How much should I give away?

August 7, 2021 levtaylor

In 2013, a survey revealed that Jews were the second biggest charitable donors in the UK.

Muslims were first.

Ever since, I’ve been trying to recruit Jews into competition so that next time a survey is run, we will win.

Coming second is fine, I guess. But if we’re going to be a light unto the nations and take moral responsibility for the world, we should be coming first no problem.

They didn’t win because there are more of them than us. That wouldn’t be a fair comparison. Muslims outdid us on both how much each person gave on average, and how much they gave as a proportion of their income.

I’m not really advocating getting into a competition between the religions. There’s enough of that going on in the world.

But I do think there is something important we can learn from Muslims. One of the reasons they do so well on charitable giving is because of how seriously they take the messsage from this week’s parashah.

Here, we read Reeh. This part of Torah introduces the concept of tithing. Tithing is an old English word, meaning ‘taking a tenth.’ And that is exactly what is prescribed here. Every Israelite must take a tenth of their produce and give it to the priests for redistribution.

The priests then use some of it for upkeep of the community; some for orphans and widows; some for the poor; and some for supporting migrants passing through.

This is the basis of Ancient Israelite society. The world of the Bible was very unequal, and living conditions were particularly harsh, so they truly saw the importance of a basic welfare system.

In the Ancient Near East, almost everyone was a subsistence farmer. Each extended family had a small plot of land, which they would use for harvesting crops, rearing animals, and general living. One bad year on the farm could render an entire family destitute.

The Torah introduced social provision, so that everyone contributed and anyone who needed it could benefit. Richer people did pay additional levies on their crops, so that a tenth was the minimum, but some could give much more. The earliest tzedakah was probably much more like modern taxes for the welfare state than charity.

But that should not excuse us taking seriously our obligation to give to charity. I’m sure we all agree that the welfare state is a wonderful thing, and that it is impressive that it has a biblical basis. I don’t need to tell you to pay your taxes. You don’t have much choice in that.

What you do have control over is your tzedakah. Your charitable giving. It is a mitzvah doraita, a commandment from Torah, that we are supposed to give 10% of our take-home income to charity.

Now, who actually gives 10% of their income to charity? Anyone here? I am embarrassed to admit that I don’t. I have regular standing orders that go out to causes I care about, but when I look back on the year, I never actually make it to a tenth of my income.

I feel especially ashamed to admit this, because that tenth is supposed to be the bare minimum. Maimonides teaches that people should give more if they can, as long as they are not consequently rendering themselves in need of charity.

But my motto is never to lead perfect be the enemy of good. All of us can start by taking charitable giving seriously as a spiritual practice and building it into our daily lives.

Muslims do this with what they call “zakat.” At the end of every week, they give at least 2.5% of their earnings to charity. They’re big donors because they make this a consistent practice and see it as a fundamental part of their religion.

It is also a fundamental part of Judaism. Charitable giving is supposed to be essential for us all. Some older members may remember that, not long ago, every home had a pushke, or tzedaka box, which would collect whatever spare change a person had. Giving has been heavily integrated into some people’s Jewish lives, and it should be again.

Elul is coming. It is the last month of the Jewish year. It is our time for reflection. We use this time to look inward and assess our deeds.

In Hebrew, this process of introspection is called “cheshbon hanefesh” – auditing the soul. We weigh up our good deeds with our bad, and put our own morals on the scales of judgement. A part of this must surely mean re-examining our giving. A cheshbon is a bill, a record of how much you owe. We owe many things: deeds, love, kindness and study. But we also do literally owe money to those who need it more than we do.

Now is the time to redouble our efforts at donating and to make sure we do fulfil our sacred requirements. The synagogue will be sending round its High Holy Day appeal soon, and I encourage you to give it a good look.

Giving to others is good for us. It strengthens our soul and sense of self-worth. It is good for others. It means people less fortunate get the support they need. It means great causes can continue to thrive.

And, of course, giving is good for the Jews. Especially if it might mean we win a competition.

Shabbat shalom.

sermon · social justice · theology

What do we stand for?

July 8, 2021July 9, 2021 levtaylor

Five years ago, I interviewed to start rabbinic training. Over four days, I went into different rooms, where rabbis, academics and lay leaders quizzed me about why I wanted to be a rabbi.

It was intense. In one interview, one of the rabbis asked me: “what do you think you most want to learn while you are here?”

I said: “I’d like to learn what we stand for.”

My interviewers scrunched up their faces. I imagined them thinking, “are you sure you’re in the right place?”

How could I not know what we believe? We are Progressive Jews; we stand for Progressive Judaism. Perplexed, she pushed me: “can you think of any principles of Progressive Judaism?”

I thought, and said: “informed choice.” We do what we like, in conversation with Jewish tradition.

The rabbi sat back and took notes. I wasn’t sure whether I had given a correct answer, and she was confused how I could say I didn’t know what we stood for if I had that grounding, or if I’d missed something more important.

What I was trying to ask was: surely we don’t just choose whatever we like? A Progressive Jew can’t make the informed choice to commit murder. We don’t look at that central commandment and think: ‘ah, but it was for its time.’ We have a shared assumption that the prohibition on killing applies to every time. So how do we make these informed choices? What decides for us which choices are right and wrong?

Permissiveness is not really a value. It’s something you do out of indifference. There must be something stronger than that motivating our congregants to get out of bed and labour for the welfare of their community.

Apparently, I am not alone. Throughout my time as a student, going to congregations across the country, people have asked me that very same question in different ways.

What are the values of Reform Judaism? What does living by Progressive Jewish values actually mean?

After 4 years of study, well… I still don’t have the answer. But I feel much closer to it than I did when I started. And the answer begins with this week’s parashah.

At the end of Masei, we hear the story of the daughters of Tzelafchad. They come forward before Moses and assert their rights to inheritance. Their father, they say, was a good man who had no sons. As it stands, his property will be passed on to nobody, and these women will be left destitute. They argue that they should be the ones to inherit his estate. Moses talks to God. God agrees.

This is a big deal in Torah terms. It shows that a law can change. Decisions are not fixed in stone but can adapt with the times. It fits exactly with the Progressive mindset. We look at the laws again, and work out if they are still relevant. Moses looked at inheritance law, saw that it wasn’t working, and decided it was time to set a new precedent.

This is at the heart of Progressive Judaism. We progress. We treat the Torah and our traditions as our basis, but we are always willing to review it, and find new ways that better suit our reality.

The case of the daughters of Tzelafchad is a great example. It fits with our intuitions about what is right and wrong. Of course these women should inherit.

But does that mean every time a law changes, it’s an improvement? In the course of the Torah, laws also change to take rights away from people. Laws can change that make people’s lives worse.

The reason why we consider this legal change so praiseworthy is because it makes life better for people. In particular, because it makes life better for women.

It fits with the feminist lesson we have learnt from history. Through the last century of the women’s liberation movement, our religion learned the importance of giving everyone their full rights and abilities to participate in Jewish life.

We have our own hashkafah: our own way of looking at the world. We see progress in terms of what gives people the most equality, dignity, and justice.

Other strands of Judaism may give priority to tradition, nationalism, or conservatism. We say that what matters is equity.

We did not decide to pursue this egalitarian cause because we thought it would make things easier. Quite on the contrary: it made things harder for many people. At the start of our movement, people were disowned by their families and ridiculed by the religious establishment because of their conviction that equality mattered. They took the more difficult course because it was the right one.

Since the early days of Reform Judaism, we have prioritised gender equality. This week, I met with one of the founder members of SWESRS, who said that in their very first days, the community discussed what they wanted from a synagogue. Even in the 1950s, they insisted that equality between men and women would be of the utmost importance.

This synagogue has gone on to create a legendary legacy. The UK’s first woman rabbi, Jackie Tabick, was raised here. This is a place with a proud history of putting forward that great principle of Reform Judaism: that equality matters.

That is how we approach the question of whether and when to change a law. We are not beholden to tradition, forced to do everything today and tomorrow, just because we did it that way yesterday. Nor will we go along with every change, just because it feels fashionable or convenient.

At every stage, the question we ask ourselves is: is this right? Is this just?

We seek to make changes that will make people more equal, more empowered, and more dignified.

So, now, if I am asked what we stand for, I have a much clearer answer.

We stand for equality.

We stand for the emancipation of all of humanity.

We stand up for the oppressed and stand beside the marginalised.

We stand in the footsteps of Moses, who changed laws because he could see that justice mattered.

We stand before God, proud to inherit a tradition; and courageous enough to change that tradition for the better.

That is where we stand.

Shabbat shalom.

This sermon is for South West Essex and Settlement Reform Synagogue, Parashat Matot-Masei, 10th July 2021

judaism · sermon · social justice

A world without walls

May 5, 2021May 5, 2021 levtaylor

There was a time before there were fences and walls.

At some point in the distant past, recorded only in our folktales, the world used to grow wild and free. Trees and plants sprouted wherever they wanted. Animals moved at their own will. There were no roads, no houses, no cars, and no banks.

Back then, human beings were hunter-gatherers. Our ancestors lived in caves, chased down animals with spears, foraged for berries, and moved wherever the weather was best.

Then, about 10,000 years ago, something changed. In a place that we now call the Middle East, a group of people realised that they did not just have to take whatever nature allowed them.

They could change their environment to meet their needs. They could plant, sow, grow, cultivate, reap and nurture crops. They could turn entire fields into places where just one thing was grown, like olive groves, barley fields and orchards.

This was the beginning of civilisation.

It was also the beginning of war. Armies grew. The spears that had been used to hunt cattle were now used to kill people.

Fences were put up. At first, they were used to keep animal livestock in. Then, they were used to mark out who owned which fields. Then, they were used to keep people in their place.

The people who had control of the fields needed people to work them. The workers, often vanquished or nomadic people, needed a place to stay and a way to get fed when all the food was fenced in.

So the workers became indebted to the owners. The landowners would feed and house the workers. The workers would labour over the land to make it profitable. The landowners gained more wealth and more land. The workers became increasingly in debt.

Sometimes, people were born into slavery, and this would be passed down for generations. Their debt to the landowners could never be repaid.

The owners, in turn, passed on the land to their children.

This presented a big problem. People could become infinitely indebted, with no hope of their descendants ever paying it off. People could become infinitely wealthy, as they conquered more land and made more people work for them. The owning people would have to use increasingly violent measures to make sure the working people did not rebel against them.

That was the situation in the ancient world. Debt. Wealth. Slavery. Borders. Violence. Revolutions.

And, according to the 19th Century historian Moses Finley, every revolution had the same demand: cancel all the debts and redistribute all the land.

When you understand this historical background, this week’s parashah, Behar, makes a lot more sense. This week, we read Leviticus 25. It is a remarkable chapter of the Bible in that, on its own, it comprises an entire sidra of the Torah, and all 50 verses deal with the same subject. This whole chapter is dedicated to how the ancient Israelites could break the cycle of debt, slavery and land acquisition.

It begins with the shmita. Every seven years, you give the land a break. You cannot overwork it. It is like a shabbat for nature, free from human interference.

Then you count seven lots of seven, seven shmitas, adding up to forty-nine years. In the fiftieth year, you have a Jubilee. Now all the land must be redistributed again. Noone can accumulate all the fields. It is a complete reset. Everyone goes home. Noone exploits anyone else.

At this time, all the debts are annulled. Nobody can rack up infinite obligations to others.

There is no ancient version of Carol Vordeman advertising that you can consolidate all your debts into one monthly loan repayment.

This means that even slaves can be set free. The law forbids landowners from charging interest to their slaves. They can’t charge them extra for the food they eat or the place where they sleep. They might be in debt, but they have to have a way of getting out of it.

Every seven years, slaves have the option to go free. Then, in the Jubilee year, all slaves are redeemed. Nobody can remain in slavery forever.

Repeatedly, Leviticus insists:

לֹֽא־יִרְדֶּ֥נּֽוּ בְּפֶ֖רֶךְ

Do not grind them down.

Don’t be ruthless.

Leviticus was written in a time of great inequality, when landowners took up huge amounts of land and charged huge amounts of interest. Workers accrued huge amounts of debt and passed on slavery to their great-grandchildren. Leviticus came to offer an alternative. The system of Jubilees means nobody can become too rich and nobody can become too poor.

This system works because there is someone to defend the poor and resist the rich. There is a force stronger than any spear and higher than any fence. There is a being who will advocate against even the wealthiest landowner and the mightiest army.

That being is God.

Nobody can be a slave forever, because, ultimately, we all serve God. Nobody can own the land forever because, ultimately, the land belongs to God. In this religious system that our Torah creates, nobody can really claim to be better than anybody else.

God tells us something that no ledger sheet can. Whereas debtors can calculate the value of every loan and landowners can weigh up the worth of every harvest, faith tells us about the things we cannot count.

You can’t put a value on human life. You can’t put a value on freedom. You can’t put a value on social harmony.

This is why the Torah makes such a special contribution to human history. In a world structured by violence, it tells us that people must be set free. In a world divided by inequality, it tells us that everyone has equal value. It calls on us to relieve all debts and free all slaves.

Ours is a world of fences and walls. Ours is a world of great debt and great wealth. Ours is a world where some are too poor and some are too rich.

But Leviticus challenges us to remember a world before this was the case. It instructs us to imagine a world where inequality is no longer the case.

It teaches us to build a world without fences or walls. Let us heed that call.

Shabbat shalom.

sermon · social justice · torah

A charter of Disabled people’s rights

April 23, 2021April 23, 2021 levtaylor

Do not curse the deaf.

Do not put a stumbling block in front of the blind.

Revere your God.

This week’s parashah is Kedoshim, the centre of the whole Torah. It is the centre in two senses: we are slap bang in the middle of our scroll. When the warden performs the hagbahh tomorrow, the Torah will look almost completely even on both sides.

It is also, I feel, the spiritual centre of our Scripture. This is the part of the Torah that tells us what the rest of it was for. All the stories and speeches that surround the rest of the text can be summarised in this portion.

Many of the verses from elsewhere in Torah are repeated. Some of it might seem superfluous. Kedoshim reads a little bit like the Torah’s greatest hits, reminding us of some its most popular laws and aphorisms.

But the collection is not random. The smattering of commandments I recited at the beginning all have something important in common. They are about what rights and obligations people have in relation to each other.

This year has brought home to many of us that we cannot take our health for granted. Our bodies are fragile and the time on earth we have is precious.

If you were to become blind, or deaf, or sick, or old, what could you expect from society? What are the minimum standards that others owe you? And, if you are blessed with youth and good health, what must you do to honour others?

Do not place a stumbling block before the blind. You might think: of course! Who would do such a thing? Who would want to trip up the disabled? But cities are structured and buildings managed in ways that are full of stumbling blocks. Every staircase to access public transport; every meeting held miles away from places people can reach; every building without a wheelchair ramp; every space without accessible toilets; every show without subtitles; and every badly laid-out street. These are all stumbling blocks.

Do not curse the deaf. And again, you would say: who would do such a thing? Surely nobody would be so cruel as to insult people who cannot hear them! But this happens all the time. Every headline that calls disabled people scroungers; every job that refuses to make adjustments; every effort to make welfare harder to access; every time the price of medication is jacked up; every time a comedian makes fun of a disability… aren’t all these insults to the deaf?

These are all ways that disabled people are kicked while they’re down.

Instead, the Torah tells us we need to lift each other up.

May we be the ones to remove every stumbling block and replace every curse with a blessing.

Shabbat shalom.

This sermon is for Edgware and Hendon Reform Synagogue, Parashat Kedoshim, on 23rd April 2021

sermon · social justice · theology

God is the reason I am gay

April 15, 2021 levtaylor

God is the reason I am gay.

I am not making any claims about how God made me or what plans God had in store. I have no idea whether my personality was predetermined. I do not have any opinion on whether I am gay because of nature or nurture. I stopped caring about that a long time ago.

But I still say that God is the reason I am gay. Because God is the reason that, if I were given the choice whether or not to keep being gay, I would stay exactly as I am. God is the reason I am proud to be open.

Growing up, there were many reasons I ought to have felt shame. In the 1990s, there was widespread public panic about gay men. I remember as a child opening up a ‘dictionary of new words.’ On one of the first pages was AIDS, whose entry redirected to ‘Gay-Related Disease.’ News stories proliferated about gay men grooming children, having sex in toilets and ruining families. The public image, only 20 years ago, was that gays were dirty, lived in sewers, and spread disease.

Synagogue was a place where I felt safe. In the small shul in my provincial town, I found serenity. And I heard religious leaders and cheder teachers speak about the innate dignity of all human beings; the Divine spark that permeated through everyone; the obligation to protect the stranger and the vulnerable.

The first time I ever heard an adult defend gay rights was in a community member’s living room. I must have been 11. Recently, a local parliamentary candidate had been outed after he was found having sex in a public toilet. Someone said something homophobic – I don’t remember the details.

A middle-aged Jewish woman leapt to the gay man’s defence. She spoke with absolute passion. She laughed when one of the homophobes said he had a gay friend. She was a grown-up telling off a bigot, and she rallied the rest of the room behind her.

As a young queer boy questioning who I was, I looked up to her and thought that was what Judaism looked like in practice. That was what it meant to defend the marginalised. I had permission – from her, and from the God in whom she believed – to be gay.

Gradually I came to realise that I was one of the people that the Jewish woman in the living room had been defending. I didn’t meet many other people like me until I got to university. When I did, I heard from many of them how religious hatred had hurt them and made them reluctant to be open about who they were.

I was grateful that I had known the true God. Progressive Jews worshipped the Source of love and justice, the universal God who did not judge, and who always stood beside the oppressed, and never sided with the oppressor. I thanked God for making me gay.

Later still, I looked around for role models. I wondered what gays could become. I knew a few celebrities existed, like Graham Norton, Elton John and George Michael. But my greatest comfort was knowing that there were gay rabbis. Rabbis like Lionel Blue.

As I looked for purpose in my twenties, I had an inspiring lesbian rabbi. I realised how much strength and joy a synagogue could give, especially to future LGBT kids. I decided I had to create that safe space for others. So God made me gay and, in turn, being gay made me seek out God.

That is the power of religion. Done right, it can affirm people when they are weakest. It can give hope to children that people like them deserve defending. It can be the champion of all who are suffering. It can be the cause of their liberation.

And that power can be profoundly abused. There are those who wield religious power to scare gays into submission. There are those who sit down with queer children and tell them that they need to seek forgiveness for their sinful thoughts. That they have been brainwashed by transgender ideology. That they are mentally disturbed. That they are possessed by demons.

Apparently it is called ‘conversion therapy.’ In this practice, authority figures tell LGBT people that they can stop them being trans or turn them straight. They convince them that if they suppress their personalities, conform to rigid gender roles and only love who they are told, they will be healed. And they do so in the name of God.

And this practice is legal. In Britain. Today.

It is even practised within the British Jewish community. Recently, LGBT people have come forward to share their traumatic stories of how they were manipulated into believing they could be ‘cured’ of non-conformity. They were convinced that if they failed, they would lose their family and community for having let down God.

If queer-affirming religion can make me the person I am today, imagine the damage it can do to teenagers struggling to work out who they are.

As the possibility was raised that this cruel practice could be stopped, a coalition of evangelical churches comprising thousands of members published an open letter saying that banning conversion therapy would effectively outlaw their religion.

At Easter, Labour leader, Keir Starmer, went to one of those very churches to give his festive address. In response to the consternation this provoked from LGBT people, Stephen Timms, a Labour MP, tweeted in support of the homophobic church.

The two most recent prime ministers, Boris Johnson and Theresa May, had both visited this church too, causing outrage. The former Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron, recently accepted a donation of £75,000 from an evangelical church that lobbies in defence of conversion therapy.

When politicians spend their time and take money from homophobic religious institutions, they send out a clear message. They tell religious lesbian, gay, bi and trans people that they are, at best, indifferent to homophobia.

When public figures choose to attend these places of worship that claim they can cure gays, rather than any of the mainstream faith houses that embrace gays, they send a message about what they consider to be proper religion, and which God they think matters.

But it is possible to send a different message. We can say that conversion therapy is unacceptable. While banning the practice won’t stop it happening, it lets everyone know that it is not OK. Young people will still talk to their rabbis about how they’re feeling, but religious leaders should not be able to answer LGBT children by promising to take away their gayness or transness.

Instead, they can give them a better message. Young LGBT people can grow up to see that their lives are sacred and deserve to be protected. They can know that they are wonderful as they are and do not need to be changed.

God is the reason I am gay, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I wrote this sermon for Leo Baeck College, where I am in my fourth year of studies.

protest · sermon · social justice

God died last month

February 12, 2021February 12, 2021 levtaylor

God died last month.

The newspapers barely reported it. No politician offered a eulogy. There was no radio broadcast of a moment’s silence. The subject did not come up over dinner. God died last month and we barely noticed.

How is it possible that God could die? Who could kill God so callously and get away with it? To understand what happened to God last month, you need to know everything that happened to God since the beginning. You need to hear about God’s life.

It was after the Exodus that the Israelites began to see how vulnerable God was. They had been redeemed from Egypt. They had crossed the Sea of Reeds. They had received the Ten Commandments from a thunderstorm.

Moses, Aaron, and seventy elders ascended the mountain once more to ratify their covenant with that God Almighty. When they reached the summit, they were shocked by what they saw.

Under God’s feet were building bricks like sapphire, as blue as the sky itself. Those feet were trapped. Those beautiful bricks bound them. The elders asked what had happened. God replied: “As long as you were enslaved, I was enslaved too. As long as you built bricks from clay, I built bricks from clouds. As long as you were in pain, I was suffering too.”

Of course, not all of God could be imprisoned. The infinite God transcends all space. But there is a part of God that lives with us and in us. A part of God labours when we toil. Cries when we cry. Hurts when we hurt.

The Israelites continued to catch glimpses of God’s frailty throughout their relationship. God had promised Jacob at the outset: “I will go myself with you to Egypt, and I myself will bring you back.”

It wasn’t just a promise of solidarity. It was a sad admission that, when the Israelites were refugees, God would be in exile too. When the Babylonia came to displace them and hold them in captivity, God travelled with the Israelites to Babylon. God sat with them in the synagogues. God was weeping by the river banks too.

Of course, not all of God could be exiled. The infinite God transcends all space. But there is a part of God that lives with us and in us. A part of God leaves when we leave. Cries when we cry. Hurts when we hurt.

God’s sympathy was not confined to the biblical age of miracles and prophecies. God stayed with us through history, even when we thought we had been abandoned. Yes, even in the concentration camps. God was there.

Elie Wiesel survived the Nazis and came to tell us what he had seen. He saw a child strung up by the guards, dangling. The child was left there for hours, dying in slow agony. The camp inmates had to stare him in the face with his still-red tongue and eyes not yet glazed.

“Where is God now? Where is He?” someone behind him asked. “Where is God now?”

And Wiesel whispered inside his heart: “Where is He? Here He is—He is hanging here on these gallows…”

God died there in Auschwitz. Of course, not all of God could be killed. The infinite God transcends all time. But there is a part of God that lives with us and in us. A part of God leaves when we leave. Cries when we cry. Hurts when we hurt. Dies when we die.

God has died with us many times. One hundred thousand sacred sparks have been extinguished in the UK this year alone. But God does not die in statistics on spreadsheets. God dies with one person at a time when one story is snubbed out too early in an unspeakable injustice. That is how God dies.

And now you know how it was possible for God to die last month. And now you need to ask why.

God died on 9th January at his home in Cardiff. He was 24 years old. He had been in police custody because someone suspected he had breached the peace. We are still not sure what that means. He was released without charge.

When his aunt picked up from the police station, he was covered in wounds and bruises. She says he didn’t have them when he was taken to jail.

52 police officers had contact with him in the 24 hours that he was held in Cardiff police station. None of them saw anything suspicious. The police are running toxicology reports and investigating themselves. They are looking at the CCTV footage but so far they have found no misconduct by officers and no use of excessive force.

The police have refused to release the footage. They say we will never see it.

We may never know how God died or why. But we know that God died last month.

And he was a black man named Mohamud Hassan. And he had a life that was worth living. And he should not be dead now.

And now you know how it was possible for God to die last month.

And now that you know that God has died, you are a witness to the crime.

And now that you are a witness, you will have to testify.

You are summoned before the Only Judge to give your testimony about why he died.

Black lives matter.

Shabbat shalom.

sermon · social justice

Support the care home strike

January 1, 2021January 3, 2021 levtaylor

Once, Rabbi Israel Salanter, the founder of the Musar movement, visited a new matzah bakery in order to check its work practices and level of kashrut. He reviewed all the manufacturing procedures extensively and observed the intense labor and toil of the employees. At the end of Rabbi Salanter’s visit, the bakery owner proudly asked him, “What does the rabbi say?” He answered, “The Gentiles accuse us, God forbid, of using the blood of Christian children in matzah. While this is not the case, from what I have seen here, there is indeed a violation of the prohibition on blood in food. The blood of the workers is mixed with the matzah! I will not certify this bakery as kosher.”

For me, my proudest moment of 2020 came in the middle of a Torah shiur. Early on into the lockdown, I was teaching a class over Zoom. 8pm was nearing and one teenage girl in attendance interrupted. “We have to go clap for the carers!” she said. At once, almost the entire class got up and walked away from their screens. I did the same. We whooped and cheered, then, ten minutes later, returned to our studies. Clapping for the carers became part of our weekly Torah study.

That, I thought, was real Judaism. It is not in our texts or our rituals, although those are important. Judaism lives in the dignity and respect we show to each other. It is in the solidarity and love we demonstrate to each other, even when we cannot physically be together.

This year, for the first time that I can remember, care workers received the recognition they deserved. In this pandemic, we learnt who really keeps the country ticking. It is the nurses, the cleaners, the teachers, the nursery workers, the porters, the social carers and home support. So often, this work, which constitutes the majority of work, is ignored or made invisible.

In this parashah, we get a rare insight into that kind of work. Jacob and Joseph both die. We hear of how the dignitaries and officers of Egypt mourned them. But we also hear, just in passing, of the physicians who embalmed their bodies. Or, rather, as Rabbeinu Bachya points out from the grammar of the sentence, that the physicians instructed others, who were lower-ranking and skilled in the matter, to embalm the bodies. We glimpse, if only momentarily, amidst the hullabaloo of important people wailing, what care work looked like in Ancient Egypt.

Care for the elderly must have been one of the hardest jobs to do this year. The Coronavirus pandemic spread fastest and with most deadly impact in the elderly care homes. The workers, without adequate protective wear, on low wages and with few rights, went in to care for older people. These workers had to return to their own vulnerable family members, potentially infected.

For many older people, their care workers were the only human contact they received, as families were prevented from mixing in the homes to prevent the spread of the virus. Care workers have done an amazing job this year, and everyone is forever indebted for their service.

So it should be a cause for absolute disgrace, for moral outrage, that a care home within the Jewish community should be spotlighted for its abhorrent treatment of elderly care workers.

That’s right. I’m talking about The Sidney and Ruza Last Foundation at the Yehoshua Freshwater Centre, better known as Sage Care home, in Golders Green. The staff there have been asking for fair wages, full sick pay and union recognition since September. These domestic and maintenance staff are paid well below the London Living Wage, denied fully paid time off if they are sick, and their grievances have been brushed aside and ignored. The management have flatly refused to have any meaningful negotiations with them, or made the workers any offers.

What an insult, then, that this care home calls itself Jewish, and says it serves the Jewish community! Who in the Jewish community is it serving? It certainly does not serve the care workers in this congregation. It definitely does not serve our elderly and vulnerable family members if it puts them and their carers in danger. Above all, it does not serve our Jewish God and our Jewish values if it exploits people.

The great conservative rabbi and posek Jill Jacobs, says that a Jewish company must meet certain labour standards to be considered kosher. It must treat workers with respect; pay a living wage; protect workers’ living conditions; and recognise their trade unions. Needless to say, the owners of Sage Care Home have failed on every single one of these fronts.

Moreover, the elderly are not safe from the pandemic if staff cannot be open about when they are sick to get necessary time off. The elderly cannot receive high quality care if employees don’t feel like when they complain about risks to health and safety they will be taken seriously. This is a grave issue for residents and staff alike.

As a result, the staff at this care home have now ballotted to strike. Unless the management intervenes swiftly to meet the carers, the whole workforce will walk out this month. The strike is scheduled to begin on 15th January.

It should never have reached this point. Many care homes manage to look after their residents and staff, by focusing on the human beings they are, rather than just profit. By ignoring the workers’ legitimate requests, the owners are endangering both staff and vulnerable older people. They must be held to account.

I know that the elderly people in these care homes and their family members want to know that their care workers have safe and fair working conditions. I know the Jewish community in London has high ethical expectations of its communal institutions.

The care workers are calling on the Jewish community to give them support. I know you will. The same community that came out to applaud care workers in the spring will surely stand by them in their struggle for a livelihood through winter.

If you have family at this care home, please write to the management to let them know your concerns. Express to them your concern for the welfare of the workers and your family.

Alternatively, take action by signing the petition or donate to the strike fund.

Let us join with the elderly and their carers to demand more from our communal institutions. May we be able to take pride in our care homes. May we truly be able to call every Jewish space kosher.

I am giving this sermon on Saturday 2nd January 2021 at Edgware and Hendon Reform Synagogue.

sermon · social justice

Until she was no longer useful

November 6, 2020November 6, 2020 levtaylor

The Torah doesn’t tell us what happened. It tells us what always happens.

The weekly stories we read are not historical recountings of the lives of ancient people. They are contemporary retellings of the lives of modern people. Genesis is not a book about the past. It is about the present.

So here is what happened. And here is what always happens.

Hagar had been an Egyptian princess in the court of Pharaoh. Sarah entreated her out to Canaan with promises of work. “You will serve such a holy man,” she promised her. She was given the name, Ha-Gar: the immigrant; the sojourner.

She worked as a maidservant. She, who had been so prestigious in her homeland, cleaned up after Abraham and Sarah in their tents. She washed their clothes and took care of their needs.

Then Sarah realised that she was barren. She instructed Abraham to sleep with Hagar, and Abraham consented. We do not know how Hagar felt about her surrogacy.

They conceived on the first try. What a successful servant! Then Sarah became jealous. “Isn’t Hagar so haughty? Doesn’t she think she’s so much better than me?”

So she started afflicting Hagar and making her life unbearable. Hagar ran away. And then she came back, because where was she going to go?

Hagar did indeed bear a child, and called him Ishmael, meaning ‘God will hear.’ And then she was no longer useful.

Fertile woman. Hated woman. Did her work well. Did her work too well. Did her work so well she was no longer useful and had to be sent away.

Sarah was threatened by her and demanded she leave. She was supposed to be a servant and now she was a competitor, with a rival child, an older boy. If Ishmael is allowed to grow up, he’ll take everything from Isaac. If Hagar is allowed to stay, she might have the upper hand.

And Hagar ran away into the wilderness and was so desperate she almost killed her son. But she found a well of water and they survived. Ishmael grew up to be a bowman.

We don’t know what happened next to Hagar. History does not record.

Now here is what happened. And here is what always happens.

Sentine Bristol was born in Grenada, a British colony in the Caribbean. The Empire lured her over to work in the United Kingdom. She came on a boat called the Windrush. She worked as a nurse in the NHS. A successful immigrant, keeping us alive. Too successful, stealing our jobs.

Aren’t they great, bringing their culture and ingenuity and skills? We will celebrate them in our Olympics opening ceremony. But it wouldn’t kill them to assimilate. Couldn’t someone else have done the work she was brought over here on the Windrush to do?

She brought her son with her. His name was Dexter. He worked as a cleaner until he was in his 50s.

And then they were no longer useful. Hardworking immigrants. Parasitic immigrants. Did their work well. Did their work too well. Did their work so well they were no longer useful and had to be sent away.

A new wave of nationalism swept the country. The Home Office destroyed the records of their having arrived in Britain. The government declared a policy of a “hostile environment” for illegal immigrants, which included people who did not have their papers because their papers had been destroyed.

So the state cast them out. Dexter had to prove he wasn’t a foreigner in the only country he’d known since he was 8 years old. And he couldn’t find the documentation. He lost his job and the right to claim benefits. He was threatened with deportation.

And no well appeared in the wilderness. And he didn’t go on to become a bowman or a great nation. He died of a heart attack from the stress of trying to keep his home. Sentine did not receive justice. She disappeared from the headlines two years ago.

This is what happened. This is what always happens.

One group gains more wealth than another. Maybe by technology, maybe by force, maybe by resources, maybe by luck. The wealthy people require the labour and expertise of others, so they entice them with promises of jobs and prosperity. People go wherever the wealth is. They become nurses, midwives, bricklayers, servants, dream-interpreters, delivery workers, chefs, surrogates, cleaners, plumbers and bus conductors.

The migrant people are despised. They have taken our jobs and brought their diseases. Their ways are too different from ours; they refuse to assimilate. Their beliefs are too foreign from ours; they cannot be allowed into our spaces. We do not trust their food or their clothes or their appearance. They will overtake us by sheer force of their numbers or intelligence or might. They must be eradicated.

The migrant people are prized. Look at the wonderful ingenuity and work ethic they have brought to us. How lucky we are to have them in our ranks. Such awards we must give them for their brains, their athleticism, their musical talent. They have transformed our cuisine and our customs. We cannot imagine our culture without them. We must protect them.

And then they are no longer useful. Maybe they are feared or maybe their hosts become jealous. Maybe the wealthy people are no longer so wealthy, or maybe they no longer feel so wealthy. Maybe there is a new government or an old ideology or a charismatic movement promising to restore former greatness. And the migrant people are surplus to requirement, so they have to leave.

They go back where they came from or onwards to somewhere else, not that it makes much difference either way. They get deported or they go voluntarily because they know they’re not wanted any more, not that it makes much difference either way. They depart on foot into the desert unsure if their children will survive. They leave on camels, in caravans, on boats, in cars. They pile into buses and aeroplanes and dinghies, depending on which paperwork they have and how much money they can stump up front.

And then they are forgotten. And we don’t know what happens to their story after that.

That is what happened. And that is what always happens.

The Torah’s stories tell of the time when humanity transitioned into a new kind of civilisation, one defined by inequality and migration. That is why they are not just about the past, they are about the present.

The Torah recalls what it was like for an Egyptian named Hagar to seek work and be abused among Israelites. It tells the story of an Israelite named Joseph who sought work and was abused among Egyptians.

And because it tells those stories of inequality and migration, it also tells the stories of all the people who moved to Britain over these centuries. Their struggles, our struggles, are reflected here too.

The Torah doesn’t tell us what happened. It tells us what always happens. Unless we do something about it.

I gave this sermon for Glasgow Reform Synagogue on Saturday 7th November 2020, Parashat Vayera.

climate change · protest · social justice · Uncategorized

Tzedakah annuls the evil decree

September 3, 2020September 3, 2020 levtaylor

Tonight I will attend a protest against climate change in Parliament Square with Extinction Rebellion Jews. My speech for the demonstration is below.

Tzedakah annuls the evil decree! So we are promised every year in the liturgy for Rosh haShanah and Yom Kippur. And with those words, the chair of your synagogue will usually stand up to tell you about the charity appeal and where you should donate.

Do not be deceived for a minute into thinking that tzedakah is the same as charity. Tzedakah does not mean charity. Tzedakah comes from the same root as ‘tzedek’: economic justice.

In Deuteronomy we are told: tzedek, tzedek tirdof. Justice, justice you shall pursue, so that you will live and inherit the land. Yes, Torah tells us that justice is a prerequisite for our continued life and for the continued health of the planet.

This is not justice of the general kind, but specifically of the economic kind. When the Torah brings this word, it brings with it warnings that you must have fair weights and measures, resist corruption, and equitably distribute the wealth. This is what the Torah means when it tells us to pursue justice.

So we know – we know – that climate justice is deeply connected to the economy. We are facing extinction because the richest corporations are squeezing the planet’s sacred resources for the sake of profit. The world is in crisis because capitalism demands constant production, consumption and expansion.

When the Torah tells us to pursue justice that we may live, we have to understand this as an economic system that encourages life; that brings our natural world in accordance with people’s needs; where communities govern the resources ourselves. That system is called socialism, and we should not be afraid to say its name. We should be proud to pursue that form of justice.

Tzedakah is the smaller form of tzedek. It is the economic justice that we can do at an individual and community level. Yes, sometimes, that means redistributing wealth within the community. Sometimes that means donating to righteous causes. And sometimes that means taking money away from places where it should not be.

The most forward-thinking synagogues and Jewish movements in this country are taking their funds away from fossil fuels. They are refusing to bank with oil barons, frackers and gas extractors. They are divesting from any association with the corporations that are killing the planet.

That must be our tzedakah for this Extinction Rebellion. We must pursue economic justice in our own communities. When you leave here today, go back to your synagogues and ask them: where is our money invested? Who are we banking with? And does this accord with the stated values of this congregation?

If not, then we will take to our leaders the words of Torah: justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may live and inherit the land.

May we see climate justice, speedily and in our days.

Amen veamen.

sermon · social justice · torah

The soul of a stranger

August 28, 2020August 28, 2020 levtaylor

1998 is imprinted in my mind as a critical turning point in Jewish history.

Those who remember it are already nodding sagely in recollection of this key moment of reconciliation between Jews and others. It opened up the Jewish community to being more accepting of difference and showed that Jews had been visibly and publicly embraced.

It was, of course, the year Dana International won the Eurovision Song Contest. Like many families across Europe, mine stayed up late watching the results come in. They were as expected – Dana had stormed the public vote.

Dana. Jewish. Yemeni. Israeli. Glamorous. Melodious. Trans.

Dana was a trans woman who had already made her name in the underground gay clubs of the Mediterannean and the Middle East. In some places, her albums had been sold illegally and discreetly.

At that time, trans people had no legal protections in any country. In popular media, they were exclusively the butt of jokes or objects of fear. There were very few public pundits who were trans or even willing to advance their cause.

But now, all of a sudden, she burst onto television screens to accolades, as if the world might finally be ready for latent queer liberation. Her victory wasn’t just a win for a pop star; it was a statement about what could be.

For me, it was mostly a watershed moment in Jewish history because it transformed the communal discussion about LGBT acceptance. British Jews celebrated Dana’s win as a win for Jews and a sign of our integration in Europe. At Purim that year, aged 10, I dressed up as Dana and danced around on the bimah.

This snapshot in LGBT Jewish history stands in sharp contrast to this week’s Torah portion. Here, we read: “A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the Eternal One your God detests anyone who does this.” This has become known as one of the ‘clobber verses’ – words from Torah quoted at lesbian, gay, bi and trans people to oppress them.

In the Talmud, Rabbi Eliezer ben Yaakov warns that men will dress up as women in order to sneak into their private women-only spaces. This is precisely the argument used today to exclude trans women, presenting them as sexual predators and imposters.

If anything, today’s discourse is far worse, since the Gemara ultimately rejects this argument, but such bigotry is often allowed to stand unchallenged in our newspapers, radio call-ins and TV debates. In fact, in the last few weeks, Members of Parliament, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Piers Morgan, JK Rowling and a number of other high profile figures have banded together to criticise what they term ‘transgender ideology.’

Defendants of trans women have spoken up to insist that they are not ‘men masquerading as women,’ but simply people seeking to live their own authentic lives.

I think, however, this defence is too constricting. There is nothing wrong with men dressing as women or women dressing as men. One of the strongest messages of the trans movement has been that gender need not be a prison. I personally have built on my childhood success imitating Dana by dressing up as Amy Winehouse and Lily Montagu for the last two Purims.

Trans people belong to a broad spectrum of people who don’t feel like their gender identity matches with what society assigned them at birth. They have diverse ideas about who they are, but shared experiences of people trying to force them to conform to a mould they do not fit.

I hope that by promoting those who do not fit the mould we can reconsider the mould altogether. There are so many ways to be a man, to be a woman, and to sit in the spaces in between.

Our communities should be strong enough to include everyone, regardless of gender presentation and identity. We should be able to accept and celebrate the myriad of gender variance today, as we did for Dana twenty years ago.

It is disappointing that what, in the late nineties, seemed like the inevitable advancement of trans rights, is now being pushed back by a toxic alliance. While other parts of society can have their own arguments, I feel it is important that Progressive Jews position ourselves firmly on the side of inclusion.

Thankfully, I am not alone. Last month, Reform Judaism’s outgoing senior rabbi, Laura Janner-Klausner, wrote alongside a leading Anglican bishop: “We believe that trans people, like every other person, have every right to be cherished, and protected by society and in the gender in which they choose to live. Our faith compels us to speak up for those on the margins, those whom others would seek to silence or misrepresent.”

This, you must understand, is not simply a matter of our liberalism trumping our Judaism, but is deeply rooted in our understanding of what Judaism requires of us. We do not believe that the Torah is God’s infallible word, but that it is a text, written by men, aiming to understand how best to live an ethical life. As a human work, it contains human biases, including sexism and what we would today term ‘transphobia.’

Instead of living by the letter of ancient words, we use them as the basis to interpret, through our own limited human experience, what morality requires of us today. Joy Ladin, a trans woman and Jewish biblical scholar, argues that while the verses criticising gender non-conformity are sparse, the commandment to know the soul of a stranger is repeated throughout Tanach.

She writes: “The commandment to know the soul of the stranger is more than a summons to social justice or a reminder not to do to others the evil that others have done to us. Knowing the soul of the stranger is part of the spiritual discipline required for a community to make a place for God. […] God commands the Israelites to hitgayer, to identify with the experience of being strangers so that they will know the soul of the stranger – the stranger who dwells among them, the strangers they are, the stranger who is God.”

It is on this deeply Jewish basis that we seek trans inclusion in our Jewish communities. We are commanded to know the soul of the stranger. We are called upon to make our synagogues not just places where words of Torah are heard, but where they are lived, so that our buildings are homes for people of all genders.

May we all know the soul of a stranger, and may all strangers know that our hearts are with them.

Shabbat shalom.

I will give this sermon on Saturday 29th August for Parashat Ki Teitzei at Newcastle Reform Synagogue.