THANK YOU! FROM RABBI ELLI I would like to say a huge thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone, who made the celebration of the 25th anniversary of my ordination such a wonderful occasion last Shabbat (12.07.14). Everything, from the beautiful flowers set on either side of the reading desk, to the […]
Dearest Rabbi Elli, It is such a privilege for all of us to be here, celebrating your simcha – thank you for providing such a lavish and lovely Kiddush for us all. After 14 years of enjoying the generosity of your spirit and compassion at all of our important life moments; it such a pleasure […]
Elli has been a rabbi for twenty five years! How fantastic! Mazel Tov. Well done. But it so nearly didn’t happen. 30 years ago, when Elli entered Leo Baeck College, discrimination and prejudice against women, but more especially against lesbian and gay people was rife. Elli had to fight to stake her claim to be […]
Have LGBT rights gone backwards globally? Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah – Jewish News, July 2014 Over the past 50 years the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people have changed beyond recognition, in particular, in Britain, Northern Europe, the United States and Israel, where struggles for liberation are achieving equality before the law and […]
As first century sage, ‘Ben Bag-Bag’, is reputed to have said of the Torah (Pirkey Avot 5:22): ‘Turn it and turn it again, for everything is in it.’ At first glance, Naso, the second portion of the Book of B’midbar/Numbers, fits Ben Bag-Bag’s notion that ‘everything is in it’ rather well. To use a contemporary […]
Written for the Israel Religious Action Centre e-bulletin. This week’s parashah, T’tzavveh, begins with a very challenging phrase from the point of view of a progressive Jew reading the Torah today: Attah t’tzavveh et-b’ney Yisrael – ‘you shall command the Israelites’ (Exodus 27: 20). The Torah, of course, is replete with ‘commands’. So, what do […]
I grew up in a home in which products from South Africa were banned. My Viennese Jewish father got out of Austria 1936 before the Nazi occupation, and went to South Africa. Following a business trip to London in the spring of 1947, where he met and married my mother, the daughter of Russian Polish […]
At the centre of Chanukkah lies a ‘Tree of Life’, represented by the nine branched M’norah or Chanukkiyyah. That Tree of Life reminds us of our ancestors, who challenged Assyrian Greek domination in 164BCE to re-establish independent Jewish life. But the celebration of Chanukkah is about much more than commemoration of the past; it reminds […]
Women Breaching Walls: Women of the Wall http://womenofthewall.org.il On November 4th, on Rosh Chodesh Kislev, the first day of the Hebrew month of Kislev, a special anniversary will be taking place in Israel: the 25th anniversary of Women of the Wall, a pluralist women’s prayer group that meets each Rosh Chodesh to pray at the […]
1. You shall honour the stranger, the asylum seeker and the refugee in the way you wish to be honoured 2. You shall encourage others to honour the stranger, the asylum seeker and the refugee 3. You shall love the stranger – Love therefore the stranger; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt […]