Tag: talmud

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

festivals · high holy days · sermon

Why won’t God answer my prayers?

levtaylor

Now and again, members of this community will say to me: “I’m hoping for sunshine this weekend. Can you put in a good word?” Or “You’ve got a direct line. Tell the One upstairs to sort these problems out.”

I have to say. Do you really think that if God was listening to me the world would look like this?

A pious Jew turns up every dawn to the Kotel, the Western Wall, in Jerusalem and prays there until sunset.

A journalist comes and asks her: “what do you pray for?”

She says: “I pray for love, peace, and understanding throughout the world.”

The journalist asks: “And how do you feel, praying for such righteous things at this holy site?”

The pious Jew answers: “Like I’m talking to a brick wall.”

The Kotel is really a relic from a religion that no longer exists. It is the remaining ruined wall of the ancient Temple religion.

To the ancients, that wall may really have felt like a gateway to God. But, for modern Jews, it’s just a wall, no closer to Heaven than anywhere else.

To the Israelites of Temple times, the priests may really have felt like divine messengers, holding the keys to connect with the spiritual realm.

But we got rid of all that, and replaced the Priests with rabbis, who are just ordinary people. At best.

We no longer have holy places or holy people. Instead, we have holy time.

This is the season when the gates of repentance open. From the start of Rosh Hashanah until the end of Yom Kippur, there is a gateway in which we may seek to become better versions of ourselves.

This doorway is called Yamim haNoraim: the Days of Awe. The final service of Yom Kippur is called neilah, which means closing. That’s when the gates of repentance shut.

We stand in the threshold, in the brief passage when those doors are open.

Each year, we pray that God hears us. In the special blessings of the new year, we ask that God remember us for good; give us blessings; and grant us a good life.

Each year, we pray to God. We pray for the sunshine and rain in their due season; for security and prosperity in our own lives; and for all evil to be kept away from us.

Does anyone else feel like God isn’t quite delivering?

Often, I feel like I pray, but God doesn’t answer.

If you have managed to hold onto your faith and believe that God is with you even through all the trials of life, I admire you.

I don’t find it so easy.

I can feel the presence of God, who is the Source of all justice. But I look at our world, and feel how unjust it is.

The Psalmist says: “open for me the gates of righteousness; that the just may enter in!”

But it feels like the gates of justice are sealed shut. Why is there so much in this world that seems so profoundly unfair?

When I’m stuck with a question like this, I turn to the Talmud. Those Babylonian rabbis of old always have some good answers. And I never agree with any of them.

Because the Talmud doesn’t tell you what to think, it tells you how to think. So, in the tractate of Talmud focused on blessings, Talmud gives a few possibilities.

Maybe I’m praying for the wrong things. Maybe God can’t do what I’m asking. Or maybe God can’t hear me.

And maybe, maybe, God is listening to me, and it’s me who isn’t listening to God.

So, let’s explore the options, as they’re set out in the Talmud.

Talmud says some prayers are pointless. If you ask God to change the past, you’re praying in vain. If you hear a scream on your street and you pray it’s not in your house, you’re praying in vain.

On one level, Talmud is just saying God doesn’t do time travel. But I think there’s a deeper meaning here. I think Talmud is saying: bad things will happen in the world, and you cannot stop them from happening to you.

We cannot go back and change the past because suffering is built into the human condition. There are things I pray for, like the eradication of all sickness, that God just can’t do.

Human beings may have been able to defeat many illnesses over the last two centuries, and medicine today is capable of remarkable things.

But so long as we are human, we will be mortal, we will get sick, and we will experience pain.

As long as there is suffering in the world, some of it will happen to me and the people I love. God won’t open the gates of Heaven to do favours for the favourites.

So, if I only pray for the right things, will they happen?

The Talmud’s answer is: still, no.

Rabbi Elazar teaches: Since the day the Temple was destroyed, an iron wall separates the Jews from God.

On the one hand, we might take that literally, and imagine that God was busy in people’s lives until year 70 of the Common Era, then lost interest when there were no more chicken sacrifices on the altar, and decided to leave us all to it.

If only we still had a stone structure in Jerusalem, we could take a baby goat to a priest, and all our problems would disappear!

But I doubt it. Even in the time of the Temple, the Prophets were very suspicious of the supposed claims of the Priests to do magic. The Talmud is the project of the rabbinic movement, which was sceptical of the Temple cult.

More likely, the Talmud is answering a question that reading the Torah poses. Why God isn’t helping.

God rescued Noah from the flood: why not us? God parted the sea for Moses: why not for us? God fed the Israelites with manna from Heaven: why not us?

These stories belong not to a historical past but to a mythic time. They happened at the same time that giants roamed in Canaan, donkeys spoke in Moab, and dragons were slain in Persia.

That fantasy time has to end somewhen. God clearly doesn’t do magic anymore.

But this explanation feels inadequate. If I’m praying for the right things, and God has the power to perform miracles, why don’t they happen?

Talmud has another answer, because: “Rabbi Elazar also said: Since the day the Temple was destroyed, the gates of prayer were locked.”

We may imagine ourselves outside a great castle, calling out to be allowed entry. But nobody can hear us.

I might pray all day every day, but nobody can hear. I might shout and scream for God to solve all the world’s problems. But no message is getting through.

It’s not that God doesn’t care. It’s not that God can’t do anything about it. It’s that, for some reason, God cannot hear what I’m asking for.

For Rabbi Elazar, that sad fact is baked into the universe. God is listening, but cannot hear.

I can make whatever demands I like, but they go nowhere.

But Rabbi Elazar offers us some comfort. He says: “Despite the fact that the gates of prayer are locked, the gates of tears were never sealed.”

All my demands from God, whatever I shout for, won’t be heard. But my tears will.

God may not hear my orders, but God will hear me when I cry.

In our haftarah, Hannah goes and stands in the Temple to pray for a child.

Hannah’s soul was bitterly afflicted, and she wept incessantly. She whispered in ways those around her could not understand. She was so distressed that, to the Priest who saw her, she looked drunk.

Abarbanel, a 15th Century Portuguese commentator, says that Hannah was filled with tears, to open the gates of tears, because they are never closed. Then God would join her in her sadness.

Now, we must imagine something new. So far, we have been putting out protests, petitions, and pleas. But God hasn’t heard any of them.

Now, instead of our demands, we offer tears. Consider how different this is. A request requires an answer. Action. Yes or no. And you can ask God for whatever you like, but you won’t get it.

Tears are different. When I cry, it comes from a place of real grief, sadness, and exhaustion.

I cry when all the bluster is gone and I’m stripped back to my most vulnerable self. I’m not telling God what to give me anymore. I’m just telling God I’ve got nothing left to give.

And God hears that.

The gates of tears are never closed. There are no locks, no doors, no iron walls, that can stop God hearing when we cry.

And then God cries too.

Tears can’t be answered with magic solutions. The only way to really answer a crying person is to hold them and sit with their pain. So that’s what God does.

God joins us in our sadness.

I cry to God that the people I love get sick and suffer. And God weeps back, because that hurts God too.

I cry to God that the world is a mess, filled with war, hatred, and environmental destruction. And God weeps back, because that hurts God too.

I cry to God about how the innocent die and the wicked succeed. And God weeps back, because that hurts God too.

I say to God: please, do all you can to make this world just a little more just. And God answers: please, you do all you can to make this world just a little more just.

This gate swings both ways. Open up the gates of justice in your world, so that I, the Eternal One, may enter into your space.

The gates of repentance have opened.

Now is the chance to channel our most justice-seeking selves. In these Days of Awe, we seek forgiveness. We resolve to abandon our worst habits and to cultivate our best traits. We swear we will become a force for righteousness.

But all year round, the gates of tears stay open.

God may not grant wishes like a genie, but God will always be a friend; there to share the pain.

So, on the days when I feel like God isn’t listening to me, I need to try and listen out for God.

I need to hear that I am not the only one crying. The whole world is crying. And God is crying with us.

In this season of repentance, may we all find the strength to be vulnerable, to cry when we need to, and to feel God’s presence with us through our pain.

Whatever you are facing, may God be with you.

Amen.

Rosh Hashanah morning 5787

judaism · sermon · spirituality

My body and my soul are always growing

levtaylor



A few years ago, I started putting on a lot of weight. I got a spare tyre around my waist and started to sag in unexpected places.

After a lifetime of enjoying a diet of junk food and fizzy drinks, my metabolism had finally caught up with me.

I felt a lot of shame about my body shape. At the time, I was midway through rabbinic College, and blessed to be surrounded by sensitive and thoughtful colleagues.

I took my worries to my classmate, David Yehuda Stern. I said: “I’m getting fat, and I don’t like it.”

He smiled lightly and shrugged. “My body’s changed too. But my body’s always been changing. It changed when I was a teenager. Why would I expect it to stop changing now?”

This is some of the best advice I’ve ever had, and I refer back to it often. This week, I texted Rabbi David Yehuda to ask if he’d be OK with me passing on these words of wisdom.

He said that, of course, he had no recollection of ever having said such a thing, but it sounded like an important message, so I should feel free to share it with you.

Having a healthy, happy relationship with my body has been one of the great challenges of my life. I sometimes joke that I’d be a lot better off if I didn’t have a physical form and could just be a concept.

But I definitely feel more at home in my skin at 37 than I did at 27, and certainly far more than I ever did at 17. I find some beauty, now, in accepting that my body, like my soul, is always growing and changing.

When I think about working on my spirit, I know that the perfected version isn’t the one that’s superficially nicest to look at. It’s the one that has lived, learned, and adapted from experience, maintaining its tenderness, while toughening its boundaries. Why should my body be any different?

The best version of my body will be the one that has fully experienced life: wrinkled from laughter; weathered from sunshine; built by adventure and experimentation; and, if I am lucky enough, blessed to reach a very old age.

Our haftarah for this week points us to a similar message of embracing our changing bodies and souls. The Prophet Isaiah preaches to us:

“Consider the rock from which you were cut, the quarry from which you were mined. Think about Abraham, your ancestor, and Sarah, who gave birth to your nation. Abraham was only one man when I called him. But when I blessed him, he became a great nation.”

It’s an interesting formulation, to put “the rock from which you were cut” and “the quarry from which you were mined” alongside Abraham and Sarah. Why should these two concepts be parallel to one another?

In the structure of a biblical poem, which these words from Isaiah certainly are, you usually get a mirroring of similar words in succession like this. Why would Abraham be compared to a rock and Sarah to a quarry?

Our rabbis see an interesting message in the use of language. In Tractate Yevamot of the Babylonian Talmud, they see this as a commentary on the lives of our ancestors, Abraham and Sarah.

Rabbi Yitzhak says this is a commentary on their infertility. Abraham and Sarah were both initially unable to conceive. In this sense, says the Talmud, they were barren like rocks and quarries.

God wanted them to pray and to grow spiritually enough before they were ready for progeny. God needed to see that their souls had grown so that their bodies could change to accommodate miracle births.

Building on this, Rabbi Ami goes even further. He says that, initially, Abraham and Sarah were tumtumim. This is a word that comes up a fair bit in rabbinic literature but a lot less so in modern medical journals. It means that, biologically, they were sexless. They had the same genitals as Action Man and Barbie: just one smooth surface.

(I checked with an obstetrician friend, who said that this was not something she had seen so far in her career. Truly special people then, were Abraham and Sarah.)

So Abraham and Sarah were not just infertile inside. Externally, to begin with, they simply didn’t have the equipment to make Isaac.

According to our rabbis, then, our ancestors went on a great journey with their bodies, spirits, and names. They began like a rock and a quarry, but gradually, over time, they eroded the hard outer layers until their bodies and souls were porous enough to receive God’s blessings. Only then did Avram become Abraham and Sarai become Sarah.

Now, most of us are not going to undergo such dramatic transitions, but there are lessons here for us all. We, like the founders of monotheism, can embrace our bodies and souls as works in progress.

In our society, that is very counter-cultural. The modern world glamourises youth and shuns any body-type that deviates from an unattainable ideal. We are taught to hate our bodies and neglect our souls.

Judaism has a different message for us entirely. When we first wake, we are supposed to thank God for our soul, which the prayer says, God is constantly creating and implanting within us.

Upon getting up, Jews are meant to thank God for our body; for all its openings and closings; for getting to breathe and have a heartbeat; to sit and stand and walk. We say to God: I am so grateful to be alive.

I can’t lie and pretend I’m good at doing this every day. I definitely can’t claim to have suddenly developed a great relationship with my body.

But the principle, taught by our text and our tefillah, has been a great relief to me. The idea, that I first learnt from my classmate, that my body has never stayed the same, gives me permission to see my body not as my enemy, but as an ever-changing vehicle for exploring the world.

My body and my soul are cherished gifts from God. May I be blessed enough to see them grow and change.

Shabbat shalom.

festivals · judaism · sermon

Judaism is never the easy option

levtaylor

If you are looking for a religion to make your life easier, give you comfort when you’re troubled, and to help give you certainty in life… I wouldn’t recommend Judaism.

Judaism gives us many things, but certainty, comfort, and ease? You won’t find those here.

Our religion is one of ‘ol Torah – the yoke of Torah. Our Talmud teaches: We must subjugate ourselves to the Torah like an ox to a yoke. Like a donkey to its  burden.

For everyone, life feels heavy. It feels like too much to bear. 

For Jews, our Torah comes along and says: would you like some more obligations to go with your struggles? I can add a few more worries to your load.

At Shavuot, we read the story of Ruth. Ruth has lost her husband. She has no land or property. There is famine and disease. She is in the middle of nowhere. She and her sister, Orpah, face a choice. They can go back to their own people, the Moabites, get new husbands and start life anew. Or they can stay in the wilderness with no possessions to look after their mother-in-law, Naomi. 

Ruth takes the harder option. She chooses to stay with her mother-in-law, learn new ways, and take on a new God. It is an act of remarkable bravery. 

We read it at this time of year to remind ourselves that we are always out in that wilderness, always with the option to turn our backs and leave behind this people and this God. But, like Ruth, we keep on choosing to stay. 

Ruth’s is a personal story of her connection to Judaism. Shavuot is also the story of our collective embrace of the Torah.

This is the festival that commemorates when forty thousand freed slaves received the Torah. 

Our Talmud says that, when they came to Sinai, God lifted the mountain up over their heads. From underneath, they could see the enormous peak suspended above them like a keg. 

Out of the clouds, God declared: “Accept the Torah, or this will be your grave.”

Now, our Talmud concedes, in that situation, accepting the Torah would be the easy option. (When a robber says “your money or your life,” they’re not actually expecting you to think it over.)

If that’s the case, the rabbis say, we should be able to reject the Torah now. If our ancestors had to accept it under duress, faced with threats, we are not bound by the decisions they made. 

But, says the Talmud, our ancestors affirmed their Jewishness in the time of Esther. Here, the shoe is on the other foot. In the time of Esther, being Jewish was a dangerous thing that might get you killed at the hands of a tyrannical regime. But, the story says, the Jews reaffirmed their Torah and took upon themselves even more commandments.

That’s right, at the time when they were carrying the heaviest burden, they chose to weigh themselves down more.

Look at our present situation. There is no threat to us that we must keep being Jewish. Everyone here has the right, without consequence, to walk out of this synagogue, and never come through the doors of another one again. We could take the easy choice, and forget this old religion.

But what actually happens? On the days when there are attacks on Jews, synagogue attendance goes up. When it feels dangerous to be Jewish, we get more requests from people who want to connect with their heritage. In just the last few weeks, we have had more requests than usual from people seeking conversion.

When being Jewish is the toughest choice – that’s when our people really show up, and take on the burden of the Torah.

Now, you may be thinking, this sounds like an awfully Orthodox sermon from our extremely liberal local rabbi. All this talk of the burden of Torah, and the yoke of submitting to Heaven – it sounds like something that belongs to the black-hats.

Let me tell you something I feel quite sure of: being a Progressive Jew is a much greater burden than being an Orthodox one.

A year ago at this time, we brought together our Liberal and Reform strands to build the Movement for Progressive Judaism. A uniting figure from our shared history is Sir Basil Henriques, who led both Reform and Liberal communities in the Jewish East End. He set out his vision of what our shared belief system is, saying: 

“The Law has been handed down to the Prophets of Israel. That Law is not static, but ever expanding and progressing. It has been revealed to Israel in every generation, and every age should be able to stand on the shoulders of the previous generation, and to see further and be able to see more clearly what is the perfect Law of God. The Law, the Torah, should be the highest ethical code of which man can conceive. If the Perfect Spirit of Righteousness demands of us perfect righteousness, then the Laws of Righteousness must be as perfect as we can conceive them to be.”

In other words, we Progressive Jews must embody, through our lives, the highest moral standards possible. The question we ask is not: “what does the tradition say I should do with my life?” but, the far tougher question: “what does God require of me?” An individual Jew ought to wake up every morning, asking how best we can serve our Creator. As a movement, we should be in a constant struggle to work out together the morally best choices.

It is relatively difficult to say no to pork and shellfish, as I do. 

But it is far harder to grapple with the morality of food itself. Should we be eating any kinds of fish? What are the air miles on our vegetables? Can we truly eat ethically in this unjust system?

But a Progressive Jew wants to know what the morally right thing to do is, not just what conforms to ritual law. So these are the questions we must ask ourselves.

A Progressive Jew can live life just as an Orthodox Jew would, with one exception. We can never unlearn the Enlightenment. We cannot backslide into racism and sexism; or magical thinking and superstition. We must always face the world full-on, with all its problems, to see how we can live up to the highest moral ideals in our time.

That is far harder. 

Let me give you some living examples.

Here in the UK, in the last few months, we have experienced some real threats as a Jewish community. Things that make us rightly scared. 

Cantor Zoe Jacobs’ shul, Finchley Reform Synagogue was attacked recently. What did she do? She threw open the doors and welcomed in the whole community. People of every nationality and religion came to join her in prayer.

Do you think that was easy? Do you think it is comfortable to open doors when your instinct is to put up walls? 

But that is what Progressive Jews do. We refuse racism and fear. We refuse to be pushed back into the ghettoes.

In Israel, compare our religious leaders there.

On the one hand, the Ashkenazi Orthodox ‘Chief’ Rabbi Kalman Ber has supported Netanyahu, his corrupt cabinet, and his wicked war every step of the way. 

On the other hand, Rabbi Avi Dabush, one of the leading Reform rabbis, comes from Kibbutz Nirim, a place that was attacked by Hamas on October 7th 2023. For the last three years, he has been demanding answers from the Israeli government for why his community was abandoned, while at the same time, physically putting himself in the way of attacks against Palestinians and trying to stop this war.

Now I ask you, who took the easy route? And who took the hard one?

And let me ask the real question: which response is the more godly; the more moral; the more Jewish?

Doing the correct thing, the Progressive thing, is harder. It takes real courage, and most of us will not live up to such high standards.

This is the burden of our Torah.

That, no matter how difficult things are, we will take on responsibility for doing what is right.

And, we all keep taking on that challenge, in every generation.

Chag Shavuot sameach. 

judaism · ritual · sermon

Make like a spider and weave

levtaylor

This sermon will be addressed to two girls who are having baby blessings at Kingston Liberal Synagogue. Their names are redacted from this online version.

Girls, welcome to your synagogue.

I will address this sermon to you, but you will not remember it, and that’s OK, because I am really speaking to all Jewish children when I give this address. And you should know that all adults, no matter how big they get, never stop being children. So I am speaking to you, but really I am speaking to everybody gathered here today.

My message for you, girls, and for all Jews is: learn to be like a spider. 

You see, from the moment a spider is born, she already carries everything inside herself to make a home. The silk with which she will construct her web is built into her body. Without ever learning from a parent or attending a school, the spider already knows how to build her home, wherever she goes. 

In this way, the spider is the perfect Jew. Jews, wherever we are, carry in us all we need to make our home. Our home can be woven absolutely anywhere. Whether in a desert, an ocean, or an Arctic tundra, Jews will always find ways of creating our sacred spaces. 

Our home is not made of silk, like a spider’s. Our home is made of the bonds we build with each other. Between every community member, there is an invisible thread. If you look around this room and squint in exactly the right light, you will see how one thread connects to each other, and every thread interlocks somewhere. That is the web of our community.

Our home is also made of rituals. In Hebrew, the word for a tractate of Talmud is masechet. The masechet is the page of our religious texts that tells us how to mark every moment and celebrate every festival. Do you know what masechet also means, dear girls? It means a weaving; a web. 

Because our home is made of rituals, you can find yourself anywhere in the world, and if somebody starts a prayer, or lights a candle, or cooks a food, you will realise that you are suddenly back in your Jewish home.

Our home is made of stories. Yes, we sew together patchworks from ancient traditions and family tales and our life experiences and all of it comes together in this great big web, so that Jews are all brought together by these stories.

Now, some religious knowledge may be innate. Girls, there is a story that before a baby is born, her soul has already been to the Garden of Eden and heard the revelation at Mount Sinai. Perhaps you are sitting there, knowing far more about the secrets of the universe than any of us. 

But the truth is, we are not like spiders. We can’t just weave the Jewish home from the moment we are born. We need to learn how to do it. We need teachers and elders who have learned to build the web from the generations before them. The thread we spin with comes from a yarn thousands of years old, and you need people who will pass on the tools to you.

That’s why, here, in your synagogue, you will be able to come to Kinderlach when you are small, and join Beiteinu as you grow, and come to many family services, and go on adventures with your youth movement. All of this exists to help you learn how to make your web, so that it is strong and beautiful and unique, like you.

Children, a moment ago, you came and were held underneath the tallit to receive a blessing. We call the tallit a “sukkah” – a tent, a tabernacle. It represents the Jewish home. “Sukkah” has the same root in Hebrew as “masechet” – the weaving we mentioned earlier. You see, the Jewish home is a portable prayer shawl, made by people skilled with textiles, and we can pull it out at any moment.

In the Torah portion we read today, on this day of your Simchat Bat, God tells us how to build a mishkan – a sacred place where God can live. I’ll give you one guess what it’s made of. 

The tabernacle where God lives is made of wool and cloth and thread and yarn. Oh, it comes in so many colours! Blues and purples and crimsons all finely interlocking on a great stretched canvas made of animal hides. 

That is where God lived with the Jews for the years we wandered in the desert. After slavery, the Jews had to learn how to be truly free. We needed to be independent of the great demands of Egyptian slaveowners and even the comforts of their homes. We needed to know how to live transiently. 

Yes, we needed to learn to be more like spiders. We needed to build a home wherever we went.

And you, dear girls, need to learn to make a home too.

Girls, I have been to your house, and I know how lovely it is. Somehow your dads manage to keep it such a calm and clean place at all times. I don’t know how they do it. I hope they can manage some semblance of the same order when you both start crawling. 

But even if you ransack the living room, and draw all over the walls, and leave your toys strewn across the stairs, they will still love you, and it will still be your home. You may move many times, or you may stay in one place, but your home will be the people you come back to. It will be the stories you tell, and the songs you sing, and the rituals you make up. Home will be your own private language that only makes sense between you.

You come today into this synagogue, and know that it will be your home. Around you, you have your whole community, who have come here to show that they will love and support you. They will teach you how to weave webs, and you will soon start wrapping your own silky strands into the patchwork of this community. 

When I welcome you to your synagogue, I am not talking about the building. That’s not our home – it’s just the frame we use to make it in.

Our home is the web we weave together – the invisible threads that connect everyone in this community. 

We are like the ancient Israelites who carried their home through the desert. 

We are like the spiders who carry their homes in their bodies.

We build our home through connection and song and story.

May you build this home with us.

Shabbat shalom.

judaism · sermon · theology

God is here, and I did not know it

levtaylor

One of the loveliest parts of synagogue life, which many of you will have experienced here, is getting to teach our religion to visiting schools. It’s such a joy to pull out things we normally leave aside, and point to things we often take for granted.

By teaching others about our ritual objects, things that are familiar become foreign. We have to reconsider what they are, and why we have them.

Take, for example, the tallit. Of course, these prayer shawls have existed in some form since biblical times. But, showing them to non-Jewish children, we need to come up with an explanation for why we continue to use them here and now.

I tell the school kids: these four corners remind me that God is everywhere, and the knots on them tell me all of the good deeds I can do in my life.

I do, indeed, feel that way when I wrap myself in the tzitzit. I feel enveloped by God’s mantle. I see the strings and think of all the mitzvot- not, in the Orthodox sense of listing out food rules, but of all that God has asked me to do in this world.

It’s nice to have a visible reminder of God’s presence.

That’s just what Jacob gets in this week’s Torah portion. Jacob lies down while travelling on a certain mountain and has the profound dream of a ladder ascending to heaven, with angels going up and down.

In his dream, the Eternal One appears to promise Jacob many descendants, spreading out like dust across the desert, and that God will forever accompany Jacob on his travels.

When he awakes, Jacob exclaims: “Wow, God is in this place and I did not know it!”

How could Jacob not realise that God was on that mountain? Surely he already knows that God is everywhere?

Perhaps Jacob did not realise already that God is everywhere. For some commentators, this is the beginning of Jacob’s prophecy. Only now does he really understand who God is and that this God is with him.

There is a deeper meaning in the language, too. Before the revelation, God is called Elohim. For the ancients, Elohim was universal- the God that permeates all places and things.

Then, in the dream, God is announced by the ineffable Name, Hashem, which we often render as Adonai. This name of God, in Torah, is specific. It is the personal God, who communicates directly with human beings.

When Jacob awakes, he says: “Behold, Hashem is in this place, and I did not know it.”

Jacob knew that God in general was there, because God is generally everywhere, but only at this moment does Jacob realise that the personal God who cares about him is also present.

Now we can understand why God says to Jacob: “I will not leave you until I have done with you what I promised.” God is helping Jacob understand that he is never truly alone. Not only is the world full of God, but so is Jacob’s own life.

In fact, in the moment before Jacob falls asleep, a miracle happens that is so subtle it can’t be noticed until after he wakes up.

When Jacob lays down his head, the Torah says there are many stones in the place, and he takes one of them as a pillow. When he wakes up, there is only one under his head.

Our Talmud says that this is a divine act. According to Rabbi Yitzḥak, all the stones on the mountain argued with each other about who would lie under Jacob’s head. Unable to decide, they merged together into a single rock. That rock, in turn, became an altar to God.

This is a wonderful view of the world, where God is not only in all places and with human beings personally, but acts in every part of nature. Even stones are agents of miracles and servants of God.

If we take seriously this idea that God is everywhere and personally connected with all that exists, there are real consequences for our lives. It means that everything is sacred. It suggests that we need to treat this world as an arena for revealing divinity.

For Progressive Jews, this is one way we might think of commandments. Rather than just a list of dos and don’ts, they’re an attitude towards reality. They see everything as an opportunity to do good, and to make the world better. We are blessed with the chance to show how God is everywhere, including in our own actions.

The same section of the Talmud says that this is why God loves humanity so much. Angels can only praise God when they are told to. Rocks can only move by miracle. But we, endowed with freedom and reason, can perform miracles and make things sacred whenever we want.

That’s what I see when I look at the tzitzit of my tallit. That God is in every place and that every moment is a chance to do right.

You don’t need to wear a tallit to do that. This is my suggestion to you for this week. Try and shift, ever so slightly, how you see the world.

Look around, for a moment, and imagine that everything permeates God’s presence. See God in the bricks of your home and the slabs of the street. At some point this week, try to picture the space where you are as a massive canvas that you can paint with good deeds.

Let us all try to be like Jacob and say: “Wow, God was here, and I did not even know it.”

Shabbat shalom.


israel · sermon · social justice

We must drag the sun over the horizon

levtaylor


In Judaism, night comes before day. The day begins when the sun sets and the first stars appear in the sky.

This has been the way of the world since its mythic origins.

In the beginning, there was endless darkness. Then God said “let there be light.” And there was light.

And God separated the light from the darkness. The first distinction. And the darkness God called night, and the brightness God called day.

And there was evening, and there was morning. A first day.

Having created nights and days, God populated them with matter. At the end of each period of creation, there was evening, then there was morning. Each day.

During the sixth day, God created human beings and placed them in a garden. Then there was evening.

The first human beings had never seen an evening before. They did not know that the sun could set. They did not know the difference between night and day.

What must it have been like for the first sentient beings to realise who they were and who their Creator was, only to see the sun disappear? How frightened they must have been!

Perhaps they called out to God and asked for guidance. But that evening marked the beginning of the seventh day, and God was resting. God did not answer them.

Our Talmud teaches that when the first human beings saw their first nightfall, they fell into despair. Adam feared that the sun had disappeared as punishment for his sin. He worried that the world would now return to the endless darkness with which it began.

Eve cried. She fasted and prayed. Adam and Eve wrapped their arms around each other and held their bodies close as they prepared for the end.

Then the dawn broke.

And they realised: this is the way of the world.

The world began in autumn, at the festival of Rosh Hashanah.

When the first winter nights crept in, and they saw the length of days decreasing, they panicked once more. Now in exile from Eden, they had no way of knowing what would come next.

Again, they fasted, wept, and prayed.

Then the spring came, and brought with it longer days.

And they realised: this is the way of the world.

We begin with darkness. Light follows.

There is evening. Then the dawn comes.

There is winter. And it always becomes spring.

This is the way of the world.

We can observe this dialectic in almost all matters of life. Our suffering is followed by joy. Our struggles are replaced by triumphs.

Some days feel like endless nights, but the dawn is always waiting for those who are patient for it. So we hold each other close and wait for the sun to rise.

This is the way of the world.

These trends appear, too, in history. There will be periods of decline followed by ages of plenty. There will be economic busts, and there will be booms. There will be war, but peace will come.

This is the way of the world.

But human history is different from all other natural rules. The order of night and day and the structure of the seasons was predetermined before we arrived on this earth.

History, on the other hand, is made by human beings. History is the one area of life where we can, collectively, choose what happens. Our actions determine whether we live in the winter of war or bountiful springtime.

So, it is incumbent upon us not just to hold each other and wait for morning, but to drag the sun over the horizon and demand that day appears.

In 1969, “Shir LaShalom,” became the anthem of the Israeli peace movement. In the final stanza of the song, we sing out: “Do not say the day will come. Bring on the day.”

Just as people make the active decision to go to war, peace is also a choice. Those who want an end to war cannot just wait in the darkness.

We sang Shir LaShalom in this sanctuary on Simchat Torah. I felt, and I think many of you did too, truly jubilant at the news of ceasefire and hostage release. After two years, we could finally see a possible end to the suffering.

My jubilation was tinged with pain as I remembered the last time that Shir LaShalom was chanted throughout synagogues.

That was in 1995. Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat had shaken hands on the lawn of the White House. They had agreed to the Oslo Accords.

While already imperfect and tentative, the Oslo Accords of three decades ago were the last major effort at a comprehensive peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians. They paved the way for mutual recognition and the possibility of two states.

High on the dream of peace, Rabin joined Peace Now protesters in Tel Aviv Square and sang along to Shir LaShalom. With the lyrics still in his breast pocket, Rabin headed to the car park. There, a far right fundamentalist waited for the Prime Minister, and shot him dead.

There is still a copy of Shir LaShalom, stained with Rabin’s blood. There are those words, covered in the blood of a man who tried to make peace: do not say the day will come, bring on the day.

Yes, we must indeed bring on the day. But there are some who want to return us to endless night.

An Israeli fanatic shot dead Rabin to stop his day from dawning.

When Hamas saw the prospect of the Oslo Accords creating two states, they launched suicide bombing attacks on public transport. They took control of Gaza and promised endless war.

The Israeli far right wrested control over the offices of government. They promised there would be no Palestinian state and that every effort to achieve one would be swiftly repressed.

It saddens me that, even in the brief interludes since Rabin’s assassination when Netanyahu’s party has not had control over the legislature, few Israeli politicians have attempted to break from their logic of violence and occupation as the only answer to the Palestinian national question. 

Daybreak always comes, but there are those who prolong the darkness, and we have been living through a terribly long night. The call to bring on the day from earlier generations has been eclipsed by militarism and fear.

We have endless war. This is the way of the world.

But this is the way of the world as some have chosen to make it. And we can make the world another way.

On Monday, we saw the first thing in a long while that looked like a sun beam.

We celebrated the hostages coming home and an end to the bombing of Gaza. It was the first reminder we have had in a long time that peace is possible, and war is a choice.

We are able to bring on the day.

Now we must create even more sunshine.

But we have become so accustomed to darkness that the dawn may even be painful.

In daylight, we will have to look hard at the choices that made this war so prolonged and destructive. We will likely see that peace was possible much earlier and that more hostages might have come back alive sooner. We may ask searching questions about the morality of this war.

In the light of day, we will have to look hard at what Israel has become, and what the spiritual state of our Jewish institutions now is.

But we must bring on the day. We cannot return to the long-lasting night of war, murder, zealotry, and extremism. We cannot let anything that happened in the last two years ever happen again.

Throughout this dark night, our Progressive Jewish counterparts in the Israeli Reform Movement have been pushing hard for serious change.

They have been protesting outside Netanyahu’s house every Saturday evening. They have been joining Palestinian olive farmers in the West Bank to protect them from settlers. They have been demanding a real overhaul of the deep, structural causes of this century-long conflict.

My month with Rabbis for Human Rights before I began here helped positively frame my rabbinate. Although the picture on the ground is bleak, it made me realise just how many people are desperately trying to create daylight in the darkest contexts.

I hope that we will not fall into complacency now because the hostages are home. The task of peace building is more pressing than ever.

I want us to draw ever closer to those who are defending human rights and trying to bring about a future based on dignity and equality. I hope that, next year, we can bring a full delegation of Progressive Jews to support the West Bank olive harvest. I hope this can be a moment where we truly embrace the cause of peace.

This is not the seventh evening of creation. It is not the time to rest. We cannot leave our colleagues alone in this struggle now.

This is the first dawn of a new morning.

It is an opportunity for real accountability. It is a chance for meaningful peace building. It is the first crack of sunshine, and we have to drag out every possible ray of light to join it.

We must wrest the light into the darkness.

We cannot say the day will come.

We must bring on the day.

high holy days · judaism · sermon

It is time to tell a different story about ourselves

levtaylor

It is time to tell a different story about ourselves.

We are writing a story about our lives right now.

On Rosh Hashanah, our story is written. On Yom Kippur, the story is sealed.

What, then, are we doing today? 

This morning, we are editing. We are looking over our story and choosing what to keep and what to discard. What to highlight and what to relegate to the footnotes.

Of course, we cannot change the events of our past, but we can decide what they mean. In writing our story today, we choose what role we played in the narrative of our own lives. 

When you tell this story, are you a victim, or a villain? A saviour or a sinner? 

Look at your mistakes. The way you tell your story will help you decide whether they were a defining part of your personality, or whether they were opportunities you took to learn and grow. 

Look at your suffering. Others have hurt you. You need to tell your own story of what that pain means. You need to decide if your suffering is the sum of your life, or if it is something you overcome. 

You are writing the story of your life right now. Be careful how you tell it.

In our Mishnah, Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi teaches: “Apply your mind to three things and you will not come into the clutches of sin: Know that there is above you: an eye that sees, an ear that hears, and all your deeds are written in a book.”

But here is what the Mishnah does not tell us:

The eye that sees can see more perspectives than we can.

The ear that listens knows all hearts in ways we do not.

And, most importantly, the book is constantly being edited and re-written.

We are always re-writing the Book of Life with our God, and that means we have the power to shape our story.

We cannot imagine that God’s eyes and ears are anything like ours, or that God writes a book the way we would. The story that an Infinite Being has to tell about you must be incomprehensible from your perspective. 

When we tell ourselves our story, we are biased, seeing only our perspective. Our narrative is partial, not knowing what others really feel.  Our account is unreliable, because we tell it to fit the character we have already made of ourselves. 

God, on the other hand, sees not just what we did, but what we hoped to do. God says to the prophet Samuel: “I do not see as human beings see; human beings see only what is visible, but I see into the heart.”

God instructs the Prophet Isaiah: “Whenever anyone turns back to Me for pardon, I freely forgive, for as the heavens are high above the earth, so are My ways high above your ways, and My plans above your plans.” 

God is able to see errors in ways we cannot. And God can understand our pain in a context that is beyond us.

This is because God is telling a different story about you to your own.

In God’s plan, you are the main character. Of course, so is everyone else. 

But that is because God has written a great novel where every creature has a vital role to play. No character could be introduced if they did not have a role in the great unfolding tale that progresses towards goodness’s triumph over evil.

So, today, look at the manuscript of your life. Decide what you want to focus on. Tell yourself stories of gratitude and joy. Consider the events that have given you pride and a sense of accomplishment. 

Look, too, at the stories in your life that are hard. Re-tell the stories of where you have been hurt, and decide for yourself what meaning you take from them.

Re-examine the stories of when you have hurt others, and decide what changes these will bring for you when you enter your next chapter.

In this way, you can take control over the story of your life. 

You cannot change what happened, but you can decide what it means. 

Only you can decide how your story ends.

Treat God as your co-editor, rather than as the author of your destiny.

For some of you, the story I have told so far is too wrapped up in religious language. You cannot get on board with all this God-talk, and the quotations from Scripture prove nothing. 

Let us turn, then, to the science of psychology. 

Over many decades, psychologists have experimented with what makes for a good life. We now have more data than ever about how people forgive. We understand a great deal more about how to overcome trauma. And we know what motivates people to live better lives.

I am going to assume that, if you are here on Yom Kippur, you came because you want to let go of some past hurt, to repent of things you have done wrong, and to live a more fulfilling life.

The Scriptures tell us how to do this, but the language they use may feel too alien to the modern mind. The sciences, however, can corroborate the same claims.

Dr Fred Luskin runs the Stamford University forgiveness project. His team has researched the best methods to help people overcome their grudges and live more fulfilling lives. 

He has tried out his techniques for helping hundreds of people forgive, including in the most extreme cases, like mothers whose children were killed in sectarian violence.

His book, Forgive for Good, is an accessible version of his research.

Dr Luskin teaches that our inability to forgive comes when we tell ourselves a “grievance narrative.” 

You may have such a story yourself. If you keep coming back to an event in your life where you were wronged and replaying it, you may be stuck on recalling a past hurt. If, in this story, there is a clear villain, and you are a helpless victim, the chances are you have a grievance narrative.

Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Many people do. 

I began reading Dr Luskin’s book out of academic curiosity, but soon found I was noticing my own grievance narratives. Some of them went right back to old hurts in school. I looked over some of the stories I had about my own life, and found they did not serve me.

Dr Luskin says that the key to getting out of the trap of these painful stories is to consider how you tell them.

First of all, decide how much space in your mind you want this story to occupy. Yes, you have been hurt, but do you want to keep letting those same people hurt you by giving them unlimited air play in your head? 

One way forward is just to change how much you think about them. Rather than letting them be the main character in your story, focus your internal account on your own successes and joys.

Secondly, consider how you are telling your story. If you have a grievance narrative, the hurt you experienced may determine everything that comes after. 

You were wronged, and that may have a lasting impact. But is it not also true that you survived, overcame, and learnt from the experience? You have the power to tell the story so that you are not a victim, but a hero.

None of this means pretending that pain doesn’t hurt, or that the wrongs others did were not wrong. Quite on the contrary: in order to move on with anything, you have to be able to say how wrong it was, and what it made you feel. 

The difference is that you get to decide what it means. You can decide whether someone else has written your story for you, or whether you are your own author. You can choose to focus your attention on your own pride and resilience.

Just as our faith tells you to pay attention to how you tell your story, so, too, do the psychologists. The story you tell can help shape how able you are to move on from past pain and be a better person.

This is true, not just on the individual level, but also at the collective level. The stories we tell about Jews are the stories we tell about ourselves. What is the story we tell about ourselves as Jews?

There are plenty of stories out there about us. There are stories where we are perfect victims, forever blameless for the suffering we endured. There are stories where we are bloodthirsty brutes, responsible for the worst evils in the world. 

Both of these stories deny us agency. These stories turn us into history’s stock character, whether as martyr or as monster. They deny Jews the ability to do what everyone else does: to hurt others, to learn from our mistakes, and to become better people. They strip us of the opportunity to grow and change.

We need, therefore, to think hard about what the narrative is that we are writing about Jews.

Rabbi Dr Tirzah Firestone sits at the intersection of spirituality and psychiatry. Firestone began her career as a psychoanalyst, then came back to the religion of her birth, embraced Renewal Judaism, and became one of its leading rabbis.

Firestone grew up with Holocaust-surviving parents. She felt that she and her siblings inherited great trauma from her family, and from the stories they told. Or rather, did not tell. Much of their former life escaping genocide was clouded by secrecy. The stories her father did tell were of persecution: that the non-Jews inherently hated Jews and would destroy them at every opportunity.

As a therapist and rabbi, Firestone urgently felt the need to tell different stories about Jews. She insists: “Identifying ourselves as victims freezes our focus on the past, and therefore forecloses our future.”

This does not mean pretending that Jews have never been victims. We need to face up to the traumas of Jewish history, including Shoah, pogroms, and persecution. Ignoring them, and refusing to tell the stories, can actually exacerbate the transmission of trauma.

What we need to do, says Rabbi Firestone, is honour Jewish history without internalising the harmful aspects of Jewish trauma. 

We need to remember that, as Jews, we have collective power. We are able to influence the world, and not just subject to the vicissitudes of history. We must claim our agency, and take ownership over what happens to our future. 

Most importantly, says Firestone, we should draw connections with others suffering from persecuting systems. By making these links, we strengthen ourselves, support our neighbours, and find positive meaning out of difficult circumstances.

We must, therefore, tell a new story about Jews. A story where we are survivors, who have been hurt and used creativity and resilience to overcome our pain. A story where we are complete human beings, who can hurt others, and who can repent and change. A story where our story connects to all of humanity for the sake of a shared future.

The story we are writing does not have to be one where we are always victims, nor incomparable monsters. We can create a narrative that acknowledges our past, honours it, and uses it to direct us towards a more positive future.

On Rosh Hashanah, our story is written. On Yom Kippur, the story is sealed.

We are writing a story about our lives right now.

Today, with the help of God and this sacred time, write your story.

Write a story you can be proud of. Write a story where you have the power to do better. Write a story where you overcome your challenges.

The events of your life so far have already been written. What they mean is up to you.

Gmar chatimah tovah – may you be written in the Book of Life for good.

Yom Kippur Shacharit 5786

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 · theology

What if death comes as a kiss?

levtaylor

Moses said to the Israelites: “I am one hundred and twenty years old. I cannot go on. God has already told me that I will not cross over the Jordan River. Now, do not be afraid. God is going with you. You will do marvellous things.”

Moses was not afraid of death. He asked the Israelites not to fear either. Instead, carry on and keep living.

How could Moses not fear?

If I asked you to depict death, you would likely draw a ferocious figure. For centuries, the Western imagination has presented death as a cruel and frightening creature.

To the Ancient Greeks, death was the merciless deity Thanatos, who came into the world with his siblings, Blame, Suffering, Deceit, Strife, and Doom. Thanatos, the despised god with wings, wrested the souls of the living and dragged them down to the Underworld, where they were handed over to Charon, the Ferryman who took the dead across the Acheron and the River Styx.

Michelangelo, Charon, The Sistine Chapel

On the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo depicts Charon, the chaperone of the dead, as a terrifying monster. Charon has clawed talons for feet and grotesquely bulging eyes. He hoists his oar over his shoulder, ready to transport the unfortunate souls.

From the time of the Bubonic Plague in Europe, death was often depicted as a morbid skeleton. In The Triumph of Death, a great oil panel painting by Dutch master Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Death is an enormous skeleton upon an emaciated red horse, slaying all in sight. He brings with him an entire army of macabre skeleton figures, all of them razing the mortals from the earth. 

Today, we know this figure as the Grim Reaper, who reached his full form in the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe. You can thank that 19th Century American novelist for the popular image of death today: the skeleton in a cloak holding an hourglass and scythe.

With such frightening depictions of death, how could Moses not fear?

Moses was lucky. He did not inherit the Western artistic tradition. The ancient Israelite attitude was remarkably different. The Jewish view of death was one far more tender.

At the end of Moses’s life, we read: “Moses the servant of the Eternal One died in the land of Moab, by the mouth of God. God buried him there in the valley, and nobody knows Moses’s grave to this day.”

In the Jewish imagination, it is God who comes personally, and takes care of the treasured people. In our Torah’s description of Moses’s burial, it sounds almost like a parent tucking in a child to sleep. The sand covers Moses’s body like a blanket, and he can finally rest.

Pieter Bruegel, section, The Triumph of Death

Our rabbis noticed an interesting choice of words from the Torah. Here, it says that Moses died by the mouth of God. 

This language is also applied to the deaths of Aaron and Miriam. They, too, die by the mouth of God.

Literally, this might mean that Moses and his siblings died at God’s command.

In the Talmud, the rabbis say instead that this means they died by a kiss. 

There are many ways that we might imagine this. We might picture a personal God pressing lips against our prophets to remove their last breath.

I like to picture a parent, gently kissing our legendary figures on the forehead. When Moses dies, God wraps him up in the blankets of the desert sand, embraces him, and pecks him on the forehead, to send him off into his eternal sleep.

Moses, the last of his siblings to die, would also have seen Miriam’s and Aaron’s deaths. He would know that death was not a fearsome monster, but the gentle caress of sleep at the end of a long day.

Indeed, the Roman Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, when he tried to explain the Jewish attitude to life to a Western audience, asked: “why should we fear death, when we embrace the repose of sleep?”

Of course, to we who are still living, death does not always feel so gentle. It can be painful and fear-inducing to witness the ones we love waste away, or be suddenly snatched from our world. 

Our Torah is aware of this. Sometimes, death is indeed depicted as a menacing spirit, as when the Angel of Death slays the first-born during the Exodus. Sometimes, death is indeed an all-consuming monster, as when the ground opens up on the supporters of Korach, to wrench them down to the netherworld of Sheol.

To us, who have to see death while we live, it can indeed feel frightening, and we should not shy away from that terror.

But, perhaps, for those who die, it does not feel so horrifying.

Sebastian Junger is a conflict journalist from New York. In 2020, he suddenly had a near-death experience. While awaiting surgery and bleeding out on an operating table, Junger suddenly had a vision of his father, hovering above him. 

Junger said his father appeared as a comforting mass of energy. In that moment, he thought he understood that there was a life beyond this one.

A devout atheist and rationalist, he went on a journey to discover how this vision was possible. He turned his voyage of enquiry into a book, published last year, called In My Time of Dying.

Tracking shamans and religious leaders from across the globe, he discovered how common his experience of approaching death was. 

This led him to wonder what his own father, a Jewish physicist, would have made of his experience. There is a poignant moment, towards the end of the text, where Junger sits down with his father’s physicist friends, and asks them for an explanation.

One of the scientists tells Junger that he thinks his father would indeed have believed it, because he was romantic like that. He explains that our understanding of physics is constantly evolving, and we know so little about it. He posits, even, that one day the presence of a reality beyond death might be the foundation of physics, or indeed its absence might be. 

Of course, Junger does not rule out the possibility that this is simply the brain’s way of protecting us, and our body’s way of making the inevitable feel less frightening. Yet, even though he is a firm rationalist, he cannot rule out the possibility that his father really was with him in his moments of near-death. He concludes feeling a deeper connection, both to the living and the dead.

None of us know what happens when we die. Nobody can see beyond the grave. Nobody has ever come back to tell us what exists in the world beyond. 

The Western imagination has conditioned us to find this uncertainty terrifying.

But what if Moses is right? What if neither this world nor the next have anything to be feared?

Maybe death does just arrive as a loving parent, tucking you into an eternal rest.

Would it change the way you lived today, if you believed, as our Torah says, that death comes as a kiss?

Jaume Barba, sculpture, The Kiss of Death