This week has been for me the blueprint of a rabbi’s life.
The portion that falls this Shabbat is Emor, which describes in detail the marking of Jewish time – the dates and times of the festival year and all important Shabbat. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel famously wrote all about the power of Jewish time in his book The Sabbath – A Palace of Time. “In a very deep sense Judaism is a religion of time and …[t]he higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments.”
He understood and I have seen it in action this week as a rabbi.
Festivals were critical in Torah but we also know the marking of personal milestones has become a deeply significant way of expressing our Judaism.
I can count key moments in my life – and some of yours too – by using Jewish blessing and tradition. This week, I led the funeral and Shivah of our beloved member Hélène D’âne and saw the comfort that is created by this Jewish time. I saw the power of marking Yom Zikaron/HaAtzmaut with three other local synagogues, as we did on Monday evening – many of us counting Jewish time and coming together to do so.
That is what we do – and it’s been comforting this week to be reminded of that. I’m counting the 49 days of the Omer with greater intensity this year; watching, waiting and witnessing feels necessary and natural right now, with all that is going on.
The writer Etgar Keret wrote this poem about his rabbit. But actually it’s about waiting. Many of us know what waiting can feel like in the darker moments of life and the counting of days.
Alive
Sometimes,
when I look at my rabbit
lounging on the living room rug,
he seems to be waiting for something.
It only looks like he’s waiting,
he’s living.
With me, by the way, it’s the opposite:
I’m always waiting for something,
it only looks like I’m alive.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
I recently noticed that the Quakers have come up with a new tagline: ‘Simple. Radical and Spiritual.’
In the 1930s, many Quakers were involved in kinder transport, sponsoring many children. Their concern for the outlier has not diminished. The Quakers still lead on refugee settlement and support. But they also lead on simple prayer and community.
I think a great deal about what it means to be Jewish right now. What three adjectives might any of us choose? I suspect we will go on thinking about this ad infinitum or l’ad olam in the Hebrew. Prayer, community, courage, action, kindness might be just a few we’d pick.
I’m writing these words on Yom HaShoah, having lit my yahrzeit candle and caught the National event. On the 3rd May 1960, 64 years ago, the Anne Frank House opened its doors to the public. I have taken many groups of Jewish children there and their response is always palpable. When I was a child, learning and talking about Anne Frank as a traditional Jewish woman was de rigueur in Orthodox synagogue’s Bat Chayil ceremonies on a Sunday afternoon-with no prayer leading. Now, I believe we want to honour the memories of Anne and her sister Margot and to teach our own children the gift and responsibility of their Judaism, to spur them to action and pride. I showed this extraordinary film of Ben Ferencz to anyone I could over this weekend. The legacy he leaves is so vivid right now.
So when this week’s portion K’doshim tells the Israelites – and us of course as we read it now, “You shall be holy, for I, the Eternal your God, am holy” (Leviticus 19:2), we consider what it means to be holy.
Parashat K’doshim teaches that it’s impossible to separate decent relations between humans from the commandments between a person and their God.
It’s all the same.
Harming or insulting a person is the same as harming or insulting the image of God in that person; therefore, it is harming or insulting to God. Embezzling public money is no different from embezzling that which is holy to God. The reason to “be holy” is because “I, the Eternal your God, am holy.” The holiness of God requires that we lead a thoughtful, sacred life. Part of that is bearing witness to the past, the present and our futures, including today’s recent escalations in Rafah. Let Ben Ferencz show you how.
I cannot say enough how important the concert will be at FPS on 19th May when we will mark Yom HaShoah this year together; as a community there are many stories and connections that we need to hear as well as the music that will accompany. Please join us. I’m proud that we are hosting this.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
Last Sunday, I attended a remarkable event – a concert and tribute to the late Alfred Bader CBE, chemist, art collector and generous philanthropist. As a child of kindertransport, his connection to the Quakers continued throughout his life. As I listened to the stories about him and the music honouring him, I thought a great deal about Yom HaShoah 5784 in this year, 2024. Everything is different post 7th October and while the brutal fighting and destruction in Gaza continues. This year, Yom HaShoah falls on Sunday night, 5th May. We have chosen to make our own commemoration with a special concert on 19th May at FPS with our chosen charity, G2G. It will be an afternoon of family stories and music from folk who remember and pay forward their memories. I urge you to join us then. Click here to book.
This Sunday, we are directing people to the National Yom HaShoah commemoration in person or on line. I will offer an online Havdalah on Saturday, 4th May to lead into such remembering. In his book ‘Zachor,’ the fine historian Yosef Chayim Yerushalmi wrote about the distinction between Jewish history and Jewish memory. This year, that distinction feels poignant. Does our remembering affect us now in relation to what is happening in Israel and Gaza? Should it? I looked up Eli Wiesel’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech. He looks back on himself as a boy catapulted into the kingdom of the night.
‘And now the boy is turning to me: Tell me, he asks. What have you done with my future? What have you done with your life?
And I tell him that I have tried. That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices. And then I explain to him how naïve we were, that the world did know and remain silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation.’
This marking of time is a very Jewish thing and for many of us, a critical part of this endeavour.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
Passover always reminds me why I am a religious person: to be part of a tradition that calls on us to show up and mark time together by sharing ritual, prayers, food and values.
During the Seder and this ‘season of freedom,’ we will retell our story: that’s literally the meaning of Haggadah. This is a story so central to our tradition that it informs our Judaism and our Jewish expression. We recall that we have lived through generations of suffering and that we know liberation. It’s an energetic remembering, because in every generation, it means something particular to the moment in which we live. We are called to radical empathy at Passover, as the writer Jonathan Safran-Foer describes. This year, the seder and its words freedom, liberation and oppression will have many more layers of meaning for those of us who sit round the table.
I imagine each of us in our own way will manage the commandment:
In each and every generation, a person is obligated to see themself as if they [personally] left Egypt. (Exodus 13:8)
I want to wish everyone a meaningful and inspiring Passover. I hope your charoset is sweet, your Seder plates full and that you and your guests come to the table tonight, and at FPS tomorrow, with a tender and open heart to all of the questions and remembering that we will do this year.
Rebecca
On Saturday night, we were having dinner with friends, talking as usual about Israel, the war in Gaza and our Jewishness, when we heard news of Iran’s impending attack. That there were no deaths was the result solidarity across the region, though one young Bedouin girl was seriously injured. So, the start of this week has been infused with concern following Iran’s assault on Israel and with fear of how things might escalate. All the while, our attention remains on the hostage families, becoming desperate for the lack of news or possibilities, as well, of course, on the dire suffering in Gaza. We here are trying to hold steady and continue our work as diaspora Jews, to resist division and to be open-hearted and sensible in our collaborative work with others. With such pernicious news, all we can do is double our efforts to negotiate our Judaism in a thoughtful, open way and to keep optimistic and hopeful.
Passover is here and the line from the Seder and Book of Exodus has rarely felt more poignant:
B’chol for va’dor hayav adam lirot et atzmo k’ilu hu yatzar m’mitzrayim. In every generation each person is obliged to view themselves as if they personally left Egypt.
I want to remind us all of two events that capture us at work and see us doubling down on our Jewish values.
The first is our open doors this Shabbat morning*. We have advertised this and invited to join us folk who want to explore their Jewishness at the moment, as we thoughtfully and courageously arrive at Passover with its invitation to consider redemption, empathy and freedom. As I wrote in London Jewish News last month, Liberal Judaism has much to celebrate. You can carry your Jewishness from either parent, from choosing to convert, from the legacy of family who gave it to you to make something different from it.
This is the moment for Jewish conversations.
The second event is on Thursday, 25th April, in the midst of Passover, when I will co-chair the London Mayoral Assembly for London Citizens. We have worked with them for over ten years and have brought so much positive change to London as Jews – remember our success settling Syrian Refugees into Barnet? Jews and our communities need to be proud and involved in London and I feel privileged to lead this event with Mayor Sadiq Khan and mayoral candidate Susan Hall. There are only three places left – if you would like to join me, contact me direct.
* Service 9.45-10.45
Discussions and family activities from 11a.m.
This Shabbat we will be praying for:
Alon Ohel
Avinatan Or
Guy Illouz
Matan Angrest
The year is marching on.
Passover is fast approaching.
We know the theme – going from a narrow place to a wide expanse. Min Hameitzar karate yah v’anani v’merchav yah. (Psalm 118) The writer Michael Walzer wrote: wherever you live, it is probably Egypt; second; that there is a better place, a world more attractive, a promised land; and third, that the way to the land is through the wilderness.
That is the theme of the holiday: moving from oppression to freedom; opening our hearts, our homes and our tables, as the Haggadah calls, “Let all who are hungry come and eat.”
This year, we at FPS wanted to reach out to the unaffiliated – to friends and to family of our members – to open our doors pre-Passover on 20th April – to converse about what it means to be Jewish right now; to meet the central story of our tradition and tell the Seder, “We were slaves in Egypt…”
Because what will Pesach be like this year? What will we add to our telling to reflect what is happening around us? Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, a thoughtful and interesting Orthodox rabbi, wrote, “the Egyptian experience may therefore be regarded as the fountainhead and moral inspiration for the teaching of compassion, which is so pervasive in Jewish law.” We all know the goal of Jewish law and tradition is to cultivate people of compassion. There are various ways to do that with the Seder and Passover experience.
Some might add a beetroot to the seder plate as a sign of solidarity for the ongoing war against Ukraine – beetroot being an obvious national food – think borscht. Rabbi Igor Zinkov suggests eating it after the bitter herbs and using its Hebrew name selek (סלק) and seeing in it the word for retreat, yistalku (יסתלקו).
May it be your will Eternal God that all enemies will retreat.
Some may set an extra seat for one of the hostages, an initiative by the Board of Deputies, printing a picture and talking about an individual far from home and the redemption and release the Passover story tells.
Some may place an olive branch – the symbol of peace – or a few olives on the Seder plate. Olive trees have long been destroyed by Israeli settlers, leading to Palestinian suffering. Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel (a multi denominational group) often replant them with communities. Now, with the devastation of Gaza and mass starvation there, perhaps some will set an empty bowl on their seder table, or even bird seed, to represent what some are reduced to foraging and eating. This could perhaps open conversations about different suffering as we list the biblical plagues. We’ll have a chance to talk about what we all might like to do.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
Last week, we hosted an Iftar – a break fast meal for Muslim neighbours fasting during Ramadan, with invited interfaith friends and local politicians. Coming together during these heated times was an uplifting affair. (Thanks to Tamara Joseph, Natasha Kafka, Janine Garai and Citizens UK for pulling it together with a fantastic team). We had just had Purim; Hindus had just celebrated Holi; we were marking the middle of Ramadan; and we were looking ahead to the Easter weekend that would fall just days later. It is, by any reckoning, a spiritual and reflective season and it felt as though we captured it. There is so much that unites us across faiths and cultures and the different paths we may take to the sacred.
I thought about this last weekend as I visited the Chagall Museum of Biblical Memory and also Henri Matisse’s Chapel in St. Paul de Vence. All my adulthood, I have wanted to visit and have finally managed it. Each artist describes how, for him, this place was the pinnacle, the denouement, of his creative life. For the first time, I noticed as an amplification of Jewish suffering the images of Jesus on the cross that Chagall incorporates into his biblical scenes, the shape of God’s cloud by day made up of hundreds of individual faces. Matisse’s focus on the infant and mother, reflected in the azure blue of the windows and paint, echoed the peace and simplicity of the chapel.
“I started with the secular and now in the evening of my life, I naturally end with the divine,” wrote Henri Matisse about the chapel. Both men were proud of their reaching towards God and religion. Following them juxtaposed so beautifully, even in the rain of the Cote D’Azur, the pathways to our faiths and the diverse ways in which we travel.
I was proud of FPS last week as we stood in solidarity and support, appreciating different paths to God, and my heart was uplifted as I was drawn in by the sacred works by those French artists.
Maybe we will manage our own modest stained glass in our renewed and restored synagogue.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
Tzav is interested in the distinction between what is offered and what is eaten. The fat of ox, sheep or goat – all kosher animals – cannot be eaten. In this portion, Torah goes on to investigate what can be eaten.
I suppose we are starting to imagine here ritual meals separate from or alongside sacrificial offerings.
I like this. Post biblical – post priestly ritual – we have to find different ways to engage with these descriptions of animal flesh. We know that gathering to eat is a major part of Jewish communal life. I have loved hosting Shabbat at the Rabbi’s meals in the community, not just Chavurah suppers in the building, which are always fun, but me (and often Anthony too) cooking and preparing Shabbat lunch or Friday night dinner and a few of us eating around my kitchen table. I like investing time and effort in what we eat, which only adds to our conversation and togetherness. Eating together is a key Jewish experience. We are planning our FPS seder 23rd April menu right now. (Remember to book).
We create our own contemporary Ohel Moeid, tent of meeting, for the people we care about. I like cooking my grandmother’s roast chicken recipe for meat eaters, and going rogue into Ottolenghi vegetable recipes for our vegetarian guests.
See what you think of this blessing written by Leah Koenig and Anna Stevenson called the ‘Cooking Bracha’:
“Blessed are You
Creator of the world
Who brings forth fruit from the Earth.
Blessed are You,
Who gives us knowledge of cooking and time to cook
And who has blessed us with the need for nourishment
so that we can fully understand Your gifts.
May it be Your will
That the food that I cook
Bring nourishment, fulfillment, and happiness
to those who eat it
And bring honour to the land and all the people that make this meal possible.”
Here’s to more meals together and remember to book in for the next one Shabbat lunch on 27 April in my kitchen
This Shabbat we will be praying for:
Ron Benjamin
Yair and Eitan Horn
Yarden, Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas
PURIM
This is the first ‘full on’ Jewish holiday post the massacre on 7th October and the war on Gaza. Chanukah was more gentle in our homes. Purim requires synagogue gathering. This year, we must still ensure our Jewish year gets marked. Our children get to experience the silliness of this unusual book of Esther that captures Diaspora Jewish life, as long as we acknowledge the piquancy of the back drop to Purim celebrations this year. I see Rachel Polin Goldberg, mother of Hirsch, as a modern day Esther, speaking truth to power and calling for an end of suffering for all peoples caught in this horror. We adults can have that sensitivity and as Rabbi John D. Rayner wrote in 1987, as Purim came back into Liberal Judaism:
It is all harmless good fun and salutary way of letting off steam provided that you only do it once in a long while and that you know what you are doing. It is when the Book of Esther is taken in dead earnest and when its Cowboys and Indians mentality is carried over into real life and becomes a basis of judgement in actual political conflict it is only then that it becomes dangerous.
But we at FPS will be having a brief and engaged Megillah and Spiel to honour our festival and do so in the most thoughtful way possible. Please join us – this year all the more so. Saturday 5p.m.
Tots and Children fancy dress parade, than our Megillah and Spiel, followed by a feast of wine, hamantaschen and snacks. All will be done by 6.15 / 6.30p.m. and we will have fulfilled the compulsion to hear the Megillat [Book of] Esther.
I wrote for Liberal Judaism a Thought for this Week on Parashat Vayikra. Click here to read on The Crumbley family convictions and a modern take on Sacrifice.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
“The money and the [Jewish] people are yours to do with as you see fit.”(Book of Esther 3:8)
Purim has always been understood as the most joyful day of the year. Silliness, dressing up, a carnival-Mardi Gras mood prevails. However, the Book of Esther is, as we know, a story of intense crisis and violence.
Initially, Jews face the existential threat of being attacked and destroyed, then at the end, Jews kill their enemies on a massive scale. It was considered so violent, so embarrassing even, that Liberal Judaism banned its celebration for decades. Rabbi John Rayner stated Purim has long been a bête noire in Liberal Judaism. It has been described as unhistorical, irreligious and unethical. It was only brought back in the 1980s when he preached that the community could cope with levity and imaginative play.
I wonder what he would say this year.
In the wake of October 7, these crises of Purim feel very real as we mourn unimaginably cruel acts of violence against Israelis, witness increased antisemitism and fear in Jewish communities worldwide and witness so many Palestinians killed in recent months.
I’m intrigued by what the Book of [Megillat] Esther teaches us about holding together both realities of violence against Jews and violence by Jews. Many communities are choosing to look at this prior to next Saturday’s Purim, when our children and musicians will help tell the story. What might we glean from the story this year, especially about responding in moments of deep fear?
This Shabbat we will learn and discuss during the service – deepening our Jewish literacy and sharing it.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
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