Passover always reminds me why I am a religious person: to be part of a tradition that calls on us to show up and mark time together by sharing ritual, prayers, food and values.
During the Seder and this ‘season of freedom,’ we will retell our story: that’s literally the meaning of Haggadah. This is a story so central to our tradition that it informs our Judaism and our Jewish expression. We recall that we have lived through generations of suffering and that we know liberation. It’s an energetic remembering, because in every generation, it means something particular to the moment in which we live. We are called to radical empathy at Passover, as the writer Jonathan Safran-Foer describes. This year, the seder and its words freedom, liberation and oppression will have many more layers of meaning for those of us who sit round the table.
I imagine each of us in our own way will manage the commandment:
In each and every generation, a person is obligated to see themself as if they [personally] left Egypt. (Exodus 13:8)
I want to wish everyone a meaningful and inspiring Passover. I hope your charoset is sweet, your Seder plates full and that you and your guests come to the table tonight, and at FPS tomorrow, with a tender and open heart to all of the questions and remembering that we will do this year.
Rebecca
On Saturday night, we were having dinner with friends, talking as usual about Israel, the war in Gaza and our Jewishness, when we heard news of Iran’s impending attack. That there were no deaths was the result solidarity across the region, though one young Bedouin girl was seriously injured. So, the start of this week has been infused with concern following Iran’s assault on Israel and with fear of how things might escalate. All the while, our attention remains on the hostage families, becoming desperate for the lack of news or possibilities, as well, of course, on the dire suffering in Gaza. We here are trying to hold steady and continue our work as diaspora Jews, to resist division and to be open-hearted and sensible in our collaborative work with others. With such pernicious news, all we can do is double our efforts to negotiate our Judaism in a thoughtful, open way and to keep optimistic and hopeful.
Passover is here and the line from the Seder and Book of Exodus has rarely felt more poignant:
B’chol for va’dor hayav adam lirot et atzmo k’ilu hu yatzar m’mitzrayim. In every generation each person is obliged to view themselves as if they personally left Egypt.
I want to remind us all of two events that capture us at work and see us doubling down on our Jewish values.
The first is our open doors this Shabbat morning*. We have advertised this and invited to join us folk who want to explore their Jewishness at the moment, as we thoughtfully and courageously arrive at Passover with its invitation to consider redemption, empathy and freedom. As I wrote in London Jewish News last month, Liberal Judaism has much to celebrate. You can carry your Jewishness from either parent, from choosing to convert, from the legacy of family who gave it to you to make something different from it.
This is the moment for Jewish conversations.
The second event is on Thursday, 25th April, in the midst of Passover, when I will co-chair the London Mayoral Assembly for London Citizens. We have worked with them for over ten years and have brought so much positive change to London as Jews – remember our success settling Syrian Refugees into Barnet? Jews and our communities need to be proud and involved in London and I feel privileged to lead this event with Mayor Sadiq Khan and mayoral candidate Susan Hall. There are only three places left – if you would like to join me, contact me direct.
* Service 9.45-10.45
Discussions and family activities from 11a.m.
This Shabbat we will be praying for:
Alon Ohel
Avinatan Or
Guy Illouz
Matan Angrest
The year is marching on.
Passover is fast approaching.
We know the theme – going from a narrow place to a wide expanse. Min Hameitzar karate yah v’anani v’merchav yah. (Psalm 118) The writer Michael Walzer wrote: wherever you live, it is probably Egypt; second; that there is a better place, a world more attractive, a promised land; and third, that the way to the land is through the wilderness.
That is the theme of the holiday: moving from oppression to freedom; opening our hearts, our homes and our tables, as the Haggadah calls, “Let all who are hungry come and eat.”
This year, we at FPS wanted to reach out to the unaffiliated – to friends and to family of our members – to open our doors pre-Passover on 20th April – to converse about what it means to be Jewish right now; to meet the central story of our tradition and tell the Seder, “We were slaves in Egypt…”
Because what will Pesach be like this year? What will we add to our telling to reflect what is happening around us? Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, a thoughtful and interesting Orthodox rabbi, wrote, “the Egyptian experience may therefore be regarded as the fountainhead and moral inspiration for the teaching of compassion, which is so pervasive in Jewish law.” We all know the goal of Jewish law and tradition is to cultivate people of compassion. There are various ways to do that with the Seder and Passover experience.
Some might add a beetroot to the seder plate as a sign of solidarity for the ongoing war against Ukraine – beetroot being an obvious national food – think borscht. Rabbi Igor Zinkov suggests eating it after the bitter herbs and using its Hebrew name selek (סלק) and seeing in it the word for retreat, yistalku (יסתלקו).
May it be your will Eternal God that all enemies will retreat.
Some may set an extra seat for one of the hostages, an initiative by the Board of Deputies, printing a picture and talking about an individual far from home and the redemption and release the Passover story tells.
Some may place an olive branch – the symbol of peace – or a few olives on the Seder plate. Olive trees have long been destroyed by Israeli settlers, leading to Palestinian suffering. Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel (a multi denominational group) often replant them with communities. Now, with the devastation of Gaza and mass starvation there, perhaps some will set an empty bowl on their seder table, or even bird seed, to represent what some are reduced to foraging and eating. This could perhaps open conversations about different suffering as we list the biblical plagues. We’ll have a chance to talk about what we all might like to do.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
Last week, we hosted an Iftar – a break fast meal for Muslim neighbours fasting during Ramadan, with invited interfaith friends and local politicians. Coming together during these heated times was an uplifting affair. (Thanks to Tamara Joseph, Natasha Kafka, Janine Garai and Citizens UK for pulling it together with a fantastic team). We had just had Purim; Hindus had just celebrated Holi; we were marking the middle of Ramadan; and we were looking ahead to the Easter weekend that would fall just days later. It is, by any reckoning, a spiritual and reflective season and it felt as though we captured it. There is so much that unites us across faiths and cultures and the different paths we may take to the sacred.
I thought about this last weekend as I visited the Chagall Museum of Biblical Memory and also Henri Matisse’s Chapel in St. Paul de Vence. All my adulthood, I have wanted to visit and have finally managed it. Each artist describes how, for him, this place was the pinnacle, the denouement, of his creative life. For the first time, I noticed as an amplification of Jewish suffering the images of Jesus on the cross that Chagall incorporates into his biblical scenes, the shape of God’s cloud by day made up of hundreds of individual faces. Matisse’s focus on the infant and mother, reflected in the azure blue of the windows and paint, echoed the peace and simplicity of the chapel.
“I started with the secular and now in the evening of my life, I naturally end with the divine,” wrote Henri Matisse about the chapel. Both men were proud of their reaching towards God and religion. Following them juxtaposed so beautifully, even in the rain of the Cote D’Azur, the pathways to our faiths and the diverse ways in which we travel.
I was proud of FPS last week as we stood in solidarity and support, appreciating different paths to God, and my heart was uplifted as I was drawn in by the sacred works by those French artists.
Maybe we will manage our own modest stained glass in our renewed and restored synagogue.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
Tzav is interested in the distinction between what is offered and what is eaten. The fat of ox, sheep or goat – all kosher animals – cannot be eaten. In this portion, Torah goes on to investigate what can be eaten.
I suppose we are starting to imagine here ritual meals separate from or alongside sacrificial offerings.
I like this. Post biblical – post priestly ritual – we have to find different ways to engage with these descriptions of animal flesh. We know that gathering to eat is a major part of Jewish communal life. I have loved hosting Shabbat at the Rabbi’s meals in the community, not just Chavurah suppers in the building, which are always fun, but me (and often Anthony too) cooking and preparing Shabbat lunch or Friday night dinner and a few of us eating around my kitchen table. I like investing time and effort in what we eat, which only adds to our conversation and togetherness. Eating together is a key Jewish experience. We are planning our FPS seder 23rd April menu right now. (Remember to book).
We create our own contemporary Ohel Moeid, tent of meeting, for the people we care about. I like cooking my grandmother’s roast chicken recipe for meat eaters, and going rogue into Ottolenghi vegetable recipes for our vegetarian guests.
See what you think of this blessing written by Leah Koenig and Anna Stevenson called the ‘Cooking Bracha’:
“Blessed are You
Creator of the world
Who brings forth fruit from the Earth.
Blessed are You,
Who gives us knowledge of cooking and time to cook
And who has blessed us with the need for nourishment
so that we can fully understand Your gifts.
May it be Your will
That the food that I cook
Bring nourishment, fulfillment, and happiness
to those who eat it
And bring honour to the land and all the people that make this meal possible.”
Here’s to more meals together and remember to book in for the next one Shabbat lunch on 27 April in my kitchen
This Shabbat we will be praying for:
Ron Benjamin
Yair and Eitan Horn
Yarden, Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas
PURIM
This is the first ‘full on’ Jewish holiday post the massacre on 7th October and the war on Gaza. Chanukah was more gentle in our homes. Purim requires synagogue gathering. This year, we must still ensure our Jewish year gets marked. Our children get to experience the silliness of this unusual book of Esther that captures Diaspora Jewish life, as long as we acknowledge the piquancy of the back drop to Purim celebrations this year. I see Rachel Polin Goldberg, mother of Hirsch, as a modern day Esther, speaking truth to power and calling for an end of suffering for all peoples caught in this horror. We adults can have that sensitivity and as Rabbi John D. Rayner wrote in 1987, as Purim came back into Liberal Judaism:
It is all harmless good fun and salutary way of letting off steam provided that you only do it once in a long while and that you know what you are doing. It is when the Book of Esther is taken in dead earnest and when its Cowboys and Indians mentality is carried over into real life and becomes a basis of judgement in actual political conflict it is only then that it becomes dangerous.
But we at FPS will be having a brief and engaged Megillah and Spiel to honour our festival and do so in the most thoughtful way possible. Please join us – this year all the more so. Saturday 5p.m.
Tots and Children fancy dress parade, than our Megillah and Spiel, followed by a feast of wine, hamantaschen and snacks. All will be done by 6.15 / 6.30p.m. and we will have fulfilled the compulsion to hear the Megillat [Book of] Esther.
I wrote for Liberal Judaism a Thought for this Week on Parashat Vayikra. Click here to read on The Crumbley family convictions and a modern take on Sacrifice.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
“The money and the [Jewish] people are yours to do with as you see fit.”(Book of Esther 3:8)
Purim has always been understood as the most joyful day of the year. Silliness, dressing up, a carnival-Mardi Gras mood prevails. However, the Book of Esther is, as we know, a story of intense crisis and violence.
Initially, Jews face the existential threat of being attacked and destroyed, then at the end, Jews kill their enemies on a massive scale. It was considered so violent, so embarrassing even, that Liberal Judaism banned its celebration for decades. Rabbi John Rayner stated Purim has long been a bête noire in Liberal Judaism. It has been described as unhistorical, irreligious and unethical. It was only brought back in the 1980s when he preached that the community could cope with levity and imaginative play.
I wonder what he would say this year.
In the wake of October 7, these crises of Purim feel very real as we mourn unimaginably cruel acts of violence against Israelis, witness increased antisemitism and fear in Jewish communities worldwide and witness so many Palestinians killed in recent months.
I’m intrigued by what the Book of [Megillat] Esther teaches us about holding together both realities of violence against Jews and violence by Jews. Many communities are choosing to look at this prior to next Saturday’s Purim, when our children and musicians will help tell the story. What might we glean from the story this year, especially about responding in moments of deep fear?
This Shabbat we will learn and discuss during the service – deepening our Jewish literacy and sharing it.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
‘Rest is the conversation between what we love to do and how we love to be… rested we care again for the right things and the right people in the right way. In rest we re-establish the goals that make us more generous [and] more courageous…’*
I love these words by the poet David Whyte. He captures so well what can happen when we stop. I confess to worshipping often capacity and busyness and energy and elastic time as an end in itself. It never occurred to me as someone who had, I thought, understood Shabbat, that longer pause can indeed be a sacred act.
Somewhere, we know that the silent pause between musical notes serves the notes themselves. The white behind and between the black inked letters of Torah serve to create full words and meanings and if we are lucky, the opportunity to step away from our desks, our daily tasks and those emails, can and will refresh and invigorate our sense of things.
That pause has been so for me. I have studied, read and read more, I’ve spent time on new prayers and praying. I have written without deadlines; I have paid attention to family when they have most needed it. I have taken time to think – and I’ve been reminded anew of the courage and generosity in people here at FPS.
No surprise to find this week’s Torah portion of Vayakel, at the end of Exodus, echoing back this past month for us. A reminder to keep Shabbat and sacred rest (if anything, to help us be more productive) and then we are told about the power of generosity and open heartedness in being part of building, the mishkan – sanctuary. It is speaking directly to us, isn’t it?
“Everyone” whose heart so moves him or her shall bring gifts,כֹּ֚ל נְדִ֣יב לִבּ֔וֹ
Translated as anyone with a willing or generous heart.
I have watched this congregation, full of generous souls, volunteering of their time, their resources, giving funds to our own sanctuary, “all whose heart is willing.” Distance allowed an amazement and pride in what we have managed and what we will, I hope, manage more: the generosity of the hearts that make up our congregation, those who have given financially and those who give of their own time and skill. The word Kol is repeated 35 times in this Torah chapter alone. It means all, each, every. It emphasises the power of congregation, of community, of equity, of collaboration in whatever we put our mind to. Having observed my own ‘Shabbat’ I’m so grateful for the generosity of all the hearts back here.
Thank you for honouring me with this short sabbatical and giving us all that sacred pause to consider. I look forward to seeing what more our willing, generous hearts bring.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
Rabbi Rebecca shared this poem with us as words that speak to this Shabbat and this moment of time:
Wildpeace
Not the peace of a cease-fire,
not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb,
but rather
as in the heart when the excitement is over
and you can talk only about a great weariness.
I know that I know how to kill,
that makes me an adult.
And my son plays with a toy gun that knows
how to open and close its eyes and say Mama.
A peace
without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares,
without words, without
the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be
light, floating, like lazy white foam.
A little rest for the wounds—
who speaks of healing?
(And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation
to the next, as in a relay race:
the baton never falls.)
Let it come
like wildflowers,
suddenly, because the field
must have it: wildpeace.
Yehuda Amichai, “Wildpeace” from Selected Poetry. Copyright © 1996 by Yehuda Amichai. Reprinted by permission of University of California Press.
Rabbi Rebecca shared this poem with us as words that speak to this Shabbat and this moment of time:
Parashat Tetzaveh describes the priestly garb worn by Aaron and his sons in their roles for the community, from their uniforms to the explicit direction for all they did in that Tent of Meeting. This poem by Nikita Gill captures ancestors and the passage of time, change and pride.
Your ancestors did not survive everything
That nearly ended them
For you to shrink yourself
To make someone else comfortable.
This sacrifice is your war cry,
be loud,
be everything
and make them proud.
Nikita Gill
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