Shabbat in Lockdown 2.0

Ah, dear friends, I know there is an election going on 6,000 miles away, but scrutinising the minute-by-minute returns of Kenosha County doesn’t bring redemption, only nervousness. 

I know we are tense, saddened, angry and confused as we lockdown again, and the temptation to relook at the regulations to see just whether we can or should get away with a bubble multiplied by the childcare divided by the R number is greater or less than the …. arrgh. It’s been a challenging week. Time to unplug. 

 Please give yourself the gift of ‘Lehavdil’ this evening – the gift of rendering some time elevated, special, holy, other from the craziness of the workaday week. Turn the news streams off. Light candles. 

Say kiddush. Breathe. We are creatures of this planet, created with the divine spark within us all. We are here to serve and protect. Our duty is to love the stranger, our fellow and our Creator. Breathe again. Keep the news switched off. 

 Rabbi Natasha, Chazan Stephen and I are live-streaming from the building tonight. If you want to spend Shabbat in peaceful quiet at home, that’s great. If you want the sound and the songs of communal Jewish engagement at such a battered time, join us at www.newlondon.org.uk/digital.

I wrote before Rosh Hashanah about creating a mini-sanctuary for a screen set for Shabbat. Clear the desk, maybe lay a tablecloth, find something to cover the keyboard, check the computer is set not to power off. Use the full-screen viewing offering to limit distractions. Turn the computer from the paradigm of workaday stress into a vehicle to connect to that which is numinous and transcendent. With screens switched on, you’ll see us for a service at 6:30pm this evening, and 10:30am tomorrow morning. It will be, I hope, songful, playful, comforting and insightful. It will be a chance to come together in our faith at an atomised time.

And then … FIRE. At our Zoom Havdalah, 5:30pm Sat night, we are joined by fire artist Oscar Richards for a Havdalah you should not try at home. All welcome on-line. Kids particularly. We can return to the world of action engaged, infused with the values of everything makes the people we want to be. That is the gift of Shabbat. It’s offered freely, but it’s a gift without price. 

 Shabbat Shalom

A Bar Mitzvah Charge - On One Leg

May I be excused for a little self-indulgence this week? It’s my son’s Bar Mitzvah this Shabbat and it’s been on my mind. As many life cycle moments as I have experienced with the wonderful members of this wonderful community - and I am probably in the low thousands at this point - there is something about being a father of a child about to celebrate their Bar Mitzvah at the very Synagogue in which I celebrated my own Bar Mitzvah, and now serve as Rabbi, that has me astounded and humbled and excited.

It’s listening to Carmi practice the last part of the Kedushah for Musaf that really gets me. ‘LeDor vaDor’ - from one generation to another. In two words the liturgy captures the essence of being a Masorti Jew - a person engaged in passing on a gift and a tradition from the past into the future.

Here are three elements of our remarkable tradition for you Carmi; a story, a feeling and an observance.

In the creation narrative the first human - an Adam who is both man and woman at this point - is created in the image of God. It’s the most powerful idea I know, predating the rise of democracy, human rights and equality movements by thousands of years, and more powerful than any of them. To be a Jew is to see in each human being an animating force which is divine and to allow that sensibility to shape our every interaction with every human with whom we share this planet.

In this week’s parasha God tells Moses that the Children of Israel shall be a ‘Goy Kadosh,’ usually translated as a ‘Holy Nation.’ But the root ‘Kadosh’ really means ‘Other’ or ‘Beyond.’ In that line from this week’s Haftarah, God is praised as thrice-fold ‘Kadosh’. And the point of our Kedushah is that we are called to be distinctive in our faith and sense of peoplehood. We are not just another version of everyone else. There are times when our distinctiveness is purely a delight - 8 days of Chanukah!, but there are also times when our commitment to distinctiveness will be tested. There will be times not to do what we might at first flush wish to do, there will be barriers to immediate self-gratification that need to be erected and maintained to allow us to find our own distinct path of otherness. There will be some who won’t understand - don’t worry about it. The great goal of existence is not to long to be the just the same as anyone else; in fact quite the reverse.

And finally Shabbat - what a gift to a child coming of age in 5779. We live in a world that does not encourage us to commemorate that work should not empty each of the seven  days of the week - the reason for Shabbat given in this week’s Torah Reading. There are many ways to rest and I suppose one could eke out every second Tuesday and the alternate Thursday for watching 12 hours of Netflix. But Shabbat is our time, it’s a time for family and a time to step back and be re-souled by rituals and in ways that have been honed by our tradition for thousands of years; from one generation to the next.

That’s all the Torah - as Hillel said after a pithier attempt to pass on our tradition on one leg - the rest is commentary, now go learn.

Good luck Carmi, I’ll be in the front row, snuffling away into a tissue, more proud than I can possibly express.

Kol Nidrei - Shabbat

Trying to become a better person, is a good thing.

Most of the time.

There was once a man, a stonecutter, and he wasn’t happy being a stonecutter. Every time the foreman would shout and harangue him and he felt this jealousness, so he closed his eyes, for just a moment and says to himself, ‘I wish, I just wish I could be a foreman.’

Poof – just like that, he becomes the foreman, and this is great. Now he is doing the bossing around, not for him the hard graft of cutting the stones.

But then the King arrives and demands the profits from the quarry and now our foreman is feeling miserable again, ‘Oh this is terrible, all my hard work, for nothing. And so he closes eyes, ‘I wish, I wish I could be a King,’ and poof, again. The King.

And this really is terrific, robes, jewels, a crown; servants to carry me through the streets of the city.

But it is hot under this crown. Goodness, I’m really starting to sweat. If only I were the sun, then I could solve all these problems.’ And so he shuts his eyes, ‘I wish, I wish’ and poof, again. Now he is the sun.

And that is great until the cloud comes and blocks out the sun. So he wishes to be a cloud, which is wonderful floaty fun until the wind blows the cloud.

So he wishes to be the wind, whistling through the trees, and that is fantastic until he comes up against a mountain, blocking the way of the wind.

‘I wish, I just wish I could be a mountain.’

Poof – and now, here he stands, a mountain, been here forever will be here forever, strong and sturdy and immovable.

Until, down in a quarry at the foothills he hears the chip, chip chip of stonecutter, cutting away at the mountain.[1]

Over Rosh Hashanah I shared, in my sermons, an idea and tried to unpack how it influences both our internal psychological, or spiritual state, our relationship with Judaism and, taking a broader perspective, should be influencing the world.

On first day RH I spoke about alterity.

On second day RH I spoke about truth.

Today I want to speak about an idea that is, perhaps, more important than either.

Here’s the problem;

We don’t know how to stop.

Going after more things seems to be the wiring of our souls.

Or maybe it’s not our souls’ fault.

Maybe it’s that we all live in a society where we are continually told acquiring more stuff will make us a better person, or a happier person, or a person of more value.

And those voices call us to gauge our success by the extent to which we hunger for more.

And, unless we police the borders of our soul we can get swept up in chasing after vanity.

Or maybe it’s the fault of the other voice that seems to crow ever more incessant in contemporary society; the voice of fear; fear of missing out, or fear of not measuring up to standards that are simply unreasonable.

24/7 no longer seems sufficient to detail the extent to which so many of us are expected to be ‘on,’ to be reactive.

I’m part of a FB group of Conservative Rabbis. One of my colleagues queried as to whether it was appropriate for a Rabbi to have an auto-response on their emails apologizing for not responding rapidly to emails at this time of year or whether that just looks like we are wasting time that could otherwise be productive.

And I’m more than aware that if that’s true for Rabbis, for those of you with jobs in the real world, the insistence that you are available and responsive 24/7 are even more demanding.

There are many things to blame for our working ourselves into spirals of dis-satisfaction and fear.

But this is Yom Kippur - it’s a day for us to take responsibility for our own decisions, no matter how much others might have enticed us.

It’s as if we think that at the end of our lives we are to be judged by the amount of stuff we have accumulated or the amount of busy-ness we affect.

Actually the Talmud[2] tells us how we are to be judged in the heavenly tribunal when our time does indeed come.

We can expect to be asked if we had fear of heaven, if we pursued wisdom - those sorts of things. But we aren’t going to be asked if we accumulated enough stuff. We aren’t going to be asked if we were busy enough.

Actually you don’t even need to know the Talmud’s lack of interest in the amount of stuff we accumulate to know the amount of stuff we accumulate is only so very rarely important at the end of a person’s life.

You don’t need to know that the Talmud has nothing to say about how much we accumulate or how many hours we work to know that these issues matter only very rarely at the end of a life.

You just need to spend time with people at the end of their lives.

People regret spending time with their family.

People regret not being able to do more with the people they love.

Those who have lived really great lives - and I’ve had the sad blessing of burying too many this past year - don’t regret anything, they just wish they could be around to spend more time doing the things they know are truly important.

The grander perspective on this relentlessness is the ecological disaster we are bequeathing on generations to come. March was so cold the army were called into help. The summer broke all records for heat.

There are two tales of creation at the beginning of the Torah. One tells us we are placed on this earth to impose ourselves on it, it tells us that the world and everything in it is our plaything - here for us.

But we’ve forgotten the other tale. The other tale tells our life’s work is to work and protect the earth - lovdah ulshomrah.

At the time that God created Adam, God led him past every tree in Gan Eden and said to him, “See how beautiful and praiseworthy are My creations. Everything that I created, I created for you. Be careful not to damage or destroy My world, for if you damage it, there will be no one to fix it up after you.”[3]

So much for working and protecting the earth - we are sucking out its resources and destabilizing the carefully balanced ecology that protects life on earth.

But we are, you and I, extraordinarily blessed to have a way out of this cycle of danger.

Because, as Jews, we have a gift that has kept our people for thousands of years.

It has allowed us to rise higher than being ever more busy.

It is called Shabbat.

This is a sermon about Shabbat.

On Shabbat we free ourselves from the tasks of subsistence, we become free.

We step back from the day-to-day tasks of the week and instead get to become, in the words of Bible, a little less than angels.

In the Creation Narrative we find that on the seventh day, God vayinafash. It is usually translated as God rested. It is a poor translation.

Vayinafash – can mean ‘breath’ and on the seventh Day, God put the breath into the world. Now that is a more radical notion than rest, as we would normally understand the word.

But Nefesh means something else as well as ‘rest’ and ‘breath.’ Nefesh is a soul.

Vayinafash – And God put the soul in the world on that first Shabbat and we can still hear that echo,

Or at least we would be able to if only we could still our lives, still the ever-spinning hamster wheels.

Shabbat can even help up find that stillness.

The radical notion of the laws around Shabbat is that our lives become more special when we abstain from stuff.

Shabbat serves as correction to the human search for that which is beyond what we really need to celebrate our humanity, and our Jewish identities.

Shabbat is the antidote to our addiction to getting more and more.

It can teach us that it’s not only possible to step back from always chasing after more. It’s actually vital.

We humans need a sabbatical day – a day in seven to be ourselves, to recover our own resources, a time to be with our families, with God, and to celebrate the joys of a simpler kind of life; a life of friendship, of community, of holiness.

As a Rabbi I feel that the Shabbat is the single greatest weapon in our arsenal as Jews, as human beings that will allow us to become better, stronger and more compassionate people.

How is it possible to make change in our lives– Keep Shabbat

How is it possible to respond adequately to the incredible gift of simply being alive – Keep Shabbat

How is it possible to keep things in perspective when life gets so cluttered and stressed and busy – Keep Shabbat

How is it possible to keep a balance between work life and home life – Keep Shabbat

It is difficult to explain how these glorious collections of rules and rituals carry so much power. In fact I guess that their mystery is part of the efficacy.

Shabbat can’t really be explained, it has to be lived.

So I want to offer two very concrete tools, techniques and approaches to Shabbat.

One for Friday night, one for Saturday during the day. Both radically simple.

On the Friday night I want to suggest to us all that we become bolder in claiming the sanctity of Erev Shabbat.

I want to suggest, to us all, that we feel more confident in declining the invitations to shows and parties and the like.

Let them go. I know we are all so well connected and so many of us get so many invitations to attend so many wonderful and interesting places.

But there will be enough invitations even if we decline ones on a Friday night.

Friday nights are for protecting a Jewish time.

Come to shul - our Friday night services are lovely - short!, shorter than this journey, you can sing, we’d love you to sing. You can connect to being part of a Jewish journey. And you can leave the rest of the world to get on with its lunacy.

And you should eat - of course you should eat. At its heart Shabbat is about meals, made unique in the week by the ritual that accompanies them. If you are blessed with a family - eat with your family. Invite others to share a Jewish meal with you. If you don’t have regular invites - make a point of booking for our dinners at New London - next one is on 9^th November.

Just protect Friday nights from a slow slide away into just another weekend evening.

For Saturday during the day I want to commend to you all the observance of an issur d’oraita – a prohibition straight out of the Bible. We are commanded not to carry, on Shabbat, in a public place.

I spend my week laid down. Even if I am not shlepping computer around, my pockets are always full of wallet and phone and jangling keys and scraps of paper reminding me of who knows what.

For one day a week they can all be left at home.

Especially the wallet.

Especially the phone.

If you really need to carry – take the one key, not the whole bunch.

Do you really need that handbag? If you really do, what can you empty out, what can you let go of?

What can you leave behind today?

It is a wonderful way to realise how little stuff we actually need to get through our days.

On Saturday day, don’t carry, Keep Shabbat.

I know there is plenty to do.

I know there is plenty to campaign for and campaign against.

And I know that we are all worried about the financial and corporate pressures of this world in which we live.

But it doesn’t help to chase after more forever.

It’s so easy to lose track of what we are actually searching for.

Keep Shabbat and we may soon start to find it.

May we do that, and in so doing find a wonderful, peaceful and healthy year to come.

Gemar Chatimah Tovah

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stonecutter

[2] Shabbat 21a

[3] Kohelet Rabbah 7:3

Shabbat UK

The Chief Executive of Next, Simon, Baron, Wolfson, was one of the panellists on last week’s Any Questions. After the usual tour of topics of the day, came a question about a school who have issued alarm clocks to their students so they don’t have to keep their mobile phones in their bedrooms. We are all, it seems, too in thrall to our phones.

“Funnily enough,” the boss of one of Britain’s most significant clothing companies shared, “for religious reasons I turn my phone off for from Friday night sundown and I keep it off until Saturday nightfall. And I have to say it’s an incredibly liberating thing to do. What you realise is that it’s not a life support machine. And you can live for 24 hours without your phone. I would recommend trying it. You will have a much nicer weekend.” Silence swept the studio as the idea sunk in, then applause.

MP, Lisa Nandy, went next. She suggested that if only MPs could be persuaded to turn off their phones for a day they could actually get together and solve the problems of Brexit. She was only half-joking.

Does that help? I figure I am, at this point, not really trusted on this - pasul b’eydut in the Talmudic idiom - banned from serving as an objective witness as to the beauty and power of a Shabbat honoured without mobile phones, computers, email and the rest of it. But here you have a FTSE 100 CEO and an MP. And there is more. Getting the phone turned off is more than a way of making your weekend ‘nicer.’ It’s about connecting with life as it right before you - not being whisked away from the here and now by the siren calls of telephony, push e-mail and streamed distraction. It’s about learning to take pleasure in what you have already, letting go of the chase for the new and probably not that important. It’s about finding a space in which to be grateful for the gift of life, and Jewish life at that.

It’s Shabbat UK - it’s a pleasure to share congratulations with the Orthodox Chief Rabbi for his leadership in drawing the focus of all Britain’s Jews towards the greatest gift we possess, as Jews - the Shabbat. There are Challah bakes and calls to light candles and all of that is important. But if you want to experience Shabbat as what the Rabbis meant when they called her a little piece of paradise on earth, please do join me in turning off that phone. Let me know how you do.

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Jeremy

P.S. If interested, The Question Time clip is on-line [here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b09bcrn4/question-time-19102017] at 54:30.

Feeling and Doing

A Neilah Sermon from Yom Kippur 5770

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The gates are closing.

How are we feeling?

We’ve spent, I’ve spent, a lot of time over the last ten days talking about feelings, believings, internalities.

And that’s fine, but it’s not enough.

 

A story.

A colleague, a very successful Rabbi in New York, received a call from his long-since retired father, who had gone to live in Florida.

Avi, he said, I’m phoning to tell you I’m coming up to New York for Shabbas.’

‘Oh Abba,’ responds Avi, ‘That’s terrific, you know how much I love to see you.

I’ll arrange a cab to pick you up at the airport and bring you home and I’ll see you when I get back from the…

‘Avi’ the father interrupts, ‘I said I’m coming up to New York for Shabbas.’

‘I heard Abba, and you know how much I’ld love to come and pick you up from the airport, but, you see …

‘Avi, I said I’m coming up to New York for Shabbas.’

‘Abba, I love you, but I’ve got meetings and things I need to do and …’

‘Avi,’ the voice gets serious, ‘Avi, do me a favour, love me a little less, and pick me up from the airport.’

 

One of the great secrets of Jewish survival is our commitment to action.

Too much emphasis on feelings, emotions and intellectualisation is not our way.

Or at least has not been our way, until these past decades, a blink in the eye of Jewish time.

Something is happening, something is changing.

There are still many many of us who are proud enough to say that we ‘feel Jewish.’

That’s good. That’s a start.

But then, when one tests this emotion out, what does it mean, for this person – too often there is little there.

Too many of us think that Judaism can be achieved by feeling alone.

And it’s not true. Very little is accomplished by feeling alone.

 

A funny person who never tells jokes isn’t really funny.

A well-read person who never opens a book isn’t really well-read.

A charitable person who never gives away money isn’t really charitable.

And a Jewish person who does little more than feel Jewish, isn’t really Jewish.

 

There’s been a lot of press attention, this last year, on the admissions policy of JFS, the largest Jewish secondary school in the country and among the most successful of all secondary schools in the country. And my feelings on the old admissions policy at JFS are, I hope, well known. But the new policy is pretty good.

The new admissions policy for JFS does exactly what I would wish it to.

 

If you want to send your child to JFS, and if JFS is oversubscribed – and it’s always over-subscribed – admission will be made according to the number of points an applicant racks up. And you score points for coming to Synagogue, you score points for being involved in Jewish education and you score points for being involved in social action or charitable projects.

Now it makes more work for shuls that have to administer the policy and it’s a little simplistic, but I’ll forgive all that because the heart of the policy is sound, tremendously sound.

Because the test of Jewishness really should be more about our Jewish doing than our Jewish feeling.

 

I’m going to make three calls on our Jewish doing this evening.

I’m going to be even better behaved than that.

It’s party conference season, and before Rosh Hashanah 5771 there’s going to be a general election.

I’m going to start my campaigning here, for the New London Party.

And in this ‘party-political-broadcast-in-favour-of-more-Jewish-doing’ I’m presenting a budgetary surplus; a surplus of time and a surplus of money.

Vote for me, vote for us.

I’m putting three things on our manifesto – the first one is going to take up some of your time, but I’ll make it up to you, you can trust me, I’m a Rabbi.

 

We are launching a new series of adult education programmes this autumn, on Prayer. We offering classes on two levels.

The first is for those who look at the siddur and see an impenetrable mess; if you can’t understand the Hebrew and reading the English doesn’t help, if you feel you could do with sorting out the difference between Kiddush, kaddish and kedushah, if you’re continually having to check which page number you should be on – we have the perfect course for you. It’s called Siddur Sat-Nav and it does what it says on tin. It’s being taught by a wonderful educator; Rina Wolfson.

I know, because so many people have mentioned it to me, that it can be hard, that it can feel off-putting, but it’s not hard to come inside – and this is the course to do if you have ever wanted to do that.

 

And if you feel at home in the services, and understand their waft and weave; come to the other series; Chazan Stephen Cotsen, Chazan Jacky Chernett and I will be offering classes on some of our favourite prayers, we’ll be looking at meaning, history and music.

I promise these classes will transform your experience of prayer, of being part of a prayer community, of being part of this prayer community.

It will give you the tools to use the liturgy to do precisely what I was talking about on the second day of Rosh Hashanah – use the liturgy to experience real prayer.

There will be a five part series starting in November and another in January.

I’m asking for your time; to be here.

 

And I’ve promised a budgetary surplus, so let me suggest where you can get the time back.

Watch less television.

I’m not opposed to television, it’s not wrong or evil of anything like that.

There are, I know perfectly good and important things that happen on television

And we use it to pacify our kids when they are a little whiny, but that’s the point.

Television is the nation’s pacifier, our dummy.

As a nation we watch too much television. As a community we watch too much television, I am sure.

And in case you might be feeling that not watching television is insufficiently Jewish, I’ll grant extra points for not watching television over Shabbat – Yom Tov, the next two weekends for starters.

So, in the year to come I am asking this Jewish ‘do’

 

Spend less time watching and more time studying.

Spend less time being the consumer of pacifying, intellectual bubble-gum and more time being an engaged partner in our fabulously rich tradition.

Turn off the television and come to a class at the Synagogue.

 

Those are my first two calls.

 

And the second one is even better. It starts by saving you money.

I want to suggest that we use no money for the period of the Shabbat.

I’m not opposed to money.

It’s just, for the 25 hours between sun down Friday and stars out Saturday, I want to ask us all not to touch it.

Not to do cash, not to do cards, cheques, paypal, switch, maestro, nothing.

Just don’t buy anything for one day in the week – the Sabbath day.

 

Jews are not scared of money.

We are scared of poverty. Poverty is, says the Talmud, like death.^[1]

Money, like television, isn’t bad, it isn’t the root of all evil.

Money’s necessary and can be a source of tremendous good.

But money, the ultimate material possession, can also blind us, it can confuse us.

 

A story – with a Jonah theme, for this early evening.

It was a hot day at the beach, Bessie Cohen was there with her three year old grandson.

She had bought him a cute little bathing costume with a cute little hat and she watched in delight as he played at the edge of the water.

Suddenly a great wave came up and swept onto the shore and before Bessie could move, it had swept the boy out to sea.

Bessie was frantic, ‘I know I’ve never been religious,’ she pleads, ‘but God, I’ll do anything, save my grandson.’

The child goes under the water for the first time.

Bessie cries become even sharper, ‘Dear God, save the boy, I’ll never ask anything of you again.’

The child goes under the water for a second time, Bessie is wailing and screaming for mercy.

Then suddenly a wave, another wave, and this one deposits the child on the shore.

The boy is shaken, but fine.

Bessie rushes over, picks him up, wraps him in a blanket, and carries him away from the sea. And then notices something.

She turns her head to the heavens and cries out again, ‘He had a hat’

 

This is the problem with money.

It blocks our engagement with the majesty of creation.

It colours our ability to see our own blessings.

If we think we are as rich, or as poor, as the value of those things money can buy, we have forgotten what is important to count in this world.

 

The promise of money, the promise of acquisition is that they will make our lives better.

The sorrow is that money seems, so often, only to trap us in a cycle of chasing after shadows and vanities.

 

So, how are we to get this balance right?

How are we to appreciate money, acquisition correctly, without it sucking the soul from our lives?

 

Sheshet yamim taavod vasitah kol malachtecha,

V’yom hashvii Shabbat ladonai eloheicha     

For six days you shall work and the seventh is a day of Sabbath to Adonai your God.

 

Shabbat is the immunisation against the ways that money and acquisition can take over our lives.

For six days we should be involved in the real world of commerce and commercialisation.

And for one day we should step back, step away, step above – reach for a world of meaning.

 

If this is part of your weekly journey through life you get this already.

If you’ve never tried it, try it. Allow yourself to arrive at Saturday evening with only the things you had on Friday afternoon – you will feel freer, I promise.

And you will be richer.

 

There, a budgetary surplus.

Come to a class at New London.

Watch less television

Spend no money on Shabbat.

 

It’s a manifesto for those of us who feel the need for something a little concrete on a day like today.

And even for those of us who feel comfortable in ‘feeling Jewish’ without allowing our lived lives to reflect our emotions.

Watch less television – take a class at New London

Stop spending money on Shabbat.

 

And in this way may our sealing be for a year better, brighter, richer and sweeter than any we have known -

Gmar Hatimah Tovah

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^[1] Nedarim 7b

Shabbat matters

 

The heart of parashat emor is a journey through the Jewish sacred calendar. It is a journey built, of course it is, off the foundation of the Shabbat – ‘for six days you shall do work but the seventh day shall be a Sabbath of complete rest, a sacred occasion, you shall not work.’

 

A member of longstanding told me a new version of a tale I have heard a number of times about our founding Rabbi. They used to live near to Rabbi Jacobs and when the young-adult son was tinkering with his car on a Saturday as Rabbi Jacobs would be walking back from shul, Rabbi Jacobs would cross over the road and then cross back again in order not to walk past the ‘mahalel shabbat’ – the profaner of Shabbat – for fear of causing him embarrassment. The tale captures much of what was great about Rabbi Jacobs, but it also captures many of failures of our community these past forty-some years; concepts central to the Jewish tradition – growth, development, observance … were peripheral at best. Of course we don’t want to become a community of judgemental pedants, but if we turn a blind eye to every fracture of the fabric of Shabbat we lose the greatest treasure we, as Jews, possess. So what should a Rabbi of New London say when they see a phone being used in Shul, when they are passed by a congregant coming out of a shop on Shabbat? It’s easy to be patronising, it’s easy to be offensive, it’s easy to feel that, as a gate-keeper and evangelist for Jewish observance, the Rabbi should always duck and hide. But all these easy options are deeply flawed.

 

Maybe the answer lies in speaking more passionately about why the observance of Shabbat matters, even in 2009, especially in 2009. Let me share this from Heschel’s The Sabbath;

 

He who wants to enter the holiness of the day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil. He must say farewell to manual work and learn to understand that the world has already been created and will survive without the help of man. Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul.

 

Or maybe the answer lies in my being clearer about what it might take, to become more serious about Shabbat. Let me share this recession busting, eco-friendly, soul-saving tip for Shabbat this week;

 

Turn things off; the computer, the mobile phone, the stereo, the rooter, the background buzz of electrical noise that suffuses our work lives. Just for a day, from half-past eight tonight to quarter to nine tomorrow. And listen to real people and yourself.

 

Shabbat shalom

Learn More Do More

Im bechokotai teilechu v’et mitzvotai tishmoru

If you go in the way of my ordinances and observe the commandments …

Says Rashi what is the difference between these two parts of the verse?

It cannot be that going in the way of ordinances is equated with observing commandments for the Torah does not repeat itself.

Rather it must mean that going in the way of the ordinances is study of Torah, immersing oneself in the texts of our tradition.

Im bechokotai teilechu v’et mitzvotai tishmoru

You shall study Torah and you shall observe mitzvot

My sermon today is very simple

Study more Torah,

Keep more mitzvot.

As a Masorti rabbi I don’t tend to lose arguments about theology.

As a Masorti rabbi I don’t tend to lose arguments about Biblical history

Rather it is tests of sociology which make me shuffle uneasily.

Let me share the sorts of questions to which I don’t have good answers

How many of the children of our founding families of this community have drifted away from Jewish involvement?

How many Masorti Jews are capable of being not just descendants, inheritors of a great tradition, but ancestors, people able to begat a Jewish future.

From this pulpit, for many years, week in week out we heard about philosophical integrity and theological truth.

But I don’t know how often we were told to keep Shabbat, keep Kashrut.

Learn to read Hebrew, learn to lead a service.

This community allowed us to feel comfortable , intellectually, with our Judaism, it didn’t, sufficiently, drive us to engage practically – bchol levavcha, bchol nafshecah, bchol moadecha.

It is not good enough to claim that our intellectual sophistication frees us from having to deal with issues as prosaic as separating between milk and meat.

Not good enough to claim elitist perfection.

When our actions are not consistent with our claims we discredit ourselves.

We give lie to our claims to be true followers in the path of our great teachers.

Tale: The Greatest epicorus in the world.

There are, of course, many tests of the strength of a community,

And according to some tests we do really very well – how much o we care about our shul.

How many of us are here, even today, Shabbat Bank Holiday.

How warm are we, etc. etc.

These are tests we pass.

But let me share some other tests

How many of us can read a Mishnah in Hebrew.

How many of us observe and care for a Shabbat that lasts from sun down to stars out.

How many of us can lead a prayer service.

How many of us make space for the rhythms and beauty of Jewish life to impact on our soul.

We need to

Study more Torah,

Keep more mitzvot.

I’m aware that this might feel like a somewhat unusual New London kind of a sermon.

It’s not about theology.

It’s not about an integration of modernity and tradition.

It’s about evangelising the heart of what it means to be Jewish.

Learn

Observe.

Let me take an example – driving on Shabbat.

I don’t believe in driving on Shabbat.

I believe that Shabbat is a time to pull the key out of the ignition.

It is a time to realise that the natural resources that go into our combustion engines are not ours to do with as we please.

They are sacred and while we may use them for six days, on the seventh we should abstain from treating the world and everything in it as if it is ours. For the earth is mine, ki li haaretz umleoah ­– sayeth the Lord.

One day week we should walk, one day a week we should allow our feet to touch the ground, to pound the pavement, to encounter a world free from air-conditioning and sliding windows that protect us from the elements at the flick of a switch.

It’s not enough to think about how clever the Rabbis were to come up with an idea like Shabbat.

It doesn’t work unless we live it.

Without a lived context Jewish observance is a fairy story that owes whatever ‘truth’ it can muster to a story about Sinai that none of us believes.

However once we start to live Jewishly, once we start to allow Shabbat into our lives not as a mere form of words, but as an organising principle, as a protection mechanism that holds back our hand when we see something and want to grab at it.

Once we allow Shabbat in, then we become capable of feeling the power of our faith, a power that has nothing to do with whether or not this sentence of that sentence came from Sinai or later or earlier moments of revelation.

There are two canards, perhaps, which serve as barriers to our allowing Shabbat in, allowing Jewish life in.

They both need addressing and rebutting.

The first is the idea that Jewish observance is an all or nothing relationship and that a person exploring, seeking, playing at observance is therefore a hypocrite.

This idea, as often as I have heard it, is nonsense.

No-one has ever successfully completed even a moment’s life being fully observant. Just the demand that we should love our neighbour as we love ourselves is or should be enough to elevate observance away from such a narrow ‘box-checking’ approach.

Don’t ever let that hobgoblin of little minds – an appeal for consistency – rob you of the possibility of journey, of development, of exploring, of growing.

The second canard is the notion that we don’t believe that observance, particularly the uniquely Jewish forms of observance, could possibly matter, to God, to this world, to anyone.

How could it be, we imagine that God cares about the way we put on our tefilin, or whether or not we light candles, make Kiddush or havdalah?

It’s a particularly non-Jewish view of the role and nature of the human.

Contemporary society may well tell us most clearly that we are merely one tiny cog and that therefore nothing we do matters so much.

But religion teaches an entirely different message.

Judaism teaches that everything matters.

This, indeed is the very essence of faith – we do indeed believe that God counts. We believe that everything we do, every word we utter, every item of clothing we put on, it all counts.

The anthropologist Loren Eisley tells a story about a man walking on the beach one morning when he notices another person picking up a starfish stranded by the retreating tide. He went up to him and asked why he was doing it. The person replied that the starfish would die if left out in the morning sun. ‘But’ the man replied, ‘this is a long beach, there must be hundreds of starfish, you can’t save them all, how can your effort make a difference.’

‘To this one,’ the person responded, ‘it makes a difference.’

Whether or not our actions count or not depends on our perspective. We can, if we wish, instil in our souls a lack of significance. We can teach ourselves that nothing we do matters that much really.

But I have no idea why we would ever do such a thing.

Why would we ever give up on an appeal to eternity.

What is man that you are mindful of him?

We ask at the beginning of the Yizkor service – yet you have made him only a little lower than angels.

By believing that our actions count, that everything counts we being to invest our lives with significance, meaning, dignity – we become worth the gift of our souls.

Ah, this is getting a little airy fairy again – an appeal to the intellect, to reason.

It’s getting a little distant from my very clear message this morning.

Learn

Do.

Let me instead make two very concrete suggestions.

One – watch the skies.

Tonight, between eleven and twelve minutes past 10 o’clock you might be able to see three stars emerge into the night sky.

This, of course marks the departure of Shabbat.

Celebrate this with something. If you want to light a candle, smell some spices, say a bracha or four, by all means.

But do something. Do something to mark a return to normality, find some way to make your late Saturday evening different from these powerful moments of Shabbat we now share together.

And the second is this.

Next week – try not to carry.

Carrying on Shabbat is perhaps the single most overlooked command regarding the Shabbat day and, at least in my own experience, the single greatest marker of this special day.

During the week I jangle; my keys, my wallet, my phone, my backpack, my computer.

On Shabbat I don’t.

Vayinafash

It’s such a relief.

They aren’t needed, let them go.

I want to offer this.

Next week unpack your pockets before Shabbat.

Don’t bring your phone, don’t bring the wallet, don’t bring the detritus of a week’s accumulation in your handbag. If there really is something that you just can’t do without, OK.

But challenge yourself to see how much schlepping around you really need to do.

It will be less than you think and you will feel freer for it.

Allow these echoes of eternity an opportunity to resonate against your soul.

Allow these observances to do their work, to make you more observant, allow them to give you a clearer insight into who you are and what really is important in your life.

The Shabbat, indeed the entire system of Jewish life is method of finding meaning in life, in our relationship in our God, our fellows and our people.

It is also the answer to the greatest challenges that can be applied to us, as members of the New London family.

It is our answer to the greatest epicorus in the world.

It saves us from becoming dislocated from the truth of our tradition, a truth that not only needs to be philosophically grasped, but performed and learnt.

Im bechokotai teilechu v’et mitzvotai tishmoru

Shabbat shalom