22 October 2022

Praying for World Peace and with USPG:
Saturday 22 October 2022

A prayer for peace in the Chapel of John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford … the Week of Prayer for World Peace invites prayers today on the theme of ‘Humanitarian Response’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Before today gets busy, I am taking some time this morning for reading, prayer and reflection.

This year, the Week of Prayer for World Peace is from 16 to 23 October. In my prayer diary from last Sunday until tomorrow, I am reflecting in these ways:

1, One of the readings for the morning;

2, A reflection from the programme for the Week of Prayer for World Peace (16 to 23 October);

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary, ‘Pray with the World Church.’

‘A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard’ (Luke 13: 6) … a fruiting fig tree near the ruins of Saint Mary Magdalene Church, Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Luke 13: 1-9 (NRSVA):

1 At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2 He asked them, ‘Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? 3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. 4 Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them – do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? 5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.’

6 Then he told this parable: ‘A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. 7 So he said to the gardener, “See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?” 8 He replied, “Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig round it and put manure on it. 9 If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down”.’

The Week of Prayer for World Peace takes place this year from Sunday 16 October 2022 to Sunday 23 October 2022

Week of Prayer for World Peace 2022, Day 7:

The week of Prayer for World Peace takes place from the second to third Sunday in October each year, which this year is from last Sunday (Sunday 16 October 2022) to tomorrow (Sunday 23 October 2022).

The Week of Prayer for World Peace is supported by a wide range of organisations, many of which I have engaged with over the years, including the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship, Christian CND, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Pax Christi, and Quaker Peace and Social Witness.

Day 7: Humanitarian Response:

We give thanks and pray for all those individuals and agencies that work to alleviate the sufferings of war.

‘May all beings everywhere plagued with sufferings of body and mind quickly be freed from their illnesses.
‘May those frightened cease to be afraid, and may those bound be free.
‘May the powerless find power, and may people think of befriending one another.
‘May those who find themselves in trackless, fearful wildernesses – the children, the aged, the unprotected – be guarded by beneficent celestials, and may they swiftly attain Buddhahood.’
– Unknown Buddhist saying

‘Be generous in prosperity, and thankful in adversity.
Be fair in thy judgment, and guarded in thy speech.
Be a lamp unto those who walk in darkness, and a home to the stranger.

‘Be eyes to the blind, and a guiding light unto the feet of the erring. ‘Be a breath of life to the body of humankind, a dew to the soil of the human heart, and a fruit upon the tree of humility.’
– Baha’u’llah’s words, Bahá’í faith

‘Allah, Most Merciful, Most Generous, please give us the patience to continue to learn from one another and work towards a more peaceful and kind world.
‘Make true in our nation the ideas of freedom and justice and brotherhood for all those who live for them.
‘Make our hearts generous so that we may treat others as we wish to be treated ourselves.
‘Help us to share that which we have with others, for your sake.
‘Strengthen us, love us and be kind to us all.’
– Adapted for a Muslim prayer for the nation

Prayers for Peace in Coventry Cathedral … the Week of Prayer for World Peace invites prayers today on the theme of ‘Humanitarian Response’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Today’s Prayer (Saturday 22 October 2022):

The Collect:

Almighty and everlasting God,
increase in us your gift of faith
that, forsaking what lies behind
and reaching out to that which is before,
we may run the way of your commandments
and win the crown of everlasting joy;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

We praise and thank you, O Christ, for this sacred feast:
for here we receive you,
here the memory of your passion is renewed,
here our minds are filled with grace,
and here a pledge of future glory is given,
when we shall feast at that table where you reign
with all your saints for ever.

The theme in the USPG Prayer Diary this week has been ‘World Food Day.’ This theme was introduced last Sunday.

The USPG Prayer Diary invites us to pray today in these words:

We give thanks for schools which offer free and healthy food to children who would otherwise go hungry. May we support them in their service to the local community.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

‘May those frightened cease to be afraid, and may those bound be free’ (Unknown Buddhist saying) … Buddhist monks taking part in the Lichfield Peace Walk along Cross in Hand Lane (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

1,000 peace cranes, a gift from the children of Hiroshima, in the Chapel of Unity, Coventry Cathedral … a reminder that we need to work to abolish all nuclear weapons (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

‘Jews in Their Own Words’:
chilling true stories of
antisemitism in Britain

Jonathan Freedland’s play, ‘Jews In Their Own Words’, is coming to its end at the Royal Court in London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Patrick Comerford

Jonathan Freedland’s verbatim play about antisemitism, Jews. In Their Own Words is coming to its end at the Royal Court in London. This drama about antisemitism was inspired by a play last year in which Hershel Fink is an avaricious billionaire in the play Rare Earth Mettle and has a Jewish-sounding name.

In this play, the Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland examines antisemitism inside liberal institutions from the theatre to the political left and shows how unconscious bigotries continue to be harboured among people who regard themselves as enlightened and anti-racist.

The play is directed by Vicky Featherstone and Audrey Sheffield, and its songs and wry jokes are underpinned by a serious inquiry into how it is that this most ancient form of hate still persists.

In his research, Jonathan Freedland compiled 180,000 words drawn from interviews with eminent Jewish figures – including Margaret Hodge, Howard Jacobson and Tracy-Ann Oberman – and Jews who are everyday members of British society. Their powerful accounts are brought on stage by seven alternating actors.

Britain’s Jewish minority numbers somewhere between 260,000 and 290,000 people. But the stories of those 12 British Jews are representative and painful. They recount the origins of antisemitic tropes and myths, including the moneylending Jew and blood libel.

The characters speak of their life experiences, such as a swastika etched into a family car, growing up in Iraq listening to radio dramas with offensive Jewish stereotypes, and abuse in schools, taxis and the workplaces.

The text is verbatim: although the words are spoken by actors, they are drawn entirely from interviews. They include social worker Victoria Hart, the Labour MP Margaret Hodge, a doctor Tammy Rothenberg, political journalist Stephen Bush, painter and decorator Phillip Abrahams, novelist Howard Jacobson, and former student leader Hannah Rose. An ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jew recalls the day he was violently beaten on an English street.

The play focuses on left-wing antisemitism too and how it has it has spread beyond party politics. Jonathan Freedland has written in the Guardian how 86% of British Jews regarded Jeremy Corbyn as antisemitic, according to a study in 2018, with just 8% disagreeing.

Margaret Hodge (played by Debbie Chazen) and the former Labour shadow minister Luciana Berger (Louisa Clein) recall their experiences of inaction and obfuscation and of misogyny and antisemitism on social media. Margaret Hodge tells how her father advised her always to keep a packed suitcase by the front door.

Stephen Bush (Billy Ashcroft) speaks of the liberal left’s characteristic suspicion of money and power, a loaded association given long-held antisemitic conspiracy theories around Jews running the media and holding all wealth and power.

Other characters say they are constantly asked for their responses to the conflict in the Middle East. People who attended Caryl Churchill’s play, Seven Jewish Children, written shortly after Israel’s bombing of Gaza in which more than 200 Palestinian children were killed, and how they felt the audience was being encouraged to boo the Jews.

‘Criticise what you want – the prime minister, the settlements policy, this war, this military strategy,’ says one character. ‘Most Jews would agree with you. But don’t do it in a way which criticises the Jewishness of Israel.’

There is also an powerful look at inherited trauma and the legacy of the Holocaust. Dr Tammy Rothenberg spoke of the ‘inherited trauma’ from the Holocaust, and many others spoke of the psychological mark it made on them.

One person recalls the day a colleague, a proudly antiracist social worker, told of her reluctance to help a Jewish woman in need. She was sure the woman concerned had money, but was hiding it: ‘I know she must be lying because they’ve all got money.’

Many Jews hesitate before disclosing that they are Jewish, wary of the response. They think hard before doing so, weighing up the risks.

The 12 conversations confirm how much British Jewry remains a community of immigrants or the descendants of immigrants.

The Turkish-born actor Hemi Yeroham notes how we seldom hear stories like his – of non-Ashkenazi, non-European Jews: ‘Most Jewish theatre is around Ashkenazi culture. The Mizrachi or Sephardi part of the Jewish story is almost non-existent.’

Jonathan Freedland has written in the Guardian how antisemites carry with them an imagined version of ‘the Jew.’ It might be a renaissance painting of Judas Iscariot, his purse bulging with silver, or it could be the supposed string-pullers of the house of Rothschild. It might be Shakespeare’s miser Shylock or Dickens’s miser Fagin. It might be the alien lizards imagined by David Icke or the wicked manipulators of weather, wielding their ‘Jewish space-laser’, concocted by the Republican congress member Marjorie Taylor-Greene.

‘The fantasies about Jews adapt to each age, and can find a home on the right and left. But the presence of these fantastical, diabolic Jews in the global imagination – often embedded so deep in the culture that we hardly notice them – is a constant.’ And the impact is felt by real Jews trying to live real lives.

The voices in this play need to be heard long after it ends its staging at the Royal Court Theatre.

Shabbat Shalom

The voices in Jonathan Freedland’s verbatim play need to be heard long after it ends its staging at the Royal Court Theatre (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)