In my Erev Rosh Ha-Shanah sermon I mentioned that the Jewish New Year has many names. Yesterday evening, as we paused in the twilight, my focus was on the New Year as harat olam, the ‘birthday of the world’. This morning, I invite us to think about this day by considering another of its names: […]
Word-lessto expressthe horrorof destructionthe fathomless abysswe read wordsancientrepeatedfor millennia:Eicha?How?we read wordsresistingdenyingthe silencethat admonishes uschallengingour incomprehension.We listen to ourselveschantingwordsthat echoin the silencehopingprayingfor a responsethat will assuagethe silencetransform wordsinto meaning.And sowe forgetagain-and-againthat meaning is wroughtis re-memberedin deedsnot in wordsis held in our handsoutstretchedreachingfor life.Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah
Va-etchannan: Remembering and Re-membering Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah – MPJ E-Bulletin, 24.07.26 This week’s parashah, Va-etchannan (Deuteronomy 3:23-7:11) is the second portion of the book of D’varim, Deuteronomy. Va-etchannan includes the second version of Aseret Ha-Dibbrot, ‘The Ten Utterances’, better known by their designation in Christian Bibles as the ‘Ten Commandments’. While the Deuteronomy version […]
Brighton and Hove Interfaith Contact Group AGM19 April 2026 Brighton and Hove Interfaith Contact Group AGM 19 April 2026 Is interfaith dialogue relevant in troubled times? My response to the question that has been put to us in a nutshell: Interfaith dialogue is essential in troubled times. It is essential for at least four reasons: […]
Chag Ha-Sukkot, ‘The Feast of Tabernacles’ (Leviticus 23:34), also known in biblical times as Chag Ha-Asif, ‘the Feast of Ingathering (Exodus 23:16), became Z’man Simchateinu, the ‘Season of our Rejoicing’ in rabbinic teaching because of the command to ‘rejoice’, reiterated in the Torah (Lev. 23:40; Deuteronomy 16:14). And yet, just five days before Sukkot: Yom […]
The ‘Sabbath of Sabbaths’desecrated at 9.31 am in the midst of morning prayers in a north Manchester suburb it could have been so much worse security volunteers holding-fast the door the arrival of armed police at 9.38 sealing the fate of the attacker still two congregants dead three wounded the rabbi’s white robe stained with […]
Yom Kippur one hallowed day for a reckoning ofall the days of the year crowded with words confessions pleas our souls’ calculations until hollowed out exhaustedfamished emptied of remorse regret we are ready to beginagain. That is the plan but how do we begin again? how can we be relieved of the burdens of the […]
Hinneinu – here we are on Yom Kippur, Shabbat Shabbaton, ‘the Sabbath of Sabbaths’. Whatever our individual motivations for participating in this most sacred day of the Jewish year, in addition to reciting prayers and making collective confession in the first-person plural, one of the most important things we will do together as a congregation […]