Evil will not win inside my heart

September 17, 2026 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*

protest · sermon · social justice

Do British Jews have dual loyalty?

August 28, 2026August 29, 2026 levtaylor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shabbat shalom.

judaism · sermon · social justice

People! Remember that there is a God!

July 10, 2026July 10, 2026 levtaylor

In the Zhitomyr Oblast of what is now Ukraine, there is a city called Berdichyiv. In the middle of the 18th Century, this was a great market town in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

To here, flocked all the great, the good, and the downright nasty from every quarter of their empire. But, of the permanent residents, three-quarters of those who lived here were Jews.

So, come with me, on any ordinary day, to the old Jewish city of Berdichyiv. You will find the streets lined with stalls; you will see shop fronts wide open; you will meet throngs of people moving to music and entertainment. Here, you can buy just about anything, and sell just about anything too.

You have to watch your wallet for thieves, of course; and be very careful not to get involved in any of the gambling games on the side streets, because you are sure to be hustled. And pay attention to the great crush and clamour of shoppers beating each other for products, or tradesmen jostling for space and trying to bargain.

But that’s not the main show. You have to really listen if you want to know why we’ve come here. Can you hear it?

Can you hear the man shouting? You have to strain your ear to get a good grip on the sound over all the noise of the market square, but you’ll catch it. There it is!

“People! Remember that there is a God! People! Remember that there is a God!”

Look. There he is, standing atop the clocktower. The man with the fluffy shtreimel and wispy beard and sidelocks. He’s thin and spritely, and he’s gripping the side of the wall and calling out with all his might:

“People! Remember that there is a God!”

To most of the people shopping here, that’s Levi Yitzchok. But to his supporters, that’s the Holy Berdichever, the great Hassidic rabbi, the disciple of the Maggid of Mezritch.

To most of the people here, he’s just a madman. But to his supporters… well, they think he’s mad too. But they love him.

Of all of the places in the world that this sage could go, he chose to go to the most corrupt town with the most unbelieving Jews with the most sinful dispositions and minister to them with fanatical spiritual messages.

Sometimes he did that by going out to the poorest and the most despised, and treating them with great love, as if they were the shining light of God on Earth. And sometimes, like today, he would stand on a platform ranting at everyone to remember that there was a God.

Now, you might indeed think this man sounds like he was mad. But I think he sounds… relatable.

I cannot tell you how much I would love to find a spot at the London Stock Exchange or the arms fairs at the City Hall or on the steps of Parliament and do exactly this. “People! Remember that there is a God!”

Would our politicians and corporations treat our planet as if it were their own dustbin to be discarded and destroyed if they knew that it was a gift from their loving Creator?

Would they treat human life as if it were something so disposable and meaningless if they understood that each person was created in God’s image?

Could they behave in ways that are so shamelessly venal and debased if they thought they would one day have to answer for their deeds?

No. They act as if there is no God but greed itself, as they sacrifice everything on the altar of the market.

Oh sure, there are those who pretend to believe in God. If you like, Donald Trump will sign a copy of his own version of the Bible, which he has hawked in American public schools to make as much as $300k. But does anyone believe that Trump actually thinks there is One above him?

His only faith is in the false idols of wealth and power.

The snivelling lapdogs around him from the Christian fundamentalist right know that Trump doesn’t fear God. That’s what they like about him.

They are impressed by his ability to manipulate and lie for their own purposes. Their religion, whatever god they worship, wants racial segregation, control over women’s bodies, war on every continent, refugees in cages, and queer people excised from public life.

This doctrine of reaction may be one of the world’s major religions. (In fact, I think it’s the true belief system shared by many of the world leaders, whatever their outward claims may be.) But it has nothing to do with the God of our Scriptures.

In our haftarah, the Prophet Jeremiah takes to task exactly these people who profess belief on the one hand and behave amorally on the other. The priests, the teachers, and the rulers, he says, have all given up looking for God and decided to waste their time on their worthless idols.

In the world to which Jeremiah brought God’s message, the leaders worshipped the work of their hands. They venerated material things, but treated life as something disposable.

They loved their possessions but turned their back on the Fountain of Living Waters. They did deals and went to war with all the empires of the world, but neglected the still small voice of conscience implanted within them.

Today, has anything changed?

Actually, I think it has. We can do far more damage now than ever before.

The kinds of weapons held in very few hands were unimaginable to the biblical prophets. The levels of environmental destruction that companies could reap on God’s forests, skies, and waters have never been so great. The cost of such cruelty and indifference has never been so high.

In our liturgical cycle, we are in the three weeks of warning: where we read the Prophets’ greatest indictments against the Jews. That is why today we read the words of Jeremiah, chastising our people to remember their God and cease lusting after vanity and emptiness.

In this build-up to Tish Bav, we are supposed to be confronted by the scale of the world’s wrongs and the dangers of our inaction. So, we could just leave it there, to feel angry and devastated by all the brazen ruination.

But, the rabbis taught, even in these weeks of warning, we should never go away feeling hopeless. So, in constructing the haftarah, they skip an entire chapter, to Jeremiah’s promise of restoration, where he vows:

“Turn away from your love of material possessions, and God will come straight back to you. You will be able to speak of your faith with truth, justice, and righteousness. Then you will be a blessing to the nations of the world, and everyone will come and praise my name.”

Jeremiah offers us a way out, available at any moment.

The great condemnations of the prophets might better be delivered at Davos or the United Nations, but we all have a role to play. We can remember, in our own lives, what it means to behave as if there is a God.

Let us conduct ourselves as though, one day, we will have to answer for our deeds.

Let us treat each human being as if they were created in God’s image.

Let us act as if this world is a gift from a loving Creator.

And, perhaps, through our example, the people of the world will come to remember that there is a God.

Shabbat shalom.

judaism

A true prophet’s destiny is despair

May 9, 2026May 9, 2026 levtaylor

All has been foreseen. That is a warning, not a comfort.

When the Progressive Jewish movement was born, its founders pledged to uphold the religion of the Prophets. Our guides would be those men of ancient Israel who courageously denounced injustice and proclaimed hope to the world.

At the time, I wonder how much attention they paid to the lives of the visionaries they sought to emulate. We know little about most of the historic prophets, if indeed they existed at all.

But, if we have one image of what they looked like, it’s probably Rembrandt’s painting of Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem.

Jeremiah is surrounded by darkness, slumped on the craggy rocks of the Negev. His left elbow rests on what are possibly his only possessions, including a book that we know will become part of our Bible.

The most illuminated part of the composition is Jeremiah’s bald forehead, drawing our eyes into his face. That face. It is so intensely pained; so sullen and exhausted. The wrinkles furrow, as if calling us to ask whether anything of this destruction was avoidable. I am captivated by the eyes, which cannot be more than two dark brushstrokes, but communicate more anguish than any scream I have ever heard.

Jeremiah spent his entire life warning Israel that it would be destroyed. He chastised them that their social injustice and complacency would be their ruin. He promised them plagues, persecution, exile and war.

Jeremiah had the unfortunate honour to see all of his visions come true.

At every stage, he promised them they could be redeemed if only they would repent of their ways. Whether that part was true, we will never have the fortune of knowing.

This is the model of our religion; the person whose mantle we have chosen to take. It is that of a man miserable enough to have been proven right; to watch everything he loved, and all that he held sacred, burn.

In some ways, prophesying doom is an easy gig. Economists are always predicting the next crash and defence experts are forever prepared for the next war. Misery is one of life’s guarantees.

When Progressive Judaism began, its progenitors insisted that prophecy was about forthtelling, not foretelling: speaking the truth about how the world really is, rather than guessing what is to be. But really one yields the other. When you see clearly how terrible the world is, you can accurately predict its tragic ends.

In Greek antiquity, Cassandra was cursed by the god Apollo to always tell the truth and never be believed. She issued accurate prophecies, and nobody took note.

Perhaps with hindsight, what she foresaw was obvious. War was coming and Troy would be defeated. Then King Agamemnon would be captured and slaughtered, as would she. The Greek ships would sink. As the city states fell, people would spend decades at sea without mooring. Disaster awaited.

All Cassandra had to do was see clearly what was happening in Greece’s unfolding civilisational collapse to know that destruction was inevitable.

And we cannot blame her countrymen for disbelieving her either. If someone stares that far into the abyss, nobody wants to be dragged into the darkness with them. Their misery sounds cloying and narcissistic. It feels impossible to bear.

If somebody tells you that the world you know and the people you love are on the brink of destruction, you have to disbelieve them. How else will you go to work, raise your children, care for your sick? How can you live in this world if you honestly believe it is ending?

Torah warned us that if a prophet predicted something and it did not come to pass, you could ignore them. They prophesied in vain.

The grand visions of peace on earth and justice rolling out like a stream haven’t happened yet.

The Christians circumvented this by writing their texts so it looked like their carpenter was fulfilling all the visions; even if the world self-evidently was not perfected. They deferred it by saying the other prophecies were still to come.

And we Progressive Jews have avoided the problem too, by claiming that the Messianic Age is forever not yet.

Perhaps it is forever not at all.

The only prophecies that have come true are the promises of disaster. The only accurate predictions were of death, plague, humiliation, and exile.

We said we wanted to be heirs to the prophets. We saw in their proclamations antecedents to the Enlightenment values of truth, equality, peace, comradeship, progress and righteousness. We heard God’s word refracted through them like a clarion call, and said we would now take it as ours.

Scattered in exile, we would be a light unto the nations. We would teach the world to study war no more. We would bring on the day when the false gods of prejudice and materialism were finally vanquished before the altar of Infinite Unity.

I need you to know that I believed every word. Even if nobody else did, I really did.

I thought I might see it in my lifetime. The great unfolding of history. Our glorious march towards true justice and equality. Call it the Revolution or the Messianic Age or Peace on Earth, I truly believed it was coming.

And it didn’t matter to us that the only full life story we knew was Jeremiah’s. Jeremiah went to jail and we would go to jail too. For the climate, for peace, for civil rights, for democracy. Progressive Jews have proudly broken the law and resisted injustice to take up the place of the suffering servant.

In Lamentations, we see the words Jeremiah spoke when he witnessed his city destroyed.

“I am the man who has seen afflictions at God’s hands…”

“…We have suffered terror and pitfalls, ruin and destruction. Streams of tears flow from my eyes because my people are destroyed…”

“…My people have become heartless, like ostriches in the desert…”

“…All this has happened because of the sins of the prophets and the iniquities of the priests…”

“…The visions of your prophets were false and worthless; they did not expose your sin to ward off your captivity. The prophecies they gave you were false and misleading…”

“… All our friends have betrayed us, and become our enemies…”

I am not sleeping well.

I wake up multiple times in the night with my fists clenched, gripping my bedsheets. I’m scared and angry and I feel so alone.

In the last month, an Iranian was arrested for hostile reconnaissance on the college where I trained to be a rabbi. A close friend, my witness at my wedding, had her street evacuated because terrorists were hiding in the gardens. A close friend, who I’m going on holiday with at the end of the month, had the synagogue where she works targeted with a petrol bomb.

None of these incidents made national news.

They are background noise to stabbings in Golders Green; murders at Heaton Park; arson at Nelson Street; smashed windows with lighter fluid at Kenton Park. Every festival, I interrupt the running of religious services to say Jews have been killed somewhere.

Am I even praying any more, or am I just trying to keep people calm?

All of this was so foreseeable. At least it feels so in hindsight.

We Progressive Jews fully embraced citizenship in Europe. We aligned ourselves with the British establishment for our protection. We swore fidelity to the monarchy in our weekly prayers. We embedded ourselves in this country and became integral to the state.

Then, in a moment of counter-culture, when people became anti-establishment and angry at the state, we were the accessible human bodies they could grasp, and stab.

We Progressive Jews rejected all politics of race and nation. We would be a moral movement, expressing only the best of the prophetic message.

But the rest of the world is based on racism and nationalism. Everyone else sees the world through the lens of race. Through their glasses, a Jew at prayer in London is indistinguishable from a Jew driving a tank in Gaza. They think they can exact war and revenge on us.

We aligned ourselves with Israel because it promised us hope. After the Shoah, we needed some guarantee of safety to cling to. We advocated for Israel and defended it. Maybe in our own eyes, too, the Diaspora and the State became indistinguishable.

We muddied the waters of our own understanding of what antisemitism was. We fought with each other, to define it, and to show where our loyalties lay. People couldn’t trust us to say what was happening. Now they absorb hateful propaganda that says we are doing all this to ourselves.

We chose bad allies to bring down people who weren’t real enemies. At the time, I expressed my fear that because of all this, people would blame the Jews for Britain’s problems.

‘Of course they wouldn’t,’ a friend assured me. ‘That would be antisemitic.’

Now, we attend rallies addressed by Nigel Farage. It is the last gasp of a failed effort to find security in race, the state, and the establishment: the very things that are making us unsafe.

The Progressive Jewish answer was always supposed to be different. We would, instead, find safety in solidarity. Our best defence is our neighbours. True security is in the positive relationships we build across other faiths, with all the oppressed communities of the world.

Where are our allies now?

I suppose we may never know whether our way would have worked.

Jeremiah told the Israelites, he told them it would happen. “Do not ally with one power,” he warned, “or another one will destroy you. And then your allies will destroy you too.”

“Do not seek surety in militaries and empires. You can only count on God.”

And then God will abandon you, too.

After the Shoah, Progressive Jews rejected the cruelty of Orthodox theologies that insisted we only had ourselves to blame. We were the victims of unjust systems, who only had bad choices in a world stacked against us.

What a great promise the worker’s revolution had been! The proletariat would shake off the chains of capitalism and all would finally be free. And yet, in every country where Jews lived under communism, they were so far from free.

The Bund: the Jewish worker’s movement; the Yiddish pamphleteers; the revolutionary singers. They would save us!

I think, now, that we romanticised them so much because they were all dead. They couldn’t make mistakes or show their weaknesses or try out their ideas and see them fail. They are all dead. All of them. The dead cannot save us.

Maybe some day, we will be the subjects of nostalgia too: the last Jews crazy enough to have faith in the prophets.

And the tolerance of liberal democracy, what of it? Didn’t it offer the very first promise under Napoleon’s tricolor that Jews might have freedom?

The safest places are safe until they are not.

I think of my great grandmother who left Lima for Berlin at the start of the 20th Century. How confident she must have been that she was heading to the safest haven on earth. I don’t need to tell you what happened to her.

I don’t think we have anywhere safe to run this time. Not Israel, even with its Iron Dome and bomb shelters. Not America, even with the hegemon’s promise to be the land of the free. I cannot imagine escaping to anywhere.

And do not pretend to me that there is any virtue in the Orthodox fantasy of good wives helping their little husbands do mitzvot while they all pretend the world is unchanging and grow ever more sadistic with it. You cannot pray your way out of reality, or study your way out of people’s dignity.

Every option available to the Jews failed miserably. Zangwill imagined that Salonika would be a great centre of Jewish life as part of an international community. The Nazis had a near complete kill-rate there.

After the Shoah, we had to find hope somewhere else.

Israel may have been a mistake, but it was the only mistake the Jews had left to make. Zionism was the only dead end the Jews hadn’t yet gone down. And, after all that, sadly, it will not bring us safety in the end either.

Why would the Palestinians give up their land and abandon their homes without a fight? How could we expect the Muslims to tolerate Jews controlling Jerusalem? There was no way any of it could survive without subjugating the Arabs and contorting the Jews until neither were recognisable.

The Jewish Left said that the Israelis and Palestinians would either all live together or all die together. I fear the choice has been made for them in board rooms they have not entered.

If I could see into the abyss as clearly as Cassandra did, I would wager that, in less than a hundred years, Jerusalem will be a desert wasteland, where every few weeks a new man will declare himself Pope, Emperor, Caliph, or Mashiach. The only thing we can’t yet imagine is what awful weapons they will have.

The only option still not explored is the prophets’ dream of lions lying down with lambs and justice flowing like an ever-flowing stream. It hasn’t happened yet.

I need you to know that I still believe in it. Even if nobody else does really, I still believe.

I just don’t think it will happen in my lifetime. It may never happen at all.

When Progressive Judaism was born, we renounced all claim to Israel. ‘Berlin will be our Jerusalem,’ promised Mendelssohn, as he cajoled us out of the ghetto. The enlightened democracies will be our Zion.

Berlin was Jerusalem, for a while. And then it was a graveyard for a generation of my family.

I’m not sleeping well. I feel like a balding man, clutching his bible, watching his city burn.

With such pride we said that I was the first person in my family to be born in the same country as his father. England was our home.

England is our home. Jewish life here is beautiful and vibrant. If they could only see how our children run around at house parties; how we spend weeks immersed in study; how our musicians play the house down; how our theatremakers make us laugh our guts out. How we bless our babies, our bnei mitzvah, our teens, our weddings, our anniversaries, our dead; how we pray with all our soul and might.

A quarter of Britons say it would make no difference if we disappeared tomorrow.

England has been our Jerusalem too. I do not know what it will become.

Maybe it isn’t too late.

The future is unwritten. That is a threat, not a promise.

interfaith · sermon · torah

Do not hide the tears of tolerance

December 18, 2025December 18, 2025 levtaylor

As some of you know, my kippah is a permanent fixture on my head, and has been since my early 20s. I often get asked whether I experience any feedback for being so visibly Jewish. My answer is: yes. Occasionally, Christians come up to me and say “shalom.” I say “shalom” back.

Well, this week, I have a more interesting story to tell.

Last Saturday night, Laurence and I were on our way back from a friend’s birthday lip synch. (Yes, in my time off, I do competitively mime to Nicki Minaj wearing a space suit and kitten heels.)

We were heading into Vauxhall Station. A group of men in their early 20s were dancing around, holding hands, and reaching out their hands for others to join them.

It will probably not surprise you to hear that I joined in. The boys cheered.

Within moments of joining them, I realised I might have made a terrible mistake. The man whose hand I was holding was, in fact, wearing a Palestine football shirt. They were all speaking Arabic. A taller man noticed my kippah and said to the others “hu yehudi.” I know what this means in Arabic, because you say it the same way in Hebrew: he’s Jewish.

And I thought, well, it’s basically the same language, I’ll try talking with them in Hebrew. Friends, these gentlemen did not, in fact, speak Hebrew. Their English was pretty stilted too.

Right next to us, a fist fight broke out between two white guys.

We all fumbled awkwardly, and tried to communicate across a language barrier. The tension became palpable. It was just me and Laurence and a whole group of Palestinian men.

I asked: “where are you from?”

“We are from Gaza,” the one who had been holding my hand said. “Do you support the government?”

I said: “of course not.”

The man said: “Really?”

I said: “Yes.”

The men cheered, and resumed dancing. I got on my train back to Ditton.

There was no time to explain that the Israeli government wasn’t actually my government at all, but my answer would have been the same whichever government he was talking about.

I am under no illusion that this story could have ended differently. But, as it is, the story ended with dancing in the streets of London, and everybody walking away with their dignity intact.

Now, I may have been the first visibly Jewish person these men had met who was not wearing a military uniform. And perhaps now, with the freedom of London, they will get the chance to learn more about who Jews are.

And perhaps I will go away and actually do my Arabic homework so that I can have a better quality conversation. At least, in the future, I won’t default to Hebrew as a good enough alternative.

I think we tend to imagine that tolerance is the true harmony of everyone fully understanding each other; living side by side; eating in the same restaurants; celebrating and grieving together.

I still believe that true peace will come, when everyone has full equality, and nobody has any more need for conflict.

But, most of the time, life is not like that.

As long as there is inequality, those with less will want what those with more have; and those who have more power will exert it over those with less. Until we all have everything we need, there will be conflict for the power and possessions we lack.

Tolerance, in our society, is the decision to set grudges aside, to suspend prejudice, and to just let each other go on with life. It is the decision of the stronger to spare the weaker. It is a choice to ignore stock characters and old grievances for the sake of everyone getting on with their day.

It is not easy passivity, but a conscious choice to accept the world as it is. Sometimes, that is painful.

So it is with Joseph and his brothers.

Consider all the array of feelings Joseph must have held when he first saw his brothers. The last time he had encountered them, they had thrown him in a pit, then sold him at a cheap price to travelling merchants.

Do you think he was in the mood for forgiving?

And what about his brothers? They are now in abject poverty. They have travelled miles on foot to escape famine in their homeland. And they have to prostrate themselves and beg before a foreign king in a language they do not understand.

The powerful and the powerless have switched places; the resources are now all in Joseph’s hands.

Joseph doesn’t just shrug his shoulders and get over it. Instead, he decides to test his brothers and bring his entire estranged family to Egypt.

Joseph hides a silver cup in his brother Benjamin’s satchel and uses the supposed theft as a pretext to hold him hostage. Joseph announces to his family that he is going to keep their youngest brother as a slave, making them relive what they did to him.

At the moment when our parashah ends, we don’t actually know how the story is going to pan out. We, who have heard this story many times, are already aware that the brothers will repent and offer their lives for Benjamin’s. We know that Joseph will announce himself and forgive his siblings.

But, for this week, we are suspended in the tests of Joseph and his brothers.

The Joseph narrative is the longest part of the Book of Genesis, not least because of the extensive detail given to Jacob’s sons’ journey back and forth between the two countries, and the lengthy description of how Joseph examines his brothers’ hearts.

This story is, in fact, repeated almost exactly in the Quran. Surah Yusuf is a lengthy narrative in the formative text of Islam. Within the chapter itself, the Quran says that it is repeating the words of previous prophets and is confirming the prior revelation of the Torah.

But there is a key difference between the Torah’s version and the Quran’s. In the Islamic retelling, Benjamin is in on the ruse from the start. Joseph reveals himself to Benjamin before hiding the cup and tells him to go along with the ploy.

Perhaps the goal here is to make Joseph seem more righteous. That is, indeed, what many of our midrash do when they retell Torah narratives. They iron out biblical figures’ imperfections.

But, if you look at the texts of the stories side by side, the parallel verse in the Torah reveals something more interesting. In our recension, rather than revealing himself, Joseph runs off to his room and cries.

The Quran’s version, then, makes the story less painful. It glosses over how heart-wrenching and difficult this process is of forgiving and letting go.

There is a lesson here for us. We all want to jump ahead to the part of the story where everyone is friends again and loves each other. We all want to fast forward to the point in history where there is lasting peace and harmony.

But, the Torah tells us, you have to stay in the feelings. You have to live in the mess for a while.

As Jews in Britain, we are forever doing a delicate dance of interfaith relations, while plagued by trauma. As the whole world seems ever more oriented towards intolerance and tribalism, we still need to show up to shared spaces with our best faces and our best expectations of others. We need to set aside prejudices for the sake of a better society.

And that is hard. So don’t gloss over the tears. Don’t hide the pain away in another room. Let us be honest with ourselves and each other that the task of building a multicultural society is tough.

But, while we hold the challenge, remember that we do still know how this story ends. We know that we are heading towards an ultimate conclusion of liberty and equality. God has a plan for the world. And it will end with true peace.

One day, all people will embrace one another as members of the human family. One day, we will all weep together over the years wasted on war. One day, without fear, we will all dance unabashedly in the streets.

May that time come soon and last forever.

Amen.