Tag: miriam

article · israel

Who will we be now?

levtaylor

The following essay is published in the Movement for Progressive Judaism’s first book, Progressive Judaism, Zionism and the State of Israel, alongside 40 other contributors.

Stand on the edge of the canyon of history.
Clasp your hands around your mouth and call out: who are the Jews?
A hundred answers will echo back at you.
Throughout the cavern, stories will reverberate. Voices saying you are monsters. Voices saying you are victims. Sounds of priests and prophets; legends and laws; heroes and martyrs. How do you choose? Which version of the story of the Jews is you?

***

From out of history come the sounds of persecution.
In September 2025, Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner appeared as a witness on the BBC’s Moral Maze. One of the panellists brought her a question. He said: “Sadly, the problem in the Middle East conflict is that both sides are right about each other. Do you share that view?”
Rabbi Laura responded with a question: “Can you finish the sentence?”
For a moment, the questioner fumbled, then put forth that both Israelis and Palestinians had “very little good intent, very little willingness to compromise.” He averred that, given half the chance, either the Israelis or the Palestinians would destroy the other. Their positive views of themselves were lies, and their demonisation of each other was the truth.
Rabbi Laura ignored the simplistic stereotyping and talked about how interconnected Israeli and Palestinian lives are.
I shuddered. I heard unspoken echoes of old European prejudices. The questioner certainly did not intend malice, but the well of antisemitism goes deep, and people draw from it without realising. Medieval passion plays depicted Jews as greedy, bloodthirsty baby-killers. Crusader propaganda portrayed Muslims as barbarous, fundamentalist hordes. The unflattering stereotypes of Palestinians and Israelis go back centuries, and do not originate from either party. They are the product of systematic othering.
Who the Jews are is not only determined from within: it is, unfortunately, a conversation with bigotry. In some minds, you are still Shylock pursuing his pound of flesh. You are the snivelling moneylender. No matter how assimilated you have become, you are Fagin trafficking children into crime.

***

Go ask Bondi Beach who the Jews are.
Dare those academics, who arrogantly proclaim that Jews are not oppressed, to tell that to Heaton Park Synagogue Manchester, or Tree of Life Synagogue Pittsburgh, or Hypermarche Paris, or Lee Park Charlottesville, or The Great Synagogue Copenhagen. From coast to coast, the voices echo.
So many places will tell you that Jews are victims. History is littered with millions of Jewish corpses. In some minds, you are still the helpless child in striped pyjamas, with a yellow star stitched on your lapel, and a number tattooed on your arm.
But don’t let that be your only answer. If we think of ourselves as permanent victims, we will rob ourselves of the agency God gave us. We will forget our power: to hurt and to heal.
We must retell our story as Jews. We cannot think of ourselves exclusively as the persecuted, and never as the persecutor.
Jews have entered history. We must take responsibility for what we do there.

***

Take a walk to the well and call into it. Ask the well who the Jews are.
The voice of the prophets will rebound, telling you that righteousness will flow out like an ever-flowing stream. You will hear the song of Miriam, whose fountain followed the Israelites in the desert; the cries of Hagar, who found water when she needed it most.
At the well of Beersheva, our father Abraham and his rival Avimelech chose to share water. Abraham, the first of our people, showed that a Jew was one who could negotiate and apportion according to need.
Still, the well may tell you that there is not enough water for everyone. That either we will drink or they will. The water might tell you that you have only one commandment, and that is to survive. If you do not drink, you will die.
Atop West Bank settlements, religious Jews rejoice at surviving. They chant: “the nation of Israel lives on; our father lives on.”
Let the water show you how some settlers have mains pipes filling their swimming pools, while Bedouin shepherds have to ration their water in butts.
Yet other Jews fight for shared resources and shared futures. Rabbi Dana Sharon stands in the way of settlers who want to attack Palestinian farmers in the West Bank. She is an organiser for Rabbis for Human Rights.
When I first met Rabbi Dana, I asked what had inspired her to get involved in peace activism. She said: “Ever since I was a  child, I wanted to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Of course, I thought the problems in my own country would be sorted by the time I grew up, and I’d have to do it somewhere else.” She knew what kind of Jew she should be, and became it.
In November 2025, Dana was shot with a drone by a settler wearing military fatigues. She was seriously injured. When I think of Dana, I believe that our father Abraham lives on. His message resounds: that sharing is a greater guarantor of survival than fighting.

***

Go to the Cave of Machpelah and stand at its entrance. This is a holy site in Hebron, where the founders of monotheism prayed. It is a tomb many thousands of years old, in Area A of the West Bank. You will have to get past checkpoints and walls and into a fortified compound, but you will find a cave.
Clasp your hands around your mouth and call into the hollow: who are the Jews? A hundred answers will echo back at you.
Here, Abraham procured a burial place for Sarah, and in turn was buried there. Abraham’s two sons, Isaac and Ishmael, came to bury him in Hebron. Ishmael had been cast out by his father. Isaac had nearly been killed by Abraham. We can’t imagine the pain they felt seeing each other, and performing a funeral for this man. Nevertheless, they prayed together at that sacred site.
Here is an answer to who Jews are. We are the descendants of Isaac, who prayed at the same tomb with his brother, Ishmael. We are the people who choose non-violence, reconciliation, and prayer.
The cave’s echoes continue, coming ever closer to the present day. The cave is a mosque and a synagogue, but the brothers do not pray together. In 1929, Palestinian rioters killed 67 Jews as part of a pogrom based on false rumours. In 1994, Baruch Goldstein killed 29 Muslims at prayer.
Murder reverberates over the South Hebron Hills. Only last year, Palestinian peace activist Awdah Hathaleen was murdered by settler Yinon Levy. Despite the assassination being filmed, the killer has not been charged with a crime.
Is this not also an answer about who Jews are? Can we reject it so swiftly because we abhor it?

***

So ask the shtetl yeshiva who you are supposed to be.
Confronted with the horrors of some Jews’ deeds, you may wish to retreat back there. You might imagine life would be simpler before Jews had power that they could weaponise against others. Maybe the Satmar Hassidim were right and we all just need to keep our heads down until the Messiah arrives.
So, go ahead. Pretend the Enlightenment never happened. Go back to the old Jewish study houses of a vanquished world. Sit at the rebbe’s table. Unless you’re a woman, of course. But, gentlemen, by all means, take a seat and open a holy book.
There, in your Mishnah, you will read: “be disciples of Aaron, loving peace, pursuing peace, loving all creatures, and bringing them closer to Torah.”
Hillel reaches out through the millennia-old books and grabs you by your shirt collar, and growls: did you think you could escape your responsibilities that easily? Our tradition demands you seek peace in your own world and lifetime. You cannot shirk away from the task of building a perfected world just because reality frightens you!
The study of Torah may happen in the yeshiva, but you live out its precepts in the streets. You fulfil the commandments by acting and taking risks.
If you want to be Jewish, you must know your past, but you cannot live there. You have to resist hatred, war, and greed in your own time. Be a disciple of Aaron. Love peace and pursue it.

***

Stand on the streets of any major city and start a chant: who are the Jews?
In New York, London, Cape Town, Paris, and Sydney, you will find people protesting for peace. In every demonstration, no matter where you are, you will find a Jewish Bloc. You will see Jews standing proud in their heritage and furious at oppression. You will hear them invoke their ancestors and their traditions in the name of human rights. Truth echoes out through skies and seas as thunderous clouds.
The prophet Jeremiah went to jail for protesting against the powerful. He chastised the false prophets who proclaimed peace where there was none. He accused them of putting tiny plasters on great gashes. Jeremiah’s rebuke of Israel was harshest because he knew that peace was possible and he saw what Jews could be.
Go ask the streets and they will tell you: those who wave placards and chant songs of dissent today stand in the footsteps of the prophets.
But the streets have other stories too. On those same marches, in other sections, there are people who chant words denouncing Jews. There are those who glamourise terror and those who monger hate.
Yes, it is true that not everyone in the coalition for Palestine is there for Palestinian human rights. Some march because they want to see Jews destroyed. Some march against militarism, nationalism, and fundamentalism. Others march for militarism, nationalism and fundamentalism of their own.
When Jeremiah denounced Israel, he chastised them they could not trust Egypt or Babylon. He attacked those who would ally with their enemies. The judgement of the prophet falls on every nation.

***

Go stand at the viewing point in Sderot. Look out over the ruins of the Gaza strip.
From this point, for two years, tourists watched bombs explode on houses like they were fireworks. Spectators could watch Jewish boots carry Jewish guns under Jewish flags into a densely-packed enclave.
Why don’t you ask Gaza who the Jews are? Will you like the answer that you hear from the unnumbered dead and rubble? Does the bombed-out rubble think the Jews are heroes?
You need not speculate. The words of Palestinians are publicly available, if you can brave the burning eyes of Gaza. Asmaa Al-Ghoul is a secular feminist in Gaza, who campaigns against the corruption of Fatah and the terrorism of Hamas. She witnessed more corpses than any soul could bear. After her cousin’s home was bombed, killing everyone inside, she wrote: “the house and its future memories have been laid to waste, its children taken to early graves, homes bombed into oblivion, their inhabitants homeless and lost, just as their camp always had been. Never ask me about peace again.”
In the days of the Judges, Samson was held captive in Gaza; all his strength sapped and his eyes gouged out by Philistines. With the last ounce of energy left in his battled body, Samson pulled down the pillars of the temple, killing himself and everybody in it.
We are brought up with stories of Samson. We call him “Samson the Hero.”
I met with a father from Gaza who had not seen his daughters in two years. They were trapped in that war zone. He told me: “They are destroying the world on top of our heads.” I wondered whether echoes of Samson were still there in Gaza, raining down destruction on their heads. Is this our hero?
In Hebrew, the word for hero, strongman, and warrior are the same. On military checkpoints, teenagers in IDF uniforms smile out from stickers, with words about who they were. For some, they are proof of ongoing Israeli heroism. All I see is dead kids, cast aside as cannon fodder for a vainglorious war.
We need to find a way of separating out heroism, masculinity, and war. Vivian Silver used to transport people from Gaza back and forth from this borderland. She lived on Kibbutz Be’eri, and was murdered there by Hamas on October 7th. 3 days beforehand, she organised a march of thousands of Israeli and Palestinian women against war.
Which is more heroic: to destroy an enemy or to make a friend? We need heroes whose strength is not in force but in fortitude.
Maybe Vivian Silver’s spirit still echoes on Gaza’s borders, too. And maybe, then, there is another way to be a Jew.

***

Go to your own heart and ask it who you are.
The great medieval sage Rabbi Moses ben Maimon told us that the ultimate question was not “what should I do?” but “who should I be?” Rambam wrote that the point of our religious laws, stories, and rituals was to help us morally perfect ourselves. Our goal should be to become the best possible human beings, in terms of character and intellect.
Rambam saw our religious inheritance as a guidebook on how to become moral agents. He taught that human beings are free to choose the right course, and showed that repentance is always available to us.
You are not stuck with a fixed version of who a Jew is. You always have the ability to make yourself anew. You can become more peaceful, more loving, and more devout. Seek to be the kind of person who wants peace and justice. Let your actions follow the highest inclinations of your heart.
Ask your heart who you are as a Jew. Let it tell you that you are a work in progress.

***

Now, return to the valley where it all began. Go stand on Mount Sinai. Surely this is the canyon of history. From atop its peak, the Ancient of Days spoke to you.
Clasp your hands around your mouth and call out: who are the Jews?
From out of this desert, the Jews spread knowledge of ethical monotheism throughout the world. At Mount Sinai, you once heard a voice: “I am the Eternal One your God, who redeemed you from the land of Egypt, to be your God.”
It is time you introduced yourself too.
Ask the canyon: who are the Jews? The question will come echoing back at you.
Canyons echo. The canyon of history is no different. If history repeats itself, it is only because we keep asking the same question.
Like a boomerang, your question returns to you: who are you?
History is Jewish. It likes to answer a question with another question.
This is your power and your burden. You must decide who you will be.
You are the answer to who the Jews are.

sermon · torah

Yet it moves.

levtaylor

In 1633, Galileo Galilei was brought before the Roman Inquisition and instructed to recount his heretical views. Galileo had said, contradictory to the views of the established Church, that the earth rotates around the sun. He had to retract this claim or face death.

So, to protect himself, Galileo assured the Church that he was wrong. The earth remained still.

As he left the courthouse where he had been tried, Galileo raised his eyes to the sky, then back down to the earth. He stamped on the ground beneath his feet and muttered: Eppur si muove: yet it moves.

Yet it moves.

For we who stand on this rock in the solar system, it does not feel like the earth is spinning. We can understand how people once thought the sun moved around them.

We, educated in our modern world, understand that the globe is rotating, and that this rotation is responsible for times and seasons.

But if you don’t know the laws of the earth’s orbit, every winter feels like a divine abandonment.

The earth feels static. And yet, the earth moves.

Hundreds of miles beneath the ground where we stand, plates are shifting in the earth’s mantle. For millennia, continental landmasses have drifted apart and pushed back together. Their pace is imperceptible from where we stand, so we cannot know what a profound impact they are having on the structure of our planet.

We, educated in our modern world, know that migration in the oceanic lithosphere explains mountains, lakes, and volcanoes.

But if you don’t know the laws of tectonic shift, every earthquake will feel like an act of God.

The ground beneath us feels static. And yet, the tectonic plates move.

Right now, the forces of history are at work.

Since the dawn of civilisation, people have arranged themselves into complex societies with varying levels of specialisation and hierarchy.

Within those systems, they have developed new technologies, made laws, and created cultures. They have struggled over resources, sometimes to the point of complete social overhaul, and sometimes to the point of common ruin.

We, educated in our modern world, know that the science of sociology explains how civilisations operate. We have learnt to recognise economic trends, like that spikes in oil prices result in increased interest rates. We have also learnt grand trajectories, like what causes empires to collapse.

But if you don’t know the laws of history, every rupture to the social order feels like a curse.

The social order feels like it will never change. Our world feels stuck on the same trajectory. And yet, the people move.

To everyone in ancient Egypt, the rule of Pharaohs felt like an unshakable fact. By the time the Israelites were enslaved in Goshen, the Egyptian empire had already existed for 2,000 years. The pyramids had already stood for a millennium.

Every Pharaoh was called Ramses and every Pharaoh declared himself a god. He claimed that he controlled the flooding of the Nile and the rising of the sun. He could not be moved.

When Moses killed a slave driver, he did not only have to fear Egyptian retribution. The Hebrews themselves were ready to mete out punishment.

Moses’s own people, turned on him and demanded: “who made you ruler and judge over us?”

Moses had rattled the social order, and this terrified even his kin. He could not be the ruler and judge over them. Their ruler was supposed to be the slave master and their judge was supposed to be Pharaoh. They could not even imagine moving.

In the Torah story, we only hear what happened forty years later, when Moses returned from his years as a goatherd for Jethro.

Yet, on his return, tens of thousands of Hebrews, and many others, were ready to leave the only land they had ever known for a barren wilderness.

In fact, even the ordinary Egyptians were in a revolutionary mood. They handed the Hebrews wealth and resources for their journey. They were co-conspirators in sedition against Egypt.

Hebrews and Egyptians alike were willing to bring down a structure that had lasted for twenty centuries, and risk existence itself.

We might attribute this sudden change of mentality to acts of god: those Ten Plagues the Eternal One wrought upon Egypt to bring down the might of Pharaoh.

But I wonder what else happened in those forty years. What were Aaron and Miriam, Moses’s siblings, doing in the four decades when their brother was absent? What did Shifrah and Puah, the rebel midwives, do in the time when all seemed lost?

I can think of no other explanation: they organised.

With Moses gone, the dissidents were preparing the Hebrews for the great exodus to come. They had faith. They knew that the slave system could be defeated. They knew that people would move.

I imagine they were knocking doors, spreading the word in the marketplace, gathering slaves for secret meetings, building alliances across the divides of race.  I imagine they were keeping hope alive; sowing seeds of possibility; encouraging people to imagine a future without domination and toil.

To those who do not know their history, the Hebrews’ decision to leave would have felt like a greater miracle than the plague of locusts.

But we know that people can shift the way tectonic plates do: so imperceptibly that anyone higher up might not even notice.

The more they move, the more they realise they have been kept captive. And then they realise they can move some more.

Then what was impossible suddenly seems inevitable.

What was unalterable becomes intolerable.

Then, it is a law of history that they will come crashing against the structures that bind them, like an earthquake.

Yes, the downfall of Egypt at the hands of rebel slaves was a seismic rupture of earth-shattering proportions.

It showed the immutable Pharaoh that everything moves.

Everything, even whole social systems, move. But today, it is easy to feel stuck.

I look at the world around me and feel afraid. It seems that, in every country, our leaders are set on a course to global war. Everywhere, antisemitism is rising and hatred is spurting out on the streets. Everywhere, governments are determined to pursue authoritarian policies.

All of this can be explained by the laws of history. When people do not have enough to live, they turn on each other. In our own history, we know that they often turn on Jews.

When people feel like the world is ending and there is no hope, they become apathetic enough to let cruel demagogues take control.

And when governments fear that their power is threatened, they can quell all dissent with a war.

Fascism and chaos both drink from the same pool of despair.

Some nights I go to sleep despairing, too.

And then I remember that is what the Pharaohs of our own time want. They want us to think that nothing can change: that racism and war are the only way.

They want to keep us heading in one direction.

But we move too.

We are the people too, and we will move where we decide to go. We do not have to follow the shift towards tyranny and hate. Like tectonic plates, we can push the other way.

We can point steadfastly towards a world of equality and peace, and insist that we will go nowhere else. If we start pushing, we can lock arms with others, and build a coalition that can defeat every despot.

Yes, we move. And when we move, God moves too.

God, the great hand of history, is always directing humanity towards justice. God’s hand may be the hardest to perceive of all the forces in the universe, but the Power of Moral Truth is always trying to push us forward.

The Eternal One, revealed through history, is most visible in eras when we decide to do God’s will.

There may be days when it feels like nothing can change.

But, everywhere, at all times, the earth spins, the tectonic plates shift, the people move, and God guides us.

We will not fall into despair. We will not stand still.

We are going to get our way out of Egypt.

We will move.

sermon · theology

Why do people get sick?

levtaylor

Why do people get sick?

In a year when so many have experienced ill health, it is worth asking why this has happened. Throughout the pandemic, we have been reminded that some will get the virus with no symptoms; some will get the virus and recover; some will get the virus and will not recover. But what determines who gets sick and who gets better? Who decides who has to suffer and who will not?

There are plenty of medical professionals in this congregation who can answer part of that question much better than I can. Statistics, underlying factors, mitigating circumstances, health inequalities, access to medicine. All of these things certainly play a role. 

But they don’t answer the fundamental question that animates us: why? Why my loved one? Why me? That is not a medical question but an existential one. It is about whether there is a God, whether that God cares, and what a religious Jew might do to change their outcomes. 

For that, we look to the Jewish tradition. Let’s start with this week’s parashah. Here, we read one of the earliest examples of a supplicatory prayer. Moses sees his sister, Miriam, covered in scaly skin disease. He cries out: “El na rafa na la.” God, please, heal her, please. We hear the desperation in Moses’ voice as he twice begs: “please.” Don’t let her become like one of the walking dead. 

In this story, there is a clear explanation for why Miriam gets sick and why she gets better. Miriam’s skin disease is a punishment. She insulted Moses’ wife, talking about her behind her back with Aaron. 

When she gets healed, it is because she atones for her sins and Moses forgives her. She goes to great lengths of prayer and ritual to have her body restored. Sickness is a punishment and health is a reward.

In some frum communities, you might still hear this explanation. All kinds of maladies are offered as warnings for gossiping. When people get sick, they’re encouraged to check their mezuzot to make sure their protective amulets are in good working order. 

In some ways, these are harmless superstitions. When everything feels out of control, why not look for reasons and things you can do? But hanging your beliefs on this is dangerous. Plenty of righteous people get sick and plenty of wicked people lead long and healthy lives. 

If you follow the logic of this Torah story, you run the risk that, when your loved one’s health deteriorates, you might blame them for their ethical conduct, when really there is nothing they could do. It is a cruel theology that blames the victim for their sickness.

In the Talmud, the rabbis felt a similar discomfort. They decided that skin diseases were an altar for atonement. When people got sick, it was God’s way of testing the most beloved. The righteous would suffer greatly in this world so that they would suffer far less in the next.

When Rabbi Yohanan fell ill, Rabbi Hanina went to visit him at his sick bed. He asked him: “Do you want to reap the benefits of this suffering?” Rabbi Yohanan said he did not want the rewards for being sick, and was immediately healed. 

We hear these ideas today, too. People will say that God sends the toughest challenges to the strongest soldiers. But I don’t think this theology is any more tenable. How can anyone say to a child with cancer that their sickness is an act of God’s love? Who could justify such a belief?

No. The truth is that these theories of reward and punishment should leave us cold. We live in a world full of sickness and suffering, and it’s attribution is entirely random.

Maimonides, a 13th Century philosopher, saw that these explanations for sickness did not work. He was a doctor; the chief physician to the Sultan in Egypt. He had read every medical textbook and saw long queues of people with various ailments every day. How could he, with all his knowledge, think that sickness was a punishment or a reward?

Maimonides taught that God has providence over life in general but not over each life in particular. God has a plan for the world, but is not going to intervene in individual cases of recovery. He disparaged the idea that mezuzot were amulets or that people could impact their health outcomes with prayer. 

I feel compelled to agree with Maimonides’ rationalist Judaism. Sickness is random and inexplicable. So is health. The statistics and medical knowledge that I set aside at the start of this sermon have much better answers than I can muster.

So, what do we do? We, who are not healthcare professionals or clinicians seeking a cure? 

Like Moses, seeing the sickness of Miriam, we pray. We pray with our loved ones, not because we think it will make God any more favourable to them, but because it is a source of comfort to those who are sick. Praying with someone shows that you love them and care about their recovery. We do it for the sake of our loving relationships.

Like Rabbi Hanina, seeing the sickness of Rabbi Yohanan, we visit the sick. We attend to people, not because we imagine we can magically cure them with words, but because company is the greatest source of strength in trying times. We go to see people in hospital, not for their bodies, but for their souls.

And, like Maimonides, we approach the world with humility. We refuse to believe in superstitions that are false or harmful. We accept that we live in a mystery and there is much we do not know. 

In this time of sickness and difficulty, it is very Jewish to ask: “why do people get sick?” The Jewish response to questions is to ask more questions. And the most Jewish question we can ask here is: “when people are sick, how can I help?”

Shabbat shalom.

I gave this sermon at Newcastle Reform Synagogue for Parashat Behaalotchah on 29th May 2021.