For Refugee Week: God sees the tears of the oppressed

While Nicky’s not been well, I’ve slept in our spare room, where we’ve often hosted guests through the excellent organisation Refugees at Home. This is Refugee Week, and Tuesday was World Refugee Day. I found a small note in that spare room last night. It was post-it size, stuck to the bedside bookshelf so that you could only see

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Hope and purpose: not a dream but a duty

From bitter years and cruel times, from far-off exile in Babylon, the prophet Ezekiel bequeathed us beautiful verses proffering purpose and hope. We read them on this Shabbat Parah, with its focus on purification and renewal. They concern our humanity: ‘I will give you a new heart and put into you a new spirit. I will remove the heart

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If only the Megillah were less relevant

Two verses from the Megillah, the Scroll of Esther, which we read this Saturday night and Sunday, give me strength and hope. But first to the story. How I wish it was irrelevant. But beneath its smiling surface, Esther’s charm and King Achashverosh’s fickle favour, it’s vicious. In two verses Haman, the villain, encapsulates antisemitism’s every trope: the Jews

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‘The world is built on loving kindness:’ is it really so?

Since long before dawn, a verse has been going round and round in my mind like a tune which won’t let go: ‘Olam chesed yibaneh; the world is built on loving kindness.’ Those words are inscribed on the cornerstone of our synagogue. Maybe they’re pursuing me because tomorrow we read in the Torah about the completion of God’s sanctuary.

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