high holy days · story

How the ancestors tamed their shadows

levtaylor

Some stories only make sense in the light of day. When the morning lights shine on your tent and the campfire no longer illuminates the storyteller in orange, the ghost stories from the night before lose their shimmer. When the puppets have been put away and no longer parade before backlights, the characters that once seemed so real disappear to wherever fictions go when they are finished.

Such is the story of how our ancestors tamed their shadows. 

If you can trust your shadow to do as you do and move as you move, you can thank your ancestors for taming it. Today, you know that when you turn out the light, your shadow will disappear, but that was not always the case.

Once, a shadow was a feral thing that strutted and fretted after every human step until it walked no more, then stapled itself to some other form.

If you tried to write by candlelight, the shadows flew across the pages and distorted every word. If you wanted to read the time from a sundial, the shadows danced in circles to disrupt what you could see. So, when the shadows were unruly, there was no recorded time.

Since the first rays of light beamed down millions of miles and crashed into the first mountains, the shadows had lived on earth. They were older than life – and just as frightening. 

When a tree stood perfectly still on a summer’s day, its shadow performed the forest’s rotting, decaying destruction. If a bush sat contentedly in a field, its shadow depicted it expanding outwards and throttling every other plant.

Shadows followed people. They lurked behind every being, showing human beings their dark side. 

A woman could happily walk through an orchard without touching a thing, but her shadow snatched the apple shadows from every branch, gobbled them up, snapped the branches, chopped down the trunks, and threw salt on the soil. 

When you looked back at the solid world, nothing had really changed. The shadows were just animations of people’s worst fears about themselves.

When human beings created the earliest civilisations, the shadows mocked up their own. The shadows of towns were burnt out ruins turned into snake pits with buzzards circling overhead. From atop a hill overlooking a community like this one, you would see the shadows of smoke and ash rising from a destroyed city.

If you were bold enough to listen, you could even hear the screams.

Yes, the shadows had voices.

When Cain committed the first murder, his shadow crouched, waiting for him in the doorway, like a bailiff to collect debts. The shadow walked behind his every step, reminding him of who he was and what he had done.

When two friends reached out to hug each other, the shadows made a puppet show of them attacking one another with fists and weapons. They hissed insults, dredging up every past slight, and insisted on each other’s worst traits.

The darkness was a terrifying thing and the shadows were a menace. So our ancestors worshipped the light. They praised the sun and hated the moon. They saw goodness in all that shone, and feared anything that cast a shadow. 

They called the god of light Adonai: the Commander; the Sovereign. They prayed: 

ברוך אתה יהוה עשה את האור

Blessed is the Sovereign, creator of light.

They called the god of darkness El: the Spirit; the Power. They prayed:

ארור את אל בורא את החושך

Cursed is the Spirit, maker of darkness.

A black silhouette sculpture depicting an angel with large, feathery wings embracing a man in a hat, showcasing intricate patterns and a dynamic pose.
The Wrestle in Steel, Grisha Bruskin

After Jacob betrayed his brother, Esau, and stole everything from him, Jacob’s shadow trailed behind him. Everywhere he went, Jacob’s shadow re-enacted his deception. It whispered to him that he was cruel, callous, untrustworthy; and, because of this, that he was unworthy, unlovable, unsalvageable. 

One night, exhausted by his shadow’s relentless attacks on his character, Jacob leapt at his own dark form and tried to strangle it. 

But the shadow fought back. The man and his shadow wrestled until morning came, when the shadow dislocated his hip from its socket. As the sun rose, the shadow gave Jacob a new name: Yisra-El; the spirit-wrestler; the one who fights with dark powers.

From then on, the ancestors knew that they could fight with the shadows. They also knew that they could not win. They called themselves the people of Yisrael: the nation that struggles with shadow-spirits.

The shadow is the closest thing to a human being at every moment. It dogs you, even when you think there is scarcely a source of light. So, what can you do when your shadow chases you, accuses you, and torments you? What can you do with something that attacks you when you cannot hope to gain victory over it?

You ignore it. 

Our ancestors pretended their shadows were not there. However grotesquely violent they made their shapes or malevolently cruel they made their whispers, they took no notice.

In the time of the untamed shadows, people were polite and kind and spoke with quiet voices and rarely displayed anything that looked like anger, pain, or fear. Meanwhile, their shadows acted out the most tumultuous scenes and displayed every possible hostility. This was how our ancestors lived for generations.

Until they could no longer.

One morning, the children poured out into the central square of their town to play, in the way that children so often do, while their parents made breakfast.

Already there in the plaza was a quiet girl who rarely joined the others’ games and often wasn’t invited. She was doing something with her shadow that nobody had seen before. 

She was playing. 

She hopscotched along the cat’s cradle court, then her shadow did the dance on after her. 

And the shadow was doing something they’d never seen before either.

The shadow was laughing. 

No, giggling.

The girl and the shadow acted out the game like friends. 

For a while, the children stopped and stared at the strange unfolding game. 

Had a grown-up entertained such a risky activity, their peers would have quickly put a stop to the behaviour. But children are less aware of social rules, so don’t always enforce them. Nobody dragged her from the danger of her game. The kids just gawked. 

And, after a while, they realised something. The shadows were gawking, too.

Eventually, a couple of kids ventured over and asked if they could join in playing. The little girl cheerfully assented. As did her shadow.

The children’s shadows whispered: “Let us play too.”

So the young and their shadows played together.

This is not to say it was all smiles. The shadows pushed each other, cheated, cut queues, and grabbed each other’s hair. But they kept playing. The children blurred the lines between body and shadow; between fun and fight; between propriety and play.

By the time that grown-ups came out to call the children in for breakfast, it was already too late. Everyone under a certain age was engaged in hopscotch or jump-rope or chase, and their shadows were playing too. 

Upon the sight, the adults’ shadows flew into murderous rages. The dark forms of parents grew into monsters with gnashing teeth and scythe-like claws and hissed at the infants. 

In their solid forms, the parents crouched gently beside their young ones, doing all they could to keep their eyes from the violent puppetry being played out on the ground. They whispered: “what are you doing? Why are you playing with these monsters?”

The children’s shadows recoiled into small balls like startled hedgehogs and cowered from their raging carers.

But in the visible world, the children stood firm. They placed their hands on their hips and spoke with indignation. They described to their parents exactly what had happened. 

And the girl who had initiated this entire transgression asked: “why have you never played with your shadows before?”

A table with various objects illuminated by lights casting playful shadows on a wall, showcasing a whimsical scene.
Hans-Peter Feldman, Shadowplay

“You can’t ignore your shadow,” she insisted. “You have to ask it questions. When she’s angry, you need to ask her what she’s feeling. When she’s frightened, you need to ask her what she needs.”

When they came to tell of this day many years later, it was a final and outright undoing of years of suspicion, after which everything fell into order. In reality, everything took more time, and included many setbacks. After all, they were undoing conventions that went back to the dawn of civilisation. 

But let us tell the story in its truncated folklore form. On that day, every ancestor turned to every shadow and started a conversation. From that moment on, they stopped ignoring the dark alter-egos that haunted them.

They saw that when these apparitions enacted violence, they were acting out their anger. They came to understand that when their shadows cowered, they were showing they were afraid. And that, when they snatched and grabbed from others, they were just exhibiting jealousy. 

They learned that shadows could offer them shelter, protection, and shade. They learned that anger, fear, and envy could help them live better lives. They learned that they could not run from their shadows.

They were their partners. They were their playmates.

The shadows could not be separated from their bodies. The ancestors themselves were their shadows, and their shadows were them. 

How wrong the ancestors had been about their God! There were not two powers in Heaven. The Sovereign and the Spirit were not separate deities: they were the same divinity in different guises. 

Just as the shadow was an answer to the body and the moon was a mirror of the sun, the god of daytime and the god of night were one. 

They ceased to talk about יהוה the Sovereign and אל the Spirit. Now they called their God by one name: יהוה אלהינו – our Spirit the Sovereign.

How wrong the ancestors had been to shun shade and revile darkness! Now they recited a new prayer:

ברוך אתה יהוה אלוהינו מלך העולם עשה האור ובורא את החושך

Blessed is the Sovereign, our Spirit, who rules the world, creator of light, and maker of darkness. 

Yes, Blessed is God, who brings on all.

You would imagine that it was the shadows who changed and became the static fixtures we recognise today. But, no, it was our ancestors who changed first. 

They became more curious about their own needs. They became more open about their desires. 

And, as it turns out, they didn’t kill each other or rob each other or hurt each other when they engaged with their shadows. In fact, all those things happened far less often. 

They were, however, more coarse and more abrupt. They were far more honest and far less polite. They had more conflict. They cried more, blushed more, and told each other they were angry more.

And they got on better with each other, and with themselves.

And then… well, the shadows did not need to come up with their aggressive dramatisations any more. And they started to look just like the bodies they were following. The shadows and the bodies merged to share the same borders, side-by-side.

Never again would they be deceived into dismissing any part of themselves. Never again would they imagine that anything did not come from the same single God.

So they taught themselves a new mantra, which they passed on to their children, and they to theirs, until many generations had passed. They told their descendants to say it three times every day and recite it whenever we prayed. They were to repeat it on waking and lying down; at home and on the way; at every moment of the day.

This was what we had to say:

שמע ישראל יהוה אלהינו יהוה אחד

Remember, O nation who struggles with shadow-spirits, the Sovereign is the Spirit. All aspects of God are One.

Such is the story of how the ancestors tamed their shadows. 

Now, hear this, all you who have come to synagogue on Kol Nidrei. You are the spirit-wrestlers. You are the descendants of those ancient people who used to fight with shadows. 

Know that you still have a shadow. We all still have dark parts of ourselves: those silhouettes shaped just like us that follow us around feeling angry and scared; greedy and sinful; violent and cruel. There are, perhaps, still high-pitched whispers dogging us, that tell us the worst versions of ourselves and everyone else are true. 

You cannot ignore your shadow all the time. And Yom Kippur is a pretty good time to face it.

Your shadow is not a foreign enemy to be destroyed. It is a part of you. It generates the feelings you would rather ignore, like jealousy, rage, lust, and fear. But all those feelings are part of you. You can’t fight them away.

Nor can you let your shadow conquer you. You can’t let your anger or envy control you. You must engage with the parts of yourself you most despise in order that the version of you you like best can thrive.

Instead, when you meet your shadow, as you are likely to do during today’s solemn fast, be gentle with it, and kind. Ask it questions, and see what it can teach you. Play with it, and see if it can bring something to your life. Tame it, like a friendly pet.

In Judaism, there is only one Source. God has no opposite, no partner, and no comparative. All that exists comes from the same God, and all is balanced towards the good. Everything that exists in you – your greatest virtues and your darkest impulses – come from God. All of it needs to be seen for what it truly is.

If this story has offended, remember that you can shake off these shadows as soon as you leave here, and it will disappear to wherever fictions go when they are finished. 

But if this parable is useful to you, tomorrow morning, when we return to our prayers, let us try to make friends with our shadows. 

After all, some stories only make sense in the light of day. 

The Shadow, Omer Davidov

high holy days · liturgy · sermon

Circumcise your heart

levtaylor



In passing, we read in liturgy recently that God asks us to circumcise our hearts. A member exclaimed: “You’re going to have to explain that one!”

I actually think it’s worth delving into, and we can learn a lot from it, but drilling into this metaphor requires some robust engagement with physicality and body gore. If you know that’s not for you this morning, feel free to check out of this sermon at any time without judgement. I’ve taken a punt by looking at an ugly expression in Torah, and if it brings up anything triggering for you, you can leave and we’ll let you know when the sermon is over.

Circumcise your heart.

Funnily, it had never occurred to me before that the expression was anything but ordinary. It appears at least twice in the Torah that I can find, and possibly more, as well as variously in the Prophets, the rabbinic writings, and the liturgy.

It’s just one of those sayings, isn’t it? It’s the reason for the season. That we pray and fast and atone and repent during these Days of Awe, in order that we might emerge on Yom Kippur with circumcised hearts.

But, confronted with the member’s incredulity, I was suddenly struck. Because I actually don’t know what it means. The term became defamiliarised and looked like a word I had never seen before.

After all, it’s funny, isn’t it? It’s an action that we can imagine on one body part, even if we’d prefer not to, but which is ludicrous if applied to another.

But more than ludicrous, it’s grotesque! Circumcising a heart sounds visceral, violent, bloody and gory. It sounds like macabre surgery.

Why do we have such an obscene metaphor placed so centrally in our Yom Kippur liturgy?

This has sent me on a journey through dictionaries, concordances, and the grammar commentaries of ibn Ezra. So, come with me, if you will, on an adventure to understand what a circumcised heart looks like, how to get one, and why we may need one, especially this week.

Well, firstly, we need a definition.

I always do a little chuckle when I go past the cafe in the park between the synagogue and Surbiton station, because it is called Orlah. I’m somebody’s language, I’m sure it’s a beautiful word, but in Hebrew it means foreskin. It can mean uncircumcised, but also unskilled, closed, and forbidden.

Lips can be uncircumcised, as Moses tells God that he has uncircumcised lips, and cannot do the work of talking to Pharaoh. This might mean literally that Moses had some kind of cleft palate or scarring around his mouth. It might be more metaphorical, suggesting that Moses had a stammer or speech impediment. But the image is of lips overlaid with layers of unwanted skin that prevent being understood.

Ears can be uncircumcised. The Prophet Jeremiah chastises the citizens of Jerusalem for having uncircumcised ears, adding that they are unable to hear God’s word. Here it is almost certainly metaphorical, and conjures an impression of ears cemented over by excess membranes.

Even trees can be uncircumcised. For the first three years, they bear fruit that shouldn’t be eaten. The early fruit is forbidden because, according to ibn Ezra, is dangerous and useless, like the foreskins of lips, ears, and hearts.

The word for circumcise is milah. This one is more exclusively used for male genitalia, but please do not only imagine the safe medical procedure practised by experts in the NHS. In our Torah, circumcision is something that can happen to adults, without anaesthetic, in the heat of the desert. That is how it is for Abraham, the men of Shechem, and Joshua’s soldiers.

This is probably the version of circumcision we are expected to picture when God tells us to remove the foreskins of our hearts.

Notice that all of these expressions are somewhat revolting. The imagery is gory. That’s probably deliberate.

We have been trained by the sanitised philosophy of the West to imagine the Bible as an intellectual text chanted gently by angels with harps. But no such creatures exist in our text and Scripture wasn’t written to be a gentle thought experiment.

One of my favourite biblical commentators, Roland Boer, wrote a book called The Earthy Nature of the Bible: Fleshly Readings of Sex, Masculinity, and Carnality, where he gets us to see how embodied and physical our holy texts are.

In every passage, Torah is blood and guts and sweat and excrement. It’s life as it is really lived: raw and without disinfectant.

When we understand that the Torah doesn’t blanche at corporeality the way we might, we can understand God’s call to circumcise our hearts.

The Prophet Jeremiah declares: “circumcise yourselves to God and remove the foreskins of your hearts, O people of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem.”

In Deuteronomy, Moses tells the Israelites: “circumcise the foreskins of your hearts, and stiffen your necks no more.”

This is a metaphor for repentance. We are to imagine something surgical, messy, full-bodied, and painful. And isn’t that what atonement really is?

There may well be moments of healing that are civil, calm, and muted. But the moments of real change, at least internally, don’t involve sitting comfortably and smiling. Change hurts.

It involves real inner turmoil and strife. It cuts deep in its own way, no less than a wound. It means breaking and healing and breaking again, like the stitches of a botched operation.

When I think of the moments of most intense atonement, I have undergone them because I had to.

Because I outgrew an older version of myself. Because I needed to quit an addiction that was hurting me. Because I had to find a better survival strategy than one that had served me when I was younger.

And I cried and I ached and I experienced pain. And that was just part of the circumcision of the heart.

Ibn Ezra says this kind of atonement cannot be done alone. You need to ask God to circumcise your heart with you. He says: God will rip away the foreskin of your heart, and remove the layers of insensitivity that obstruct your heart.

And knowing this I become aware of those layers of hard membrane that keep clogging up my spirit. And I know I want God’s help to strip them away.

My own arrogance and ego, which keeps me from seeing myself as I truly am.

My anxiety and fear, which keep me from doing the right thing now, by focusing only on a worrisome future.

My snappiness and my temper, which keep me from building more meaningful relationships with the people I love.

I wish to cut away them all.

All the many escape routes I have found to keep myself away from sitting still with God, whether it’s over-working, or over-eating, or over-exercising. Or running away into books and words.

All of these are layers that I once built up to protect myself. Slicing them off would leave my heart rawer, more vulnerable, and exposed. The process would be painful and it would require more recovery time than I allow myself. But I know I need it.

Bloody, gory, embodied, and fully physical, I know I need to change.

So, I ask God’s help, this Shabbat Shuva, to see the layers of dead skin on my spirit. May God be a surgeon of the soul, ready to tear away those defences that do not serve me. May I do all I can, this Yom Kippur, to circumcise my heart.

Amen.

Opening scene from The Killing of a Sacred Deer
high holy days · sermon

The power of naming

levtaylor

Each of us has a name
given by God
and given by our parents

Each of us has a name
given by our stature and our smile
and given by what we wear

Each of us has a name
given by the mountains
and given by our walls

Each of us has a name
given by the stars
and given by our neighbours

Each of us has a name
given by our sins
and given by our longing

Each of us has a name
given by our enemies
and given by our love

Each of us has a name
given by our celebrations
and given by our work

Each of us has a name
given by the seasons
and given by our blindness

Each of us has a name
given by the sea
and given by
our death.

This poem was written by Zelda, an Israeli poet, born in Ukraine, and translated into English by her friend, the American Marcia Falk. Although written as recently as the 20th Century, these words have achieved iconic status. “Each of us has a name” has become part of the Jewish liturgy for funerals, stonesettings, and Holocaust Memorial Day.

Zelda



It speaks to something we know: the power of names.

When Adam, the first human being, named the animals, he gave life to their souls.

Knowing somebody’s name tells you about them. We hear a name and, in it, hear language, history, culture, connection.

You know, when you hear your own name, the power it holds. Your full name. Your government name. Your nickname. A secret name only someone you love deeply ever calls you. In hearing your name, you know your relationship to the one who says it.

Speaking someone’s name can summon them, invite their presence; or can scold them, cast them away. When we speak a name, we exert our own power.

We give names at birth through baby blessings. We call up somebody by their Hebrew name when they come to Torah. We change names with marriages, after life-changing experiences, and as a way of affirming gender. We etch names on tombstones and recite names during El Malei Rachamim.

When we understand the power of names, we can understand the significance of the rituals of Yom Kippur.

Long before there was a synagogue in Kingston, or Jews in Europe, or an academy in Babylon, or a Temple in Jerusalem, there was a Tabernacle in Shiloh.

It was a great tented structure on a great hill north of Bethel, whose songs could be heard deep in the Jordan valley and whose burning incense could be smelt as far away as Jericho.

This fabric sanctuary had many layers. Everyone could stand around the edges. Then, past the first gate, only the true believers could enter. Then, into the inner sanctum, only the priests from the ancient tribal hierarchy would go. And then, right at the centre of the mishkan, behind many curtains, hidden away from all view, was the Holy of Holies.

Only one man could enter there: the High Priest. And he could only enter once a year: on Yom Kippur. And he could only say one word, a secret word: the name of God.

We do not know what that name was or how it was pronounced.

Even Moses did not know it. While tending Jethro’s flocks in Midian, a great burning bush appeared before Moses and demanded he return to Egypt and free the people.

Then Moses asked for God’s name. God roared in reply “ehyeh asher ehyeh”: I will be what I will be. “Tell the people that ‘I will be’ is the one who sent you.”

God did not share the name with Moses in that moment. Maybe Moses never heard it at all. Indeed, maybe Moses could not have known it, because to know someone’s name is to know their inner essence, and God’s is beyond our comprehension.

But, we are told, God did let someone in on the secret of the Name: an initiate; one in every generation: the High Priest. He is a semi-mythic figure in our Torah, who, in legend, was beholden to the secrets of the Universe. But, insofar as God’s Name was ever knowable, the High Priest knew it.

We do not know how he said the name. Perhaps he shut his eyes and whispered it into the empty space behind all the drapery. Or maybe he cocked his head back and cried it aloud up to the Heavens. We know he said it ten times.

And, by saying God’s ineffable name, some great magic happened. In this pre-rational time of mystics and miracles, God’s holy presence descended on the Israelites, and granted them all forgiveness.

Yes, a name grants connection across the veils of reality. In ancient times, to say God’s unspeakable name breached God’s innermost essence. Saying the name summoned God from behind the veil of reality. The name ruptured through the boundaries of real and spiritual; finite and eternal.

You have seen this name written down. Above our ark here are the words in Hebrew ‘ivdu et Hashem besimchah- “serve God with joy” but the word is not written as it sounds.

Scholars call it the Tetragrammaton, meaning “four letter word” because it is inscribed with four Hebrew characters. Yod-heh-vav-heh.

But these letters are unpronounceable themselves. Even with vowels added, the letters struggle to make a discernible word. Protestant Christians in Germany tried to render it as Jehovah, which we know is impossible in Hebrew.

According to the Talmud, the name the High Priest may actually have said in the Holy of Holies was forty-two letters long. The High Priest intoned it quietly under the sweet melodies of the priests so that nobody could hear it.

Legend says that perhaps this name was passed on through generations but only to those who lived a life of absolute discretion, never once got angry, never tasted alcohol, and never insisted on anything. If such people exist, they are too modest to reveal their knowledge. If they ever existed, they probably no longer do.

So we read it as “Adonai,” literally meaning “my ruler,” even though we know that is not really God’s name.

In common speech, we just call God “HaShem”: literally, the name. Baruch HaShem: thank God; b’ezrat HaShem, please God. God is the Name; the Name of all Names; the Name beyond Names.

We come to the Yizkor ceremony. In the space-time of Yom Kippur, this service of remembrance is our holy of holies. Now, we say names.

In the build-up to this ritual, members send in the names of all those they remember, so that they can be read aloud. Some names, too, remain unspoken, but rest silently on lips, or stay gently placed on grieving hearts. Here, the names of our dead are called out.

Just as when the High Priest entered the Tabernacle at Shiloh so many centuries ago, something intangible happens with the naming.

Just as Adam once named the animals and animated their spirits, we name our loved ones and breathe new life into their memories.

We breach past death and touch an essence of the person that cannot be reduced or destroyed. We rupture the boundaries of real and spiritual, and see that something of our loved one has never left us.

Through saying the names of our loved ones, we bring their presence into our lives. They bring us comfort, and the pain of their loss. They bring us forgiveness, and the opportunity to forgive. They bring us the past, and point us to the future.

David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at the University of Stanford. He wrote a small book called Sum, which imagines forty different possible afterlives. In the eighth possible ending to our time on earth, Eagleman writes:

There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.

This popular imagining of the afterlife is, in some ways, anticipated by our rituals of remembering.

Today, we say the names of our loved ones, and, if only for a moment, we give them life with us here once more. In a way we cannot explain, that is beyond reason, their names stand in for their whole being.

We know that, in our naming, and in our remembering, we keep something important of the dead with us. Just as they were once called in from playing in the street, or called up to read from Torah, or called out to in a crowded room, we call them again to come and pray with us.

May their names be remembered for a blessing.

Adam naming the animals

Yizkor 5787, Kingston Liberal Synagogue

festivals · high holy days · sermon

Why won’t God answer my prayers?

levtaylor

Now and again, members of this community will say to me: “I’m hoping for sunshine this weekend. Can you put in a good word?” Or “You’ve got a direct line. Tell the One upstairs to sort these problems out.”

I have to say. Do you really think that if God was listening to me the world would look like this?

A pious Jew turns up every dawn to the Kotel, the Western Wall, in Jerusalem and prays there until sunset.

A journalist comes and asks her: “what do you pray for?”

She says: “I pray for love, peace, and understanding throughout the world.”

The journalist asks: “And how do you feel, praying for such righteous things at this holy site?”

The pious Jew answers: “Like I’m talking to a brick wall.”

The Kotel is really a relic from a religion that no longer exists. It is the remaining ruined wall of the ancient Temple religion.

To the ancients, that wall may really have felt like a gateway to God. But, for modern Jews, it’s just a wall, no closer to Heaven than anywhere else.

To the Israelites of Temple times, the priests may really have felt like divine messengers, holding the keys to connect with the spiritual realm.

But we got rid of all that, and replaced the Priests with rabbis, who are just ordinary people. At best.

We no longer have holy places or holy people. Instead, we have holy time.

This is the season when the gates of repentance open. From the start of Rosh Hashanah until the end of Yom Kippur, there is a gateway in which we may seek to become better versions of ourselves.

This doorway is called Yamim haNoraim: the Days of Awe. The final service of Yom Kippur is called neilah, which means closing. That’s when the gates of repentance shut.

We stand in the threshold, in the brief passage when those doors are open.

Each year, we pray that God hears us. In the special blessings of the new year, we ask that God remember us for good; give us blessings; and grant us a good life.

Each year, we pray to God. We pray for the sunshine and rain in their due season; for security and prosperity in our own lives; and for all evil to be kept away from us.

Does anyone else feel like God isn’t quite delivering?

Often, I feel like I pray, but God doesn’t answer.

If you have managed to hold onto your faith and believe that God is with you even through all the trials of life, I admire you.

I don’t find it so easy.

I can feel the presence of God, who is the Source of all justice. But I look at our world, and feel how unjust it is.

The Psalmist says: “open for me the gates of righteousness; that the just may enter in!”

But it feels like the gates of justice are sealed shut. Why is there so much in this world that seems so profoundly unfair?

When I’m stuck with a question like this, I turn to the Talmud. Those Babylonian rabbis of old always have some good answers. And I never agree with any of them.

Because the Talmud doesn’t tell you what to think, it tells you how to think. So, in the tractate of Talmud focused on blessings, Talmud gives a few possibilities.

Maybe I’m praying for the wrong things. Maybe God can’t do what I’m asking. Or maybe God can’t hear me.

And maybe, maybe, God is listening to me, and it’s me who isn’t listening to God.

So, let’s explore the options, as they’re set out in the Talmud.

Talmud says some prayers are pointless. If you ask God to change the past, you’re praying in vain. If you hear a scream on your street and you pray it’s not in your house, you’re praying in vain.

On one level, Talmud is just saying God doesn’t do time travel. But I think there’s a deeper meaning here. I think Talmud is saying: bad things will happen in the world, and you cannot stop them from happening to you.

We cannot go back and change the past because suffering is built into the human condition. There are things I pray for, like the eradication of all sickness, that God just can’t do.

Human beings may have been able to defeat many illnesses over the last two centuries, and medicine today is capable of remarkable things.

But so long as we are human, we will be mortal, we will get sick, and we will experience pain.

As long as there is suffering in the world, some of it will happen to me and the people I love. God won’t open the gates of Heaven to do favours for the favourites.

So, if I only pray for the right things, will they happen?

The Talmud’s answer is: still, no.

Rabbi Elazar teaches: Since the day the Temple was destroyed, an iron wall separates the Jews from God.

On the one hand, we might take that literally, and imagine that God was busy in people’s lives until year 70 of the Common Era, then lost interest when there were no more chicken sacrifices on the altar, and decided to leave us all to it.

If only we still had a stone structure in Jerusalem, we could take a baby goat to a priest, and all our problems would disappear!

But I doubt it. Even in the time of the Temple, the Prophets were very suspicious of the supposed claims of the Priests to do magic. The Talmud is the project of the rabbinic movement, which was sceptical of the Temple cult.

More likely, the Talmud is answering a question that reading the Torah poses. Why God isn’t helping.

God rescued Noah from the flood: why not us? God parted the sea for Moses: why not for us? God fed the Israelites with manna from Heaven: why not us?

These stories belong not to a historical past but to a mythic time. They happened at the same time that giants roamed in Canaan, donkeys spoke in Moab, and dragons were slain in Persia.

That fantasy time has to end somewhen. God clearly doesn’t do magic anymore.

But this explanation feels inadequate. If I’m praying for the right things, and God has the power to perform miracles, why don’t they happen?

Talmud has another answer, because: “Rabbi Elazar also said: Since the day the Temple was destroyed, the gates of prayer were locked.”

We may imagine ourselves outside a great castle, calling out to be allowed entry. But nobody can hear us.

I might pray all day every day, but nobody can hear. I might shout and scream for God to solve all the world’s problems. But no message is getting through.

It’s not that God doesn’t care. It’s not that God can’t do anything about it. It’s that, for some reason, God cannot hear what I’m asking for.

For Rabbi Elazar, that sad fact is baked into the universe. God is listening, but cannot hear.

I can make whatever demands I like, but they go nowhere.

But Rabbi Elazar offers us some comfort. He says: “Despite the fact that the gates of prayer are locked, the gates of tears were never sealed.”

All my demands from God, whatever I shout for, won’t be heard. But my tears will.

God may not hear my orders, but God will hear me when I cry.

In our haftarah, Hannah goes and stands in the Temple to pray for a child.

Hannah’s soul was bitterly afflicted, and she wept incessantly. She whispered in ways those around her could not understand. She was so distressed that, to the Priest who saw her, she looked drunk.

Abarbanel, a 15th Century Portuguese commentator, says that Hannah was filled with tears, to open the gates of tears, because they are never closed. Then God would join her in her sadness.

Now, we must imagine something new. So far, we have been putting out protests, petitions, and pleas. But God hasn’t heard any of them.

Now, instead of our demands, we offer tears. Consider how different this is. A request requires an answer. Action. Yes or no. And you can ask God for whatever you like, but you won’t get it.

Tears are different. When I cry, it comes from a place of real grief, sadness, and exhaustion.

I cry when all the bluster is gone and I’m stripped back to my most vulnerable self. I’m not telling God what to give me anymore. I’m just telling God I’ve got nothing left to give.

And God hears that.

The gates of tears are never closed. There are no locks, no doors, no iron walls, that can stop God hearing when we cry.

And then God cries too.

Tears can’t be answered with magic solutions. The only way to really answer a crying person is to hold them and sit with their pain. So that’s what God does.

God joins us in our sadness.

I cry to God that the people I love get sick and suffer. And God weeps back, because that hurts God too.

I cry to God that the world is a mess, filled with war, hatred, and environmental destruction. And God weeps back, because that hurts God too.

I cry to God about how the innocent die and the wicked succeed. And God weeps back, because that hurts God too.

I say to God: please, do all you can to make this world just a little more just. And God answers: please, you do all you can to make this world just a little more just.

This gate swings both ways. Open up the gates of justice in your world, so that I, the Eternal One, may enter into your space.

The gates of repentance have opened.

Now is the chance to channel our most justice-seeking selves. In these Days of Awe, we seek forgiveness. We resolve to abandon our worst habits and to cultivate our best traits. We swear we will become a force for righteousness.

But all year round, the gates of tears stay open.

God may not grant wishes like a genie, but God will always be a friend; there to share the pain.

So, on the days when I feel like God isn’t listening to me, I need to try and listen out for God.

I need to hear that I am not the only one crying. The whole world is crying. And God is crying with us.

In this season of repentance, may we all find the strength to be vulnerable, to cry when we need to, and to feel God’s presence with us through our pain.

Whatever you are facing, may God be with you.

Amen.

Rosh Hashanah morning 5787

high holy days · sermon

Look for the helpers

levtaylor

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”

The pastor, Fred Rogers, said these words. He was speaking to nursery age children on American public TV. He was a gentle Christian minister, who gave people hope and comfort through trying times.

This year, I have returned to his words often. This has been a difficult year for the British Jewish community. We have seen previously unthinkable and frightening acts of antisemitism. 

And, yet, for every one person sowing hatred and fear, there have been hundreds of others bringing love and solidarity. 

On days when a disaster happened, I wished that every KLS member could be in this building. Then you could receive the cards, the flowers, the emails, the calls.

You could see all the neighbours checking in on us. All the faith leaders extending solidarity. All the politicians asking what we need. All the emergency services coming round to offer us reassurance.

I wish every member could receive all the love, because to look at the news, you would think there was nothing but hate. But there are so many good people, who are happy that Jews are here in Britain, and who want to build with us a society based on tolerance, liberty, and compassion.

They are our helpers. And we have had so many.

While some may want to kill and destroy, without the helpers, there would be no such thing as civilisation. 

Indeed, there was a time when even knowing Rosh Hashanah’s date depended on a great community of helpers.

In this modern age, we can look at our phones and quickly find out when Rosh Hashanah begins. Some use paper calendars or have the information stuck up on their fridges. 

But there was a time before all that. Not just before phones and fridges. But before we even had a fixed calendar. 

Back then, if you wanted to know when Rosh Hashanah began, you had to stare up at the night sky. 

Rosh Hashanah always starts with the new moon of Tishri. The new moon is a slither in the sky, visible only for about fifteen minutes on a clear night, and requiring expert precision to identify.

So, Jews throughout the Diaspora would gaze patiently at the waning moon, perhaps as they tended flocks, or nursed children, or laid on their backs under a cloak of stars. They would wait for it.

And then they’d see it. The exact moment when the moon looked almost entirely black, save for a faint glow around the perimeter. Blink and you’ll miss it. But see it, and the new moon has come, and with it, the new year. 

Still, it wasn’t enough for one person to spot the moon from a field. Every Jew had to agree that this was indeed the start of their year. 

So, the witnesses walked to Jerusalem. They trekked from wherever they were in the countryside to the old Temple. They gave testimony there before learned teachers, holding up picture charts, who could confirm that what they saw was a true new moon.

On the walk to Jerusalem, you could find others walking the same path, all heading towards the Temple courtyard, because they had seen the same moon that you had seen. Hundreds would descend on the courtyards to bear witness to fifteen minutes of a blackened sky.

Rabban Gamliel, the head of the Jewish community in the early first century, wanted to make sure that all these helpful people felt valued. So, he threw a great feast in the courtyard for everyone who came to volunteer their sighting of the moon. 

Gamliel ensured that every witness was questioned thoroughly, and asked to describe the moon they saw. And he made a new law, saying that anyone who was giving this testimony could walk two thousand cubits in every direction, even in violation of Shabbat. He wanted to reward people; to make sure they continued helping.

When every witness had been interviewed, and the rabbis had confirmed that the new moon had been seen, they would light up a fire on the Mount of Olives to declare that the festival had begun. And everywhere across the Jewish Diaspora that they saw a burning pyre, they’d light their own bonfire, to let the whole community know that this was the beginning of the year.

The Rosh Hashanah of Antiquity was made by helpers.

Now, every year, for thousands of years, at exactly this time, we have gathered, just as they once did, to celebrate this day.

Yet, this Erev Rosh Hashanah is not only a celebration.

We meet here on the 25th anniversary of the World Trade Centre attacks. September 11th 2001, a quarter-century ago, forever changed the world. 

I remember coming home from school to see that now iconic footage of the Twin Towers falling live. My mum stood, ironing shirts, transfixed by rolling coverage on the BBC. She said: “there will be bombs dropping somewhere tomorrow morning.” She had a tone of detached fear. 

Terror, I suppose, is the word.

A few days later was Rosh Hashanah. Rabbi Alexandra Wright preached. In her sermon, she summarised the mood:

“The sickening fear that refused to dissipate, the disbelief and unutterable shock of seeing those elegantly poised silver towers, knifed by the steel of two airliners, buckle slowly, almost gracefully, crumbling, shattering into a million pieces amidst a plume of lethal dust and smoke, held back for a little while any contemplation of the global implications of this attack.

“But by the following morning, a voice of anger, outrage and retribution had been discovered. America would avenge the deaths of its thousands. Retaliation would be bitter-sweet comfort in its hour of loss.”

Rabbi Alex was sadly proven right. A month later, the attacks on Afghanistan began. That war lasted twenty years. Subsequent wars followed in Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, Lebanon, Pakistan and Syria. Some say we are still living through the same war.

Immediately following 9/11, there was a climate of fear.  If even New York were vulnerable, anywhere could be attacked. 

We in Britain feared for how we might be hurt, and we feared for the hurt that our own country might inflict on others.

In this climate of panic, there was another message that cut through, too. Televisions re-ran the message of Mr. Rogers. “”Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”

The speakers directed us to think of the heroes that day in New York. The firefighters who rushed towards danger. The first responders who came to the scene. The nurses and paramedics who treated wounds.

These are the same people mentioned in the Mishnah of Rosh Hashanah where we learn about the team of volunteers that called the new moon. Because Rabban Gamliel didn’t just create legal exemptions and special protections for the new moon volunteers. 

He extended Shabbat privileges to midwives, firefighters, sentinels, and anyone who needed to take swift action to counteract a disaster. He made a halachah for the helpers, to say that their helping mattered more, even than Jewish law.

“Look for the helpers,” that was the message. Find strength and comfort in all the people who run towards disaster with the sole goal of helping others.

Realising that his voice was needed once more, Mr. Rogers came out of retirement to record a message for the post-9/11 world. Rogers, a Presbyterian minister, used a Jewish concept to anchor his message: “tikkun olam”; healing the world.

He said:

No matter what our particular job, especially in our world today, we all are called to be repairers of creation. Thank you for whatever you do, wherever you are, to bring joy and light and hope and faith and pardon and love to your neighbour and to yourself.”

This was a message to everyone. 

The work of being a helper did not just belong to those who did exceptional professions, but to anyone willing to do the right thing. Anyone who came forward with a volunteer spirit to address a problem was a helper. 

The message to look for helpers has recurred many more times since September 11th 2001. In 2018, a terrorist shot up the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, killing 11, and injuring 8. The neighbourhood where the attack took place, Squirrel Hill, had been home to Fred Rogers.

Tovia Jacobs came from the same neighbourhood, and was a student at Yeshiva University. He penned a profound reflection on coming as a Jew from this place, inspired by Fred Rogers, and wanting to find helpers. He acknowledged, in particular, the Muslim organizations who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Synagogue within a few days of the attack. “The helpers were definitely there,” he said, “each acting as a small vigil candle in the darkness.”

This year, that message has reverberated in my brain once more. Look for the helpers.

Tonight, I want to retell the story of this last year, not as one of victimhood and fear, but one that has been profoundly shaped by helpers.

Last Yom Kippur, there was an attack on Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation in Manchester. The leadership of this synagogue carried out the necessary risk assessments and made the brave decision to stay open. The Synagogue Protection Group understood that we needed to change how we do shul security, and stepped up to the plate. So many members, through their volunteering, ensured our community flourished in proud defiance of hatred.

In the weeks after the attack, we were inundated by gifts of flowers and messages of support. We made a notice board purely to showcase all the words of solidarity we were receiving. Some people called the synagogue office, just to say they were thinking of us, and to let us know that we were their neighbours, and that they cared about us. A man came round and, to my surprise, handed me an anonymous cheque to help with our increased security costs.

On the first night of Chanukah, after the attack at Bondi Beach in Australia, we received so many messages of support. The local MP, Monica Harding; the Council leader, Andreas Kirsch; the mayor, Noel Hadjimichael, and several dignitaries immediately came round to support us. We received visits from all of the local police services. Some of the police then came in the evening to our Chanukah Party, danced with us, and ate doughnuts.

When there was an attempted arson attack at Finchley Reform Synagogue, all the faith communities of their area immediately came together to stand as one. Cantor Zoe Jacobs, FRS’s spiritual leader, said at the time: “We are extremely grateful for the solidarity of our neighbours, local police, and politicians. They help us remember that we are always a community who would choose to build bridges rather than walls.”

When there was a stabbing attack in Golders Green, the local vicar, Reverend Joe Moffatt, and the council’s faith worker, Marina Payen, called and asked what we needed. I said we needed a public show of support. They said: “then that’s what we’ll do.”

That weekend, all the faiths came to stand together against hate outside the Bentall Centre in Kingston. The mosque promoted the event at Jummah prayers on Friday. Some of the churches stopped their Sunday services to join us. We were surrounded by Kingston’s community representatives and faith leaders. I looked around and thought: “I am so glad the Jews are outnumbered here.”

In Kingston, we are blessed with exceptionally strong civil society, positive neighbourly relations, and a culture of collaboration between the faiths. 

So, yes, there have been stories this year that I need not repeat. But there are other stories that we should be telling again and again. Stories of the helpers.

We have seen them. And we need to keep looking out for them.

We look for the helpers because, when we feel scared, they give us security.

We look for the helpers because, when our faith in humanity is tested, they restore it sevenfold.

We look for the helpers because, when we’re not sure what to do, we know we can follow them.

All across this city, this country, this world, there are people who have decided that hatred will not win. They are determined to stamp out the scourge of bigotry and intolerance. They are building a world based on love and diversity. 

There are those, now, who are scared and confused, and looking for helpers. 

They are looking for you. So find that helper within yourself.

In Antiquity, when the Temple stood in Jerusalem, the New Year wasn’t declared until the helpers arrived. Then, when they had confirmed that they had seen the new moon, they lit a torch on the Mount of Olives to say that Rosh Hashanah had begun. 

And everywhere across the Jewish Diaspora that they saw a burning pyre, they’d light their own bonfire, to let the whole community know that this was the beginning of the year.

Today, let us each light the fire within ourselves that we will be numbered among the helpers.

Let us set up the beacon from this synagogue that says we will promote tolerance, liberty, and compassion.

Let us look out and see all the many other flames, shining bright in the darkness, coming from every place that believes in the vision of a shared society.

And, as we look out at the sea of lights in the darkness, let us say: a new year is here.

Shanah tovah.

Erev Rosh Hashanah 5787

protest · sermon · social justice

Do British Jews have dual loyalty?

levtaylor



Friends, at this season of teshuvah, I want to begin with an apology. I am terribly sorry, because I have been selling KLS short.

When people asked me over the last couple of years what Kingston Liberal Synagogue was like, I told them that we were a friendly suburban family shul with good Progressive values.

What an embarrassment, because all this time I neglected to tell anyone that we are really the centre of a Zionist conspiracy. That’s right, this community in Thames Ditton is, in fact, the beating heart of a Mossad plot to control the Green Party.

If you’re surprised, you can only imagine what a shock this is for our Green Party members.

Although I joke, something quite serious has happened. The Canary, a conspiracy website owned by a used car salesman, has decided to run “an exposé” on some of our Green-affiliated members.

On their social media channels, they ran with the headline “Zionist synagogues in the pipeline to defend Zionism.” It explains that some of the core Jewish Greens are members of Kingston Liberal Synagogue, which was part of Liberal Judaism, and is now part of Progressive Judaism, then declares: “all these organisations and all member synagogues are formally signed up to the Zionist movement.”



Its author, David Miller, is a TV host for Iran’s state-run media channel, Press TV. He has collected a database of “foreign influences” on British policy, which now includes members of the synagogue Council who are not even members of the Greens. His database looks remarkably like a list of British Jews.

This incident has inspired many feelings. I do feel scared, as this carries frightening historical memories. This is not the first time somebody has decided to collect a list of enemy Jews, whether they were labelled as “Zionists” in Iraq, “counter-revolutionaries” in Russia, or “Communists” in America.

I feel outraged that people I care about should be subjected to such attacks. I feel sad that people who have devoted their lives to causes like sustainable transport, fair economic distribution, and indeed Palestinian human rights, have been tarred with such an ugly brush.

But most of all, I feel proud. Proud to be a Progressive Jew and proud to be a rabbi to Progressive Jews. Proud to know and support people who consistently stand up for their values, even when faced with hostility.

People like David Miller want to stop Jews from participating in public life. But when people want you to shut up, the best thing to do is get louder.

So I want to bolster our members with proud defiance. The values of Progressive Judaism cut across party, affiliation and creed, and those who uphold them should always be encouraged in what they do.

Now, if you are not au fait with internal Green Party bureaucracy, you may be wondering what crime these notorious Israel propagandists committed.

Some of them criticised a motion to the Green Party, which said that Zionism is racism. The goal of its proposers was that the Greens would be Europe’s first anti-Zionist Party and declare all Zionists unwelcome.

Unsurprisingly, some Jews had reservations. Party leader Zack Polanski said it depended entirely on how Zionism was defined. There are, we know, versions of Zionism that promote racist and murderous policies.

And then there are versions, such as we have supported here, that involve Jews going out to provide protective presence to Palestinian olive farmers in the West Bank, or to promote democracy and minority rights, or that seek to defend the land’s natural resources.

Any of these projects might be subjected to legitimate critique, from left or right, but I cannot see how any of them would warrant being kicked out of public life. Indeed, the most vociferous critiques, that these are liberal plasters on nationalist wounds, come from the exact people named as Zionist agitators by Miller.

And that is precisely the concern that some raised. Our member, Dr Joshua Alston, warned that declaring the party free from all Zionists would disqualify most Jews from party membership.

As Miller has demonstrated, that is not quite true. The witch hunt for Zionists excludes all Jews from public life.

The logic for Miller in pinpointing our congregants as part of this great conspiracy is precisely their Jewishness. They are suspicious because they are Jews doing Jewish things.

A Jew goes to synagogue. A synagogue is part of a national organisation. The national organisation is part of an international denomination. And, all of them, says Miller, are signed up to the “Zionist movement.”

Only Jews who have no connection to other Jews or to Judaism could possibly pass Miller’s purity test. And that’s the point.

This database of Zionist lobbyists and suspicion of all Jews has roots in a deep-seated European prejudice that Jews have a “dual loyalty.” On the one hand, we may seem to be citizens of Britain, but, in reality, our secret loyalty is to the global network of Jews.

This was notoriously demonstrated by the Dreyfus Affair of 1894. Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish artillery officer in the French Army, was accused of spying for Germany. He was stripped of his title and shipped off to a penal colony.

As many noted at the time, Dreyfus was a scapegoat for the military establishment. The government and army knew that the real spy was one of their own, but used a Jew to deflect blame and cover up their failings.

Dreyfus worked as a foil because, being Jewish, he could never be trusted to be truly loyal to France, despite having done nothing wrong. Jews could never be true patriots to their country.

The Dreyfus Affair

To think that, only a year ago, Kingston Liberal Synagogue was a touted hot bed of anti-Zionism. It feels like only yesterday that our little shul was expelled from the Board of Deputies for being insufficiently loyal to Israel.

Our elected Deputy committed the heinous offence of joining with Israeli civil society by opposing the war on Gaza. Along with 35 other representatives, she condemned the Israeli government for breaking the ceasefire and attacking civilians in Gaza, rather than engaging in diplomacy to bring the hostages home.

These incidents are, I believe, related. They show examples of Progressive Jews refusing to be forced into binary choices. Whether it is Greens defending the presence of Zionists in their party, or Deputies insisting on their right to oppose war, these are people demonstrating real compassion and nuance in an increasingly polarised culture.

And they are both examples of that Jewish dual loyalty. The Jewish Greens have refused to hide their Jewishness to appear more palatable as Progressives.

The rebellious Deputies refused to compromise their Progressive values for their Jewishness. They would not engage in slavish national loyalty when they saw their core ethical principles violated.

So, perhaps British Jews do have dual loyalty. This was the reason given by Tory politicians in the early 19th Century for refusing to allow Jews civic rights in England. In 1830, Catholics had just been emancipated, and the Jews hoped they were next.

One of the greatest advocates for Jewish emancipation was a Whig MP named Thomas Babington Macaulay. Macaulay was a liberal historian and powerful orator with a firm belief in equal rights.

Macaulay issued a pamphlet addressing the claim by opponents of progress that Jews “are not Englishmen. They are a separate people, living locally in this island, but living morally and politically in communion with their brethren who are scattered over all the world.”

Rather than refuting the charge of being insufficiently patriotic Macaulay said: of course they are! So is everyone!

Who is so simple minded that they can only swear allegiance to one nation, or so naive that they only feel sympathy for one cause?

Look at those pesky Quakers, the cantankerous Wesleyans, or those treacherous Huguenots. Everyone feels loyalty to multiple people and causes.

Just look at the Catholics. If you wait two hundred years, one of them may even become prime minister!

Macaulay argued that if Jews didn’t feel passionate enough about Britain, it was the job of the government to give people reasons and responsibilities to care about building the country.

People are not mindless servants. They are full human beings, with ethical codes, family attachments, sacred texts, personal histories, and values. The role of Britain wasn’t to force Jews into some box, but to make the box bigger.

Thomas Babington Macaulay


Jews, in turn, responded to the Whigs’ call. They threw themselves into English civic life and volunteered for every posting where they could be helpful. (If you’ve ever wondered why we say weekly prayers for the King and his government but no other religion does, it’s a hangover from Victorian efforts by Jews to be accepted in Britain.)

We have fully embraced the modern world, and taken on the universal promises of the Enlightenment: peace; equality; human rights for everyone; the triumph of love over all. And we have synthesised them completely with our love of Judaism, its ancestral traditions, its strange ways, and its peculiar people.

We have indeed embraced multiple loyalties: to the country where we live; to Jews everywhere; and to our deeply-held beliefs in universal religion.

This is the way of Progressive Judaism. It requires a constant mediation between our particular attachment to the Jews and our universal concern for human rights. It is an ongoing struggle to love one’s people and all other people in a world beset by hatred.

How easy it would be to only have one! To only be Progressive or only be Jewish. To ditch empathy for pride and be a vulgar nationalist. Or to forfeit self-respect for compassion and welcome our own annihilation.

In late October 2023, as Israeli society was still reeling from the horrors of Hamas attacks, and violent reprisals against Palestinians were well underway, the peace activist Neta Hazan reflected on this dichotomy.

The Israeli Left, she said, is constantly accused of dual loyalty for advocating for the Palestinians as well as their own. She said that now it was time to take that label as an honour. She wrote:

“Dual loyalty is probably not the right word. It is double pain, double heartbreak, double caring, double love. It is holding onto everyone’s humanity. And it is hard. It is so hard to hold onto humanity here. It is exhausting, and it feels like time after time the world simply asks you to give up. It would be so much easier to “choose a side”—any side. Just to choose, to stick to one, and at least reduce the amount of pain you hold. At least to feel part of a group and less alone in all of this… And this pain that some of us in our small community hold, this “dual loyalty,” is probably the only hope this place has.”

So, dear Progressive Jews, we will never be sufficiently British for the white supremacists. We will never be Zionist enough for Netanyahu’s cheerleaders. And we will never be anti-Zionist enough for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard.

And that’s great. That’s a cause for real pride.

It means that we are full people with open hearts, who care about ourselves and about others. We are capable of love that those bigots cannot comprehend.

As a community, we span ideologies and political parties. The way we vote and hold party memberships is just one of our loyalties.

Another is the love and support we show for each other. Let us strengthen that loyalty.

Our loyalty to our members. To our movement. To our cause. And to our God.

Let us hold our hands together and keep our heads high, in love and pride.

Shabbat shalom.

Progressive Jewish thought leaders
judaism · sermon

Have you considered therapy?

levtaylor

Isaiah stood up on his soap box and preached to the people:

‘Listen to this, you wasters who sit in a drunken stupor, though not from drinking wine. This is what the Sovereign, your God and Defender, says: “See, I have taken the terrible cup from your hands. You will drink no more of my fury. Instead, I will hand that cup to your tormentors, those who trampled you into the dust and walked all over your backs!”’

The people stood and watched his prophecy, then replied: “Isaiah, have you considered therapy?”

Isaiah, you should go to therapy.

Isaiah, beloved prophet, seer of justice, speaker of truth, visionary of God, I do think you would have benefited from a bit of counselling. I read your words, so filled with passion, as you swing between abject rage against all humanity’s follies and then salivating at the possibility of God’s vengeance against your enemies. And I love your words, these are such beautiful Torah, but I also just want to give you a hug.

Isaiah, my friend, my favourite prophet of them all, do you need someone to talk to? Are you going through something just now? When was the last time you were able to open up and be vulnerable? Because this… these speeches… they’re beautiful, they really are, and I think you might need some help processing all of this.

There are tools available. There are ways you can access your feelings and address some of the root causes of your pain. 

I’d like to introduce you to a nice Jewish boy who lives in Hampstead. He doesn’t care much for shul, but he likes studying some of our texts, and he’s had some good ideas. His name is Sigmund Freud. 

He had this fantastic idea that, if a person spoke freely about all that was worrying them, they might feel a little better. 

He found trends that showed that some of what makes us angry or sad or anxious can be connected to our childhood. Now, being honest, some of his theories have lost their appeal. He put a lot of stock in a couple of Greek myths. But, in general, he understood that by re-telling our internal narratives, we can live in ways that are calmer and more fulfilling. 

During his lifetime, Freud had to deny that his techniques were a “Jewish science,” but later his daughter Anna was able to reclaim the label as a “badge of honour.” 

I think it probably is something of a Jewish science, and I wish more Jews would try it.

I look at some of the characters in our Torah and think how much they might have benefited from a trip to a therapist’s couch. 

Would Isaac have pitted his sons Jacob and Esau against each other so callously if he’d been able to cope with the betrayal he felt when his father Abraham tried to kill him?

Could Moses have kept his temper in check a little if he’d had space to talk through the displacement of discovering he had been adopted?

Maybe Rachel and Leah could have done with some family therapy to process their jealousy and build better relationships.

Of course, they wouldn’t have given us such compelling stories if they’d been better adjusted, and we wouldn’t have the Torah we do. 

It’s too late now for the biblical protagonists, but it’s not too late for us. We actually can go to therapy, and learn to like others and ourselves a little better.

As a community, one of our great highlights is Sandra Webber’s Shabbat Island Discs, where members share their life stories alongside their favourite tunes.

Believe it or not, the idea didn’t begin at KLS, but originated on BBC Radio 4, where it is called Desert Island Discs. On 4 August 1989, the show welcomed on a castaway by the name of Rabbi Lionel Blue. You can still listen now on iPlayer, as he speaks with such gentle warmth, and offers up a song about his Yiddishe Momme. 

But there is a really profound moment when Rabbi Lionel describes the benefits of therapy to us all. He had learnt about himself through a self-taught psychotherapist who took him on for free. His first session took 10 hours! 

He says his reason for promoting the benefits of therapy is that “you can only love God as much as you love yourself.”

This approach, that we ought to get to like ourselves better through therapy, positively impacted on how rabbis were trained at Leo Baeck College. For several decades, it has been actively encouraged as part of rabbinic training.

On and off, in various forms, I’ve been going to therapy for about 15 years. And I swear by it. It has helped me know myself better and love myself more. It has made me a better pastor, partner, and friend. 

And I think Lionel was right: it has made me love God more.

With the lengthy commute between Essex and Surrey, I wasn’t able to go so often. But now, with space and time for it, I find myself back on the couch. It’s doing me a world of good.

As Jews, we don’t evangelise, but if I were asked to give a rabbinic endorsement to anything, it would be psychotherapy. If you’re not already bought in, I encourage you to give it a try. 

Spend just under an hour talking to a trained listener, and see how much better you feel.

Shabbat shalom.

social justice · spirituality · theology

One God, No Masters

levtaylor

We are, all of us, sparks of the divine.

There is something within each of us that is holy. 

We are more than moving limbs and functioning organs. We have a quality that cannot be reduced to DNA, or psychology, or narrative. 

There is something about a person that makes them who they are: more than their physical experiences, and more than our experiences of them. 

It is a feature that we can’t perceive by touch, sight or smell, but we know it is definitely there. It is the unfathomable essence within a human being that glows invisible and breathes without lungs and animates without moving.

This property cannot really be named, but it has been known in English as soul, spirit, or lifeforce; in Hebrew as neshama, ruach, nefesh.

There is something unique about life. And, if anything deserves to be called sacred, it is that.

In Judaism, we call it “the spark of the Divine.” As if God were one burning bonfire in which all of us were the flames. As if, inside every one of us, a candle was lit before we were born and cannot be extinguished after we die. 

There have been moments in my life when I have truly felt it. When I have seen the sacred spark in myself and realised, in a way I still cannot explain, that I am made in God’s image. 

There have been times when I have truly seen the sacred spark in others. Not just that another person was special or lovable, but infinite: that, qualitatively, their true essence could never be contained. 

I hope you have felt this at times too, or already know it to be true, because I want to talk about how radical this concept is.

If you truly believe, as I do, that we all have sacred souls, how could it ever make sense for one person to be better than another? 

In the light of God’s majesty, the divisions of gender, race, nation, and physical characteristics look like pale imitation of reality. Our bodies are real and diverse, but our spirits have a reality that is incomprehensibly more real and more diverse.

The Divine Spark within us comes from the Source of all Truth. And because God has implanted it within us, every life is equally, completely, and unassailably holy.

Every human spirit is remarkably equal. Not because each one is in some way alike, but because each one is infinitely different. 

In this week’s haftarah, the Prophet Isaiah proclaims: “O Eternal God, masters other than you have ruled over us, but we only remember your Name. Those others are dead and lifeless; sunken beings who will never rise. You, O God, have wiped them out and obliterated their memory.”

Who are these other masters? And why can God destroy them so decisively?

We might be tempted to imagine this as we do the Pagan pantheon, where one god comes in and destroys the others, as the Titan Cronus usurped his father, Uranus, only in turn to be vanquished by Zeus. 

But this is not a myth of many gods. In the Jewish understanding, there is only one God. So who else has ruled over us?

Midrash Tehillim says that this is referring to Nebuchadnezzar, the tyrant of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Nebuchadnezzar ran colonial campaigns throughout the Middle East, suppressing all revolt, and establishing himself as sole dictator over the Levant. In 586, Nebuchadnezzar besieged and ransacked Jerusalem. He bulldozed Solomon’s Temple, conquered the Land of Israel, and carried away its leaders as captives. 

According to our tradition, Nebuchadnezzar demanded that the Israelites he had imprisoned bow down to idols. They refused. Nebuchadnezzar heated a furnace to seven times its regular temperature and attempted to burn the Israelites alive. But, by a miracle, God saved them, and the three pious believers walked out from the fire unscathed.

In this understanding of the text, there is only one True Ruler, and that is God. The lords who attempt to subjugate others are men. Sure, they may be able to win some wars, defeat some people, and make some people bow down to their will. But, ultimately, they are mortal.

Their lives are nothing in the span of God’s eternity. Their empires are worthless in the expanse of God’s universe. They are lying to themselves and others that they can be anything but dust and ashes. 

Only one being is immortal – that is God – and all are equal in the Eternal One’s beneficent eyes. The rulers of the world can never conquer us in a way that truly matters, because our spirits belong to something greater than their meager understanding.

If we deeply internalised this sanctity of every life, our entire world order would seek to function. Consider what it would mean to believe in the profound equality of every soul. How could anyone take more than they need from society, or abide for anyone else to have less? Surely nobody would ever be able to kill another and there would be no more wars. 

How would we have borders and checkpoints, when no human being can own the earth, because everything is God’s possession? Nobody could ever dominate or govern another.

And, in truth, if we truly got rid of all borders, states, laws, militaries, and inequalities, civilisation would fall apart. Society, as we know it, would cease to exist.

Well, good, said Rabbi Avraham Yehuda Heyn. He was one of the leading intellectuals among the Chabad Chassidim in 20th Century Ukraine. He taught that Judaism was a rejection of hierarchy, force, and inequality. We wrestle against the strong arm to make everyone strong and uproot weakness. 

He outlined a view of the world that would upturn all order. Absolute equality for everyone in everything. Complete refusal to participate in states or war. The abolition of all classes, and the levelling of all people.

Avraham Yehuda Heyn was part of a cohort of rabbis from Eastern Europe, profoundly educated in Talmud, as well as the modern thought of Tolstoy, Nietzsche, and Kropotkin. There were many like him, in the 19th and 20th Centuries, who believed that the only logical conclusion to Judaism’s insistence on the sanctity of life was freedom and equality for all. In his recent book, No Masters but God, Hayyim Rothman calls this ideology of strictly Orthodox mystics “anarcho-Judaism.”

This idea may sound radical, and even intimidating. You can feel that it belongs to the heady days of a time when Jews were becoming free and anything felt possible. It belongs with the revolutionary optimism of mystics in another era. It is bold.

And yet: it is hard to honestly believe what we do – in God and the sanctity of the spirit – without arriving at some pretty bold conclusions. 

Think seriously about what it would mean to say that we are all holy embers. To say that we are sparks of the divine.

As if God were one burning bonfire in which all of us were the flames. As if, inside every one of us, a candle was lit before we were born and cannot be extinguished after we die. 

Breathe life into the flames. Give fuel to the candle. And, perhaps, something within us all, will set this world ablaze.

Shabbat shalom.

judaism · sermon · spirituality

My body and my soul are always growing

levtaylor



A few years ago, I started putting on a lot of weight. I got a spare tyre around my waist and started to sag in unexpected places.

After a lifetime of enjoying a diet of junk food and fizzy drinks, my metabolism had finally caught up with me.

I felt a lot of shame about my body shape. At the time, I was midway through rabbinic College, and blessed to be surrounded by sensitive and thoughtful colleagues.

I took my worries to my classmate, David Yehuda Stern. I said: “I’m getting fat, and I don’t like it.”

He smiled lightly and shrugged. “My body’s changed too. But my body’s always been changing. It changed when I was a teenager. Why would I expect it to stop changing now?”

This is some of the best advice I’ve ever had, and I refer back to it often. This week, I texted Rabbi David Yehuda to ask if he’d be OK with me passing on these words of wisdom.

He said that, of course, he had no recollection of ever having said such a thing, but it sounded like an important message, so I should feel free to share it with you.

Having a healthy, happy relationship with my body has been one of the great challenges of my life. I sometimes joke that I’d be a lot better off if I didn’t have a physical form and could just be a concept.

But I definitely feel more at home in my skin at 37 than I did at 27, and certainly far more than I ever did at 17. I find some beauty, now, in accepting that my body, like my soul, is always growing and changing.

When I think about working on my spirit, I know that the perfected version isn’t the one that’s superficially nicest to look at. It’s the one that has lived, learned, and adapted from experience, maintaining its tenderness, while toughening its boundaries. Why should my body be any different?

The best version of my body will be the one that has fully experienced life: wrinkled from laughter; weathered from sunshine; built by adventure and experimentation; and, if I am lucky enough, blessed to reach a very old age.

Our haftarah for this week points us to a similar message of embracing our changing bodies and souls. The Prophet Isaiah preaches to us:

“Consider the rock from which you were cut, the quarry from which you were mined. Think about Abraham, your ancestor, and Sarah, who gave birth to your nation. Abraham was only one man when I called him. But when I blessed him, he became a great nation.”

It’s an interesting formulation, to put “the rock from which you were cut” and “the quarry from which you were mined” alongside Abraham and Sarah. Why should these two concepts be parallel to one another?

In the structure of a biblical poem, which these words from Isaiah certainly are, you usually get a mirroring of similar words in succession like this. Why would Abraham be compared to a rock and Sarah to a quarry?

Our rabbis see an interesting message in the use of language. In Tractate Yevamot of the Babylonian Talmud, they see this as a commentary on the lives of our ancestors, Abraham and Sarah.

Rabbi Yitzhak says this is a commentary on their infertility. Abraham and Sarah were both initially unable to conceive. In this sense, says the Talmud, they were barren like rocks and quarries.

God wanted them to pray and to grow spiritually enough before they were ready for progeny. God needed to see that their souls had grown so that their bodies could change to accommodate miracle births.

Building on this, Rabbi Ami goes even further. He says that, initially, Abraham and Sarah were tumtumim. This is a word that comes up a fair bit in rabbinic literature but a lot less so in modern medical journals. It means that, biologically, they were sexless. They had the same genitals as Action Man and Barbie: just one smooth surface.

(I checked with an obstetrician friend, who said that this was not something she had seen so far in her career. Truly special people then, were Abraham and Sarah.)

So Abraham and Sarah were not just infertile inside. Externally, to begin with, they simply didn’t have the equipment to make Isaac.

According to our rabbis, then, our ancestors went on a great journey with their bodies, spirits, and names. They began like a rock and a quarry, but gradually, over time, they eroded the hard outer layers until their bodies and souls were porous enough to receive God’s blessings. Only then did Avram become Abraham and Sarai become Sarah.

Now, most of us are not going to undergo such dramatic transitions, but there are lessons here for us all. We, like the founders of monotheism, can embrace our bodies and souls as works in progress.

In our society, that is very counter-cultural. The modern world glamourises youth and shuns any body-type that deviates from an unattainable ideal. We are taught to hate our bodies and neglect our souls.

Judaism has a different message for us entirely. When we first wake, we are supposed to thank God for our soul, which the prayer says, God is constantly creating and implanting within us.

Upon getting up, Jews are meant to thank God for our body; for all its openings and closings; for getting to breathe and have a heartbeat; to sit and stand and walk. We say to God: I am so grateful to be alive.

I can’t lie and pretend I’m good at doing this every day. I definitely can’t claim to have suddenly developed a great relationship with my body.

But the principle, taught by our text and our tefillah, has been a great relief to me. The idea, that I first learnt from my classmate, that my body has never stayed the same, gives me permission to see my body not as my enemy, but as an ever-changing vehicle for exploring the world.

My body and my soul are cherished gifts from God. May I be blessed enough to see them grow and change.

Shabbat shalom.

judaism · sermon

We’re clearing a path by gentle steps

levtaylor

It’s a pleasure to be back here.

About ten years ago, I used to sit over there on a Shabbat morning. Rabbi Nathan was still a student, taking over from Rabbi Janet, and I was applying to Leo Baeck College. This community was then, and still is, such a wonderful home for all kinds of Jewish characters.

I’ve just moved back to south London after a long time away, although I’ve been commuting to my synagogue in Kingston from Essex for nearly two years. 

This fortnight, I have finally found myself living and working in the same area. The best bit? I can do something I haven’t been able to do for a while in my daily life: walking.

I love walking. I love the meditative rhythm of getting between places; seeing what the landscape, the nature, and the people are doing along the way.

I love a good hiking holiday. Wandering with my husband and friends through the hills. 

In the mountains, anywhere you may walk in this country, you’ll find paths that have been paved. Not by bulldozers and concrete but by the gradual gentle treading of a route over thousands of years. 

Rocks are smoothed over; ledges and grooves formed into the hillside like staircases; rubble cleared and large boulders pushed aside. These pathways are a reminder that people have trampled the same routes for generations, each traveller beating out a physical memory into the mountain, following on from those before, and leaving a trail for others to follow.

This is, I think, what we do with Judaism. In every generation, we are taking our own path up the mountain of religious truth. We are trampling our way up towards the Heavens. We follow a path that others have made, and, through our footsteps, make sure the way is clear for others to follow.

The Hebrew word “halachah” is often mistranslated as “Jewish law,” but its literal meaning is “the path.” Similarly, “minhag” gets translated as “customs” but its literal meaning is “the way we go.” That is what Judaism is: in every community, a way of walking the path to God.

This week is Shabbat Nachamu: the Sabbath of Comfort. In our liturgical calendar, we begin the six weeks of consolation, taking us to the High Holy Days. Each week, we read words from the prophets that offer us solace.

This week’s haftarah comes from the Prophet Isaiah and begins with the words “nachamu nachamu ami”: comfort, take comfort, my people, hence the name of our Shabbat.

Isaiah declares to the Israelites: “clear a way in the desert for the Eternal One; raze a highway for God! Let the rugged ground become level and the ridges become a plain!”

This is, of course, not literal. The Jewish religion is incompatible with the brute force of bulldozers and never seeks to subjugate land. Our Torah’s ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace.

Isaiah is speaking metaphorically. The valleys and mountains he wants to flatten are spiritual. 

Isaiah is writing to the exiled Israelites in Babylon, promising them that there is still hope. These refugees are held in captivity and have no idea if they will ever return. 

To them, God feels miles away. Without their home or their people, they don’t know how to communicate with their Creator. 

Keep walking, says Isaiah. Tread down that path with your feet. Wherever you are, you are on your journey to God.

Remember that this way has been trodden many times before.

For forty years, the Hebrews wandered in the wilderness. There, their feet really were stepping literally. But something deeper was happening too: their souls were on the voyage to freedom. They were learning to live without certainty and material comfort in harsh conditions. They had to walk the path of faith, putting their trust in God.

At our point in the Torah story, Moses knows that his physical journey is coming to an end. He tells them, with some heartbreak: “I must die in this land, I cannot cross over the Jordan.” After a lifetime of roaming, Moses has to finally hang up his sandals.

But he knows the spiritual journey is far from through. He is passing that on to the next generation. 

He tells them: stay on that sacred path to God. Don’t deviate from it by turning away to worship idols. Keep on that search for the divine. Walk on the way I have shown you.

Today, coming back to the South London Liberal Synagogue, I feel myself treading again on an old path. These are the steps I walked on my journey to becoming a rabbi, and I feel a wistful nostalgia to come back to this part of the mountain. 

I feel conscious, too, of those who trod down the path into this synagogue for me, especially the wonderful members of this synagogue, now departed, who made me feel so at home here. 

And I think to those who first saw a path for a Liberal Synagogue in Streatham. They had walked the path of Judaism inherited from their ancestors. They could see that some more conservative Jews were carrying on walking ahead, but no longer ascending the mountain. They were stuck on a path to nowhere, and heading towards a ravine. So those Liberal Jews had to beat out a new path and clear away rubble others dared not touch.

They made the way for a Judaism, our Judaism, that would be inclusive, justice-oriented and spiritually meaningful. Over the last century, the way they foresaw has been walked on more, made deeper grooves, and come further. 

Over the last few years, we have found that many of those brave first pathways are now converging with routes that others have trodden. Liberal and Reform paths are coming together. The traditional and the radical are finding they can walk the same way. 

What a joy to walk on the same road after waving at each other for years! Together, we are going to walk a deeper and wider path. 

The challenge for those of us who hold onto the vision of the earliest Liberal Jews will be to make sure the way is always progressing up the mountain. 

If ever the tracks that everyone else is going down look too narrow, or like they are heading somewhere stagnant, we must have the confidence to point towards the Heavens. 

We, today, must continue to walk the path that others have paved. And we must look ahead, so that there will be a clear route for others to follow behind.

“Every valley shall be raised up; every mountain and hill made low. And the glory of the Eternal One will be revealed.”

Walk together. Keep on hiking. Let us climb towards our God.

Shabbat shalom.