Category: spirituality

fast · high holy days · sermon · spirituality · talmud · theology

Evil will not win inside my heart

levtaylor

In the old Looney Tunes cartoons, when a character faced a dilemma, two little figures would pop up on each shoulder. So, Buggs Bunny, deciding what to do, would look on his right shoulder and see a rabbit that looked just like him, only with a white dressing gown over his body, a pair of wings protruding from his shoulder blades, and a halo above his head. Then, on the other side, there’d be a little bunny on the left shoulder, this time with a pitchfork in hand, a pointed tail, a long cloak, and horns sticking out of his head.

The shoulder angel and the shoulder devil. The angel told him what the right thing to do was, while the devil told him what the fun thing to do was.

In Judaism, these little inner voices have a name. We call them the yetzer hara and the yetzer hatov.

The yetzer hatov is the inclination to do good. It’s the voice inside us that tells us what we ought to do, even when it’s not easy. It’s the part of us that wants to be kind, humble, compassionate, generous, and forgiving.

The yetzer hara  is the inclination to do evil. It’s the part of us that feels envious, haughty, angry, selfish, and cruel. 

We all have the two within us, and there’s no point denying it. Some might like to pretend that they’re saintly through and through, but if they’re only lying to themselves. Because the force that’s responsible for kidding us that we’re better than we are? It’s that pesky yetzer hara.

There are those who want others to think they’re wholly wicked, too. Maybe because they’ve been told they’re bad so often they actually believe it. Or maybe because that hard exterior of callous selfishness gives them an armour against a world they don’t trust. But there’s plenty of good within them, and they know it’s there.

An abstract painting featuring a distorted figure with a dark head tilted back against a textured light background, evoking a sense of somber contemplation.
Zoran Music, Head

Not only do we have both a yetzer hara and a yetzer hatov, we need both. 

According to the midrash, at the time of creation God put inside us the good inclination and the evil one, and God said that both were very good.

Without the yetzer hatov, the good inclination, the voice of conscience, society would fall apart. We’d never be able to look after each other, trust each other, build community together. We need a sense of altruism to survive. 

And we need the yetzer hara too. We need that wicked inclination inside us.

The midrash says: “The evil inclination is a very good thing, for without it, nobody would ever build a house, get married, give birth, or do business.”

The yetzer hara is a motivator. Without a bit of fear, you can’t protect yourself. Without a bit of jealousy, you can’t achieve anything. Without a bit of lust, you won’t find a partner.

So God made us, deliberately, with all our qualities, including anger, apathy, cowardice, aggression, recklessness, and indecisiveness. We are supposed to have these qualities in order that we can be fully human. God looks at all of it – the whole person – and says: this is very good.

But, although we must have a wicked inclination, we can never give in to the yetzer hara. The yetzer hatov and the yetzer hara may always be in battle within our hearts, but it is our responsibility to make sure that the best within us wins. 

Have both, love both, but let your better self lead. Isn’t that why we come here on Yom Kippur at all: to become better human beings?

We must have a yetzer hara, but we cannot let it win. 

In the Talmud, Rav Asi says: when you first allow the yetzer hara to take hold, it’s as fine as the thread of a spider web, but if you grant it any quarter, it will grow as thick as a wagon rope.

Rava says: the yetzer hara might at first look like a traveller in the distance, then it feels like a guest at your door, but before you know it, the wicked inclination has taken over your whole house!

Don’t we already know that to be true? A little fear can feel a long way off, but anxiety can take control of the whole body. A little bitterness might feel like only a drop in the ocean, but in no time that can turn into all-consuming rage. 

So, what can we do with this yetzer hara that is both so necessary and so poisonous? 

Well, the wise King Solomon treated the yetzer hara as an enemy that he needed to befriend. He said, if you want to conquer an enemy, feed it when it’s hungry and, when it’s thirsty, give it something to drink. Then, says Solomon, it will be reconciled with you.

So, according to this reasoning, we need to understand the wicked inclination inside ourselves. I should be curious about my yetzer hara, and find out what it really needs. But only so that I can govern it, not so that it will conquer me.

If I’m feeling angry, that’s teaching me something about my boundaries, and I may need to enforce them. If I’m feeling afraid, that’s teaching me something about threats, and I should assess them. If I’m feeling jealous, that’s teaching me something about what I desire, so I can work out if it’s something worth pursuing. 

We are living in uncertain times. Many people feel poorer and more vulnerable. These are exactly the conditions in which the yetzer hara thrives. Sadly, we see it everywhere. 

Talking with leaders from other faiths, I know how much they feel this pain in their communities. I have more in common with Progressives of every other faith than I do with reactionaries who happen to be Jewish.

There are those in every religion who wish to take society back a hundred years; undo the rights of women; force gays and lesbians back into the closet; and cast trans people out from public life. There are those who believe that God loves only them; plays favourites; wants to see them take over the world; blesses every bomb they drop and cheers on every war.

Then, there are those of us, hanging on still in every religious movement, who know that God wants us to take the gentle path; find inroads towards peace; and live in harmony with nature. We, who uphold the rights of the vulnerable and seek justice for the oppressed.

Christian friends have shared their abject horror at seeing crucifixes paraded on white nationalist marches and fascists claiming Jesus as their own. Muslim colleagues describe their deep anger at how their faith is warped by chauvinists to control and destroy. Hindus express their anguish at how Hindutva extremists have ramped up ethnic tension.

And we Jews cannot claim any exemption from this problem. We know full well that there are Jews who use our history, our traditions and our religion, to carry out the most heinous abuses. We know that, in this climate of ignorance and fear, anyone can be seduced by the ugly rhetoric of hatred.

A few years ago, Rabbi Robyn Ashworth Steen wrote: 

“There are extremist voices among us, or perhaps even within us, that only speak in the language of revenge and of winners and losers. They would have us believe that there are sides, that some blood runs redder and thicker than others. Those voices whisper to us, luring us into their web. They would laugh at the idea that people are ultimately good.”

The extremist voice Rabbi Robyn named now feels increasingly loud. In all religions, we are facing a battle for our very soul.

Two years ago, an Oscar-winning film came out that portrayed this battle playing out in the Catholic Church. Based on a book by Robert Harris, Conclave depicts rival factions and personalities jostling for power after the death of a Pope. 

The conservative Catholics want a more robust, masculine, traditional Church to combat the onset of modernity. The liberals want to carry on the deceased Pope’s programme of modernisation and social justice.

The film compellingly portrays the conflict between the two tendencies in religions. At least, we liberals think it does. 

The climax of the film occurs when, all of a sudden, an Islamist terrorist sets off a bomb in the Vatican and the Cardinals have to be raced off to a safe room.

There, the conservative Cardinal reveals his true colours. He says it’s time for the Church to declare a holy war against those human animals.

At this point, a new Cardinal who hitherto had not spoken, gets up. He says, defiantly:

A cardinal wearing a red cape and a cross stands with a solemn expression in a dimly lit auditorium, with other attendees seated in the background.
Cardinal Benitez in Conclave (2024), Edward Berger

“My brother cardinal, with respect, what do you know about war? I carried out my ministry in the Congo, in Baghdad and Kabul. I’ve seen the lines of the dead and wounded, Christian and Muslim. When you say we have to fight, what is it you think we’re fighting? You think it’s those deluded men who’ve carried out these terrible acts today? The thing you’re fighting is here… inside each and every one of us, if we give in to hate now, if we speak of “sides” instead of speaking for every man and woman.”

This spiritual war, depicted for Catholics, is happening for us too. There is a battle for the Jewish soul, but it is not between the Orthodox and the Progressives, nor liberal and traditional, nor left and right. It is inside the heart of every Jew. 

This year, I have felt that spiritual battle in my own heart more intensely than any time I can remember. I do my best to be calm, lighthearted, generous, and joyous, because I know those are the traits God most needs me to bring into the world. But in my heart, I have often been feeling scared, defensive, angry, and confused.

Technological progress outpaced me when I was only a teenager, and now there are algorithms that threaten to destroy the planet. Corporations are plundering the reservoirs of drinkable water to fuel their machines, while churning out toxic gases into the atmosphere. 

I feel angry and afraid. Those feelings in themselves are neutral. But the yetzer hara latches onto them and says: not everyone will survive. Make sure you and yours do. Take and consume and stockpile. The yetzer hara says: the world is going to end anyway, so abandon your ideals, eat whatever you like, go wherever you like, forget about the future.

I can’t pretend I don’t have that voice inside me. So I need to understand it and bring it in line with the best within me. 

If I am scared about the natural world around me being destroyed, it is because I love life. I love this planet, and the English forests, and the Welsh mountains, and the Cornish cliffs, and the Scottish Islands. I adore the Thames and all its canals and tributaries. My fear is telling me what I want to protect. 

If I feel angry at corporate destruction, it is coming from a place of righteous indignation at how so few can destroy something so precious. 

The yetzer hara wants me to channel that fear into despair and that anger onto my fellow human beings. But the yetzer hatov is still there, insisting that it is never too late, that there is still hope, that we can still conserve our fragile ecosystem so future generations can swim in our rivers and drink from them.

Over the course of my lifetime, ethnic tensions and racial divisions have become increasingly pronounced and volatile. This year, antisemitism came for me, my colleagues, my congregants, and the people I care about in ways I never imagined it would.

I feel scared and confused. Those feelings, in themselves, are neutral. But the yetzer hara pounces upon them and says: see, the world hates us, it always has. To everyone else, we are the eternal scapegoat, and they’ll destroy us given half the chance. Pull up the fences around the synagogue, build bigger walls around Britain, pull up the drawbridge, keep the foreigners out of Europe, and stop any incursion on our way of life. 

It may surprise you to know I have these thoughts, because I certainly never let them impact how I treat others or make decisions in the synagogue. It takes an act of will, real spiritual struggle, to be hopeful and open and loving. It is a matter of determination. 

My goal isn’t to avoid feeling any anger, fear, or hatred. It’s to make sure I’m ruled by something greater.

I recognise that defensive voice as the yetzer hara. If I am scared about harm coming to Jews, I need to remember it’s because I love Jews and Judaism. I love our faith, our piety, our ever-evolving culture. I love, above all, our optimism and our desire to perfect the world. If I want to preserve Jewish life, I do it best by keeping us outward-looking, justice-oriented and inclusive.

If I feel worried that the society we have built in Britain where Jews thrive is at threat, it’s a reminder of how much I love multicultural social democracy. I want to live in our shared society, with all the other faiths and communities. It’s what’s best about London, and why many of us choose to live here. I can’t defend multiculturalism from inside an ethnic enclave. 

So the yetzer hatov says: get out there, build relationships, talk to people you disagree with, welcome newcomers and show them the advantages of tolerance, create cross-communal relationships, protect democracy. 

The yetzer hatov says: resist the voices of hate, whether they are directed at us, or at anyone else. Because it isn’t Muslims or immigrants that undermine our democracy. It’s the logic of racism and exclusion that threatens us. We protect Jews best by living in solidarity and partnership with our neighbours. 

Friends, we are gathering at a time of challenge in our country and in our world. The forces of nationalism and supremacism are gaining ground. Sometimes it feels like the Progressive voice will be lost entirely.

The countries of the world seem hellbent on a path to war and determined to build ever more hostile walls. We, who live in these countries, find ourselves increasingly pitted against one another in a climate of suspicion and aggression. 

But I am not giving up. 

However hopeless this world becomes, I will hold onto hope. However hateful others become, I will continue to love. And no matter what the forces of history may throw at us, I will continue to have faith.

Despite all our best efforts, we may not be able to control whether hatred and fear take over this world, this country, this society. But there is a place where I can refuse to grant hatred any quarter. 

It cannot take my soul. The forces of wickedness may succeed some places, but they will not win inside my heart.

There are many battles being fought in many places. Over territory, over resources, over truth. 

And there is a spiritual war taking place, inside every soul. Between love and hate. Between anger and compassion. Between welcome and fear. 

All those voices live within us, and they must all be heard. 

But only one can win. Only the voice of love. That is the only one God needs us to bring into the world.

Evil will not win inside my heart.

I will hold onto hope until the very end.

Gmar chatimah tovah. May we all be sealed in the Book of Life for good.

Colorful abstract painting featuring vibrant swirls, flowers, and textured brush strokes.
The Inner Light, Elena Kotliarker

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.

debate · judaism · spirituality

The spiritual possibilities for our new Jewish movement 

levtaylor

“The history of a community, like the history of an individual, is marked by the recurrence of periods of self-consciousness and self-analysis. At such times its members consider their aggregate achievements and failures, and mark the tendencies of their corporation.” 

These are the opening words of an essay that gave birth to our Jewish movement. 

In 1898, a social worker named Lily Montagu published an essay in the Jewish Quarterly Review, entitled “The Spiritual Possibilities of Judaism Today.” 

What this pioneering thinker asked of Jewish London was that it take stock of what it had achieved and what it wished to be.  Only by giving an honest and sober account of where we were, could we imagine a better future for our Jewish life.

This is the perfect time to revisit that essay. We are forming a new movement, which will be far bigger and broader than Miss Lily could have anticipated, and may even soon make up the majority of British Jews. Is that not summons enough to the period of introspection Montagu required of us? 

But, more than that, when you look at her essay from over 120 years ago, you can see that the issues Montagu wanted to address had much in common with the challenges facing us today. 

Montagu was scathing in her perception of Anglo-Jewry. She accused it of “materialism and spiritual lethargy” and charged “that Judaism has been allowed by the timid and the indifferent to lose much of its inspiring force.”

Judaism, she felt, was supposed to be a great and inspiring system that would draw Jews closer to God and motivate its adherents to face the real-world challenges of the day. Instead, it had been captured by a lazy spirit that wanted nothing more than to assimilate, appease the establishment, and provide a lackluster imitation of religious rituals. Does that sound familiar?

Montagu assessed how London’s Jews actually lived. She called them “East End Jews” and “West End Jews,” but was clear that this was not just a geographical phenomenon. She was talking about class, culture, and background. 

The “East End Jews” of her day were working class, poor, Ashkenazi immigrants. They were highly observant, but obedient to a fault. They followed along with the old words they already knew, but rarely spent much time thinking about what any of those prayers might mean for their soul. Their main motivation for practising Judaism was a combination of superstition and fear.

“West End Jews,” by contrast, were from higher classes and mixed ethnic backgrounds. They were materialistic, obsessed with status, and only attended synagogue because they thought it was more respectable to be Jewish than to have no religion at all. Yet, she said, by replacing real religion with possessions and status, they ultimately still had a vacuum where religion ought to be.

These types of Jews, as Montagu described them, don’t exist in the same way today as they did then. However much one might nostalgise the factory-working Jews of the Whitechapel shtetl or the days when Jewish aristocrats held drawing room parties in Maida Vale, that world is gone. Economic disparities persist, but far less visibly, and without entire Jewish cultures built around location and class.

She warned that, although the Jews of her age might be economically divided, they still had the same thing in common: their religion was vapid and empty. It was about having an identity rather than having a relationship with God. For both sets of Jews, Montagu argued, Judaism needed a complete spiritual revival.

Apparently, a great number of people agreed with her, because over the years and decades that followed, many came together to form congregations for exactly this purpose. Together, they made the Jewish Religious Union, which then became Liberal Judaism, and is now becoming part of Progressive Judaism. 

Our Judaism has, indeed, been reinvigorated. We have opened up new approaches to liturgy, prayer, and worship. Synagogue teams come together to make sure that every Shabbat and festival is meaningful.

Montagu warned a previous generation that they would have to actually live Jewishly, or they would not be Jewish at all. Her prediction has come true, as some generations have just shaken off their roots, while others have decided to commit to Jewish life entirely. 

One happy surprise is that, through the Liberals’ embrace of converts, we have Jews who are committed and educated in ways previously unknown in earlier generations. The dedication of converts has also inspired those who might have taken their Jewishness for granted to step up their game, learn more, and embrace their heritage.

Miss Lily did not just advocate for spiritual revival, but wanted to see Jews play a full role in the life of Britain. Full citizenship had only been granted to Jews a few decades previously, and Montagu wanted Jews to rise to the challenge. 

Other communal bodies felt that the best thing for Jews to do was toe the establishment line, tell the government how wonderful they were, and hope that they would let us stay in the country without impeding on our religious practices. Our founders wanted us to embrace a more expansive sense of citizenship. 

They wanted us to say: we live here, this is our home, and we have the right to change it. They wanted us not to grovel before power, but to make demands of it. They wanted us to ask ourselves “what does God require of our country?” and go about pushing for it. 

This wasn’t something that belonged to one political persuasion. The intellectual leader, Montefiore was a capital C Conservative. The first Liberal rabbi, Mattuck, was a socialist who wanted the religious institutions to unite with the unions for revolution.

Montagu herself was a political Liberal. She was a suffragist and social reformer. She believed that the pursuit of peace and human rights were sacred commandments. She dedicated herself to alleviating poverty.

While politically diverse, our founders held in common a conviction that Jews could, in conversation with our God, make demands.

We could change the world. The world, too, could change us, and we should not be afraid of it or hide away in ghettos.

Montagu asserted that the youth were crying out for a Judaism that made moral demands and had something to say to their society. If their elders did not rise to the challenge, the next generation of Jews would vanish away into nothingness.

Montagu knew such Jews because her daily life was taken up as a social worker in London’s youth clubs. 

I believe we are facing such a challenge today. Many Jewish young adults are looking at us, including in the movement she founded, and see a Judaism that is reluctant to take stands for fear of rocking the boat. They see a Jewish life where God is, at best, a nice accessory tacked onto a cultural centre. If we look honestly at our own institutions, can we deny their aspersions?

Throughout my twenties, I was one of these disaffected young people, bewildered by why my institutions were so ambivalent on the moral issues of the day, from massive inequality through catastrophic climate change to ongoing Israeli military occupation. 

I felt acutely the absence of religious conviction in the establishment and in the institutions. There were pioneering rabbis who led the way on some issues, like gay rights, women’s equality, and refugees, but they were often marginal, and their impact could be felt only dimly in most synagogues. There was a gap.

In terms of our spiritual life, there were peer-led groups that tried to engage in serious prayer and text study, but you’d struggle to find any evidence for their existence in most synagogues.

I do not know how many young Jews fell by the wayside, but I stuck around. I had a strong sense, at least from my peers, that a better Judaism was possible. That we could speak out on social issues and we could have meaningful spirituality. That the Judaism of tomorrow might be more meaningful. 

Now, in my thirties, I am a part of the establishment I railed against, and I feel that the issues facing Jewish youth are even worse. The moral and spiritual vacuum has only grown wider, and it looks even harder to fill.

I worry that the demands of our age for renewed spirituality and moral meaning are being quietly subsumed under a banner of “inclusivity.”

Inclusion is a positive and noble goal, but it must be inclusion in something. It must have real substance, if it isn’t just trying to market synagogue membership to the lowest common denominator while offering nothing and standing for nothing. 

The challenge facing our movement is, I think, not so much to be broader, but to go deeper. We need to have a deeper relationship with God. We need to ask ourselves searching questions about what God demands of us. We need, as they did over a century ago, a thorough moral and spiritual revival.

In her essay, Montagu warned: “no fresh discovery can be made exactly on the lines of the past; the temperament of one generation differs from that of another.” We cannot apply Montagu’s methods in the same way today. 

But we can ask the same questions that she did, and go through a serious process of reflection, as she suggested.

We can look together for new ways of revitalising our spiritual life, and put God at the centre of our synagogue.

We can work together to provide bold answers to the moral questions of our age. We can ask ourselves what God demands of Britain and hold up those prophetic clarions to our leaders.

These are the spiritual possibilities for Judaism today.

That is the spiritual challenge facing our new movement. 

If we can rise to it, Progressive Judaism may yet last another century and beyond.

sermon · spirituality

It’s not just what you see, it’s the way that you see it

levtaylor

During prayers, I find my mind wanders- or rather focuses. It sees things it otherwise wouldn’t.

The details of the space I am in suddenly interest me in new ways. I, who live in a world of words, suddenly find myself in a world of space: physical and embodied.

Look around: what do you see?

Perhaps a more pertinent question is: how do you see it? In a synagogue, walls are not just walls. Ceilings are not just ceilings. Curtains are not just curtains.

Every inch of space buzzes with meaning, crying out for interpretation.

For months, we have looked at this space with a certain set of eyes. For the Council, commissioning a new sanctuary, they have looked at the room with eyes of possibility. For the team responsible for the redesign, they have been looking at the space with the eyes of architects, artists and technicians. Those who were accustomed to this space have perhaps looked at it with nostalgic loss, knowing that their familiar sanctuary would be transformed.

I want to invite you now to look at this space anew: through the eyes of a believer.

In 539 BCE, Cyrus the Great permitted the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their Temple, which had been destroyed in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. A generation of exiled elites returned and remade their holy space.

The books of Ezra and Nehemiah are dedicated to explaining what happened in those formative years.

Ezra recounts the dramatic unveiling ceremony for the new Temple. He says that, when the elders of the generation saw the new Temple, they began to cry, while the young cheered out in jubilation.

Seventy years they had been held captive. Seventy years they had not seen their holy mountain.

For the old, this was a place they never dreamed they would see again, certainly not within their own lifetimes. For the young, this was a place that had only existed in myth and psalm.

What a moving experience it must have been to witness it.

So, I invite you to come to this building with the eyes of exiles. True, our four weeks in the next door hall do not quite compare to the seventy years the Jews spent in Babylon.

Nevertheless, soak it up, because it is a marvel to enter after a period away. Absence surely makes the heart grow fonder, and I know I had missed the beautiful serenity of this synagogue.

Yet the commentaries on the book of Ezra believe that the elders were not shedding tears of joy. Rashi says they were, in fact, crying for the Temple they had lost. The First Temple, he says, was even bigger. Solomon’s Temple was enormous by comparison.

This is an interesting proposition, because it is almost certainly not true. We do not have any archaeological evidence to suggest there was a First Temple, still less a bigger one with wider foundations. By all accounts, it is far more likely that the First Temple was smaller and more frail.

Yet, Rashi is right that the elders could truly have believed the old Temple was bigger and grander. When they last saw it, they would all have been infants.

My primary school’s doors were enormous wooden structures that towered over all who entered them… until I returned as an adult and realised they were just doors.

There may be a part of you that looks back with wistful nostalgia at the old sanctuary, dilapidated though it was. This is natural: in our synagogues we find safe spaces that ground us in our youth. Adjusting can be hard.

So, this is an invitation: try to look at this space through the eyes of a child. Try to feel the comfort and wonderment that you did in your youth.

When Ezra returned and rebuilt the Temple, he sought to recreate all that was best in the one that had stood before.

Like us, the Jews dedicated and blessed their Second Temple in the month of Adar, between the festivals of Purim and Pesach.

They brought in what they had preserved from the last Temple: cleansing bowls and musicals instruments. Where they could not repeat, they replicated, weaving curtains and priestly garments.

In Solomon’s Temple, there had been a permanently lit flame above the altar, symbolising God’s eternal presence with the Israelites.

When the exiles returned with Ezra, they relit the pyre, to show that, while they had left the Temple, God had never left them.

After the destruction of the Second Temple, the Jews installed in their synagogues a ner tamid, an everlasting light. Through this emblem, the flames showed that God’s light was not only in every time, but also in every space.

So, look at our light, with its memorial to the Shoah, and see how this same flame has burned for 3,000 years, linking us to hundreds of generations of worshippers.

But do not stop there, or you may be tempted by conservatism.

After the Temple, our rabbis reinvented every ritual item so that they could have new homes in the synagogues.

The Ark that contained the Two Tablets of the Law became the ark that holds our Torah scroll. The breastplate and crown that the priests wore became adornments for Torah. The sacrificial altar became the bimah from which Torah was read.

In every object, you can see the theological creativity of our people. You witness the myriad ways in which we constantly reinvent and reanimate our traditions.

So, look at the details of this sanctuary and embrace all the ways that our artists and architects have participated in that great tradition of innovation.

Everything contains the holy sparks of what went before. Every spark is breathed new life by the creatives who recreate it.

You, too, can fill this space with life, as you bring your own meanings to it.

Come to this sanctuary. Come with the eyes of an exile; the eyes of an elder; the eyes of a child. Come with eyes that are ancient and new. Come with eyes that have seen thousands of years and still look to the future.

Then bring those eyes back out into the world – and see what needs to be done.

Shabbat shalom.


sermon · spirituality

How do those stories taste?

levtaylor



As human beings, we are constantly carrying stories with us of who we are, what we have done, and how we should be in the world. On top of those stories, we build edifices: whole structures and personalities to serve those narratives. But, when those structures are forced to face up to reality, they can come crumbling down completely. And then we are left with only our stories, and we have to reconsider whether they were ever true.

That is what happened to the Israelites when they built the Golden Calf.

Moses went up Mount Sinai and spent time with God. There, on the precipice, God’s finger inscribed in stone the two tablets of the Law, as Moses watched in awe.

Meanwhile, down below, the Israelites grew restless. They didn’t know where Moses was or when he would be back. Under Aaron’s instruction, they built for themselves a Golden Calf, which would serve as their God. Now they could have something to worship.

When Moses returned, he found the people prostrating themselves before the calf, singing praise to the idol that it had brought them out of Egypt. Immediately, in a fit of rage, Moses threw the tablets on the ground and shattered them.

Those stone slabs were not the only thing destroyed that day. Moses also took the calf the people had made and burned it in fire; then he ground it to powder, scattered it on the water and made the Israelites drink it.

This is perhaps one of the strangest things that happens in the whole Torah. Two questions have really animated commentators on this passage. The first is: how is this possible? Can gold really be ground to dust and consumed with water? What sort of process would enable Moses to break the idol down so fine and feed it to the Israelites? Is such a thing actually potable? Wouldn’t it injure or kill the Israelites to drink it?

The second question is why? Why would Moses do such a thing? What is the value?

Rashi, following the Talmud, suggests that this was similar to the Sotah ritual. Elsewhere in Torah, we read of a custom for wives suspected of being unfaithful to their husbands. They are required to drink soot mixed with water. If they are guilty, they will miscarry. If not, they will survive.

There are obvious parallels in terms of procedure: both involve drinking water mixed with soot. It is also true that, in much of biblical theology, the Israelites are understood to be God’s faithless wife. Whenever the Israelites worship other gods, they are described as philanderers who have rejected their loyal husband. Here, then, the ritual would be testing the adulterous people to see whether they had broken their marriage vows. Based on this, says Rashi, God would determine what punishments were appropriate for their misconduct.

While I like the elegance of the solution, it doesn’t quite sit right. It’s not just because of the obviously misogynistic undertones. It’s also because it doesn’t make sense. The Sotah ritual is for wives suspected of adultery. A Sotah ritual might find its victim guilty, but, more likely, it would clear them of wrongdoing. Here, there is no doubt. They have been caught in the act. You don’t need to check whether something has happened if you saw it happening and talked about it.

Nachmanides was obviously also perturbed by this explanation. He offers an alternative suggestion: Moses was trying to humiliate the Israelites. He was turning their god into something loathsome and disgusting, that they would be forced to excrete. Once the Golden Calf had come out of them as dung, they would surely recognise that it wasn’t really God.

This is actually an argument that Nachmanides had used in the infamous Barcelona Disputation. Nachmanides was brought to the Spanish palace and ordered to defend Judaism against the Christian official, Friar Pablo Christiani. He said that the eucharist, the bread given at Catholic masses as a body of Jesus, could not possibly be God, because the Christians disgraced it by excreting it. Nachmanides’ interpretation, then, seems more motivated by his theological proofs against Christianity than by the matter of the text itself.

But Nachmanides has a point. The Israelites really needed to understand that the Golden Calf was not God. It was not enough for them to know that idolatry is a sin. They had to really feel, emotionally and physically, that what they had been worshipping amounted to nought.

Thus, the question of how the Israelites could drink the calcined Golden Calf is intimately bound up with why. Sure, it is possible to reduce and grind up gold, but there is no way of consuming it without getting sick. No matter how diluted, oxidised metal is a dangerous concoction.

Moses is saying to the Israelites: if you really think this is God, see how it tastes. Drink it. Is it alive? Is it helping you? Can it really do anything for you?

As the Israelites drank their mixture, they were forced to reckon with the reality that they had built themselves a structure that did not serve them.

They had told themselves a story. We need a God we can see to worship. We need physical things to feel secure. If we make something magnificent, we can tell ourselves that this is what saves us. When those stories were confronted by the hard truth of fire and water, it was evident they weren’t true.

So, they had to rebuild, this time with new stories. The Golden Calf could not be recreated, and nor could their narrative that idols would serve them.

The only thing left to do was to return up the mountain and rebuild the other thing that was broken: the Two Tablets of the Law. They had to tell a new story: of an invisible God, whose proof was in deliverance. They had to build a new structure: the moral laws that would build a harmonious society.

I feel like this is part of the human condition. So often, I have caught myself telling internal stories that keep me on guard and afraid. If I allow such narratives to take hold, I will build up edifices that I imagine will defend me, like anger, resentment, and a victim mindset. I will build up walls so others cannot get in.

But, like the Golden Calf, are serving these structures more than they are serving us. When the walls we build are tested by the fire and water of real life, they amount to nothing. They are just toxic substances that will destroy us. And, when they crumble, all we can do is go back and rebuild the structures that are actually secure: the moral laws that bind us to each other in obligation.

So, this is the challenge. When you find yourself building up a defensive story, pause and ask yourself how it tastes. If you were to drink what you are telling yourself, would it taste like the freshwater of a living God, or would you be imbibing the toxins of an idol?

The stories we tell ourselves are no different to anything else we allow in our bodies. They can either keep us alive, or they can destroy us.

Choose life. Shabbat shalom.

spirituality · story

God is sharing her location on WhatsApp

levtaylor

The king is in the field.

Last weekend, a new moon hung in the sky, marking the new month of Elul. This season, is a time dedicated to reflection on who we are and who we can become. It is a time when we turn back to God and aim at healing our relationships.

At this time, you may hear Chabadniks greet each other, saying “the king is on the field.” It comes from a story taught by the Alter Rebbe, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, who was the founder of the Chabad-Lubavitcher dynasty in the 18th Century. He used to explain the month of Elul using the parable of a king coming out in a field.

According to the analogy, the king’s usual place is in the capital city, in the royal palace. Anyone wishing to approach the king must go through the appropriate channels in the palace bureaucracy and gain the approval of a succession of secretaries and ministers. He must journey to the capital and pass through the many gates, corridors and antechambers that lead to the throne room. His presentation must be meticulously prepared, and he must adhere to an exacting code of dress, speech and mannerism upon entering into the royal presence.

However, there are times when the king comes out to the fields outside the city. At such times, anyone can approach him; the king receives them all with a smiling face and a radiant countenance. The peasant behind his plow has access to the king in a manner unavailable to the highest ranking minister in the royal court when the king is in the palace.

The king described by the Alter Rebbe in this metaphor is God. In his analogy, God is the ruler of all, but is hard to access except by an elite few. During Elul, the heavenly king comes out from his palace and makes himself accessible to all. In this month leading up to the High Holy Days, everyone has the chance to approach God, seeking favour and forgiveness.

It’s a beautiful analogy. But metaphors also have their problems, and we need to check them to see if they really work for us.

First of all, is God really a man? Well, of course not. God is too great and infinite to be held by anything as small as a body or a gender. Some Jews have therefore chosen only to use gender-neutral language to describe God, deploying words like “Holy One” and “Source of Life.” Alternatively, some Jews have chosen to reclaim divine feminine language, emphasising God’s femininity.

As Reform Jews, our belief in gender equality is essential to us, and that is bound to come through in how we think about God. To be honest, I’m happy addressing God by any pronouns because none of them capture what God really is. You can really insert whatever gender you like.

The much bigger question is what kind of personality this anthropomorphic God has. In the Lubavitcher parable, God is a king. There is plenty of precedent in Jewish tradition for such a reading: God is “adon olam,” the Lord of the universe; God’s throne is eternal and His sceptre stands upright; God is described as the king over all kings, and we are called upon to build God’s kingdom on earth.

I really don’t like this imagery at all. True, it tells us something about how powerful God is, but the image of a benevolent ruler isn’t very helpful to self-improvement. If a king tells you to change your ways, you’ll do it out of fear of violence or retribution. A king, to me, conjures up images of unearned power, and I want to deliberately rebel against it.

I prefer the idea of God as a loved one. When I approach Elul, I want to improve so that I can be the best possible version of myself. The people that make me aspire to that are my partner, best friends, and close family members. They remind me that I’m loved, and inspire me to do better by others.

This idea is also very present in Jewish interpretations of Elul. Some rabbis have noticed thar the letters of Elul could be an acronym for the beautiful love poetry of the Song of Solomon: ani ledodi vedodi li; “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.” In this allegory, God and Israel are lovers working together. I much prefer this idea of equality and mutual partnership.

This idea of equality really doesn’t fit with how Chassids imagine God or social relationships. As they explain in the Alter Rebbe’s fable, God is only accessible to elite people most of the time. That is a core ideological belief for many Chassids. They see their rebbes not only as teachers but as holy men, who have a special connection to God. They advocate dveikus: cleaving to special people so that we, through them, can get closer to God.

They don’t hold this belief because they are somehow traditional and we are not. At the time when Chassidism was birthed, roughly contemporary with Reform Judaism, many of its greatest opponents within Orthodoxy criticised them for creating hierarchies and dynasties within Judaism. God, they said, had no intermediaries, and Judaism did not have hereditary hierarchies.

The story of the king in the field is quite beautiful, but when subjected to scrutiny, it looks much less appealing. It speaks to a worldview in which everything is divided up on a power ladder. Men above women; special Jews above ordinary people; and God as a king on top of it all.

That doesn’t mean we should completely abandon this teaching about Elul. The idea of coming back to God is helpful, and I adore the image of meeting God in the open country.

I want us to imagine an alternative. I want us to imagine what this theology would look like if all of humanity were equals. What would we say if our relationship to God was not a vertical one of subject to king but a horizontal one between lovers?

So, I submit to you, an alternative telling of the analogy of the king in the field, updated for modern times and modern beliefs.

God has turned on location sharing.

You receive a WhatsApp message. She is letting you know she’s on her way.

You haven’t seen her all year, so your heart immediately flutters with excitement. You can’t wait to see her again.

You love her. When she’s around, you feel like the best version of yourself. You laugh more. You give more of yourself. You feel more compassionate and honest. You want to bottle up the love you feel when you’re with her so that you can share it with others the rest of the year.

The little location sharing pin says she is inching closer towards you.

Only inching. She appears to be walking through fields. You calculate how long it might take him to reach you. Weeks, perhaps.

Still, seeing her is worth the wait. You wonder if you could meet her sooner.

You text back: “Can I meet you somewhere along the way?”

She answers instantly: “Yes.”

Your heart beats a little faster as you get dressed, tie your walking boots and head out. She walks faster than you. You will be reunited soon.

It is Elul. God is coming closer to you, and you are getting closer to God. As we trudge through the muddy fields of this month, let us relish the chance to draw nearer to our loving God.

Shabbat shalom.


judaism · ritual · spirituality

Wrap your body in prayers

levtaylor

Most of the time, when I’m experiencing something emotional, I feel it in my body before I can even process it. 

I’ll feel a sinking in my stomach and know I’m dealing with dread. I’ll wake up grinding my teeth and realise I must be anxious. I go to bed feeling full of life and visceral feel my joy.

Every emotion is a physical experience. It is not just something we can rationally understand.

In Biblical Hebrew, if you want to say that you are angry, you say that your nose flares. If you are compassionate, you are womb-ful. If you are sad, you rip your hair. If you are lustful, you are big-balled. If you feel respect and awe, that’s in your liver.

In the biblical imagination, the body is a map of all the emotions we might feel. Each limb and organ corresponds to the full range of affective experience. 

We must bear this in mind when we come to read this week’s parashah and its resultant commandments:

Put these words that I command you today on your heart… Wrap them as signs on your arms. Bind them in front of your eyes. 

The words are recited daily by the most observant Jews. They form part of the first paragraph of the Shema, Judaism’s central prayer. 

The Shema begins with an instruction to listen; to pay attention. Hear, O Israel, the Eternal One is our God. The Eternal God is One. 

It then tells us the embodied experiences we must have to make sense of what we are hearing. Heart. Arms. Eyes. 

Of course, these carry metaphorical meanings. For the ancient Israelites, the heart was the seat of thinking, much in the same way as we consider the brain in the modern West. When Torah tells us to keep it on our hearts, it means that it should be part of our whole intellectual being.

The arm is the site of action. It is synonymous with power. The arm is what gives to charity and shields the vulnerable. It is also the body part that raises swords and strikes stones. With an outstretched arm, God redeemed the Israelites from Egypt. The instruction to keep God’s word on our arms is a call to use our power for God.

Eyes, for the Hebrews, are for desiring. Your eyes can wander after foreign gods. They can delight at the wonders of nature. They can covet things that aren’t yours. They can favour children. The Eternal’s eye is always on those who have hope and mercy. If the commandments are frontlets before your eyes, enacting them as all you want to do. You are singularly focused on doing good deeds. 

Over time, our ancestors came to see these words as more than just symbols. Rabbi Akiva, the Mishnah’s great thinker on metaphor and interpretation, is credited with codifying the rules for tefillin.

Tefillin are compartmentalised boxes affixed to leather straps. You can see people wear them wrapped around their heads and arms in weekday morning prayers. 

These prayer aides were invented so that observant Jews could literally enact the commandment of binding the words on the body. Inside the boxes are the words of the Shema. Cheder children tell me they look like Go-Pros.

Carefully, we tie them to our arms, close by our heart. We wrap the leather straps around our arms, seven times. We place them as a crown around our heads, settled between our eyes. We finish up by plotting the straps around our fingers and palms in a set pattern.

If ever you come to Leo Baeck College’s shacharit services, you will see a bunch of students and teachers adorned in them. 

If the founders of the College and its movements could see us, they would be aghast. For many of the originators of our movement, such embodied practices were strange and arcane. 

Progressive Judaism was a response to the Enlightenment. Across Europe, people heralded the triumph of science and reason. Ideas, not feelings, were paramount. Rational thought, not embodied emotion, would be what guided humanity to greatness. 

Reforming rabbis of the past called the practice of bending knees in prayer “bowing and scraping.” They saw their Orthodox contemporaries’ kissing the scroll as a form of idolatry. Above all, they certainly never wore tefillin. 

When, in my early 20s, I asked my dad for a tefillin set for an upcoming birthday, he raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that an Orthodox thing?” he asked. We didn’t talk much about the theology, but I told him I liked the idea of it, and he got me a beautiful pair.

In a way, he was right. Tefillin were an Orthodox thing. But, over time, progressive Jews have reclaimed them and made them our own. 

Reason is still deeply important. We still hold to the importance of modern scientific inquiry and rational debate. It’s just that we can no longer isolate what goes on in our bodies from what goes on in our brains. 

Living with chronic pain, I see daily how intertwined are my spine and my spirit. Every part of my mental and physical health is connected. I would struggle to draw a line between my body and my ‘self,’ and can’t really comprehend their separateness. 

This is just as true in prayer. So I wrap tefillin. I feel my religious inclinations before I can process them. 

I’ll stick a box on my left bicep and know that my body is part of the miracle of creation. I wrap it around my arms and I am bound by God, submitting to the commandments. I set the straps over my head and feel the weight of responsibility. I rest the box before my eyes and see what I have to do. I tangle the knots around my fingers as if I am being married and I am overwhelmed by the loving gift of a new day.

I wrap my body in prayers. I can work out what they mean later. 

I wrote this sermon for Leo Baeck College’s newsletter, Parashat Vaetchanan

sermon · spirituality

In defence of large groups of people

levtaylor

The great sage of the Mishnah, Ben Zoma, once exclaimed:

How hard must the first ever human being have worked before he had bread to eat! He plowed, sowed, reaped, sheaved, threshed, winnowed, separated the grain from the chaff, ground the grain into flour, sifted, kneaded, and baked… and only then did he get the chance to eat. But I wake up and find all of these prepared for me.

He added:

How hard must the first human being have worked before he had clothes to wear. He sheared, laundered, combed, spun and wove… and only then could he put on a shirt. But I wake up and find all of these prepared for me.

And, of course, he is right. How many hands must have touched everything we enjoy. Ben Zoma knew this was true 2,000 years ago. How much more true is it now that we live in a globalised world with food, clothes and technology Ben Zoma could not even have fathomed.  Anything that anyone in this world does is because many people have worked together to make it happen.

But Ben Zoma also says something ridiculous. He imagines that Adam, the first human being, did all this alone. We know that is patently false. First of all, at the very minimum, Adam was accompanied by Eve in Eden. And, if we follow the biblical story, God provided that first couple with everything they needed. They could pick fruit off the trees without trouble and never bothered with bread. They didn’t even need clothes until they had left their paradise garden.

When Adam and Eve did leave Eden, they immediately found wives for their male children. The Torah doesn’t explain how they got there, but any other explanation for how humanity came about would be very troubling. The Torah knew that it was impossible for human beings to ever achieve something on their own.

And, in fact, the Talmud, where this saying from Ben Zoma is quoted, knew this too. This imaginary world where individuals only do things for themselves comes as part of a sugya that speaks in celebration of groups of large people. The Talmud marvels at the diversity of human beings, where every face and mind is completely different. It speaks in praise of migration, hospitality, crowded marketplaces and huge throngs flocking to the same place.

Human beings are social animals. From the off, we have done everything in groups. Before civilisation, we hunted and gathered in packs. When we first set up farmsteads and villages, we did so together, in groups. The modern world was built by people sharing technology, innovation, resources, and working together to develop them. The only evolutionary advantage that human beings really have is that we can organise in ways that no other animal can.

For the last year, some forms of collectivity have been permitted, and some have been forbidden. People have been allowed to meet each other in warehouses, factories, and takeaways, where they make and distribute things to those who can afford them.

People have not been allowed to encounter each other in parks, or houses, or community centres, or gyms. They have rarely been able to accompany the sick at their bedsides, or celebrate births and marriages, or share ideas in public forums. 

Now, as things ease, people are permitted to gather, but only if they are spending money. We can meet in shops, pubs, and restaurants, and even sit indoors without masks on. But very few of the community activities for children have returned. Older people in hospitals and hospices are still rarely seeing their families. 

Certainly, almost every form of protest or public demonstration remains criminalised, and it may stay so for a very long time. Like last summer, even with a nearly completed vaccination programme, the government is keen to rush people back to work, but reluctant to allow people time to just be together and heal. 

Still fearing the virus, despite minimal risk of transmission to the vulnerable, many people have given up on public transport. There is more regular car use in the UK now than at any previous point in history. I see people avoiding each other, avoiding making real contact, even though the option is there.

I look at this so-called ‘recovery’ from Coronavirus and wonder if anybody has considered what actually makes life worth living. We are not automatons, created to work like robots. The best part of being human is other human beings. We are social creatures, whose purpose is derived from what we can do together. 

And there is a place where people are supposed to be able to meet for just that purpose. Its name in Greek is ‘synagogue,’ which means ‘shared path.’ In Hebrew it is called a ‘beit knesset: ‘a house of meeting.’ In Yiddish, we call it ‘shul,’ which just means ‘school.’ This. This is it. This thing where we come together to sing in unison and study communally and hear how people are really doing, this is what life is supposed to be about. 

This. This place where babies are blessed, bnei mitzvah celebrated, weddings solemnised, healing recognised and deaths memorialised. This is how people recognise the humanity in others, and in themselves. 

This is my last service with you. I have absolutely adored working with you. I have got to know so many of you in such depth, without even leaving my home. I have heard about your families, your fears, your hopes, your dreams, and your life stories. I cannot wait to do that with you in person again.

We have weathered an entire year together through a pandemic. That much is remarkable. I have been so impressed by the ways you have continued to pastorally support each other online, and to provide essential services to the vulnerable. 

The next stage is going to be hard. It means meeting people face to face again. It means taking risks, being brave, and trusting each other. It means accepting compromises and imperfections. But above all, it means truly building a community that is loving and generative. 

I look forward to returning to Newcastle to see you all again in the building, in person, shaking hands, embracing, and catching up on the things that matter. I sincerely hope it will not be long before this community sings in harmony once more and natters over homemade foods at kiddush. 

At no point in our history has anyone managed to go it alone. The future sees us together.

Shabbat shalom. 

article · spirituality

A Letter to God

levtaylor

Hi Judy,

I hope you don’t mind me calling you Judy. I know Lionel Blue used to call you Fred. I remember reading about it in one of those compilations of Thought for the Day segments he put out. He said we should talk to you like an old friend, with the same degree of familiarity. He called you Fred and addressed you like you were his conscience; a kind voice coaxing him to do better. I picture something approximate to Jiminy Cricket.

So I’ll address you as a friend and call you Judy. I want to call you Judy because I don’t know anyone who goes by that name, so I can invent an image from scratch without knowingly projecting my ideas of others onto you. I want to talk to you as a woman, maybe because I’m just sick of having religion dictated to me by older men. I imagine you queer, because Judy only you truly know how much I need my God to be non-conforming. 

So I’ll picture you, if I may. Pixie dyke haircut and hooped earrings. Comfortable trainers. A flowing blouse. Sitting on one of the chairs in my back garden, any back garden I’ve ever had. And you smoke a rolled-up cigarette, or maybe it’s a joint, and you don’t offer it to me because you know I quit smoking a long time back. But you are immortal and immutable, so you don’t need to worry about what impact all that tar will have on your health. 

Judy, I hope you don’t mind that I say “you” and not “You.” If I were writing high liturgy or biblical translations, I think I would have to capitalise you. But I’m following a theology that Rabbi Blue picked up from Martin Buber, who adopted it from German Protestants. I’m supposed to speak to you unguarded and as my full self, without illusions of grandeur, neither yours nor my own. 

I have to ask forgiveness just for talking to you this way, because I know it is heretical. Even imagining you is an affront to who you really are. Maimonides long ago instructed us that you had no physical form nor anything resembling one. Like the Rambam, I admire the austere iconoclasm of philosophical Islam. It pushes us to realise that you are incomparable to a human being. You are more akin to a force, like gravity or entropy. You are like the moral vibrations of the universe. We only can say what you are by saying what you are not.

But I can’t talk to a vibration or an equation. I can’t make friends with an abstraction. The truth is, Judy, I need you, and I need you to be a relatable human being, because I depend on your guidance for change. I need to picture someone who believes in me and my capacity for goodness, especially on days when I feel like I have nothing to give. I try hard to be someone better than I am, I honestly do, and imagining a slightly stoned lesbian can help with that.

I’m writing this because I want to connect to you, truly and faithfully. I want to reflect on what you mean to me. I want to try and develop morally and spiritually. So I talk to you like you’re here.

I don’t need you to say anything back. I don’t have any illusions about what role you play in the universe. I just need to feel that somehow you are there; listening to me; encouraging me. I just imagine a warm smile and a gentle hand on my shoulder. Jonah’s God. Shechinah. Someone intimate and loving.

If I have to accept that you are beyond comprehension, I wouldn’t be able to talk to you. I would feel like I’m shouting into a silent void. Elijah’s God. The God who isn’t there.

And there are few things I find more frightening than silence. Part of what prompted this letter was a series of exercises where I had to keep quiet for long periods because it was supposed to be spiritually enriching. I get that it is supposed to be enlightening. That’s the popular image of Orientalist postcards showing gurus meditating on the Ganges and fully-robed Buddhist monks sat for hours in silence. It is a significant part of the imagination of Westerners who can’t connect with their own traditions.

That’s not fair. That’s not (the only reason) why it makes me so uncomfortable. It’s also part of English religious history. There is so much I admire about the Quakers. I normally find myself chiming with their politics; impressed by the way they turn anti-militarist protest into acts of religious service. I admire that. I have felt deeply connected to you when in their presence. In your queerness and hunger for justice, I imagine that you blockade arms fairs too.

But I don’t feel your presence when in their silences. I feel anguished and frustrated when I’m forced to contend with silence. I once walked into a retreat happening in the home where I lived. The people weren’t talking or engaging with each other. It reminded me of hospices and retirement homes I had visited where the patients were so drugged up or afflicted by dementia that they had no idea what was going on. I left instantly. 

Later, I returned to sleep. While the more enlightened sat in the living room experiencing their quiet contemplations, I washed the dishes with a friend. She talked about her own discomfort, that these practices were stripped from their original contexts of social justice movements and anti-colonial practices, then re-packaged into the medicalised language of “wellness” or the neoliberal politics of “self-improvement.” I had not considered that such a practice could be radical, because I understood silence to be entirely isolating and alienating.

That comes from my own experiences. So much of being gay has, for me, been about deciding what to share and when. In nearly new spaces I wonder whether I can be camp, or if it will put people off. I wonder if I can tell the stories of who I am and who I love and the small queer family I am building, or whether it will invoke new anger from people. In most circumstances, I have to kill part of myself in order to fit in. Coming out isn’t a one-time event, and nor is being in the closet. It is a constant process of ascertaining whether somewhere is safe, and how much. That is why being coerced into silence affects me so much. It’s why I need to be able to talk to a God like you, Judy; someone who is an outsider too.

When I construct my own gay deity, I don’t feel like my queerness is the problem. I feel like it’s part of the solution. Growing up in a world made by other people to suit their own hierarchies has made me empathetic to the struggles of others. I don’t claim to understand what it is like for black men in Chicago or Palestinian children in Sheikh Jarrah or women working in Bangladeshi sweatshops. But I care about it because I know how I have felt when faced with injustice. And that burning rage against oppression feels holy. 

It doesn’t just feel like endless anger when I’m with you, Judy. It feels like it means something so much bigger. It is not just politically expedient solidarity or, worse, bleeding heart liberalism. The combined grief and anger of all persecuted people feels like it is deeply spiritually meaningful. It is the foundation for divine justice. It is proof that all of humanity is connected by something bigger than ourselves: a sense of righteousness in resisting iniquity. I think that is what the Latin American liberation theologians are getting at. I feel like they have sat in the back garden with you too.

Judy, it matters greatly that you are there at those barricades and back gardens. Without you, as a real and personal presence, all my fears about the world and desires to change it are misplaced. There is no right and wrong. Oppression is just something that happens. We are alone on a burning planet in an empty universe. There is nothing we can do to change that and, even if we did, it wouldn’t matter. I have to believe you are real. And that you are really real, not just as a story that I have chosen to believe, like existentialists who are nihilists with self-deception. I have to believe that moral statements mean something and a greater tomorrow can come.  I have to believe you are real or life will not be worth living. 

There are so many who want to treat you like you don’t exist. Some of them claim the Holocaust as a reason to deny you. God abandoned them at Auschwitz, so they will abandon God in turn. Or: if God were real, God would have intervened. I was asked this last year by Shoah survivors at a Tu Bishvat seder. I just listened. I told them they did not have to believe anything. Because my instinctive reaction is to say: what did you think would happen? Did you imagine God would strike Hitler down with a thunderbolt from the sky? Did you think God should just swallow up the camps into pits before they piled the Jews into the gas chambers? How would that work? But, faced with living survivors, I had nothing to say. Albert Friedlander taught that any theology had to be able to be repeated in front of a million murdered Jewish children. Faced with them, I had no answer.

I think that’s why I have to imagine you silent, just listening, and refusing to intervene. If I thought you could respond or intervene, I would be so angry at you. So I imagine you calmly reflecting, nudging me on, reminding me with your eyes that you did not kill all those people, Nazis did. You remind me with your smile that human beings are responsible for our own actions. Above all – that I am responsible for mine.

Because of that, I do look upon some atheism with cynicism. There are people whom it suits very well to deny that there is a God or that morality has any meaning. The world created by Thatcher and Reagan is one where everyone is an individual atom, compressed to its smallest form, seeking nothing but the maximisation of its own wealth and happiness. If there were some great force holding us all together, their entire project would be at an end. If there were such a thing as love or justice or retribution, they would have nowhere to turn. So they pretend not to know you. When they sit down and feel your presence beside them, they shut off the part of them that knows what it means. They are no different to those who thank you for their success, as if you would ever hand out rewards like cookies to children. 

I think I heard you once. I was in intense pain and struggling with life, around seven years ago. I was standing on top of a roof, smoking a cigarette. (I wasn’t looking to kill myself instantly, just slowly with tobacco.) I looked up at these overpowering grey clouds and I asked what I should do. And I heard this voice saying “forgive yourself.” It said “forgive yourself” over and over again, quietly at first, and then louder and louder. At that time, I felt like I had always been hearing those words; I’d only just paid attention to them for the first time. I felt like you were there with me, and that was your message for me. And once I’d heard it, truly heard on it, I no longer heard it, because I no longer needed it. Suddenly, I felt ten stone lighter and like I had a message for the whole world. 

Judy, you might be imaginary. I might have had a moment of insanity. We might be alone in a meaningless universe. There are so many scientific explanations, and I’m sure there could be so much wonder in the world even without faith. Maybe justice doesn’t matter as much as I think it does. Maybe. Maybe all kinds of things. But I’ve chosen a story that makes sense so I can live a life that feels right.

I have to believe. So I talk to you and write to you and call you Judy. I only ask one thing of you, Judy. Please don’t answer. Please don’t tell me what you think or what I need to do. The only thing worse than silence would be to hear your voice. I couldn’t bear your judgement, or your love. Either would be too much. Let me remain in doubt, that’s all  I ask. 

You take the last drags on your roll-up. You stub out the fag end on the ground. You put a hand on my shoulder and use my body to lift yourself upright. And you leave me again, for a while.

Thanks for listening, Judy.

Thanks for being here.

I love you.