The Biggest Organising Principle in the Torah

 I came across, this week, a new version – to me - of an old argument.

The old argument, between two rabbis both of whom have been dead for almost 2000 years is about the Klal Gadol BaTorah – the central organising principle of the Torah.

If you could strip the entire Jewish tradition back to just one verse – what would you go for.

 

Rabbi Akiva, says that the Klal Gadol -greatest organising principle of the Torah is Love your neighbour as yourself – Vahavta LeReicha Camocha – Lev 19:18.  It’s a popular answer. It comes in amongst the top two verses Jesus goes for in the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

But Ben Azzai has a different suggestion, and his verse from Genesis 5:1) is less well known.

Zeh sefer toledot adam beyom b’ra elohim adam bidmut elohim asa oto.

This is the book of the descendents of Adam on the day God created Adam in the image God.

It’s an odd verse. For a start it doesn’t seem to demand anything, doesn’t seem to get a person to do anything.

But I think Ben Azzai has the same problem, or maybe the same three problems with Akiva’s favourite verse, Jesus’ favourite verse as I do.

Vahavta LeReicha Camocha – Love your neighbour as yourself sounds great,

Problem One

What if you don’t love yourself? What about people experiencing a darkness in terms of how they think of themselves?

Problem Two

What if the thing you love actually causes other people pain? Should you do painful things to other people just because you like them being done to you?

And the biggest problem of them all

What if you can look at another human being and decide – they aren’t my neighbour?

What if you look at someone and because, I don’t know, of the colour of their skin, or their sexuality, or their passport, or their religion, that they aren’t your neighbour – Loving your neighbour as you love yourself isn’t going to stop a person from being sexist, racist, antisemitic or any of the rest of it.

I think it’s pretty clear that Rabbi Akivah would never countenance sexism, racism or any of the rest of it, but there are these three problems with his Klal Gadol.

That’s what I think Ben Azzai knew when he said that the greatest Klal in the Torah is

Zeh sefer toledot adam beyom b’ra elohim adam bidmut elohim asa oto.

This strange, not very famous verse that tells us that every human being is created in the Image of the Divine and that we all descend from the same Adam – the same first human being.

So even if you are feeling a darkness, courage!, you are made in the Image of God.

So when it comes to how we treat other people, the really important thing to know is that they too are created in the image of God, and therefore if we cause them pain, in their unique different never-been-seen-before ways of experience joy or pain, if we cause them pain we diminish the image of God in the world. Whoof – now that’s a reason to care about how we treat our fellow human beings.

And you, you just can’t treat another human being as worth less than you, for any reason, and certainly not based on their gender or sexuality or faith or skin colour, because they – just as you – are equally in the image of the one God who transcends all this human pettiness.

 

Well that’s the old version of the argument about the Klal Gadol B’Torah between Rabbi Akiva and Ben Azzai. It turns up in a Midrash called the Sifra which is around 1800 years old.

 

And then, this week, I came across a new version of the argument, my thanks to Rabbi Sammy Rubin. And Rabbi Sammy found it in something written by Rabbi Sacks, and Rabbi Sacks, found it in a collection of teachings of great Rabbi of C16 Prague, Yehuda Low.[1]

In this new-to-me version of the argument there’s another disputant, Shimon Ben Pazzi, who gets up and suggests a he’s got an even greater Klal than Rabbi Akiva and Ben Azzai.

That takes a lot of guts – the bar is set, already, pretty high.

But Shimon Ben Pazzi’s verse comes from the Torah reading we read today – Parshat Pinhas, so, hold on to your kippot – what’s he got?

אֶת־הַכֶּ֥בֶשׂ אֶחָ֖ד תַּעֲשֶׂ֣ה בַבֹּ֑קֶר וְאֵת֙ הַכֶּ֣בֶשׂ הַשֵּׁנִ֔י תַּעֲשֶׂ֖ה בֵּ֥ין הָֽעַרְבָּֽיִם׃

You shall offer one lamb in the morning, and the other lamb you shall offer at twilight.

You’ve got to be kidding.

With a choice of Loving your neighbour as yourself, and the creation of every human being in the image of God, Shimon Ben Pazzi goes for

אֶת־הַכֶּ֥בֶשׂ אֶחָ֖ד תַּעֲשֶׂ֣ה בַבֹּ֑קֶר וְאֵת֙ הַכֶּ֣בֶשׂ הַשֵּׁנִ֔י תַּעֲשֶׂ֖ה בֵּ֥ין הָֽעַרְבָּֽיִם׃

You shall offer one lamb in the morning, and the other lamb you shall offer at twilight.

Give him a second. He’s on to something.

This verse – Numbers 28:4 is a call to service, a call to be prepared to make a sacrifice. Interestingly the sacrifice is the daily sacrifice – the twice daily sacrifice. It’s not the weekly Shabbat special offering or the in a while special festival offering. It’s a command to show us and Lkarev – The Hebrew is usually translated as to make a sacrifice, but really it means to come close, to turn up twice a day for life.

And the more I think about it, the more I think its brilliant.

Because I don’t really care if a person do the right thing once. Anyone can be nice once. Shira, as amazingly as you’ve done today, you’ve done it once. And the real test is – what you are you going to do tomorrow?

And this thing that we are to do – this lamb offering, it’s a sort of charitable gift, it’s pitched, right about here; neither so incredibly complex that we could never hope to meet the standard of our very very best effort, but nor is it a soft-option, something that doesn’t pull in effort and attention.

It’s the sort of Jewish equivalent of trying to do a good deed every morning and every evening. It’s the sort of Jewish equivalent of getting up every morning and going to be every evening saying the Shema, or making regular charitable contributions, or decisions to keep pushing at the things we know we should be doing with our life, that can feel a little repetitive or less immediately gratifying than, I don’t know, Youtube or buying the latest plastic tat on Amazon.

What I think Shimon Ben Pazzi is asking us is to try every morning and every evening to live up to the miracle that is our life. He’s asking us to commit to try every morning and every evening to live out our values and sense of who we want to be. Or perhaps more precisely he’s saying that this level of commitment, this is the Klal Gadol BaTorah – the central organising principle of the Torah.

And that’s a big ask in a complex time.

We live in a time where the central organising principle of secular society is live your own best life – as if self-centred immediate gratification isn’t, in fact the greatest danger we humans pose to each other and the planet we live. We would be much better swapping that principle for Rabbi Akiva’s loving your neighbour as you love yourself, for Ben Azzai’s principle about the creation of every human being in the image of God and certainly Shimon Ben Pazzi’s principle drawn from this week’s Parasha of אֶת־הַכֶּ֥בֶשׂ אֶחָ֖ד תַּעֲשֶׂ֣ה בַבֹּ֑קֶר וְאֵת֙ הַכֶּ֣בֶשׂ הַשֵּׁנִ֔י תַּעֲשֶׂ֖ה בֵּ֥ין הָֽעַרְבָּֽיִם׃.

Shabbat Shalom

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[1] https://www.sefaria.org/Netivot_Olam%2C_Netiv_Ahavat_Reia.1.4?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en

Please Use AI, by Jo Atkins-Potts

I was taken by this poem;

read– so it seems - by a real human and written by a real human also.

Please use AI when your mother dies.

Ask it what grief feels like

Let it explain bereavement in 12 clear bullet points

Do not spend years finding her in the supermarket by the tomatoes she always bought.

Discovering new ways to miss her.

Please use AI the next time you fall in love.

Ask it how to know whether someone is the one.

It will give you a faster answer than watching a person become familiar

Learning how they take their tea, which floorboards will wake them, how their silence sounds when something is wrong.

Please use AI for your wedding vows, your eulogies, your apologies

Why struggle for the right words when a machine can give you beautiful ones?

I was struck, listening to Atkins-Potts’ poetry, by the religious nature of the tasks she ‘suggests’ for AI; grief, love, marriages, funerals. It’s certainly the case that I’m increasingly aware of AI ‘improved’ speeches as I accompany members from cradle to grave and how different they feel to old-school human written articulations. It’s true for example, that the AI ‘improved’ speeches are, precisely in the sense Atkins-Potts suggests, ‘better’ than their human-written counterparts. They are smoother. There is a success about their structure and length, and the ticking of all the right boxes. But these AI ‘improved’ speeches contain no grit.

I don’t mind lovers or mourners resorting to AI support when the emotions are beyond our ability to craft. But I prefer the way of our tradition, which offers the simplest, briefest ritual holder to allow a moment to be recognised before life will prove how much we remember, or mourn, or love; “you are betrothed to me with this ring,” is the only thing a lover says under the Chuppah. “I wish you a long life,” is the only thing that needs to be said at a Shiva. And then the real test is revealed as life moves forward. As Golda observes in Fiddler on the Roof, “after 25 years...”

The really important thing is not to run away from or down-value the necessary messiness of human life, not to elevate the value of “smoothness” above its more human counterpart, not to confuse successful structure, length and balance with honesty. Honesty and humanity, especially in the most important (and religious) parts of our lives, will be gritty, uneven and probably a little overlong. That, I believe – and I hope you’ve read this far – is the point.

How Goodly Are Your Tents, O Jacob. How Goodly Is Your Society, O Britain.

In this week’s double-Parasha Torah reading, the wicked Bilaam is commissioned to curse the tribes of Israel and finds himself unable to do so. Instead, he looks over the Israelite encampment and remarks Mah Tovu Ohalecha Yaacov.

What was it about our encampment, Rashi wants to know, that struck Bilaam as so good? Our greatest commentator supplies an answer drawn from Talmud Baba Metzia, “It was that the entrances of their tents weren’t directed one facing the other.” The Mishnah in Baba Metzia is concerned with how houses should be set up to ensure privacy. But I wonder if what really made the ancient society of Israel good in its sprawl of non-lined-up tents had nothing to do with privacy and everything to do with a celebration of the multi-directionality of how each of our ancestors set up their individual tent.

It’s easy to imagine that a society is at its best when everything is lined up neatly in disciplined rows. There’s a certain kind of efficiency that arises when everything and everyone is neatly arrayed. It can feel optimised. But optimisation isn’t the same as goodness. Efficiency isn’t the same as delightful and vibrant. Humans are designed to be different. I love the Mishnah in Sanhedrin which suggests that the reason all humanity began with the creation of a single Adam is to demonstrate God’s magnificence, for when a King of flesh and blood creates a coin to mint, each subsequent coin comes out the same, but when the King of Kings, the Holy Blessed One, mints a coin, each of us come out diverse and unique.

I’m just back from three days as part of the Senior Faith in Leadership Programme hosted at Windsor Castle, spending time with Christian, Muslim and even different-to-me Jewish faith leaders. I’m living in a society that is richer – both pecuniary and culturally – because of its openness to difference. Actually, I’m only tolerated here, as a Jew, because of a conception of British society that knows – even we struggle always to remember – that we are better as a society because we don’t insist everyone lines up their tents in efficient normativity. It feels a dangerous thing to claim, at a time when society seems intent in retreating away from a celebration of human difference. Indeed, I think there is something irreducibly radical about the claim. It requires a suspension of the reflex animalistic response to the outsider – fight or flight. This suspension opens up possibilities that are, perhaps, invisible in the immediate moment we are confronted by difference, but far richer not only in spite of their immediate invisibility, but precisely because of their transcending what we can immediately understand. Perhaps this is why the Mitzvah of loving the stranger sits alongside the Mitzvah of loving God and loving our fellow. We need to be reminded that goodness requires a love of that which we don’t understand in all its sprawling complexity.

Shabbat Shalom

Thoughts on a Thread of Blue

 

At the end of this week’s Torah reading comes the passage that articulates the Mitzvah of Tzitzit, fringes; a thread of blue tied into each corner of a four-cornered garment.

 

The obligation is explained this way – we are to look at the Tzitzit and remember all the Mitzvot. Tzitzit serves as a sort of physical mnemonic. It’s hard to remember everything we wish to be – so we wrap ourselves up in an aide-memoir. Tzitzit serve as a sort of CBT – cognitive behavioural therapeutic practice serving, at the very least, to inure us from, as the Torah states, “going after your heart and after your eyes which lead you astray – Zonim.”

 

That Hebrew word, Zonim, has a licentious quality picked up in a glorious – if adult-rated – moment in Talmud Menachot where a student, renowned for his particular interest in Tzitzit, is drawn to spend four hundred gold coins on a Zonah - prostitute (not recommended). As he strips off his clothes, the Talmud reports, his Tzitzit slap him in the face, and he comes to his senses. Would that all the licentious challenges of the world could be so confidently defeated.

 

But there is something very powerful in allowing Halachah – Jewish observance  - to pull us away from running after the inclinations of our heart and eyes. Observance of Shabbat should keep us aloof from an utter dependence on our phones. Observance of Kashrut should sensitise us to the values of thinking about the food we place in our bodies. Observance of prayer should remind us to be grateful for the gifts of our lives and instil in us the knowledge that our own concerns and understandings should not be confused with the greater needs and truths of the Universe. This is the ‘training’, I think, that the Talmud is offering when it comes to explaining the colour of the original thread that the Torah commands to be inserted into the Tzitzit. Techelet, a bluish ink derived from the shells of the Murex Trunculus snail,  “resembles the sea, the sea resembles the sky, and the sky resembles the Throne of Glory.” We look at the blue thread to be reminded of bigger things and the very biggest of things.

 

The point is that the individual rituals- not just Jewishly informed rituals, but I’m thinking primarily of Halachah- spill over from individual practices to shape our lives and bring our actions into line with the values we often say we want to live by – but struggle to make tangible in a world so full of distractions. Observance shapes our imagination and the impact we have in the world. Sometimes a thread of blue isn’t just a thread of blue.

 

Shabbat Shalom

Order and Chaos As We Open the Book of BeMidbar / Numbers

 

BeMidbar, or the Book of Numbers, contains two very different kinds of material.

At its opening, the Book is resplendently ordered. Each adult male member of each Tribe is counted and arranged around the central Sanctuary. Specific roles are allocated for specific sub-groups, and everything feels ready for the grand departure from the foothills of Mount Sinai.

 

Then everything goes wrong. Dispute, grumbling, faithlessness, rebellion, blame-mongering and failure mark the second part of the Book.

 

It’s a dynamic held, I think, in the relationship between the two names used to refer to the book – Numbers (or Sefer HaPikudim) – ordered, and BeMidbar (or Wilderness) – chaotic.

 

It’s a dynamic at play, also, in our own community. Last Sunday, the Board of Deputies hosted a cross-communal rally to oppose antisemitism. Everyone was invited. What could possibly go wrong? Well, actually, not quite everyone was invited; there were lines drawn that included some and excluded others. There have been reports of assaults, booing, and placards being pulled away (which, of course, I condemn, but I want to make a different point). The attempt to perfectly organise a unity of humanity – any humanity, but certainly the Jewish subsection of humanity – will always be doomed to fail.

 

“Hell,” wrote Sartre in his 1944 play No Exit, “is other people.” Sartre’s line arises from the impositions on personal freedom that arise in a ‘crowd’ of merely three characters. In our contemporary existence, as part of a world of billions of interconnected souls, it might be getting worse. We certainly seem increasingly resistant to the notion that deference should be paid to those who wish to cohere us into uniform blocks of collective identity. That, in many ways, is a good thing. But this resistance also threatens to increase atomisation, loneliness, jeering and setting ourselves against our fellows. These things are destroying the fabric of our society.

 

Saying we support tolerating ‘acceptable differences,’ while booing those differences we deem ‘unacceptable,’ is too thin a protestation. It’s too easy to set the line between ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ difference wherever we feel comfortable, and we end up accepting no difference at all. One of my particular current concerns about the Jewish community is that we are attacking both each other and those with whom we should be building alliances.

 

Washing our hands of the whole messy business of attempting to stand together, in solidarity with different human beings, similarly may feel attractive, but it is ultimately unacceptable. “It is not upon you to complete the work,” warned Rabbi Tarfon (ultimately martyred as a result of Roman persecution) “but nor are you permitted to abstain from it.”

 

We have to learn to celebrate difference, admire those who take different views from our own and applaud people who see the world differently from us. We need to imagine other people’s views from their perspective, not our own. The vision of the future we would all wish for is, of course, varied and multiple. We must support and model that desire with greater energy.

 

I have a tiny, delightful way to exercise that muscle to suggest for this Shabbat. It’s Cheder Shabbat. Our younger members will be in providing their particular brand of slightly chaotic leadership. It won’t be dreamily organised. It shouldn’t be dreamily organised. It’s a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the chaos of difference.

 

Shabbat Shalom

Sunday - Something I’m Delighted to Share and Something I Wish I Didn’t Have To

For those experiencing life as darker than we would wish, I have a recommendation. Come to Shul, Sunday evening for some glorious music. We are welcoming Sharqia, with guest artist Yoav, to share their Middle Eastern grooves. We have a hammered dulcimer, an oud, clarinets, saxophones and … Yoav is back. It will be a very special celebration of the Jewish music of the Middle East and North Africa. 

7pm, Sunday 10^th May. Advance booking is warmly appreciated - https://shulcloud.newlondon.org.uk/event/sharqiah-middle-eastern-grooves

 

This is the more painful piece.

There will be a major gathering in opposition to antisemitism also on Sunday, 1pm on Whitehall, opposite Number 10. It shouldn’t have to happen. Jews shouldn’t be being attacked for being Jews, and Jewish buildings shouldn’t be firebombed for being used by Jews. We shouldn’t be experiencing fear. Our concerns and demands must be clearly and publicly expressed before those who have the power and responsibility to ensure the safety of all the inhabitants of these isles. I’ll be there. If anyone wants to travel down and stand together as part of a New London Synagogue presence, please let me know.

The last major communal rally I attended, in October 2025, was exceptional. Powerful, united and moving. Others have been painful, complex and riven by the challenges of representing a British Jewish community that does not speak with a single voice on, frankly, anything. Speakers have been booed. Speakers have used the platforms at communal rallies to make what, to me, have felt inappropriate speeches. In general, I don’t like big rallies. But I’ll be there on Sunday. 

On Tuesday night, three local MPs, all taking the Labour whip, held a public meeting on antisemitism at St. John's Wood Synagogue. I went. There were moments of fractiousness, moments where the backdrop of national politics elbowed its way into the discussion – as was always to be expected. It wasn’t an easy space. I’m glad I was there.

The Board of Deputies and Jewish Leadership Council, who are leading the organisation of the rally on Sunday, have made decisions about who to bring into the list of sponsoring organisations. Those are hard decisions to get right. Political speakers have been invited, prompting an outpouring of disagreement about who should and shouldn’t have been invited. One of the original sponsoring organisations made a decision to pull out; again, that’s a tough call. I share many of these concerns. I don’t think the rally on Sunday will be an easy space, not in a physical sense – I’m confident the police and CST will look after our physical safety – but emotionally. There will be those on the platform and in the crowd who will take the opportunity of this rally to express views with which I disagree. But I’ll be there. I’m going to take a placard. I don’t really like placards. Mine will read, “Every Human Being is Created in the Image of the Divine.” It’s as close to a slogan as I am ever likely to feel comfortable standing behind.

The way that this mess of a societal problem gets better is that we learn to stand together when we don’t fully agree. We learn to handle the impossibility, or certainly the ineffectiveness, of only being present in places of pure comfort.

We need to remember that those who are working to bring us together are not our enemies, even if their means are misguided or even self-defeating in our own eyes. We need to put more effort into standing in uncomfortable places and hearing uncomfortable voices. And we need to wave our own placards high. As I say, I’ll be there on Sunday for the rally in Whitehall. With a placard.

Then I’m hugely looking forward to getting back home and then coming to hear Sharqia in the evening. Balance. It’s a narrow bridge, and aside from not being afraid, we need balance.

Shabbat Shalom

 

How To Be Happy in Unhappy Times - Thoughts on 'Special Needs'

 In honesty, I’m having a lousy time at the moment – too much worry, too much hate and not enough joy.

If you are anything like me, here are a couple of IG reels that have lifted my heart, both connected to special needs.

https://www.instagram.com/reels/DYA2gY2u_mY/

and

https://www.instagram.com/reels/DX-QcSePKQ9/

As I was wiping away the result of some dust clearly having got in my eye … twice!, and thinking of posting this, the fact that both these posts feature special needs somehow figures into what was making these posts so special for me.

Two thoughts

One is thank you. I owe an enormous debt to everyone who has opened my eyes to what happens when we make accommodations to the needs of each individual in each of our particularities. I’ve been reading the newly published A Different Spirit: Creating Meaningful B’nai Mitzvah for Children with Disabilities (H/T Howard Blas and Ilana Trachtman). It’s, largely, a collection of first-person narratives of those who have been on a meaningful BM journey, or loved someone who was, or wasn’t supported, or teachers, tutors, rabbis and the whole constellation. And aside from picking up some terrific tips for our own approach at New London, I’ve realised that the image of God emerges from these encounters in a way that it’s so easy to miss ‘normally.’ I’ve had the privilege of supporting special-needs journeys many times, and every time I’ve felt more lifted by what I have gained than challenged by the effort. Thank you.

The other is an obligation. There are still so many who find a single door-entry into Jewish life unfit for their needs; whether that be ramps or amplification, or patience, or the technical skill brought by a diverse range of therapeutic professionals or … The object has to be that every human being, again, for me there is no getting around the essential place of the doctrine of Tzelem Elohim in this – the image of God is vested in each of us precisely in our peculiarity and idiosyncrasy – finds a pathway through which they can enter with decency and travel with pride. More to do.

But if, in the meantime, you want to feel a little happier about the world … click on the reels.