Tag: America

high holy days · sermon

Look for the helpers

levtaylor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Rosh Hashanah of Antiquity was made by helpers.

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

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

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

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

Terror, I suppose, is the word.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He said:

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

This was a message to everyone. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shanah tovah.

Erev Rosh Hashanah 5787

protest · sermon · social justice

Do British Jews have dual loyalty?

levtaylor



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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Dreyfus Affair

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thomas Babington Macaulay


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shabbat shalom.

Progressive Jewish thought leaders
sermon · social justice

Why do people hate Jews?

levtaylor



A joke from darker times in history.

Two Jews sit on a park bench in 1930s Germany. One sees that his friend is reading Der Sturmer, the mouthpiece of the Nazi Party. Horrified, he asks: “what on earth are you doing reading that rag?”

His friend replies: “This newspaper says Jews control the banks, the media, and the governments of every country. These days, that’s the only good news I get!”

I try, where I can, to pay attention to the questions people in this community are asking, and make my sermons answer them. The question I have heard most frequently in the past few weeks is: “why do people hate Jews?”

I’ve heard it from young and old, Jew and non-Jew, left and right. It’s a heartbreaking question, because it shows how anxious people are. It is a serious question, so it deserves serious answers.

Why do people hate Jews?

My first answer is: they don’t.

Look at our neighbours, friends and coworkers. We are surrounded by love.

Whenever the Jewish community faces attacks, this synagogue is inundated with messages of support. (You will remember that, for a while, we kept all our letters of solidarity on a board.)

When Finchley Reform Synagogue was threatened last week, their local community came to uplift them. Mosques, churches and community centres. The Lebanese community brought doughnuts. The councillors, politicians and emergency service workers filled up the shul until it was standing-room only.

These people don’t hate us: they stand with us.

But that doesn’t mean no people hate Jews. Clearly, some do.

On Monday night, the BBC ran a Panorama called “Why are British Jews afraid?” It brought the wider British public’s attention to the reasons for fear of which we are already aware.

The attack on Heaton Park Synagogue on Yom Kippur. The murderous gunman on Bondi Beach at Chanukah.

In the last month, terrorists set fire to Hatzola ambulances and attempted arson against multiple Jewish gathering points in north west London. Recently, an Iranian operative was arrested for plotting to attack the site where I trained to be a rabbi, the Sternberg Centre.

Reports once distant are coming closer to home, affecting my own friends and colleagues.

It is because of these abhorrent acts that the question is even asked: why do people hate Jews?

Yet, even in these cases, I don’t think the perpetrators actually hate Jews, because I don’t think they even know who we are. Had the teenagers from Leyton who set fire to Hatzola ambulances ever met a Jew?

They were not even thinking about Chabad of Golders Green. Presumably, they were responding to news from the Middle East, but that doesn’t mean their violence is just misdirected anger against Israel.

I find it quite perverse to entertain the idea that, if only Israel would behave itself, British Jews wouldn’t warrant terror threats. I think most of us have expressed great anguish over Gaza, but that doesn’t prompt us to attack ambulances. The same is true of the rest of Britain.

As Dave Rich of the Community Security Trust said on the BBC documentary: the vast majority of people attending pro-Palestinian protests in London are motivated by a sincere concern for human rights. It is a minority of interlopers that are the cause for concern.

The primary groups who radicalise against British Jews are white nationalists and Islamists. Neither group particularly cares about Palestinians or Israelis, but only makes a pretence of it to serve their own supremacist agendas.

People were attacking Jews and Jewish institutions for many centuries before Israel was founded. They don’t need Israel to commit war crimes to justify burning synagogues.

Antisemitism is not really about Jews. Not real, living Jewish people. It is about a fantasy boogeyman who causes all the world’s problems.

The people who commit crimes against Jews are generally boys whose lives lack meaning. They know that something is wrong with the world, but they have no words to say what. So they invent an enemy, and their fabricated villain is a Jew.

The problem is not that they don’t like Jews but that they don’t like themselves.

Still, you can’t get from feeling dissatisfied with life to chucking petrol bombs at a synagogue without encouragement.

Antisemitism, like all forms of bigotry, is created from the top down.

April Rosenblum’s pamphlet The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere is a fantastic introduction to what antisemitism is and how to fight it.

Medieval antisemitism, she says, worked by having a group to sit in between the masses and the ruling class. Unlike other forms of racism, which are about making sure the boot is always on some minority’s neck, antisemitism worked by creating a buffer class so the people in charge could blame someone when things went wrong.

So, England on the brink of bankruptcy from Crusades banished the Jews; the Tsar’s supporters in decaying Russia invented The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; and in the 1930s Nazis gained power in impoverished, humiliated Germany by promising to deal with the Jews.

Judaism has changed much in the last thousand years, but antisemitism hasn’t. When Donald Trump says “the Jews don’t like me because they can’t buy me” or Elon Musk says Jews push hatred against whites, they’re standing in a long tradition of elites pointing at Jews for problems they created.

When Iranian leaders say that terrorist attacks are false flags launched by Jeffrey Epstein’s cabal to undermine Europe, they’re not even trying to hide their conspiracies behind innuendos.

These people don’t hate Jews. Jews are just convenient fodder for their smokescreens. What they hate is that they might lose some of their wealth or power. What they can’t stand is the thought that people might see past the lies and blame the real enemy: them!

Whether in America, Iran, or Britain, demagogues want people to hate Jews so that they won’t ask questions about what really causes social problems.

If only people did just hate Jews, it would be easier to defeat antisemitism. We could find every one of our enemies and bash them down like an anti-racist game of whack-a-mole.

But antisemitism runs deeper than that. It is a system of distraction and confusion, baked into the world’s contradictions over hundreds of years. It may draw on myths from religious texts or items from the news, but its core object of hate is not a real Jew.

Its Jew is a pantomime villain, created by corrupt elites to give desperate people someone to blame. The Jew they hate is a phantom, who vanishes on contact with reality.

So, to all those in this community asking why people hate Jews, let me say with surety: there is nothing in you that deserves hatred.

There is nothing you have done that made terrorists mad. There is nothing you could have done differently to stop fools attacking synagogues. Their hatred is not for you.

But the love is real. The relationships we have with our neighbours are based on genuine connections. The friendships we have built across faiths are sincere. The good work we do in our community has a real impact.

May we never let anybody’s hatred diminish that. May we only love harder.

Let us love our neighbours more. Let us love each other more. Let us love, ever more, our synagogue, our Torah, and our God.

So let us love Jews.

Shabbat shalom.

judaism · sermon · theology

If you don’t fancy killing pigeons, you’re probably a Progressive Jew

levtaylor



Have you ever done something wrong, completely accidentally, with all the best intentions, and, feeling ashamed and repentant, thought to yourself: “that’s it, I better go kill a pigeon.”

Of course you haven’t. Because as an astute reader of Torah knows, if you have committed a sin, you need to sacrifice at least two pigeons. A goat for serious misbehaviour. A bull, if you really messed up.

This week, we enter the Book of Leviticus, an impressive catalogue of sins and sacrifices. This third book in the Torah cycle, called in Hebrew Vayikra, acts as a directory for priests.

Here, you can match up any misdeed or lifecycle event with the appropriate sacrificial animal, and it comes with a handy recipe book for how to make the meat smell nice enough that God forgives you.

(Bit of oil… bit of incense… bake for three days in a smoke oven…)

We leave behind the great moral myths of Genesis. We leave behind the inspiring liberatory narrative of Exodus. And this, too, is where we leave behind Orthodox Judaism.

If you are an Orthodox Jew, the only problem you can see with killing a pigeon to atone for your mistakes is that you don’t have a Temple to do it in.

In the Koren Sacks Siddur, the Orthodox daily prayer book, you will find petitions to be recited every day that God rebuilds the Temple in Jerusalem, brings back the hereditary priesthood, and restores the sacrificial cult.

Finally, if I make an accidental mistake, I will be able to fulfil the Torah’s command that I should splatter a bull’s blood and entrails all over a table.

Frankly, I don’t know how our friends further up the Thames have managed to go so long without enacting this sacred duty.

At its best, the rebuilt Temple of Orthodox Judaism involves some kind of mystical descent of a palace from the clouds at the end of time. At its worst, there are Jews currently hoping to blow up the Al Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount and replace it with a gaudy pillared Roman-style shrine.

I’m not going to get into the geopolitics of why that would be a terrible idea. My area is theology, and I can tell you now, that from a religious, moral, spiritual, and ethical perspective, bringing back any kind of Temple would be a terrible idea.

Even as a metaphor, the yearning for Temple Judaism is an abrogation of responsibility, a refusal to engage in the real world, and a fantasy that blood can avenge wrongdoing. We cannot tolerate this idea on any level, whether real or abstract.

It is hard to overstate what a fundamental difference this is between Progressive and Orthodox Judaism. Opposition to rebuilding the Temple is central to Progressive theology.

In 1885, American Jews came together at the Rodef Shalom Synagogue in Pennsylvania and signed up to their foundational document: the Pittsburgh Platform. This decree has influenced how Progressive Jews see our religion ever since.

In it, they declare: “we expect no sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron.” From the outset, we have believed that the synagogue has permanently replaced the Temple.

The author of the Pittsburgh Platform was an inspiring rabbi, named Kaufmann Kohler. Born in Germany, he became America’s preeminent Reform scholar. If you’ve ever dipped into the Jewish Encyclopedia, you’ve probably read something written by him.

Kohler wrote an introduction to Jewish theology that dealt thoroughly with how we Progressive Jews should understand these Temple texts. They were, for their time, a tool to help Jews gain moral understanding. The rituals and sacrifices showed us how to take responsibility for our thoughts, and even our conduct.

But, over time, we outgrew pigeon slaughter. We moved on to the world of rules and structures created by the early rabbis. And now, in our modern age, we are still moving forwards: so that we will do the right thing without being bound by old laws.

That’s what the progress in Progressive Judaism means: progressing from the age of slaughter through the age of laws towards the age of morals.

It’s not that we should discard the laws, or even the stories of slaughter. We should be like students who learn more through our schooling- at each stage, we retain what we learnt earlier, but we refine it, and we realise that some of our earlier ideas were too simplistic. Wanting to rebuild the Temple is like wanting to go back to the crayons of nursery school.

Throughout the moral education of humanity, we received hints that this was where we were going all along. In the Book of Proverbs, written when cattle murder was the normal way of dealing with guilt, it says: “To do what is right and just is more desired by the Eternal One than sacrifice.”

Throughout the books of the prophets we are repeatedly assured that God is far more interested in our moral conduct than in how much fat we can burn off the bones of a lamb.

Centuries later, when the early rabbis were busy codifying all their laws, the midrash explained why the Torah would say this. Sacrifices could only happen in the Temple, but you can do good deeds anywhere. Sacrifices can only atone for mistakes, but with good deeds you can repent for what you did wrong on purpose. Sacrifices only last a short while, but righteousness can endure forever.

At every stage of its development, says Rabbi Kohler, we Jews were a priestly people. Even in the days of animal sacrifice, we were always trying to demonstrate how to live with knowledge of God and concern for morality.

So, says Kohler, our mission on earth is to constantly be a beacon of moral behaviour. If we forfeit that, even for a moment, we will cease to be worthy of being called God’s people.

The idea of rebuilding a Temple isn’t just a dead end: it is a reversal of history. It takes us backwards from reason to superstition. It is the most retrograde step from our understanding of animal suffering to treating God’s creatures as subjects for abuse. It is abhorrent.

And I think most people know that. I honestly believe that, if we asked the vast majority of our friends and family who attend United or Federation synagogues if they think we would be better off with a cult of butchery based in Jerusalem, they would be repulsed by the concept.

In that case, they do not believe in Orthodox Judaism. Mazel tov, they’re Progressives already! Come through our doors, come celebrate with us, come pray with us!

You can leave your fantasies of pigeon massacres at the door. Come and be God’s priestly people.

Come and be a Progressive Jew.

Shabbat shalom.

high holy days · sermon

The world is governed by compassion

levtaylor

“Hineni he’ani mi-ma’as – behold, I am poor in deeds and lacking in merit. Nevertheless, I come trembling in the presence of You, O God, to plead on behalf of Your people Israel who sent me, although I am neither fit nor worthy of the task. You who examine hearts, be my guide, and accept my prayer. Treat these words as if they were spoken by one more righteous than me. For you listen to prayers and delight in repentance. Blessed are You, O God, who hears our prayers.”

In the synagogues of medieval Europe, the service leader used to begin with this public prayer of atonement, openly acknowledging their own inadequacy. 

In the Liberal world, we have been shaped by the Victorian attitude that eschewed public vulnerability. So, instead, this prayer is given out to rabbis to read privately to themselves. 

The days when we had to pretend to be perfectly put-together are over. In our age, we recognise that openly sharing our insecurities builds a more emotionally authentic culture, where people are better at handling their feelings.

So, this year, I not only quietly recite this prayer in my office, but share it with you openly.

This year, these words feel more profound than usual. 

This is a sensitive time, and I know how fragile so many hearts are. 

In the build-up to these Days of Repentance, an American Masorti rabbi, Joshua Gruenberg, wrote:

“Rabbis stand before their congregations with trembling hearts. We know that every word matters. We know that words can wound and words can heal. And we know that in a climate like this one, the margin for error feels impossibly thin. […] The only way we will find wholeness is if we grant each other the space to be imperfect, the courage to be vulnerable, and the grace to be human.”

As this year came to an end, I thought back on the conversations I’d had with you over my time here. I thought back over some of the pain and worry you had felt, and realised just how much stress some members of the community were feeling. 

Words can, indeed, hurt and heal. They matter. I want to honour that, by reflecting on the pain some of you have expressed.

We come here because we want to be together, in our fullness, with all our wounds and trauma, so that we can move towards healing. 

To that end, let’s consider how we can approach anxious and hurting people with compassion. That is, after all, what we all need from each other.

The world has changed greatly in the last few years. So much feels more precarious. 

Ten thousand people rallied at Tommy Robinson’s far right march in London to a speech by Elon Musk telling the crowds to get ready for violence against immigrants. The news from Israel and Gaza, and Russia and Ukraine, and Sudan and Ethiopia, keeps rolling in, feeling ever worse. 

For me – and I know for some of you – the horrors of October 7th and the ensuing assault on Gaza marked a major turning point. In many of us, these events have brought up trauma responses we didn’t even know we had.

Since then, so much has unfolded that is out of our hands. This can feel painful when your instinct is to find solutions and assume control.

We have to accept our own limitations. I sometimes recite to myself the Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Those of us within this room do not have the power to bring about peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. We cannot get the hostages back or stop the starvation of Gaza.

That feels hard. If it were up to the members of this synagogue I have no doubt that the whole world could live in peace. 

I am certain that we could indeed solve the country’s problems and fix our hurting planet. But nobody seems to be letting us do that, outside of setting the world to rights over kiddush.

But that does not mean we have no power at all. 

The one area where we have real power is in our own homes and our own community. 

And, there, we have the power to decide how much compassion we feel.

Even in the face of our own trauma and fear, we can choose to feel compassion for others.

Perhaps you can relate: in the immediate aftermath of October 7th, I felt intensely isolated. I felt a void where compassion ought to be.

I felt, among Jews, my own people, that I struggled to find many people who felt compassion for the people in Gaza. 

On the left, as much my natural home as the synagogue, I struggled to find many people who felt compassion for Israelis. 

Initially, I narrowed my circle to a small niche of Progressive Jews with left-wing opinions. It was comfortable and reassuring, when what I needed was to feel safe. 

But if I was looking for compassion in the world, I needed to bring it into the world. I needed to model it. 

Not just with the people who I knew felt like I did, but also with those whom I assumed were miles away from me. 

It is easy to love humanity in general, and fine to pity people on TV. It is much harder to love the people nearest you when you feel so distant, or to understand them when it feels like they are living in a different world. 

How could I look for compassion elsewhere if it wasn’t in my own heart? 

How can we look for compassion if we do not feel it?

You can’t expect others to extend compassion to strangers when you can’t even have conversations with the people you already know.

I felt then – I still feel – that, perhaps, if we can feel compassion in our synagogues, and extend it out towards the world, and that others could extend their compassion too, then it might cause something to shift.  

And, ultimately, that shift might make this world, which is harsh and unkind, a little better than it has been.

The message of compassion is already explicit in the liturgy of our Yom Kippur service. 

God’s name is Compassion. 

We read the refrain that repeats throughout the High Holy Days: “Adonai, adonai, el rachum vechanun… a God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in compassion and faithfulness…”

It is a beautiful invocation of God’s qualities to help us through Yom Kippur. 

The verses come from Moses’s second acsent of Mount Sinai, when he takes the new set of the Ten Commandments in his hand. As Moses walks down the mountain, God comes with him.

As Moses chants out these declarations of God’s mercy, it is as if Moses has truly understood what kind of God he is dealing with.

He learns how the world really works. He sees that it is governed by compassion.

Just before coming to get the new tablets of the law, Moses had seen the Israelites worshipping a golden calf, and smashed up the first set of the Ten Commandments. 

These are great sins: idol worship and wanton destruction are strictly prohibited. The Israelites have been wayward. Moses has been angry. 

Still, God, abounding in compassion and faithfulness, says: “Try it again. Have another go.”

In the Talmud, Rabbi Yohanan teaches that whenever the Jewish people sin, they should think back to this verse.

In the repetition of “Adonai, Adonai,” the Jews should understand that God is their Loving Creator before a person sins, and God is their Loving Creator after a person sins and performs repentance.

God is always willing to give people another chance.

In the same section of Talmud, we learn that, in the moment when Moses recited those words, God made a covenant based on thirteen attributes of mercy. It was a promise that God would always hear our prayers.

Later, in the Middle Ages, the French commentator Rashi elucidated what these thirteen attributes were.

In each word, says Rashi, is a reflection of the type of compassion God feels. 

God is slow to anger to give you a chance to repent.

God is abundant in mercy, even with those who don’t deserve it.

God remembers good deeds even for a thousand years.

Even when we hear that God holds grudges for three and four generations, Rashi says that this only refers to people who maintain the evil ways of their ancestors. If they repent, all can be forgiven of them too.

This is how one truly maximises compassion.

So, let us be compassionate.

Let us maximise how much compassion we feel.

Our own community and our own homes are small places where we can truly practise compassion in a world where it seems so sorely lacking.

Last week, in her Rosh Hashanah address, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, of the American Reform movement’s flagship synagogue in New York, reflected on how the division in the world was creating strife even within her synagogue.

She urged her congregation to practise compassion, saying:

“It now seems that any expression of compassion for “the other side” is regarded with suspicion – as disloyal, or even threatening. Is our capacity for empathy so finite? Are our hearts so small, that if we increase our empathy for certain people, that we need to reduce it for others — until one day, we conclude: that ‘other side’ is not deserving of any compassion?”

Here, the “other side” could be so many different groups in this increasingly polarised and hostile world. 

We all want to feel like people understand our own side, but struggle to extend our understanding the other way.

You don’t have to agree with people to love them. You just have to be curious, and try to understand them.

Some days, we may be capable of less compassion than others. On those days, let’s give ourselves grace, take time out, and remember how flawed we all are.

Even on our worst days, we can always try to understand each other. We can hold our own hearts while making them permeable enough to feel others’ pain too.

When people challenge us, let’s look for the best in them. Imagine their best intentions, and try to consider what problems they might be facing.

We are, all of us, flawed and temperamental. We all ask good grace of others, and we can all give it in return.

This year, let’s try to feel compassion for the people in our own families and homes.

Let’s try to find compassion for the people in our neighbourhoods. Perhaps we will shift something in them.

Let’s find compassion for the people in our community, so that we can hold each other, in our diversity, through these trying times. 

And, as much as we can, let’s try to find compassion for everyone. 

It won’t change the news cycle, but it might change you. And you might change others. 

It is a small contribution to this world, but it is a mighty one. 

It is the best that we can do.

Behold, I am poor in deeds and lacking in merit. Nevertheless, I come trembling in the presence of the One who hears the prayers of Israel. O God, You listen to prayers and delight in repentance. Blessed are You, O God, who hears our prayers.

Amen.

Kol Nidrei 5786, Kingston Liberal Synagogue

judaism · sermon · torah

That land had neither milk nor honey

levtaylor


“There are no cats in America and the streets are made of cheese!”

In one of my favourite childhood movies, a gang of mice pranced about the film screen singing these words. There are no cats in America and the streets are made of cheese.

In An American Tail, the protagonist is a seven-year-old Jewish mouse named Fievel Mousekewitz. In his home country, the mice are terrorised by cats. They struggle to eat and sustain their traditions. His whole family dreams of making the journey across the Atlantic to a new country where they won’t face these problems any more.

In America, they imagine, the cats, which represent persecution or kossacks or fascists or pogroms, won’t exist any more. After years of not eating, America will provide them with every food they have imagined. Over the ocean, even the streets will be paved with cheese.

As the plot unfolds, the mice arrive in New York. Fievel discovers that America’s streets are no more cheesy than the old country’s, and that cats are just as prevalent. In their new land, they will also be hungry, and persecuted, and tired, just as they were in the old. Their dreams could not be realised by moving from one country to another.

In this week’s parashah, Moses sends out scouts to survey the land of Israel. He asks twelve envoys to go into the country they expect to possess and report back on its contents.

I imagine this must have been a moment of great trepidation. We today know what other countries look like. We are able to travel abroad; we meet migrants from foreign places; we have access to people anywhere in the world through media in the palms of our hands.

Not long ago, such journeys were rare. People did not know how expansive the globe was or how similar and different people around the world would be to them. Perhaps travelling merchants brought fantastical tales from places they had never been. Some maps were marked with warnings of sea monsters and dragons. For the Israelites making the journey to Canaan, it would have been their first time leaving their valley in Egypt. Anything could await them on the other side.

When they came back, ten gave their report. The land has fertile soil, with large grapes growing on vines. But the people who live there are numerous and giant. We looked like grasshoppers to them. The cities are walled, fortified, and guarded. We have no chance of taking that land, and, even if we could, it will swallow up everyone who inhabits it.

Caleb and Joshua disagreed. They offered a minority report. We can do it. We can take this land. It is a land flowing with milk and honey. As long as you obey God and Moses, you can capture that place and live the life you have fantasised about.

According to our story, the other ten scouts were struck down with plagues and punished for their transgression. How dare they give such a negative report?

Only Joshua and Caleb go on to enter the Promised Land. Rabbinic commentaries make much of how courageous and optimistic those men were. They had faith. They believed in God’s strength and their own.

But here’s the thing. Joshua and Caleb were lying. That land was not flowing with milk and honey. They really were outnumbered. They really were about to take on fortified cities. It really was unlikely that an exhausted band of runaway slaves were going to be able to conquer an entirely new country.

All Joshua and Caleb were offering were politicians’ promises. They were giving false hope to keep people in line and stop them rebelling against Moses.

They say, at this moment, God decided that this generation would not enter the Promised Land. They were too rebellious and stubborn. Only Joshua and Caleb, who actually believed in God, would be permitted admission. This was their punishment: they will not know what the Land of Israel looks like, and they will wander further.

But, if they had entered the land, the whole Israelite people would have seen that the first ten scouts were right. They would have realised that Joshua and Caleb had fleeced them. They would have seen that Moses promised them a land that did not exist.

Preachers often lament how sad it was that Moses never saw the Promised Land. But how much sadder would it have been if Moses had reached it? Imagine if Moses had travelled all those miles, given up everything, fought with everyone, and struggled endlessly, only to see that the much-vaunted land of his ancestors was just another desert.

The lands of Israel are no more fertile than the plains on the east side of the Jordan. They are filled with inhospitable desert. While the Israelites have had to fight with Amalekites and Moabites to reach their destination, in the new country they will battle Canaanites, Philistines and other tribes. For all the promises of peace, the war is not over.

Moses had brought the Israelites away from Egypt promising freedom. In the new country, there will still be slaves. There will still be priests and kings to subjugate them. There will still be debts to pay and unaffordable rents and famines and strife. They will still see death, sickness, and injustice.

How tragic would it have been for Moses to reach that land flowing with milk and honey, where he would find that it had neither. The Promised Land was not as promised.

There were still cats in America. The streets were not paved with cheese.

At the conclusion of An American Tail, the mice eventually band together to defeat the cats. Using their cunning, technology, and finding surprising friends, they build a contraption to scare away their evil persecutors. They learn that there will be cats, but that they have to work in solidarity if they want to defeat them. They discover that streets are not paved with cheese, but that, if they find some, they can share it, and in those moments they will feel sated and free.

None of the spies could really give a report on the land, because it wasn’t a place they were going. It was somewhere they imagined they might build by common endeavour.

They could have said: “That land does not flow with milk and honey. But it could. We could make it feel like it was.”

Maybe we don’t learn those things from speeches and scouts’ reports. We only learn how to work together by doing it. We only discover what we are capable of if we try.

Only by working together can we make a world that flows with milk and honey.

Together, we can free the world of cats and pave the streets with cheese.

Shabbat shalom.