I am learning wheel throwing; having wanted to immerse myself in ceramics for a while, I’ve finally found a wonderful teacher, Amy Wilson and her group on a Monday morning and have spent the last three months wrestling with clay, learning just enough to know which tool to use when, switching on the wheel and just settling into the pottery studio. I’ve discovered that white, non-toasted clay is easier to work with than toasted, which literally hurts your fingers as you handle it.
But the biggest revelation is that it is all about ‘centring’. The clay needs to be centred well, really well, on the wheel. Your body needs to be upright and grounded, your hands aligned, touching and careful, and the pot’s base and lip must all be centred in turn.
The concept of centring is so integral to Jewish discourse, and indeed to the life of a congregational rabbi, that I was almost dismayed to find the same rules apply here too. Leading a congregation presents the piquant challenge of being centred enough to see and hear everyone, to occupy a middle position from which you can identify the entire spectrum of lives flowing in and out of the synagogue community. Being centred means you are weighted just right to be accessible to, and inclusive of, all. It sounds easy – just as centring a pot sounds easy – until you actually try it.
The patience needed to set up each ‘throwing’ feels Herculean to me. It makes me realise how lacking in patience (savlanut) I am. The Musar movement, created by Rabbi Israel Salanter in the 19th century, describes how best to manage our souls and use the characteristics available to us to be in balance – not too much or too little of anything. My impatience is a deficit of savlanut. I see how much – and how swiftly – I want to see results. I realise that slow, careful entry into the pot making is extraordinarily challenging for me. I want to make it
, not fiddle with preparing the clay before it gets onto the wheel, centring it on the wheel, then carefully honing the worked wedge of clay up and down three or four times to ensure the pot is ready to be built.
Musar has also taught me about being grounded, creating trust (bitachon) for myself and for others so that we trust the process and the order of things (seder). One can’t bypass the stages we need to go through in life, whether it be grief, loss – or even learning to make a pot. Now, the clay and the pot are repeating these lessons back to me. It is difficult precisely because nothing can work without that crucial centring, including in the work of a congregational rabbi, charged with ensuring everything happens carefully, fairly and evenly in community. This week’s portion Acharei Mot-Kedoshim warns against partiality in all settings. I rather like that reminder of steadiness.
I love the lesson that is there every day of my working life – and that it is exactly the same in the pottery studio – an
d maybe that’s because it’s true.
Amy is joining us this Shabbat, as part of our OMER focus on simplicity and beauty. 10.30pm 25th April and then again Erev Shavuot 5-7pm 21st May to make candlesticks and mezzuzot to ground in love, and simplicity. The perfect antidote to the world right now. There are two places left. Please consider joining me, it will be good.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
Post Passover and in the days between Yom HaShoah and Yom Ha’atzmaut I’m reflecting on whether we believe in the power of redemption?
New film The Drama has everybody talking after raising a number of issues around redemption that are core to both our shared humanity and our Progressive Jewish tradition.
In the movie, a bride-to-be (played by Zendaya) reveals, a week before her wedding, something huge that changes the way her groom, and everyone else, sees her, possibly forever. Their relationship is thrown into jeopardy.
Is that our worst nightmare – to share a shameful secret and then not find redemption for it?
It also raises the question – what, when and who can we forgive?
The response feels quite obvious. If regret is truly there, then one is obligated to consider it. If it isn’t, then it’s also clear. No one can expect redemption if one hasn’t owned, truly owned, the harm they have wreaked. Apologies have to be real and thoughtful, motivated by regret.
Progressive Judaism will always use tradition as a foundation and then respond with contemporary relevance, details and ethics.
Maimonides’ advice from his Hilchot Teshuva has stood the test of time.
People make mistakes, but without owning them and committing to be better, the regret is flimsy and insubstantial.
When the regret is real and all four steps have been followed with genuine remorse, it’s on us to accept – to acknowledge that change can happen. Everyone deserves a second chance. Everyone.
It is forbidden for a person to be cruel and not appeased; so when someone feels terrible, makes amends and wants to make things right, it’s incumbent on us to give them a second chance.
The broken tablets – that Moses threw at his disobedient people – were deposited in the Ark, taught Rabbi Yosef, alongside the new ones, as a reminder of human frailty. (BT Bava Batra 14b).
Believing in each other’s power to change and grow is a belief in our fellow human, and this belief is at the heart of Progressive Judaism.
I hope The Drama, when I see it, won’t change my mind on this.
Shabbat Shalom and look forward to seeing you over Shabbat or at one of our events next week – the streamed Memorial service at FPS on Monday or Yom Ha’atzmaut on Tuesday.
Rebecca
I am writing an article for ‘Faith Matters’ in Jewish News next week, responding to the new film The Drama and the moral conundrum it exposes. A bride reveals something heinous to her groom just one week before their wedding. Can she be forgiven? Jewish News wants to know. Following the Kanye West debacle this past week, the question is strikingly apposite – and frankly, the answer feels quite obvious. Without regret, remorse, or a true understanding of the wrongdoing, apologies cannot be considered and redemption remains out of reach.
What has been particularly distressing about this week’s news is the failure of the Wireless Music Festival to take responsibility. It is disheartening that they would allow someone who has shared such heinous views to headline their event. That the government had to intervene at this stage is equally disappointing.
This is not strictly a “Jewish issue”; it is a moral one that affects all of Britain. We should all be able to speak clearly and crisply about the abhorrence of Nazi ideology. It should never have reached a point where the Jewish community was tasked with the responsibility of accepting an apology, an invitation to talk, or a hollow olive branch. True morality requires courage. As we leave Pesach, a season defined by stories of redemption, liberation, and hope, we see there is much work left to do. Crucially, it is work we must not do alone.
Shabbat Shalom
Rebecca
What a momentous week. Four events have persisted in our consciousness:
All of these events are tied together by one verse in this week’s parashat, Tzav. While it is a challenging portion pertaining to priestly rites, there is nonetheless a message of longevity: some things are worth persisting.
אֵ֗שׁ תָּמִ֛יד תּוּקַ֥ד עַל־הַמִּזְבֵּ֖חַ לֹ֥א תִכְבֶּֽה
The constant fire on the altar must not go out.
Repeated again and again, the message is clear: we must not break the continuity. The fire, the commitment, the memory, the sense of being part of a community must be kept alive and alight. As we work to provide care and concern for our community during these tense times, while resisting the urge to let a ‘lachrymose history’ surface, we try hard to maintain hope, pride, connection and love. We do this so that we may pass these values to our children and to the children of others. We maintain the flame. That is our reminder and our blessing this Shabbat.
See you tonight at FPS, where I will be leading our service.
Shabbat Shalom to all.
Rebecca
Proud that Rabbi Baginsky represented us and captured this moment and the challenge posed.
This week, we begin the book of Leviticus. It is often seen as the driest of the five books, the one centred on priesthood, community, worship and the mechanics of gathering. Yet its minutiae – how to slaughter, the rules of sacrifice and how to create an offering, the rules of priesthood, of how to make amends and how to look after homes – all speak to a level of detail and care that we still cling to today (even without the priests, the sacrifices, and the blood).
I have watched the beauty of our new building unfold and the attention to detail therein is paying off. It makes us love the synagogue more and feel its love in return. Every meal we have shared, every table we have set, and every kiddush we have eaten, tastes all the better for the care we
have lavished upon it. The new windows, the wooden shutters enclosing our kitchen and the curated plates and cups all point to our love for FPS at 54, Hutton Grove. The fact that fifty of you showed up on Tuesday night for security training with CST also points to that same love.
A poem by Anne Sexton, important to me during rabbinic training, comes to mind as we begin the ‘minutiae of care’ laid out in Leviticus:
There is joy
in all:
…in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry “hello there, Anne”
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing…. So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken. (Anne Sexton)
Last week, I spoke to my friend and colleague in Israel, Rabbi Chen ben Tsfoni. She leads Beit Samueli in Ra’anana, a wonderful synagogue that has benefited from this same communal love and care. Solidarity with our colleagues and fellow Progressive communities in Israel is critical at this time. We have planned an online Havdalah moment to share together around Pesach (look out for details).
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
My friend and colleague, Rabbi Lisa Greene, leads North Shore Congregation Israel, just down the road from Temple Israel in Bloomfield, Michigan. Both are large Reform synagogues, deeply rooted in the commitment and ideology inherent to our movement.
“I feel literally unwell,” she messaged me last night. Here we are again, navigating that sickening sense of fear and vulnerability as we prepare to gather in our sanctuaries, the very places that should afford us safety. How do we hold this fragility while still encouraging one another to show up, be together and say “yes” to community?
I believe our unique responsibility as Progressive Jews is to reach out, connect and ensure that we are in deep engagement with those around us. And yet, we face this.
What do we do? How do we navigate another event designed to frighten and alarm while still persevering with open hearts? The dilemma I spoke of last week feels even more apposite this Shabbat. How do we resist becoming a ‘fortress’ synagogue yet ensure vigilance and safety without?
One way we have decided to do this at FPS is to up our vigilance and security at our gates and ensure that our welcome is all the stronger inside our building. Both are essential for our bodies and our souls.
This weekend is Refugee Shabbat across the UK. Last night, JCORE launched the event alongside MPs and prominent Rabbis. Tomorrow, we will do the same here at FPS. Migration and the search for ‘home’ have always been central to the Jewish story. We will discuss our own journeys of settling, as well as the journeys of others, during our Breakfast Shiur tomorrow at 10:00am with Lesley Urbach, followed by a service that celebrates and includes too.
We do all of this with hearts full of thoughts for Temple Israel, Michigan, and all of us. Joining us tomorrow will be an extra special gift and mitzvah.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
I cannot resist sharing these words from Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch regarding the impetus to open our homes and synagogues:
Let your house not be closed and sealed only for yourself and your household, to be a place of rest and peace only for yourselves. Rather, let it be open for the benefit of the desolate, for the hungry, the thirsty, and for all who seek shelter and refuge. You should happily and lovingly bring in any guest who has no other letter of introduction… except for that which comes from his being a creation of the Omnipotent, a child of our Father in Heaven. — Horeb 579:2
These words are from Hirsch’s essays on Jewish communal duties in the Diaspora, written as part of his efforts to preserve traditional Judaism for a contemporary, intellectual audience. Published in Germany in 1835, they were translated into English in 1962.
I heard the reports of the arrests this morning as I made my challah: four men held on suspicion of espionage against the Jewish community. I imagine there is much fear today. Our task right now is finding the balance between paralysis and suspicion, maintaining a weathered steadiness. We are committed to navigating this sensibly.
Our Security Lead is working closely with authorities to ensure we remain safe, vigilant and careful. He wrote to you yesterday, asking you to join our collective efforts to ensure that we are doing the right things.
This week’s Torah portion, Ki Tissa, tells the unsettling story of the Golden Calf. The Israelites panic when their leader, Moses, is delayed. They simply cannot cope without his presence and guidance. There is a palpable leadership vacuum:
וַיַּ֣רְא הָעָ֔ם כִּֽי־בֹשֵׁ֥שׁ מֹשֶׁ֖ה לָרֶ֣דֶת מִן־הָהָ֑ר וַיִּקָּהֵ֨ל הָעָ֜ם עַֽל־אַהֲרֹ֗ן וַיֹּאמְר֤וּ אֵלָיו֙ ק֣וּם ׀ עֲשֵׂה־לָ֣נוּ אֱלֹהִ֗ים אֲשֶׁ֤ר יֵֽלְכוּ֙ לְפָנֵ֔ינוּ כִּי־זֶ֣ה ׀ מֹשֶׁ֣ה הָאִ֗ישׁ אֲשֶׁ֤ר הֶֽעֱלָ֙נוּ֙ מֵאֶ֣רֶץ מִצְרַ֔יִם לֹ֥א יָדַ֖עְנוּ מֶה־הָ֥יָה לֽוֹ׃
When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, the people gathered against Aaron and said to him, “Come, make us a god who shall go before us, for we do not know what has happened to Moses, the man who brought us from the land of Egypt.”
This impatience, panic and worry, this sense of being untethered and afraid, is surely familiar to us all right now. We don’t need to melt our jewellery but we do need reassurance, however incomplete. We are remaining vigilant and careful, while refusing to go down the path of paranoia or suspicion of everyone and everything. It is a difficult path to negotiate but doing so is in the DNA of FPS and we will keep working hard at it. Shabbat here is the centre of synagogue life and this moment of madness in Torah is book-ended by references to Shabbat – and in particular, to how God was refreshed by it.
And on the seventh day, [God] rested and was re-souled. (Ex. 31:17)
I hope we will lean into that re-souling, refreshing ourselves by being together. Tomorrow, (which also marks International Women’s Day) I’ll remind our children and ourselves of the leaders who have inspired and led us. We will also reflect on what being part of the Jewish community, and FPS in particular, means to all of us when the stakes are high.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
Lechavod u’letifaret
לְכָב֖וֹד וּלְתִפְאָֽרֶת
These words jump out at me from this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Tetzaveh. The text describes the priestly garments, detailing how their splendour and “fanciness” served to inspire the congregation.
While chatting with student rabbi Richard Greene over lunch in Leo Baeck College’s sunny garden this week, I realised this phrase speaks equally to our newly renovated synagogue. The renewal of FPS has lifted our collective mood and deepened our love for our space. As we hoped, it has already begun attracting new faces – and with our tidying and gardening still underway, who knows what’s yet to come!
This Friday, we will celebrate Purim back in our sanctuary. The recent improvements truly provide both “honour and beauty” to our proceedings. I am exceedingly grateful that we managed to restore and renovate this little place of our own in our corner of the North London diaspora.
The Book of Esther paints a scene of a Persian diaspora community working hard to ensure their continuity. While our journey has had rather fewer dramatic twists and turns, I believe we have achieved something similar.
Join Us This Friday
Please join us for Shabbat, our Purim Spiel, and the inevitable festive snacks:
P.S. I was recently a guest on Rabbi Karstadt’s podcast, The Rest is Commentary, discussing diaspora concerns. You can listen to the episode here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4IKUZygUhVx2j6BmwqlRgU?si=9bL3Xjz4QhSAjUm3OAgVZA
Shabbat Shalom and an early Purim Sameach!
Rebecca
This past Tuesday evening in Swiss Cottage, behind Waitrose, I joined a clergy gathering to meet Rabbi Jill Jacobs. I try to squeeze these opportunities into my already busy week because they are incredibly inspirational; they remind us of our core purpose when we build community.
Rabbi Jacobs leads the American organisation T’RUAH: the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, which brings the Torah’s ideals of human dignity, equality and justice to life by empowering rabbis and cantors to be moral voices. They do fantastic work in both the United States and Israel. Indeed, it was T’ruah’s network of leaders that connected and supported so many in Minneapolis during ICE’s random attacks there – delivering food parcels to families afraid to leave their homes and supporting school and neighbourhood communities. It was inspiring for our group of UK rabbis and cantors to consider our own capacity to influence public life for the better.
It was particularly poignant to do so during the week of Parashat Terumah, the portion that begins the building of the mishkan (sanctuary): “Tell the Israelite people to bring me gifts (terumah); you shall accept gifts for me from every person whose heart is willing… And let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.”
I love this verse especially. God dwells among the people, not in the building. Community is created by all of us contributing what we have, what we do and what we can bring.
I have talked about this a great deal in relation to our congregation at FPS, who we are and what kind of community we want to be: kind, principled, learning, curious. You can add the adjectives. But this also reminds us that being part of a Jewish community means keeping an eye on public life and making a difference. I write this as I wait for guests to arrive for the final night of our Winter Homeless Shelter. I know what a difference we have made by hosting these past two months. We have worked with refugees settling here, those seeking asylum and with food banks that support so many, all while looking after the lonely and bereaved within our own community. There are many other just, kind and principled initiatives that our members undertake because of, and on behalf of, us at FPS. I am thinking of all of that this week.
Rabbi Jacobs once wrote of the T’ruah community, “Jews who exercised their commitments to public life outside of the Jewish community will find a place within this community, as they contribute their own wisdom and observations to the conversation [of justice]… .”
May it be so for us.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
And God spoke to Moses and said: “Come up to me on the mountain and just be there.”
I am struck by this invitation. How rare it is to simply “be,” and how noticeable this small, quiet moment is. We find this within Parashat Mishpatim, which we read this Shabbat. After the cacophony of Sinai and the delivery of the Ten Commandments in last week’s portion, Yitro, this portion follows in a more grounded way, detailing legal rules and the people’s enthusiastic response. With alacrity, they agreed to join this endeavor, this faith, and this relationship.
וַיִּקַּח֙ סֵ֣פֶר הַבְּרִ֔ית וַיִּקְרָ֖א בְּאׇזְנֵ֣י הָעָ֑ם וַיֹּ֣אמְר֔וּ כֹּ֛ל אֲשֶׁר־דִּבֶּ֥ר יְהֹוָ֖ה נַעֲשֶׂ֥ה וְנִשְׁמָֽע׃
Then he took the book of the covenant and read it aloud to the people. And they said, “All that GOD has spoken we will do and heed!” (24:7)
It is a clear-eyed commitment to a way of life and it brings a sense of calm. At the end of the portion, God shares a moment with Moses, calling him and Joshua to the summit of the mountain to “just be there.”
וֶהְיֵה־שָׁ֑ם
(The Hebrew word (ve-hyeh – “and be”) is an anagram of the Divine Name, יהוה. Whatever that name signifies to you, it serves as an invitation to go deep into the silence to find the sacred – the necessary pause in our lives.
The world is heavy right now. There is so much that demands our response. As Jews, we know it is our task to speak out against injustice, from the streets of Tehran to the cities of Minnesota. We’re proud at FPS to host a weekly group of women who are Iranian dissidents. And from the debates over immigration in the UK (the Reform party is currently creating a rather worrying Jewish Alliance) to the daily support of and leadership in our own synagogues. There is always something to do. Yet, in order to sustain that doing, we must occasionally shut out the cacophony of voices and information, sitting quietly with ourselves to be fully present to recoup energy.
Wendell Berry’s Sabbath poem captures this feeling perfectly:
I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.
Take a moment for this invitation.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
*this was also written for MPJ Thought for the Week found on https://progressivejudaism.org.uk/
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