Tag: Essex

judaism · sermon

Have you considered therapy?

levtaylor

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

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

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

Isaiah, you should go to therapy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shabbat shalom.

sermon · social justice · torah

How did the exodus look from the back?

levtaylor

When the silver trumpet blasted, the Israelites decamped and moved to a new location in the desert.

At the front of the procession, this seems to have been a marvellous affair. The tribal leaders assembled at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting with triumphant fanfare. God’s presence ascended from the Tabernacle as a glorious pillar of smoke in the day or a fearsome column of fire at night, and the chieftains marched in pre-assigned order behind their divinely appointed leaders: Moses, Aaron, Miriam, and the priests. 

For the men at the head of the procession, this must have felt like a victorious military march towards the future.

But what was it like at the back? How did this experience of moving through the desert feel to the people who were on the edges of this grand voyage?

Consider how many Israelites were wandering in the desert. We have heard their numbers and know they amount to the size of a small city. There were more Israelites crossing the Sinai desert than there are people living in the modern country of Luxembourg. 

In such a large group of people, most had no idea that all this pomp was happening at the front of the group. If they were midway through the camp and all the travellers were silent, they might have had a chance at hearing the vaguest echoes of trumpet blasts. But it is unlikely that anyone on the edges heard these fantastic instruments at all. 

Perhaps, at a far distance, they could see the plumes of smoke and fire to let them know they were moving. But, far more likely, the greater indication would be the others around them shifting. They would hear rumours and murmurings, and get ready to move on their encampment to its next stage.

While the priests at the front played with their horns and struck up a marching rhythm, a whole other group of people would get to work. 

The people who pitched tents would start the laborious process of deconstructing them. Breastfeeding mothers would gather up their infants in slings. Parents would call out to playing children and try desperately to cajole them into staying close. Water-carriers would haul tankards over their heads or hoist them on their backs. Animal handlers would load their donkeys and camels, and entice them to carry rations.

Our Torah is told from the perspective of those at the front of the procession. We learn their family dramas, hear the complicated rituals they performed, and picture the magnificent relationship they had with God.

For most of the desert Israelites, however, the journey was altogether different. What kept them together, more than these supranatural experiences and religious rites, were their relationships with each other. 

I think it is important to centre their stories.

I have a long commute from Essex to Surrey. If the traffic is good, it takes about an hour and a half each way. To pass the time, I spend my journeys listening to audiobooks.

This has opened up a new world of literature to me. My usual reading is philosophy and theology, but that’s hard to focus on at the same time as the road. So I’ve started listening to sci-fi and fantasy novels.

Over the last few months, I’ve made my way through a whole bunch of stories by Ursula Le Guin. As a storyteller, she is a favourite of the college principal, Rabbi Dr Deborah Kahn Harris, and was beloved by her teacher, the legendary Rabbi Sheila Shulman.

Fiction, Rabbi Deborah assured me, is sometimes the best way to get across theological ideas. I have found this to be totally true.

During my car journeys, I have listened to Le Guin’s Earthsea Quartet from beginning to end. For the first three books, this was a world inhabited by dragons, powerful mages, young kings, demonic spirits, and magic spells. It was captivating.

The fourth book, Tehanu, has a sudden change in tempo and style. It was written more than 25 years after the first novel, with the characters having aged by the same amount of time. 

At first, hearing this final book, I was somewhat disappointed. The pace is slower. Far less seems to happen. The characters, who had previously been magical heroes who cast spells and rode dragons, were now old, disempowered, and facing a world that is violent and cruel.

Only after I finished listening did I get to hear the author’s own voice. In a recorded post-script for the audiobook, Le Guin says that Tehanu looks at the high fantasy world from below. It shows what the world I had loved and lived in during my car journeys is like from the vantage of the people without power: women, workers, and children. She says this was her way to give voice to her own people in the world of Earthsea.

Now it made sense.  I was, I discovered, learning a philosophical and theological lesson from the story, just as Rabbi Deborah had threatened I would. The world, after all, can be violent and cruel, and it is especially so to those without power.

History and politics are very different when you see them through the eyes of people who don’t march at the front, but gather at the back. 

That doesn’t mean that life for workers and women is all misery. In Le Guin’s story, the powerless still have their own magic, their own rituals, their own beliefs, and build their power in community with each other.

That’s true for our biblical ancestors, too. Thanks to archaeology, we now have a better idea of what life looked like for the earliest Israelites who had no access to the Temple cult. They had their own parallel religious practices, with God centred in their homes. In their kitchens and bedrooms. They had fertility rituals, prayers they recited, and stories they told, even though they were excluded from the world of priests and kings.

This is one of the great joys of Judaism. While it has always had its figureheads who spearhead the community from the front and pronounce the direction for all to proceed, it has also always had its margins. 

Within Jewish life, those who were excluded from the centre have built a religious life on the edges. These are exciting, creative places. They are, often, where real changes are first ignited.

Today, we must pay attention to the wonderful world of Jewish life that is being created far from board rooms and conference podia. There are other Judaisms, constantly being made in people’s homes, and in communities quite separate from the centre of north west London. Why, there are even congregations south of the River! This Judaism may not always make headlines or even get written down, but it is the lifeblood of our religion.

We should, of course, listen to the sounds of the great trumpets blasting to tell us we are moving.

But we must also pay close attention to what people are saying at the back, as we move on our eternal journey to freedom. 

Shabbat shalom.

Ursula K. Le Guin
sermon · theology

Numbers don’t matter

levtaylor

In the last decade, the number of Jews in Redbridge decreased by 37%. Meanwhile, the number of Jews in Epping Forest increased by 18%, and in Havering they increased by 16%.

These are our numbers. And they don’t matter.

According to the last census, the East of England has now overtaken Yorkshire as having one of the largest Jewish populations, with over 42,000 individual Jews living in this area.

These are our numbers. And they don’t matter.

In 2022, SWESRS gained 43 new household members. In the first quarter of 2023, we continued the same trajectory, gaining 15 new household members.

These are our numbers. And they don’t matter.

None of these numbers matter.

But. There is one person sitting in the synagogue this morning, praying. That number matters. There is one person watching on Zoom, feeling connected to the community despite not being able to attend. That number matters. One of us is in hospital; another just had a baby; another is sitting shiva; another is preparing for a wedding. Yes, those numbers matter. Those ones. Those ones are the only numbers that really matter.

In general, our Scripture takes a pretty dim view of counting activities. In the Book of Samuel, when King David takes a census of the Israelites, he instantly feels guilty and repents before God. God is furious that David has done this, and sends instant punishment. A plague falls on the kingdom lasting three days and wipes out 70,000 people. 

At the time of the census, there had been 130,000 possible warriors. Now their numbers are significantly reduced. 

But why? What’s so bad about counting Jews?

Abravanel says it was a proud and haughty thing to do. David was impetuous, believing that he could control his fate by counting his people. God is saying: you like numbers? Tough. Have fewer. You think your strength comes from how many of you there are? Wrong. Have fewer.

Maybe. But that doesn’t explain the attitude to censuses elsewhere in Scripture.

In our Torah portion this week, Moses takes a census of the Israelites. Moses counted up every man of fighting age who might be able to bear arms. They counted them up by tribe: 46,500 for Reuben; 59,300 for Simeon; 45,650 for Gad… and on it went, until the census reached its total. There were 603,550 Israelites in the desert, ready to fight.

And, as it turned out, those numbers didn’t matter. They listed them all, got them into procession, and then… nothing happened. There was no war to be had. They never entered into combat. 

Instead, the entire narrative instantly pivots completely. Now, instead of talking about all the thousands of people that Moses has on command, the story shifts to talking about Aaron’s two sons, Nadav and Abihu, who died while making strange sacrifices to God. All those big numbers and none of them matter. The only ones that do matter, it turns out, are those two young priests, whom Aaron is still mourning many chapters after their deaths.

That’s right, we’re in the Book of Numbers, and the message of the Book of Numbers is… numbers don’t matter that much.

It’s individuals that matter.

The best explanation comes, I think, from the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas had survived a prisoners’ camp in World War Two. He was one of the most eminent philosophers in the world, but was aghast at how educated people had been seduced by the disease of fascism. What was wrong with his intellectual colleagues and teachers, that they could become Nazis?

The problem, he felt, was that they did not understand the value of human life. 

Every human being, he taught, is infinitely valuable. Not in the mathematical sense. In a deeper spiritual sense. Every one of us is immeasurably, inconceivably sacred. 

We cannot be counted because we are already infinite. We are already part of God, who is beyond any number. People, like God, are unique and infinite. They cannot be divided in any way. 

None of us are supposed to be counted. We are not supposed to have a number assigned to us as individuals. 

This was precisely the sin of the Nazis: they thought that they could measure, quantify, and categorise people. They were so committed to this rationalisation that they tattooed the numbers of their prisoners on their arms. 

Counting people, then, is a detestable thing. No number can be put on our lives. We were created by God to serve a purpose so much higher than any number can describe.

This is why the Torah rebukes counting. Any effort is a complete miscalculation. If you think you can work out how many people there are to prepare for war, you are wildly underestimating what you have before you. In each human being is a living, breathing, spark of the Divine, far beyond calculation.

So, let’s go back to the census. I will be honest at my own sin. I have spent ages poring over it, thinking on how many Jews there are in different areas, and working out what they mean for our synagogue’s development. I have tried to keep track of how many members we have, and where they’re coming from, and where they live. And that is, at best, an error. At worst, it is a grave underestimation of who we already are.

Rabbi Jacob Rader Marcus, one of the leaders of the American Reform movement through the 20th Century, warned: “When you survey your congregation on a Friday night, don’t count bodies, count souls. These chosen few, this elect, has a job to do: these Jews are our future; they have to save us; even more they have something to tell the whole world, to distil for all humanity what the Jew has learned after 3,000 years of bitter experience […] They taught us to abhor hatred, violence, brutality, to avoid every aspect of any concept that manifests itself in contempt for fellow human beings.”

We must count souls, not bodies. We must reject the logic of quantifying people. We must love each other as irreducible, wonderful, infinite expressions of the ultimate Creator, our God.

judaism · liturgy · sermon

Pray for the right kind of rain

levtaylor

Every day, we pray for the right kind of rain. 

The Amidah praises God’s holiness and dominion over the natural world. 

We change how we address God in rhythm with the seasons. In the summer, we thank God for making dew descend. in the winter, for bringing on heavy rains. 

For us living in cities, we can feel quite disconnected from how important this water cycle is. I only catch snippets of how it causes concern. A radio broadcast says British farmers are worried that there hasn’t been enough frost in January. In a supermarket, a cashier tells me there is a shortage of aubergines because there wasn’t enough rain in Portugal this year. 

The cycle of the right rains affects whether we have enough to eat. It can mean the difference between living safely and losing everything. There is a reason the greatest catastrophe our ancestors could imagine was a flood.

This week, we gained a sense of how important and delicate the rain cycle is. 

At the start of the week, I was heading back from a holiday in the Lake District. It was searing hot. The hottest summer we’ve ever had, people kept saying. As I climbed mountains, normally soft moss felt like dry straw under my hands. The shops had stopped selling barbecues and matches. 

Everyone said that the slightest spark could set the whole forest on fire. We would wind up like California or the Amazon, with acres burnt to a crisp. Thankfully, it didn’t happen, but I left with an awareness of the forests’ fragility and a deep concern that England was not ready for climate catastrophe. 

Only days later, I came back to intense flooding. The rains fell intensely, relentlessly. I thanked God that I was safe inside as the skies turned black and stayed that way for what seemed like days. The area around our synagogue was drenched. Charlie Brown’s roundabout flooded again. Some in this community saw damage to their property. Members of our synagogue were displaced: moved initially to the higher floor of the care home, then relocated. 

I was taken aback by how well our care team took to handling the crisis. Claire, Sue, Debz and others made sure everyone who might be affected received calls, and that anyone who needed help got it. They showed the very best of what this synagogue is for. 

But I was most impressed by the bnei mitzvah students I met this week. Jacob and Layla, twins, are preparing to come of age around Pesach, at the time when we stop praying for heavy winter rains and start celebrating the gentle dew. I asked them what they want to be when they grow up. Jacob wants to be a primary school teacher. Layla says she wants to be an environmental activist.

I have to be honest. When I was Layla’s age, I had no idea campaigning could be a job. It is a testament to her curiosity and sense of justice that she has found this out.

But it is also a wake-up call of how dire things are with our environment that Layla has to think of this job. The problems we saw this week had many causes. We have a rapidly changing climate. Companies have over-consumed fossil fuels and spoiled the ecosystem. Developers have built on flood plains. Much of the development after the Olympics destroyed natural wetlands, worsening the situation. But all of these factors share a common problem: we have taken nature for granted.

In this week’s parashah, we read: 

If you listen, if you truly pay attention, the Eternal One your God will grant the right rains at the right times: autumn rain for autumn and spring rain for spring. You will be able to eat and so will your cattle. 

But you must guard yourself against a straying heart. If you serve other gods and bow down to them, God’s anger will blaze out against you. God will shut up the sky. There will be no rain.

This text might feel familiar. It is the second paragraph of the Shema, found on page 214 in your siddur for the Shabbat morning service. You may have read it before, but it’s unlikely you’ll have heard it read aloud in any service. 

It is the custom of this synagogue, and of all Reform synagogues, to read these verses in silence. So, why do we whisper it? 

One reason is that we are very uncomfortable with what is implied theologically here. It suggests that good things happen to good people and bad things to bad people. We know this isn’t true. The righteous suffer and the wicked prosper. Our rabbis knew long ago that there is no individual reward for good deeds in this life. So we won’t say it out loud when we have doubts about it.

But what if it is true? The warnings in these verses are not about how God might deal with individuals, but the impact of actions on entire groups of people. If you don’t pay attention to the ethics of Torah, you all can be destroyed. If you worship gods other than the Source of all creation, you will find yourself helpless before the forces of nature. Cause and effect. Action and consequence. 

In the biblical world, worshipping other gods meant turning to material things. Whereas the idol-worshippers bowed down to wood and stone, what marked out the ancient Israelites was that they only prayed to the transcendental God, who held all of nature in balance.

And that is what is happening in our world today. We are disregarding our ethical obligations to care for the planet, and we are seeing what happens. People have substituted the Eternal God for the material elilim of oil and gas. We have traded humility before nature for the arrogant belief that we can control and manipulate our environment without consequences. 

Now we are living the impact. We are dealing with the wrong rains. We are witnessing floods here, in China, in Germany, in New York, and in India. 

The Torah warns us: “Do not believe you have made all this with your own hands!”

We may have built cities and roads and bombs and planes, but we didn’t make the grass grow. We haven’t made the sun shine. It’s not us that makes the rains fall. 

All that is in the hands of a supreme Creator, who has charged us with protecting and sustaining this planet. We must hear, and truly pay attention, to that God, whose Word calls to us today. We must take up the challenge of replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy; of rebuilding our world in harmony with nature, rather than against it; of tackling carbon emissions and climate disaster. We must enable Layla to inherit a living planet so that she actually has something to protect.

We must act now. 

Shabbat shalom.

This sermon is for South West Essex and Settlement Reform Synagogue, 31 July, Parashat Eikev

sermon · social justice · theology

What do we stand for?

levtaylor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We stand for equality.

We stand for the emancipation of all of humanity.

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

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

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

That is where we stand.

Shabbat shalom. 

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