Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Q1: How have your intersecting identities affected your (faith) leadership?

Back in the late 1970s, I was a lesbian radical feminist separatist. Married to a man in 1975, I came out in 1978. A Marxist during my undergraduate studies as a Sociology student at LSE, after I graduated in 1977, I discovered the Women’s Liberation Movement and realised that, aware of my sexual orientation since I was a child, it was possible for me to come out and live with pride as a lesbian.

It was a heady, liberating moment. But it didn’t last. Within a couple of years, it became clear that the Women’s Liberation Movement in Britain, as in the USA, was rather WASP, that is, predicated on White Anglo-Saxon Protestant assumptions, which marginalised me and my identity and experience as a Jewish woman. We didn’t use the language of intersectionality back then, but along with other Jewish women, I began to feel the need to occupy a feminist space that embraced me as a woman, as a lesbian and as a Jew. So, not long after being involved in the foundation of the Jewish feminist movement in Britain in January 1982, I became part of a Jewish lesbian group.

The journey from radical feminism and lesbian feminism to Jewish lesbian feminism involved me coming to terms with complexity. My life was not just connected to a sisterhood involved in a struggle to overcome patriarchy, it was also connected to a people, with a long history that was, both, one of glorious ongoing inventiveness and creativity and also horrific persecution, exclusion, and genocide.

So, I saw myself confronted with a double challenge. I needed to do what I could to contribute to the struggle to end patriarchy, and I needed to do what I could to contribute to the task of enabling Jewish life to flourish – in particular, after the Holocaust, what Jews refer to as the Sho’ah, the ‘devastation’, that saw the murder of half the Jews of Europe – one third of the world Jewish population – and the destruction of tens of thousands of Jewish communities.

As it happens, my connection to the Sho’ah was also personal. While my mother’s parents fled anti-Semitic pogroms in eastern Europe in 1905, settling in the East End, where they met and married in 1906, my paternal grandparents were Viennese, and experienced the disintegration of their world after the Nazis invaded Austria in February 1938. My paternal grandfather was one of the 30,000 men rounded up by the Nazis after Kristallnacht, the infamous ‘night of the broken glass’ on 9 November 1938 that heralded the beginning of the violent persecution of the Jews of Europe. Incarcerated in Dachau concentration camp on 13 November 1938, my grandfather was released on 19 January 1939, on condition that he and his family left the country. I have a copy of the Dachau document. But it wasn’t easy to get out because refugees were not welcome… In the end, my father, who had emigrated to South Africa in 1936, managed to organise domestic permits for his parents and two siblings to travel to England, and they escaped shortly before World War II was declared.

It’s a much longer story, but for the sake of brevity, determined to contribute to the defeat of patriarchy and refusing to grant Hitler a ‘posthumous victory’^[1], I decided to become a rabbi.

That decision was not only about taking on that double challenge. It also involved the realisation that to have a chance to effect real change, it was no good being part of a radical cadre, separated from society. I needed to participate in society and work to generate change from the inside. My way of doing this was by joining the mainstream Jewish community and doing what I could to contribute to making Jewish life egalitarian and inclusive and fit for purpose in the late 20th century.

But of course, I chose a very challenging path. Needless to say, there was resistance. Another member of my Jewish lesbian group, Sheila Shulman, who sadly died in 2014, shortly after we celebrated the 25th anniversary of our ordinations, had also reached a similar conclusion. So, we both applied to the Leo Baeck College in London, which trains rabbis for the progressive rabbinate, and after a week of interviews in March 1984, we are both admitted – but only on condition that the usual one-year probationary period was extended for the full five years of the postgraduate rabbinic training programme. I don’t have the time here to say more about how difficult those five years were. Suffice it to say that opposition only made me more determined: More determined to create space for LGBT+ people within the Jewish community; more determined to enable all those on the margins of Jewish life to feel welcome and included and enabled to participate.

I have spoken about myself as a woman, a lesbian, a Jew. These are labels, categories. In the past 10 years, I’ve added another: gender-queer. But people are not categories, they are individuals. When we speak as we do today of the ‘protected characteristics’ – race, disability, mental health, gender, gender identity, sexuality – we have to remember the individuals who inhabit those characteristics, many of whom embrace within themselves several at once. Ultimately, my intersecting identities have informed my leadership as a rabbi by making me sensitive to the importance of welcoming, including, and enabling individuals to participate. The text that has influenced me most in this regard is a passage at the beginning of the Book of Exodus chapter 25, which introduces the project of constructing the tabernacle in the wilderness. We read (25:1-9):

The Eternal One spoke to Moses, saying: / Speak to the Israelites, that they take for Me an offering; from everyone whose heart makes them willing you shall take my offering. / And this is the offering that you shall take from that which is theirs: gold, and silver and brass; / and blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats’ hair, / and rams’ skins dyed red, and sealskins and acacia-wood; / oil for the light, spices for the anointing oil, and for the sweet incense; / onyx stones, and stones to be set, for the cape and for the breastplate. / Then let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them. / According to all that I show you, the pattern of the tabernacle and the pattern of all its furnishings, just so shall you make it.

There are very important messages for us in these verses. That a collective enterprise requires the participation of individuals. That individuals contribute voluntarily. That each person brings their particular gifts for the creation of community. That participation involves enhancing the community with our personal contributions. That the Eternal One dwells amongst the people when every individual offering is included.

My rabbinate has been framed by my combined personal and professional tabernacle project: to integrate all of who I am in my life and work as a lesbian, feminist, gender-queer Jew and to enable others to live integrated lives in which all the different aspects of their identities thrive, and to participate in all their lived complexity in the life of community.

Q2: People with intersecting identities often find it harder to feel seen and welcomed in faith spaces – what advice would you give faith communities to provide more positive experiences to their members?

Faith communities don’t have a good reputation for being inclusive. Most LGBTQI+ people in search of community and belonging, probably wouldn’t set foot inside a synagogue, a church, a mosque, or a temple, because judging by official religious teachings and standard communal practices, they would regard such spaces as excluding and unwelcoming. Given this perception, which matches with reality in the majority of cases, a religious or spiritual community committed to being egalitarian and inclusive needs to take action to demonstrate that they are inclusive and treat everyone equally.

When I began working as rabbi of Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue in December 2000, the synagogue was not inclusive. Nevertheless, in response to the presence of LGBT+ rabbis since the time that Sheila Shulman and I were ordained in 1989, the movement to which the congregation is affiliated, Liberal Judaism had embarked on a journey, and by 2002 when LJ set up a rabbinic working party on same sex ceremonies on which I served, it had begun to consider the practice of inclusion and equality for LGBT+ people. In the next few years, there were a series of landmark developments. In December 2005, LJ published the Working Party’s liturgy for same-sex ceremonies to coincide with the Civil Partnership Act coming into force.^[2] As the Equal Marriage Campaign gained momentum, with leadership from the Rabbinic Conference, Liberal Judaism gave public support for equal marriage, and also began working with Queer and Trans Jews UK.^[3] LJ also launched other projects: Rainbow Jews^[4], recording Jewish LGBT+ history from the 1950s to today, the trans interfaith project Twilight People^[5] and Rainbow Pilgrims, a project exploring the experiences of LGBT+ migrants and refugees^[6].

It was against the backdrop of the first signs of change within Liberal Judaism that I presented to the synagogue Council, the governing body of the congregation, the need to become more inclusive, starting with our approach to unaffiliated and disaffiliated Jews. In September 2002, we held our first outreach event on a Sunday morning, headlined as: ‘Are you Jewish or Jew-ish?’ Advertising in the local press and on BBC Radio Sussex, 70 people – Jewish, Jew-ish and non-Jewish – showed up! And so, we continued. Another important change was the Council’s decision to adopt a Hebrew name: Adat Shalom v’Rei’ut, ‘Congregation of Peace and Friendship’, and also to give the monthly newsletter a name that reflected this ethos: Open Door. At the same time, the decision was taken to address the synagogue’s PR, and proclaim the message of equality and inclusion via our leaflet and website. With inclusion firmly on the agenda, in 2005 the Council adopted Liberal Judaism’s policy on the inclusion of LGBT+ individuals and couples and took the decision to allow same-sex ceremonies to be held in the synagogue. Indeed, in March 2006, my partner Jess and I had the joy of celebrating our wedding with the synagogue packed to the rafters. In due course, the Council also endorsed Equal Marriage. And then, with growing awareness of marginalisation of trans people, the Council’s plans to rebuild the synagogue as an eco-friendly, level-access accessible space, with wide-door entry to all spaces, a new improved hearing loop and sound system and a lift that could take a large mobility scooter, also included an all-gender accessible toilet downstairs and an all-gender toilet upstairs with requisite signage. A 50-month project, the new building was inaugurated and rededicated on the Sabbath of Chanukkah, the festival of ‘dedication’ in December 2015.

As I mentioned earlier, inclusion is not just about how we welcome people in, it’s also about enabling individuals to participate and contribute their gifts. Providing educational opportunities, diversifying religious services and empowering people to participate in these activities in their own ways is essential to ensuring full inclusion. And so, six months after I began work at BHPS, at the AGM in 2001, the congregation voted to vary eve of Sabbath services to broaden their appeal: a shared meal with blessings and songs on the first Friday; a shortened service and a speaker on the second; a creative service on the third, and a classical Liberal service on the fourth.

Meanwhile, I introduced Hebrew for adults at all levels twice weekly, and a rolling Exploring Judaism programme. The idea behind both these initiatives was to give individuals the resources to access Jewish texts and participate in services, and to engage Jewishly in their own lives at home. Over the years, these programmes have attracted members of the congregation who missed out on a childhood education, and individuals on their journeys – Jewish, Jew-ish and non-Jewish – many of whom took their first step by meeting with me and sharing their story. So, the classes have always included a range of people of all ages and backgrounds, identities and life situations.

Empowerment of individuals has extended to religious services. Lay readers lead in their own way, determining how much they do in Hebrew/English and read/sing, how many verses of the weekly Torah portion they read or sing, the incorporation of poetry, meditative practices, and so on. The rota of ‘lay readers’ includes our young people, aged 8 to 15, whose regular leadership of the congregation’s Sabbath morning service with their teachers, includes performing a mini-play written by themselves based on a theme from the Torah portion.

In Jewish life, a young person transitions into adulthood at the age of 13, and at BHPS, the young person leads the service before being called up to read the Torah and give a mini-sermon about their portion. Perhaps the most important step on the path to full inclusion was taken in 2018, when we decided that in addition to preparing young people to become bar mitzvah, a ‘son of the commandment’ or bat mitzvah, a ‘daughter of the commandment, we would offer each young person the gender-neutral option of becoming b’ mitzvah, rather than assume their gender on their journey to adulthood.

Just as services vary according to who is leading, so the congregation are invited to participate in their own way: for example, to sit or stand for as they choose for key prayers rather than be directed one way or another.

I hope that the example of Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue shows that if we are committed to ensuring that people with intersecting Identities feel seen and welcomed in faith spaces, those spaces need to send out messages of welcome, ensure accessibility, and also be committed to putting inclusion into practice for all by treating each person as an individual, cherishing the gifts they bring, and enabling everyone to participate in their own ways.

Q3: What has been your experience with inhabiting other identity spaces with your “faith hat” on?

It’s quite hard to answer this question without sounding angry. The issue from a Jewish point of view is not about being a person of faith in a context in which others are not people of faith. The issue is about being a Jew in a society that is still dominated by Christian cultural assumptions – even, if most of those who are nominally Christian don’t attend church or practice Christianity. So, in a nutshell, when I inhabit other identity spaces as a Jew – which basically means any time I go anywhere that isn’t a Jewish space – my experience as a Jew is marginalised at best and I’m presented with explicit anti-Semitic tropes at worst. The exceptions to this experience are those spaces that are consciously dedicated to Interfaith exchange – and I have been engaged in in-depth Jewish-Christian dialogue and Jewish-Christian-Muslim trialogue for over 35 years.

Let me share a couple of examples of my experience of marginalisation. Since British life follows the Christian calendar, around Christmas or Easter, the assumption is that everyone is celebrating or marking these festivals – so, I’m usually asked questions like: What are you doing for Christmas? When I meet people for the first time, I’m often asked where I’ve come from – I guess because I have looks that mark me out as different from the British norm – although surely, by now, with all the waves of immigration that have followed Jewish immigration in the past 70 years, you would think that being ‘British’ would encompass a wide variety of cultures and ethnicities. But of course, what is true of London and of the other major urban centres, is not true of smaller towns and rural areas.

When it comes to anti-Semitic tropes, the most common and least offensive include the response to a contribution I might make to a discussion, that: ‘Jews are very clever’. And needless to say, in left-wing or progressive circles, I’m often given the strong message that I’m only acceptable as a Jew if I denounce Israel. And then, there is my experience of attending some Christian services, where I’ve heard the Hebrew Bible referred to as the ‘Old’ – as in, redundant – ‘Testament’, and I’ve listened to Christian Ministers contrast the ‘harsh justice’ of ‘the Old Testament’ with the message of ‘love’ in the New Testament, as if ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ was not a Jewish teaching – as set out in Leviticus chapter 19, verse 18 – and as if 2000 years of Christian anti-Jewish hatred and persecution had never happened.

These situations make me feel angry. The times when I feel hurt and pained are when I face marginalising or anti-Semitic comments in LGBTQI+ spaces. Of course, like any other person identified with a faith or religious community who is committed to equality and inclusion, when I’m in LGBTQI+ spaces, I’m acutely aware of the terrible impact of homophobic religious teachings, and that many people who are LGBTQI+ reject religion on this basis. I’ve dedicated a lot of my time during my rabbinate to re-interpreting religious teachings – not least, those infamous verses in the Book of Leviticus, in chapters 18 (:22) and 20 (:13) outlawing sex between men – and to reading sacred texts with LGBTQI+ eyes and generating new teachings that are affirming of LGBTQI+ existence.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah is a Liberal Rabbi, author, and social justice activist. An LGBTQ+ pioneer, who became one of the first two openly lesbian rabbis in the world in 1989, Elli is a member of the British Friends of Rabbis for Human Rights and a long-time participant in Jewish-Christian-Muslim trialogue. Liberal Jewish Chaplain at Sussex and Brighton universities and rabbi of Brighton & Hove Progressive Synagogue for 20 years, following retirement in April Elli was appointed as Rabbi Emeritus.

1. This is the additional commandment articulated by the Jewish philosopher Emil L. Fackenheim (The Jewish Return Into History. Reflections in the Age of Auschwitz and a New Jerusalem. Schocken Books, New York, 1978, p. 22). ↑

2. Covenant of Love – B’rit Ahavah (Liberal Judaism, 2005). See www.liberaljudaism.org. Also see ‘Marriage by any Other Name’, chapter 8 in my book Trouble-Making Judaism. (David Paul Books, 2012). ↑

3. http://transgenderjews.org.uk/ ↑

4. http://www.rainbowjews.com/ ↑

5. http://www.twilightpeople.com/ ↑

6. https://www.rainbowpilgrims.com/ ↑

Thinking in Twos

In recent years, we have become more aware of the extent to which we make sense of the world in terms of binaries; that is, in ways which split our perception and experience of the world into oppositional, mutually excluding categories. To name just the two most common binaries: good and evil; male and female. When splitting the world into binaries, the issue isn’t just that complexity is reduced to two oppositional elements. The elements are not equal. The elements in opposition are evaluated according to a binary positive/negative assessment: so, good is by definition, ‘good’ and evil is by definition ‘evil’; in other words, they are closed, sealed categories. And as the French Philosopher Simone de Beauvoir argued in her ground-breaking work published in 1949, Le Deuxième Sexe, The Second Sex, the male represents the self and the female the other.

For some people, even today, these binaries are completely self-evident – and I have deliberately mentioned binaries that are taken utterly for granted. Of course, we think we can recognise ‘good’ and ‘evil’ because they seem to us to be natural categories, rather than binary constructs that we impose on our lived experience. Of course, the division of humanity and other living creatures into two biological types is a reproductive imperative. 

Binary Judaism 

Unsurprisingly, binary thinking is also a dominant feature of Jewish teaching. The Torah’s foundational narratives assert this again and again. Ha-Adam, the first Human is split in two; Adam and Eve, two halves driven out of Eden to live lives of hardship, each with their own separate burden^[1]. Their children, Cain and Abel: the first children; siblings; rivals as it turns out for the good favour of God, who favours Abel’s offering, so Cain kills Abel^[2]. Ishmael and Isaac: the two sons of our ancestor Abraham; divided by separate destinies; Ishmael in the line of his Egyptian mother, Hagar; Isaac, the fruit of Sarah’s womb^[3]. Similarly, Jacob and Esau. And with these siblings, who were the sons of the same parents, Rebecca and Isaac, and also twins, the division is even more pronounced: Jacob becomes Israel; Esau is identified as Edom because of his ‘ruddy’ skin, an alien nation^[4]. So completely alien that Edom is later identified in rabbinic literature as Rome^[5], the empire that dominated Jewish life from 65 BCE onwards.

From binary narratives to a religious system embedded in binaries. The Book of Leviticus, Va-yikra, reads like an encyclopaedia of teaching predicated on the binary division between sacred and profane. The Levite tribe is set apart from the Israelite tribes. The priestly family of Aaron and his sons is set apart from the other Levitical families. The choicest agricultural products are set apart as offerings on the altar. Menstruating females and women who have just given birth are set apart for a period of cleansing before being readmitted into the community. Likewise, men who produce seminal emissions and those who experience a skin eruption. Most importantly, the people of Israel as a whole is set apart from the other nations. Significantly, the rationale for the sexual prohibitions outlined in the double portion Acharei Mot-K’doshim, Leviticus chapters 18 and 20, is precisely this separation. We read at Leviticus 18, verses 1-5:

The Eternal said to Moses, / “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘I am the Eternal your God. / You must not do as they do in Egypt, where you dwelt, and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. You must not follow their practices. / You must practice My laws and keep My statutes and follow them. I am the Eternal your God. / You must keep My statutes and My laws, for the person who practices them will live by them. I am the Eternal’”.

The root meaning of the sacred, the holy, represented by the Hebrew letters Kuf Dalet Shin, means to ‘set apart’. The first time the root is used in the Torah is in connection with the setting apart of the seventh day from the six working days. We read in B’reishit, Genesis chapter 2, verse 3:

Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it – Va-y’kaddeish oto – because on it, God ceased from all the work that God had created to do.

The sacrificial system described in the Book of Leviticus ceased when the last Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE, and most of the associated purification rites also ceased – with the exception of those associated with females. Indeed, the entire edifice of Rabbinic Judaism is rooted in the division between male and female roles. The Jew is the male Jew responsible for fulfilling the majority of the mitzvot – that is those which are positive and time bound and are undertaken in a public congregational setting. In this gender-divided system, women are specifically responsible as women for three mitzvot, all of which are fulfilled in the private domain: dividing the challah dough, lighting Shabbat and festival candles, and observing niddah, the laws of purification around menstruation and childbirth^[6].

There can be no doubt that social systems rooted in binaries are endemic, after all, they have dominated human life for thousands of years. But such a binary status quo is not exactly life-enhancing, especially for the relegated second category. Binaries generate oppositional dichotomies that ensure that the bifurcated binary elements are mutually exclusive. In contemporary terms, the preoccupation with the gender binary, for example, has led to the ridiculous notion that ‘Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus’^[7]; if only men and women would understand this they would live for ever in harmonious relationships. Social binaries reduce everything – Life/Thought/Experience – to dualistic oppositions, unequal partners at best, generating fear and hatred of the other at worst. We only have to think of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has been raging over the past ten days.

Thinking in Threes

Fortunately, despite the preoccupation with binaries, in particular, sacred and profane, male and female, Jewish teaching is more sophisticated. The Torah doesn’t only present binaries. Indeed, right from the outset, alongside an account of Creation that pivots on a binary relationship between humanity and the rest of Creation, there is a three-fold presentation of Life.

Three-fold Presentation of Life

Significantly, there is a second creation narrative in B’reishit, the Book of Genesis that begins at chapter 2, verse 4. In this version, instead of a concern with hierarchy and the placement of humanity at the pinnacle of Creation tasked to subdue and dominate all the other living creatures, the second Creation narrative centres on humanity’s responsibility as steward of the Earth – or rather, as responsible for the upkeep of the much more modest domain of a garden. Indeed, formed ‘out of the dust of the ground’ – afar min-ha-adamah^[8] – ha-adam, the human is created for this purpose: l’ovdah u’l’shomrah – ‘to work and to keep’ the garden^[9].

Further, the animals are introduced, not as creatures to be dominated, but rather as potential companions^[10]. While the first Creation narrative differentiates the human into two forms, ‘male and female’, zachar u’n’keivah, for the purpose of reproduction^[11], the second Creation narrative addresses the existential issue at the heart of singularity: Lo-tov heyot ha-adam l’vado – ‘it is not good for the human to be alone’^[12]. So, in the second creation story, differentiation is driven by the need for companionship. And when the human being fails to find a companion among the animals because the act of naming the animals, an act of power means they are not suitable companionship material^[13], the human is divided into two forms that are essentially two of the same; ishah and ish from the root, Aleph Nun Shin, to be ‘human’^[14]. While the terms zachar and n’keivah specify what differentiates the two humans from one another for the purpose of reproduction, the terms ishah and ish reflect their shared humanness.

Nevertheless, are we still stuck with the binary? No. Because the relationship between ishah and ish is not the exclusive focus of the second Creation narrative. Rather, the narrative focuses on the relationships between the human and the other forms of life. Instead of a binary representation, the narrative suggests the possibility of multiple relationships that emerge from the triangle between the human, the earth, and the other creatures: the interrelationships between the human and the earth and all that grows on it, the interrelationships between humans and animals, the interrelationships between humans.

Three-fold presentation of our people

I have spoken at some length about the second Creation narrative. I would now like to turn to the three-fold presentation in the Torah in connection with the narratives of our people. Significantly, the ancestors are presented in three generations: Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob, Leah, Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpah. And then, the Exodus story is a tale of three sibling leaders – Miriam, Aaron and Moses – although each sibling is accorded very different treatment. The youngest, Moses, is the focus of the narrative from the moment he is born. Aaron, the middle sibling, is tasked with a role of Moses’ right-hand-man, a functionary, even before his designation as the high priest. Meanwhile, Miriam, the eldest sibling, who was responsible with their mother for saving Moses’ life^[15] is side-lined. Although designated a prophet^[16], the Torah devotes just 29 narrative verses and two non-narrative ones in all to the eldest of the three sibling leaders of the Exodus^[17]. If you’re interested in an extensive treatment of Miriam, please read the second chapter of my book, Trouble-Making Judaism^[18]. Interestingly, moving from the Torah through the rest of TaNaKh, we can also discern three forms of religious leadership: priests, prophets and scribes. Later, the scribes became the rabbis.

Three names for our people

This talk is not just an exercise in identifying threes rather than twos in the Torah. The point about recognising the threes is what they can teach us about how breaking down dualistic thought patterns can lead to an opening up of previously closed categories and so enable us to acknowledge the complexity of our lived experience. While thinking in binaries, reduces everything to simple, fruitless oppositions, thinking in threes expands our horizons. I’m now going to take us through this by examining some more threes, beginning with the three names for our people.

Yes, we have three names. To start with the most obvious: Y’hudim, Jews, the Jewish people. This designation reminds us that we are the descendants of the ancestors; specifically, Jacob and Leah’s fourth son, Y’hudah, Judah^[19]. The name Y’hudah expresses the biological dimension of our peoplehood.

And then, we are also Ivrim, Hebrews. When a sudden storm led the sailors to make enquiries about the identity of the stranger who had come on board, Jonah answered, Ivri Anokhi, ‘I am a Hebrew’^[20]. The Hebrew root of ‘Hebrew’, Ivri, is Ayin Beit Reish, meaning to ‘cross over’ or to ‘pass over’. This name reflects our experience of journeying as a people, from the time that Abraham and Sarah set out on their first journey^[21]. We are Ivrim; those who are eternally crossing borders. The name Ivrim expresses the existential dimension of Jewish existence.

Finally, the third element: Yisraeil. As is made clear in the story relating Jacob’s night time struggle with an unknown man on the eve of his reunion with his twin, Esau, that culminates in him receiving a new name, Yisraeil means ‘One who struggles with God’^[22]. The name Yisraeil expresses the spiritual dimension of Jewish existence.

Taken together, these three names, Y’hudim, Ivrim and Yisraeil express the different dimensions of our peoplehood. They also invite us to embrace an inclusive way of thinking about what it means to be a Jew and what it means to belong to the Jewish people. For some, the fact that they are born Jewish expresses the sum total of what it means for them to be Jewish; it is a biological inheritance, which may be a simple fact, or may represent a burden. For some, being a Jew is about identifying with the history of the Jewish people and millennia of journeying; for some this will also mean exploring their roots and the journeys of their own particular family. For some, being part of Yisraeil, the people who struggle with God is the most significant element in their identity. And of course, there will be as many reasons for this as there are individuals. For some, their spiritual identity is key. For some, being Jewish is about engaging in a contest, it’s about arguing and asking questions and striving for answers, and yet finding most meaning in the questions. Some of us may engage with all of these dimensions at different times. These dimensions don’t describe denominations or geographical locations. And only one, the biological link to the first ancestors, is confined to those who are born Jewish. Acknowledging our multiple names enables us to be all of who we are, both individually and collectively.

Three loci of Jewish existence

Of course, both the names ‘Israel’ and Judah’ have at different times designated the land across the Jordan. King Solomon’s great kingdom was divided following his death into two kingdoms, Israel and Judah (c. 922 BCE). Israel was vanquished, along with its ten tribes, by the Assyrians in 722 BCE. In 586 BCE, the Babylonians conquered the Kingdom of Judah and the remaining tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and destroyed King Solomon’s Temple. Other conquests followed – by the Persians (546 BCE), the Greeks (c. 333 BCE), the Assyrian Greeks (175 BCE), the Romans (65 BCE). Judah/Judea, which enjoyed a brief period of independence under Hasmonean rule (140-65 BCE) before the Romans came along, remained a colonial outpost of the Roman Empire until the emergence of Islam. And it wasn’t until the end of the 19^th century that the birth of political Zionism brought new hope in the restoration of Zion and the re-establishment of a Jewish state.

I’ve encapsulated 3000 years of the history of the land on the eastern seaboard of the Mediterranean in a few sentences. It is tempting to regard Jewish existence today in binary terms – on the one hand, in the diaspora, on the other hand in the State of Israel. In an effort to resist this temptation, let us go back to the foundational narrative, back to the Torah, where we find not a simple distinction between Egypt, where you have been and Canaan, where you are going – to paraphrase those verses at the beginning of Leviticus 18 I quoted earlier – but rather a picture of three loci of Jewish existence: Egypt, the wilderness, the land beyond the Jordan, in a chronology; Egypt, the past; the wilderness, the present; the Land, the future. Forever looking backwards and yearning forwards, we tend to ignore the present moment, the wilderness. Just a few days ago, we were reminded of the wilderness on Shavuot, the festival of ‘Weeks’ that, in the absence of a Temple after 70 CE and the possibility of bringing agricultural offerings, the rabbis transformed into z’man matan Torateinu, ‘the season of the giving of our Torah’. The ex-slaves, both the descendants of the ancestors and the erev rav, the ‘mixed multitude’ that made a dash for freedom with them^[23], encountered the Eternal One in the wilderness, in the empty desert. It was there, between Egypt and the Land, that they entered into a covenant with the Eternal One. Moreover, that experience was not simply a fleeting present moment between past and future; in that fleeting moment, the wilderness became eternally present. We carry that wilderness within us wherever we go. The wilderness is space, emptiness, without the accretions of space that we associate with organised societies; pieces of land that are named and claimed and populated and built-up and defended against outsiders. Our roots as a people in the wilderness teach us that space is always conditional, mobile, elusive. We are reminded in B’har, Leviticus 25, in the Torah portion that envisions a time of ‘freedom’, d’ror, in the fiftieth year beyond the seven cycles of seven: ‘The land shall not be sold in perpetuity; for the land is Mine; for you are strangers and settlers with Me^[24]. Like the actual wilderness that our ancestors trekked, the wilderness is a perilous bridge between Israel and the diaspora, and ultimately, even in the Land we are in the wilderness still, stripped of our presumptions, our possessions, and our certainties. The wilderness is with us in the Land and it is with us in all the other lands that we inhabit. What is the wilderness? It is a perpetual reminder of the Eternal.

Living in cycles of three

Eternal wilderness wanderers, we are united as a people with all our names, in all our complexity and multiplicity, and in every place, in moments of time: Shabbat and the annual cycle of festivals and commemorations. Interestingly, if you look at the Torah‘s accounts of the sacred days, we find two intersecting sets of three. The most familiar threesome is known collectively as shalosh r’galim, the ‘three feet’ festivals, when our ancestors would go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem to present their offerings to the priests at the Temple: Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot^[25]. And there is also another cycle, although it’s not so immediately apparent: the sacred days of the seventh month^[26]: the first day, which later became the new year for years, Rosh Ha-Shanah^[27], Yom Kippur and Sukkot followed by Sh’mini Atzeret, the eighth day of ‘closure’ that concluded the festival cycle in Temple times. Significantly, while the pilgrim festivals root us in a horizontal dimension, in the earth, in the seasons and the cycles of nature, and in our history of journeying, the sacred days of the seventh month lift us up into a vertical dimension. The link in the two intersecting cycles of three, Sukkot -Sh’mini Atzeret, draws on and expands the themes of the first ten days of the seventh month – repentance and renewal in the context of eternity. At the same time, framed by the wise teachings of the biblical Book of Kohelet, Ecclesiastes, Sukkot-Sh’mini Atzeret, brings together the horizontal focus of the pilgrim festivals with the vertical focus of those ten days through concrete action. We build the fragile sukkah that is open to the sky and to the elements, and as we recall our ancestors’ wilderness wanderings, we acknowledge the fragility of life. We shake the lulav in the four directions of the compass, beginning in the east, and also towards the heavens and towards the earth, and simultaneously, give thanks for our material blessings while recognising that everything passes, however hard we grasp.

The context of Jewish Teaching: The Eternal – Torah – Israel

So, what do we learn from an exploration of Jewish space and time? That space is elusive and time is momentary and we live in eternity. But there is more. Alongside the intersection of the two annual cycles of Jewish time, there is the intersection of space and time in that wilderness moment we refer to as the Revelation at Mount Sinai. It’s not just that our ancestors encountered the Eternal in the barren desert, in the owner-less empty space that is the wilderness. That encounter inhabited and continues to inhabit another dimension: Torah. The Torah is neither the word of God (which is the traditional view), nor, written by men over centuries (as understood by critical scholarship). The Torah is, both, the teaching we have received and our on-going engagement with the Eternal. The Torah is the expression of a living conversation between the Eternal and the people that encompasses many texts and multiple voices – including our voices. Every time we study our Jewish texts, we engage and enlarge that conversation. After the destruction of the Temple, in place of a sacred space, the Torah became the eternal meeting place between the Eternal and Israel. And so, the covenant between the Eternal and Israel may be regarded not simply as an agreement, a contract with multiple clauses and conditions, but also as the agreement to participate in and contribute to that eternal conversation; an agreement that begins with an invitation to bring Torah in its widest sense, into our lives.

Triangular Teachings: a Magein David framework for Jewish Life

So: The Eternal – Torah – Israel: the relationship between the Eternal and Israel mediated by Torah from Sinai until now. In the last part of my talk, I will focus on two rabbinic passages that, rooted in the Torah as eternal teaching, offer us a framework in threes for our lives as Jews today.

In these passages, both from Pirkei Avot, The Chapters of the Sages, appended to the Mishnah

the world is presented as standing on three pillars.

We read in chapter 1, mishnah 2:

Simeon the Righteous was one of the last survivors of the Great Assembly. He used to say: ‘The world stands on three things: al ha-Torah – on Teaching; v’al ha-Avodah – and on Divine Service; v’al G’milut Chasadim – and on Loving Deeds.’

And then, in the same chapter, mishnah 18:

Rabban Simeon ben Gamliel used to say: ‘The world stands on three things: al ha-Din – on Justice; v’al ha-Emet – and on Truth; v’al ha-Shalom – and on Peace (1:18)

These teachings describe the essential pillars of the world and delineate the particular and the universal responsibilities of Jewish life. But we’re not just noticing here two sets of threes. And now we get to the heart of the matter of why threes are so important. Taking us beyond the binary, threes introduce multiplicity because of the potential for multiple interactions. 

Considering the particular responsibilities of Jewish life. The world stands on Torah, Teaching, and on Avodah, Divine Service, and on G’milut Chasadim, Loving Deeds. Torah, a pillar, and also an archway, linked to the other pillars. Moreover, there is complete interdependency. Torah is actualised through Avodah, service of the Eternal, and also through G’milut Chasadim, the service of our fellow human beings. Torah is not the preserve of the sacred, set apart for ritual veneration on Shabbat and the festivals. Torah is our morashah, our ‘inheritance’^[28] and lives in our lives when we engage in the work of living Torah in our relationships with others. The world stands on Torah and on Avodah and on G’milut Chasadim; on all three pillars. All three are essential. 

Turning to the universal responsibilities of Jewish life. The world stands on Din, Justice, and on Emet, Truth and on Shalom, Peace. Again: All three are essential. A system of Justice, which is what the word Din denotes, cannot be a just system if it is not allied with Truth. Why? Is Truth an absolute? Why is Truth not a singular absolute? Because Truth is embedded in a context in which perspectives are diverse. Truth is not a self-sufficient given. Truth is only Truth when it is connected to Justice, that is, when it is connected to the conditions, contexts and perspectives in which Justice is practised. Meanwhile, Peace is not possible without Justice. Peace is not abstract. The establishment of peace between parties engaged in conflict, for example, is only possible if both parties are treated justly and their differing narratives, their particular truths, are recognised.

The pillars of the world. What a powerful image. The world stands on Torah and on Avodah and on G’milut Chasadim and on Din and on Emet and on Shalom. And what a complex web of interactions emerges when we bring the interrelationships between all six pillars into play. I will leave that to your imagination. One way to envision these interactions is by thinking of the two sets of three as interlocking triangles. The Magein David, the six-pointed star, is made up of two triangles. So, we could picture the intersection of these two sets of three-fold teachings to form a Magein David of Jewish life, in which the particular and universal elements engage together, as they do in the context of our individual lives and in our lives lived in community.

Final words – and the example of Havdalah

So, what do we learn from all these ‘threes’? That while binaries split elements in a mutually exclusive oppositional way, threes introduce the possibility of interconnection, generate complexity and release the potential for multiplicity as the three elements interact in different ways.

And there is more. Unfortunately, I have not had time in this talk to reflect explicitly on the liminal space between different elements. In place of exploring ‘betweens’ in detail, I will leave you with a particular example. Shabbat begins with the kindling of light and the making of kiddush and it ends with havdalah, the ceremony whereby we ritually create a distinction between the sacred seventh day and the six days in which we engage in work and productive activity. Havdalah means ‘distinction’. Significantly, according to halakhah, we should not make havdalah until the Shabbat day has ended, indicated by three stars appearing in the sky. In other words, there must be a clear distinction between day and night. As we know between day and night there is evening. The Hebrew word erev is connected with another word with the same root: ma’arav, meaning ‘west’. The sun sets in the west, and after sunset, the sky is a mixture of light and dark. The Hebrew root letters for both erev and ma’arav is Ayin Reish Beit, meaning to ‘mix’.

So, havdalah is about marking the ‘distinction’ between the Shabbat day that has ended and the six days of the working week, and the ceremony concludes with a blessing that is a litany of distinctions: ‘… between sacred and profane, between light and darkness, between Israel and the nations, between the seventh day and the six working days.’ (The distinction between Israel and the nations is omitted from most progressive prayer books). And yet, the binary distinction between Shabbat and the six working days is expressed in a ritual involving three elements, each of which subverts binary distinctions.

A blessing is recited over a cup filled with the fruit of the vine, the symbol of joy, that marks Shabbat as a day of joy, but in addition to drinking from the cup, its contents are spilled at the end of the ceremony to express the loss of Shabbat – and not just spilled, spilled over the havdalah candle to douse the flames. The havdalah candle is utterly distinct from the usual two candles, each with a single wick, that are lit to inaugurate Shabbat. But the havdalah candle consists of many intertwined wicks. Shabbat and the days of the week are inextricably connected. Shabbat means to cease from work. Shabbat only has meaning in relation to the six working days of the week. Further, the blessing we recite over the blazing havdalah candle acknowledges the Eternal One as ‘creator of the lights of the fire’ – borei m’orei ha-eish. Multi-wicks and multi-lights – and not simply lights: ‘lights of the fire’; the igniting of fire, symbolising the first creative act after Shabbat. And, of course, fire isn’t just a creative power; it is also a destructive power. Fire is not singular and it is, potentially, uncontainable. The power to create and to destroy is in our hands.

Finally, the spices. I say, finally, but significantly, the blessing of the spices is recited and then the spices inhaled between the blessings over the wine and the havdalah candle. A mingling of different contrasting scents, as reflected in the blessing acknowledging the Eternal as ‘creator of different types of spices’ – borei minei v’samin – the spices symbolise drawing in to our beings the spirit of Shabbat for the week ahead. But, again, the representation of multiplicity and complexity; unlike other sources of smell, spices combine aromas. Between the blessings for wine and the lights of the fire, contrary to the binary assertions of the concluding havdalah blessing, the blessing of the potent mix of spices, subverts simple dualistic distinctions.

So, where does all this leave us? Looking forward to havdalah, I hope! In my reflections on the benefits of thinking in threes and embracing multiplicity, I am not suggesting that Jewish teaching dissolves into an array of relativities. Jewish teaching is a firm framework that is enriched by nuance and the awareness of complexity. And most important, engaging in Torah in its widest sense, encourages and enables us through study and reflection to subvert the assertion of absolutes and binaries and so enrich our experience of our lives and the world around us.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

1. Genesis 2:21-3:20. ↑

2. Gen. 4:1-15. ↑

3. Gen. 21:1-21. ↑

4. Gen.25:5-34; 27:1-45; 32:4-17; 36:1-43. ↑

5. An early link between Edom and Rome is found in Sifrei, the 2^nd century collection of midrash on Deuteronomy, e.g., Sifrei 343. Later, the identification is found in the 4^th-6^th century collection of midrash, B’reishit (Genesis) Rabbah, e.g. 6:3. ↑

6. The Talmud devotes one of the six ‘orders’ to ‘Women’, Nashim. One of the tractates in Nashim, Kiddushin, concerned with the laws of betrothal and marriage, includes a discussion of positive precepts dependent on time from which women are exempt’ mitzvat ‘aseh she-ha-z’man g’ramah (Kiddushin 33b-35a). ↑

7. The title of the best-seller book by John Gray. HarperCollins, 1992. ↑

8. Genesis 2:7 ↑

9. Gen 2:15. ↑

10. Gen. 2:18-20. ↑

11. Gen. 1:27. ↑

12. Gen. 2:18. ↑

13. Gen. 2:19-20. ↑

14. Gen. 2:21-23). ↑

15. Exodus 2:1-10. ↑

16. (Ex. 15:20). ↑

17. Narrative texts: Exodus 2: 1-10, Ex. 15: 19-20, Numbers 12:1-16, Num. 20:1. Non-narrative references: Numbers 26:59, Deuteronomy 24:9. Plus elsewhere in TaNaKh: Micah 6:4. ↑

18. David Paul Books, 2012. ↑

19. Genesis 29:35. ↑

20. Jonah 1:9. ↑

21. Genesis 12:1ff. ↑

22. Gen. 32:29. ↑

23. Exodus 12:38. ↑

24. Leviticus 25:23. ↑

25. Exodus 23:14-17 and Deuteronomy 16:16. ↑

26. Leviticus 23:26-43. ↑

27. Mishnah Rosh Ha-Shanah 1:1. ↑

28. As we read in Deuteronomy 33:4: ‘Moses commanded us the Torah, an inheritance of the congregation of Jacob’ – Torah tzivvah-lanu Moshe, morashah k’hillat Ya’akov. ↑

Introduction: Why a radical feminist Jewish lesbian decided to train for the Rabbinate

Good evening everyone. Thank you, Nigel for inviting me to speak to you all this evening. I’m going to begin with a sobering backdrop to our lives and take you back briefly to that devastating time over 75 years ago.

One third of the world Jewish population was murdered and tens of thousands of Jewish communities across Europe were destroyed in the Sho’ah, meaning ‘devastation’, ‘ruin’ or catastrophe’, which is the preferred Jewish designation of the Holocaust^[1]. The Nazis also persecuted and murdered the Roma people, disabled people, gay men, lesbians and nonconforming women, as well as communists and socialists. The child of a mother, whose parents fled pogroms in the Russian Pale in 1905, and a father whose own father was incarcerated in Dachau concentration camp after Kristallnacht in November 1938, after I came out in 1978 and became active in the Women’s Liberation Movement and Lesbian Feminism, as a Jew living in the shadow of the Sho’ah, I began to realise that a vibrant Jewish lesbian life couldn’t be forged out of those horrors…

And then, it became obvious to me that I needed positive reasons for being Jewish when, in the aftermath of Israel’s first Lebanon war in 1982, the media reacted with anti-Semitic tropes that included depicting Prime Minister begin as Hitler. Disappointingly, the feminist media, represented by the WLM weekly newsletter, the monthly magazine, Spare Rib and Outwrite, the black feminist newsletter jumped onto the bandwagon. Fortunately, Jewish feminists had already began to connect and I was part of a Jewish Lesbian group, which meant that I was not dealing with this hostile atmosphere on my own. And so, in the company of other Jewish lesbians, rather than be defined by anti-Semitism, I started to explore what it meant for me to be a Jew.

My Jewish education having stopped, aged 8 ½, when my brother became bar mitzvah, I decided to go to Liberal Judaism’s Montagu Centre in central London and learn to read Hebrew. That was the beginning of my rabbinic journey. Very quickly, I went from novice Hebrew reader to applicant for the Leo Baeck College rabbinic programme, starting in autumn 1984.

It was just as well that I became absolutely determined to do what I could to contribute to making Jewish life more egalitarian and inclusive because the next five years were almost impossibly challenging. But I wasn’t alone. Another lesbian, Sheila Shulman, who sadly, died in 2014, not long after we celebrated the 25^th anniversary of our ordinations, also decided to embark on the rabbinate at that time. We both belonged to the same Jewish Lesbian group, but hadn’t said a word to one another about it. Clearly, it was meant to be. Except that the Jewish world, even the progressive Jewish world, wasn’t quite ready for two ‘out’ lesbians. We were both put on probation for the full five years of the programme – the usual probation period is one year – and were told that we could be asked to leave at any time if the two progressive movements that sponsored the college, Liberal Judaism Reform Judaism, felt that their constituent congregations were not prepared to accommodate us. Fortunately, the first gay rabbi in Britain, Lionel Blue, became my tutor, and he and other key teachers offered both Sheila and I enormous support. I was very honoured to be ordained by Lionel on 9 July 1989.

Working as a lesbian rabbi in the mainstream Jewish community

When I first began working as a rabbi, I experienced a lot of challenges in my efforts to ensure equality and inclusion for LGBT+ people, particularly, around the issue of trying to secure same-sex marriage.

Back in 1989, Lionel, Sheila and I were the only LGBT rabbis in Britain. Following ordination, Sheila co-founded with a group of other lesbians, Beit Klal Yisrael, a synagogue which has been a beacon of inclusivity in the Jewish community ever since. Meanwhile, I became rabbi of the mainstream Reform synagogue that I had served as a rabbinic student in my fifth year.

I’m not going to recite the litany of homophobia and persecution I have experienced in the early years of my rabbinate – which included a small group lobbying to oust me from that first post. The good news is that since I became part of Liberal Judaism in 1998, beginning with a two-year stint at Leicester Progressive Jewish Congregation and then going on to the just over 20 that I have been rabbi of Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue, the involvement of LGBT+ rabbis – now 20% of the progressive rabbinate – has generated a major transformation in Jewish life. In 2000 Liberal Judaism established a rabbinic working party on same-sex relationships, including two LGBT+ rabbis: Rabbi Mark Solomon, who grew up in Sydney and left the orthodox rabbinate for Liberal Judaism in the early 1990s – and me. Liberal Judaism has been championing the rights of LGBT+ people ever since. In December 2005, LJ published the first fruits of the working party, a booklet of commitment ceremonies to coincide with the Civil Partnership Act coming into force.^[2]

LJ then went on to support the campaign for equal marriage. In the past few years, LJ has also provided a home for a series of LGBT+ projects: ‘Rainbow Jews’, exploring the heritage of LGBT+ Jews; ‘Rituals Reconstructed’, creating opportunities for LGBT+ Jews to develop our own rituals; ‘Twilight People’, a multifaith transgender initiative; and ‘Rainbow Pilgrims’, which focuses on the lives of LGBT+ migrants and asylum seekers who come to the UK.^[3]

A lesbian rabbi at Brighton Hove Progressive Synagogue

So: a very positive story of LGBT+ inclusion within Liberal Judaism over the past 20 years. But this evening, I’ve been asked to focus on my experience of working to make Brighton and Hove Progressive synagogue a place of welcome inclusion for LGBT+ people.

When I left the Reform Synagogues of Great Britain over the issue of same-sex marriage in July 1997, there was as a vacancy at BHPS, so, thinking that It would be nice to live in the LGBT-friendly atmosphere of Brighton and Hove, I applied. But at that time the Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues that came to be called Liberal Judaism, wasn’t any more hospitable, and I wasn’t invited for an interview.

Thankfully, the following summer the congregation I had served as a rabbinic student in my fourth year, Leicester Progressive, offered me a weekend-a-month position, which felt very supportive. I then left London to live in Brighton in March 2000, and when the post at BHPS became vacant again in July 2000, I put in another application. Fortunately, with the help of the Executive Director of Liberal Judaism at the time, Rabbi Dr Charles Middleburgh, who had persuaded the synagogue leadership to speak to me, after an initial conversation, I was interviewed – by the entire council, the governing body of the synagogue, as it happened. The notion of appointing a lesbian feminist as Rabbi seen as potentially extremely controversial, the council decided to make the decision themselves, rather than take the proposal to a general meeting of the members of the congregation, so I got the job.

2000-2001

In my first year as Rabbi of BHPS, half a dozen members chose to resign their membership rather than have a lesbian as a rabbi. Fortunately, I also received much support from the Council and its officers. After each resignation, the then president of the congregation would call me up and reassure me that I had the support of the Council and that I shouldn’t take it personally, Bear in mind, that each resignation meant a membership subscription fee lost.

So, that first year was challenging. Thankfully, I enjoyed the support of the majority of the congregation, so, I found my feet. I also found that the congregation was willing for us to take a journey together.

2001-2004

Because of my experience as a lesbian on the margins of the Jewish community, the principal priority of my rabbinate has always been the inclusion of people on the margins: in particular, LGBTQI+ people, but also patrilineal Jews, Jews in mixed relationships, women, who had not received a Jewish education as children; people who for one reason or another were unaffiliated or had disaffiliated

And so, as soon as I began at BHPS, I established weekly Access to Hebrew and Exploring Judaism programmes. At the AGM in 2001, the decision was taken to diversify Sabbath services to make them more appealing to a wider range of people. In September 2002, we held our first outreach event on a Sunday morning, headlined as: ‘Are you Jewish or Jew-ish?’ Advertising in the local press and on BBC Radio Sussex, we had no idea how many people would cross the threshold. 70 people – Jewish, Jew-ish and non-Jewish – showed up! Another important change was the council’s decision to adopt a Hebrew name: Adat Shalom v’Rei’ut, ‘Congregation of Peace and Friendship’ – a name that reflected the welcoming, nurturing ethos of the synagogue – and also to give the monthly newsletter a name that reflected this ethos: Open Door.

2005-2011

With inclusion firmly on the agenda, in 2005, after participating in two Sunday mornings of homophobia training, conducted by my partner – now my spouse – Jess Wood, in her capacity as Director of Allsorts Youth Project. the council adopted Liberal Judaism’s policy on the inclusion of LGBT+ individuals and couples and took the decision to allow same-sex ceremonies to be held in the synagogue. Indeed, in March 2006, Jess and I had the joy of celebrating our wedding with the synagogue packed to the rafters. In due course, the council also followed Liberal Judaism’s lead in supporting and endorsing Equal Marriage.

In addition to these changes, I asked the council to look at its publicity materials, and suggested changes that would state that the congregation welcomes people on the margins, including LGBT+ people, people in mixed relationships, patrilineal as well as matrilineal Jews, and so on. And so, in addition to revamping the synagogue web-site, a new attractive synagogue leaflet was created – at a time when paper communications were still important.

Needless to say, before too long more people, who had hitherto lived on the margins, including LGBT+ people, started attending services and study sessions and other events.

2011-2021: The last ten years

And then, with growing awareness of the marginalisation of trans people, the council’s plans in 2011 to rebuild the synagogue as a totally accessible space encompassed installing an all-gender accessible toilet downstairs and an all-gender toilet upstairs – with requisite signage – proclaiming loud and clear that when we say ‘all are welcome’, we really mean it.

The rebuilt synagogue was inaugurated on Sabbath of the festival of Chanukkah, on 12 December 2015. In 2017, one of our members, who had become bar mitzvah with me at the synagogue celebrated her transition as a Trans woman, with a special ceremony during a Shabbat morning service. Then in 2018, very significantly, the council unanimously endorsed the Education committee’s proposal to offer each 12-year-old the option of preparing to become bar, bat, or non-binary gender b’ mitzvah, rather than continue to assume their gender identity.

Meanwhile, the synagogue began to connect with the LGBT+ calendar of the city. I had already participated over the years in LGBT+ History Month, and other LGBT+ community events, by giving talks and sharing panels, and had also participated in Trans Pride. So, the decision was taken to host a Sabbath evening meal with blessings, songs and reflections on the eve of Brighton Pride 2016. Open to our own congregants, it was also open to anyone who wished to attend. The event was so successful that until the pandemic struck, eve of Sabbath shared meals have been held on the eve of Pride each year through 2019. At one of these, cis ally, Rabbi Janet Darley, came to speak to us and showed a film of the special LGBT+ Seder meal held each year at her congregation, South London Liberal Synagogue.

In addition to the annual eve of Pride event, the new building has hosted exhibitions created by the various Liberal Judaism LGBT+ projects I mentioned earlier, including, Rainbow Jews, Rainbow Pilgrims, and Rituals Reconstructed.

Creating an inclusive congregation

I have focused on the journey to inclusion of one synagogue. What does it take to make a synagogue – or a church, or a mosque, or a temple – a place of welcome and inclusion?

My 20-year experience with BHPS suggests a number of key factors:

• That the larger movement to which the particular congregation belongs makes inclusion and equality a priority, and takes action to demonstrate that commitment.
• That the spiritual leader of the congregation is fully committed to making inclusion and equality a priority.
• That the lay leadership of the congregation is prepared to work with their spiritual leader to make inclusion a reality.
• That congregants themselves are prepared to open their hearts to welcome others into their midst. 

With all these elements in place, it is possible to transform the culture of a congregation. And let’s remember, that when we are talking about creating a culture of welcoming and inclusion, people don’t approach our congregations as categories, they are individuals, with their own lives and stories and journeys. Being welcoming and inclusive, comes down to how we treat each and every individual who comes knocking at the door, or who sends a message to the website or an email to the office.

I would like to close by sharing with you one of my favourite passages from the Torah – which is at the beginning of the Book of Exodus chapter 25, and introduces a theme that takes up most of the rest of the book; the building of the mishkan, the tabernacle in the wilderness (Exodus 25:1-8):

The Eternal One spoke to Moses, saying: /Speak to the Israelites, that they take for Me an offering; from everyone whose heart makes them willing you shall take my offering. / And this is the offering that you shall take from that which is theirs: gold, and silver and brass; / and blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats’ hair, / and rams’ skins dyed red, and sealskins and acacia-wood; / oil for the light, spices for the anointing oil, and for the sweet incense; / onyx stones, and stones to be set, for the cape and for the breastplate. / Then let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them.

The Jewish people has not had a physical sacred place, a mishkan, a tabernacle, a Temple, for almost 2000 years since the Romans destroyed the last Temple in 70 CE, but, nevertheless, there are very important messages in these verses for our lives today. That individuals contribute voluntarily. That each person brings their own special gifts for the creation of community. That participation involves enhancing the community with our personal contributions. That the Eternal One dwells amongst the people when every individual offering is included. I’ve been fortunate to spend the last 20 years of my rabbinate at Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue. In the past two decades the congregation has gone on a journey to becoming an inclusive congregation. As I prepare to retire in a few days’ time, just prior to my 66^th birthday on Monday, my hope is that before too long all congregations of every faith and culture will find ways of accepting and embracing the gifts of LGBTQI+ people and all those who seek to contribute to communal life.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Brighton and Hove Sexuality, Gender and Faith Group

Zoom meeting, Tuesday, 27 April 2021 at 7.30 pm

1. Holocaust means ‘burnt offering’, suggesting that the murder of the Jewish people had a sacred quality to it. Alternatively, Sho’ah, found in the Hebrew Bible, e.g. in Isaiah chapter 10, verse 3, more directly suggests the impact: ruin, desolation. ↑

2. Covenant of Love. Service of Commitment for Same-Sex Couples. Liberal Judaism, London, 2005. ↑

3. See: https://www.liberaljudaism.org/what-we-do/lgbtqi-projects/ ↑

Friends, it’s a pleasure to be here participating, once again, in the annual Interfaith service organised by the Brighton and Hove Interfaith Contact Group. Every time we come together from across the city, my spirit is lifted by the spirit of hope, goodwill and mutual respect that we generate in these gatherings. It is vital that we nurture that spirit within us and between us and share it with others tomorrow and the day after, and the day after that. The Brexit debate has divided this nation for over three years now and the threat of climate change puts all our reserves of hopefulness to the test. Meanwhile, the global refugee crisis demands that we continue to welcome those in need of refuge with open hearts and resist the ugly forces of xenophobia.

During the past year, the Interfaith Contact Group adopted the theme of the Tree of Life as an act of solidarity with the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh USA that was attacked on 27^th October 2018 by a gun-wielding ultra-right anti-Semite as congregants were gathering for a Sabbath morning service. His blog posts indicated that he targeted the synagogue because of its support for migrants and refugees. Tragically, it was not the last terrorist assault against a house of worship. On 15^th March, the worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand were attacked by another gun-wielding extremist in the midst of Friday prayers, and on Easter Sunday, three churches and four hotels in Colombo, Sri Lanka were targeted in a series of suicide bomb attacks. Of course, there have been many more assaults against synagogues, mosques and churches since – not least, in Halle, in Germany, just over six weeks ago, when an ultra-right extremist attempted to break into the synagogue there on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the most sacred day of the Jewish year.

It is hard in the face of hate-fuelled violence not to give in to despair. But we must not. The tree of life beckons us to join our hands together around its trunk and shelter together beneath its branches. The symbolism of the tree of life reminds us of our connections with one another and our firm roots in the earth that is our home and that we are committed to protecting. The first reference to the tree of life is found in the Torah in the Book of Genesis, in the account of the Garden of Eden: ‘The Eternal God planted a garden eastward, in Eden; and there, God put the human whom God had formed. And out of the ground, the Eternal God caused to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food; and the tree of life in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil’ (Genesis 2:8-9). Specifically, commanded not to eat of ‘the tree of knowledge of good and evil’ (2:17), If we follow the story, which seems to focus on what happens when the first human beings transgress that command (Genesis 3), it’s easy to ignore the powerful symbolism of the tree of life in the midst of the garden. If we become preoccupied with the forces of nihilism and destruction all around us in our world today, we are in danger of ignoring the tree of life in our own midst.

In the Book of Proverbs in the Hebrew Bible, we read that wisdom ‘is a Tree of Life to those who grasp it and all who cling to it find happiness. Its ways are ways of pleasantness and all its paths are peace’ (3:18). The liturgy of the Torah reading service which includes this verse when the Torah scroll is returned to the Holy Ark [aron ha-kodesh] identifies ‘wisdom’, hochmah, as Torah, the ‘teaching’ of the Eternal One. Whether one prefers to think in terms of ‘wisdom’ or ‘teaching’ – or, indeed, imagine the tree of life in another way – let us take up the invitation to grasp it with both hands and to plant trees for the sake of the Earth and all the forms of life that inhabit this planet with us; our only home.

I would like to close by singing the verse from Proverbs (3:18) together with the penultimate verse of the Book of Lamentations (5:21), both of which accompany the closure of the Ark doors at the end of the Torah reading service. I will sing the verses more than once, so please follow the words you can see on the screen and join in with me, when you feel comfortable.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Brighton and Hove Interfaith Contact Group Annual Service

Stanford Avenue Methodist Church

24^th November 2019

1. Proverbs 3:18 ↑

2. Lamentations 5:21 ↑

Friends, it’s wonderful to be here at this 25^th conference of the International Congress of LGBT+ Jews. The first conference I attended was held in Amsterdam in July 1987. I then went to the one in Chicago in July 1989, just after my ordination. Subsequently I was part of the organising committee for the 13^th conference held in London in 1993. Since then, the demands of my rabbinic work have meant that I’ve not had a chance to participate in World Congress conferences, so I am delighted to be here with you all in Sydney and want to take this opportunity to thank Dayenu for inviting me to give the opening address.

The journey so far

We are about to embark on our four-day journey together, exploring kol koleinu, ‘all our voices’. I’d like to begin with where we are right now. A short while ago we visited the Jewish Museum and the Gay and Lesbian Holocaust Memorial. Jewish communities the world over – not just the remnant that survived on the continent of Europe – still live in the shadow of the smoking crematoria. My decision to study for the rabbinate was driven in large part by the force of the additional commandment articulated by the Jewish philosopher, Emil Fackenheim: ‘Thou shalt not give Hitler a posthumous victory.’^[1] My maternal grandparents had fled pogroms in the Russian pale of settlement in 1905. My paternal grandparents were refugees from Nazism. My Grossvati was torn from his home in Vienna on the night of 13 November 1938, four days after Kristallnacht, and deported to Dachau. He was one of 30,000 Jewish men torn from their homes and incarcerated in concentration camps after ‘the night of broken glass’ and burning synagogues that saw thousands wounded and 91 Jews murdered across Germany and Austria.^[2] My Grossvati was one of the lucky ones. After being beaten up and tortured, he was released on 19 January 1939 on condition that he and his family left Austria. Fortunately, my father had gone to South Africa in 1936 – if he hadn’t already left, he would also have been deported – and he was able to organise domestic permits for his parents to travel to England to work as servants. They subsequently decided to go to the United States, where they settled in Chicago. My Grossvati never recovered from his ordeal, and he died in 1955 a few months after I was born. Most of the wider family were murdered.

One third of the world Jewish population was murdered and tens of thousands of Jewish communities across Europe were destroyed in the Sho’ah. The Nazis also persecuted and murdered the Roma people, disabled people, gay men, lesbians and nonconforming women, as well as communists and socialists. However powerful the imperative not to give Hitler a posthumous victory, a vibrant Jewish life and a vibrant LGBT+ life cannot be forged out of the horrors of the Sho’ah. It became blatantly obvious to me that I needed positive reasons for being Jewish when, in the aftermath of Israel’s first Lebanon War in 1982, the media reacted with anti-Semitic tropes that included depicting Prime Minister Begin as Hitler. And so, rather than be defined by anti-Semitism, I decided to explore what it means to me to be a Jew. Having left my husband and come out as a lesbian, I had already spent the late autumn through early summer of 1978-79 picking citrus fruits and avocados on a small socialist ha-shomer ha-tza’ir kibbutz in Western Galilee, just over a kilometre from the Lebanese border. After that terrible summer of 1982 which saw the horrifying massacre of refugees in Lebanese refugee camps by Christian militia forces that supported Israel, the sense of needing to live positively as a Jew was overwhelming. When I returned to Israel for three-weeks to see my kibbutz friends in the summer of 1983, I seriously considered going on aliyah. But then I was forced to confront the fact that at that time if you were out as a lesbian or gay man, the Law of Return did not apply.^[3] Engaged as I was in lesbian community and activism in the UK, I was not prepared to go back into the closet. That realisation coalesced with the other major impetus in my decision to study for the rabbinate: my refusal to be excluded and marginalised from the Jewish community on the basis of my gender and sexual orientation. Having left cheder, aged 8 ½, when my brother was bar mitzvah, I decided to go to Liberal Judaism’s Montagu Centre in central London and learn to read Hebrew. That was the beginning of my rabbinic journey. Very quickly, I went from novice Hebrew reader to applicant for the Leo Baeck College rabbinic programme, starting in autumn 1984.

It was just as well that in the course of that transformative year of 1983-84 I became absolutely determined to do what I could to contribute to making Jewish life more egalitarian and inclusive because the next five years were almost impossibly challenging. But I wasn’t alone. Another lesbian, Sheila Shulman, also decided to embark on the rabbinate at that time. We both belonged to the same Jewish Lesbian group, but hadn’t said a word to one another about it. Clearly, it was meant to be. Except that the Jewish world, even the progressive Jewish world, wasn’t quite ready for two ‘out’ lesbians. We were both put on probation for the full five years of the programme – the usual probation period is one year – and were told that we could be asked to leave at any time if the two progressive movements that sponsored the college felt that their constituent congregations were not prepared to accommodate us. Fortunately, the first gay rabbi in Britain, Lionel Blue, became my tutor, and he and other key teachers offered both Sheila and I enormous support. I was very honoured to be ordained by Lionel on 9 July 1989. He brought a very special spiritual presence to Progressive Judaism and was an inspiration. Sadly, after suffering deteriorating health over several years and then experiencing the loss of his beloved long-term partner, Jim in 2014, Lionel died on 19 December 2016. Zichrono livrachah – May his memory be for blessing.

And sadly, Sheila Shulman is also no longer with us. She died on 25 October 2014, just a few months after we celebrated the 25^th anniversary of our ordinations. Zichronah livrachah – May her memory be for blessing. By that time, so much had changed – to the extent that Leo Baeck College held a special day of celebration to mark 25 years of LGBT+ inclusion. Indeed, as of 2014, over 20% of the combined Liberal and Reform rabbinate in Britain was LGBT+.

Back in 1989, it was just Lionel, Sheila and me. Following ordination, Sheila co-founded with a group of other lesbians, Beit Klal Yisrael, a synagogue which has been a beacon of inclusivity in the Jewish community ever since. Meanwhile, I became rabbi of the mainstream Reform synagogue that I had served as a rabbinic student in my fifth year. I’m not going to recite the litany of homophobia and persecution I have experienced in the early years of my rabbinate – which included a small group lobbying to oust me from that first post. The good news is that during the past 21 years since I became part of Liberal Judaism, beginning with a two-year stint at Leicester Progressive Jewish Congregation and then going on to the 18 years so far that I have spent as rabbi of Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue, the involvement of LGBT+ rabbis has generated a major transformation in Jewish life. In 2000 Liberal Judaism established a rabbinic working party on same-sex relationships, including two LGBT+ rabbis: Rabbi Mark Solomon, who grew up in Sydney and left the orthodox rabbinate for Liberal Judaism in the early 1990s – and me. Liberal Judaism has been championing the rights of LGBT+ people ever since. In December 2005, LJ published the first fruits of the working party, a booklet of commitment ceremonies to coincide with the Civil Partnership Act coming into force.^[4] LJ then went on to support the campaign for equal marriage. In the past few years, LJ has also provided a home for a series of LGBT+ projects: ‘Rainbow Jews’, exploring the heritage of LGBT+ Jews; ‘Rituals Reconstructed’, creating opportunities for LGBT+ Jews to develop our own rituals; ‘Twilight People’, a multifaith transgender initiative; and ‘Rainbow Pilgrims’, which focuses on the lives of LGBT+ migrants and asylum seekers who come to the UK.^[5]

I’ve shared with you a little about my journey. My own personal experience and the experience of being a rabbi for the past 30 years, has taught me that despite all the emphasis on the community in Jewish life, everything begins with the individual and with the particular journey of each and every individual Jew. The French Revolution of 1789 that signalled the end of a feudal social order in Europe in which the life of the individual was determined entirely by communal expectations and by one’s place in the pyramid, over the course of the 19^th century led to a new social and political system in which individuals had rights as well as responsibilities. Confined to a ghetto existence for millennia, Jewish individuals also benefited from this massive social upheaval. It was also in this climate that new forms of Judaism emerged. At one end of the spectrum, Orthodox Judaism, which responded to modernity by building a fence of communal demands around the Torah in an effort maintain Jewish life. At the other end of the spectrum, Progressive Judaism, which embraced the new freedoms, and attempted to develop Jewish life for the modern world. And so, the major contribution of Progressive Judaism since its inception at the dawn of the 19^th century has been the empowerment of the individual. Rather than being subject to non-negotiable commandments, each individual has a responsibility to make informed choices about how they will live their lives.

Each one of us here today is challenged with that responsibility. When I decided to embark on a journey into the rabbinate, spurred on by the need to make informed choices about how I would live my life, my task as I saw it was twin-fold. First, I was challenged to embrace all of who I am as a nonconforming female and a lesbian and a Jew, to integrate all of who I am, and do what I could to ensure that all of who I am could live and make a healing contribution to life of the world. Second, I was challenged to do what I could to enable others to embrace themselves, to integrate all the parts of themselves, to live fully and make healing contributions to the life of the world.

‘Queering the Text’^[6]: Exploring Biblical characters through LGBT+ lenses

Hinneinu. Here we are: LGBT+ Jews – and in the course of this conference we will have an opportunity to explore kol koleinu – ‘all our voices’. As we do so, I’d like to suggest that we might find food for thought by exploring the Hebrew Bible, and in particular, by engaging with those biblical narratives that specifically raise questions about gender and sexuality.

Jacob and Esau

A fascinating place to begin is with Jacob and Esau, the twin sons of Rebekah and Isaac.^[7] Like Isaac and Ishmael before them, ^[8] their relationship was disrupted, and the firstborn was displaced by the second born. But the story of Jacob and Esau also raises the issue of the meaning of maleness. After the birth of the twins, the narrative moves on immediately to present two young men; two very different young men. We read:^[9]

The boys grew; and Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field; and Jacob was a quiet man, dwelling in tents / Now Isaac loved Esau, because he ate his venison; and Rebecca love Jacob.

Parental favouritism is always a problem. But there is much more going on here. Esau is an alpha male, a rugged, hairy hunter of a man. Jacob likes to stay at home. There is not one single way of being a man.

As it happens, quite apart from the story of Jacob and Esau, events in the course of Jewish history have also had an impact on the way maleness is expressed in Jewish life. When the last Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE and our ancestors ceased to be farmers, men of the field were replaced by scholars poring over texts in study houses. In his book, Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man, ^[10] Daniel Boyarin challenges the gentile male gaze and the disdain for the ‘feminized’ male Jew and his circumcised penis, and recovers the gentle, receptive, ‘feminized’ studious Jewish male we find in the Talmud – and in the study houses, in which the pages of the Talmud are studied in minute detail to this day.

Boyarin argues that rather than the ‘feminized’ Jewish male being a pathological result of life in the diaspora and of the experience of living in societies dominated by the warrior model of masculinity, diaspora Jewish life offered and offers another way of being male. Nevertheless, from the time that the first rabbis gathered in all-male academies to reconstruct Jewish life after the destruction of the Temple, the entire halachic enterprise has been predicated on a binary gender culture, involving the subordination of women. All the scholarly tomes, from the Mishnah, the first code of rabbinic law, edited around 200 CE, onwards treat the male as the subject and the female as other. There’s even a tractate of the Talmud, entitled, Nashim, ‘Women’ that is devoted to defining women’s place. Yes, in a patriarchal society, studious men are patriarchs, too. At the same time, in the context of the modern Israeli reinvention of the macho man of action, Boyarin reminds us to acknowledge a Jewish way of being male that does not fulfil the dominant masculine stereotype.

Joseph

Interestingly, the Torah doesn’t only present two binary versions of being male in the characters of Jacob and Esau. In the story of Joseph, we find the presentation of the central character that confounds gender expectations altogether.^[11] Forget ‘the coat of many colours.’ The Hebrew expression k’tonet passim, means a ‘garment reaching to the palms [of the hand and feet]’. There are only two references to such a garment in the whole of the Hebrew Bible: Joseph was dressed in a k’tonnet passim^[12] – and so was Tamar, the daughter of King David. In fact, when Tamar was sexually assaulted by her half-brother Amnon, the text explicitly explains: ‘She was wearing a k’tonet passim; for virgin princesses were dressed thus in olden times.’^[13] We already know that Joseph’s garment, a gift from his doting father, Jacob, singled him out as the favourite son.^[14] By linking Joseph’s garment with Tamar’s, the gender of Joseph is called into question.

And there is more. Joseph paid a heavy price for his singular position as his father’s favourite, when his envious brothers sold him into slavery.^[15] The account of Joseph’s experience as a slave in the house of Potiphar in Egypt also raises further questions about his gender – and also about his sexuality. When Potiphar’s wife attempted to seduce him, he resisted her attentions, and fled. ^[16] On the one hand, the tale at this point simply conveys the vulnerability of Joseph the ‘Hebrew slave’ in the house of his Egyptian master – and mistress. And so, the reader understands why Joseph ran away, when she kept pleading with him on successive occasions to ‘lie’ with her. On the other hand, this story within a story, opens by saying how ‘beautiful’ Joseph was – literally, ‘beautiful’. We read:^[17]

Va-y’hi Yosef y’feih to’ar vifeih mareh.

Now, Joseph was beautiful of form and beautiful in appearance.

At first glance, the reference to Joseph’s ‘beauty’ simply acts as a preamble, explaining why ‘his master’s wife cast her eyes upon Joseph’.^[18] But this phrase is more than a statement about Joseph; it links Joseph directly with his mother, Rachel. The Torah relates that when as a young man Jacob took flight from his brother Esau’s wrath after stealing Esau’s blessing as the firstborn son and went to his maternal uncle Laban for refuge, he encountered Rachel herding her father’s flock, and promptly fell in love with her.^[19] Laban wanted his nephew to marry his older daughter, but Jacob told Laban, boldly, that he would serve him for seven years for his younger daughter. Immediately prior to this offer, the Torah briefly explains Joseph’s choice:^[20]

V’einei Leah rakot; v’rachel hay’tah y’fat to’ar vifat mareh.

While Leah had weak eyes, Rachel was beautiful of form and beautiful in appearance.

Hebrew is an entirely gendered language. The only difference between this phrase about Rachel and the one about Joseph is that the verbs, nouns and adjectives associated with Rachel are in the ‘feminine’ gender and those associated with Joseph are in the ‘masculine’ gender. But the difference in gender only serves to underline the similarity between the two phrases. There is no getting away from it, the Hebrew root, Yud Pei Hei means to be ‘beautiful.’ So, Joseph was ‘beautiful’ as his mother Rachel was ‘beautiful’. Overwhelmingly, the adjective yafeh, ‘beautiful’ is used to describe a woman. Much less frequently yafeh is used of a boy or a young man – for example, of King David’s son, Absalom,^[21] and of the young man in the Song of Songs – as described by his female lover.^[22] There is an obvious comparison between young women and young men when it comes to youthful beauty. But the particular context of the Joseph narrative makes Joseph’s beauty, both a direct reflection of his mother’s beauty – like mother, like son – and also another way of presenting Joseph as a gender-confounding dreamer, who wore a special ‘princesses’ garment’ that set him apart.

So, what do we make of Joseph? So far, I have used the standard gender pronouns ‘he’, ‘him’ and ‘his’ when referring to Joseph. Perhaps, it would be more appropriate to adopt the gender-neutral pronoun, their. In one sense, as we read in Va-y’chi, the last portion of the Book of Genesis, Joseph’s story has a conventional happy ending that serves to normalise and integrate ‘him’: the first ‘diaspora’ Jew to make it, Joseph not only got to be Pharaoh’s right-hand-man, ‘he’ was also reunited with ‘his’ family. But at the same time, the happy ending also conveys other messages: ‘beautiful’ Joseph, utterly different from their shepherding brothers, ultimately survived by becoming an Egyptian and assuming a new identity. Indeed, as with Joseph’s ‘princess’s garment’ identity, this new identity was expressed in the way Joseph looked: dressed as an Egyptian overlord, Joseph’s brothers failed to recognise Joseph at every encounter with the dreamer who had provoked their rage, and so, finally, Joseph had to reveal their identity to them.^[23] As an Egyptian overlord, Joseph’s transformation was complete. Indeed, Pharaoh gave Joseph a new name, Tzaf’nat Pa’nei’ach, and also ‘gave’ the newly named Tzaf’nat Pa’nei’ach, As’nat, the daughter of Poti-phera, priest of On, as a wife.^[24] Further, although Joseph made their brothers promise that they would carry up their bones, when God brought the Israelites out of the land to the land promised to their ancestors,^[25] the Book of Genesis nevertheless closes with an image of Joseph’s body being embalmed in the Egyptian manner.^[26]

Joseph wore many guises, transcending a simplistic understanding of ‘who’ ‘Joseph’ was. Joseph: an exception that proves the rule – and yet, also a model and exemplar of another, gender-fluid way of being human; which brings me to Joseph’s name: Yoseph – based on the Hebrew root, Yud Sameich Pei, meaning, to ‘add’. As we try to make sense of Joseph, binary gender categories of ‘male’ and ‘female’ just don’t work. Perhaps, what we need to do in order to encompass the complexity of Joseph and acknowledge fully Joseph’s female/male qualities is add an expression and dimension of humanity that transcends conventional binary gender.

Miriam

For many years, I was preoccupied with the complete marginalisation of Miriam in the Torah. Miriam was the elder sister of Moses and Aaron and co-leader of the Exodus, but all the verses about Miriam taken together fill up less than one side of a sheet of paper.^[27] And yet, Miriam was responsible for saving the baby Moses,^[28] and at the time of the Exodus is described in the Torah as a prophet, n’vi’ah, who led the women in song and dance as they crossed the divided Sea of Reeds. ^[29] Significantly, Miriam did not marry. The longest text about her is at Numbers chapter 12 – a short chapter of 16 verses that are totally devoted to an incident that Miriam was responsible for instigating. The chapter begins:

Then Miriam spoke – and Aaron – against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman. / And they said: has the Eternal indeed spoken only with Moses? Hasn’t he also spoken with us?

Understandably, both Miriam and Aaron took exception at their baby brother’s special relationship with God. But clearly, unlike Aaron, who was assigned a special status as High Priest, Miriam had much more reason to feel aggrieved. Indeed, the Hebrew makes it clear that she initiated the challenge against Moses. The verse says Va-t’dabbeir, ‘She spoke’, rather than using a plural form. Hence the translation: ‘Then Miriam spoke – and Aaron – against Moses.’

As a lesbian reading this chapter, I am prompted to ask questions about the Cushite woman from Miriam’s perspective. Who was she to Miriam? Why might Miriam have objected to Moses marrying her? In chapter 2 of my book, Trouble-Making Judaism, taking my cue from the inventiveness of rabbinic commentary where concern that Miriam was unmarried led the sages to marry her off to Joshua or Caleb,^[30] I present a new story of Miriam through a lesbian lens. In my account, the Cushite woman is Miriam’s woman, whom Moses married in order to break up their relationship. So, Miriam, the eldest of the Exodus leaders could well have been a lesbian.

Deborah

Interestingly, on the Shabbat when in the annual Torah reading cycle we read the portion B’shallach, which relates the final instalment of the story of the Exodus that includes the crossing of the Sea of Reeds and the songs of triumph of Moses and Miriam,^[31] our second scriptural reading, known as the haftarah, ‘conclusion’, is the story of Deborah found in the Book of Judges chapters 4 and 5.^[32] The narrative there opens by telling the reader that Deborah was ‘the wife of Lapidot.’^[33] However, Deborah was not the ‘wife of Lapidot.’ Certainly, the Hebrew says, eishet Lapidot, and eishet means ‘wife of’ or ‘woman of’. But there is no one called ‘Lapidot’ in the whole of the Bible, and the biblical convention is that when someone is designated as the wife of a certain man, there must be other references to him. Significantly, however, the word, lapidot means ‘torches’ – singular, lapid. So, the Hebrew may be describing Deborah as a ‘woman of torches’ or ‘torch-like woman’. Such a description fits well with what the text says next about Deborah: that she was a prophet – n’vi’ah – who was ‘judging’ – that is, leading – ‘Israel at that time’: Hi shof’tah et-Yisrael ba-eit ha-hi. The story then goes on to tell us that in her role as a leader, she also accompanied her general, Barak into battle and sang a song of triumph when they were victorious.^[34] Clearly, Deborah, the unmarried leader of the people, in no way conformed to the expectations for a woman of her time. And the portrayal of Deborah as gender nonconforming is further reinforced by the more stereotypical presentation of the other two women in the story: Yael, the wife of Hever the Kenite, who enticed Sisera, the captain of Canaanite King Yavin’s army into her tent and then drove a tent-peg into his head when he fell asleep,^[35] and the unnamed mother of Sisera, who is portrayed looking through the lattice as she waited at home for her son’s return.^[36]

There is an obvious parallel between the songs of triumph of Moses and Miriam in the Exodus story and the song of triumph sung by Deborah and Barak. But there is an even more important connection between Miriam and Deborah – what their stories tell us about two nonconforming women. Unfortunately, unlike Deborah, Miriam had two brothers, who inevitably upstaged her – or at least, the Torah account diminishes her leadership role in favour of her younger brothers. The rabbis, by contrast taking seriously Miriam’s role as a prophet, attempted to redress the balance. They achieved this, in part, by selecting the story of Deborah to accompany the reading of the account of the Exodus in B’shallach, and in part, by elaborating the legend of ‘Miriam’s Well’ that accompanied the Israelites on their journeys through the wilderness until Miriam died in the fortieth year of their wanderings.^[37] The image of ‘Miriam’s Well’ forms an interesting juxtaposition with the image of Deborah the Torch-like Woman: water and fire; two powerful forces / elements that are essential to life. Miriam and Deborah: two powerful women who did not conform to the conventional feminine gender stereotype.

David and Jonathan

You may have noticed that, so far, I have talked about biblical characters that connect with the ‘T’ and ‘L’ in LGBT. So, what about the ‘G’ and ‘B’? Turning, first, to ‘B’, let us consider King David. A poet and a musician, King David was also an adulterer, who had the captain of his army killed in battle, just so that he could take his wife, Bathsheba.^[38] But that’s not all. As a young man, David loved Jonathan, son of King Saul – and Jonathan loved him. We read in the First Book of Samuel: ‘Now it came about when he had finished speaking to Saul that the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as himself.’^[39] And then, later when Jonathan died in battle, we learn in the Second Book of Samuel that David sang a song of lament for him:^[40] ‘I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan, very pleasant have you been to me, your love to me was wonderful, surpassing the love of women.’

Jesus

So, is there a gay character in the Hebrew Bible? It’s hard to say, since in ancient times the majority of men and women entered heterosexual marriage regardless of their sexuality. I realise that I am wandering into the territory of the Christian Gospels, but since Jesus was born, lived and died a Jew, and his teachings suggest that he was also a rabbi, I would like to mention him here. Like other rabbis of that era, Jesus spent most of the time with other men. But other rabbis were married. It was simply unheard of for a Jewish man of Jesus’ age – he was around 32 when he was crucified by the Romans – not to have a wife. Perhaps, it was his gay sensibility that enabled Jesus to relate to Mary Magdalene as a person, rather than as a woman of ill-repute.^[41] And yet, according to the Gospels, Jesus insisted that people should be married – and not get divorced.^[42] Is it possible that Jesus was diverting attention away from his non-normative sexuality and marital status through his pronouncements on marriage?

Some of you may be thinking that my efforts to identify the LGBT figures in the Bible are outlandish. As it happens, my musings are very much in the tradition of rabbinic aggadic midrash, that is, rabbinic commentary on the narrative parts of the Bible. The rabbinic sages were very happy to spin yarns about our ancestors. One of these is the well-known story that when looking after his father’s idol-making shop one day, Abraham smashed the idols.^[43] This is pure invention – but like all rabbinic invention it serves a purpose. The sages were trying to understand how it was that Abraham heeded God’s call and decided to leave his land, his kindred, and the house of his father to go on a journey to a distant land. When we read the Bible as LGBT+ Jews, we bring our questions and our preoccupations, and so we see possibilities that the heteronormative male-dominated tradition did not see. My exploration is an invitation to read the texts of Jewish tradition through the lens of our experience as LGBT+ Jews.

Finding a framework in Torah teachings for our lives as LGBT+ Jews

Identifying LGBT+ characters in the Bible is an affirming experience for us as LGBT+ Jews. I have also been inspired on my journey towards self-affirmation by seven particular Torah teachings. Seven, the number of the days of the week, is the number of completeness in Jewish teaching. In my view, everything we need to construct a framework for living fulfilled lives as Jews and as LGBT+ Jews is contained in these teachings. Before I explore each one of them separately, let me enumerate them for you.

1. ‘God created the Human … in the image of God’ (B’reishit, Genesis 1:27).

2. ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself. I am the Eternal’ (K’doshim, Leviticus 19:18).

3. ‘You shall not oppress the stranger for you know the nefesh – the inner being – of the stranger seeing you were strangers in the land of Egypt’ (Mishpatim, Exodus 23:9).

4. ‘The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; and you shall love them as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the Eternal your God’ (K’doshim, Leviticus 19:34).

5. ‘Justice, justice, you shall pursue’ (Shof’tim, Deuteronomy 16:20).

6. ‘For this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too wonderful for you nor too remote… For the matter is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart to do it’ (N’tzavim, Deuteronomy 30:11; 14).

7. ‘You shall choose in Life’ (N’tzavim, Deuteronomy 30:19).

I’m now going to unpack each one of these teachings and demonstrate how each one relates to our lives as LGBT+ Jews.

The first teaching: ‘God created the Human … in the image of God’

In the first narrative of creation recounted in the Book of Genesis, we read that God created the human – ha-adam, the singular undifferentiated human – b’tzelem Elohim, ‘in the image of God’. What does it mean to say that the human is an image of God? There is a lovely passage in the Mishnah that draws out the meaning: ^[44]

One stamps out many coins with one die, and they are alike, but the Sovereign above the Sovereign of Sovereigns, the Holy One, who is Blessed, stamped each person with the seal of the first human – adam ha-rishon – and not one of them is alike.

Each and every human, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, colour, ethnicity, class, ability is an image of God. Each and every human being is equal to each and every other human being. God created One humanity in myriad forms. In the late 1960s and early 70s, with the emergence of gay liberation, the pink triangle that gay men were forced to wear in the concentration camps became a symbol of defiant gay pride.^[45] Since the late 1970s, as increasingly diverse queer folk came out of the closet, LGBT+ people have been flying the rainbow flag.^[46] The rainbow flag, celebrates the diversity of LGBT+ existence. It is also an emblem for humanity; the rainbow spectrum of colours embracing us all. Another rabbinic teaching emphasises the essential equality of all human beings. We read in the same paragraph in the Mishnah: ^[47]

It was for the sake of peace among us that creation began with a single human being: so that none might say to another: my ancestor was greater than your ancestor.

The second teaching: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself. I am the Eternal’

We find this teaching at the heart of the Torah, in the Book of Leviticus, chapter 19, in the parashah – portion – K’doshim, which sets out rules for ethical behaviour, known as ‘the Holiness Code’.^[48] ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ In order to love our neighbour as ourselves, we must first love ourselves. This teaching, which can be applied to every arena of engagement in life, may also be applied, specifically, to our intimate relationships. The Holiness Code is sandwiched between two chapters that focus on sexual prohibitions.^[49] Most of the sexual prohibitions are expressed with an opening statement, ‘you shall not uncover the nakedness of’, and then go on to specify whom a man may not have sex with. Apart from the example of bestiality,^[50] it is the male alone, who is regarded as the sexual actor. These two chapters also include two versions of the notorious teaching proscribing sex between men: ‘You shall not lie with a man, as with a woman it is an abomination.’ The penalty, as Leviticus chapter 20 makes it clear, was death.^[51] This particular teaching has been responsible for the marginalisation and oppression of gay men. It is irredeemable. Of course, like several of the teachings of the Torah it reflects its time and its place. Other examples would include, forcing a woman accused of adultery to endure the ordeal of consuming poisonous bitter waters,^[52] and stoning to death a rebellious son.^[53] But there is something else about this notorious teaching prohibiting sex between men that tends to get ignored. Interestingly, it’s the only teaching in the list of sexual prohibitions that assumes as its starting point that two male sexual actors are by definition equals. What it seems to be saying is that it is prohibited for an autonomous male to treat another autonomous male as he would treat a female – that is to dominate his sexual partner. Again: ‘You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination.’ The concern of the sexual prohibtions in Leviticus is not so much with ethical behaviour, as with setting apart the people Israel from the other nations that practised idolatry at that time,^[54] and with maintaining order within a patriarchal system that is rooted in the enforcement of binary gender, predicated on male domination.

There’s also something very interesting to learn from the placing of the Holiness Code between two lists of sexual prohibitions. So, what do we discover when instead of treating Leviticus chapter 19 separately we read the sexual prohibitions set out in Leviticus chapters 18 and 20 through the lens of ethical conduct? When we do this, the prohibition against ‘uncovering nakedness’ ceases to be a descriptive statement and takes on an ethical tone as a prohibition against exploiting another’s vulnerability in their nakedness. The juxtaposition of the chapters invites us to devise an inclusive, egalitarian sexual ethic for ourselves within the parameters of not exploiting another person’s vulnerability on the one hand, and loving one’s sexual partner as ourselves, on the other.

The third teaching: ‘You shall not oppress the stranger for you know the nefesh – the inner being – of the stranger seeing you were strangers in the land of Egypt’

Before I decided to study for the rabbinate, I was a Jewish lesbian. Before that, after discovering the Women’s Liberation Movement in 1978, I became a lesbian feminist separatist. Before that, when I was an undergraduate sociology student at the London School of Economics, I was a Trotskyite Marxist and member of the International Marxist Group. My political awakening began at 17 years old, and at that time I expressed my convictions by being vehemently anti-racist and reading everything I could about the black experience in the Americas and apartheid in South Africa. I have sketched the development of my consciousness in reverse order because the stages I went through say a lot about the way in which an individual with a complex identity attempts to negotiate their personal challenges in the context of negotiating their connections with others. I began by paying very little attention to my personal experience and identifying with the experience of other particular oppressed groups. Stage by stage, I began to integrate my personal experience of marginalisation as a Jew and as a lesbian into my commitment to challenging oppression in all its forms.

And then, the encounter with the Jewish textual sources that became available to me when I began my rabbinic studies gave me a language that spoke to my quest for integration. There are several verses in the Torah that focus on how we treat the stranger.^[55] This particular verse, both, reminds us of our past experience of being strangers ourselves, and also appeals to the very heart of each one of us. Again: ‘You shall not oppress the stranger for you know the nefesh of the stranger ….’ Under the influence of Greek thought, nefesh came to be translated as ‘soul’. In the biblical worldview however, there is no division between ‘body’ and ‘soul’, so nefesh is best translated as ‘inner being’. As LGBT+ Jews we are at the sharp end of that internalised experience of being other. We know what it feels like to be othered as LGBT+ people in a heteronormative society – both within the Jewish community and within the wider world. We know what it feels like to be Jews with a history – including a very recent history – of vicious persecution, and to live in a society that remains dominated by Christian cultural assumptions. And so, as LGBT+ Jews, knowing ‘the nefesh – the inner being – of the stranger’ so intimately and intensely, it is incumbent upon us to be at the forefront of the struggle to challenge the persecution of refugees and asylum seekers and to do what we can to help them find a home – not least, LGBT+ asylum seekers who are fleeing regimes that persecute them, and in some cases kill them.^[56]

The fourth teaching: ‘The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; and you shall love them as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the Eternal your God’

When the Holiness Code Leviticus 19 exhorts us to love our neighbour, the Hebrew word for neighbour – rei’a – suggests that a neighbour is a fellow Israelite; someone who is part of our community, who is like us. And so, the code adds the command, ‘You shall love the stranger as yourself.’ It’s one thing to do what we can to ensure that strangers are not mistreated and oppressed, but can we really be commanded to love the stranger? As LGBT+ Jews, knowing so very intimately the nefesh, the inner being of the stranger, that deep and palpable awareness is a pathway to love. ‘You shall love the stranger as yourself.’ As LGBT+ Jews, in order to live as fully integrated human beings, we are challenged to love our difference, our strangeness; we are challenged to embrace our otherness. If we find ways of loving ourselves as the strangers that we are, we will also be able to love other strangers, whoever they are.

The fifth teaching: ‘Justice, justice, you shall pursue’

This is such a powerful statement. Very terse – even more so in the Hebrew – it says so much: Tzedek, tzedek tirdof. In Hebrew, a sentence usually begins with the verb. But here, the noun ‘justice’, tzedek, comes first. And it is repeated. The emphasis, literally, quite emphatically, is on justice. The repetition also conveys a central aspect of any system of justice: equity. This verse is part of a section of laws in the Torah dealing with the administration of justice that make it clear that there can be no partiality in justice; no favouring of one party over another in a dispute. Justice for the one, must also be justice for the other. But the verb is very interesting, too. We are exhorted: ‘Justice, Justice you shall pursue’. Justice is never a given. We have to chase after it and unless we do this, it may elude us. As LGBT+ Jews, we are called upon to pursue justice for ourselves and others. And more than this, to do justice, equally, to the different aspects of ourselves: to our Jewish selves as well as to our LGBT+ selves. We live in such a binary world. When I first came out as a lesbian, I didn’t know that I could be a lesbian and be Jewish. So, I immersed myself, as I mentioned, in lesbian separatism. And then I discovered that a huge part of myself was missing; that I was marginalising my Jewish self, my Jewish past and present, in order to fit in to life within a lesbian feminist community that turned out to be based on very narrow white Anglo-Saxon Protestant cultural norms that othered me as a Jew. We must pursue justice for all of who we are. And we must pursue justice on behalf of and in solidarity with others.

The sixth teaching: ‘For this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too wonderful for you nor too remote… For the matter is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart to do it’

This is one of my favourite Torah teachings. One of the reasons I love it so much is because it is expressed so beautifully. I’m going to quote the passage from Deuteronomy chapter 30 in full:^[57]

For this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too wonderful for you, nor too remote. / It is not in heaven that you need to say: ‘Who will go up to heaven for us, and fetch it for us, that we may hear it and do it?’ / Neither is it across the sea that you need to say: ‘Who will cross the sea for us and fetch it for us, that we may hear it and do it?’ For the matter is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart to do it.

The opening verse of this passage does not specify any particular commandment. According to the medieval 13^th century commentator, Nachmanides^[58] ‘this commandment’ is a specific reference to the command to repent, since the previous passage begins with the exhortation to return to God^[59]. For Ya’akov Tzvi Mecklenburg, born in 1785, on the eve of the Enlightenment, on the other hand, ‘this commandment’ refers to the whole of the Torah – and most commentators up to the present day agree. But the emphasis of the passage lies elsewhere. The point is ‘For this commandment … is not too wonderful for you, nor too remote …. For the matter is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart to do it.’ As LGBT+ Jews, we are not just faced with the challenge of integrating our gender and sexual orientation with being Jewish, what being Jewish means for each one of us can be hugely complex, difficult and troubling. I think one of the main reasons for this is that we seem to be grappling with something out there that can feel like a burden – the burden of the expectations of our families, the burden of a past drenched in blood, the burden of the weight of scholarly works packed with rules and regulations bearing down on us. But this passage is saying something else. It teaches that ‘the matter is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart to do it.’ Significantly, the Hebrew for ‘the matter’ is ha-davar. The noun davar, means ‘word’ or ‘thing’. Hence the translation, ‘the matter’. But the Hebrew conveys so much more: forget millions and millions of scholarly Jewish words; the word, the matter is in the mouth and in the heart of each one of us to do it. Ultimately, each one of us is the arbiter of the Jew we want to be. Each one of us is by definition an authentic Jew by virtue of our own personal sense of what it means for us to be a Jew. But the essential thing is that to be a Jew is to do. Again: ‘It is in your mouth and in your heart to do it.’ It is not enough to feel Jewish. It is not enough to talk about being Jewish. To be Jewish is to act as a Jew in the context of our own lives, in relation to those around us and in relation to the wider world.

The seventh teaching: ‘You shall choose in life’

The Jewish toast is L’Chayyim! To Life! Chayyim is a plural word. Life is plural. It includes joy and sorrow. Our lives are plural – each one of us encompasses so many different dimensions. L’Chayyim! The toast is an optimistic celebration of life, whatever life brings. How astonishing that L’Chayyim! Is the Jewish toast. In the face of murder and destruction: L’Chayyim! To Life! The exhortation, ‘You shall choose in life’ – u’vacharta ba-chayyim – concludes a verse in Deuteronomy chapter 30, a little further on from the passage I’ve just explored. Let me quote the verse in full:^[60]

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today: I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore you shall choose in Life, that you may live, you and your descendants.

Life includes all these dimensions, life and death, blessing and curse: U’vacharta ba-chayyim – Therefore you shall choose in Life. As LGBT+ Jews, we are all too familiar with these stark choices. How many LGBT+ people have chosen death; have chosen to kill themselves in response to their experience of persecution and exclusion, or in fear of rejection – not least from their own families? We are exhorted not to choose life in some abstract way, but rather to choose in life – ba-chayyim; we are exhorted to plunge into life, body, heart and soul. As LGBT+ Jews, in the face of bigotry and hatred and our own internalised homophobia, biphobia and transphobia, we are challenged to choose to live. We are challenged to choose in our embodied lives; to consciously choose with confidence and commitment all the dimensions of ourselves, so that we can then wholeheartedly choose to participate in the life of the community, the wider society and the world in which we live.

The journey ahead

In this address, I have suggested that our Jewish teachings and stories may serve as resources as we grapple with the challenge of embracing ourselves as LGBT+ Jews. I would like to draw my address to a close by offering two questions for you to explore in the remaining minutes of this session, and also to take with you on your journeys through this conference and in the year ahead. The questions are:

Which of these seven Torah teachings speak(s) to me most – and why?

And:

Inspired by these teachings, what steps can I take to support myself to live a fulfilled life as an LGBT+ Jew?

You will find on your seat a sheet with the teachings on one side, and the questions on the other.

In a few moments, I will invite you to turn to your neighbour and respond to these questions, but first, I would like to end with two short passages from Pirkei Avot, the Chapters of the Sages, a collection of the wise aphorisms of the first generations of rabbis that is appended to the Mishnah. I offer these passages as words of encouragement for our journeys – and for our efforts to contribute to the great task of tikkun olam, repair of the world that begins with the repair of our LGBT+ Jewish selves.

We read:^[61]

Lo alecha ha-m’lachah ligmor, v’lo attah ben-chorin l’hibatteil mimennah.

It is not for you to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.

Finally, the words of the sage Hillel span over 2000 years to challenge us still:^[62]

Im ein ani li, mi li? U’ch’she’ani l’atzmi, mah ani? V’im lo achshav, eimatai?

If I’m not for myself, who will be for me? But if I’m only for myself what am I? And if not now, when?

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

25^th Jewish LGBT+ World Congress, Sydney, Australia

21^st-24^th March 2019

1. ‘The 614^th Commandment’ in The Jewish Return Into History. Reflections on the Age of Auschwitz and the New Jerusalem. Schocken Books, New York 1978, pp. 19-24. ↑

2. For an authoritative and accessible history of the Sho’ah, see: The War Against the Jews 1933-1945 by Lucy S. Dawidowicz, Penguin Books, 1975. ↑

3. When I lived in Israel in 1978-79, the Law of Return, which was enacted by the government of Israel in 1950 to establish the right of all Jews living in the diaspora to immigrate to Israel, was being interpreted in such a way that lesbian and gay Jews were excluded. ↑

4. Covenant of Love. Service of Commitment for Same-Sex Couples. Liberal Judaism, London, 2005. ↑

5. See: https://www.liberaljudaism.org/what-we-do/lgbtqi-projects/ ↑

6. In this address I present my own commentaries on the biblical text. The title of this section quotes the title of the book: Queering the Text: Biblical, Medieval and Modern Jewish Stories by Andrew Ramer and Jay Michaelson – with Afterword by Camille Shira Angel 2010. For an extensive treatment of the Torah from an LGBT+ perspective, I recommend Torah Queeries. Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible edited by Gregg Drinkwater, Joshua Lesser, and David Shneer – with a Foreword by Judith Plaskow (New York University Press, 2009). I also recommend the ground-braking work, Like Bread on the Seder Plate. Jewish Lesbians and the Transformation of Tradition by Rebecca Alpert (Columbia University Press, 1997). ↑

7. The narrative of Jacob and Esau begins at Tol’dot, Genesis 25:19-23. ↑

8. See Va-yeira, Genesis chapter 21. ↑

9. Gen. 25:27-28. ↑

10. University of California Press, 1997. ↑

11. The Joseph story begins at Genesis 37 and continues to the end of the Book of Genesis. ↑

12. Gen. 37:3. ↑

13. 2 Samuel 13:18 ↑

14. Va-yeishev, Gen. 37:3. ↑

15. Gen. 37: ↑

16. Va-yeishev, Gen. 39:7ff. ↑

17. Gen. 39:6. ↑

18. Gen. 39:7. ↑

19. Va-yeitzei, Gen. 29:10-11. ↑

20. Gen. 29:17. ↑

21. 2 Samuel 14:25. ↑

22. Song of Songs 1:16. But the adjective ‘beautiful’ is not only used to refer to people. As it happens, in the Joseph story, the seven healthy looking cows of Pharaoh’s first dream, are also described as ‘beautiful’. In her article, ‘The Song of Solomon’s Wife’ (in Hear Our Voice. Women Rabbis Tell Their Stories edited by Sybil Sheridan. SCM Press, 1994, pp. 64-71), Rabbi Sybil Sheridan argues that the Song of Songs, which treats the lovers in such an egalitarian way, may well have had a female author. ↑

23. Va-yiggash, Gen. 45:1. ↑

24. Mikkeitz, Gen. 41:45. Tzaph’nat Panei’ach is Egyptian for ‘God speaks; he lives’, or ‘creator of life’, according to the Jewish Publication Society translation JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh (1999, footnote, d, p.88). ↑

25. Va-y’chi, Gen. 50:25. ↑

26. Gen. 50:26. ↑

27. The Bible on Miriam: Exodus 2:1-10, Ex. 15:20-21, Numbers 12:1-16, Num. 20:1, Deuteronomy 24:8-9, Numbers 26:58-59, Micah 6:4, I Chronicles 6:3. ↑

28. See the story of the birth of Moses: Sh’mot, Exodus 2:1-10. ↑

29. B’shallach, Exodus 15:20. ↑

30. Midrash Sh’mot Rabbah 1:17. ↑

31. See B’shallach, Exodus 13:17-15:21. ↑

32. Starting at Judges 4:4. ↑

33. Judges 4:4. ↑

34. Judges 4:6-10. ↑

35. Judges 4:17-22; 5:24-27. ↑

36. Jud. 4:28-30. ↑

37. ‘Israel had a well in the desert in Miriam’s merit’ (Talmud Ta’anit 9a). Another tractate in the Talmud, Shabbat 35a, has this: If one wishes to see Miriam’s well, one should go up Mount Carmel and look toward the sea where one will witness something that looks like a sieve amid the sea and that is Miriam’s well. Rashi comments: Miriam’s well: This is the well that would follow Israel through the desert by virtue of Miriam’s merit, as it is written, ‘And Miriam died there.’ The very next verse says, ‘And there was no water for the community. See also Legends of the Jews, Vol. III edited by Louis Ginzberg (Jewish Publications Society of America, Philadelphia, 1968) for a compilation of all the midrashim related to Miriam’s Well (pp. 50-54). The notes (119-135), with the references are in Vol. VI, pp. 20-22. ↑

38. 2 Samuel 11:2-27. ↑

39. 1 Samuel 18:1. ↑

40. 2 Samuel 1:26. ↑

41. New Testament, Gospel of Luke 8:1-3. ↑

42. See Matthew 19:1-12. ↑

43. Midrash B’reishit [Genesis] Rabbah, chapter 38. ↑

44. Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5. ↑

45. See: The Men with the Pink Triangle: The True Life-and-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps

    by Heinz Heger, Klaus Muller (Introduction), David Fernbach (Translation), 2010 (first published in 1980); The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals by Richard Plant, 2011 (first published in 1987). ↑

46. https://www.history.com/news/how-did-the-rainbow-flag-become-an-lgbt-symbol ↑

47. Ibid. ↑

48. At the 13th conference of the International Congress in 1993, I explored this verse in the sermon I gave on Erev Shabbat. Subsequently, it became an article, and then a chapter in my book, Trouble-Making Judaism, entitled, Towards an Inclusive Jewish Sexual Ethic (David Paul Books, London, 2012). ↑

49. Leviticus chapters 18 (Acharei Mot) and 20 (K’doshim) ↑

50. Lev. 18:23, ↑

51. Lev. 20:13. ↑

52. Naso, Numbers 5:12-31. ↑

53. Ki Teitzei, Deuteronomy 21:18-21. ↑

54. See: Acharei Mot, Leviticus 18:1-5, the opening preamble of the sexual prohibitions. ↑

55. See, for example: Mishpatim, Exodus 22:20; K’doshim, Leviticus 19: 33-34. ↑

56. https://76crimes.com/76-countries-where-homosexuality-is-illegal/ ↑

57. Nitzavim, Deut. 30: 11-14. ↑

58. Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, who was born in Gerona in Spain in 1194. Also known as the Ramban. He was a Talmudic jurist, and also very interested in Kabbalah – the mystical dimension of Judaism, and so his comments frequently offer mystical insights. ↑

59. Nitzavim, Deuteronomy 30:2. ↑

60. Deut. 30:19. ↑

61. Mishnah Pirkei Avot 2:16. ↑

62. Ibid. 1:14. ↑

Friends: It’s wonderful to be here this afternoon for this annual interfaith service that celebrates the rich and diverse religious and spiritual life of our city, and the bonds of love and respect we have forged between us. Brighton and Hove is a city of angels – and I want to take this opportunity to thank Rev Anthea Ballam, who conceived and developed the Angels project, for reminding us that angels are all around us. After all, angels are not just those carved in stone, or depicted in the beautiful and varied artworks produced for the ‘Angels’ exhibition. Angels are also people of flesh and blood.

In the original Biblical Hebrew sense of the word, an angel – malach – is a ‘worker’. The word malach is related to m’lachah, meaning, ‘work’. But a malach is a very special kind of worker; one that does the work of the Eternal.

In the Bible, these m’lachim – the plural of malach – are messengers, bringing messages from the Eternal One to individuals, in all kinds of circumstances.

Here in Brighton and Hove, m’lachim of all faiths and none are found working for and with those who are the most vulnerable and marginal in our city: people living in poverty on the streets, those who have taken flight from tyranny and persecution, war and destitution in search of refuge, young LGBT+ people, who have been rejected by their families and bullied by their peers.

From a Jewish perspective, a malach is not an other-worldly creature, but rather a person who commits themselves to translating feelings of care into acts of caring. The early rabbis, who lived and taught 2000 years ago, spoke of g’milut chasadim, ‘deeds of lovingkindness’, as one of the three pillars that upholds the world. We read in Pirkei Avot, the collection of the wise teachings of the rabbinic sages that is included in the Mishnah, the first code of rabbinic law edited around the year 200 (Pirkei Avot 1:2):

Al sh’loshah d’varim ha-olam omeid: al ha-Torah, v’al ha-Avodah v’al G’milut Chasadim.

The world stands on three pillars: on Teaching, and on Divine Worship, and on Deeds of Lovingkindness.

The world stands on these three pillars; which suggests that without the three pillars, it falls. So, why are these three particular things so important that they constitute the three pillars that uphold the world? Through engaging in Sacred Teaching, found in the Scriptures of all faiths, we discover what it means to be human, and our obligation to use our powers to build and sustain a just society. Through Divine Service, we acknowledge the Eternal One as the source of our lives, empowering us to act in the world. By undertaking Deeds of Lovingkindness, we channel our powers and our capacity for love to the service of others.

In the popular imagination, angels – m’lachim, may seem to be extraordinary ethereal presences, but they are only extraordinary insofar as people willing to summon up their personal resources of compassion and commit themselves to deeds of lovingkindness are extraordinary. Angels are not extraordinary in Brighton and Hove. On the contrary, they are ordinary people, doing deeds of lovingkindness each and every day.

And they – we – are here today. This multi-faith gathering is a congregation of angels, and this special annual day in the calendar of our city is an opportunity to celebrate the angel-work we do. The first verse of Psalm 133, offers these words of celebration:

Hinneh mah-tov u’mah-na’im, shevet achim gam-yachad

How good and how pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity.

I would like to conclude by singing those words to the tune I learnt from my mother, who sadly died in November 1991. Zichronah livrachah – May her memory be for blessing. I will sing the words achim, ‘brothers’, and achayyot, ‘sisters’, alternately, recognising that both words, achim and achayyot, share a common root that conveys the deep connections we all share with one another as human beings, regardless of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, culture or religion. May the bonds that hold us ‘together in unity’ today on this day of light and joy, continue to hold us ‘together in unity’ during days of darkness and sorrow. And may they strengthen us for the angel-work that lies ahead.

This And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue

Interfaith Contact Group Annual Interfaith Service

Sunday, 25^th November 2018

St Peter’s Roman Catholic Church, Portland Road, Hove

Good morning, everyone. I’m delighted to be here today. When I was at school, one of my favourite subjects was History. Then I had the opportunity to do Sociology A-level and I was soon hooked. It was so exciting to learn about society here and now and how it works. And then, when I went to the London School of Economics in 1974 to study for a BSc. in Sociology, I found myself immersed in the 19^th-century, studying the thinkers whose ideas had shaped the sociological enterprise – in particular, Karl Marx, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim. I discovered that sociology had a history, but more important, I learnt that to understand society today, we need to understand the way society had been in the past, and the role of the past in shaping the present.

In preparation for coming here today, I thought I might find out about the beginnings of Brighton College. The most important thing about this school is that it is a centre of educational excellence, preparing its pupils – all of you – for your future lives. To understand how Brighton College has come to have this well-deserved reputation, it’s interesting to know that, founded in 1845 by William Aldwin Soames, it was the first Victorian Public School to be established in Sussex. Apparently, Soames had wanted the school to be based at Brighton Pavilion, but after Queen Victoria refused, built it here on Eastern Road in Kemp Town. Can you imagine going to school at Brighton Pavilion – now, that would have been very cool!

Life is so demanding – not least when you’re at school, and have to learn at a terrific pace, and deal with all the exams. It’s easy to be so consumed by the daily routine that thinking about the past – except in the form of the subject of ‘History’ on the timetable – doesn’t feel very relevant. But of course, it is. Let me give you an example. In Britain today, lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender people are accorded equal treatment in law: the age of consent is the same for all, regardless of sexuality; lesbian and gay couples can get married; people who are transgender can have their birth certificates changed to reflect their chosen gender. That doesn’t mean to say that LGBT people – including young people – don’t get bullied any more, but now schools and other institutions have adopted anti-bullying policies, and homophobic and transphobic bullying is no longer acceptable.

How did it get to be like this? This year marks the 50^th anniversary of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act that decriminalised sex between two consenting males over the age of 21, in private. Before then, sexual activity between men of any age was illegal, and men were prosecuted, imprisoned, and subjected to degrading and inhumane treatment. The huge legal changes that have taken place in Britain since 1967, resulting in equality and inclusion, only happened because LGBT people – including me – engaged in a struggle for acknowledgement of our full human rights. Of course, we can’t be complacent. There are countries in the world today, where LGBT people are still imprisoned, and in some places, put to death. The struggle for LGBT human rights continues – and will not end until equality is achieved in every place.

So, you can see why it is relevant to learn about LGBT history. I am now going to turn to another contemporary topic with a back-story, which is less uplifting and inspiring. On this day – 29 November – seventy years ago in 1947, the United Nations General Assembly voted to partition the disputed land on the eastern seaboard of the Mediterranean into two states: a Jewish state and an Arab state.^[1] Yes, this goal, representing a compromise between the aspirations of two small peoples for self-determination, the Jews and the Palestinians, has not yet been achieved.

The historical backdrop is complicated, and there is no time to go into all the details now. But there is an important aspect of the history that we need to remember because it is embedded in the scourge of colonialism and imperialism – that is, in the imposition of the rule of Imperial powers on other nations. For almost 500 years, the Ottoman Empire, centred in Turkey, ruled over the Middle East. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of World War One, two other colonial powers, Britain and France, stepped in. The map of the Middle East reflects decisions taken then: Lebanon and Syria, under the authority of the French, Palestine and what was called Transjordan, under the authority of the British. The Arab inhabitants of Palestine, mostly tenant farmers, had never known freedom and independence. Meanwhile, in Europe, in response to a new racist form of anti-Semitism that overtook anti-Judaism in its virulence and menace, a new movement arose: political Zionism. The longing to return to Zion on the part of Jews around the world goes back to the crushing of the Jewish revolt against Rome and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE. Political Zionism was developed by those who felt that the only solution to anti-Semitism was for Jews to join the remnant Jewish population living in our ancestral homeland, and have our own independent Jewish state.

The first Zionist Congress was held in Basel in 1897. And then, 20 years later, juggling the aspirations of Jews and Arabs, the British government offered support for – and I quote: ‘the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people… It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done that may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.’ These are the words used in a short letter from Lord Balfour to Lord Rothschild, on 2 November 1917.^[2]

For the next 20 years, Jews escaping persecution continued to immigrate to Palestine, there were two major Arab uprisings in 1929 and 1936, and successive attempts on the part of the British government to find a settlement to the dispute. In the end, it was Hitler’s war against the Jews, which resulted in the murder of one third of the world Jewish population that precipitated the formulation of UN resolution Number 181, calling for the territory of Palestine to be divided into two states. At the UN General Assembly on 29 November 1947, 33 states voted in favour of the resolution and 13 against. 10 states abstained, including Britain. The partition plan was rejected by the Arabs and accepted, reluctantly, by the Zionists.^[3] It failed.

On 14 May 1948, on the eve of the end of the British mandate in Palestine, the Jewish community in the land declared independence and established the State of Israel. The new state was attacked immediately by the surrounding Arab nations, and conflict has been continuous since. In June 1967, in what became known as the Six Day War, another wholesale attack on Israel resulted in an Israeli victory, including, the occupation of the West Bank of the River Jordan beyond the Green line – the ceasefire line – that had been agreed at the end of the 1948 to 1949 war.

That occupation has been the main issue in the continuing conflict. There have been peace initiatives. Israel made peace with Egypt in 1979 (on 26 March), and returned the Sinai to Egypt. On 13 September 1993, the peace process resulted in a now famous handshake between then Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, later assassinated on 4 November 1995 by a Jewish extremist, and Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. In 1994 (on 26 October), Israel signed a peace treaty with Jordan. But after Rabin’s assassination, the peace process stalled. Today, on the 70^th anniversary of the UN vote on partition, the hope of a two-state solution is almost lost.

When we look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we can see clearly how the weight of history doesn’t just determine present reality, it can squeeze out all signs of life. So, what’s the answer? There is no escaping the past; all we can do is try to understand how and why the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians arose, recognise the complexity of the issues involved, and acknowledge how many external parties, including Britain, bear responsibility for driving a wedge between these two small peoples.

On second thoughts, there is something we can do. We can continue to be hopeful that the deadlock will be broken; our hope fuelled by other transformations that we have witnessed – not least, the progress that has been made in the liberation of LGBT people, which at the time of that UN resolution in 1947, could never have even been conceived. 20 years ago, I adopted the Hebrew word for hope, Tikvah, as my middle name at a time when I had experienced some very painful setbacks in the struggle for LGBT equality. I’m very glad that refusing to despair, I managed to summon up the great resource of hope. There is a Jewish teaching recorded in the collection of wise sayings of the first generation of rabbis, edited around the year 200 CE, which continues to be relevant in the context of the seemingly intractable problems we face today (Pirkei Avot, 2:21): ‘It is not for you to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.’ That is what it means to be human. We have no option but to continue working to challenge injustice and foster peace, even when the work involved seems endless. May each one of us find our own ways of contributing our energies, skills and creativity to the work of repairing our broken world for the sake of the future. And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue

Brighton College Assembly

29 November 2017

1. All the different sources on the UN resolution are presented from partisan perspectives, either pro-Israel, or pro-Palestine, so here’s the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine ↑
2. Again, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration ↑
3. See Note 1. ↑

Good afternoon everyone. It is wonderful to be here and to participate once again in the annual Brighton and Hove Interfaith service.

The theme of today’s service, as we know, is listening. For Jews, listening is an imperative: Sh’ma! ‘Listen!’ The central statement of Jewish theology and practice, expressed in the Hebrew Bible in the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 6, declares (verse 4):

Sh’ma! Yisraeil, Adonai, Eloheinu, Adonai echad.

Listen! Israel, the Eternal is our God, the Eternal is one.

Importantly, in the related paragraph that follows, the imperative to listen, is immediately translated into the obligation to act:

You shall love the Eternal your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. / And these words that I command you today shall be in your heart. / And you shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall speak of them when you sit at home, and when you walk along the way, when you lie down and when you rise up. / And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes. / And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house, and on your gates.

So, we are commanded to listen out for the voice of the Eternal, and to translate the teachings we receive into practice.

The account of Revelation in the Torah, in Exodus chapters 19 and 20, describes the rabble of ex-slaves huddled at the foot of the quaking Mountain, listening to the voice of the Eternal One. The narrative then concludes at Exodus 24, with the sealing of the covenant between the Eternal One and the rabble who have been transformed in that covenantal moment into a people. The people declare their consent: Na’aseh v’nishma, ‘We will do, and we will listen’ (verse 7).

So, the rabble having become a people in the act of listening; pledge themselves to act on what they had heard and to continue to listen.

But what does it mean to listen to the Eternal One? How do we listen to the Eternal One today? By listening to one another; by listening to the plural voices of God’s plural creation. And acting on what we hear; by practising compassion – rachamim – and deeds of loving kindness – g’milut chasadim.

Since a covenant is an agreement between at least two parties, the listening involved is not simply one way. In the central prayer of Jewish worship, recited three times a day, evening, morning and afternoon, the last blessing of a section of 13 petitionary blessings, begins with these words:

Sh’ma koleinu! Hear our voice! Eternal One our God, and have compassion on us, and accept with compassion and favour, our prayer.

Sh’ma koleinu! Again, listening is expressed as an imperative: Sh’ma! Except with these words the people are calling on God to listen.

During the annual season of the ‘days of awe’ that begins with the New Year, Rosh Ha-Shanah, and concludes with the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, these words become a poignant call for God’s mercy, sung with a melody that expresses deep longing.

I shall conclude by sharing the melody with you, which ends with the penultimate verse of the Book of Lamentations in the Hebrew Bible; the verse which accompanies the closing of the Holy Ark, at the end of the Torah reading service (5:21):

Return us, Eternal One, to You and we shall return, renew our days as of old.

Sh’ma koleinu, Adonai, Eloheinu, chus v’racheim aleinu,

v’kabbeil b’rachamim u’v’ratzon et-t’fillateinu.

Hashivenu, Adonai, eilekha, v’nashuvah,

chaddeish yameinu k’kedem.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue

B&H Annual Interfaith Service

Hove Methodist Church

26 November 2017

Dear Friends and honoured guests, here we are gathered together for this sacred service of Remembrance. We probably think we know what we mean by the word ‘remembrance’. At a remembrance service, we remember. But of course, we don’t all remember. None of us here today remember the First World War, and only a few of us will remember the Second World War. We rely on the memories of others in order to remember. We rely on the news accounts of the time, on the diaries and autobiographies and poems written by those who were there.

During this past year, here at Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue, two of our splendid old soldiers passed away, both veterans of combat in the Second World War: Dennis Hollis, who died almost exactly a year ago on 9^th November 2016, at the age of 91, and Warwick Winston, who died on 12^th April this year, less than four weeks before his 94^th birthday. I would like to tell you about them now so that we remember their stories.

The country had been at war for almost four years, when in May 1943, a few months before he turned 18, Dennis decided that he wanted to join up to fight Hitler. The Sergeant Major who saw Dennis at the London Station Recruiting Office, accepted that the young lad in front of him was old enough to serve, and Dennis went off to the West Kent Regiment based at Maidstone. But young Private Hollis was looking for a challenge, so he volunteered for the 12^th Battalion Parachute regiment. After an arduous period of training, which included marching ten miles in two hours in full battle order, Private Hollis was ready for action, and in due course, his unit parachuted into a field near the Rhine on March 24^th 1945, where the enemy was concealed in haystacks. I am grateful to Sidney Lipman, stalwart of Brighton and Hove AJEX for the account of what happened, published in Sussex Jewish News:

Gliders carrying airborne forces had landed on the other side of the Rhine, but a small party of paratroopers was cut off by the enemy, and it was essential to contact them by radio in order to guide them to the main body and also to communicate with Divisional Headquarters some miles away. Unfortunately, the only radio was in a glider some distance away, which the Germans had covered with Spandau fire. Two volunteers went out to try and bring the radio back. One was killed and the other badly injured. Lance Corporal Hollis (a private at the time) then volunteered and succeeded, as the official citation reads, ‘at great personal risk to himself.’ As a result, the small isolated party was guided back to the main body and contact with Divisional Headquarters.

In response to his bravery, Private Hollis was promoted to the rank of Lance Corporal and awarded the prestigious Military Medal. He also received the 1939-1945 Star, the France and Germany Star, the Defence of Britain Medal and the War Medal.

Throughout the remainder of his life, Dennis never lost his soldierly upright bearing: always impeccably turned out and always on time. His experience of being a soldier also taught him to help others, and a regular at the synagogue, while he was still able, Dennis volunteered at the Jewish Day Centre and was always ready to give people lifts and run errands for them.

Unlike Dennis, Warwick, did not say much about his life as a soldier. His daughter Mandy recalled at his funeral that ‘Warwick was the perfect time-keeper; he liked to arrive early for everything.’ But Warwick did not tell his daughter anything about being a Royal Marine during the war, while she was growing up. It was only when they went together in his later years to Bletchley Park and saw an exhibition of World War II ships that Warwick began to tell her about his wartime experiences. And so, Mandy was able to share his story at his funeral. This is what she said:

‘He had signed-up immediately war was declared by lying about his age! Then on his 18^th birthday, 5^th May 1941, he left Avonmouth on his first voyage, an Armed Merchant Ship, the Highland Princess, taking troops to Durban, then onto Buenos Aries. His ship was blown up and sunk in the South Atlantic – Luckily survivors were picked up by an Australian destroyer, Warwick amongst them.

‘His next ship, the fast Isle de France took him to the Middle East. He helped form and train the new combined units of Beach Masters. Later Mountbatten wrote “the success of an operation largely depends on the speed and efficiency with which the (Royal Navy Beach) commandos get their beaches organised to receive the force to be landed.”

‘Warwick was also in Crete, Malta, Sicily and Israel. In Tel Aviv, the Royal Marine 9^th Battalion became a Royal Marine 40 Commando. It was on the beach during the battle at Tobruk that Warwick was injured by shrapnel in his back. During his recovery in 2^nd General Field Hospital in Ismailia he got sent to collect bundles of 100 blankets: In true Warwick fashion, he got them counted – only to find all the bundles contained only 96. You can’t fool the inspector!

‘He then went to Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to an airfield that had been mined – he taught troops how to plot and clear a minefield. The area was criss-crossed by dykes which were full of alligators – another close shave!

‘Warwick moved around the world again, ending up on the Andaman Islands, where he found the last Japanese soldier. Half an hour later he felt his foot wet, and when he took off his boot it was full of blood! He’d been bayoneted in the knee! Luckily, he got moved around before they could amputate his leg, ending up on a hospital ship that took him back to civilian hospital in Colombo. At the end of the war he returned to the UK and was invalided out.’

Proud veterans of the Second World War, Dennis and Warwick also became firm friends, supporting one another with daily phone calls and weekly lunches together. They were both also regulars at our Shabbat morning services – indeed, in his early 80s, Warwick became head of synagogue security, standing at the door on Shabbat mornings. We miss them both deeply. Zichronam livrachah – May their memory be for blessing.

May their memory be for blessing. We say these words every time we recall someone who is no longer with us, reminding ourselves that people live on through us and that we have the responsibility to remember them. The Jewish people specialises in remembrance. As we turn the Torah again and again each year, we remember the liberation of our ancestors from slavery. Remembrance of that foundational narrative is also secured by the blessing of redemption recited at daily evening and morning services, by observance of Shabbat, the sacred seventh day of rest and freedom, and at the Festival of Pesach, Passover. The Torah reading cycle, the liturgy and the festival cycle, all combine to aid our remembrance.

For Jews, remembrance is a commandment. But it is not an end in itself. Repeatedly, in the Torah remembrance of the Exodus is linked to laws concerning our treatment of the stranger. We read, for example, in Mishpatim, the first code of law in the Torah, following the account of Revelation in the Book of Exodus, these two verses. In chapter 22: ‘A stranger you shall not wrong, neither shall you oppress them; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt’.^[1] And then further in chapter 23: ‘A stranger you shall not oppress; for you know the nefesh – the inner-being – of the stranger, since you are strangers in the land of Egypt.’^[2]

Remembrance of events in the past is supposed to guide our actions in the present for the sake of the future. And so, as we focus our remembrance today on the soldiers killed in combat in the First and Second World Wars, and pay tribute to their heroism, courage and self-sacrifice, let us also honour our fallen warriors by challenging tyranny and resolving conflicts without resort to violence, so that we can look forward to a time of which the prophets spoke when: ‘they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks, and learn war no more.’ ^[3]

How wise are these words: People learn to make war, and so we must also learn to make peace. Learning is very hard. We try and we fail, again and again. But we must keep on trying. As we read in Pirkei Avot, the collection of wise aphorisms of the early rabbinic sages, appended to the Mishnah, the first rabbinic code of law, edited around the year 200 CE: ‘It is not for you to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.’^[4]

The challenge before all the nations is clear – and couldn’t be more urgent. The First World War was initially described as ‘the war to end all wars’. The Second World War unleashed even more devastating violence. The dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, while finally forcing the capitulation of the Japanese government, and so bringing an end to the war in the east, simultaneously, presented the world with the terrifying prospect of nuclear war, which, potentially could destroy all life completely.

War in so many different forms continued through the 20th century. Let us remember that century of slaughter and acknowledge that the new century so far has been a time of continuous war, without an end in sight. Ultimately, remembrance must lead to re-membering; to mending and healing. May this sacred day for remembrance inspire us to re-commit ourselves to the task of repairing all the broken parts of our broken world. And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Brighton and Hove AJEX Service

Remembrance Sunday

12^th November 2017 – 23^rd Cheshvan 5778

1. Exodus 22:20. ↑
2. Ex. 23:9. ↑
3. Isaiah 2:4 and Micah 4:3. ↑
4. Pirkei Avot 2:21. ↑