This weekend marks the end of Black History month, but as a Black friend of mine said meaningfully, Everyday is Black history month for me.
I have been learning about the iconic Dame Jocelyn Barrow – the first black female governor of BBC. How is it she is not a household name? We recognise our community, alongside many others has work to do in expanding and enlarging our understanding of the Jewish family. This is a good moment to highlight and draw attention to the work and words of Black Jews and Jews of Colour who have and do contribute so profoundly to our Jewish experience.
This past Rosh Hashanah Rabbi Angela Warnick Buchdahl delivered a searing sermon about race and the Jewish people. We will recognise much of what she says. Do read it here ahead of this Shabbat. This week’s Taste of Torah will focus on this sermon and allow us a moment of conversation alongside Parashat Vayeira: Expulsion and Division.
This Shabbat will be Parashat Lech -Lecha where our Jewish journey began with Abraham and Sarah leaving with their possessions and the souls they had made in Haran, and they went to go to the land of Canaan, and they came to the land of Canaan.
Rashi quotes Bereshit Rabbah and suggests this was conversion, Abraham converted the men and Sarah the women. Either way this is the first time we see community growing.
We have always been a people growing, gathering others along the way. What a perfect verse to read this week. Our ancestors are from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Egypt as well as the later Ashkenazi line.
This Shabbat fellow Liberal synagogue Kehillah North London is holding an all black led service . If you would like to support and be part of this please do please zoom in and let us know.
Shabbat Shalom
Rebecca
This week is like the day after the night before.
The Chagim (festivals) of Tishri finished, and now we sit in the new month of Cheshvan. Funnily Cheshvan, one of the few Hebrew months containing no festivals was referred to in the Rabbinic period as Mar Cheshvan (Bitter) because it’s without the joy of festivals. In the world of professional Judaism Cheshvan is the pause for breath we’ve all been waiting for. And then you add, for this Jewish professional a Bar Mitzvah, and the pause is very welcome.
In Parashat Noach we see God pausing and breathing, well almost.
God said quietly, to Godself, I won’t ever again destroy humankind as I have just done. (8:21)
What a detail, that private thought, shared with no-one else, but a commitment and promise nonetheless. What a way to begin this quieter, calmer month with that silent promise of the rainbow sealing the covenant between God and the earth.
Surely a good time to head outdoors and find moments of divinity and calm in nature.
To that end FPS will share both Shabbat services with Rabbis Alexandra Wright and Igor Zinkov at LJS. A rest for the whole FPS team and an opportunity for synagogue visiting from your living room. Look forward to seeing you the following Shabbat 30/31 October when we will begin services in our sanctuary.
Shabbat Shalom to you all
Rebecca
And you can overcome it [your desire to sin]
My youngest child’s Bar Mitzvah this weekend. As Rafael himself wrote in Shofar this month, he’s anticipating a few tears. And he is right to. What is it about the passage of time and these life cycle moments that move us so. Sheila K-L today reminded me when we first joined FPS and of Rafael climbing the steps of the Bimah, to my embarrassment, and wrapping himself around my legs. Things move and change; and that is both the source of joy and wistfulness. Watching our babies become (at times) thoughtful adolescents is a good thing and I couldn’t be prouder of him.
I love that he has this portion, the one that ends with the words describing Cain’s new home East of Eden, the same words that gave John Steinbeck the title for his book. The story of Cain and Abel and their attempts to please God inspired Steinbeck’s story of the brothers Cal and Aron trying to love and be loved by their father Adam. Steinbeck was not alone in loving the story. But it’s the devastating last page that captures the intensity of this biblical narrative about free will and how we choose to behave. Timshel is Adam’s last word directly quoted from Genesis 4 atah timshol bo; replete with the meaning he gives his sons; ‘you can overcome [it]’, or as I prefer to understand it, ‘you may always choose to do better’.
Shabbat Shalom to you all
Rebecca
We are reaching the end of our HHDs and the Tishrei festivals with Simchat Torah and our celebration of two fantastic members of FPS as they bless and bring honour to Torah. Valerie Joseph and Dean Staker have brought so much to our services all through these extraordinary seven months. Honouring Torah and being honoured by it in turn is a very Jewish phenomenon.
“Turn it over, and [again] turn it over, for all is within it. Look into it and become old and frail within it, never moving away from it, for you have no better measure than it.” (Pirkei Avot 5:22) and it is so.
To that end I am hoping for a group of adults who might like to work towards reading Torah in the Spring and preparing together. We have chosen Shabbat Acherei Mot-Kedoshim on 24 April 2021. We need three folk only to make this group viable. It will be a wonderful opportunity to learn and prepare together for one of the most meaningful portions in Torah.
Do let me know if you might be interested.
Shabbat Shalom to all and looking forward to seeing you for our last car park service on Friday at 6.30pm (please book in via the office) and streamed to you on Shabbat at 11am.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Rebecca
Never before has our fragility been so apparent.
Usually we would want to pack our sukkah with uzpishin, guests, real and imagined. But this year it will be us, members of FPS who need the sukkah to meet in. Designed to be impermanent and not remotely robust, we bring ourselves into this new space.
This year it would be unsafe to squash into our usual sukkah space so there will be impermanent structures in the car park. Fabulous David Lewis will bring strong outdoor lights for us. Bring warm clothing. The service length will be understanding of us being outside!
We are tashvu k’ein taduru, we sit in the sukkah in the manner in which we dwell in our permanent homes. We make out like it is our home.
But we know as Rabbi Alan Lew z’l described; No building of wood and stone can ever afford us protection from the disorder that is always lurking all around us. So let’s bring all of that into our Sukkah this year whilst also marking our joy. This Sukkot, waving the lulav and eating and dwelling in the Sukkah, is a commandment that can only be fulfilled with joy.
We would love for you to bring fresh fruit and vegetables for the Food Bank (they will be delivered on Shabbat so families have them fresh).
Your local lulav – an opportunity to reflect on this strange time – and a message we can hang in the Sukkah about something you have learned of fragility this year.
Rabbi Rebecca
Yom Kippur this year will be hard for many of us, staying at home, fasting perhaps alone, without the throngs of folk and even the occasional irritation with the person seated next to us. All of this we will miss. Be easy with yourselves as you anticipate the day and what it might hold for you. Perhaps prepare to be disappointed or frustrated then one can only be pleasantly surprised.
Our services will be shorter, and there will much to peruse or visit across the LJ community in that early afternoon slot. We wanted to offer as much virtual inspiration as possible, so have asked four folk ahead of Yom Kippur to share their thoughts on the Torah reading that day. Netzavim talks of community; who is included, and what our Judaism might be.
We’re so excited to tell you about our new FPS Podcast. Rabbi Rebecca discusses thoughts and ideas from our Emeritus Rabbi, Frank Hellner, Sheila King Lassman, our Life President, Richard Greene leading our Building Group and our new Chair Tamara Joseph. Together they offer new insights into being a Jew and meeting Yom Kippur. Look out for the first episode coming on facebook and twitter in the next few days.
We’re also delighted to announce our Kallat Bereshit and Chatan Torah for this memorable Simchat Torah. Valerie Joseph has chaired our Beit Tefillah Services Committee and Dean Staker, as we know, makes our services. Both have done much during the past six months to hold services, prayer and community together, both behind the Bimah and on it. Very much looking forward.
Gmar Chatimah Tovah. A good fast, a good day and a good finish.
Rabbi Rebecca
Please do donate the equivalent of your Yom Kippur meals to Foodbank Aid. You can drop bags off at 36 Millfield Lane, Highgate N6 6JB.
I wish you a joyful, an easy and a sweet New Year. I hope you manage to taste new fruits and food.
Managing new moments is the spirit of Rosh Hashanah; new experiences are such a key part of our New Year rituals. In that spirit we’d like to give FPSniks a chance to visit the sanctuary, have a 15-minute moment in front of the ark and essentially re-connect ahead of Kol Nidrei between 10.30 and 12.30 on Sunday 27th. We hope to have some of our new Council here to welcome and wave at you and give you prayers and siddurim. Do book in for your slot by emailing
What a year for us to negotiate our way into a New Year with no more clarity or certainty than the one we are leaving. I pray that we can be of use to each other, that our congregation continues to provide solace and even joy and we can together add to the urgent tikun our community and world needs.
Yesterday I was taught a phrase by the Reverend Dr Rosemarie Mallet, Archdeacon of Croydon, who referred to religion’s “inward reach and outward stretch”. May this New Year of 5781 be that for us; an inward reach to the profound parts of our Jewish practice and learning and an outward stretch to be felt in the world. Good goals to have.
Shanah Tovah to you all, thank you for all you bring to FPS.
Rabbi Rebecca and all working here in your synagogue
Zoe, Dean, Franklyn, Pauline, Gracielle and Hilary
We are living in an ever changing world. Guidance this week, more robust than before makes gatherings for over six people illegal. Clearly this will disrupt family Yom Tov gatherings for many of us.
Sadly we will not be able to meet together for Tashlich and communal Shofar blowing on Rosh Hashanah afternoon. Instead we will prepare packs for families or groups of six that would like to do this themselves. Please email if you want a pack.
We will still manage our car park Friday evening services and move forward on synagogue gatherings under 30. We will keep you informed at every stage. This Shabbat, Ivriah will come into the building and we will gauge how that feels for everyone.
Franklyn, Dean and I will bring Selichot to you on Saturday evening from the sanctuary. In the meantime, as home connection seems inevitable for us all, here are some tips how to make your computer space for services feel a little different over the High Holidays as you zoom into the sanctuary which I hope will allow you to feel closer to us and the building.
When the rabbis asked the question where would Judaism be after the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E, they answered ‘homes’. Each home would become a mikdash m’at, the miniature Beit Hamikdash (Temple). Shabbat tables would be the mizbei-ach (altar). Maybe we need to remember this during this insane year that keeps us out of our synagogue building.
Some ideas from around the Jewish world for managing being at home and Zooming in for services:
Wishing you Shabbat Shalom and looking forward to meaningful renewal for us all whatever the medium.
Rabbi Rebecca
Schools are going back. Which frankly felt a like a dream until I saw Dora walk up the path and down the road to Woodhouse College. Rafael begins next week and, of course Ruben is finished and it’ll be a year before he begins his Economics degree at Glasgow University.
But all of this does mean that we have arrived at Autumn, as the poet John Keats captured for ever;
Season of Mists and Mellow fruitfulness…
Things have not felt mellow for many of us these past six months. Indeed anxiety has been pretty high. So preparing for Rosh Hashanah this year as we pass through this month of Elul is so different. Time has been strange these past months as days and weeks merged together; and we negotiated work schedules at home and new means of marking distinctions.
But of course preparing for the New Year is also familiar, because this opportunity to gaze inwards comes annually and reminds us that we are responsible for ourselves. This past year has amplified what is beyond our control and Elul invites us consider what we can control and manage. That is, ourselves. Kotveinu b’sefer chayim we will chant again and again this month, Write us in the Book of Life. That Book doesn’t get written on Rosh Hashanah; we write in it continually. Decisions that were made for us will be in its pages; the experiences of growing up, our parents, our siblings. Our work and our adult choices and of course the decisions we make every day how to be and how to react.
In S.Y. Agnon’s beautiful anthology, Days of Awe, we find this story: “A tale is told of one who sat in study before the zaddik Rabbi Mordecai of Nadvorna, of blessed memory, and before Rosh ha-Shanah came to obtain permission to be dismissed. That zaddik said to him, ‘Why are you hurrying?’ Said he to him, ‘I am a Reader, and I must look into the festival prayer book, and put my prayers in order.’ Said the zaddik to him, ‘The prayer book is the same as it was last year. But it would be better for you to look into your deeds, and put yourself in order.’”
And so we do.
Actually this year the prayers will be a little different, service format tweaked and adjusted for the different reality we find ourselves in. The yamim nora’im, the ‘awed days’ are upon us and I hope they will bring you an opportunity to feel that awe and radical amazement of being alive, of having reached another year and another renewal for us, our lives and our hopes.
Shabbat Shalom for the weekend of Parashat Ki Tavo; the penultimate Shabbat of 5780.
I wish you well and look forward to seeing you in person if you manage one of our Car Park services, or on line as we have been doing.
Rebecca
“All models are wrong,” statisticians like to repeat, following words coined (most likely) by British statistician George Box in 1976 “…but some are useful”.
When does usefulness outweigh justice?
This has been quite a week; five days of much anguish for young people as they surveyed their school years of study and in some instances their future hopes and dreams in shatters. This all followed the A Level results, which had been adjudicated by a computer algorithm created by Ofqual. And on Monday at 4pm of this week, it was trumped by the human touch and knowledge of teachers. And our government reversed their trust in the system and returned to Central Assessed Grades.
There is such an anti-dystopian message in all of this. One A Level student talked of the ‘lack of humanity’ in all of this. Huy Duong, a refugee from communist Vietnam, arriving in the 1980s, now an IT consultant anticipated the errors for 39 % of students, but no-one listened. He described the algorithm as opaque and undemocratic, something he recognised from his youth. And talked of our 18 year olds’ “collective punishment by statistics”. In other words the computer said no.
How can there not be a message or a moral in all of this?
Maybe one is that justice and humanity is sometimes at odds with ‘usefulness’. This week’s portion Shoftim gives Jews their marching cry, it’s directed us for many generations. Tzedek Tzedek Tirdof…Justice, Justice shall you pursue. Amidst all the attempts for efficiency and usefulness is the desire for humane justice. This is the case whether calling out environmental damage, responding to poverty and destitution or people fleeing their countries for safety. And indeed even calling for fair and transparent ways of rewarding our school children, wherever their postcodes.
Shabbat shalom
Rabbi Rebecca
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