“Freedom Day” (19th July) did not necessarily mean freedom.
We are committed to caution and thoughtfulness around how we gather in the building. We will watch carefully to ensure we remain vigilant. We know the Delta strain is raising concern but keeping open and available is also our priority.
We are, this week, able to bring in a lovely change advocated by Liberal Judaism alongside our fellow organisations of Reform, Masorti and United Synagogues.
We can now sing (quietly) behind face masks!
As promised we will continue to:
Shabbat Shalom
I don’t know about you but a particular tiredness has set in for me. I’m certain this will be cured by some time in nature and a little bit of river swimming, as we head to Wales for a few days tomorrow.
But I like to think acknowledging exhaustion and when we’ve run out of steam allows a certain awareness of our lives. It has been busy. It’s ok to be tired.
Va’Etchanan this week’s Torah portion includes not just the second version of the Ten Commandments but also the Shema, that piece of Torah that has become our preeminent prayer:
Hear O Israel the Eternal is Your God, The Eternal is One.
I like to focus on the instruction to “Hear”, not just passive listening but active hearing of what is being said, what is happening around us and what are the voices we pay attention to inside ourselves.
Last year’s first lockdown saw a dramatic decrease in traffic, both on the road and in the air and we heard all sorts of things we hadn’t for a very long while. Life has now returned to its previous noisiness, and I am hoping to hear less and more when we head to the River Wye.
Will I be able to respond to the Shema‘s call and be renewed by what I hear. I hope so.
And I hope to see you over the Summer when things, for a while, will be quieter and calmer.
Shabbat Shalom
Rebecca
The 9th Av is the most solemn day of the Jewish calendar, when the destructions of the first and second temple are mourned.
The day has become a magnet of grief and now marks the day of all Jewish atrocities.
Indeed the Haredim in Israel boycotted the creating of Yom HaShoah (holocaust remembrance day) because, they argued, there already was a day of mourning.
As Progressive Jews the day has lost some of its intensity as our Judaism doesn’t focus on temple rebuilding and return. But the idea of mourning and grief is powerful, maybe particularly this year.
The rabbis, romantically, suggest sinat chinam, senseless hatred in the Jewish community was the cause of the destruction and suffering. Historically we know the Romans were responsible for the second temple destruction and exile. However the destructive idea of hate is compelling.
We’ve seen such an outpouring of racist hatred this week following the Euros 2021 final on Sunday evening. It is all our responsibility, not just the recipients of such abuse. Children this week have been racially abused on the way to school in our neighbourhood.
We are all duty bound to cry out when our community and society is permeated by such poison. Indeed the prophet Isaiah will remind us of our duty this Shabbat. To be a Jew is to be part of this conversation and as passionate about the sinat chinam that exists as we are about our religious rites:
Stop bringing meaningless offerings!
Your incense is detestable to me.
New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—
I cannot bear your worthless assemblies
The 9th Av gives us pause to consider exile, destruction and hatred and to reflect and respond. Reinvigorating our festival year to bring renewed meaning is at the heart of being a Jew.
Shabbat Shalom
Unlocking
Pikuah Nefesh – “Safeguarding Life” is a bedrock principle of Jewish law, and supersedes most other obligations or mitzvot. It is what guided us all to be as conscientious and careful as possible these past 16 months.
As unlocking begins in earnest I am thinking deeply what PIKUACH NEFESH can mean.
We know it can mean literally, the saving a life from death. But it also means the quality of that life, the nuanced and complex way we feel alive.
The utopian day of 19 July will mean so much and so differently for each of us. I’m considering, as you might imagine, how that informs our synagogue life.
We will gather as community but with such different attitudes and experiences, some more fearful than others. As always, I hope kindness and consideration will inform how we are. Some of us are needing community and relationality above all things, simply as a life saving option. Some are afraid of loosening restrictions for our hard won health and safety.
The chances are our community is made of all those attitudes and probably many more. We will be considering carefully mask wearing and singing in our services by listening closely to PHE’s advice to faith institutions, and of course using our common sense.
Pikuach Nefesh will guide us as it always has in keeping each other safe and comfortable, but now in new extended ways.
We have been through a She’at Hadehak – “ an Extraordinary Moment” – how will we reflect communally on it and continue to be kind to each other even as our opinions and perspectives on this differ?
Jewish life has always made adjustments in times of emergency and crisis. We did, when we became more than a building. Opening up requires a similar sensitivity and thoughtfulness. I intend to offer as many opportunities to talk and navigate through these stages. I hope it will be guided, informed and inspired by Chesed “Profound Love and Kindness” so we act with tremendous love and understanding with each other.
We truly are, once again, a mixed multitude. A community full of folk whose own encounter and appreciation of what we have been through is diverse.
We will do this well.
Please continue to book in, and now you can even enjoy kiddush under your seats.
Shabbat shalom to all
Rebecca
History happens all the time. And of course changes are made to laws, customs and ideas.
This month Rabba Dr Lindsay Taylor Guthhartz became the first UK based orthodox woman to receive semicha at the Yeshivat Maharat. (Dina Brawer received hers in the U.S) I can’t stress how important this is for us even though as Liberal Jews it’s been old news. We claim Regina Jon as the first in Europe, 1935 followed by Jackie Tabick in 1976. All of them came from a situation where they asked for more. They asked for greater, fuller Jewish inheritance. Every time that happens, surely we must applaud and encourage.
Indeed it was only 2011 when our Queen, Elizabeth II, changed the laws of succession. Sons and daughters of any future UK monarch will have equal right to the throne. Commonwealth leaders agreed to this progression, so it’s now enshrined in constitutional law.
The desire to receive inheritance equally and equitably is a good one. And it stems from a desire to be alive and engaged.
“The secret of success,” Jackson Pollock’s father wrote to the teenage artist-to-be, “is to be fully awake to everything about you.”
Being awake is what the daughters of Zelophehad famously were in this week’s portion of Pinchas. After appraising their family situation and legacy they saw what was missing, them being able to inherit. And amazingly when they asked, their request was granted. “Zelophehad … had no sons, only daughters” (v26:33). And [so] …The daughters of Zelophehad … came forward. The names of the daughters were Mahlah, Noa, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah. They stood before Moses, Eleazar the priest, the chieftains, and the whole assembly, at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting and said… Let not our father’s name be lost to his clan just because he had no son! Give us a holding among our father’s kinsmen!” (27:1-4)
Being fully awake to everything about you is what made our founders and builders insist on a tweak in Jewish inheritance, for all to be open. Let women come down from the balconies, insisted Lily Montagu over a century ago.
Moses needed to confer with God, he was uncertain. Naturally. But the answer was a resounding “yes”. And these daughters paved the way for women. To inherit. And we continue this tradition of being awake and asking for more. Only last month at our shared Shavuot celebrations the scholar and theologian Professor Judith Plaskow reiterated the words in her 1990 book Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective. “I am not a Jew in the synagogue and a feminist in the world. I am a Jewish feminist and a feminist Jew in every moment of my life.”
I can’t help but celebrate this portion again. The chutzpah of Mahlah, Noa, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah invite us to consider what we might need to ask for next.
That’s what Mr Pollock meant when he told his artist son to be awake. And for us the laws of financial inheritance that Zelphehad’s daughters negotiated, have transformed for us into a keenness for equal inheritance and opportunities for leadership.
It’s always been there. It was Henrietta Szold who captured that [the] Jewish heart has always starved unless it was fed through the Jewish intellect.
Here’s to more audacious asking.
Shabbat Shalom to all.
Rebecca
Mah tovu ohalecha Ya’akov, u’mishk’notecha Yisrael
These words of Balaam offered every Shabbat morning as we gather in prayer, in all synagogues, have become significant for us wherever we are.
And so they are sung to our synagogue buildings and communities. Indeed these words are what bind us at the start of every morning service.
Or as Talmud Sanhedrin suggests,
How goodly are your tents, O Jacob, those places of your spiritual gatherings, and all the places where God’s presence dwells among you…(Sanhedrin 105b).
Now we are returning to our four walls, back in the tent of FPS, the dwelling place of Hutton Grove. It’s this actual week that we read Balaam’s words and this (reluctant) blessing.
‘We’re ‘more than a building‘ we’ve reassured ourselves and each other these past sixteen months. And now we must turn to our building and think how to love it again. It’s a time for those who can, to attend, and for those who can’t let, we Zoom you into your home from on the Bimah, in the Ark, in our synagogue sanctuary.
Next month we plan to lay out an individual personal kiddush plate under every chair so those in the synagogue can eat kiddush alongside those at home. We are slowly tasting what real space and time community feels like again.
As we return, we must do so safely and with care for each other. The most important way is to book your place. It is so easy but without doing that we threaten the numbers we have allocated.
I must ask you to please help us be safe, prepared and confident that we are doing well for each other. Here is the link to make your booking. It couldn’t be simpler.
Each form can book only people from one household, so you may need to access more than one form if you are booking for other family members.
By coming to our ohel, our mishkan, you are agreeing to our Code of Conduct which is the Torah we must abide by for the moment.
Shabbat Shalom to all.
Rebecca
The town of Austerlitz had one of the oldest Jewish populations in Moravia dating back to the twelfth century. Relatively peaceful for several centuries Jews paid tribute to local nobles but by 1757, Empress Maria Theresa issued an edict restricting the number of Jewish families in Moravia to 5000. Austerlitz was allowed to shelter 72 of them. This is where one of our Czech scrolls are from. A community that was decimated by the Shoah, deported on 4 April 1942 to Terezin on transport Ah. (Those in neighbouring Kolodeje were deported on 18 April of the same year.)
Torah scrolls were gathered from all over Czechoslovakia and Moravia and left in the Michle synagogue, many rotting in damp and neglected conditions. The extraordinary story of their rescue by Ralph Yablon, a British Jew who brought 1,564 to Westminster synagogue in February 1964 is the stuff of legends. As is the Sofer (scribe) David Brand knocking on the synagogue’s door looking for scrolls to mend and staying 25 years.
We as a community are fortunate to have three of these precious scrolls on loan including one of their binders, our Emeritus Rabbi Frank Hellner brought one back from the Knightsbridge synagogue on the tube, carrying his precious cargo with care.
Our Bnei Mitzvah read from these scrolls and learn of their provenance.
This shabbat we rededicate them in our shabbat service. Torah is still the heart of our Jewish lives, the rhythm of the scroll read every shabbat, the stories and insights in its columns still speak to us.
We are blessed to have this connection to our past and be the guardians of these and the history they hold.
Join us this shabbat as we bring out our three scrolls, one known as an orphan scroll and so tiny it has been used as a children’s Torah. We will read from one and recite the names of those lost in the community that owned them once upon a time. It’s a profoundly important moment for us a congregation.
Do join us.
Shabbat Shalom to all.
Rebecca
This week I attended an international conference for Women Rabbis, WRN. I met many rabbis from around the world, some of them the first in their own countries. All of the women I met described their youth movements enticing them into deeper learning and eventually the rabbinate. We don’t expect all our children to become rabbis. But I do hope that many get to experience their Youth movement and what it offers in terms of challenging and thoughtful Jewish identity.
I’m sorry this message is especially for parents and grandparents but it’s important just this week. Finally after the year of uncertainty we’ve had our youth movement LJY Netzer has confirmed our Summer Camps. They have worked so hard to adapt and craft newly safe and Covid compliant camps.
Please see the poster, if you have children 7-17 and consider sending them to one of our brilliant LJ camps. I wanted to lend as much support and encouragement as I can to our Youth Movement, who support us in raising thoughtful, happy and proud Jews. Please consider camp this summer.
There is now a camp for years 11 &12, just one week at the start of the holidays. The regular Kadimah at the end for 2 weeks for our years 5-10 and a new one week camp for young children aged 7-11.
I’m sending my children along with other FPSers. And I am happy to chat to anyone who needs to learn more.
Shabbat Shalom to all.
Rebecca
p.s please check out Liberal Judaism’s events for Refugee Week.
I wonder if we are more or less religious than our Liberal ancestors. It used to be that very few tallitot or indeed kippot were worn in synagogue. Now maybe it is quite a few more. We certainly have more Hebrew now. But does that say anything about prayer itself and our attitudes to it. Have our beliefs and doubts changed through the generations?
This week’s portion Shelach Lecha mentions the tallit, prayer shawl or tallis depending on your preference.
The Eternal One said to Moses as follows: Speak to the Israelite people and instruct them to make for themselves fringes on the corners of their garments throughout the ages; let them attach a cord of blue to the fringe at each corner. That shall be your fringe: look at it and recall all the commandments of the Eternal and observe them…Numbers 15:37-39
The text goes on to say these tzitizit, the cords that are knotted on all four corners, are literally aides-memoire to stay true to God and the commandments that tie us to Godself. Some of us may say we don’t need or choose such outward dressing of our internal commitments. After all, as the feminist theologian Judith Plaskow notes, “why should the creator of the universe care whether we put a ‘tassel on the corner of our clothes in every generation’ and what possible difference can it make…?” (Mentioned by Rabbi Lisa Grushcow and quoted in Lawrence Hoffman, ed., My People’s Prayer Book, vol. 1 [Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 1997], p.115).
What possible difference does faith make to our decisions and choices as Jews?
I look forward to a conversation during this Shabbat morning about our attitudes to prayer, to doubt and to belief. I’ll be joined by our Life President Sheila King Lassman, who very much chose Liberal Judaism.
Where we find ourselves now is the theme of this week’s Shabbat service.
Shabbat Shalom to all,
Rebecca
This past week or so we have reached out to our students, teens and children within FPS.
We know that social media is stoking the fire of the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis and their leaders. We know that some of our young people are being asked to comment, explain or even defend a situation they barely can understand themselves. LJ Netzer has offered supportive sessions, we used Ivriah time last Shabbat and Streetwise connected with CST offered a session for teenagers last night to attempt to unpack and find thoughtful language to navigate what is happening and the inevitable overflow into life here in schools and universities. I hope this is a time when LJ and us as a Liberal synagogue can respond and support.
Even we adults know the complexity of opinion and strong seated feelings about the matzo, the situation as Israelis often refer to the political moment.
This week’s Torah portion Be’halotecha captures a moment of dissent, argument, even prejudice between Moses and his siblings. They criticise him for his ‘Cushite wife’, commentaries are divided. Was this a reference to a new wife he took, or perhaps to Zipporah’s skin colour. Either way it is perceived as offensive and Miriam is punished. It gives much food for thought about difference, tolerance and acceptance. We’ll read this section on Shabbat. But it’s a good reminder of the damage words can do and the febrile and inflamed way one can hear them.
El Na Refa Na La, Moses pleads to God in the shortest verse in Torah. Heal her please.
These words gave me pause for thought this week.
Rebecca
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