RECENT READINGS

PART ONE

FIVE DAYS IN LONDON, MAY 1940
By John Lukacs

A Sermon Review
October 18, 2002






Rabbi Edward Paul Cohn
Temple Sinai
New Orleans, Louisiana


This Sabbath I want to begin a series of sermon reviews which are based on several books I read during our annual summer retreat to the sea coast of Maine. I'm calling them "Recent Readings," and the first is a most timely book titled Five Days in London, May 1940, written by John Lukacs.

Lukacs has written extensively of the Second World War and especially of both Churchill and Hitler as they attempted to "psych" out one another and anticipate the other's next move.

What Mr. Lukacs seeks to do in Five Days in London, published in 1999 in hardback and now in paperback, is to trace the course by which, over a most critical five-day period, Churchill brought the British War Cabinet to an irrevocable "no negotiation" stance.

By no means was this decision anywhere as clear to Churchill's War Cabinet, to his fellow Conservative party members, to the King of England, or even to the British public at large, as it was to Prime Minister Churchill. You had very powerful and highly respected-thoroughly aristocratic-members of Parliament like Lord Halifax who were equally certain that, because in the spring of 1940:

Winston Churchill was convinced otherwise. His was the conclusion that any move towards negotiation would have sucked England down a road where the will to fight would have been lost and eventually terms-whatever Hitler offered-would have to be accepted. Thus, Churchill reasoned, even a tentative move toward negotiation with a monster must be stopped.

We all know how Winston Churchill, surely one of the greatest personages of the 20th century, rallied the British people in their darkest hour to stand alone against Nazi tyranny during the Blitz.

But, what Lukacs carefully documents in this wonderful book is how perilously close it all came to falling apart. Using only recently released British archival papers, he shows us how the most crucial five days in the history of western civilization occurred between May 24-29, 1940, when the appeasers within his Cabinet began pressuring Churchill to seek a negotiated settlement with Hitler. All of this, naturally, in top secret.

And, over and over again, we are made to understand how, by the sheer force of his will and personality-the character which defined the man-Churchill not only resisted, but won the struggle. The war against Nazism would now be fought, no matter what!

Mind you, Churchill had been Prime Minister for only two weeks when this critical juncture presented itself. And a man of lesser vision might well have not even realized its solemn charge until it was too late.

Moreover, Winston Churchill was profoundly disliked by many within his own government. He was discounted as a temporary Prime Minister- considered a man of unstable temperament, rhetorical and alcoholic excess, and unsound judgment. Hitler, too, underestimated Churchill's staying power and ability to unite Britain around him. Says Lukacs of Churchill:

Before 1940, it was not easy for him to be taken seriously as the man of destiny he believed himself to be. . . . . Some of his enemies often referred to hum as a "half-breed" (his mother having been American, and a woman with more than one past) or a "mongrel."

In any event, this so-called "mongrel" perceived a reality which precious few others understood-that the greatest threat to western civilization was not Communism. It was National Socialism. If only our Congress had so understood in the late 30s and early 40s! Millions of Jews might have been saved! By finally convincing the British government that his assessment was correct, by means of personal diplomacy and moral suasion, Churchill won the day.

Listen, Churchill did not win the Second World War because of those decisions of May 24-29, 1940. In the end, it took America and Russia to win the war. But, in May 1940, Winston Churchill was the one who did not lose the war. It was the strength of character embodied within Winston Churchill, and later galvanized within his government, during those five days in London which made the decision. No matter which European countries fell to the Nazis, England would now fight Hitler to its death.

Our author, John Lukacs, has written an extraordinarily well-researched and suspenseful history. And he spotlights the inevitable difference that a person of uncommon character will always make upon any given circumstance.

You know, some say character is the hardest of human attributes to define. I like this definition offered by an anonymous sage:

Character is what you are in the dark.


It seems to me that if any religious faith does not have central to its objectives the upbuilding of human character, well then, I would call that religion a fraud! Alexander Pope insists:

Know then thyself; presume not God to scan.
The proper study of mankind is man.

Our Judaism is a people's faith, not only in God but in the necessity and process of building and realizing human character. Our Judaism expects us to be restless and ill at ease with what we have and with whom we are. And it dares us to grow deeper in empathy and in character. Do you remember the famous challenge of Rabbi Hillel?

If I am not for myself, who will be?
But if I am only for myself, what am I?
And if not now, when?


The great poet Goethe believed that-

Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete our character. It is a life-long process which begins with infancy and continues to our death.


The Torah teaches us all about the growth of character when it introduces us this Sabbath to Abram. Ethan will read it to us tomorrow morning!

At 75 years of age, an unknown God speaks to Abram, urging, commanding:

Lech l'cha may artzecha,
oo-mee-moladitcha
oo-mee-beit avecha.

Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred and from thy father's house unto the land that I will show thee.

And I imagine how Abram told his wife Sara about it. And she replied- Are you kidding? We've just done the kitchen!

Well, we'll watch carefully as we read his story, and as Abram's eyes are opened to unaccustomed challenges and possibilities, to new ideas of God, and to a novel understanding of how an eternal Covenant may be entered, and a Promised Land secured.

Throughout the next weeks, we'll see just how painful, and yet how glorious it is, as the fires of hardship and testing refine Abram's character and make him Abraham-the father of a multitude and the first patriarch of the Jewish people.

Judaism teaches that we are each of us unique on the face of the earth. And just as you and I differ in our DNA and fingerprints, so do we differ in the fine features of our characters and personalities. Dick Francis writes that:

Everyone journeys through character as well as time. The person one becomes depends on the person one has been.

That's one reason I always urged our own children, and the children in our Sinai Religious School, to dare to break out of the "approved" mold, to forsake the "in" crowd, political correctness, and the conventional.  Says Emerson:

"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. . . . Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind."

Perhaps, not unlike the inspiration I received from my reading of Five Days in London, we often derive inspiration, and even permission, to grow beyond the status quo, from immersing ourselves in reading biography-in learning about others' stories and experiences.

Remember Senator Jacob Javits of New York? He was interviewed shortly before his death from Lou Gehrig's disease. Breathing with the help of a portable respirator, he was asked what sense he made of life. Javits said:

Life owes me nothing! I'm not going to stew about it, because I owe everything to life. Give love and help to others---stay busy and fill every day with goodness and care.

This was a giant among men and a great American.

Here's another story of genuine character: Miss Marion Anderson, that great contralto who helped to break the color barrier on the American stage and within the American mind. Well, a reporter once asked her what could be considered a routine question, I suppose: "What was the greatest moment of your life?"

She didn't mention the obvious high points: the acclaim of singing at the White House, or in front of the Lincoln Memorial, or receiving so many honors and awards. None of these comprised, for Marion Anderson, the greatest moment of her life. She replied to that reporter's question:

The greatest moment was the day I went home and told my mother that she would not need to take work home anymore.

The greatest moments of character, and of our lives, will always be moments of giving, not receiving.

Character cannot be counterfeited, nor can it be put on and cast off as if it were a costume. Some of us turn down character's invitation to grow-tragically, we're afraid to take a chance on realizing the bigger person we know we could, and should, become.

We're all like those who visit Independence Pass way up in the Rocky Mountains. On one side of the road is a sheer cliff, on the other, a deep, deadly fall. And usually, the path is also littered with fallen rocks.

But upon reaching this well-known spot, invariably the prudent traveler hesitates. And that's why, many years back, someone put up at Independence Pass which reads:

Oh, yes, you can! Millions have!

Character hasn't changed since Abraham's day, or, for that matter, since Churchill's. Destiny still interrupts the comfortable and the self-absorbed with an unexpected and inconvenient challenge, and an uncomfortable task. Abram faced it and left all he knew, going into the unknown. Churchill sensed that fate had brought him and prepared him to lead in dangerous times.

If we're willing to take a chance, to go the distance, to set off into the night and to say goodbye to the familiar-then, and only then, will we truly be people of character.

You can do it! Sure you can! Millions already have!


Amen.