Tuesday 31 July 2012

New London in Search of New Cheder Teachers

NEW LONDON SYNAGOGUE

33 Abbey Road, London NW8 0AT

 

A year ago, our Cheder was re-launched under the expert eye of Angela Gluck, one of the country’s leading Jewish educators. It has become a vibrant place of Jewish learning for the 3—13 age group and the number on roll has trebled in that time.

 

So now we’re seeking more teachers to join our active and co-operative team, from September 2012. This is an exciting opportunity for those who care about the Jewish education of our youngest community members, and the remuneration is competitive.

 

Y     Do you enjoy the company of children and young people? Do you want to help them grow Jewishly?

Y     Are you willing to work within a strong Masorti ethos that values the best in both Jewish tradition and modernity—and the interaction between them?

Y     Do you believe that Jewish education is a life-long process and that a bank of positive childhood memories is its firmest foundation?

Y     Are you willing to develop as a Jewish educator, whatever your experience to date?

Y     Do you thrive on challenge? And do you have a sense of fun?

 

If yes, and you’d like to be involved in our Cheder, do get in touch with us by e-mailing your cv to the Executive Director, Jo Velleman, at director@newlondon.org.uk or phoning 020 7328 1026 (mornings only) by 13th August 2012.

 

Please feel free to pass this on to others who might wish to develop themselves through developing our cheder.

 

Thursday 19 July 2012

How Many Jews Does it Take to Change a Lightbuld - Destruction and 'Bedek HaBait'

Q: How many New London Synagogue members does it take to change a light bulb?

A: The problem isn’t the bulb, the real challenge is turning the Synagogue around.

 

As a community we’ve become too used to paying professionals to change bulbs. But when we do the work ourselves we feel a special sense of ownership over the place we help repair – that’s the same kind of ownership I would want all our members to feel about the Synagogue. Last year a heroic team of volunteers painted the Kiddush Hall, it looks terrific. Last Sunday a team of painters and other odd-jobbers painted the kitchen, cleared out books and undertook what the Bible calls, ‘Bedek HaBayit’ – maintenance. I would love to say that last week’s volunteers, brilliantly led by Angela Gluck, felt a renewed sense of connection to the Shul. Many, instead, simply felt ‘where is everyone else?!’ And we still have a nasty green corridor and a couple of classrooms to spruce up.

 

That’s why we are holding Yom HaBait again, Sunday week, 29th July. The symbolism is (I hope) irresistible. It’s the day we commemorate the destruction of the precursor of all Synagogues, the Temple. We will be marking destruction from 9:15am, with our Shacharit service, and then there will be a chance to rebuild (other less physical opportunities to help with Yom HaBait are also available) and we will also be showing a documentary about the attacks on the Israeli athletes at the Munich Games. You are welcome for any part of the day, even for an hour of your time, your support is needed and much appreciated. Please e-mail cheder@newlondon.org.uk for more information or to confirm you can come and lend a hand.

 

Shabbat shalom,

 

Rabbi Jeremy

Thursday 12 July 2012

I've Been Thinking About Getting Married

 

No, not that, I’m happily married already thank you! But the process of marriage as understood in Jewish Law has been on my mind. Jewish marriage rituals are suffused with rituals and language borrowed from Jewish contractual law. At the heart of Jewish marriage ritual is an act of ‘Kinyan’ – purchase. ‘A woman is acquired in three ways’ opens the Talmudic Tractate on Kiddushin – marriage and the Halachic process of bringing man and woman together is seeped with a sense of a woman as chattel, sometimes ameliorated, sometimes excused, but irreducibly present. Of course none of the couples I support around their marriages sees their marriage in ‘acquisitive’ terms and certainly none of the women sees themselves as chattel and, indeed, very few couples seem particularly worried this acquisitive taint. I invariably suggest some minor ways to lessen some of the acquisitive nature of the traditional service, but these offers are often declined by the couple in search of a supposedly fully authentic service. But there are theoretical and also practical concerns with the acquisitive model. Despite polygamy disappearing from mainstream Judaism centuries ago, theoretically only the wife commits to monogamy in a traditional service – the husband doesn’t. More practically problematic is the case of women refused divorce by men who refuse to let go of what they perceive as their personal property to make suffer. There is also a spiritual problem with celebrating commitment using language and rituals that no-one under the chuppah, Rabbi or couple, literally commits to.

 

My colleague, Rabbi Joel Levy, pointed out a different problem. If a woman does not think she is being acquired, in a marriage, and if a man does not think he acquiring, maybe the words and the rituals performed are, and should, be void – even if they are fully traditional. In other words, in these modern times, we need to become more untraditional in order to achieve anything.

 

Masorti and liberal Orthodox religious thinkers are looking at other models with which to celebrate marriage and the most popular is ‘shutafut’ – partnership, again making use of rituals and language taken from contractual law, but this time acknowledging and building from a base of mutuality. It seems that while the Government is thinking about abandoning civil partnerships in favour of traditional marriage ceremonies, there are a good many religious leaders thinking about abandoning old forms of marriage in favour of new kinds of civil partnerships.

 

Sunday 8 July 2012

On Bilaam and the Holiness, or otherwise, of The Shard

 

Mah Tovu Ohalecha Yacov, Mishcenotecha Yisrael

 

The most famous line in this week’s parasha suggests that tents can be good, morally refined even.

We have a sense that kedushah can be applied to town planning and architecture.

So that is what I wish to address this week.

Actually I have another Biblical narrative in mind, but I’ll come to that later.

 

Three teachings from this week’s parasha.

Rashi asks what Bilaam saw, to call it good, and suggests he sees each tent openning away from a central courtyard, respecting privacy, shelo yatzitz ohel chavero. A sense of privacy, modesty promoted by architecture and planning. That’s a good thing.

 

Bilaam lifts up his eyes and sees the nation of Israel shochen lishvatim – dwelling according to their tribes.

Each Israelite, the Medieval Midrash -  Bmidbar Rabba – states camps under their own bdiglo  - each claiming and supporting their own sense of tribal identityeach fitting into their neighbourhood, each having a sense of place and security.

 

And there is a textual problem with this verse

Mah Tovu Olahecha Yaacov– how goodly are your tents,

Mishconotecha Israel – your dwelling places, Israel.

Why do we need both. Appears redundant.

There is a Rabbinic dislike of redundancy so the apparent contradiction is solved – one mention refers to the tent of meeting, the central point where God meets the Children of Israel.

The other is the dwelling places of the people arranged around the outside.

What is good, on this reading, is the centralisation of a settlement around a focal point of holiness.

 

Three holy architectural ideas.

When a settlement is built around something decent, the decency seeps into the people who live in the settlement.

When a people have a sense of place and a security they can grow, develop and thrive.

When the arrangement of dwelling space fosters a sense of modesty, when we are weaned off a desire to peer pruriently into the lives of our fellows we can thrive.

 

The power of planning, architecture and design is not only ancient.

Our member, Barbara Weiss, rebuilt the newly opened Weiner Library, a collection of Holocaust related material.

Designed to feel open, white, transparent space.

As if transparency is a prophylactic against fascism.

Architecture as a response to horror, dignified and invested in fostering the sort of study that might make Never Again indeed possible.

This week went to see exhibition of the Heatherwick studios at the V&A – I’ll explain why a little later.

Not a great exhibition, sad because much of the work is stunning

Thomas Heatherwick is a designer who has turned his hand to everything from 30 storey high art installations which could be taken into their building fitting through a letterbox, to a new design for a London bus.

My eye was taken with a design for toilets in a Chinese shopping centre.

Each cubicle was made of a single piece of curved veneer which flexed rather than hinged open. It was witty, beautiful, creative and small.

It would make its user smile.

Smiling is good too.

 

I went to the Heatherwick exhibition because I didn’t want my sense of design, this week, to be taken over by The Shard, the new 300+ metre addition to the London skyline which officially opened for – and the idiom is entirely deserved – business this week.

The Shard is tall. It’s also tall, tall and tall.

Its developer suggests the Shard’s height is its greatest asset. ‘This is London, this is the Shard. Now’ says Irvine Sellar, ‘we can kick sand in the face of the Eiffel Tower.’ Hmmm.

Putting aside the reality that the Tour Eiffel is actually taller than the Shard the whole idea of judging a city or a building by its height alone seems vapid.

 

Where when you look up at The Shard is the sense of place, security and comfort? Where is the drawing of the mind and heart of a people to a central point of decency and goodness? If not a Ohel Mohed as least something about creating community, civic amenity, something!

Rather, looming over everything, glorifying in its own sheer tallness, the Shard reminds us, unless we are one of the very privileged few who can afford umpteen millions to live in its upper floors, that there are richer people than you looking down on you.

 

I’ve noting against tall buildings.

Certainly not tall religious buildings. Indeed New London height is part of its own beauty.

Religious buildings should made us look up.

Alain de Botton, nice Jewish boy that he is, writes of the importance of lofty cathedrals drawing our attention up and beyond our own petty cares, making us realise that there are heights beyond our grasp, things we are not supposed to understand, and that’s all good and important.

But from a religious perspective the point of looking up is to witness the numinous, the transcendent and the good.

You don’t look up to be reminded of the wealth of others.

Placing The Shard in the midst of its environment turns us all into voyeurs, excluded and wilfully or otherwise forced to peering in. It is as if we are forced to become little match girls pushing our noses up against a life we will never have and never thought we wanted.

 

The Shard is notable only for being notable, it peers down at us and turns us willingly or otherwise into voyeurs of it.

Indeed the better Biblical narrative to speak about, in this week in which London’s skyline is punctured with such a bland phallic intent, is the tale of the Tower of Babel, built to make a name for its property developers just before they, and the people of Babel were scattered all over the face of the world.

 

We live in a great city.

We should be proud of it and protect its greatness.

We should also remind ourselves of what architecture and planning should do, even if that is not what planners and architects are doing.

We should build our lives modestly, avoiding prurience.

We should make our homes places that contribute to our sense of security and place.

We should build our lives around central points of decency, civility and holiness and in so doing we would deserve again the praise of Bilaam.

Mah Tovu Ohalecha – how great are your tents.

 

Shabbat shalom

On Bilaam and The Shard

 

Mah Tovu Ohalecha Yacov, Mishcenotecha Yisrael

 

The most famous line in this week’s parasha suggests that tents can be good, morally refined even.

We have a sense that kedushah can be applied to town planning and architecture.

So that is what I wish to address this week.

Actually I have another Biblical narrative in mind, but I’ll come to that later.

 

Three teachings from this week’s parasha.

Rashi asks what Bilaam saw, to call it good, and suggests he sees each tent openning away from a central courtyard, respecting privacy, shelo yatzitz ohel chavero. A sense of privacy, modesty promoted by architecture and planning. That’s a good thing.

 

Bilaam lifts up his eyes and sees the nation of Israel shochen lishvatim – dwelling according to their tribes.

Each Israelite, the Medieval Midrash -  Bmidbar Rabba – states camps under their own bdiglo  - each claiming and supporting their own sense of tribal identityeach fitting into their neighbourhood, each having a sense of place and security.

 

And there is a textual problem with this verse

Mah Tovu Olahecha Yaacov– how goodly are your tents,

Mishconotecha Israel – your dwelling places, Israel.

Why do we need both. Appears redundant.

There is a Rabbinic dislike of redundancy so the apparent contradiction is solved – one mention refers to the tent of meeting, the central point where God meets the Children of Israel.

The other is the dwelling places of the people arranged around the outside.

What is good, on this reading, is the centralisation of a settlement around a focal point of holiness.

 

Three holy architectural ideas.

When a settlement is built around something decent, the decency seeps into the people who live in the settlement.

When a people have a sense of place and a security they can grow, develop and thrive.

When the arrangement of dwelling space fosters a sense of modesty, when we are weaned off a desire to peer prurient into the lives of our fellows we can thrive.

 

The power of planning, architecture and design is not only ancient.

Our member, Barbara Weiss, rebuilt the newly opened Weiner Library, a collection of Holocaust related material.

Designed to feel open, white, transparent space.

As if transparency is a prophylactic against fascism.

Architecture as a response to horror, dignified and invested in fostering the sort of study that might make Never Again indeed possible.

This week went to see exhibition of the Heatherwick studios at the V&A – I’ll explain why a little later.

Not a great exhibition, sad because much of the work is stunning

Thomas Heatherwick is a designer who has turned his hand to everything from 30 storey high art installations which could be taken into their building fitting through a letterbox, to a new design for a London bus.

My eye was taken with a design for toilets in a Chinese shopping centre.

Each cubicle was made of a single piece of curved veneer which flexed rather than hinged open. It was witty, beautiful, creative and small.

It would make its user smile.

Smiling is good too.

 

I went to the Heatherwick exhibition because I didn’t want my sense of design, this week, to be taken over by The Shard, the new 300+ metre addition to the London skyline which officially opened for – and the idiom is entirely deserved – business this week.

The Shard is tall. It’s also tall, tall and tall.

Its developer suggests the Shard’s height is its greatest asset. ‘This is London, this is the Shard. Now’ says Irvine Sellar, ‘we can kick sand in the face of the Eiffel Tower.’ Hmmm.

Putting aside the reality that the Tour Eiffel is actually taller than the Shard the whole idea of judging a city or a building by its height alone seems vapid.

 

Where when you look up at The Shard is the sense of place, security and comfort? Where is the drawing of the mind and heart of a people to a central point of decency and goodness? If not a Ohel Mohed as least something about creating community, civic amenity, something!

Rather, looming over everything, glorifying in its own sheer tallness, the Shard reminds us, unless we are one of the very privileged few who can afford umpteen millions to live in its upper floors, that there are richer people than you looking down on you.

 

I’ve noting against tall buildings.

Certainly not tall religious buildings. Indeed New London height is part of its own beauty.

Religious buildings should made us look up.

Alain de Botton, nice Jewish boy that he is, writes of the importance of lofty cathedrals drawing our attention up and beyond our own petty cares, making us realise that there are heights beyond our grasp, things we are not supposed to understand, and that’s all good and important.

But from a religious perspective the point of looking up is to witness the numinous, the transcendent and the good.

You don’t look up to be reminded of the wealth of others.

Placing The Shard in the midst of its environment turns us all into voyeurs, excluded and wilfully or otherwise forced to peering in. It is as if we are forced to become little match girls pushing our noses up against a life we will never have and never thought we wanted.

 

The Shard is notable only for being notable, it peers down at us and turns us willingly or otherwise into voyeurs of it.

Indeed the better Biblical narrative to speak about, in this week in which London’s skyline is punctured with such a bland phallic intent, is the tale of the Tower of Babel, built to make a name for its property developers just before they, and the people of Babel were scattered all over the face of the world.

 

We live in a great city.

We should be proud of it and protect its greatness.

We should also remind ourselves of what architecture and planning should do, even if that is not what planners and architects are doing.

We should build our lives modestly, avoiding prurience.

We should make our homes places that contribute to our sense of security and place.

We should build our lives around central points of decency, civility and holiness and in so doing we would deserve again the praise of Bilaam.

Mah Tovu Ohalecha – how great are your tents.

 

Tuesday 3 July 2012

On Cycling and the Book of Job

When God finally offers some sort of answer to Job, after his appalling suffering, God points out the power of nature. Just as we cannot manage the wind and rain, so too (and so much more so) we cannot fathom the will of the One who brings the rain.

And so I found myself stranded in Inverness at the end of a 100 mile sponsored bike ride north, as a result of floods which have closed the rail lines to London. Nothing like Job's suffering, of course, but a frustration. I hope to be back for Shabbat, weather allowing, but reflecting on man's ultimate inability to shape the world to our own needs is never a bad lesson.

Rabbis of all denominations from across the UK have been cycling from Land’s End to John O’Groats to highlight Anglo-Jewry’s year-long campaign to promote sustainable transport and environmental education. It is a fund-raising project organised by the new food and environmental charity Gefiltefest. www.gefiltefest.org. Each Rabbi is raising money for different charities, as well as for Gefiltefest’s food and environmental projects.

For more on the ride see Twitter #rabbirelayride. To sponsor my cycle ride please go to www.newlondon.org.UK/donate and put Rabbi's Sponsored Cycle Ride in the message box when it appears. Funds raised to be shared between gefiltefest and NLS

Piece for Jewish News on Situation in Israel

In the early 1950s David Ben Gurion offered an exemption from military service to some 400 scholars learning full-time in Yeshivah. Today around 60,000, or 15% of those eligible for Army service, avail themselves of this exemption and remain in life-long full-time study, unable to enter the work-place. No-one imagined either the increase in those seeking an exemption or the impact this increase would have on relationships between one type of Israeli and another. Ben Gurion’s assumption that such an exemption was his personal gift has been found illegal but the scheme put in its place, designed to encourage more ultra-orthodox into limited army service before entering the work-place, has failed and is being dismantled. The current system by which ultra-orthodox Jews can be exempted military service will be gone by September and a major row is brewing.

 

Another result of negotiations sixty years ago between the early Zionist leaders and the ultra-orthodox is the system of State funded Rabbis. Until earlier this month hundreds of municipal councils would fund Rabbis – but only orthodox Rabbis - for their communal services. As of the end of May the Attorney General has committed the State to pay wages of non-orthodox Rabbis in certain communities also. The announcement is seen to herald greater inclusion of progressive Jewish voices in Israeli society – a society which, currently, only accepts orthodox marriages, pays for orthodox Mikvaot and systematically funds orthodox Jewish education. Trenches are being dug and both sides are preparing for a fight.

 

These new and not so new battlegrounds are forcing Israel to confront its Jewish and democratic nature. Does being a Jewish State mean supporting only one form of Judaism? Does being democratic mean that elected members of the Knesset should pursue narrow self-interest or attempt to govern on behalf of those whose perspectives and commitments they do not share? As a lover of Israel and as a Masorti Rabbi this is what I do, and don’t, want to see.

 

I have no interest in a singular form of Judaism being imposed by any organisation which holds power. Even typing that sentence sends shudders through me; it evokes national memories of non-Jews imposing restrictions of one kind or other on the fullest range of Jewish practice and God-forbid Jews should do that to each other. Of course ultra-orthodoxy inspires many to do God’s will as best as they understand it. Other streams of Judaism also aspire to fulfil a will beyond human knowledge. I believe God, and the Torah, are sufficiently manifold to contain many visions of a good Jewish life. ‘All its paths are of peace,’ we sing as the Torah is returned to the ark. The key word ‘paths’ is in the plural. If the Israeli government is to support religious services – and I am delighted that it does – it must support a wide enough range of Jewish practices to inspire towards holiness as many Jewish Israeli citizens as possible.

 

I believe in the value of serious dedicated religious study, but study is important, according to the Talmud, because it leads to action. When Moses turned to God on the banks of the sea with Egypt’s massed ranks charging down on the people, God did nothing, as the Midrash teaches, until someone stepped into waters. Study as a life-time’s sole occupation is desperately limiting, certainly for the non-elite scholars, and certainly for those with large families to support. It might even be contrary to the spirit and letter of Jewish law. I have no visions of ultra-orthodox Yeshivah students being forced into the front-line of the Israel Defence Force. That isn’t going to happen. But I do feel more ultra-orthodox Jews need to be supported in finding a way to serve the country which provides them with financial and physical support. Modern-orthodox Israeli girls who don’t want to serve in the army can undertake non-military national service and modern-orthodox boys who want to combine military service with Yeshivah study are supported in doing this. These models must be the basis on which the future of the current exemption from military service is worked out.

 

At stake is an Israel in which Jews of every kind, secular, progressive and ultra-orthodox alike, can pursue their Jewish lives alongside one another, making compromise, and co-operating. If we can learn to live peacefully alongside Jews with whom we disagree we might even be able to build a peace with non-Jews in our midst and beyond our borders also. The vision is the vision of Zechariah, ‘on that day a person will call out to their neighbour, one from beneath the vine, one from beneath the fig tree… beautiful, beautiful it will be.’

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