My Jewish Soul
by Anthony Gimpel
Christians Aware (Leicester, 2013) pbk. £7.50. ISBN 9781873372432
This is a most remarkable book. Since Anthony and Ann Gimpel arrived in Loughborough until now they have made a deep impact on its life. We all have become Anthony's neighbours, and he loves us as himself. The way Holocaust Memorial Day is celebrated in Loughborough's Queens Park is international and multi-faith, and concerned to address the fear, hatred and genocide to be found all over the world.
Anthony's book tells the story of the Holocaust in a terribly personal way through the lives and deaths of Anthony's family, and the fear, the denial and the lies that resulted. His descriptions are both very moving and thoroughly examined, and in the course of them Anthony has some tremendous insights. His treatment of the value, and the problems, of forgiveness, for instance. First you forgive, then you understand, he says. 'To ask Jews to forgive Christians for centuries of persecution is a big request, but it must be done.'
Really to work at finding yourself, as Anthony does, is the way – he says – also to understand others. Justice is not about apportioning blame, but about healing. We are not by ourselves able to make the world a better place, but we must always try – or, as Anthony puts it 'It is not your part to finish the world of creation AND you are not free to desist from trying.'
Prayer, for Anthony, is summed up as 'to what your heart really wants, the universe responds'. Ann and he have been practising Quakers since before they came to Loughborough, and Quaker spirituality is a deep influence in what Anthony says, how he relates to others and himself, and to his attitude towards the dogmatism that so often spoils religious thought. Spiritual experience does not prove any doctrine or text to be truer than another.
I loved his remarks about the theatre: his youthful experience of playing Shylock at school for instance. This was before he was really acknowledging his Jewish identity, but he remembers playing the part for pathos, not for venom, and insisting on that interpretation. Theatre's power and magic, he says, lies in drawing the audience into the space between the actors, (even when it's playing the Dame for a Multifaith pantomime!).
Very often in the book, Anthony re-visits topics and events again and again in his quest for understanding, approaching them from a different angle each time. It reminds me of Eastern – especially Indian – ways of thinking and reasoning.
There is one point on which I thoroughly disagree with him. He says he is a romantic. Yes. He is profoundly aware of 'an awful sadness', from which he is tempted to hide or run away. Yes. But he says of himself 'my instinct was cowardice'. To my mind, someone who is determined to face up to things, to uncover the hidden and confront the dreadful – who is terrified but who does it anyway – is probably the only truly courageous person there can be. These are the qualities necessary for nonviolence – for ahimsa, for Gandhi's satyagraha, of which I see Anthony as a faithful example.
Anthony's courage can be seen in the honest, insightful way he and his friends of Just Peace have been tackling the issue of the State of Israel and its neighbours. It is so hard not to be scared of walking into that minefield of divine claims, ideals, dreams, history, unhealed wounds and the history of oppression which turns victims into perpetrators. So hard to risk being misunderstood.
'Think globally, act locally' wrote Gandhi, and my final impression of this book is the way Anthony illustrates this in his own understanding. This book records his search for his inner soul, but (or should that be 'and') at every stage it reveals and explores a greater whole. Family, ancestry, Jewishness become the whole evolutionary process uniting all living creatures, all human beings, the State of Israel and its neighbours, the multicultural life of Loughborough, and Ann and Anthony's own personal neighbours: 'AND you shall love your neighbour as yourself.' 'To repair the world for yourself is not in your power. Your gift is to repair the world for other people' (page 58).
David Paterson is SOF Trustee and runs the Oxford SOF Group.
The book is available from the publisher: Christians Aware, 2 Saxby Street, Leicester, LE2 0ND (0116 254 0770) for £7.50 plus p. and p.