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
Rabbi Larry Hoffman came to London several years ago.
On a hot Thursday in July quite a few rabbis, student rabbis and Reform and Liberal lay leadership crammed into our synagogue in Hutton Grove and heard him expound on the essence of Jewish identity. It was, he explained; “Jewish conversation”.
There was a pause, we’d anticipated something more erudite, more esoteric perhaps. But no, it turns out that that is what Rabbi Larry Hoffman believes is “the essence, the heart of Jewish life and identity. Jews talking, friends of Jews talking, all can have a Jewish conversation, and such a discussion, chat or conversation needs to be about something Jewish. That’s it.” He continued to say that the topics can be learning, music, food, memories, Israel, family, preoccupation, even Jewish anxiety. As long as you are talking, then you are engaging. In his clear but far from simplistic way Hoffman captured everything.
Just “keep talking” he told us. Like Tess and Claudia on Strictly… but instead of Dancing, it’s Talking.
I was reminded of that summer as we invite you this week to two very interesting conversations.
The first will be tonight 6pm with, soon-to-be Baroness Gillian Merron, in her final months of leading the Board of Deputies. Do join this conversation about why BOD needs all parts of the Jewish community. And why we as a community should be at the table. We will hear some highlights of her time there, and maybe some of its challenges.
The second conversation will be on Israel, Thursday 7.30pm. My colleague Rabbi Lea Muhlstein in her role as chair of Arzeinu, the Progressive Zionist International organisation has much to say about talking and listening and being at the table. Again please join us for what promises to be an informative and important conversation.
I know many who excel and have excelled at Jewish conversations. Rosita Rosenberg z”l was one. was one. She died this week, and we are poorer for her loss. Rosita led Liberal Judaism for nearly a decade and brought much history, sensibility and menschlikeit to the conversations she enabled. Zichrona L’vracha.
Wishing you Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
I met the Conservative former immigration minister Caroline Nokes with a group of rabbis two years ago. Mike Freer MP set up the meeting for us to talk about settling refugees and asylum seekers in the UK. He knew we cared about it deeply.
Now a back bencher Nokes has accused the Home Office of trying to make our country seem as “difficult and inhospitable as possible”. She says by using inhumane accommodation like the Napier Barracks in Kent or a new barracks style unit close to Yarl’s Wood; we are causing immense suffering. There is often no running water, food so bad no-one can eat, and obviously huge outbreaks of Covid. In isolated spots the residents have no access to support or connection. Instead they are living in ghetto-like settings where previous trauma is relived and renewed daily.
Why do I write of this in a weekly synagogue message? Our Judaism rests on the pillar of engagement with the world we live in, not separation from it. Lo Tuchal L’hitalem -You cannot be indifferent – Deuteronomy chides us from the archaic conversation of lost oxen, but the challenge has survived. Lily Montagu’s legacy informs and inspires the heart beat of Liberal Judaism, the young women known as her girls who flocked to the afternoon service at West Central. A service she fought to provide for them.
Caroline Nokes is quoted this week saying of her government, “We as a nation can do better than this.” It is true. And calling out is important.
This week in Parashat Yitro the Ten Commandments are given. The rules that guide us as Jews and indeed most people in living a just and safe life, certainly the last five of them speak particularly to this. The portion contains the covenant moment at Sinai and the enthusiastic commitment by Israel to take the commandments on; “naaseh v’nishmah” we will do it and then understand it…
The name is taken from Moses’ father-in-law Yitro, an outsider, a Midianite Priest. Yet he’s the one to feedback to Moses about the congregation and about God “Blessed be the Eternal”.
May we never stop working towards that.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
You can’t do it all yourself . Italian commentator Sforno c.15th paraphrases Yitro’s advice to Moses. Lo tov hadavar asher ahah oseh, he tells him. Create, he suggests, a team of reliable people anshei chayl to share the leading, the judging and the listening. This must be the favourite parasha for rabbis and synagogue councils. How to create engaged and expansive shared leadership in our congregations, so all are invested and part of the work. Yitro was surely the first management consultant of ancient times, and in ‘not for profit’ religious communities. I intend to open Yitro’s conversation this week and beyond!
Following my sermon last Shabbat on our obligation to support those who need help to feed their families and themselves: First time users of food banks have emerged these past months. People who managed cars, holidays and jobs now in brutally different circumstances and relying on Food Banks, as others are.
Today is Holocaust Memorial Day. The anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and so many Genocides that tragically happened since, despite the Never Again. It is also Tu B’Shevat, the New Year of Trees. So as we anticipate the coming of Spring and the joy of trees and their fruit, we remind the community of what is needed and how to give in the easiest way. We honour those who died and knew well the preciousness of enabling others to eat. Please give: 100,000 victims lost this pandemic and this is a palpable way to help those who have been affected brutally by the collateral damage. It feels profoundly Jewish to look back, to remember and to act.
Copyright © 2025 Finchley Progressive Synagogue. All rights reserved. Website designed by Addicott Web. | Charity #1167285