheid. As a ‘non-European,’ he suffered humiliation and disadvantages for being in the ‘wrong time and in the wrong place.’ We, as Jewish people, also know very well what it means to live in the wrong time and the wrong place. Unlike Dr Groener, as we live in Sydney in the early 2020s, we are faced with another kind of challenge, the complacency that comes with living a life of relative privilege and comfort. 

In this week’s Parsha we are told, Ki Tavo El Ha’aretz, when you finally come into the land that the Lord your God gives you. After enduring 40 years in the desert, with heat on our backs and calluses on our feet, running out of water, enduring the monotonous manna and wandering around in circles, we finally enter the land of Israel. From nomads, we become landowners. We grow our own grain and produce and we become rich and comfortable. It seems the Torah was worried as to what would happen to us at this time. This is because as the late Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said: “The greatest challenge is not slavery but freedom; not poverty but affluence; not danger but security; not homelessness but home”. Sacks z’l understood that when we live a life of relative comfort, we are in danger of losing our gratitude, losing a greater sense of meaning and purpose and becoming complacent. Being disconnected from our own suffering, can make it harder to connect to the suffering of others.  

As an antidote to this privilege, when we come into the land, we were given a mitzvah. The Parsha tells us that every year after we have grown our first fruits, we must take them and walk to Jerusalem and present them to the Kohen (Priest) and tell our story… “Once upon a time, our ancestors were wanderers, we came down to Egypt in a famine, we were enslaved there and it was tough-going. God took us out of Egypt and God committed to bringing us to a land flowing with milk and hone”.  As we remember this story, we offer our first fruits at the Temple as a symbol of our newfound wealth. This amazing ritual is essentially saying once you have settled, made your money and are enjoying the fruits of your efforts, remember the STORY of where you come from, remember that it was not always easy for you and your people, remember your suffering and be grateful for where you are. Remembering our story, is an antidote to complacency!

I sat with an uncle of mine on a beach this past weekend and we spoke about the Australian story. For many of us, it’s a story that starts with coming from another place, often as refugees, to make this place our home. There are people indigenous to Australia with other stories, stories of losing their homes and being dispossessed of their culture. If we scratch a little deeper, we find that we all have a story, and if we can wonder, what’s my story of how I got here, and then be curious, what’s your story and yours and yours… we are reminded that life isn’t always about privilege and comfort. This remembering helps us sculpt lives that are driven by gratitude, humility, meaning-making and justice-seeking.

When we can do this, our lives can be infused with gratitude and spiritual riches. Then we will truly be able to sing, “Look around, Look around, how lucky we are to be alive right now.”

Shabbat Shalom