We embark today on 29 days of the month of Elul.
Elul’s acronym is I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine (dodi li v’ani lo). Tradition has understood it to be speaking about the individual and God, rather than just romantic love. For us now, it can be how we intuit the sacred and our relationship to it. And so, we are encouraged to undergo a 29-day reflection as we approach Rosh Hashanah.
We do this year in and year out, trying to concentrate our intentions, our self-knowledge, our potential. In the book of Kohelet we read, ‘there is nothing new under the sun’ (1:9). We know these cycles; this is what we do. Yet this year’s High Holy Days will feel different for all of us. The horror of October 7th, as we were winding down to end the of the Tishri season last year, continues to traumatise in so many ways, from so many perspectives. How might we approach this season with this terrible backdrop behind and seemingly in front of us? How will it be when we gather together with all our different responses?
Colleague Rabbi Kath Vardi, on behalf of Reform and Liberal Rabbis and Cantors, suggests, In such circumstances it can be tempting to allow hope to give way to cynicism, to protect ourselves from bitter disappointment and hurt by pre-deciding that there is little point in working towards anything different.
Yet surely that is exactly what we should be doing, so that once again we embark on that internal work that allows these days to carry the grandeur, the possibility and the hope they promise.
So, with a great appreciation for repetition, I share some fragments again for each day of Elul. You’ve seen some of them before but like our prayers, they speak afresh to the person we are this year. We are different – and perhaps they may help us to find the future and hope we look towards.
This exercise is to enable us to arrive readier and more open to the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur journey. Take what you find helpful and leave what you don’t.
It will also be different because we will be out of our beloved building as work begins on our roof. It is a challenge to not be in our home – but what an act of love for our synagogue community this work is.
We are encouraged to read Psalm 27 daily throughout Elul. I’ve found that different stanzas and phrases call out at different times of the month. Print it out for your fridge? I’m sharing a particularly beautiful translation by Rabbi Richard Levy z’l. And here is it set to music by Aly Halpert and Joey Weisenberg.
1 Of David.
Adonai is my light and my victory—
From whom should I feel fright?
Adonai is the stronghold of my life—
From whom should I feel terror?
2 When evildoers approach me in battle to feed on my flesh—
My pursuers, my adversaries—
They have stumbled, they have fallen down.
3 If a camp encamps against me, my heart will not fear;
If a war arises against me,
In this I would trust:
4 One thing have I sought from Adonai—how I long for it:
That I may live in the House of Adonai all the days of my life;
That I may look upon the sweetness of Adonai,
And spend time in the Palace;
5 That You might hide me in Your sukkah on a chaotic day,
Hide me in the hiding places of Your tent,
Raise me high upon a rock.
6 Now my head rises high above my enemies roundabout,
And in Your tent I’ll offer offerings to the sound of t’ruah.
I shall sing and chant praises to Adonai!
7 Hear, Adonai, my voice—
I am crying out!
Be gracious to me, answer me!
8 My heart has said to You: “Seek my face.”
I am seeking Your face, Adonai—
9 Do not hide Your face from me.
Do not turn Your servant away in anger,
You have been my help—
Do not forsake me, do not abandon me, God of my deliverance!
10 For my father and my mother have abandoned me,
Yet Adonai gathers me up.
11 Make Your path apparent to me,
Guide me in the upright road
Because of those up ahead who lie in wait for me.
12 Do not hand me over to the lust of my adversaries—
For false witnesses have risen against me, puffing violently!
13 Had I not the faith
That I would see the goodness of God in the land of life . . .
14 Wait for Adonai—
Fill your waiting with hope in Adonai;
Let your heart be strong and of good courage,
And wait hopefully for Adonai.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
These quiet weeks of August have been anything but here in our synagogue as we pack, plan and proceed. However, as a few vital folk take holiday these next few days, we will be offering this week’s as a double email. Your next email will arrive on 1st Elul which is Wednesday 4th September and we will begin the Elul entry into the High Holidays together.
If not now when…. begins the famous learning from Pirkei Avot. This considering and reflecting on our past year and its enormity on the world stage will certainly take some thought. But so do our own smaller lives – and as always, it starts with where we are now.
So in these remaining days of summer, wherever you are, whatever you are remembering, recalling or looking at right now right here, I wish you time and meaning as you do so. I share a blessing based on tradition and inspired by our good friend Rabbi Professor Larry Hoffman:
Baruch Ata Adonai Melech HaOlam, she’kacha lo b’olamo
Blessed are You…whose world is filled with beauty.
Wishing you Shabbat Shalom and if you need anything during these days while Caroline is away, do be in touch with me or Beverley.
Rebecca
This week, we will celebrate our Resouled Band with a special kiddush to show our gratitude for all the music they have created for us. Resouled will be a little smaller and more modest in the coming months but the tunes and the music will remain with us. Please join us this Friday to celebrate with them. Shiru L’Adonai Shir Chadash, Sing to God a New Song, said the Psalmist and so said Dean Staker and Rabbi Neil Janes over 16 years ago. The power of song and prayer are central to the spirit of FPS and Resouled is critical to that.
This week’s portion, V’Etchanan, contains the second version of the Ten Commandments. It is different particularly in the reason for keeping Shabbat. This one suggests gratitude for the Exodus from Egypt rather than the work of creation that God made.
For me this week, it speaks of repetition: the opportunity of iterations and the chances to try things again and differently. FPS has been known for its creative music and famously for Resouled which was exactly that: Shir Chadash – a new song.
Change can be daunting, sometimes even paralysing, but we must remember that newness springs from it.
Shiru L’Adonai Shir Chadash
Shabbat Shalom and see you on Friday night.
Rebecca
Helen Keller said; “The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.”
We know the difference between sight and the capacity to see and have vision. These past ten months, the need to see, watch and bear witness has been huge since the horrific events of October 7th and events in Israel, Gaza and the Occupied Territories have unfolded through the following months. It has felt a Jewish obligation to pay attention carefully and watch responsibly. This has extended to life here. I haven’t taken this responsibility to keep eyes open lightly.
When we’ve offered the Morning Blessings, pokeach ivrim, the one who opens the eyes, feels very live and very real.
This week’s Parashat BALAK has Balaam the sorcerer failing to the see the obstruction in his path and it takes his donkey, after he has whipped it three times, to help open his eyes so he can see the Angel of God. B’nei Mitzvah students love this portion with the talking donkey, but there is something very adult as well about the opening of his eyes to the reality. It’s compelling in this story and it has been extraordinarily compelling these past ten months.
But so is the need to look and gaze elsewhere at times. So is the need to take rest and look at the stars, greenery, the sea and your beloveds.
Mary Oliver wrote in The Song of the Builders:
On a summer morning
I sat down
on a hillside
to think about God –
a worthy pastime.
I hope to manage this during my break from work and although watching the tragedies that surround us, I will be focusing my attention elsewhere briefly. As the poet Amanda Gorman explains;
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it
if only we’re brave enough to be it.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
I was very moved on Sunday to witness the ordination of 5 new rabbis; joining the progressive rabbinate and ready to take on communities.
Rabbis Daisy, Eleanor, Nicola, Martina and Matt who studied through the Pandemic and the closures all spoke of their trepidation of what it might mean to lead, to give direction, to know where to go – one even asked us the congregation exactly what to do; he felt so uncertain. They spoke of hoping for encounters with congregants and the opportunities to grow relationships. The senior librarian at Leo Baeck College gave a brilliant address, during which she reminded the congregation that becoming an accountant is very not like becoming a rabbi.
Because, she said, it is far more intimate, you are bound up with people constantly. The prospect of all those waiting relationships was daunting for each one of the ordinands. 23 years since my ordination I can say that it has been the best part of my role.
The great Civil Rights rabbi German/American Joachim Prinz reflected this understanding when he said, “You cannot be a rabbi unless you love people. You don’t have to like them, but you have to love all of them. [God] says, ‘Thou shalt love the neighbor as thyself.’ [God] doesn’t say, ‘Thou shalt like them.’ I have loved all the people with whom I’ve come into contact. Even those with whom I have disagreed and whom I have disliked because I think God wants us to love people.”
This week we read about the waters of Meribah where the children of Israel argued. They argued so badly that they ignored Moses grief for his sister’s death, they caused Moses and Aaron to lose their right to finish the task.
הֵ֚מָּה מֵ֣י מְרִיבָ֔ה אֲשֶׁר־רָב֥וּ בְנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל
And we know as we read that disagreement is not the sign of indifference, as Prinz identified there can still be love there. And at the end of this story it strangely says as interpreted by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz with these Hebrew words et vahev b’sufa” (Numbers 21:14) “In the end, there was love.”
That is at the heart of these stories and the ones in our own lives and communities.
Why vote?
I have studied attitudes to civic engagement with our teenagers this past month. Jewish tradition has a great deal to say on involving ourselves with the welfare of our cities and the wider community in which we live. As Jeremiah wrote in the 8th century BCE to his anxious and exiled people: But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you [into exile,] and pray to the Eternal on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. [Jeremiah: 29:7]
This feels particularly apposite this week.
In a delightful twist of fate and time, our synagogue Annual General Meeting was booked for the day we will turn out to vote in our General Election. And the effects of living in a democratic society benefits us all.
Our community is a microcosm of our wider society. No organisation is sustained healthily without its members caring for it. In all the 12 years of my serving FPS, I have seen that demonstrated every day – a full, if miniature, democracy. On Thursday, I imagine we will feel similarly about the leadership of our local areas and the country at large.
In Mishnah Avot, we learn that Rabbi Hanina, the vice-high priest insisted: Pray for the welfare of the government, for were it not for the fear it inspires, every person would swallow their neighbour alive. We need good governance – we know what the alternative is – and we do more than pray for it. Thanks to our new BoD representative Tim Seyner-Harness, our community had access to a local hustings for the candidates for Finchley and Golders Green and those in neighbouring constituencies have had access too. It is deeply Jewish to care what happens around us – Lo Tuchal L’hitalem – Do not become indifferent, says the Book of Deuteronomy in Ki Teitzei.
I welcome this opportunity as you may also do. Do join us on Thursday evening – in between your voting and watching results for the General Election – by expressing your views on our synagogue, its plans and its governance. You are critical to that process too.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
There are sharp divisions between the Jewish people all over the world.
We might not yet call it a civil war, thank God, but the dissent between us is distressing.
I am not sure about the percentages but a large group of Jews are more, and maybe even exclusively, drawn to the suffering of Jews and the plight we are in; such is the trauma that it is impossible for them to see others’ suffering. The other group feels that pain but also deeply feels the responsibility and values of Jewish life threatened by the suffering unleashed on others. It is safe to say this is a profoundly difficult time for all of us, wherever we sit on that continuum. Dissent troubles us in the British Jewish community, even though our name means wrestling with God – Yisra (wrestle) El (God). I heard yesterday about families torn about these past 7 months or so – families not even caught up in the terrible troubles – just the mere act of talking and conversing has proved divisive and injurious.
In the Book of Esther study group, we have been reading with great interest this diaspora fairytale that speaks so acutely to the news right now.
There have always been passionate differences of views and as always, our Torah portion speaks to this, with the fractured response to those scouts who checked out the land for Moses and the people. The scouts produced bad reports about the land that they had seen (Numbers 13:32). The people began to panic, screaming and crying, and saying they wanted to go back to Egypt (Numbers 14:1). They even threaten to throw stones at anyone who tries to calm them down (Numbers 14:10).
I pray for us to keep talking, keep discussing and keep open to each other’s points of view, however challenging we may find them.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
I find the idea of complaining rather compelling. You may have seen the cartoon of a New York City Jewish restaurant table with three older women: “Is there anything else I can bring you to complain about?” the waiter asks them.
Complaining is often a pretext in our own lives for finding fault, creating negativity, avoiding gratitude and positivity. This is the scene we find in this week’s portion.
וַיְהִ֤י הָעָם֙ כְּמִתְאֹ֣נְנִ֔ים
The people were complaining.
Rashi suggests they were looking for a pretext a reason to fall out of favour, or out of connection, with God.
Complaining was a way of doing that. Recalling the plentiful food in Egypt allowed an amnesia of everything that came with the cucumbers, leeks and meat. They could be cross rather than assess their new situation out of Egypt, with less food but more freedom and safety. Instead, they complain.
The concept of complaining is complicated. Sometimes, it’s indulgent and self-serving. But sometimes, complaining is a form of protest and concern, raising alarms, seeking protection and calling to account. As a veteran complainer, I appreciate this reminder – that it is not only bad.
Last week, a group of parents of soldiers and combatants at the front line in Gaza wrote a letter of complaint (or beseeching perhaps) to the government. They joined with the hostage families critiquing their government’s policy of war and beseeching them for an end to hostilities and a deal that brings home their loved ones and ends the killing. We are out of time, they complained.
What a reminder that complaining can be powerful, heartfelt and hopeful.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
Count all the congregation of the children of Israel, by families following their parents’ houses; a head count of every adult (of army age) so everyone is counted according to the names of their family.
As we begin the book of Numbers this week, we are reminded to count and be aware of everyone who is in the community – and it couldn’t be more appropriate for our congregation. We also begin this week with newly-received planning permission for our modest, but essential, renovations. This is momentous for us and confirms that we are truly in business. We have a final chunk to raise and will be doing so in earnest with a new Just Giving page and renewed energy for this Fundraising campaign.
We have raised £1.5 million. We need at least another £400,000.00 to ensure the building project can happen fully and include the repairs that we have recently discovered we must carry out to ensure the safety of our building. I am confident, as are the team working on this.
Our architects have gone out to tender; builders have been visiting and continue to do; we are planning when and how we will move out. There is much to arrange but it is exciting and every step confirms our belief in and love for FPS: looking after our Sifrei Torah; setting up Ivriah in our new Shabbat venue; organising where we will be for High Holy Days.
We think we will have all this information for you by next week.
There will be a new fundraising page so that we can share with family and friends and add our sponsored events. We will, we hope, have clear decisions as to when we are moving out and a detailed plan of where we will be for festivals, Shabbatot and all between.
In this week’s portion, as well as the counting and creating of this portable community, is the reference to packing up the Mishkan – Tabernacle – and travelling with it. That will be us in the Autumn and although daunting, it will be exciting too.
When the Tabernacle is set to travel, the Levites shall dismantle it; and when the Tabernacle camps, the Levites shall erect it.
Although our own James Levy, who is leading the Building Campaign, and many of our numbers may inherit the Levite clan and name, we know that for us Liberal Jews all are responsible for the synagogue, all that is in it, all that it offers and most of all, right now, all that it needs.
We definitely have holy work to do and I am looking forward to it.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
We are so delighted at FPS to have welcomed Student Rabbi James Feder to be our intern for the next 5 weeks. Please look out for learning opportunities with him – he’ll be leading services this Shabbat, as well as teaching with me at Delving into Judaism (our weekly Adult Ed class for all interested in learning more). He will also be leading Café Ivriah on 15th June, Navigating Communal Trauma: Re-Reading Psalm 23 after October 7th. He introduces himself below.
Shabbat Shalom.
“If you follow My laws and faithfully observe My commandments,” God promises in the opening verses of Parshat Behukotai, “I will grant your rains in their season.” I’ve only been here a few days, but if rain is the litmus test, it seems to me that God is certainly quite pleased with you — and I can see why! I’ve been so moved by the warm embrace I received upon joining FPS last Shabbat, and am really look
ing forward to spending the next month with you all.
Heading into my fifth and final year of rabbinical school at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion, Reform Judaism’s seminary in North America, I am so grateful to Rabbi Rebecca Birk for providing me this opportunity to experience the British Jewish community. In many ways, it feels like a homecoming. I spent five years living in the UK, earning an undergraduate degree from the University of St. Andrew’s and a postgraduate degree from the University of Glasgow. Since then, and before beginning rabbinical school, I spent two years working in LGBT journalism in New York City and four years directing communications for an international consortium of non-profits involved in Israeli-Palestinian conflict resolution. In 2018, I made aliyah to Israel, where I worked with one of the largest civil society organisations aiming to mobilise moderate Israelis in support of progressive causes.
When I’m not here, I’m based in in Brooklyn, New York, and study at HUC-JIR’s Manhattan campus. In the fall, I will be returning for a third year as the rabbinic intern for the amazing community at Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield, New Jersey. Among various honours and fellowships, I am a current fellow in the Tisch Fellowship Programme, which is led by Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman (himself a big fan of Liberal Judaism and FPS).
Having lived my life between the United States, the United Kingdom, and Israel, I have long said that I want to craft a rabbinate that is truly global. This feels like an important step towards realising that aim. I am so excited to learn from you, to pray with you, and to grow as a leader through our time together.
להתראות \ l’hitra-ot,
James Feder
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