But rather than familiar keywords in the religious lexicon like chesed (lovingkindness) or tzedakah (righteousness), he wanted to produce a “more edgy” list, which ranges from aspaklaria – a rabbinic word for lens or perspective which was particularly used of prophetic vision – to safek (doubt) and tzechok (laughter). “I didn’t feel the need to write an obvious book to say that it was a good idea that we should love each other and be nice and so forth. I agree with it, I just don’t think it needs to be said again.”
As well as subjects such as community, prayer, belief, ritual and chosenness, he looks at Israel’s relations with the Palestinians and what makes a decent (“hogenet”) society.
His style is clearly influenced by the tradition of midrash with its creative wordplay and interpretation of texts and “its daring – being prepared to say things that are not just conventional and mainstream. I am very attracted to all of that.”
In one striking example, he uses an extraordinary legend involving Adam and Eve, cannibalism and a demon baby to examine how we may “swallow” the darker aspects of history. He also links attitudes to Aza (Gaza) to Azazel, the ancient ritual of the scapegoat despatched to the wilderness on Yom Kippur.
The book, he said, was “generated by a cocktail of anxiety and hope. I make the case that most works of Jewish thought that have been created over the millennia have had at their source a combination of these two.”
Two main anxieties lie at its root. The first is that while modern Judaism – Reform, Liberal, Progressive, call it what you will – might sound good in theory, in reality does it work? The belief that a sustainable Jewish life can be compatible with contemporary values “ is challenged in the times we are living through,” he said.
“Anxiety number two relates to Israel. Israel, a place where I moved to over 40 years ago and where I make my home. The Israel I came to was full of the promise of being both the land of our ancestors and a land in which we can live our highest ideals, a Jewish and democratic state, to quote the Declaration of Independence. Now the question is that can that equation hold. Can we actually hang on to both of these parts of that definition?”
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He is “not full of doom and gloom – I don’t say we are lost” but he confronts the challenges head on, believing that retention of the West Bank poses an “existential risk” to Israel’s future. Since those who have advanced settlements have done so “in the name of Judaism”, he argues in the book, this “demands a Jewish response from those who oppose it”.
His own political positions are to the left of many friends and colleagues, he acknowledges, but in Israel he believes himself freer to express himself than he might have been in a pulpit elsewhere. “I imagine if I were a congregational rabbi somewhere in the UK I would need to be a little more cautious in expressing my views,” he said.
Since his aliyah, the number of Reform congregations and rabbis ordained has grown but “there is still a good deal of political opposition. The stronger the voice of Israeli Reform… becomes, the more vigorous the resistance, the more flamboyant the rhetoric and hyperbole against us.
“But I don’t suggest we dwell on that too much, it gives too much power to the troublemakers.
“There is still another challenge we face in Israel: have we broken through the DNA of Jewish identity in Israel, do most Israeli Jews think of Reform as a legitimate option for them in their lives? I would say the answer is still not yet.”
But there are signs of its influence “peeking through”. For example, when Shimon Peres’s daughter, a member of a Reform community, said Kaddish for her father, she used a version from Progressive liturgy “which doesn’t only talk about God’s relationship to the people Israel but involving a vision of peace for all”.
In a way, he is carrying on the legacy of his father Dow, one of the most prominent Reform voices in the UK in his time as rabbi of Alyth, who died in Jerusalem four years ago: over 40 years ago, Rabbi Marmur senior published Beyond Survival, a critique of communal agendas that emphasised group survival but neglected the purpose of maintaining a Jewish way of life.
Antisemitism barely rates a mention in Living the Letters. While “troubled by it,” he said he was “also overwhelmingly bored by it, that is to say I am not prepared to make my Jewish commitments based on or in response to low expressions of bigotry by other people.” In Israel, he was more free “to get on, for better or for worse, with the business of trying to imagine what our Judaism might look like”.
His book cites Israeli thinkers like Yishai Mevorach who are little known outside academic circles. A few years ago Rabbi Marmur co-edited an anthology of American Jewish thought.: “It has often crossed my mind,” he said, “there is also a place for an anthology of Israeli Jewish thought translated into English because there is quite a lot going on in Israel both in terms of philosophy, theology, poetry and other genres that folks in the English-speaking world have just not encountered.”
Living the Letters: An Alphabet of Emerging Jewish Thought (Palgrave Macmillan) can be downloaded here
