יִּהְיוּ֙ חַיֵּ֣י שָׂרָ֔ה מֵאָ֥ה שָׁנָ֛ה וְעֶשְׂרִ֥ים שָׁנָ֖ה וְשֶׁ֣בַע שָׁנִ֑ים שְׁנֵ֖י חַיֵּ֥י שָׂרָֽה׃
Sarah’s lifetime—the span of Sarah’s life—came to one hundred and twenty-seven years.
וַתָּ֣מׇת שָׂרָ֗ה בְּקִרְיַ֥ת אַרְבַּ֛ע הִ֥וא חֶבְר֖וֹן בְּאֶ֣רֶץ כְּנָ֑עַן וַיָּבֹא֙ אַבְרָהָ֔ם לִסְפֹּ֥ד לְשָׂרָ֖ה וְלִבְכֹּתָֽהּ׃
Sarah died in Kiriath-arba—now Hebron—in the land of Canaan; and Abraham proceeded to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her.
This week’s portion, Chayei Sarah, tells of Sarah’s death. The repetition of the word year, or ’shanah’ in Hebrew, emphasises the importance of all her life and the equity of all parts. Her husband Abraham is also the first person ever, in Torah, to offer a eulogy, in Hebrew a hesped. That’s how we learned to mark our loss and express our grief, by sharing it with others. Remembering and mourning is our duty, honouring whole lives of those we recall and loved personally but also generations who went before us.
This week is the anniversary of ‘Kristallnacht,’ known as the November Pogrom, 9/10 November 1938. 1,200 synagogues were desecrated and thousands of Jewish businesses and homes looted. Following the assassination of a junior diplomat in Paris by a young Polish Jew, the Nazi Party incited mass anti-Jewish violence, claiming it as a spontaneous popular ‘retaliation’ against the ‘enemy within’. 90 people were killed and over 25,000 Jewish men were arrested and deported to Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen. Alfred Wiener and his colleagues at the Jewish Central Information Office in Amsterdam collected over 350 testimonies and reports. This doctor’s report below is from the Wiener Library collection.
On the notorious Thursday evening when the synagogues burned and the shops and homes were wrecked, I was arrested by the Gestapo with the explanation, “We must take you into Schutzhaft in connection with the events of this day.“ I was transferred to the remand prison and remained there one day. Treatment there quite correct, perhaps it could even be called friendly. Released towards evening, so that at first the thought occurred to us that we would be released to go home… Arrival in Buchenwald: order to get out. Even louder and cruder shouts and hail of insults. Order: “Hats off.” Again herded at top speed and then a proper running of the gauntlet. We had to pass between two lines of SS men, one punched and kicked, the other beat us with knuckle-dusters and whips. .. Again it was the case that agile younger men got away with a couple of blows whilst the older men, some of whom were suffering acutely, emerged from the alley bleeding and limping..Basically in Buchenwald there is no treatment of wounds for Jews. They have no claim to bandaging material, to medication or to any medical help whatsoever.
We will light a yahrzeit candle into our shabbat service this Friday, making space for honouring these memories.
Shabbat Shalom
Rebecca
This week has seen the return of Col. Asaf Hamami, 40, Capt. Omer Neutra, 21, and Staff Sgt. Oz Daniel, 19, to be buried at home with their families.
The return of children to their parents has not happened for everyone. Young people dying is particularly difficult to bear – and we know it, as we have watched countless deaths in Gaza, as well as in Israel. I always remind myself of Rachel Goldberg saying almost two years ago, If you are not crying for the death of babies on both sides then your moral compass is askew. I have officiated at many funerals where parents are burying their children and it is unbearable each time. As so it should be.
This week’s Torah portion, Vayera, describes Abraham seemingly agreeing to the slaughter of his son, Isaac, at his own hands and the probable, indeed assured, death of his older son, Ishmael, when he’s sent into the wilderness with his mother and only one skin of water. Despite the gentle language, the stories are brutal and we must make sense of them every year as we read this passage (and again on Rosh Hashanah).
Neither of the boys dies but surely both are traumatised from the near death experience. Perhaps Torah is teaching one clear lesson: never stop being outraged and shocked by these deaths. Abraham is inexplicably silent in the face of both plans, although he is distressed:
The matter distressed Abraham greatly on account of his son. (21:11)
Hagar, Ishmael’s mother, finds his impending death from thirst so unbearable she has to sit a bow’s shot off once she has given him all the water she has.
“Let me not look on as the child dies.” She sat at a further distance and burst out crying.” (21:16)
It’s fascinating that we never see Abraham again with his children, these two sons. Nothing matters more than our capacity to be moved by violence and untimely deaths – surely it’s’ what makes us human. Torah manages, in its tenacity and understated emotion, to hit hard and to offer the most intense of commentaries on familial life.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
I love that we return to FPS the week we read this portion of Lech Lecha.
“The Eternal One said to Abram, Go forth from your land, your birthplace, your father’s house, to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and it shall be a blessing.” (Gen. 12:1-2)
When called to go on this journey of self-improvement, or of raising money in believing that we could future-proof and build a better more attractive synagogue, I am sure many felt, ‘What is the point in that? Why bother? What might it bring for us?’ But we overcame nerves and launched right in.
When Abram and Sarai are called in this portion of Torah, they don’t answer. They don’t comment. They just do it.
I guess we did it too. Richard Greene, Alan Banes, Paul Silver Myer, Jo Dowling, Alex Kinchin Smith and James Levy just started this move. It was daunting, to say the very least. But as we began, we encouraged each other. Forty weeks, we were told (we are a little over). It gave us something to hold on to and now we are in earnest moving back, unpacking boxes, re-finding ourselves – and it looks even more beautiful than it did at HHDs. May we be the blessing we believe we can be for each other as congregants and as a synagogue that will be attractive and impactful for those who visit us looking for a spiritual home and a welcoming community. May the investment in this place, and the journey we’ve been on too, make it the beginning of a new chapter for this synagogue, where internal and external details match.
I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to be unpacking my book boxes onto my new timber shelves. It means so much to be doing so. We have chosen this synagogue to care for, as well our Jewish life in the process.
In his book ‘How Will You Measure Your Life?’, Clayton M. Christenson, a professor at Harvard School of Business, responds to the “should I stay or should I go?” dilemma that confronted Abram.
“ … in life, like in business, we each have limited resources: time, energy, talent and wealth. With every moment of our time, every decision about how we spend our energy, our talent and our money, we are making a statement about what really matters to us.”
In the fractured times in which we live, in the thoughtful way we have chosen to express our Jewish lives, we have also chosen to make FPS matter, not just in ideas but also in the loving care of our home, the bricks and mortar and beautiful new windows. We captured our talent, money and energy for this.
Join us tonight for our inaugural learning event to fill our synagogue, and say what matters most to us as we celebrate and commit to our diversity, as FPS MOSAIC hosts Nadine Batchelor-Hunt, who will speak on the spectrum of Jewish identity as a Black Jewish woman.
This is a whole new chapter for us. Let’s ensure it truly is a ’blessing.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
And the whole earth spoke one language and were united in deeds and actions.
It sounds paradisiacal doesn’t it? Yet this tiny moment of our Torah portion describes God confusing language (balal) within the tower of Bavel. It’s a great story, teaching that unity and sameness is not always as good as it sounds – and diversity is 
better and safer. The Tower of Babel signifies the strength and challenge of diversity and I am leaning in this year to that.
With that in mind, I am so delighted that we are packing up to return to FPS and launch our renewed tower of FPS. We want to be using the beautiful building not only on Shabbat, so the new Education Hub begins on Wednesday evening, 29th October. There will be a choice of different courses and endeavours but to be together.
We launch with a superb event hosted by FPS Mosaic group for Black History month, welcoming the writer and journalist Nadine Bachelor Hunt, who celebrates Black Jewish heritage in our complicated world, in conversation with the Mosaic team. I cannot recommend this enough. Choir will be launched that night too, meeting at 6.30pm and then joining our conversation with Nadine at 7.30pm.
6.30pm FPS Choir
7.00pm Welcome snacks and drinks for the Non Singers
7.30pm Mosaic Team in conversation with Nadine Bachelor Hunt
Shabbat shalom as we return home and properly settle into this brave new year.
Rebecca
They are back – and what a full heart of relief, hope and trepidation has accompanied us this week! A moment of redemption.
Our prayers on Shabbat for peace will be rewritten, our kavannah – our spiritual intention when we pray for the hostages coming home – will be transformed.
Kohelet was wrong, wrote Israel’s poet laureate Yehuda Amichai z’l. I love this. During the week of Sukkot we read Ecclesiastes (Kohelet) chapter 3:
There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
Yet truthfully we, and so many others, have experienced all these things at once: celebration, relief, fear, sadness at who hasn’t returned alive. We have witnessed the devastation that is Gaza for the families that have survived these 2 years and the grief they hold. Our friend, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, said the same. Hope has accompanied us all. Rabbi Michael Marmur taught that hope – tikveh in Hebrew – has the root KAV, meaning cord. That cord binds and pulls forward and connects us back (just like the Torah scroll we unrolled on Simchat Torah). So this verse from Bereshit, the beginning of our story calls out to us:
וַיִּבְרָ֨א אֱלֹהִ֤ים | אֶת־הָֽאָדָם֙ בְּצַלְמ֔וֹ בְּצֶ֥לֶם אֱלֹהִ֖ים בָּרָ֣א אֹת֑וֹ …
And God made human beings in the divine image. Creating it in the image of God…
This being human is complicated, large and heavy, full of fear, sadness and joy – but what a blessing it is.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
It’s always been so challenging to me that Sukkot literally commands joy. It doesn’t suggest it. It’s actually called zman simchateinu – season of our joy. What an interesting tension to hold this week. Today, the second anniversary of 7th October and in the aftermath of the attack on Heaton Park Congregation.
Yet it’s right here in our tradition. We lean in to joy when we may least feel like it. And we invite guests into the sukkah when our instinct might be to close down a little.
But neither option is available to us because we will continue to reach for joy and gratitude and connections.
I feel bereft without our synagogue sukkah this year but last night we had a magical and very packed Sukkot service and celebration chez Katz and this morning such a meaningful service with our friends at SPS.
Wishing you a joyful Sukkot, even if it’s moments in your garden and Shabbat Shalom. I’ll be in Stockholm celebrating the 20th anniversary of the community I helped to build there, which is going from strength to strength. There is joy in that.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
A few years ago, Rabbi Robert Nosanchuk suggested to his community of Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple that, every night of the liminal ten days that float between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, one should do this:
I encourage you: before each nightfall of the ten days of repentance, prepare your testimony. Ask yourself in your heart: are you a person who defaults to truth, or do you greet most of what of what you hear people say with suspicion? Don’t judge your answer. You are who you are, and you will not have a perfect record of judgment and being judged. The mistakes we all make often lead to grudges, vendettas and long-held bad feelings. In my experience, and in keeping with Jewish tradition, it is best to scrutinise the grudges we hold and ask ourselves what they yield that is more fruitful than forgiveness and understanding of oneself and others.
We are told again and again. Yom Kippur, which begins this year on Wednesday evening, is just for us. In order to smooth things with others, we need to pick up the phone, drop a note or just open our hearts a little wider, so that we cope better with those in our lives whose ‘person tax’ gets a little high – and I suppose we would do well to imagine how our ‘tax’ might be onerous for others. Sometimes.
This is the balancing of what matters most to us and the people we live amongst. What matters is when we forget the essence of us, we can now effect some kind of teshuvah (turning) that allows us to return to ourself, to the root of our soul.
I am so looking forward to seeing you over Yom Kippur. We are back at FPS, Hutton Grove.
I wish you a meaningful day. Gmar Chatimah Tovah.
Rebecca
It was exceedingly special in so many ways being back at FPS. Please see this clip that includes Alex Kinchin-Smith’s words about being in the building and our part in it.
These ten days are opportunities to reflect and connect. We are told not to arrive at synagogue for prayer until we’ve connected with those in our lives where there’s friction and fracture. That’s not always easy but it’s an interesting challenge. These days are heightened emotionally: use this time wisely. I try, and don’t always succeed, every year. But what I do manage is to love these days and this season, a time where introspection isn’t just accepted; it’s encouraged.
See you over Shabbat Shuvah (the Shabbat of return or repentance). If you prefer nature to shul, come for Tashlich walk at Dollis Brook and let me know via Caroline () you’re joining.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
Robert Pirsig wrote in his novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, “We’re in such a hurry most of the time, we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went, and sorry it’s all gone.”
I love this sentiment. It’s so right for this season.
Having real conversations is something we care deeply about at FPS.
In the Summer, we completed our Listening Campaign, where we talked and listened to each other about what matters.
What matters to each of us and what matters in the world is what keeps us up at night and what helps us rise in the morning. Our friend, Rabbi Larry Hoffman, loves to say Jewish conversations are as important as Jewish learning and Jewish prayer. Conversations over the dinner table, however fractious, are exactly this. One of my favourite lines of Torah falls in this week’s portion, Parashat Netzavim.
‘This Jewishness, this commandment, is not too miraculous for you. It is not up in heaven…it is not across the sea that you’d need someone to go and get it and do it for you. No, it is close to your mouth and your heart to do it.”
It’s as close and easy as a conversation. That’s what the High Holy Days remind us. It is all ours, this Jewishness to which we can recommit. And amazingly, we will be back at Hutton Grove, reunited with each other and our building.
I cannot wait to see you then.
WE WILL BE HOME IN HUTTON GROVE FOR ROSH HASHANAH & YOM KIPPUR.
These weeks call on us to imagine our communities as ‘Agudat Echat’. One body, united and together. It’s good to see the Board offers such thoughtful protection. We are in anguish right now, so these weeks of consolation and comfort are needed pretty desperately.
We are in the six weeks before Rosh Hashanah now. Monday 25th will be the start of Elul. We are invited to let the walls of our souls crumble and the first glimmers of opening and breaking apart, necessary for the pre Rosh Hashanah cycle, begin. I began such a process in the most unlikely of places, on a tiny island in Finland’s archipelago, while on a meditation and yoga retreat designed to stretch our hearts wide open. And I did in anticipation of these 6 weeks – the journey which our calendar takes us to try to let the unsolved elements of our lives be solved.
This week’s portion, Eikev, reminds us that suffering accompanies us. Apparently, our clothes didn’t wear out and our feet didn’t swell during those 40 years in the desert and from that we know that times can be incredibly hard and we can access resilience. We show up even when it’s hard. I am so aware that many of you are navigating great loss and illness right now and I hope the softness of this moment in our calendar lends itself to comfort.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
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