Circumcise your heart

September 15, 2026September 15, 2026 levtaylor

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

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

Circumcise your heart.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, firstly, we need a definition.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I wish to cut away them all.

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

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

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

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

Amen.

*Opening scene from The Killing of a Sacred Deer*

high holy days · sermon

The power of naming

September 14, 2026September 14, 2026 levtaylor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May their names be remembered for a blessing.

Yizkor 5787, Kingston Liberal Synagogue

high holy days · sermon

Look for the helpers

September 10, 2026 levtaylor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Rosh Hashanah of Antiquity was made by helpers.

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

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

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

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

Terror, I suppose, is the word.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He said:

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

This was a message to everyone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shanah tovah.

Erev Rosh Hashanah 5787