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Learning From the Multi-Vocality of Jewish Teaching Yom Kippur 5787

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Over the course of this very long, exceptional day, we will recite many prayers, utter confessions, and make pleas for forgiveness. We will also study Jewish teaching. The highpoint of the Shabbat morning service is always the reading of the weekly Torah portion, followed by the haftarah, the ‘concluding’ reading from the second section of TaNaKh, the Hebrew Bible, the books of N’vi’im, the prophets. This unique day of Yom Kippur, also referred to in Aramaic by the sages of the Talmud as Yoma, ‘The Day’, because it is so special, is also known as Shabbat Shabbaton, the ‘Sabbath of Sabbaths’. So, it is not surprising that on the day designated as Shabbat Shabbaton, we are treated to a feast of Jewish teaching. In place of food: intellectual and spiritual nourishment.

In a short while, we will read from N’tzavim, a portion in the Book of Deuteronomy, and be reminded of the choices set before us today, and the obligation to choose life (30:19). We will then read the stunning words of Isaiah chapter 58, and face the real challenge of Yom Kippur: not how piously we observe the rituals associated with today, but how we will act when we step out into the world tomorrow. And then, if this isn’t enough, in the afternoon, we will read from K’doshim, the Holiness Code, located at the very heart of the Torah, Leviticus chapter 19, and be presented once again with the core ethical prescriptions that provide the foundation for our relationships with others, including our neighbours, and the strangers in our midst. Finally, we will reread the Book of Jonah, and just in case, we might imagine that the day set aside for our journey towards atonement is an indication of our special status as the Jewish people, we will be confronted with a tale in which, not only is the Jewish prophet admonished by God for trying to escape his calling, but the repentance of the wicked nation of Nineveh that he is called to chastise is accepted by God – much to Jonah’s annoyance. And apart from the readings from Scripture, we will pause for a study session between the ‘additional’ and ‘afternoon’ services.

So, our personal and communal journeys towards atonement, assisted both by the liturgy we recite and by the teachings we read and study. How will we navigate ourselves through the sea of words? The words flow. How will we engage with them? How will we wrest meaning from them for our own lives?

Fundamentalism is inimical to the Jewish approach to our sacred texts. That is why every word of Torah is subjected to endless commentary. The Mikra’ot G’dolot, the multiple volumes of the ‘great commentaries’, compiled in the mediaeval era, present phrase by phrase, verse by verse commentary on all the books of the Hebrew Bible, all printed in what is called ‘Rashi script’; a special Hebrew script named for the great French mediaeval biblical and Talmudic commentator, Rabbi Shelomoh Yitzchaki (1040-1105). Rashi script was designed to allow for the printing of the maximum number of letters in the minimum amount of space. In the first volume, B’reishit, Genesis, the commentary on the very first verse of the Torah, runs to several pages.

And of course, there is the Babylonian Talmud, edited around the year 500 CE. Seventy volumes long, the Talmud encompasses the first code of Jewish law, the Mishnah, edited around the year 200 CE, and the gemara, the commentary of the expounders of the Mishnah. But that’s not all. On each page of the Talmud, the interpretations of later commentators, including Rashi, are presented around the Mishnah and gemara. The Babylonian Talmud records the conversations of the sages who deliberated in the Babylonian academies of Sura and Pumbedita, and the stories they told to illustrate their points. And out of the Talmud, further commentary: works of halakhah, preoccupied with clarifying Jewish law, and works of aggadah, focused on embellishing the narratives of the Torah.

Why am I telling you this? The reason for my focus on the phenomenon of a tradition characterised by multiple sources of teaching, reflecting innumerable perspectives, is because one of the dangers we are confronting in today’s world, alongside the threat of climate change and ecological catastrophe, alongside deadly wars and increasingly authoritarian regimes dominating global affairs, is the misuse and abuse of the concept of ‘truth’.

Acknowledging that the sages articulated multi-viewpoints, leads us to the concept of emet, the Hebrew word for ‘truth. Emet is based on the same Hebrew root, from which we derive the word ‘Amen’, pronounced ‘Amein’ in Hebrew. The three-letter root, in question, Alef Mem Nun, means to confirm or support. And so, when we respond to a prayer with the word ‘Amen’, we are basically indicating our support or affirmation for the sentiments expressed, as if we were saying: ‘I agree!’ or: ‘So may it be!’ or ‘True!’ with an exclamation mark. Similarly, the word emet has a sense of affirmation about it.

In the Hebrew conception, ‘truth’ connotes affirmation. Hold that thought. Now, let’s turn to the other side of the coin: ‘untruth’; the lie. In recent years, the scourge of lying has been one of the negative outcomes of the social media revolution, expressed, in particular, in the phenomenon of ‘fake news’. We may recognise that truth can be plural, but the complexity of truth is undermined when people actively and deliberately create and circulate untruths in bad faith, such as, notoriously, the lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 Presidential election in the United States. The Hebrew word emet affirms the speaking of truth in good conscience.[1]

In Pirkei Avot, the Chapters of the Sages, that is appended to the Mishnah, we read (1:18):

Rabban Simeon ben Gamliel used to say: ‘The world stands on three things [d’varim]: on justice [al ha-din]; and on truth [v’al ha-emet]; and on peace [v’al ha-shalom]’.

How do we understand the notion that the world stands – the Hebrew word is omeid – on these three things? First and foremost, that they are related; that they stand together: no justice, without truth and peace; no truth, without justice and peace; no peace, without justice and truth.

Let’s explore now how these concepts of justice and peace qualify the concept of emet.

There are four words for justice in the Bible and rabbinic literature. The text before us speaks of ‘din’. In biblical Hebrew din means ‘judgement’, and the early rabbis extended this meaning of the word by using it to denote ‘law’, a ‘law-suit’ and a ‘claim’, as well as ‘justice’. Din conveys ‘justice’ in the sense of the legal system for executing justice. A rabbinic court is a Beit Din, ‘House of Judgement’, and several tractates of the Mishnah and the Talmud are devoted to different aspects of the rabbinic legal system.[2] In the Torah, another word connotes the system of justice, mishpat, based on the three Hebrew consonants, Shin Pei Tet, meaning to judge. The ‘judges’ of the Bible were the shof’tim.[3]

The Torah also uses two other related words for justice, tzedek and tz’dakah, which are both based on the three-letter root: Tzadi Dalet Kuf. We read in Deuteronomy 16, verse 20, in the context of a passage dealing with how the system of justice is to be administered: Tzedek, tzedek, tirdof , ‘Justice, justice, you shall pursue’. In Hebrew, nouns, adjectives, and verbs are all derived from three-letter roots, that is, each word is rooted in three consonants. The word ‘pursue’ in Hebrew, indicated by the three consonants, Reish Dalet Pei, conveys a sense of urgency, as it does in English. In Hebrew syntax, it is usual for the verb to come first, and in the verse, Tzedek, tzedek, tirdof, ‘Justice, justice, you shall pursue’, the tone of urgency is heightened, not only by the repetition of the word, tzedek, ‘justice’, but also by the word order: ‘Justice, justice, you shall pursue’. Meanwhile, the repetition of ‘justice’ suggests impartiality: where two parties are involved, pursuing justice for the one also necessitates pursuing justice for the other.

Justice involves equity and impartiality, and connecting this understanding to ‘truth’, involves recognising, for example, the truths of both parties in a dispute. So, how does peace relate to this equation?

Peace is a much-used word that carries with it a significant, additional freight of meaning in Hebrew. The Hebrew Bible is full of powerful statements about shalom, peace. Both Jews and Christians often quote the text found in the Book of Isaiah (2:2-4) and also in the Book of Micah (4:1-3), which looks to a time in the future when ‘they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, and they shall learn war no more’. These famous words express an ideal state, but they also say something very real about what it takes to create peace: That, like making war, it demands energy and effort – all that beating of metal – and involves learning the ways of peace. And Micah adds something else, a vision of the peaceful life that is also very instructive: ‘Rather, each person shall sit under their vine and under their fig-tree, and none shall terrorise them’ (4.4a). Creating peace involves making it possible for everyone to create prosperity and to live in security. Peace is not an end but a new beginning.

The word we translate as ‘peace’, shalom, is based on a three-letter Hebrew root, Shin Lamed Mem, meaning to be complete or sound. A related word, shaleim, means ‘wholeness’, and so, also, ‘well-being’ and ‘welfare’. That is why the Hebrew greeting, when people meet is ‘Shalom’. Shalom, peace, is not the same as ‘tranquillity’ [shalvah], or ‘quiet’ [sheket]. And peace is not simply the absence of war or violence. Peace is a state of completeness. A passage in Leviticus 5, verse 16, speaks of a person committing a wrong, being obliged to make restitution, or reparation, using a verbal form of the root: y’shalleim. And so, making peace involves putting right what is wrong, in order that what is broken may be repaired and become whole again.

Returning to the words of Rabban Simeon ben Gamliel: ‘The world stands on three things: on justice; and on truth; and on peace’. The Hebrew for ‘things’, d’varim, also means ‘words’. From a Jewish perspective, we only have to look at the millions of words of our tradition to get a sense that the world stands on words. Alternatively, if we think about these three d’varim in material terms, as pillars constructed out of the rock of the Earth, it is apparent that even if emet, is the central pillar, it cannot uphold the world in the absence of justice and peace. Indeed, for there to be emet, there must also be justice and peace.

So, we have a lot of work to do today for the sake of tomorrow – not least, to affirm the quest for truth as inextricably linked to the pursuit of justice and peace. While this unique day demands so much of us as individuals on our journeys towards forgiveness, it also challenges us to consider our responsibilities as Jews and as human beings for establishing truth, justice, and peace, in our increasingly complex, multi-vocal society. It is a tall order! Hopefully, as we negotiate this complexity, the presence of fellow travellers is a comfort. Interestingly, the word comfort is derived from the Latin: com, meaning ‘with’, and fort, meaning ‘strength’. As we pray and reflect alongside one another, with one another, may each one of us find the strength we need to repair ourselves, our relationships, and our world. And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Leicester Progressive Jewish Congregation

Yom Kippur Shacharit, 21 September 2026 / 10 Tishri 5787

  1. My colleague, Rabbi Dr Charles Middleburgh, points out (in private correspondence) that according to the Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament produced by Koehler and Baumgartner, the Hebrew noun emet also conveys the meaning of trustworthy, reliable, genuine, and unadulterated: Koehler, Ludwig and Baumgartner, Walter. Eds. (2002). The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Two-Volume Study Guide Edition. Translated by M.E.J. Richardson. Leiden: Brill Academic Publications, vol. 1, p.66, col.1. ↑

  2. The legal tractates of the Mishnah (and Talmud) are: Bava Kamma, Bava Metzia, and Bava Batra (the three ‘gates’), Sanhedrin, Makkot, Shevuot, Eiduyyot, Avodah Zarah, and Horayot – all in Nezikin, (‘Damages’), the Fourth Order of the Mishnah, which deals with the laws of private and civil wrongs, capital penalities, homicide, courts of justice, and evidence (Pirkei Avot, the ‘Chapters of the Sages’ is appended to Nezikin). See Blackman, Philip. Ed. (1983). Mishnayoth, Vol. 4 Order Nezikin. Gateshead: Judaica Press. ↑

  3. See for example, the Book of Judges 4.4, concerning the prophet [n’vi’ah] Deborah ‘who was judging (shof’tah) Israel at that time’. ↑

Learning From the Rhythm and Qualities of Yom Kippur 5787

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The ten-day journey that began on Rosh Ha-Shanah has reached its destination. We have arrived at Yom Kippur. We have stepped out of the insistent rush of our 24/7 existence in order to embark on an otherworldly journey; one that we take slowly, prayer by prayer, reflection by reflection, confession by confession, nourishing our souls with the wise teachings that infuse our day-long sojourn in eternity.

Of course, we have a lot of work to do today; the work of self-interrogation is demanding, and potentially exhausting. And yet, what a blessing to have this gift of a day, when we can set aside the preoccupations and tasks that consume our days, day after day, and immerse ourselves in this sacred moment.

But then, it is only one day. As we approach the concluding hours, and the sun sets, what will we take with us? What spiritual nourishment? What insights about ourselves and our relationships with others? What might we learn from this day out of the routine of our daily lives that might make a difference to the days, weeks, and months that lie ahead?

Before we turn to the concluding prayers of our Kol Nidrei service, here are three suggestions, drawn from the unique atmosphere of this unique day.

My first suggestion is about developing our capacity for attention. On Yom Kippur we are called to pay attention, to focus our attention on what really matters, on how we go about our daily lives, on our values, and how we practice them, on how we take care of ourselves and our relationships, on how we relate to those around us in our community and in the wider society, on how we take responsibility for making a contribution to the repair of the world.

So, how do we cultivate our capacity for attention? In order to be able to become more attentive, we need to practice pausing before we go onto the next thing. One of the principal functions of reciting a blessing before we eat, for example, is to pause and appreciate what we are about to enjoy; to take a moment to reflect on the blessing of food. Pausing also helps to inhibit the inclination to multitask. If I can’t pay attention to the one thing I’m doing, how can I possibly pay attention when I’m doing several things at once?

When we pause to pay attention, we interrupt the ceaseless rush and repetition of every day and create the possibility of making a discovery that might take us in a new direction. Let me share an example of a familiar story recounted in the Torah in the Book of Exodus, chapter 3. The whole epic tale of the liberation of our ancestors from slavery may never have been told and written down had it not been that Moses paid attention to the bush that was burning in the scorching heat of the desert. Imagine if Moses had not turned aside to look (Ex. 3:3), but rather, had just walked on, and continued with his shepherding duties: no encounter with the ineffable presence that called him to return to Egypt and demand that Pharaoh free the slaves. No Exodus. No Sinai. No transformation of a rabble of ex-slaves into a people, who would journey with the ineffable presence for millennia. No Torah. No festivals. No descendants to gather together as we are doing this evening on Erev Yom Kippur.

My second suggestion is intrinsically connected to paying attention and pausing: slowing down. We drive ourselves on day after day. We are also driven on day after day. I’m 71 years old now, and as I look back, I’m so aware of how life has got faster and faster. This is particularly noticeable in our communications. People used to write letters, and an exchange of letters could take days. Then fax machines came along, and with it the demand to deal with the communication on the same day. Then email, and a ceaseless supply of emails into our inboxes, forcing us to respond as quickly as we can to ensure that the list of the ‘unread’ doesn’t get longer and longer. And alongside email, texting, recently superseded by the incessant flow of WhatsApp messages. Personally, one of the ways I’m trying to cultivate slowness is by setting my own pace, rather than being driven on by the continuing flow of communications.

There are other ways of slowing ourselves down. Whatever activity we are engaging in, we can do it at a slower rhythm. Rather than being driven by the need to get a job done, and being outcome-oriented, we can enter into it, and derive meaning and even enjoyment from doing it. Following this intensively hot summer, an obvious example is watering gardens and plants. In many regions of the country, there have been hosepipe bans, so gardeners have had to resort to using watering cans. They have also had to be selective about which plants to water. One thing that my spouse, Jess, has tried, is using a smaller watering can. This involves making more frequent trips to the diminishing water-butts, and so takes much longer, but also means she can pay more attention to the individual plants as she waters them. Mindfulness, originally a Buddhist concept, has become popular in recent years. Some of us may have already adopted a mindful approach to how we live. For those who haven’t, being mindful about what we do, is a good way of cultivating our ability to pay attention, pause, and slow down.

We can find a wonderful example of the gift of slowing down, and inhabiting slowness with focused effort, in the account of the building of the mishkan, the Tabernacle in the wilderness. The immense detail we find when we read the accounts in the concluding chapters of Exodus, beginning at Exodus 25, give us a sense of how absorbing the construction task was for B’tzalel, the chief craftsman, and all the other craftspeople involved (Exodus 31:1-11). All those glorious materials (Exodus 25:3-7), carefully measured, crafted, and arranged, for the tent itself and its different compartments, for every single utensil and item of furniture, not least for the m’norah, the two altars, and the table, and also for the priestly garments. And apart from the painstaking care required for all these tasks, since the mishkan and everything in it was portable, the Levites, who had the responsibility for the porterage of the mishkan, and all its special utensils and furnishings, also had to take great care to ensure its safe transportation through the wilderness (Numbers 1:50-51; 3:6-37). If it’s hard to imagine how difficult a task that was, just think of the lengths taken in the summer to transport the Bayeux tapestry safely from Normandy to the British Museum in London[1].

Cultivating slowness enables us to craft our own lives with patience and care. Cultivating slowness may also be necessary as an antidote to the hyper-speed AI revolution. Of course, the development of artificial intelligence is already making a huge difference to medical diagnosis and treatment, and also has a host of other benefits, not least the ability to speed up the process of analysing huge volumes of data.[2] But the exponential growth of AI, forces us to ask: what do we lose on a personal level when we resort to using AI? My own answer is that we forfeit, not only our special human capacity for creativity, but our own individual and unique voice. My new book, Breaking Binaries,[3] is the product of my thought, research, creative endeavour, and almost five years of labour at my desk. Certainly, AI can summon up information, and write a coherent article, or even book, on any topic, but the creative spark that is generated when an individual writes is completely lost. And it’s not only an issue that is confined to writing. AI is being used to create art?[4] Can art created by AI be called art? Similarly, AI music offerings ‘are flooding streaming platforms’.[5] Do we want this?

During a breakout group at a rabbinic meeting in the summer, one of my colleagues commented that ‘unlike human beings, AI has no history, and no vision of the future’. Yes, AI can do things at stupendous speed that no human being, however brilliant, could ever accomplish. AI has its place. But at this juncture, when AI is speeding away exponentially, perhaps, we should devote some thought to putting AI in its place, while simultaneously advocating for being limited mortals and embracing our human limitations. That’s my third suggestion of a possible outcome we could develop out of our experience of this unique day. Alongside paying attention, pausing, and cultivating slowness, let’s reflect on what it is about our human limitations that we want to hold onto.

I can think of a few. The capacity to be overtaken by a sense of awe and wonder when we are in nature, and immerse ourselves in that moment. The capacity to appreciate ‘small joys’, even in the midst of difficult or painful circumstances. The capacity for acceptance in the face of terminal illness. The effort involved in doing a time-consuming task, like preparing a special meal, making a birthday card for a loved one, cleaning the oven, or weeding; the list of possible time-consuming tasks is endless.

Significantly, we can find in the two accounts of creation at the beginning of the Book of Genesis, contrasting models for how to be human. In the first account in Genesis chapter 1, the human is at the pinnacle of creation with a license to dominate and subdue every other creature and form of life (Gen. 1:26-28). In the second account, in Genesis chapter 2, the human has the more modest responsibility of working and maintaining a garden (Gen. 2:15). Interestingly, as I demonstrate in the last chapter of Breaking Binaries, both accounts offer hints that for all our distinctiveness as humans vis-à-vis other forms of life, we share essential qualities with all that lives. In the first account that inextricable connection is expressed in the description of each creature as nefesh chayyah, a ‘living being’ (Gen. 1:20-21). In the second account, that inextricable connection is expressed in the very formation of the human – ha-adam – from the dust of the ground – ha-adamah (Gen.2:7). The AI Revolution demonstrates that for all our powers, humans are not all-powerful. Perhaps, we would do better to remind ourselves of what we share with all that lives, and limit our aspirations, so that we can devote our time and energies to taking care of our beautiful blue planet, our only home.

I hope that we all find meaning and purpose in this unique day. I also hope that we can draw on what it teaches us as we re-enter the world the day after Yom Kippur, and the New Year begins in earnest. The world, after all, is in turmoil on every level – economic, political, ecological, spiritual. In the face of all these challenges, it is easy to give in to despair. It is also easy to get caught up in social media representations that feed despair, that make us desperate to escape, shut out the world and hibernate as much as we can. But these are urges that for the sake of our lives, our communities, our humanity, our world, we need to try to resist. Thinking about the qualities I’ve talked about this evening as resources, can help us cultivate such resistance because they help to build resilience; they enable us to develop patience and the determination needed to commit to the struggle of repairing the world; they foster a spirit of Hope so that we can envision a better future, and feel that it is possible to make it happen. There are no instant fixes and solutions; there is only patient and persistent effort. May this unique day nourish us, and inspire all our efforts to renew our lives and the life of the world in the days that lie ahead.

And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Leicester Progressive Jewish Congregation

Erev Yom Kippur, 20 September 2026 / 10 Tishri 5787

  1. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/bayeux-tapestry-return-england-british-museum ↑

  2. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/394379604_The_AI_Revolution_in_Healthcare ↑

  3. https://unusualpublications.com/ ↑

  4. https://www.sciencenewstoday.org/ai-and-creativity-can-machines-create-art-music-and-literature ↑

  5. https://audioengine.com/explore/ai-music-is-flooding-streaming-platforms-artists-and-listeners-are-pushing-back/ ↑

The Day of Justice Rosh Ha-Shanah

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In my Erev Rosh Ha-Shanah sermon I mentioned that the Jewish New Year has many names. Yesterday evening, as we paused in the twilight, my focus was on the New Year as harat olam, the ‘birthday of the world’. This morning, I invite us to think about this day by considering another of its names: Yom Ha-Din, ‘The Day of Judgement’. This name reminds us that the first day of Tishri, the seventh month of the cycle of months that begins with Nisan in the spring, is also the first day of aseret y’mei t’shuvah, the ‘ten days of returning’ that conclude on Yom Kippur, the tenth day of Tishri. Today we begin a process of self-reflection and self-examination, in which we look back at our actions and inactions of the past year, everything we did and failed to do, the errors and wrongs we committed, the hurts we inflicted on others; all of this in the knowledge that we face a judgement. Perhaps, we don’t acknowledge a Divine Judge, who is weighing our deeds and misdeeds in the balance during these ten days, which are also known as yamim nora’im, literally, ‘awed days’. But even if the notion of Divine Judgement feels alien or meaningless, we know that our actions have consequences on others, as well as on ourselves, and that judgement lies in these consequences; we can weigh our own deeds on the scale, and reach our own conclusions.

I’ve translated Yom Ha-Din as ‘The Day of Judgement’, which is the usual translation. But Hebrew, unlike English, which has a huge vocabulary, and so uses individual words very precisely, has a more concise vocabulary, and so words can have a range of meaning. Yes, Rosh Ha-Shanah is Yom Ha-Din, in the sense of being ‘The Day of Judgement’. But it is also Yom Ha-Din, in the sense of being ‘The Day of Justice’.

So, what are the implications of thinking of Rosh Ha-Shanah as ‘The Day of Justice’? Before we can answer this question, we need to examine the word, din, in the sense of its meaning as ‘justice’. In the first chapter of Pirkei Avot, the ‘Chapters of the Sages’, which is appended to the Mishnah, the first code of rabbinic law, edited around the year 200, we find this statement (1:18):

Rabban Simeon ben Gamliel used to say: ‘The world stands on three things [d’varim]: on justice [al ha-din]; and on truth [v’al ha-emet]; and on peace [v’al ha-shalom]’.

Having said that Hebrew is more concise than English, there are four words for ‘justice’ in the Bible and rabbinic literature. The passage speaks of ‘din’. In biblical Hebrew din means ‘judgement’, but the early rabbis extended this meaning of the word by using it to denote ‘law’, a ‘law-suit’ and a ‘claim’, as well as ‘justice’. Din conveys ‘justice’ in the sense of the legal system for executing justice. A rabbinic court is a Beit Din, ‘House of Judgement’, and several tractates of the Mishnah and the Talmud are devoted to different aspects of the rabbinic legal system.[1] In the Torah, another word connotes the system of justice, mishpat, based on the three consonants, Shin Pei Tet, meaning to judge. The ‘judges’ of the Bible were the shof’tim.[2]

The Torah also uses two other related words for justice, tzedek and tz’dakah, which are both based on the three-letter root: Tzadi Dalet Kuf. We read in Deuteronomy 16:20, in the context of a passage dealing with how the system of justice is to be administered: Tzedek, tzedek, tirdof , ‘Justice, justice, you shall pursue’. In Hebrew, nouns, adjectives, and verbs are all derived from three-letter roots, that is, each word is rooted in three consonants. The word ‘pursue’ in Hebrew, indicated by the three consonants, Reish Dalet Pei, conveys a sense of urgency, as it does in English. In Hebrew syntax, it is usual for the verb to come first, and in the verse, Tzedek, tzedek, tirdof, ‘Justice, justice, you shall pursue’, the tone of urgency is heightened, not only by the repetition of the word, tzedek, ‘justice’, but also by the word order: ‘Justice, justice, you shall pursue’. Meanwhile, the repetition of ‘justice’ suggests impartiality, where two parties are involved, pursuing justice for the one also necessitates pursuing justice for the other.

Justice also has an economic component. In another chapter in Deuteronomy, in a section dealing with economic justice, we read that, when giving a loan to someone, returning their garment that has been taken as a pledge before sunset is an act of tz’dakah, ‘justice’ (24:13). The pursuit of justice, tzedek, involves what we now call ‘redistributive justice’. Similarly, tz’dakah, connotes an act of justice that we are obligated to perform in favour of the poor and the needy. Although tz’dakah is often translated as ‘charity’, the word charity has a very different meaning. From the Latin word caritas, charity suggests an act of kindness that expresses our loving feelings towards others. The point about tz’dakah is that we are obligated to do it, even when we do you not feel charitable.

While the words tzedek and tz’dakah relate to the individual’s responsibility to act justly, the words din and mishpat focus on the legal system. The legal system is governed by rules that regulate the conduct of individuals and treat parties to the dispute on the basis of impartiality. As we read in Deuteronomy 16:19:

You shall not pervert justice [mishpat]; you shall not show partiality; neither shall you take a bribe; for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the words of the righteous [tzadikim].

The legal system also attempts to ensure that the stronger members of the society come to the aid of the more vulnerable and dependent members of the society, designated in the Torah, in particular, as ‘the sojourner [ha-geir], the orphan [ha-yatom] – literally, the “fatherless” – and the widow [ha-almanah]’ (Deut. 24:17) (in that order). The sojourner is dependent on the generosity of the host society. In the case of the fatherless and the widow, having lost the male breadwinner in the family, they both become dependent on the wider community.

Having examined the different words for and applications of ‘justice’ in Jewish teaching, let me return to the question I posed a few minutes ago: what are the implications of thinking of Rosh Ha-Shanah as ‘The Day of Justice’? During the Rosh Ha-Shanah and Yom Kippur services, we recite a mediaeval poem, known by its opening words, u’n’tanneh tokef. In this poem which addresses God as a Dayyan, a ‘Judge’, we proclaim in response that we can avert the negative judgement of the Divine Judge by engaging in three related actions: t’shuvah, t’fillah, and tz’dakah; by ‘returning’ to the true path of our lives; through ‘prayer’, which in the essential meaning of t’fillah, implies self-interrogation, and through acts of ‘justice’. We can see these three actions as a process that involves the decision to change our ways, the self-examination that enables us to do this, and the acts of justice that put intention into practice.

So, today is the Day of Judgement which calls us, starting from now, to practice Justice every day of our lives. How do we go about doing this? We will all have different responses to this question. For those who are concerned about tackling all forms of injustice, social, economic, and political, in our communities, society, and throughout the world, there are multiple demands on our commitment to justice. But whatever we decide to do and wherever we direct our energies, I think it’s important that we take guidance from a core feature of justice in both its legal and activist dimensions, and that is equity. Again and again, I return to the key Torah verse that I quoted earlier: ‘Tzedek, Tzedek tirdof’, ‘Justice, Justice, you shall pursue’ (Deut. 16:20). If our passionate pursuit of justice rests on a binary approach in which, we see only heroes and villains, in which we feel justice can only be served if the ‘good’ side we support defeats the ‘evil’ side we deplore, then the outcome is likely to fuel conflict, rather than establish justice.

As I say this, of course, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at the forefront of my mind. With its roots in the unilateral establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948, and then firmly entrenched following Israel’s victory in the Six Day War of June 1967 and the subsequent occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become even more catastrophic for both peoples since the horrific Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel in October 7, 2023, and Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, with it devastating consequences for the people of Gaza. Justice demands that the dispossessed and displaced Palestinian people achieve liberation and self-determination. In order for the conditions to be created to make this outcome possible, justice also demands that both peoples can live alongside one another in peace and security.

With social media dominated by binary narratives, I have drawn strength and inspiration from those projects and organisations in which Israelis and Palestinians are working together to secure a just peace. This morning, I want to share an example of an organisation, ‘Roots-Judar–Shorashim’, founded in 2014, a ‘bi-national initiative’ for Palestinians and Israelis living in the West Bank, which engages in educational and dialogue activities, with a view to building trust between the two peoples.[3] Given the daily horrors inflicted by extremist settlers against West Bank Palestinian communities, Roots provides the most powerful evidence I’ve come across that when protagonists begin to acknowledge each other’s narratives, it is possible to break the cycle of hatred and violence.

I’ve attended a number of Roots online zoom events. The one I joined in February, took the form of an interview. The interviewer was Rabbi Daniel Rowe, who immigrated to Israel from England just two years ago, and has since that time been making contacts with Palestinians. As Rabbi Rowe put it before he began the interview, ‘If you only have one side of a story, you haven’t got half the story, you’ve got fiction’. His interviewee was Ali Abu Awwad, who was born in 1948 to a refugee family, and whose mother was one of the leaders of the PLO. Like his mother, Ali spent several years in prison, during which time he said that he learned about nonviolent resistance. Released four years after the Oslo peace initiative, during the second intifada, Ali’s brother was killed by an Israel soldier. ‘By that time’, he said, he ‘had enough anger to take revenge’. But one day, he met a group of Israelis who asked permission to visit him at his home. As Ali talked with them, he began to realise that ‘the price I paid was also being paid by Israelis’. He also saw himself as ‘equal to Israelis for the first time’. That experience changed Ali, making everything, as he put it, ‘more complex’. Since then, Ali feels that ‘I carry Israelis in my heart and on my shoulders, as well as my own pain’.

As he spoke, Ali Abu Awaad shared his vision of a different future in which ‘from the river to the sea, everyone will be free’; a vision rooted in his continuing conversations with Israelis. Ali argued that both sides have to ‘learn to change behaviour, rather than change identity’. That ‘no solution is possible if we don’t respect that both sides belong to this land’. He argued that on each side, ‘leaders have failed’, commenting that, ‘politicians manage a situation, leaders manage the journey to a different future’. Ali also stressed that ‘dialogue isn’t a solution, it’s a tool’, and that together they need to find ‘a solution that recognises the dignity and identity of both peoples’. Ali went on: ‘We need to find a political solution that allows these identities to thrive in their own countries and to thrive together’, and ‘we have to understand what conditions have to be created on the ground for there to be a solution’. In his concluding remarks, Ali Abu Awaad said, ‘we peacemakers are the active minority who speak for the silent majority’.

Of course, Ali Abu Awaad and Rabbi Daniel Rowe are just two individuals; two voices of sanity. The social media echo-chamber cacophony that now dominates the public discourse shrieks hatred and drowns out such voices. Nevertheless, they are two individuals, who are participating in an Israeli-Palestinian coexistence initiative, that is among one hundred and eighty such projects and organisations.[4] Today, on this ‘Day of Justice’, when we are called to act for justice, let us demonstrate our commitment to justice by, at the very least, amplifying the voices of the peace-and- justice makers in Israel-Palestine, and in every place. And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Edinburgh Liberal Jewish Congregation

Rosh Ha-Shanah Shacharit

12th September 2026 / 1st Tishri 5787

  1. The legal tractates of the Mishnah (and Talmud) are: Bava Kamma, Bava Metzia, and Bava Batra (the three ‘gates’), Sanhedrin, Makkot, Shevuot, Eiduyyot, Avodah Zarah, and Horayot – all in Nezikin, (‘Damages’), the Fourth Order of the Mishnah, which deals with the laws of private and civil wrongs, capital penalities, homicide, courts of justice, and evidence (Pirkei Avot, the ‘Chapters of the Sages’ is appended to Nezikin). See Blackman, Philip. Ed. (1983). Mishnayoth, Vol. 4 Order Nezikin. Gateshead: Judaica Press. ↑

  2. See for example, the Book of Judges 4.4, concerning the prophet [n’vi’ah] Deborah ‘who was judging (shof’tah) Israel at that time’. ↑

  3. https://b8ofhope.org/grantees/roots-shorashim-judur/ (Accessed: 3 November 2025). ↑

  4. The Alliance for Middle East Peace (ALLMEP) ‘represents a network of over 180 organizations engaged in civil society peacebuilding between Israelis and Palestinians’. https://www.allmep.org/about-us-allmep/members/ (Accessed: 10 April 2026). Meanwhile, ‘It’s Time’ is ‘a coalition of over 60 peacebuilding and shared society organizations, working together with determination and courage to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a political agreement that will ensure both peoples’ right to self-determination and secure lives’. https://www.timeisnow.co.il/english (Accessed: 10 April 2026). ↑

Learning from Twighlight Erev Rosh Ha-Shanah

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The old year has just ended, and the new year has barely begun. Hinneinu, here we are, on Erev Rosh Ha-Shanah in a liminal, in-between space that is, like twilight, a realm of indistinctness in which hard edges blur, and the sharp colours of the day give way to shades of grey. 

The Hebrew word, erev, which is translated in English as ‘eve’, and denotes ‘evening’, is derived from the Hebrew verb, to ‘mix’, represented by three Hebrew consonants, Ayin – Reish – Shin. Logically, evening is an in-between time that is a mixture of day and night. The word erev is connected with another word with the same root: ma’arav, ‘west’. The sun sets in the west, and after sunset, the sky is a mixture of light and dark.

Rather than simply accept that night will soon descend, and that in a few hours, a new day will dawn, I would like to invite us to pause in this in-between moment, and reflect on what it teaches us – about life and the journey of life, about Jewish time, about our nature as humans, and about ourselves.

In March, my latest book was published, Breaking Binaries. A progressive rabbi engages in contemporary issues. In my book I challenge either/or assumptions, and the ways in which we force life into binary, and often oppositional, categories. The binary of ‘day and night’ is an example of this phenomenon, and one which we experience in every twenty-four period, 365 days-and-nights of the year.

Rosh Ha-Shanah, literally, ‘the head of the year’, which falls on the first day of the seventh month, Tishri, is known by a number of different names. One of these is harat olam, the ‘birthday of the world’. And so, the Jewish year begins not with our first Jewish ancestors, Abraham and Sarah, but rather with the beginning of everything. If we turn to the beginning of the Torah, we find that each of the initial six days set out in the first Creation narrative, concludes with the phrase, ‘And it was evening and it was morning …’ – Va-y’hi erev, va-y’hi voker …[1] Meanwhile, the narrative, through a series of declamations, establishes a number of binaries: heaven and Earth; light and dark; day and night; seas and dry land; humanity and the rest of creation. Nevertheless, at the same time it reiterates a statement about the liminal ‘in between’ dimension, between one day and another. Erev, ‘evening’, begins after sunset, when the light begins to fade until the night darkness takes over. In the Babylonian Talmud tractate Shabbat 34b, in the context of determining the beginning of Shabbat, there is a fascinating discussion concerning the uncertainty – the word used is sapheik, ‘doubt’ – involved in the period when it is neither completely ‘day’, nor completely ‘night’ – that is, twilight, although this word is not used.

In the phrase, Va-y’hi erev, va-y’hi voker, ‘And it was evening and it was morning’, it is not only the word erev that draws attention to the liminal arena between sunset and sunrise. The noun, boker, ‘morning’, is derived from the root Beit Kuf Reish, meaning to ‘seek’, but originally, to ‘divide’, to ‘discern’, corresponding to the Arabic root to ‘slit’, ‘rip’, ‘split’. And so it is that the noun, bakar, meaning cattle, herd or ox, points to the role of these domestic animals in ploughing the land. Similarly, boker suggests the penetration of the light of day into the darkness of night.

In the first rabbinic code of law, the Mishnah, in the tractate, B’rakhot, ‘Blessings’, we find a very interesting discussion that interrogates the time period between night and day. Opening with the theme of when the Sh’ma,[2] should be recited in the evening – and connecting the times of prayer with the times when offerings were presented by the priests in the Temple (Mishnah B’rakhot 1:1) – the second paragraph turns to the recitation of the morning Sh’ma. The paragraph begins (1:2):

At what time does one begin to recite the Sh’ma in the morning? When one can distinguish between blue and white. Rabbi Eliezer says, between blue and green (and concludes it) by sunrise.

It is important to note that the noun for ‘morning’ used here, which is also used for ‘morning prayer’, is shacharit, not boker. Shacharit, related to the biblical noun, shachar, means ‘dawn’. The issue for the rabbis is when does dawn begin? The first two statements provide answers to that question. The word for ‘green’, karti, means ‘leek-green’. The word for ‘blue’, t’kheilet, is the same word used for the ‘blue’ thread amongst the white tzitzit, ‘fringes’, worn on the four-cornered garment mentioned in the third paragraph of the Sh’ma (Numbers 15:37 ff.).

In the commentary on the Mishnah that we find in the G’mara, which documents the discussions of the amoraim, literally, ‘speakers’, the later generations of scholars, who explicated the Mishnah, the second comment relates directly to the tzitzit (Babylonian Talmud B’rakhot 9b):

What is the meaning of ‘between blue [t’kheilet] and white’? Shall I say: between a lump of white wool and a lump of blue wool? This one may also distinguish in the night! It means rather: between the blue [thread] in it [i.e., the fringe] and the white in it.

The purpose of the thread of t’kheilet, which was later not included in the tzitzit because of the problem of identifying the exact t’kheilet-blue, was to be visible to the individual.[3] As it says in what became the second paragraph of the Sh’ma (Num. 15:37-39a):

The Eternal said to Moses: / Speak to the Israelites and say to them that they should make themselves fringes on the corners of their garments throughout their generations; let them attach a thread of blue to the fringe at each corner. / And it will be for you as a fringe and you will see it [my emphasis] and you will remember all the commandments of the Eternal and do them…

While morning clearly begins at sunrise, there is a period between the night and the day, which commences with the dawn, when the increasing light, enabling the individual to distinguish between the blue and white of the fringe, indicates that the time of reciting the morning Sh’ma has begun, even though the sun has not yet risen.

From evening, erev, which corresponds to the fading of the light of the previous day, until morning, boker, which follows the night, there is a liminal region: between night and day. Further, as Rabbi Howard Cooper reflects, the first use of the word yom, ‘day’, in the Torah (Genesis 1:5) demonstrates that:[4]

there is an immediate subversion built into the text of the binary opposition between Day/yom and Night/laylah. Although ‘yom’ is the name given to the ‘Day’ alone, the text concludes, ‘and there was evening and there was morning, one YOM’. You could probably construe this in different ways, but at a minimum it subverts/confounds our innate wish to separate into simple binary pairs/opposites.

The tradition of Jewish teaching is all about interrogating texts and words, and drawing out nuances and meanings. So, what are the implications for us of the awareness that we spend so much of our lives in between day and night, night and day? What sense are we making right now, of this twilight moment?

I would like to think that inhabiting twilight fully and consciously would nudge us towards reflection on how we might find ways of getting between the other binaries that characterise our lives. The most obvious one of these is gender. The majority of people are born biologically female or biologically male, and until recently, the one in two-thousand born intersex in various ways, were invariably surgically readjusted to conform with the male/female binary.[5]

In recent years, in the context of new thinking about sex and gender, increasing numbers of people beyond those who are intersex have been identifying themselves as gender queer or non-binary. Personally, I have done this because, despite the efforts of lesbian feminists like me, who participated in the Women’s Liberation Movement in the late 1970s and early 1980s in order to challenge male domination, most societies the world over are still invested in a male/female power dynamic that forces every person from the moment of birth into a binary gender straitjacket. So, how would it be if we allowed our experience of twilight at this moment of the turning of the year to enter our beings and influence our sense of ourselves, so that we could emerge with the consciousness of ourselves, not as female or male, but rather, primarily, as humans?

Significantly, the Creation narratives at the beginning of the Book of Genesis, challenge more than our assumptions about day and night, light and dark. Significantly, although the first Creation story places the human at the pinnacle of creation, it also teaches that every creature, like the human is nefesh chayyah, a ‘living being’ (Gen. 1:20;21;24). Meanwhile, the second Creation story, rather than commanding the human, both male and female, to subdue and dominate the rest of creation (Gen. 1:28), situates the undifferentiated human – who, in this version is ‘formed from the dust of the ground’ (Gen. 2:7) – in the circumscribed space of a garden, with the humble task of working it and maintaining it (Gen. 2:15).

‘The human’, ha-adam, intimately connected with ‘the ground’, ha-adamah. One of my favourite T-shirts bears the slogan, ‘Human Beings 100% Organic Colours Vary’. Returning to the question I put a few moments ago, but revising it slightly: How would it be if we allowed our experience of twilight at this moment of the turning of the year to enter our beings and influence our sense of ourselves, so that we could emerge with the consciousness of ourselves, primarily, as earthlings, organic creatures, living beings, intrinsically connected to Life in all its gloriously variegated forms?

And what would be the implications of such a consciousness? Surely, the reality of our organic nature, shared with all life, is that, as Genesis puts it in chapter 3, ‘for dust you are, and to dust you shall return’, Ki-afar attah, v’el-afar tashuv (3:19). Like all organic matter from the microscopic amoeba to the magnificent elephant, it is in our nature to grow, blossom, and finally, disintegrate, and return to the earth. How would it be if we embraced, not only life around us, but our own organic selves, and accepted our mortality? What difference might that make to our experience of life? To our experience of every day? To our appreciation of being alive? Of course, unlike all other life-forms on this beautiful blue planet, humans have, both, the capacity to be aware of our mortality, and the capacity to look back into the past and gaze forward into the future. These capacities may be understood as our special gifts as humans, but they may also have negative consequences for our ability, both, to experience deeply, spiritually, intellectually, sensuously, the present moment, and to relate to the other forms of life that inhabit the present with us. How would it be if we could find ways to, both, to accept our mortality and be fully present in the present?

This evening, I have invited you to be present in this twilight moment. As I draw to a conclusion, I’m going to recite the Twilight People Prayer written by Rabbi Reuben Zelman, the first openly transgender person to be accepted for rabbinic training at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in the United States.[6] We recite it at the beginning of our Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue annual eve of Brighton Pride Seder. This Erev Rosh Ha-Shanah, I’m offering it as a prayer for all of us, as we stand on the threshold of the New Year:

As the sun sinks and the colours of the day turn, we offer a blessing for the twilight,

For twilight is neither day nor night, but in-between.

We are all twilight people. We can never be fully labelled or defined.

We are many identities and loves, many genders and none.

We are in between roles, at the intersection of histories, or between place and place.

We are crisscrossed parts of memory and destination, streaks of light swirled together.

We are neither day nor night.

We are both, neither, and all.

May this in-between light illuminate our way to the God who transcends all categories and definitions.

May the in-between people who have come to pray be lifted up into this twilight.

We cannot always define; we can always say a blessing.

Blessed are you, God of all, who brings on the twilight. And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Edinburgh Liberal Jewish Congregation

Erev Rosh Ha-Shanah

11th September 2026 / 1st Tishri 5787

  1. See: Genesis 1.5; 8; 13; 19; 23; 31. The ‘v’ of ‘voker’, ‘morning’, is the consonant, Beit. As a result of a grammatical rule, the Beit loses its dageish, ‘dot’, following a vowel in the previous syllable (or a vowel at the end of the previous word, where two words are connected together), and so is pronounced, ‘v’. ↑

  2. The liturgical text of the Sh’ma is composed of three paragraphs from the Torah: Deut. 6.4-9; 11.13-21; Num. 15.37-41. ↑

  3. See the Babylonian Talmud Menachot 42b-44a for discussions of the testing required to ensure that a ‘blue’ was t’kheilet [my choice of transliteration of the Hebrew]. For an exploration of t’kheilet, see: Navon, Mois. (Undated). Threads of Reason. A Collection of Essays on Tekheilet. https://www.divreinavon.com/pdf/ThreadsOfReason.pdf. (Accessed: 7 November 2025). ↑

  4. Private email correspondence with the author, MumFourI’m coming down to make tea11.03.14. ↑

  5. With very few exceptions, as soon as a baby is born that tiny bundle of life is instantly identified as ‘female’ or ‘male’, and the one in two thousand births where there is some doubt, were, until recently, unilaterally processed for surgical adjustment, so that they could be fitted into the binary gender regime. See the following sources (all accessed: 9 November 2025): the Intersex Society of North America: http://www.isna.org/faq/ten_myths/rare; IGLHRC, MULABI and Jimenez, Natasha. (2011). Intersex Shadow Report to the 5th and 6th National Report of the Republic of Costa Rica on the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), 27.06.2011. http://intersex.shadowreport.org/post/2012/10/26/Shadow-Report-CEDAW-2011; Jones, Tiffany. (2018). ‘Intersex Studies: A Systematic Review of International Health Literature’, Sage Open, 8(2), May. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2158244017745577; Monro, S., Carpenter, M., Crocetti, D., Davis, G., Garland, F., Griffiths, D., and Aggleton, P. (2021). ‘Intersex: cultural and social perspectives’, Culture, Health & Sexuality, 23(4), pp.431–440. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691058.2021.1899529; Guo, J., Marsh, H.W., and Parker, P.D., et al. (2024). ’Cross-Cultural Patterns of Gender Differences in STEM: Gender Stratification, Gender Equality and Gender-Equality Paradoxes’, Educational Psychology Review, 36(37). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10648-024-09872-3. ↑

  6. https://www.keshetonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Twilight-People.pdf

    https://reformjudaism.org/blog/gender-expression-isnt-purim-costume ↑

Confronting Silence – Tishah B’Av 5786

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Word-less
to express
the horror
of destruction
the fathomless
abyss
we read words
ancient
repeated
for millennia:

Eicha?
How?
we read words
resisting
denying
the silence
that admonishes us
challenging
our incomprehension.

We listen to ourselves
chanting
words
that echo
in the silence
hoping
praying
for a response
that will assuage
the silence
transform
words
into meaning.

And so
we forget
again-and-again
that meaning is
wrought
is re-membered
in deeds
not in words
is held
in our hands
outstretched
reaching
for life.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Remembering and Re-membering: A commentary on the Torah portion, Va-etchannan (Deuteronomy 3:23-7:11)

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Va-etchannan: Remembering and Re-membering

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah – MPJ E-Bulletin, 24.07.26

This week’s parashah, Va-etchannan (Deuteronomy 3:23-7:11) is the second portion of the book of D’varim, Deuteronomy. Va-etchannan includes the second version of Aseret Ha-Dibbrot, ‘The Ten Utterances’, better known by their designation in Christian Bibles as the ‘Ten Commandments’.

While the Deuteronomy version of the Sabbath commandment begins with Shamor! ‘Keep/Guard!’ (Deut. 5:12), the version in the Book of Exodus opens with Zakhor!, ‘Remember!’ (Ex. 20:8):

Remember! the Sabbath day to sanctify it [Zakhor! et-yom ha-Shabbat l’kad’sho].

Nevertheless, the Deuteronomy version, which is placed in the narrative in the fortieth year of the journey in the wilderness, also mentions remembrance; in this case, as a rationale for observing Shabbat (Deut. 5:15):

For you shall remember [v’zakharta] that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Eternal your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm; therefore, the Eternal your God commanded you to do [la’asot] the Sabbath day.

Significantly, the command, Zakhor! ‘Remember!’, is also used in another context, which, although it is related in connection to the story of the Exodus, conveys a very different message. We read in Deuteronomy 25:17:

Remember! [Zakhor!] what Amalek did to you on the way, when you were going out from Egypt.

The incident alluded to is narrated in the Book of Exodus (16:8-16). Zakhor! in Deuteronomy 25 is preoccupied with remembrance of a heinous assault. Perhaps, Amalek’s attack may have faded out of memory, but, like the Exodus, it was incorporated by the early rabbis into the liturgy and into the festival cycle. In addition to being part of the annual cycle of weekly Torah readings, the passage from Deuteronomy exhorting remembrance of Amalek is recited again in the Shabbat morning service before Purim, the festival of ‘Lots’, when we read the Scroll of Esther, which relates how a wicked courtier in the court of King Achashveirosh, named Haman, a descendent of Amalek (Esther 3:1), devised a plan to destroy the Jewish people.

The injunction to remember – and in particular, to remember persecution – has also been incorporated into an official litany of remembrance in another way. The traumatic experience of the destruction of King Solomon’s Temple and the city of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, recalled for all time in the biblical Book of Lamentations, was included by the early rabbis in the annual cycle of commemoration. The early rabbis created, not one, but three commemorative dates: the tenth day of the Hebrew month of Tevet, marking the beginning of the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem in the winter of 586 BCE; the seventeenth day of the Hebrew month of Tammuz, marking the summer day when the Babylonians breached the city’s walls; the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, three weeks later, when Jerusalem and the Temple were finally destroyed. A fast day like Tenth Tevet, the principal ritual of Tishah B’Av (Ninth Av) is the reading of the Scroll of Lamentations. Parashat Va-etchannan is read on the Shabbat after Tishah B’Av, and so the portion is forever connected with remembrance of devastation.

Given our long history of persecution and destruction, it is not surprising that the Torah injunction to ‘Remember! Amalek’ (Deut. 25:17), reinforced by the biblical tale of Esther, has persisted and the Jewish people has continued to remember Amalek over the millennia in all his guises from Haman to Hitler, and into the twenty-first century. Amalek also remains eternally present because the Jewish experience of time is complex. On the one hand, Jewish time is teleological: moving from the past towards the future, the messianic days of wholeness, peace, and justice as envisioned by the prophets. On the other hand, the Jewish people inhabits an eternal now in which, through our annual cycle of Torah readings, and observance of Shabbat and the festivals, the past lives in the present. And in the land of the eternal now, Amalek is at liberty to roam, an ever-present deadly stalker of the Jewish imagination

It is not possible to dismiss this troubling underside of our eternal now mindset, because, after all, the Jewish people has experienced a succession of Amaleks. Past persecution can seem to be ever-present. As Marge Piercy puts it, in her wonderful poetic rendition of the central prayer of Jewish worship, the Amidah: ‘We are caught / in history like whales in polar ice’ (The Art of Blessing the Day. Poems on Jewish Themes. Nottingham: Five Leaves Publications, 1998).

At the same time, as the historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, argues in his book, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, we have witnessed a ‘decline of Jewish collective memory in modern times’ (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1982, p.94). If this is the case, perhaps we can regard this decline as an invitation to develop new ways of remembering and reconfiguring Jewish memory. After all, the Torah exhorts us to remember our liberation from slavery and also our long history of marginality, vulnerability, and persecution for a purpose. As we read in another passage in Deuteronomy that contrasts sharply with the injunction to ‘Remember! Amalek’ (24:17-22):

You shall not pervert the justice due to the sojourner or the orphan, and you shall not take a widow’s garment on pledge. / Rather, you shall remember [v’zakharta] that you were a slave in Egypt, and the Eternal your God redeemed you from there; therefore, I am commanding you to act on this matter [my emphasis].

Remembering can be seen not as a reflex of eternal victimhood, but rather, re-membering for renewal. Remembrance embraced as a spur to take action with, and on behalf of, the marginalised, persecuted, and oppressed today.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Va-etchannan: Remembering and Re-membering

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah – MPJ E-Bulletin, 24.07.26

This week’s parashah, Va-etchannan (Deuteronomy 3:23-7:11) is the second portion of the book of D’varim, Deuteronomy. Va-etchannan includes the second version of Aseret Ha-Dibbrot, ‘The Ten Utterances’, better known by their designation in Christian Bibles as the ‘Ten Commandments’.

While the Deuteronomy version of the Sabbath commandment begins with Shamor! ‘Keep/Guard!’ (Deut. 5:12), the version in the Book of Exodus opens with Zakhor!, ‘Remember!’ (Ex. 20:8):

Remember! the Sabbath day to sanctify it [Zakhor! et-yom ha-Shabbat l’kad’sho].

Nevertheless, the Deuteronomy version, which is placed in the narrative in the fortieth year of the journey in the wilderness, also mentions remembrance; in this case, as a rationale for observing Shabbat (Deut. 5:15):

For you shall remember [v’zakharta] that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Eternal your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm; therefore, the Eternal your God commanded you to do [la’asot] the Sabbath day.

Significantly, the command, Zakhor! ‘Remember!’, is also used in another context, which, although it is related in connection to the story of the Exodus, conveys a very different message. We read in Deuteronomy 25:17:

Remember! [Zakhor!] what Amalek did to you on the way, when you were going out from Egypt.

The incident alluded to is narrated in the Book of Exodus (16:8-16). Zakhor! in Deuteronomy 25 is preoccupied with remembrance of a heinous assault. Perhaps, Amalek’s attack may have faded out of memory, but, like the Exodus, it was incorporated by the early rabbis into the liturgy and into the festival cycle. In addition to being part of the annual cycle of weekly Torah readings, the passage from Deuteronomy exhorting remembrance of Amalek is recited again in the Shabbat morning service before Purim, the festival of ‘Lots’, when we read the Scroll of Esther, which relates how a wicked courtier in the court of King Achashveirosh, named Haman, a descendent of Amalek (Esther 3:1), devised a plan to destroy the Jewish people.

The injunction to remember – and in particular, to remember persecution – has also been incorporated into an official litany of remembrance in another way. The traumatic experience of the destruction of King Solomon’s Temple and the city of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, recalled for all time in the biblical Book of Lamentations, was included by the early rabbis in the annual cycle of commemoration. The early rabbis created, not one, but three commemorative dates: the tenth day of the Hebrew month of Tevet, marking the beginning of the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem in the winter of 586 BCE; the seventeenth day of the Hebrew month of Tammuz, marking the summer day when the Babylonians breached the city’s walls; the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, three weeks later, when Jerusalem and the Temple were finally destroyed. A fast day like Tenth Tevet, the principal ritual of Tishah B’Av (Ninth Av) is the reading of the Scroll of Lamentations. Parashat Va-etchannan is read on the Shabbat after Tishah B’Av, and so the portion is forever connected with remembrance of devastation.

Given our long history of persecution and destruction, it is not surprising that the Torah injunction to ‘Remember! Amalek’ (Deut. 25:17), reinforced by the biblical tale of Esther, has persisted and the Jewish people has continued to remember Amalek over the millennia in all his guises from Haman to Hitler, and into the twenty-first century. Amalek also remains eternally present because the Jewish experience of time is complex. On the one hand, Jewish time is teleological: moving from the past towards the future, the messianic days of wholeness, peace, and justice as envisioned by the prophets. On the other hand, the Jewish people inhabits an eternal now in which, through our annual cycle of Torah readings, and observance of Shabbat and the festivals, the past lives in the present. And in the land of the eternal now, Amalek is at liberty to roam, an ever-present deadly stalker of the Jewish imagination

It is not possible to dismiss this troubling underside of our eternal now mindset, because, after all, the Jewish people has experienced a succession of Amaleks. Past persecution can seem to be ever-present. As Marge Piercy puts it, in her wonderful poetic rendition of the central prayer of Jewish worship, the Amidah: ‘We are caught / in history like whales in polar ice’ (The Art of Blessing the Day. Poems on Jewish Themes. Nottingham: Five Leaves Publications, 1998).

At the same time, as the historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, argues in his book, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, we have witnessed a ‘decline of Jewish collective memory in modern times’ (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1982, p.94). If this is the case, perhaps we can regard this decline as an invitation to develop new ways of remembering and reconfiguring Jewish memory. After all, the Torah exhorts us to remember our liberation from slavery and also our long history of marginality, vulnerability, and persecution for a purpose. As we read in another passage in Deuteronomy that contrasts sharply with the injunction to ‘Remember! Amalek’ (24:17-22):

You shall not pervert the justice due to the sojourner or the orphan, and you shall not take a widow’s garment on pledge. / Rather, you shall remember [v’zakharta] that you were a slave in Egypt, and the Eternal your God redeemed you from there; therefore, I am commanding you to act on this matter [my emphasis].

Remembering can be seen not as a reflex of eternal victimhood, but rather, re-membering for renewal. Remembrance embraced as a spur to take action with, and on behalf of, the marginalised, persecuted, and oppressed today.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

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Is interfaith dialogue relevant in troubled times?

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Brighton and Hove Interfaith Contact Group AGM
19 April 2026

Brighton and Hove Interfaith Contact Group AGM

19 April 2026

Is interfaith dialogue relevant in troubled times?

My response to the question that has been put to us in a nutshell:

Interfaith dialogue is essential in troubled times. It is essential for at least four reasons:

Because the history of the major religions is a history of domination and subjugation, of the persecution of the marginal and vulnerable by the powerful.

Because so many of the conflicts that scar the world today are fuelled by religious hatred.

Because so many people of all faiths believe that their truth is the only truth.

Because the hatred between different religious groups is fostered by ignorance of other faiths, and a lack of contact with people of other faiths.

The only antidote to conflict and division between faiths is for people of faith to encounter one another. For forty years, I have been fortunate to be engaged in interfaith encounters with Christians and with Muslims, in which participants have demonstrated a commitment to learning about one another. In my new book, Breaking Binaries. A progressive Rabbi engages with contemporary issues,[1] I devote a chapter to interfaith dialogue in which I speak of ‘journeying in the borderland’. The interfaith encounters I have experienced were profound because those involved were prepared to move from the centre of their respective traditions to a borderland, a marginal terrain occupied by those who participate in interfaith work. It is a marginal terrain because in order to engage in interfaith encounter, individuals have to be prepared to move from the centre ground of their faith or tradition to the edge, to the borderland between the faiths and traditions. In that borderland, each participant with their experiences, convictions, and assumptions is in a position to look over the border to the land of the other, with their experiences, convictions, and assumptions. The hope is that those who have inhabited this borderland will think and act differently about their own faith and tradition and the faith and traditions of others when they return to their own country, aware that truths are plural and perspectives are multiple.

During the twenty years that I ministered as rabbi to Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue, I was a member of the Executive of the Brighton and Hove Interfaith Contact Group. In addition to focusing on my experience of in-depth Jewish-Christian and Jewish-Christian-Muslim encounter, the interfaith chapter in my new book also highlights the importance of dialogue at the local level, which is exemplified by the excellent work of the IFCG. To mark my impending retirement as rabbi of Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue, with the COVID-19 pandemic still raging, the Executive held a zoom event in February 2021. These are the thoughts I shared that evening about what my experience has taught me about the ingredients of meaningful interfaith encounter. The ingredients are:[2] Listening; Sharing; Giving; Receiving; Acknowledging and respecting our differences; Caring, both, in the sense of caring for one another, and taking care in how we communicate with one another; Learning; Celebrating.

Listening

As we all know, listening is not the same as hearing, which is a physical capacity. Listening means paying attention. It means making space in one’s head to take in the experience of the other; what they are saying about themselves. So many of us have assumptions and projections about the other. Listening involves absorbing and processing what another person has to say about themselves in their own terms.

Sharing

When we are engaging with people of other faiths, it is so important that we do not just listen, but are also prepared to speak and share our truths, our understandings, our experiences. If we are not prepared to share and enable someone to listen to us, then encounter cannot take place. Of course, such sharing requires trust, mutual trust.

Giving

Giving is related to sharing, but unlike sharing, which can be motivated by our own needs, giving is usually a response to the needs of others, rather than the need to express ourselves. Giving requires generosity of spirit and a preparedness to forge, maintain, and cherish relationships. It is an essential aspect of interfaith encounter.

Receiving

Some people who are prepared to give to the other, find it more difficult to receive from the other. But, without the willingness to receive, giving can become a form of condescension. A fundamental component of interfaith encounter has to be equality. That does not mean that the parties to the encounter are treated equally in society at large. The experiences of someone who is part of majority culture are very different from those of someone who is part of a minority, in particular, a minority that has been subject to persecution and abuse. Nevertheless, for interfaith encounter to be a genuine exchange, we need to consciously meet one another as equals.

Acknowledging and respecting our differences

When people of different faiths meet, there is often a powerful urge to look beyond our differences and find common ground. We want to look at the other and say, ’how wonderful, we are really the same’. Of course, it is true. Thinking in religious terms, as we read in Genesis chapter 1.27, each human being is an image of God, and so we are essentially, the same. But our urge to look for similarities can often overlook important differences. Often, what we are doing is trying to find ourselves in the other, a reflection of ourselves, so the other feels less other, less alien. But, when we do this, we are not so much encountering the other as trying to bolster up our own sense of ourselves.

Perhaps the most important thing I have learnt from four decades of interfaith work is to value the differences between us. The differences that make us who we are as Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Pagans, alongside all the different denominations within each faith or religious grouping. Interfaith encounter is successful when it enables us to acknowledge our differences and respect our differences while recognising our common humanity.

Caring – both, in the sense of caring for one another, and taking care in how we communicate with one another

Caring for one another is essential to interfaith encounter. If we do not care for one another, then we will not care to do the work of listening, sharing, giving, receiving, and acknowledging and respecting our differences. The other aspect of caring that is equally important and is actually fundamental to our capacity to care for one another is taking care in how we communicate with one another. Taking care in this way, encompasses the language we use, the way in which we refer to each other’s religions and faiths, and the way in which we talk about our own. For example, speaking from my own personal experience, when someone who is a Christian, talks to me about the ‘Old Testament’, rather than the ‘Hebrew Bible’ or the ‘Hebrew Scriptures’, however friendly they are to me, they demonstrate a lack of care. Taking care involves informing oneself. ‘Old Testament’ means ‘Old Covenant’, an appellation that carries the understanding that the ‘Old’ has been superseded by the ‘New’. Speaking of the ‘Hebrew Bible’ or the ‘Hebrew Scriptures’ is also a way of acknowledging the primary sacred text of the Jewish people on its own terms. For those who wish to refer to the Hebrew Bible in relation to the ‘New Testament’, the best term to use is ‘First Testament’.

Learning

People sometimes think of interfaith encounter as a quest for ‘understanding’. Of course, we may grow to understand one another, but that is an outcome of the work we do together. Interfaith work involves learning about one another. I have used the word ‘work’ a few times. In Hebrew, sacred work is spoken of in the language of ‘service’, Avodah. Interfaith encounter requires work: sacred service, avodah, service to one another, and ultimately, service to the Eternal that is within and beyond us.

Celebrating

When we can enter the borderland between us and celebrate together, celebrate what we share and also celebrate our differences, then we know that we are engaged in a real encounter.

Of all the ingredients of transformative interfaith encounter, perhaps the most important is learning. Being open to learning from and about the other involves us in moving towards the other and into a liminal space between the clearly demarcated borders of each faith. Let us hope that, as humanity faces so many global challenges in the coming years, not least climate change, the abuse of ‘faith’ as a vehicle for dominating and supplanting others, may be replaced by borderland encounters between people of different faiths, religions, traditions, and cultures, for the sake of all our lives and the planet which is our shared inheritance.

And a final thought: Rabbi Lionel Blue, Zikhrono livrakhah, may his memory be for blessing, my tutor and ordaining rabbi, who was one of the founders of the Jewish-Christian-Muslim conferences in Germany, was at his happiest when he was engaged in interfaith encounter. Rabbi Blue, used to say: ‘Judaism is my religious home, it is not my religious prison’.[3] How can we really learn about one another and the religious homes we inhabit, if we are not prepared to leave our familiar surroundings and venture into the unknown? If we are not prepared to discover what makes another person’s heart sing, what motivates their devotion, what inspires them, and what gives them consolation? Ultimately, what makes interfaith engagement vital in our troubled world in these troubled times is that, rather than difference being divisive, it can enable us to share our particular passions and truths and become more whole in the encounter with one another.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

  1. Sarah, Elli Tikvah. 2026. Breaking Binaries. A progressive rabbi engages with contemporary issues. Seaford: Unusual Publications ↑

  2. Brighton and Hove Interfaith Contact Group gathering via Zoom, 16 February 2021. I have edited out references to IFCG activities. ↑

  3. Sadly, Rabbi Lionel Blue died in 2016. My tribute to him is included along with the tributes of others in a special issue of European Judaism (2018). Rabbi Lionel Blue Memorial Issue, 51(1), Spring. https://www.jstor.org/stable/e48504771 (Accessed: 10 November 2025). ↑

The Second Sh’mini Atzeret After October 7, 2023

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The Second Sh’mini Atzeret After October 7, 2023

Sh’mini Atzeret
‘Eighth Day
of Closure’
the autumn sacred season
concluded
with solemnity
Yizkor
recited again
(just twelve days after
Yom Kippur)
remembrance
of those who once lived
amongst us
integral
to the tasks
of the living
to the obligation
L’Chayyim!
‘To Life’!
plural
in which sorrow is
intertwined
with Joy.

And so
Simchat Torah
‘Joy of Torah’
on the same day
(or the day after)
Torah scrolls
dancing
to the rhythm of our feet
circling round and round
to celebrate
the turning of the cycle
from the death of Moses
to the creation of the world
from ending to beginning.

Mourning
and rejoicing
a peculiar
essential
Jewish
conjunction

And now
the second Sh’mini Atzeret
after
the desecration
of Sh’mini Atzeret 5784
October 7, 2023
hope
following the release of
the remaining hostages
the free-flow of aid
and
in the-time-to-come:
a permanent
end to
death
destruction
occupation
out of chaos
a new leadership
of home-grown
justice-and-peace-builders
(Israelis
Jewish and Palestinian
Palestinians
Muslim and Christian)
a new beginning
for all
who live
between
the river and the sea.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

A Reflection on the Lulav: A Metaphor for the Journeys of our Lives

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Chag Ha-Sukkot, ‘The Feast of Tabernacles’ (Leviticus 23:34), also known in biblical times as Chag Ha-Asif, ‘the Feast of Ingathering (Exodus 23:16), became Z’man Simchateinu, the ‘Season of our Rejoicing’ in rabbinic teaching because of the command to ‘rejoice’, reiterated in the Torah (Lev. 23:40; Deuteronomy 16:14). And yet, just five days before Sukkot: Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when we confess our errors and misdeeds and seek forgiveness; the day which concludes Aseret Y’mei T’shuvah, the ‘Ten Days of T’shuvah, ‘Turning’, that commence on Rosh Ha-Shanah, ‘the Head of the Year’, the Jewish New Year.

At first sight, Sukkot seems completely unconnected with Yamim Nora’im, the ‘Days of Awe’ – another name for the ten days from Rosh Ha-Shanah through Yom Kippur. Indeed, Sukkot belongs to another cycle. It is a third of the shalosh r’galim, ‘three feet’ festivals; so-called because in ancient times, our ancestors went up to Jerusalem on foot with their offerings three times in the year: for the spring feast of Pesach; to mark the early summer ‘first fruits’ festival of Shavuot; and to celebrate the late summer harvest at Sukkot (Ex. 23:14-17).

And yet, beginning on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, the month of Tishri, at the full-moon, Sukkot is connected to the Days of Awe that commence on the first day of the seventh month, heralded with the blasts of the shofar, the ram’s horn (Lev. 23:24).

As we step out into the unknown and begin a New Year, the sukkah, the fragile shelter we build in remembrance of our ancestors’ wilderness wanderings, and ‘dwell’ in for seven days (Lev. 23:42-43) reminds us of the plight of the homeless and destitute, the fragility of our own lives, and the impermanence of material things.

But that is not the only connection between Sukkot and the awed days that precede it. In addition to the command to ‘build’ and ‘dwell’ in a sukkah, the Torah also speaks of taking ‘the fruit of a splendid tree, branches of palm trees, and bows of thick trees, and willows of the brook’ (Lev. 23:40). Collectively, these items became known as the lulav, with directions given in the Talmud for holding and shaking them in all the directions of the compass, as well as towards the heavens and the earth (Sukkah 37b-38a).

If we examine the symbolism of the lulav, we can find meaning for the journeys of our lives.

The term lulav is used to describe all the elements we hold and shake, but actually, it refers specifically to the palm-branch. The straight branch of the palm reminds us that, however much the paths we take may twist and turn from the moment we are born, we may only travel in one direction – towards our deaths.

On either side of the palm, we find small sprigs of leaves. Together they represent all the different journeys we may make in the course of our lives; all the various places we may find ourselves as we step out into the world.

The willow leaves – long and narrow – are the narrow alleyways, where we sometimes lose our way; the narrow bridges we must cross, less we fall into deep ravines. And there are two sprigs of willow leaves to teach us that there are always at least two possibilities before us: We can either get through the alleyway, or stay trapped; we can either cross over the bridge, or fall…

The myrtle leaves are quite different: thicker, almost round. Sometimes we find ourselves going round and round in circles; always returning to the same place, again and again, getting nowhere, despite all our efforts. And there are three sprigs of myrtle leaves to guide us towards the three steps we might take if we want to stop going round and round, forever retelling are familiar tales:

The first step is simply to acknowledge that we are constantly repeating ourselves; the second step is to make a conscious decision, either to continue or to change course; the third step is to act – either to move on or stay where we are.

The etrog, the yellow citrus fruit that looks like a large lemon is very different from the palm, the willow and the myrtle. Its most obvious distinction is that it is brightly coloured; it also smells lovely and is edible.

The etrog represents the fruit of our lives. We all produce fruit, wherever we go, whatever we do, whatever choices we make. Like the proverbial ‘golden egg’, the etrog, bright and beautiful, is a treasure, the prize, the reward we seek. And yet, while it is enticing to look at, the bitter flesh beneath the skin can set one’s teeth on edge.

But whether we produce golden eggs or fruit with bitter flesh, we can transform our lives. Some lay golden eggs and then smash them; some seem to produce only the most bitter of bitter lemons, and then find a way of turning them into a delicious lemon curd. We make our choices, and then we can make other choices.

So, although each one of us is moving inexorably from birth to death, the possibilities for how we journey and what we create – and destroy – are endless. Even when we find ourselves in the narrowest of narrow places, or trapped in a seemingly endless round, we can move and change direction.

All the possibilities for our lives are in our hands. When we hold the palm, the willow, the myrtle and the etrog, let us imagine ourselves holding the possibilities for our lives together and waving them in every conceivable direction – east, south, west, and north, towards the sky towards the earth. Perhaps then, that moment of gathering and holding may become something else. It may become an opportunity for expressing our readiness to take responsibility for our lives, and our willingness to see our lives in perspective – in the context of the wider world around us, and of Eternity beyond us.

And so, when we wave the lulav on Sukkot, and shake the bundles we hold three times in every direction, we can do so in the spirit of hopefulness. Wherever we have been over the past year, whatever we have created or destroyed, our past choices need not to determine our future choices. We can shake everything up and start again.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Brighton and Hove Progressive synagogue

27th September 2015 – Erev Sukkot (15th Tishri) 5776

The Second Sukkot after October 7, 2023

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The ‘Sabbath of Sabbaths’
desecrated
at 9.31 am
in the midst of
morning prayers
in a north Manchester suburb
it could have been
so much worse
security volunteers
holding-fast the door
the arrival of armed police
at 9.38
sealing the fate of the attacker
still
two congregants dead
three wounded
the rabbi’s white robe
stained with blood
the worshippers
traumatised
the heart of
Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation
broken
by malevolent violence
rooted
in age-old-Jew-hatred
fuelled
by a century-old conflict
elsewhere.

And so
back in Gaza
where since
a previous sacred-day-desecrated
in southern Israel
by the massacre of twelve-hundred
days have had
no distinctions
even the sacred days
lives destroyed
every day
for hundreds of days
while hostages
for those same
hundreds of days
incarcerated.

And now
on the second Sukkot
since October 7, 2023
hope revived
that this Sukkot
 will see an end
to bloodshed
the release
of the remaining captives
alive and dead
plans for
reconstruction
steps towards
a lasting
and just
peace?

Meanwhile
as we ‘dwell in Sukkot’
for seven days
those fragile
temporary shelters
open to the elements
constructed in remembrance
of our ancestors’
wilderness wanderings
for our rejoicing
in the fruits of the harvest
the wandering
starving
people of Gaza
displaced again and again
have been dwelling
in flimsy tents
open to the elements
for two years.

May Sh’mini Atzeret
the ‘eighth day of closure’
that concludes the sacred season
the day
on which the past two-years-of-horror
commenced
be transformed into
the day
of new beginnings.
Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

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