On the Death of the Queen

 

These are days when Jews in the UK become aware of what it means to be hyphenated Jews. We are part of that strange phenomenon known as ‘Anglo-Jewry’; we send representatives to the ‘Board of Deputies of British Jews’. In other words, we are hybrids: our sense of ourselves is multiple. This must surely be true of other minority groups, and indeed anyone who feels the pull of other allegiances – to culture, ethnicity, gender, birthplace, language - within themselves.  But here I can only speak of what I am familiar with: an awareness of living in two parallel realities, one Jewish and one deeply connected to the country in which I was born, raised and educated and where I have lived all my life – a life almost exactly overlapping the years in which Queen Elizabeth II was on the throne.

As we begin to feel our way into this transition in national life, it is as if the ‘British’ aspect of ourselves as Jews comes to the fore and although there are plenty of republicans amongst the Jewish community, many UK Jews have a deep and abiding affection for the institution of monarchy (however problematic or intellectually indefensible it might be); or at least – not the same thing – many UK Jews have a deep admiration for the ways in which the Queen lived out her destiny within that role, a role she of course inherited and did not choose.  

The Queen’s death touches us in personal and specific ways: we each will have our own memories and associations in relation to our monarch (I was an excited twelve-year-old with specially polished shoes standing in line – for ages - with the other boys when she visited our school on the 450^th anniversary of its founding). And of course her death links us to the collective mourning that is taking place nationally and internationally.

So we find ourselves reflecting back on the text and texture of a life, a long and historically remarkable life, a life of duty and service, about which many words of tribute have already been spoken. To pick just one aspect of what she represented: she was able, when necessary, to provide the nation with a sense of hopefulness (a very Jewish quality, but one that I imagine came from her abiding Christian faith). For example, during the height of the first wave of Covid (April 2020) she addressed the nation with simplicity and directness: as the seriousness of the pandemic was becoming apparent, she offered words of encouragement and calm reassurance: “Better days will return again; we will be with our friends again; we will be with our families again; we will meet again.”

Such a beautiful touch that last phrase, “we will meet again”– I thought she must have great speechwriters, until I read that she scripted her Christmas and other addresses herself – with its nod to Dame Vera Lynn, whose wartime song evokes a nation that survives what history throws at it; but used in 2020 it was also an acknowledgement of the Queen’s own longevity and  continuity over the decades, of herself as a living link to this county’s past – she was there on the balcony of Buckingham Palace with her father at the end of the War, and her first Prime Minister was Winston Churchill: all of that was implicit within that address, while still being focussed, aged 94 (as she then was), on continuity into the future - we will emerge from dark times, collectively we will get through this.  

This is what she did, this was her job, this was her vocation - what she’d been called to do: called by life, called by God, according to the curious mythology about monarchy that she represented. And it was a job she did, a public role  – and the same words keep coming up as you listen to the commentators, and those who’d met her – a job she did with warmth, compassion, humility, wisdom, empathy, self-restraint, dignity, dedication, and a sense of humour (guest starring with Daniel Craig, James Bond, during the 2012 Olympics; sharing marmalade sandwiches with Paddington Bear only this year for her Platinum Jubilee).

And, yes, this was her life of duty: a sense of duty she saw through to the very end. Earlier this week (Tuesday, 6^th) we saw what we did not know then, but now know, are the last pictures of her - our last glimpse of her that will remain etched in our minds forever - fulfilling her constitutional duty in relation to yet another prime minister, her 15^th. Those pictures will long remain as a symbol of her legacy of service to the nation. It was almost as if she kept on going until she’d fulfilled this last responsibility entrusted to her - and then she could let go.

People do that: determined to get to the family wedding, to the Bar Mitzvah, to see the new grandchild – and then able to let go of life. But now I’m straying into the realm of mythologising or sentimentalising her, which I’d rather not do. Let’s just say that she was steadfast in fulfilling her responsibilities until almost her dying breath. 

Perhaps the most resonant words I have encountered since her death are those of the commentator Jonathan Freedland, who wrote that “She was woven into the cloth of our lives so completely, we stopped seeing the thread long ago”. I think that captures, poignantly and precisely, the way in which she was both an invisible part of our sense of ourselves as British and an aspect of the fabric of our lives from our own earliest days. She has accompanied us, in the background, and has become part of our psychic life, personally and collectively.

So: a real life has come to an end, it leaves a hole in our lives, small or large; a link with our past, personal and collective, has gone and we shall not see a monarch like her again.

But of course she will have an afterlife: literally - on banknotes, on coins, on postage stamps, on post-boxes – all of which will remain in our midst for some time, until gradually becoming mingled with (or replaced by) images of King Charles; and symbolically, where her afterlife will be in the ways she will remain inside us both as a reminder of others whom we have held dear in our lives who are no longer with us, and as a reminder of something much rarer - what a lifetime’s devotion to duty looks like.

[based on reflections shared at Finchley Reform Synagogue, London, on Saturday September 10th, 2022]