Zoe writes:
This week’s portion is about Holiness. Kadosh (holy) also has a sense of separation – the normal from the special, the clean from the unclean, the holy from the profane.
This week’s news is full not of Covid-19 but of copycat caterpillars (I did ponder a copycat-erpillars pun there…) and elite football groups.
Through the lens of holiness, Marks and Spencer believe their Colin the caterpillar cakes are Holy because they stand alone (not be copied by Aldi). Meanwhile, fans believe football is Holy because it stands together.
Certainly this lockdown has pushed us to learn and enjoy the moments we experience alone, while appreciating the times of communal holiness we wish we could reinstate.
I noted the prayer by Rabbi Howard Cooper included in the most recent Reform siddur (Forms of Prayer, 2008) for those lighting Shabbat candles alone:
Two candles, one person
I welcome this Shabbat alone
and join myself to the community of Israel
One candle for me
One candle for my people
Together and alone
we share our heritage
our future
our yearning
for the peace of Shabbat.
For me, this prayer could have been written specifically for Covid life – holding the personal and communal experiences, normally together, in parallel at a distance.
Over these 15 months we’ve learnt how technology can help us bridge the distance, whether our incredible Shabbat services, morning meditation, or one-off events.
Next Wednesday is – for me – the biggest of the latter. The London Citizens Mayoral Assembly. I have been involved in the planning from the start – for an event that was intended for May 2020 and was, like so much, postponed until now.
We aim to have 6000 people on that call. And I hope one of those 6000 is you.
Maybe holiness is one person, in one room, logging on to a Mayoral Assembly – when they could do anything else – knowing they are part of something so huge, making such an enormous difference, by standing up and being there.
And maybe holiness is knowing that we will each be doing that, together.
Shabbat shalom,
Zoe
We are stronger together is one of those cliches that turns out to be true. When we ended Passover in a brief zoomed Havdalah ceremony with 80 other Liberal Jews we saw that. When we make changes for the better because of stronger alliances and connections with others, in our Citizens UK work, we see that too. Famously it was Martin Buber in his book I and Thou that first expressed the idea of religious meaning through person relationships. It has born out.
All actual life is encounter. The I of the basic word I-You is different from that of the basic word I-It…Persons appear by entering into relation to other persons.
So I wanted to alert you this week to two important events where we should ensure our presence as a community.
1. London’s Mayoral Assembly April 28th 6pm, where our own Zoe Jacobs and Adrian Lister will be prominent leaders on the night. Sign up here.
2. Liberal Judaism’s Biennial Weekend, a slight misnomer as of course there was one last year too. But taking advantage of online gathering colleagues wanted to create a collective Shabbat learning opportunity for us all. We will participate in the Shabbat services together and there is learning and conversation all weekend from Friday to Sunday. Please book here for free for your easy pass to access everything.
I wish you a Shabbat Shalom and an easy weekend.
Rebecca
Moufletas at our Mimouna Brunch
This period of the year is intense, Jewishly.
We finish Pesach, see these mufleta from our Mimouna celebrations.
And then on the journey to Shavuot we mark Yom HaShoah and Yom Ha’atzma’ut, both days added to the calendar in modern times.
This addition was and is hugely controversial for the more tradition Haredim but for us they stand as witness to the continuing experience of Jews from ancient times through the extraordinary events of the twentieth century.
Remembering never ceases being a cornerstone of our Jewish experience. Zachor, (memory) wrote Joseph Chaim Yerushalmi is more relevant sometimes than history. “The antonym of ‘forgetting’ is not ‘remembering’, but justice.”
I hope you were able to join us for our marking of Yom HaShoah.
This Saturday we are joining East London and Essex Liberal Synagogue for their special inclusive Shabbat service. Virtual visits to other synagogue services is one of the benefits of these strange times!
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Rebecca
There was something particularly memorable about our communal Seder last Sunday evening, not least because two Elijah’s arrived and a goat. We came together with such warmth and dedication emboldened by our learning and preparations. New members were delivering Passover food to others and we expanded our minhagim to include new Mizrachi traditions thanks to The Fuller Table.
This Sunday at Cafe Ivriah we’ll mark Mimouna, a Moroccan Jewish holiday for the end of Pesach gathering increasing popularity in Israel now. It’s a chance to translate some of the Pesach commitments let all who are hungry come and eat into the vernacular of our lives.
This holiday may be based on the yahrzeit of Maimon ben Joseph, the father of Maimonides, a scholar in his own right who lived in Fez (Morocco) and wrote on Jewish-Islamic relations. He died around 1170. Or it might be based on the Arabic word, ma’amoun for plenty and good fortune.
Or perhaps even the Hebrew word emunah (belief) and the Maimonidean Ani Ma’amin, I believe as a reassurance after Passover. It’s a holiday of commitment and hope for the fertility and fortune of Spring . It’s sharing of food, produce and friendship, a return to real food, no longer the bread of affliction. I imagine we will have much to share after this full year of virtual gathering and yet the community has welcomed new members and grown in interesting ways.
Our FPS Mimouna will reflect on this and hopes for the months ahead. See below for the food stuffs to have.
We’re going to try it this year, because who doesn’t need a serving of blessing and joy. Join us on Sunday for some learning, conversation and virtual eating together but looking to the moment when it will be real.
Moadim l’simcha and wishing you a good end to Passover.
Rabbi Rebecca
I wish you Chag Pesach Sameach, a good and joyful Passover. Could we have imagined we’d be here having another ‘virtual’ seder a year on? what pain we’ve witnessed and what losses some of us have endured and yet what resilience we’ve built. Min Hameitzar Karati Yah, Anani b’merchav yah. Out of the narrow place I called to you, and you answered with wide expansiveness. That’s our hope this year more than ever, words from Psalm 118 recited during Pesach. Let us taste some ease, here at home. Let us pray for an opening for us all. And for those oppressed and imprisoned further away too. As we call for freedom and are reminded of its value, may we hold those peoples still under bondage in mind. Let’s talk of their plight, as the Uyghurs in China, at our Sedarim this weekend. May this year be a meaningful Passover for us.
Rabbi Rebecca
Vayikra el Moshe -The Eternal Called to Moses and spoke to him … Please feel called to join us for our Passover Preparations and celebrations. This week marks a year since the beginning of lockdown life and our moving as a community to online activities.
I doubt any of us thought we’d be holding our second Zoom seder.
So I think preparing together for Pesach will be significant this year. Look out for our Fuller Table session next Wednesday 7pm where we’ll expand the customs and practices of Passover to include Mizrachi and Ethiopian Judaism. We will welcome guests to our table; Rabbi Gary Somers, Isaac Treuherz and Desta Shanko. This exploring has rightly come from our work to see Jewish life, tradition and practice as wider than we might have previously. We are waiting very hopefully for the guidance from Stephen Bush’s report at the BOD.
Let all who are hungry come and eat… might just be spiritual as well as edible. (Sunday’s event on Food Poverty in Cafe Ivriah is just one of these). Do join us for this important step in our Jewish learning and practice.
Rabbi Rebecca
I could talk Royal family this week, Harry, Meghan and Oprah but I won’t.
At least not yet.
Instead I’ll say a census is coming this year. 2021 we will be counted in the U.K.
We know a thing or two about being counted as well as counting ourselves in. This week’s double portion Vayakhel-Pekudei, the last in Exodus, refers to the Census just completed and the 603,550 souls that were included from aged twenty up. At the end of a year of this pandemic sitting so squarely within our lives, we have never before been so dependant on and grateful for data. This data has enabled and informed so many of our decisions and I for one, have find a new found appreciation for counting and record keeping.
We find ourselves in our community truly thinking about our membership right now, at the end of a year when online activity has expanded engagement. Our Chair convened a new Membership team to consider our reach and our remit as a synagogue, who we appeal to and who in fact chooses to be counted amongst us. How do we best sell ourselves as a congregation? What do we do well? What would you like us to do more of? Who could benefit from our services who is not already?
These are ways I consider counting and being counted within FPS. The leitmotif of Jewish experience and community is based heavily on the living in, and leaving Egypt, being a stranger once and the responsibility it places on us now. This will be even more present for us in the coming weeks of our festival year. Similarly, understanding us within Progressive Judaism’s place in Israel is part of that, note our conversation this Thursday with the Embassy.
But most importantly being at home is key to being counted, to contributing to our congregation and being known by it as well. Hard to imagine but Moses had to stop the gifts and the voluntary work offered; he was overwhelmed ‘No man or woman shall do any more work for the offering of the Sanctuary’ (Shemot 36:6).
These are not rhetorical questions! So I so look forward to hearing from you.
Shabbat Shalom to all and see you later?
Rebecca
Life moves apace and I am already looking to the next moment on our Jewish calendar, as is our way. Pesach is at the end of this month.
This week’s portion Ki Tissa sees the Golden Calf and Moses (and God’s) ensuing fury. Afterwards, after he’s gone back up Sinai to collect the second set of tablets, Moses is alone with God and asks to see God’s presence, it’s a beautiful request.
In the end he’s hidden in the cleft of a rock and is told, for his own safety, he’ll see just the back of God.
I think of this actually as anticipating Passover.
Why? When former bishop Richard Holloway left his faith because of its empty promises he nonetheless talked of the beauty of “the ritualistic aspect, the way that each day is marked out for a particular purpose, so that we will regularly have appointments with spiritual ideas”.*
Boy, I loved this. And of course our festival year is replete with appointments with spiritual ideas. Whether it’s seeing God in these small dates in our diary, in the seder, the service, the feeding of others. It’s all bound up in the moments that matter for us.
Let All Who Are Hungry Come and Eat, we’ll say on Seder night and before it. This year maybe in as many languages as we can muster. So, if you have customs and minhagim in your families you’d like to see added to our FPS seder and services, do tell me. Let’s expand our appointment with spiritual ideas for everyone.
Rabbi Rebecca
*Leaving Alexandria: A Memoir of Faith and Doubt by Richard Holloway Canongate Books 2012
It’s poignant that last Purim we gathered together without knowing or understanding the virus in our midst. Purim, a relatively minor festival, impacted us profoundly.
This past year has been full of loss and suffering for so many. Some more than others as we know from our communities. Covid has been brutal to health capacity but also to livelihoods. So many had careers, work and income damaged; that has meant real suffering in many homes.
But Purim 2020 also left with us the custom of mishloach manot (sending gifts) and matanonot l’evyonim (gifts to the poor) and these permeated the Jewish year way beyond the festival. We have spent the last twelve months ensuring we send gifts to those that need, both food and cheering. We have had to be more responsive to those who have struggled. Possibly for the first time, some have had to rely on food banks and gifts, when they have hitherto never needed charity. So many of our synagogues have become hubs for local food banks. Our community letters have reminded us since last Purim: that if we are able to give we should. Looking ahead to Pesach we’ll say at Seder “Let All who are hungry come and eat”. It has taken on a piquancy through these months. Gifts and food for those who need has become a necessity rather than an option.
Famously the Book of Esther excludes the name of God. But even more so the word Ester contains the letters s-t-r, which is the root of the word ‘to hide oneself’. Talmudic rabbis play with this, and suggest Esther is from Hester Panim – ‘the hidden face’ of God – Deuteronomy (31.18), when God insists: ‘I’ll hide my face’. It has been a dark year but there is light ahead, as the Megillah ends with Mordechai “seeking goodness and speaking of peace to his descendants.” It’s tough not being together for another Seder; the second in a row. Perhaps we have people in our lives we fear it might be the last? So we hope and pray for a new ease and peacefulness.
Min Ha Meitzar karati yah v’anani v’merchav yah.
So says Psalm 118 which we will recite at Pesach in just a few weeks now;
“From a narrow place I cried to you and you answered me with wide expansiveness.” As we navigate these two holidays so anticipated, may we find that openness in a safe way for our communities and our country.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Rebecca
This piece is published in London Jewish News this week.
We are currently renewing and refreshing our work with Barnet Citizens.
As you know, we count ourselves part of an alliance of six institutions in the borough who work together for positive change.
While we are currently not in our building, we know it will be there for us when we are allowed to be there safely – and what a moment to rejoice it will be.
Meanwhile our neighbours, the Markaz (Muslim community centre) in Golders Green have suffered Islamophobic hate throughout their journey to their own holy building, The council took 150 days to validate their application (when their own policy states a maximum of 10 days) and they received over 1000 emails against their application. The council webpage publishing these had to be blocked because of the racist hatred.
We robustly support their campaign along with other local synagogues, and take action with them in this next step on their journey.
V’asu li mikdash v’shachanti b’tocham, “Let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them” These are the gifts . . . and this is how you shall make it. “Exactly as I show you . . . ken ta-asu, so shall you make it” (Exodus 25:8-9).
This week’s Torah portion, T’rumah, details the building of a Holy space – and its specification of each item needed. But notably it isn’t just the wealthy who offer gifts ‘trumah’ to make the building – everyone must add *something*, and that way a true community space is built.
It is our turn to join our neighbours, to stand with them as they fight for their community space.
Join us on Wednesday 24th Feb at 8pm to meet the Markaz leaders and lawyers supporting their campaign.
If you are interested in this campaign, or the other campaigns we’re working on – supporting a faster and better mental health provision for teens in Barnet, and working towards the London Mayoral Assembly – please do sign up to our two fabulous training opportunities below.
I believe it’s vital FPS has leaders for these..
Shabbat Shalom from both of us this week,
Rebecca and Zoe
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