Tag: high holy days

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

Evil will not win inside my heart

levtaylor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A few years ago, Rabbi Robyn Ashworth Steen wrote: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I am not giving up. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Evil will not win inside my heart.

I will hold onto hope until the very end.

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

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

high holy days · story

How the ancestors tamed their shadows

levtaylor

Some stories only make sense in the light of day. When the morning lights shine on your tent and the campfire no longer illuminates the storyteller in orange, the ghost stories from the night before lose their shimmer. When the puppets have been put away and no longer parade before backlights, the characters that once seemed so real disappear to wherever fictions go when they are finished.

Such is the story of how our ancestors tamed their shadows. 

If you can trust your shadow to do as you do and move as you move, you can thank your ancestors for taming it. Today, you know that when you turn out the light, your shadow will disappear, but that was not always the case.

Once, a shadow was a feral thing that strutted and fretted after every human step until it walked no more, then stapled itself to some other form.

If you tried to write by candlelight, the shadows flew across the pages and distorted every word. If you wanted to read the time from a sundial, the shadows danced in circles to disrupt what you could see. So, when the shadows were unruly, there was no recorded time.

Since the first rays of light beamed down millions of miles and crashed into the first mountains, the shadows had lived on earth. They were older than life – and just as frightening. 

When a tree stood perfectly still on a summer’s day, its shadow performed the forest’s rotting, decaying destruction. If a bush sat contentedly in a field, its shadow depicted it expanding outwards and throttling every other plant.

Shadows followed people. They lurked behind every being, showing human beings their dark side. 

A woman could happily walk through an orchard without touching a thing, but her shadow snatched the apple shadows from every branch, gobbled them up, snapped the branches, chopped down the trunks, and threw salt on the soil. 

When you looked back at the solid world, nothing had really changed. The shadows were just animations of people’s worst fears about themselves.

When human beings created the earliest civilisations, the shadows mocked up their own. The shadows of towns were burnt out ruins turned into snake pits with buzzards circling overhead. From atop a hill overlooking a community like this one, you would see the shadows of smoke and ash rising from a destroyed city.

If you were bold enough to listen, you could even hear the screams.

Yes, the shadows had voices.

When Cain committed the first murder, his shadow crouched, waiting for him in the doorway, like a bailiff to collect debts. The shadow walked behind his every step, reminding him of who he was and what he had done.

When two friends reached out to hug each other, the shadows made a puppet show of them attacking one another with fists and weapons. They hissed insults, dredging up every past slight, and insisted on each other’s worst traits.

The darkness was a terrifying thing and the shadows were a menace. So our ancestors worshipped the light. They praised the sun and hated the moon. They saw goodness in all that shone, and feared anything that cast a shadow. 

They called the god of light Adonai: the Commander; the Sovereign. They prayed: 

ברוך אתה יהוה עשה את האור

Blessed is the Sovereign, creator of light.

They called the god of darkness El: the Spirit; the Power. They prayed:

ארור את אל בורא את החושך

Cursed is the Spirit, maker of darkness.

A black silhouette sculpture depicting an angel with large, feathery wings embracing a man in a hat, showcasing intricate patterns and a dynamic pose.
The Wrestle in Steel, Grisha Bruskin

After Jacob betrayed his brother, Esau, and stole everything from him, Jacob’s shadow trailed behind him. Everywhere he went, Jacob’s shadow re-enacted his deception. It whispered to him that he was cruel, callous, untrustworthy; and, because of this, that he was unworthy, unlovable, unsalvageable. 

One night, exhausted by his shadow’s relentless attacks on his character, Jacob leapt at his own dark form and tried to strangle it. 

But the shadow fought back. The man and his shadow wrestled until morning came, when the shadow dislocated his hip from its socket. As the sun rose, the shadow gave Jacob a new name: Yisra-El; the spirit-wrestler; the one who fights with dark powers.

From then on, the ancestors knew that they could fight with the shadows. They also knew that they could not win. They called themselves the people of Yisrael: the nation that struggles with shadow-spirits.

The shadow is the closest thing to a human being at every moment. It dogs you, even when you think there is scarcely a source of light. So, what can you do when your shadow chases you, accuses you, and torments you? What can you do with something that attacks you when you cannot hope to gain victory over it?

You ignore it. 

Our ancestors pretended their shadows were not there. However grotesquely violent they made their shapes or malevolently cruel they made their whispers, they took no notice.

In the time of the untamed shadows, people were polite and kind and spoke with quiet voices and rarely displayed anything that looked like anger, pain, or fear. Meanwhile, their shadows acted out the most tumultuous scenes and displayed every possible hostility. This was how our ancestors lived for generations.

Until they could no longer.

One morning, the children poured out into the central square of their town to play, in the way that children so often do, while their parents made breakfast.

Already there in the plaza was a quiet girl who rarely joined the others’ games and often wasn’t invited. She was doing something with her shadow that nobody had seen before. 

She was playing. 

She hopscotched along the cat’s cradle court, then her shadow did the dance on after her. 

And the shadow was doing something they’d never seen before either.

The shadow was laughing. 

No, giggling.

The girl and the shadow acted out the game like friends. 

For a while, the children stopped and stared at the strange unfolding game. 

Had a grown-up entertained such a risky activity, their peers would have quickly put a stop to the behaviour. But children are less aware of social rules, so don’t always enforce them. Nobody dragged her from the danger of her game. The kids just gawked. 

And, after a while, they realised something. The shadows were gawking, too.

Eventually, a couple of kids ventured over and asked if they could join in playing. The little girl cheerfully assented. As did her shadow.

The children’s shadows whispered: “Let us play too.”

So the young and their shadows played together.

This is not to say it was all smiles. The shadows pushed each other, cheated, cut queues, and grabbed each other’s hair. But they kept playing. The children blurred the lines between body and shadow; between fun and fight; between propriety and play.

By the time that grown-ups came out to call the children in for breakfast, it was already too late. Everyone under a certain age was engaged in hopscotch or jump-rope or chase, and their shadows were playing too. 

Upon the sight, the adults’ shadows flew into murderous rages. The dark forms of parents grew into monsters with gnashing teeth and scythe-like claws and hissed at the infants. 

In their solid forms, the parents crouched gently beside their young ones, doing all they could to keep their eyes from the violent puppetry being played out on the ground. They whispered: “what are you doing? Why are you playing with these monsters?”

The children’s shadows recoiled into small balls like startled hedgehogs and cowered from their raging carers.

But in the visible world, the children stood firm. They placed their hands on their hips and spoke with indignation. They described to their parents exactly what had happened. 

And the girl who had initiated this entire transgression asked: “why have you never played with your shadows before?”

A table with various objects illuminated by lights casting playful shadows on a wall, showcasing a whimsical scene.
Hans-Peter Feldman, Shadowplay

“You can’t ignore your shadow,” she insisted. “You have to ask it questions. When she’s angry, you need to ask her what she’s feeling. When she’s frightened, you need to ask her what she needs.”

When they came to tell of this day many years later, it was a final and outright undoing of years of suspicion, after which everything fell into order. In reality, everything took more time, and included many setbacks. After all, they were undoing conventions that went back to the dawn of civilisation. 

But let us tell the story in its truncated folklore form. On that day, every ancestor turned to every shadow and started a conversation. From that moment on, they stopped ignoring the dark alter-egos that haunted them.

They saw that when these apparitions enacted violence, they were acting out their anger. They came to understand that when their shadows cowered, they were showing they were afraid. And that, when they snatched and grabbed from others, they were just exhibiting jealousy. 

They learned that shadows could offer them shelter, protection, and shade. They learned that anger, fear, and envy could help them live better lives. They learned that they could not run from their shadows.

They were their partners. They were their playmates.

The shadows could not be separated from their bodies. The ancestors themselves were their shadows, and their shadows were them. 

How wrong the ancestors had been about their God! There were not two powers in Heaven. The Sovereign and the Spirit were not separate deities: they were the same divinity in different guises. 

Just as the shadow was an answer to the body and the moon was a mirror of the sun, the god of daytime and the god of night were one. 

They ceased to talk about יהוה the Sovereign and אל the Spirit. Now they called their God by one name: יהוה אלהינו – our Spirit the Sovereign.

How wrong the ancestors had been to shun shade and revile darkness! Now they recited a new prayer:

ברוך אתה יהוה אלוהינו מלך העולם עשה האור ובורא את החושך

Blessed is the Sovereign, our Spirit, who rules the world, creator of light, and maker of darkness. 

Yes, Blessed is God, who brings on all.

You would imagine that it was the shadows who changed and became the static fixtures we recognise today. But, no, it was our ancestors who changed first. 

They became more curious about their own needs. They became more open about their desires. 

And, as it turns out, they didn’t kill each other or rob each other or hurt each other when they engaged with their shadows. In fact, all those things happened far less often. 

They were, however, more coarse and more abrupt. They were far more honest and far less polite. They had more conflict. They cried more, blushed more, and told each other they were angry more.

And they got on better with each other, and with themselves.

And then… well, the shadows did not need to come up with their aggressive dramatisations any more. And they started to look just like the bodies they were following. The shadows and the bodies merged to share the same borders, side-by-side.

Never again would they be deceived into dismissing any part of themselves. Never again would they imagine that anything did not come from the same single God.

So they taught themselves a new mantra, which they passed on to their children, and they to theirs, until many generations had passed. They told their descendants to say it three times every day and recite it whenever we prayed. They were to repeat it on waking and lying down; at home and on the way; at every moment of the day.

This was what we had to say:

שמע ישראל יהוה אלהינו יהוה אחד

Remember, O nation who struggles with shadow-spirits, the Sovereign is the Spirit. All aspects of God are One.

Such is the story of how the ancestors tamed their shadows. 

Now, hear this, all you who have come to synagogue on Kol Nidrei. You are the spirit-wrestlers. You are the descendants of those ancient people who used to fight with shadows. 

Know that you still have a shadow. We all still have dark parts of ourselves: those silhouettes shaped just like us that follow us around feeling angry and scared; greedy and sinful; violent and cruel. There are, perhaps, still high-pitched whispers dogging us, that tell us the worst versions of ourselves and everyone else are true. 

You cannot ignore your shadow all the time. And Yom Kippur is a pretty good time to face it.

Your shadow is not a foreign enemy to be destroyed. It is a part of you. It generates the feelings you would rather ignore, like jealousy, rage, lust, and fear. But all those feelings are part of you. You can’t fight them away.

Nor can you let your shadow conquer you. You can’t let your anger or envy control you. You must engage with the parts of yourself you most despise in order that the version of you you like best can thrive.

Instead, when you meet your shadow, as you are likely to do during today’s solemn fast, be gentle with it, and kind. Ask it questions, and see what it can teach you. Play with it, and see if it can bring something to your life. Tame it, like a friendly pet.

In Judaism, there is only one Source. God has no opposite, no partner, and no comparative. All that exists comes from the same God, and all is balanced towards the good. Everything that exists in you – your greatest virtues and your darkest impulses – come from God. All of it needs to be seen for what it truly is.

If this story has offended, remember that you can shake off these shadows as soon as you leave here, and it will disappear to wherever fictions go when they are finished. 

But if this parable is useful to you, tomorrow morning, when we return to our prayers, let us try to make friends with our shadows. 

After all, some stories only make sense in the light of day. 

The Shadow, Omer Davidov

high holy days · liturgy · sermon

Circumcise your heart

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 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

high holy days · sermon

To be the head and not the tail

levtaylor

Everything has changed. Everything keeps changing. 

We meet tonight to pause. 

Tonight is a return to a definite, reliable point in the calendar. While the world spins on outside, for a brief moment, we stop. We reflect. We take stock of all that has changed, so that we might change too.

You have already seen this evening many simanim – symbols of the Rosh Hashanah seder. These small tokens speak to us about what the festival means.

There is another one, though, that you won’t see here, partly because our synagogue is a meat-free site, and partly because it just would not feel right in a Liberal synagogue. 

It is a ram’s head.

Yes, in many New Year seders throughout the centuries, Jews would place the carcass of a sheep’s skull in the centre of the table. This tradition goes all the way back to 9th Century Babylonia.

By the 15th Century, the German rabbi, the Maharil, explained the custom using a phrase from the Psalms: 

שנהיה לראש ולא לזנב 

– that we should be the head and not the tail.

There is a play-on-words here. After all, what does Rosh Hashanah literally mean?

The Rosh is the head. It is the head as in the beginning; it is the head as in the body part; and it is the head as in the one who has control. 

This symbolism works because, in Hebrew, a word contains multiple meanings and associations. 

So, the fish head represents our being on top of our own lives.

Now, what about hashanah? The word shanah does indeed mean year, but its root ש-נ-ה also means cycle, difference, repetition, or change. 

This makes sense: a year is a cycle, a return point that we repeat, each time observing the change. 

So Rosh Hashanah does mean “start of the year.” But, through the associations with the words’ other meanings, Rosh Hashanah is also “the master of change.”

Outside of these walls, the world is full of changes. AI unleashes new technology into a society that has already been completely transformed by the Internet. Our climate is changing, and we are truly starting to notice its effects on our own seasons. 

International relations are changing: violence, war, and fear feel like a new normal. And, of course, we are only a few years out of global pandemic and lockdowns.

So, at this juncture, we return to the start, and try to find a small oasis of calm to reflect on this changing world. 

Yet, inside these walls, things have changed too. This is my first High Holy Days with you. This is your first High Holy Days in the newly refurbished sanctuary. This is our first High Holy Days where we have voted to join a new movement. 

This is our first time doing the High Holy Days without the choir in every service and, as you will see, that means we are changing how we do music.

In every case, these changes will evoke many feelings, including excitement, trepidation, loss, and growth. This is a chance to face all our feelings. 

Change is inevitable. Change can be good. And, yes, change is hard. 

I don’t know about you, but I have changed. I have not just grown a year older since the last Rosh Hashanah. I also feel like I have aged many decades in the last few years.

The world transforms and I shift with it. As I shift, I do not even always notice the ways I change, or work out what they mean. 

I don’t even have time to decide if I like who I am becoming before I find that things changing again.

So, at Rosh Hashanah I come to this space, this synagogue, this everlasting home with God, and ask: can I love myself better? Can I love my community? Can I muster up the strength to face all that is changing? 

Can I find a way to be the head and not the tail?

Blessed are You, Eternal One our God, who gives us the power to change.

high holy days · sermon

What did Jonah do inside the whale?

levtaylor

A simple Jew prays to God on Yom Kippur, and says “Ribon shel olamim, ruler of the Universe, I do not have much to repent of. Not compared to you. Unlike you, O God, I have not taken away children from their parents; I have not taken away parents from their children; I have not allowed disease and starvation and war. Compared to you, Holy One, I have been a saint. So, this year, I won’t be repenting. It’s your turn to repent.”

The rabbi asks him, “what were you praying there?” 

He tells her all that he’s said.

She says: “You fool! You let God off too easy. You should have told God to bring about the Redemption as well.” 

I don’t know about you, but I haven’t felt much like repenting this year. After all, what have I done, compared to the enormity of wrongs perpetrated? 

I haven’t killed anyone or waged any wars. I haven’t robbed anyone or embezzled any funds. To the best of my knowledge, I haven’t brazenly lied or misled. I certainly haven’t intentionally hurt anyone. I’m just not in the same league as the great sinners of our time.

And I don’t much feel like growing this year, either. Other years, I have enjoyed the stillness of Yom Kippur for reflection on being better. But I don’t feel like doing it this year. 

Sure, I’m grateful for turning off my phone so I don’t have to look at all the bad news, but that’s more about self-care than self-improvement. I’m more interested in switching off from the world than in switching onto myself. 

I mean, really, do I have to move? The world is changing so much, and not for the better. Shouldn’t I be allowed, as a one-off, to stop constantly evolving and just be as I am for a bit?

You know who else just wanted to stay still? 

Jonah.

I think Jonah knew exactly how I am feeling now. 

He was perfectly alright where he was, before God got involved and told him he needed to go and sort out all the problems of the world. 

Who was Jonah in the scheme of things? He certainly was not a big player in the wrongs of the world. All of Nineveh’s sins were enormous and happening miles away. Why should he have to change himself?

So, when God called on Jonah to get up, that was already asking too much. 

Jonah ran away to Tarshish. He shouted at God: “haven’t you got bigger fish to fry?” 

God said: “you want to see a big fish? I’ll give you a big fish!”

One came along and swallowed him whole.

Now, all of the story before is about Jonah not wanting to move and all of the story after is about what happened after God moved him. 

What happened in the whale, however, should really interest us. 

This year, I feel like I’m in the whale. I am sitting in a puddle from which I feel like I cannot budge. I am stuck here and have no idea how to get out. All around me, the waves are crashing down and there’s nothing I can do to stop them.

(A pedant will point out it’s not actually a whale. Technically, it’s a big fish, and the idea of it being a whale came later. But, technically, I’m not actually inside a whale at all, I’m in a synagogue, so I’m going to stick with the idea of the whale because it feels evocative.)

Now, I’m not even on the level of Jonah. My task is not nearly as big and I am not even inside a literal whale. So Jonah should be a good starting-place for my feelings of stubbornness and obstinacy.

What did Jonah do inside that whale? He despaired. He observed. He prayed. He sang. He learnt. And, eventually, he repented and grew.

So, this Yom Kippur, let’s engage with the whale. Let’s focus just on the three days Jonah spent inside the belly. Maybe we can learn from Jonah what to do when everything feels too overwhelming but we know we have to change anyway.

The second chapter of the book of Jonah is not narrative-form, like the rest of the book. Only the first verse, where Jonah gets swallowed by the whale, and the last verse, where the whale spits Jonah back out again, follow a linear storyline. 

The rest of the chapter, only eleven verses long, reads more like a poem. It is a song, where each verses contains a parallel structure. It would fit just as well in the Book of Psalms, where there are similar supplications to God. 

If the second chapter of Jonah is a journey, it is only a spiritual one. Jonah himself remains completely static, stuck in the belly of the beast. 

His soul, on the other hand, begins in the depths of despair, goes through questioning and defeat, recognises the glory of God, and finally comes out committed to getting out there, thanking God, making offerings, and taking part in the deliverance.

This feels like the most important chapter to us, then. We are just sitting and standing in the same space. But we are expecting our souls to move. 

I am feeling stuck in a world I cannot change, but I know I have to get somewhere else spiritually. We can’t just sit around here and hope to become better people. We know it needs work. But without a narrative, how do we know what to do?

Well, in the spaces left by the absence of narrative, the rabbis come up with their own stories. Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer is a collection of creative writing, compiled over many generations, that retells the biblical stories. These are our midrash, and in this rabbinic fan-fiction, we get a story to go with everything that Jonah says. 

From these stories, we might come up with our own meanings of what we should be doing here.

The first thing Jonah does is acknowledge where he is. He accepts that he is in the belly of the fish.

The midrash gives us a grandiose interpretation of what that looked like. It was like entering into the great synagogue: an enormous, echoey chamber. The fish’s eyes were two great windows, so that Jonah could see what was going on underwater. Inside the fish was a giant pearl, which illuminated the belly and shone out towards the sea. With a lamp and windows, Jonah had a clear vision of where he was.

What can we learn from this? We learn that we need to be honest with ourselves about where we are. The world is a bit of a mess right now, and there’s no point putting on a happy face and pretending everything is OK. Equally, we are pretty safe here. We in this room are not under attack, and the risk we would be is very low. 

So, start by taking stock of reality. Where am I? I’m in a synagogue, sitting on a comfy chair, with my feet planted on firm ground. I can see the lights of the room and smell that familiar sweet must of this religious space. 

But it’s not enough to just say where we are. We need to say how we feel. That’s what Jonah does next. 

He says: “I am crying out to God from my narrow-straits, please answer me.” Jonah says, “I am crying out from the belly of Hell, may God hear my voice.”

The midrash says, that’s exactly where the whale took him. It plunged him right down into the depths and showed him the gates to Hell. 

So, we need to do the same. We need to ask ourselves how we are really feeling. Be honest about the frustrations and worries and anger we feel. 

Next, Jonah finds a way to relate what is going on to what has gone before. In the depths of the ocean, Jonah says, he sees the billows and waves and reeds. 

According to the midrash, this is because the whale took him on a tour, not just of the sea, but of Jewish history. The whale showed Jonah the foundations of the earth, deep on the ocean-floor, and reminded him that God had made the world. The fish took him to the Sea of Reeds, and showed him the flora of the spot where the Israelites had crossed out of Egypt.

Faced with adversity, we have to remember that it has happened before. Once, there was nothing, then the world came into being. Once, we were slaves, but then we were freed. Wars and persecutions and empires have all come before and, somehow, our people have survived.

We, as individuals, have also survived challenges before. How recent was the Covid pandemic? We can take pride in our own resilience at getting through such troubles before.

Knowing what had gone before, Jonah was able to feel confident that he could face what was to come. Jonah cries out: “You saved my life from the very pits, O Eternal One my God!”

The midrash says that this came when the whale took Jonah down to meet the great sea-monster of the deep, Leviathan. Jonah told that nautical dragon: “You may think you are going to swallow me up, but I carry the promise of Abraham, and I know that one day, when God chooses, it will be you who gets eaten by the righteous.”

Like Jonah, let’s look at the problems ahead of us, and say: “I have faith. I can face you.”

Next, Jonah reflects back on what he has learned. He notices: “Those who cling onto empty folly forsake their own welfare.” He had been willing to stay where he was, clinging onto old vanities, but he did so at the expense of his own soul.

So, he proclaims, instead: “I, with loud thanksgiving, will sacrifice to You, God.”

We, too, can be grateful for what we have, and take on this next year in service of our Creator.

That is the journey on which Jonah took his soul, and it is where I hope to take mine over this Day of Repentance. 

I said I wanted to stay still, but stillness is not inactivity. The Rambam understood that serious thinking was the most active you could be. It connects you directly to that Most Active Intellect: the thinking, living God. 

In stillness, you can nurture who you are. Jonah was stuck in an underwater pit, but that was when he got most energised. It was when he really engaged in the audit of his soul.

This year, I have spoken to friends and community members and witnessed them say things they normally would never. People who would ordinarily be very liberal, turn racist. People who are normally very peaceful, justifying violence. People who are normally pretty discerning, regurgitating conspiracy theories. People who are usually nuanced, turn to absolutist thinking.

I am not saying this with any judgement. I say it because I’ve done it too.

And when I meet this now, I try to say to myself: I know you are scared and angry, and while you are feeling scared and angry, you can hold all those feelings. You are inside the whale. 

But one day, please God, you will be released from this whale, and you will have to reckon with who you became there. 

Take care of your soul. It is a precious gift. Don’t let it become too cynical or warped by the horrors that surround it.

That’s my goal for this Yom Kippur: to hold my soul with gentleness, and ask it to be porous and empathic and kind.

I am here, inside the whale. I cannot change what whale I am inside. I cannot stop the waves from crashing or remake the world so it is less scary. 

I can only change what I can change. And what I can change, in this moment, on this Yom Kippur, is myself. I just have to deal with who I am here and now. 

So, let’s be like Jonah. Let’s accept the whale we’re in, and, yes, despair, but also observe, pray, sing, learn, repent. 

And it may be that, when we finally get blown out from that great fish’s blowhole, we might still be better people than when we got swallowed up.

Amen.

climate change · sermon

This world could just as easily be wonderful

levtaylor



In the time that we are alive on this earth, it could burn in front of us. There could be droughts and famines and wildfires and pandemics of deadly diseases.

But. In the time that we are alive on this earth, it could be transformed into a paradise. The planet could become run entirely on renewable energy, with enough food for everyone, where everything that lives could have all its needs met.

Within our lifetimes, we could once more see a resurgence of fascism, racist nationalism, and global war. We might see once more the increased subjugation of women and the rise of bigoted intolerance.

But. Within our lifetimes, we might be the first generation to witness world peace. We might see a new flourishing of tolerance and inclusion. We might live in a society without inequality, where the rights of all are respected.

Why is it so much easier to imagine disaster than success? Why do we allow our imaginations to deprive us of the possibilities of a better world?

Sure, this world could be horrible. But it could just as easily be wonderful.

What world will our children inherit?

Will it be the burning dystopia that feels so present, or the perfected society that seems so distant?

The Prophet Isaiah was not sure either.

In the build-up to the High Holy Days, we read haftarot from the Prophet Isaiah. The lectionary cycle offered us three readings of warnings and six of comfort. That great leader of ancient Israel struck fear into our hearts with threats of how horrible the future might be. Then he promised us solace with visions of how wonderful life could be. Which should we believe?

In one of his prophecies, Isaiah warns that the coming world will be “a cruel day, with wrath and fierce anger—to make the land desolate and destroy the sinners within it.” He forewarns of unending darkness and exile and terror. He offers no remedy. He tells us that everyone will go to war against each other, that every neighbour will become the other’s oppressor, and nobody will win.

Yet elsewhere, Isaiah envisions a redeemed world, in which the poor see justice, and wolves lie with lambs, and refugees find home, and people beat their swords into ploughshares and no nation goes to war any more.

Isaiah holds two visions in the balance. One of hope and one of fear.

Perhaps we might say that this is the same vision seen from different perspectives: that what would be wondrous for some would seem disastrous for others. That justice for the poor would feel like tragedy to the rich. That the end of war for its victims would be calamity for its profiteers.

But that doesn’t seem plausible. Surely, there will either be outright war or there will be none? Justice may be subjective, but conflict over resources is a fact. Either everyone will have all they need or all humanity will battle fir scraps.

You might say: perhaps these prophecies were given at different points in Isaiah’s life? The historical critics argue that the book of Isaiah in fact had three different authors, all writing in different periods.

But this still doesn’t explain the discrepancy. Within even the same chapter and verse, Isaiah oscillates between dream and nightmare, holding both possibilities in contrast.

The contradiction only exists if you imagine prophets as fore-tellers of a pre-ordained history. The Jewish tradition has tended to see them instead as forth-tellers: bringing God’s word to show what might be possible.

In this week’s haftarah, Isaiah promises both together. Isaiah talks about vengeance and redemption.

Isaiah is showing us the two ways in which humanity might go, and leaving open both options. This world might be brought to its end by disaster. But it could be wonderful too.

The fear of what this world might be can sometimes keep me up at night. I think of unfolding climate catastrophes, with floods and wildfires already engulfing parts of the globe. I see escalating wars between major powers in multiple countries. I hear the rhetoric from political leaders, ramping up racism, xenophobia, sexism and transphobia. And Isaiah’s nightmares do not seem so distant.

But I am trying to rejig my perspective. There is nothing radical or interesting about pessimism. Misery is easy. It is the default for minds accustomed to defeat, prone to anticipate worst case scenarios.

But hope. Hope is harder. Hope demands far more imagination as we expand our horizons of the possible. If we have hope, we cannot give in to how things are. Hope demands of us action.

Recently, I have found reason to hope in fiction. There is a wealth of writing by Jewish eco-futurists, who create worlds set in the not-too-distant future. Instead of the dystopias imagined by 20th Century writers like Orwell and Huxley, they ask a much bolder question: what if we made it right? What would the world look like if, instead of accepting the inevitability of defeat, we projected winning?

A few years ago, TV star and beloved Essex Jew, Simon Amstell, made a film imagining a world fifty years in the future. In it, the whole world is engaged in a truth and reconciliation process, as elders try to explain to the young where they went wrong and how they rebuilt. The new world is idyllic, and all that had to happen, says Amstell, is that everyone stopped eating meat.

The film, called Carnage, is clearly satirical, and takes a self-referential jibe at preachy vegans. But it also posits something intuitively true and beautiful: a better world than this one could be possible with very small changes.

Over the summer, I have been reading the solar-punk fiction of author Sim Kern. Their works imagine alternative worlds to this one. In their major book, ‘Depart Depart’ a dybbuk haunts a Jewish youth as he makes his way through a world ravaged by climate catastrophe. Yet, in more recent works, Kern imagines alternative worlds in which humanity made steps towards addressing these disasters. Imperfect, true, and still full of tension – otherwise there would be no story – but they still pitch another reality. And inhabiting those fictional worlds has helped me realise how real they could be.

Enough with pessimism.

Sure, this world could be horrible. But it could just as easily be wonderful.

Let’s make it so.

high holy days · sermon

God has decided to let you off this year

levtaylor

At Yom Kippur, we stand trial. The Heavenly Court convenes and charges the Jewish people with its sins. 

The Accuser lays out the prosecution. They have sinned. They have betrayed. They have been two-faced. The people have been angry, cruel, violent, hypocritical, dishonest and corrupt. All the evidence is laid out before the Holy One, who presides over the case as its Judge. 

The evidence is pretty compelling. We have been everything that the Accuser says we have, and more. We cannot pretend to have been perfect. In fact, we have fallen pretty far short of decent. 

The Angel of Mercy steps forward to plead in our defence. True, the Jews have been callous and unkind, but they have also been charitable, supportive, participated in mutual aid groups, called up vulnerable people, tried to make peace with their friends and neighbours. They have done their best.

The Accuser laughs out scornfully. “I challenge you,” says the avenging angel, “to weigh up this people’s good deeds against its pad. Set their mitzvot on the scales of justice and see how they manage against all their malice. Let’s see whether their good even comes close to counter-balancing their bad.”

The Angel of Mercy is nervous. Of course, they won’t win. The good deeds aren’t nearly numerous enough. Every one has been kept and held tight over the year. This is a sure way for the Jews to lose.

Perhaps the compassionate Angel can plead extenuating circumstances. After all, we’ve been through a pandemic. There has been so much uncertainty. The Jews have had to work from home with screaming children. They have been cut off from all their usual support systems. They have dealt with unimaginable stress. 

Surely, God understands that they can’t be expected to have been on their best behaviour. Not this year. This has been the hardest year yet. And, yes, to be fair, the Angel of Mercy did make the same excuse last year, but this year really was even worse. It really was.

God interjects; raises a single finger. “Enough evidence,” God says. “This year, I have decided just to let it slide.”

Now, both prosecution and defence look confused. They glance at each other, the assembled Heavenly Court room, and we defendants here gathered in our witness box. Perhaps the Holy One has made a mistake?

“It is true,” says God “that this people Israel has done much evil, and it is true that they have done some good. Their good does not amount to much and their evil is pretty damning. Yes, there are extenuating circumstances, but they are not very convincing. I did, after all, give this Torah to all times and places, including to Covid-stricken Britain. So there is no good reason to forgive the Jews. But, having weighed up all the evidence, I’ve decided I’m just going to forgive anyway. I’m just going to pardon them. Court adjourned.”

And that’s it. That’s the end of Yom Kippur on high for another year. 

It was over quickly. But it went exactly as it did last year. And the year before that. And every year going back to when humanity was first created. 

This is the story told by Pesikta Rabbati, a great collection of stories and sermons from Jews in the 9th Century CE. According to this midrash, when Yom Kippur comes around, the Accusing Angel charges the Jews with all its sins before God.

This Angel heaps all of our sins on top of the scales of justice. They weigh down heavily, and it’s clear that the sins outnumber the good deeds.

God then gives greater value to the good deeds so that they can override the evil, but the Accuser has many more sins to submit in evidence.

So, says our midrash, God hides our sins. God wears a long purple cloak and shoves all the sins under it. God sneaks the sins off the scales, and determines to find us innocent anyway.

Our sins are removed and hidden away.

“Yom Kippur” is often translated as “The Day of Atonement,” but the literal meaning of “kippur” is “cover,” “curtail,” “tuck away.” This is the day when our sins are submerged under the great cover of God’s forgiveness. 

They don’t disappear, but God is able to hide them away and forget them. For the sake of love of humanity, God just lets us off.

Lo ‘al tzidkateinu – not because of our righteousness do we pray for God’s forgiveness, but because of God’s unending love. Only on account of God’s infinite compassion do we get to carry on. God’s forgiveness is infinite and instant. 

But if we already knew God would forgive us, why do we bother? Why turn up here for Kol Nidrei, and afflict ourselves, and spend 25 hours in prayer? What’s all this for? 

Well, it might take God only a short while to forgive, but for us it takes a bit more work. We have to go through some effort to get to a fraction of that clemency. So, we take our time to look within, examine our imperfections, and release the guilt we have been feeling. Now is the time for us to forgive.

This year may seem like it requires more forgiveness than usual. This is an unprecedented time for conflict between friends and family, personal struggles, grief, job losses and frustration. It is hardly surprising that people feel so much resentment. 

I speak to people angry about how much they have lost. Time. Money. Strength. Health. Joy. Socialising. All these things that we have been robbed of. We have struggled in ways never experienced before.

Understandably, people want to place the blame elsewhere. They project their anger onto others who they imagine haven’t followed the rules enough, or who have taken it all too seriously, or who don’t think the same way as they do. 

All that anger does is sit inside of the people who hold onto it. It won’t help get back what has been lost. The weight of holding onto slights without forgiving just pulls us down. It just holds us back from growth. The only way to move forward is to let go.

That is why we have forgiveness. We acknowledge our hurt. We take stock of the injuries. And then, although it may be painful, we let go. We accept the way things are and make peace with what can’t be undone.

So, I urge you to forgive.

You might not get closure. You might not get apologies. You might not get reconciliation. Try to forgive anyway. 

The people who have hurt you probably did much wrong. And they probably didn’t do enough to make up for it. And all the dire circumstances will not feel like enough to excuse their behaviour. If you can, excuse it anyway.

The people who you forgive might not be big enough to forgive you back. Still, consider forgiveness.

In the build up to Yom Kippur, we were supposed to apologise to everyone we wronged. You did apologise, didn’t you? Me neither. Not enough. Not completely. Not to everyone. Not for everything. 

And I know my own reasons. I have been so tired and preoccupied and overworked and anxious. I have been too busy getting by to be trusting or vulnerable. The right time to apologise just never came up. 

But I still want to be forgiven. And I know God has already found a way to be merciful towards me. So I will have to reciprocate. 

At Yom Kippur, we stand trial, and God finds us not guilty. Not because we deserve it, but because God has decided to put trust in us. Our task over Yom Kippur is to validate that trust. 

So, we will try to forgive. It is not easy. It may well feel incomplete, and some things may be beyond pardon. Nevertheless, let us try to leave some of the pain of the previous year behind. 

Let us endeavour to accept people, including ourselves, flawed as we are, and move on.

Gmar chatimah tovah.

This is my Kol Nidrei sermon for South West Essex and Settlement Reform Synagogue

high holy days · sermon

A life without regrets

levtaylor

If today were your last day, what would you make of the time you have had? Would you be satisfied that you’d lived your life right? Would you feel like you had left much undone or unresolved?

If today was your last day, would you feel confident in your end? Would you know for certain what had made your life worthwhile?

These are the uncomfortable questions Yom Kippur pushes us to consider. And they are indeed uncomfortable questions. Without even mentioning God, morality, or religion, I know that some will feel affronted by the line of questioning. I know that if I were the one being asked, I would feel affronted. I would be raising objections to the questions. 

But everything about the rituals of Yom Kippur forces us into that way of thinking. 

We dress in the clothes in which we will be buried. A kittle, or cassock, for Ashkenazim. A simple tallit for Sephardim. No jewellery, no perfumes, no fancy shoes. We are dressed not too differently from how we expect to leave this world.

We pray.  We pray that we will be allowed to live. We recount the many ways in which we might die: by fire, water, beast, sickness, ordeal. We recite vidui: the final words we expect to say on our deathbed.

We fast, afflict, and deprive ourselves. All of this is supposed to make us reckon with our mortality. It is a death rehearsal. Yom Kippur asks us whether or not we are ready for death.

Today is Shabbat Shuva, the Shabbat midway between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. While some of our readings are special to the occasion, the Torah continues where we last left it before the High Holy Days, with Moses proclaiming his last speeches of Deuteronomy. 

At this stage, Moses knows that he will die, and he contemplates his coming end. His life is over, and so is his mission. He will not reach the Promised Land to which he has travelled, and he must handover power. God tells Moses: “The time is coming close for you to die. You will soon lie down with your ancestors.”

God offers Moses no reassurance that he has succeeded in his life’s task. Quite the opposite, God tells Moses that the people will now chase after false gods, neglect the holy laws, and forget their covenant with God.

After all that. Plagues and miracles in Egypt. Signs and wonders and an outstretched hand to deliver them. They had seen the sea part and bread fall from the sky. They had received the commandments from a thunderous mountain. Now, God tells Moses, they will forget it all and ignore what they learned.

Moses must have wondered in that moment if his life had been worth living at all. His projects may not be continued. His beliefs might not be upheld. Everything he did may have been for nought. 

Yet, somehow, Moses seems to have achieved a kind of calm. He no longer protests against his Creator. He does not challenge the decree. He hands over to Joshua and lets him take the reins.

Perhaps, by this stage, Moses has learned that what matters in life isn’t whether your work succeeds, but whether you perform it with integrity. What matters isn’t whether you find out all the answers, but that you seek to learn. And what matters isn’t whether you perfect the world, but that you treat the world as if it can be improved. In short, what matters is that you do your best.

In the Babylonian Talmud, Rava tells us that, upon dying, Heaven will ask of us six questions:

  • Did you have integrity in your work?
  • Did you make time to study Torah?
  • Did you care for your family?
  • Did you try to make the world better?
  • Did you welcome new ideas?
  • And did you have reverence for your Maker?

Our task on earth is not to be wealthy or famous or powerful. It is to be honest, studious, caring, supportive, optimistic, inquisitive and loving. It doesn’t matter so much what we do with life, but how we do it.

Heaven doesn’t ask what our job was. It asks if we did it faithfully. Did we conduct our working lives in ways that we could be proud to give account of ourselves before God? Did we act as if how we treated others in business mattered for the sake of our own souls?

Heaven doesn’t ask if you can recite the whole of the Mishnah by heart. It doesn’t ask whether you mastered some sacred texts. It doesn’t even ask if you learnt your aleph-bet. Did you try? Did you take an interest in your traditions and heritage? Did you actually look to the past to see if it had any bearing on your own life?

Heaven doesn’t expect you to have had only one marriage of the right kind. It asks whether you actually looked after people. Did you care for those around you? According to palliative nurses, the most common regret among the dying is that they did not spend enough time with those they loved. At the end of life, God also challenges you with the same question. 

Heaven does not ask if you brought about salvation of all humanity. It asks tzafita lishua? Were you on the look out for redemption? Did you search for chances to make the world better? Did you hold onto hope that the world could be changed?

And Heaven does not ask if you arrived at the right answers. It asks whether you asked wise questions. Were you curious? Were you inquisitive? Were you interested in what others have to say?

Above all else, the question we are asked is whether we had yirat Hashem, awe of God. Without this, all the other questions are irrelevant. The Talmud compares someone without reverence for Heaven to someone who only has the keys to the door inside the house, but can’t actually get into the house.

Ultimately, what matters is that we treat our lives like they have meaning. You have to actually care about how you live, and believe that it really matters.

When Moses reaches the end of life, he doesn’t wonder whether it was worth it. He is faced with the far more fundamental question of whether he really lived right. 

Integrity. Curiosity. Kindness. Justice. Effort. Love.

These are the things that really matter in the end. We will get to the end and our only regrets will be the attitude we took towards life itself. 

Yom Kippur is, indeed, a preparation for death. But above all else it is a calling to live. It demands of us that we look at our lives and resolve to conduct them better, with fewer regrets.

Shabbat Shalom

fast · high holy days · sermon

Closing the Gates

levtaylor

These are the short sermons I delivered for the final two services of Yom Kippur 5781.

Yizkor

This morning, I talked about how this year could be understood through the lens of grief. Yet nothing can compare to the grief of losing a loved one. Every feeling we described, of denial, bargaining, sadness, anger and acceptance, is intensely heightened by the enormity of the lives that have been lost in this last year.

I will not say numbers. Their lives were not statistics. They cannot be reduced to the collateral damage in government reports about which measures worked best. They were full human beings, imbued with the sacred light of God. They were people with pasts and dreams, filled with stories. They were complete people, with flaws and complexities and little idiosyncrasies.

And we have not yet even begun to mourn them. In the midst of a pandemic, we have been like the Israelites in the desert, forced to keep on moving and maintaining high spirits for an undefined period of time. We keep looking straight ahead to keep our spirits awake, so struggle to look back at the hurt. Even old wounds from people long dead have returned to us, and we have struggled to find ways to heal.

Here, in this moment, for this brief service, we can take the time. Let’s stop in this space and reflect. We remember the names of everyone who mattered to us. We loved them. We cared for them. They cared for us. We admired them. We looked up to them. They took inspiration from us. We laughed with them. We cried with them. We got angry with them. We hated them. Sometimes. We spent precious time with them. We did not spend enough time with them.

And now, in this moment, we remember them. And we refuse to let them ever be forgotten.

Neilah

This year has been challenging for all of us. As much as our physical health has been at stake, everyone’s psychological wellbeing has taken a toll. Public health experts warn that we are facing a delayed mental health crisis. 

This morning, I spoke about how the year could be understood through the stages of grief. Those feelings, however, can be pathological when taken to an extreme. Sadness can become depression. Anger can become anxiety. Denying what exists and accepting what does not can result in psychosis. 

We will need to pull together in the coming year. We will need to check in on each other more than ever and find new ways to support each other. Above all, please talk about your feelings. If it feels like it’s going too much, do talk to a rabbi for pastoral support, or to a doctor for medical help. It is important that we all look after each other.

I know that we begin Yom Kippur by annulling the vows we have made with God. I think, however, this year, we need to end by making a new one. We need to promise each other we will make it. We must swear to each other that we will do everything we can to keep our bodies, minds and souls alive in the coming year. Say it to God, make it a vow.

As the gates of prayer close, I vow that I will care for myself and my community. I vow that I will be honest with my feelings and kind to my body. I vow that I will be here next year.

Next year, in a world without pandemic. Next year, in a world built back better without racism and injustice. Next year, in a world where we can see each other in person. Next year, in the building, with each other, holding hands and singing together.

We will make it to next year. Shanah tovah.