Community | HEART AND MIND

04 Jun 2026

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The Judaism We Need Now!

Sticky Post By admin On June 4, 2026

https://jonathanwittenberg.substack.com/api/v1/audio/upload/a17d26f5-ae3c-4747-ab01-880802af005a/src

I was invited to speak about the Judaism we need today for Yom Masorti, last Sunday, and feel so passionately about the subject that afterwards I recorded the gist of what I said.

Janine Stein kindly summarised my words:

The Judaism we need now is a Judaism of community, compassion, justice, truth, and serious commitment, rooted in deep engagement with tradition, while affirming the dignity of all human beings created in God’s image, and the preciousness of all creation. Such a Judaism offers not only resilience in difficult times, but a path towards a more hopeful future for the Jewish People worldwide and for society as a whole.

It is a Judaism that brings strength, joy, hope and purpose. It is a Judaism we need to live by, celebrate and fight for.

21 May 2026

Sticky Post By admin Posted in Community, Ethics Permalink

The Struggle for the Soul of Judaism

Sticky Post By admin On May 21, 2026

‘Like one single person:’ that is how Rashi explained the Torah’s use of the singular verb to describe the Children of Israel when they pitch camp before Mount Sinai. They were ‘of one heart and mind;’ their differences disappeared as they prepared to hear God’s word.

It’s not like that today. These are difficult times. We are conflicted, and our differences matter. While we do our best to stand together against antisemitism and hatred from without, we also face a struggle for the soul of Judaism from within.

We are not at liberty to be silent in that struggle because it concerns the very essence of our Judaism. The issues could not be greater: what kind of Torah do are we receiving at Sinai? What do we believe God is telling us?

This is how Raoul Wootliff, who grew up in our UK Masorti community but has been living in Israel for many years, answered these questions. He had not long beforehand been beaten up by thugs at a rally in support of Tommy Robinson for protesting against his racist values. On this occasion Raoul was addressing a crowd outside the police station in Modi’in where Alex Sinclair (also brought up in our congregation and also for decades in Israel) was detained for wearing a kippah embroidered with both the Israeli and Palestinian flags. This, said Raoul, is what it meant to be a free Jew in Israel:

The right to think. The right to believe. The right to express who we are – even when it is complex, even when it is uncomfortable…especially when it is uncomfortable.

That, he said, ‘is not the struggle of one kind of Jew – It is the struggle of all of us,’ and it shows not weakness but strength.

Alex himself, discharged unceremoniously from the station with the Palestinian flag cut from his kippah, spoke on Israel’s national media: ‘I am a Zionist, a Jewish educator; I have been for years.’ He is also an observant Jew. The two flags represented his hope for a better future.

I’m proud of Alex and Raoul; I admire their courage and commitment whether or not I share all their views. Immersed in Jewish practice, devoted to Israel, guided by Torah, they are dedicated to the dignity of all persons, Jews and non-Jews, to the rule of just, impartial law, to democracy and to hope. These values are as essential for the Judaism of the Diaspora as they are critical for Israel.

This Shavuot I’m taking their words with me to Sinai.

Sadly, I’m also taking the response of former Mossad chief, Tamir Pardo, who said when he witnessed the lawless anarchy underway in the West Bank: “I feel ashamed to be a Jew.” I’ve seen similar scenes for myself and felt likewise. Others, too, have spoken to me about their feelings of shame. I never thought I would hear such words about our compassionate, just, life-affirming, wise and beautiful Jewish heritage.

We can’t push all this aside as ‘not religion but politics.’ We can’t say, either, that this has nothing to do with us in the UK because it’s only about Israel. It impacts us profoundly. It provides ammunition for the constant media and social media fixation on the ethics of parts of Israeli society and some of its leadership. It’s manipulated and twisted into vicious antisemitic hate speech and murderous attacks aimed evilly at any and all Jews. It divides our communities and hearts, and challenges our loyalties.

Painful and severe as these impacts are, they are not my focus here. My concern is that what’s happening is being done in the name of Judaism and that it profanes our religion and our God.

So what then is the Torah I hope to hear at Sinai? There is, of course, no single answer because ‘the Torah has seventy faces,’ and seventy times seventy voices. But here is what I’m listening for, not just at the foot of the mountain, but always.

I seek to hear God’s voice as Rebbe Yehudah Aryeh-Leib Alter of Ger (1847 -1905) described it, when he wrote that, at the words ‘I am your God,’ all creation grew still. Every living being felt: ‘God is speaking to me,’ because God’s spirit is the sacred essence of all life. For all life bears God’s image and is sustained by God’s spirit.

I seek to hear the commandment ‘Don’t take my name in vain’ in the way Maimonides understood it when he wrote, in the Laws of the Foundations of Torah, that sanctifying God’s name means endeavouring to conduct ourselves with empathy, compassion, fairness and humility before everyone.

I want to understand ‘Don’t steal’ and ‘Don’t covet’ not just as the condemnation of robbery and theft, but also through what they imply about the need to work for societies which care for the needs of everyone, as Isaiah proclaimed: ‘If you see the hungry, feed them; the naked, clothe them; the dejected and homeless, give them shelter.’

These are the words of God from Sinai which I seek to follow and understand. From them, I believe, all the commandments, observances and teachings of our religion can be derived. This is my Judaism, by which, with all my failings, I endeavour to live. I believe it is true to, and in line with, the long, faithful, resilient, tradition of Jewish practice, discourse and commitment.

I believe, too, that we urgently need to teach, live by and stand up for this Judaism. The times are fraught and frightening. All the more, therefore, must we not allow this Judaism to be side-lined, delegitimised and silenced.

I believe, further, that this Judaism offers an essential voice not just within, but beyond, our own Jewish communities, out there in this world of growing uncertainly, fear, and indirection, where other, more dangerous, voices are busy seizing the space.

14 May 2026

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A Million Acts of Hope

Sticky Post By admin On May 14, 2026

Today is Day 2 of the week of A Million Acts of Hope. It’s timed to say in the face of the rhetoric of hatred and frustration around us, that there is another way: the path of togetherness and kindness, the path of being there for one another. It’s timed to show at a critical hour that hope, kindness and togetherness are the true heart and soul of Britain,

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Acts of hope are simple; acts of hope can be tough.

Acts of hope are simple as saying ‘Can I help you?’ as making a cup of tea, as bringing the shopping to a friend who’s not well, giving a lift to the man whose wife is in hospital, as picking up litter, as helping in a foodbank. These are examples which stick with me. There’s a coffee stall by a tube station I pass every week, with a box and a small sign: please help pay ahead for people who can’t afford a hot drink.

At the other end of Britain, there’s a row of birdfeeders up a mountain. I met the woman who looks after them and learnt that she travels two hours each way to keep them full and pays for it all herself. Sir David Attenborough, – congratulations, mazal tov, on his hundredth birthday, – would be proud of her.

Acts of hope are as simple as the dinner we shared as Jews, Christians and Muslims together on the eve when the week began. They are as simple as ensuring that those who need it get a seat on a busy tube.

All this is no more than what the Mishnah states: ‘Gemilut Hasadim, acts of kindness, are of immeasurable value.’ We say those words every morning, because we need to live them every day.

Acts of hope can be hard. It’s takes courage to be out there for each other when fears isolate us and angers pull us apart. I respect those across our Jewish communities who stand up and protect us, who support our most vulnerable. I just heard from the The Association of Jewish Refugees how traumatised some of those they care for are by the resurgent antisemitism around us. I’ve listened to what Jewish, and some non-Jewish, students face for so much as mentioning Israel, or just for being Jewish. I respect and appreciate the Christian and Muslim leaders who’ve spoken out publicly against Jew hatred, standing with us at rallies, praying with us in our synagogues.

Acts of hope can be tough. I admire my fellow Jews, young leaders among them, who show clearly that standing against hatred directed at us means standing against hatred targeted at others, Muslims, minorities, everyone made vulnerable by hate speech around us. Hate travels. Hate for one group leads to hate for others. That is why we must stand up for each other. We cannot condone by our silence the rhetoric of contempt against refugees. We must not spread over it the mantle of acceptability. That’s not only because we were refugees once. It’s because of what Hillel said two thousand years ago: ‘If I am not for myself, who am I? But if I am only for myself, what am I?’ We’ve cited often enough Pastor Niemoller’s famous words: ‘When they came for the communists, I did nothing, because I wasn’t a communist… When they came for me… We know the conclusion.

There’s something harder still about true acts of hope. This is summed up by the epigram in the Dhammapada: ‘Hate is not conquered by hate. Hate is conquered by love. This is a law eternal.’ (1:5) In Jewish terms, it’s the truth that sinat hinam, pointless hate, must ultimately be overcome by ahavat chinam, loving kindness that seeks no reward.

The challenge this takes us to is how can we avoid hating the haters and, in so doing, allowing hate to become part of ourselves. It’s hard to find a good answer. But perhaps what this means is that we have to try to understand where the anger and frustration come from that lead to hatred and contempt. This may prove futile; it may help with nothing. But it asks us at least to try to cross divisions, to hear stories we find it hard to hear. If we ask ourselves: ‘Where is the hope in that?’ the answer might be that, maybe, just maybe, just sometimes, in listening we will learn of the fears and hurts in others and uncover a commonality deeper than everything that divides us. This is exemplified by the Families Forum, the community of Israeli and Palestinian parents who’ve lost children and relatives in the violence, yet who have found each other despite everything, and in so doing have also discovered comradeship, solace and even brotherly and sisterly love.

In these troubled times, I imagine God asking me a question. Perhaps it’s not imagination but the truth. It’s the oldest of God’s questions, the one God asked Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden: ‘Where are you? Where’ve you been?’ I hear that question like this: Why aren’t you there when people are struggling? Why aren’t you standing alongside people who’re afraid? Why aren’t you listening? Why don’t you care more deeply for nature, for all the community of the more-than-only-human world? From what are you hiding, when there is so much to strive for in this wounded world?

The answer does not lie in trying to do a million acts of hope. It rests in doing just one, or five, or ten, of those acts of kindness, solidarity, care and commitment that bind us to our family, community, neighbours, and, beyond them to everyone who truly cares, of all faiths and none, across the great community of life. It means committing ourselves to such acts not as a once-off in a special week but regularly, because they form the core of who we are. In so doing, we become part of a society committed not just to one single million acts of hope, but to millions and millions of acts of hope, so much so that such acts define who we are as human beings, as a country, as people of faith before the God of all life.

Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg

*A Million Acts of Hope https://millionactsofhope.org/

is supported by Hope not Hate, https://hopenothate.org.uk

who create ‘a platform for ordinary people to do the extraordinary,’ and by The Good Faith Partnership

https://goodfaith.org.uk

who ‘connect businesses, governments, charities, philanthropists, foundations and communities… around a common vision: the power of people working together to bring about lasting change.’

You can go to

https://millionactsofhope.org

to thank the helpers and doers and be inspired by what they’re achieving.

And you can sign the card which reads:

‘You are the beating hearts of our villages, towns and cities. And because hate can seem louder than hope these days, we have never needed you more.’

Signed, The hopefuls

01 May 2026

Sticky Post By admin Posted in Community Permalink

After the Stabbings

Sticky Post By admin On May 1, 2026

I had so wanted to write something different!

‘Not on the outside door; on the inside entrance,’ pleads a friend who lives far from other Jewish people. We’re discussing where to place the mezuzah, the small parchment scroll with the instruction ‘You shall Love your God’ which marks the doorposts of Jewish homes.

Photo by Sebastian Pena Lambarri on Unsplash

Many Jews feel acutely vulnerable and unsafe. The stabbings of two Jewish men in Golders Green follows the fire-bombing of three ambulances just down the road, and the attempted arson against two London synagogues and a Jewish charity. It’s only months since the murders in the Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester during prayers on the holiest day of the Jewish year. It’s not surprising that the community feels anxious about attending communal events. Parents hold their children’s hands more tightly when taking them to synagogues and Jewish schools. Some are afraid of sending them.

‘We’re terrified,’ a student tells me: ‘One in five other students refuse to share a house with us because we’re Jewish.’ Students are attacked verbally and sometimes threatened physically. Virulent anti-Jewish hate speech has become commonplace not just on social media, but in many workplaces, and on the street. Antisemitism has become normalised, a colleague says. If the issue is, ‘Is it out of control in the UK?’ the answer is ‘Yes.’

The question: ‘Will there be further attacks?’ seems not about ‘if’ but ‘when’. The phrase ‘Shocked but not surprised’ has become standard when we’re asked how we feel after yet another outrage. As one colleague put it, if you call during marches for the globalisation of the Intifada, you can’t be surprised when it comes to London. Aspects of those marches have rightly led to them being under review. Hate speech leads to hate acts, creating the climate in which they become not just inevitable, but to some even acceptable, perhaps desirable.

The discourse about Israel has sharpened everything. Clear criticisms of specific policies of its government are legitimate and shared by many Jews, including myself. But the persistent demonisation of the country is not. Such constant and vehement attacks have not been directed at any other country. Nor is it in any way right to use Israel as a pretext to go after the Jewish community of the UK, or anywhere else. Such behaviour is simply antisemitism under another guise.

The attacks over the last weeks have justly been described by the government as acts of terror which threaten the national security of Britain. Jewish leaders have long called on the government to ban the IRGC. Evidence may point to other cells of hostile states. The threat level against this country has been raised to ‘severe.’

But the perils for the UK are broader. The main targets now are Jews, but hatred is also impacting Muslim communities, refuges and more. As British Jews, we feel for all victims of hate. Hate travels through society, a moral infection, undermining the classic qualities which we like to think of as characterising Britain: mutual respect, tolerance, inclusion and liberty.

That is why the solution to antisemitism does not lie only in better policing, necessary as this sadly currently is. The extra funding announced today for the protection of Jewish communities is welcome.

It’s an urgent issue for all levels of government. Clear guidelines are required on what constitutes hate speech and incitement, and they must be enforced. Intentions without follow-up cause only frustration. Words are inadequate; the community needs to see action from the top and down.

But antisemitism and all forms of hatred are also an essential concern for the whole of society. We must strengthen interfaith and communal relationships. We need to reconsider how we talk to each other when we’re together and, even more importantly, how we talk about each other when we’re not together. Those responsible for community and workspaces, in the fields of education, health, the media, the arts and all civic institutions, need to manage those spaces in ways that allow discourse to be open, yet respectful. None of this can be achieved quickly.

Yet there are immediate signs of a deeper appreciation of the need for togetherness. The women’s walk in Golders Green for those of all faiths and none, held just a day after the stabbings, was a touching indication. It will be important to see the presence of all the organisations who oppose every form of racism standing in solidarity with the Jewish community at the rally planned for May 10.

Meanwhile, though deeply anxious, the Jewish community remains vigilant and strong.

Judaism is a history of resilience and faithfulness. Two thousand years ago, Rabbi Akiva was asked if he would abandon teaching Torah in public because the Romans had made it too dangerous. He answered with a parable. A fox was watching fishes trying to evade the fishermen’s nets. ‘Come out and play with me on dry land,’ he invited them; ‘you’ll be safer up here.’ ‘No,’ said the fishes. ‘Water is our environment. It may be risky in our rivers, but it’ll only be worse if we leave them.’

Torah is the life-sustaining environment for Jews. Far from abandoning it, we remain committed and resilient and hold its teachings even closer in our communities and hearts.

This piece was originally published in The Independent.

10 Apr 2026

Sticky Post By admin Posted in Community, Ethics, Spirituality Permalink

Strength in Compassion, and Compassion within Strength

Sticky Post By admin On April 10, 2026

It’s hard to find hope and resilience in difficult days. That’s true, whether times are tough because of personal struggles, because of what’s happening in the world around us, or because of both at the same time. ‘Where’s the hope?’ is not just a question others ask me almost daily, but one I ask myself when inspiration seems as elusive as an alchemist’s search for the magic stone. The prayers put it bluntly: ‘What is our life? Our kindness? Our fairness? Our strength?’ Basically, what’s the point?

I get help from the mystical interpretation of the Counting of the Omer. To explain, the Omer is a dry measure, in this case of barley, and the ‘Counting of the Omer’ is the enumeration, day by day and week by week, of the seven weeks of harvest connecting Pesach with Shavuot. This represents the journey from Egypt to Sinai, from ‘freedom from’ to what that freedom is for. The period includes the grief of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Memorial Day; the heartache of Yom HaZikaron, the Memorial Day for the dead in Israel’s wars and conflicts; and the hopes, fears, and anguish connected with Yom Ha’Atzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day. It’s not a simple stretch of time.

But what engaged the mystics was neither harvest nor history. Rather, they understood the Omer as a journey of the spirit ever deeper into the heart of the sacred. They devoted each of the seven weeks to one of the sacred qualities with which they understood all creation to be imbued. They dedicated the first week to Hesed, lovingkindness, and the second to Gevurah, strength. Within each week, they attributed a special quality to each day. Thus, the second day of week one is Gevurah shebaHesed, strength within love, while the first day of week two is Hesed shebiGevurah, love within strength.

Strength within love, love within strength: these challenging combinations grip me. How does one retain compassion in a brutal world? When power and force dominate, how does one still find space for kindness and love? What’s it worth, in a bombed-up world?

Then I remember: I’m writing at a cafe two doors down from where a man from Beirut, who asked not to be named, prayed with me not just for his own family, but “for everyone, whoever they are, whichever side of the border they are, that we may live together in peace.”

That’s loving kindness, despite power and conflict.

I remember, too, the carer who told me how she keeps going while looking after an elderly woman who constantly tells her exactly what to do, criticises her loudly if she fails to comply to the letter but never saying ‘thank you.’ ‘I go far down into myself. I find the inner pool of love. It’s hard to go deep enough sometimes, but the stream that feeds it never runs completely dry. Even when I can’t feel it, I know it’s flowing into my heart.’ That’s strength within love.

I remember, also, how when I opened my emails there was a video about the power of music: wildlife wardens were singing to orphaned elephants to comfort them after poachers killed their mothers and the ‘little ones’ came and let themselves be stroked.

Then I look out into the garden and recall the blessing we said over fruit trees earlier in this month of Nissan. I think of the Ukrainian family whose orchard was bombed, but who’ve planted a plum and a cherry tree in pots on their London balcony. It’s a small but significant fight back: ‘We may be uprooted, but our faith in life will be replanted.’

I realise that all around are people who find strength within love and the love to remain strong and I’m moved, inspired and restored.

20 Mar 2026

Sticky Post By admin Posted in Community, Environment Permalink

If Only I Could Do More…Why I’m Running the London Marathon

Sticky Post By admin On March 20, 2026

May God protect your coming home and going out, now and always.

May God protect those we love, and everyone, in these frightening times!

I’m training for the London Marathon, trying to build the physical and mental stamina to manage those 26+ miles. I’ll be running for Israel Guide Dogs and for TreeAid.

It’s an impossible choice. I wish I could also run for World Jewish Relief, with its amazing support for Ukraine; for The New Israel Fund, with its hope-oriented work for a peaceful shared future; for Crisis, which cares deeply for the homeless, for Camp Simcha which offers respite to unwell children and their families, for some of those amazing NGOs across the world which give medical help, support refugees, provide havens for abused people, rescue hurt and terrified animals, restore rainforests and save plants and birds from extinction.

I wish I could do something for all those so-called ‘ordinary’ special people, in Israel, Lebanon, Iran, Ukraine, everywhere, who just want to get on with caring for their family, helping their friends, having a life. I wish we could stop those terrible wars and find better ways into the future. But I can’t. So this is the tiny bit I can do.

And this is why I’ve chosen these two organisations. Israel Guide Dogs is because I love humans and dogs, and care about my people. The Israel Guide Dog Centre offers dogs to everyone, whatever their faith. They train the amazing dogs who bring confidence and independence to people who’ve lost, or never had, their sight. They upskill trauma and PTSD support dogs, and companion dogs for children. These wonderful animals have a capacity for faithfulness, love, attentiveness and affection we humans cannot match. They don’t bear grudges, argue back, or let you down. They’re there whenever, with their loving hearts. When people have been through hell, when torment pursues them in nightmares, and doesn’t go away when the dawn comes, that wag of a tail, nudge of a head, tap with paw, lick on the ear, means everything.

I’m running for TreeAid, because I love people and trees and all the life and hope they bring. TreeAid works across Africa: ‘We believe people and trees are deeply connected. Trees are a lifeline, vital for survival, resilience and opportunity.’ Shea trees produce nuts from which butter is made, enabling women to have an income, their children to go to school, the soil to retain water and regain fertility, the birds to come back. TreeAid is part of the vast project of planting a twenty-kilometre-wide belt of forest across Africa to hold back the Sahara from expanding its creeping desolation. This is essential for people, children, climate, insects, animals, the very liveability of the planet. Ultimately, it’s about the future of us all.

Image gallery showing Ethiopia in the 1980s featuring: two women tending to tree seedlings in a nursery; a landscape shot of Ethiopian highlands; a group of children standing beside trees; two men tending to tree seedlings.

God willing, I’ll be doing the London Marathon MyWay. It’s definitely a better name than the previous ‘Virtual Marathon’ which suggested sitting at home watching others toil. MyWay means you choose your own route, so long as you run on the correct date, 26 April, and use the official tracker which measures your distance. It’s a wonderful app, talking to you every half mile with just the right amount of encouragement: ‘David’s running for cancer research; listen why;’ ‘You’re tired, but you’re halfway; think of everyone cheering you on;’ ‘Mile 18 is dedicated to fighting racism.’

Meanwhile, alongside training, I’m gathering examples for A Million Acts of Hope week, (https://millionactsofhope.org/) a nationwide, all-faiths-and-communities plan to change the narrative of this country and show that the vast majority of people are not about hate, but friendship, neighbourliness and caring.

I feel so helpless and useless in this world at war. But that’s not going to stop me from doing the little that I can.

Shabbat Shalom, and Happy Eid to all my Muslim friends and colleagues

Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg

Please support my 2026 London Marathon fundraising at Israel Guide Dog Centre UK and Tree Aid

If you love dogs and trees – and people – please share this piece!

05 Mar 2026

Sticky Post By admin Posted in Community, Environment, Israel Permalink

This Springtime, This War

Sticky Post By admin On March 5, 2026

I don’t understand.

The world is so beautiful. The world is so full of horrors. Life is so precious, so treasured. Life is so cheap, so brutalised. I can’t be the only person who struggles, uncomprehending, with these contradictions.

Here’s a glimpse into our gorgeous garden: rhododendrons I’ve loved since childhood in Scotland, when I put the fallen trumpet flowers, full of rain, like thimbles on my fingers.

Here’s to the apricot which blossoms so early that the March frost sometimes ruins it. Could this be a glut year, with so much fruit that my jam-making friends can collect ten jars’ worth? If so, I’ll bottle some too, remembering my father’s aunt Sophie who loved her fruit garden but perished in Auschwitz.

See the pink flowers of the copper beech reaching into the sky. Soon they’ll be followed by red-brown leaves.

The birds are serenading the sunshine and its time to put out soft wool as additional lining for their nests. In a month we’ll say in The Song of Songs ‘The call of the turtle dove is heard in the land.’ That bird is almost extinct in Britain, but I met a small-holder who’s breeding them until they can be released and make their return, such love people have for life.

And such is the contempt for life: the hatred that makes its own leaders murder tens, hundreds, of thousands of their own people; the rhetoric of success that makes no place in its heart for the hundreds of innocent people who die as ‘collateral damage.’ Meanwhile millions spend their days and nights in resigned exhaustion in safe rooms and bomb-shelters, if they have any. My heart goes out to them, in Israel and everywhere.

And yet it’s not simple. Evil and cruelty cannot be ignored. They can’t be left to stockpile forever; stockpiles are never just for show. Might there be, or have been, better ways of confronting them? How can we truly know?

Then, too, there is the immense courage of those called to risk their lives in fighting. This, also, must be recognised, especially by those of us currently far from danger.

Who can see where all this will go? ‘Humanity must perforce prey on itself like monsters of the deep:’ those lines from Shakespeare stick in my head, – except that sea-monsters don’t cause so much damage or risk the lives of everything.

What does one take from all this? Cynicism? Hopelessness? No! That’s not the way of the human spirit, certainly not the Jewish way. Love of life is too strong; the need to care is too compelling; the roots of compassion go down too deep.

Even in wartime, we must honour and cherish life with as much respect and mercy, and in whatever situation and manner, we can. We must not let our heart be shrunk, our soul extinguished, our compassion exhausted, or our eyes be blinded to beauty and blessing.

Back in April I went to the Iranian supermarket where I sometimes shop. ‘Your friends in Tehran?’ I asked the women at the checkouts. ‘They’re OK. Yours in Tel Aviv?’ ‘OK,’ I answered. ‘Thank God,’ they said. ‘Thank God,’ I said. I must go there again. We long, together, for freedom, peace and life.

27 Feb 2026

Sticky Post By admin Posted in Community Permalink

Two Reasons Why I am Passionate About Masorti Judaism

Sticky Post By admin On February 27, 2026

The Installation in Oldenburg

Last Sunday I was privileged to officiate alongside Rabbi Bea Weiler at the installation of two outstanding rabbis, Rabbi Levi Ufferfilge and Rabbi Netanel Olhoeft, in Oldenburg, North Germany, where once Samson Raphael Hirsch wrote his famous Nineteen Letters, encouraging in the warmest of terms return to Jewish practice.

This open-hearted community, which covers 9,000 square kilometres, embraces people from Israel, Russia, Ukraine, survivors of the Shoah, and children who grew up in DP camps. The rabbis bring together pupils who are often the only Jewish students in their class, offering essential support and solidarity in these cruel times of rising antisemitism. And, added Rabbi Levi, All the municipalities, religious communities, schools, parties etc. in this huge area approach them for interreligious and memorial events.

But he and Rabbi Netanel rightly want Judaism to be about far more than remembering the Shoah, essential as that is, and combatting antisemitism. It must be filled with simchah shel mitzvah and simchat chaim, joy in the commandments and joy in life. That is certainly what I experienced as a guest of the community.

Masorti Judaism, led by committed rabbis and practised in warm-hearted communities which combine deep engagement in Judaism together with a humanist vision embracing the dignity of people of all faiths, is essential today. From within our ancient tradition, which teaches love of God, neighbour and stranger, we must challenge the pernicious narrowness of unconstrained nationalism and resurgent populism. We are committed, in the words of last week’s Torah portion, to creating a dwelling place for God, sanctified through offering a safe, respectful and restorative spiritual home for people of all faiths and for all life together.

To Whom the Kotel Belongs

When he dedicated the Temple in Jerusalem, Solomon prayed that God would hear the supplications of all Israel in times of trouble, that God would listen to the outpourings of the soul of every Jew and respond to the petitions ‘of the stranger who comes from afar.’ ‘God,’ he prayed, ‘Hear from Your dwelling place in the Heavens, forgive, and grant to each person according to their ways, for You know their heart.’ (1 Kings 8)

Isaiah spoke similarly two-and-a-half centuries later, in words we say to this day: ‘My House [says God] shall be a place of prayer for all peoples.

Yet men and women who wish to pray together today, who do not want to be divided by the partition that separates the sexes in the huge plaza in front of the Kotel, currently have to locate a different entrance and follow a path with many steps and turns down to a remote and broken corner of the wall. In truth, I have never resented this, but much preferred that quiet space among the huge stones, many still lying where they fell during the Roman destructions in 70 CE. Here, you can listen to the birds calling out like the music of an India raga, piercing the heart, accompanying and deepening our human prayers.

But now the motion has been put before the Knesset that orthodox bodies alone should have complete authority over the entire area, which would make freedom of worship at this most iconic of places impossible. What would King Solomon, what might Isaiah, think of this? Those who seek total domination over God space, generally seek control over everything else as well, justice, dignity and who is, or is not, worthy of consideration and compassion.

Given the current balance of powers, there is every chance that the process before the Knesset might succeed, though from across the world we must oppose it in every peaceful way we can.

But we should also remember this: that, in truth, God’s spaces can never be governed by partisan and discriminatory human authority. God’s breath gives life to in every person; it breathes in every heart and every living being. This was the Psalmist’s conclusion, at the close of 150 poems: ‘Let every breath praise God!’ Who is going to manage to control that? No one. For the sacred breath of life remains holy, whatever life it inhabits. It will not be strangled, and its songs and prayers cannot and shall not be suppressed.

06 Feb 2026

Sticky Post By admin Posted in Community, Holocaust, Spirituality Permalink

In the week when we read the Ten Commandments in the Torah

Sticky Post By admin On February 6, 2026

In that moment when the words ‘I am your God’ were spoken, the whole world fell silent, all creation stood still and listened. Every living being felt: ‘These words are spoken to me.’ Everything in nature realised: ‘This is my inner essence; this is who I truly am.’

This beautiful explanation, by Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh-Leib Alter of Ger, takes us far beyond the understanding of the first of the Ten Commandments as a statement of religious dogma. Rather, it is the truth at the heart of all life: whoever I am, in whatever way I frame my identity, – Jew, continental, American, Russian, gardener, teacher, parent, teen – there is a deeper reality to me. That truth flows through me and through all things constantly, almost always unrecognised and unnamed, but without it I would have no breath and my heart would not beat. That truth is the sacred vitality, the divine energy, which imparts life to all that is. In that moment when God spoke, not just down from Mount Sinai but upwards from the depths of all being, this truth surged to the fore and, for one inerasable moment, united all consciousness in the one awareness: this is my God, the ‘I’ which is the core of all being and is the deepest reality of all that exists.

That moment of revelation at Sinai may or may not be historical, but it certainly is eternal, universal and all-encompassing. Only, it flows deep down and concealed, well below the loud, unceasing, constantly chafing, frequently brutal, experience of our everyday world. Noise and violence drown it out. But they cannot negate it or render it untrue. We continue to hear it, if only rarely; we to intuit it in those moments when we fall silent and not just our mind but our heart comprehends: we belong to one life you and I, fellow traveller, fellow human, fellow being, bird, sheep, tree.

Yet, despite this teaching, I find myself thinking over and again of a very different commentary on the Ten Commandments, by my much-missed teacher Rabbi Hugo Gryn. In Chasing Shadows he writes of his experience in concentration camps:

‘In the intervening years I have often thought how Auschwitz-Birkenau was the denial and the perversion of all the Ten Commandments. In that Nazi empire…it was clear that:

I. God was replaced by a Fuehrer and his minions who claimed for themselves the power of life and death.

II. They fashioned for themselves idols of silver and gold and filled their world with the sigh of swastikas, the sound of Heil Hitler and the smell of burning corpses.

VI. Murder was at the heart of that culture, and killers were promoted and honoured.’

This is what can happen when we forget the sacred ‘I’ which is the heart of all life and by virtue of which all life is precious and must, in all its individuality and diversity, be recognised and respected. How different that ‘I’ is from the ‘I, not you’; the ‘I have no place for you,’ the ‘ego-nationalism,’ exclusionism and racism at the core of the worst of populist politics. How different from those tyrannical ‘I’s’ in our current world, eager to take up weapons and kill.

I fear this rise of violence and contempt, whoever it is directed against: refugees, fellow Jews, Muslims, non-Brits, nature, life itself. That is why it is so important, essential beyond anything words can convey, to listen to that voice which speaks from Sinai and, as Rabbi Yehaudah Aryeh-Leib taught, to recognise it, be silent, and know.

02 Feb 2026

Sticky Post By admin Posted in Community, Spirituality Permalink

5786 Shabbat Shirah – The Shabbat of Song

Sticky Post By admin On February 2, 2026

Singing abides deep in the intrinsic nature of existence. It cannot be alienated.

In the dark times, will there also be singing?
Yes, there will be singing.
About the dark times.
~ Bertold Brecht

That is why the authors, whoever they were, who composed Perek Shirah, ‘The Chapter of Song,’ were not satisfied that the ancient Mishnaic texts which reached them should speak only of law and ethics. For beneath even the basic, essential truths that address the will and conscience, they sensed a further depth of consciousness, an awareness of the sacred, and that consciousness sings. Not only, therefore, did they compose their chapter in its honour, but it seems they backdated pseudepigraphically it to that core creative rabbinic period of the first and second centuries of our epoch, as if to say: This is not only equally as valid and as holy, as necessary to the life of the spirit as keeping the Sabbath, or proclaiming ‘God is one’: it is, in fact, the true meaning of ‘God is one,’ the truth that nourishes all subsequent truth, the essence of being itself. Hence, they understood that not an orb, nor a whale in the ocean, nor a bird, nor a human soul in its journey across the span of life, but will, sometimes even unknown to itself, be susceptible to song.

Song may be bleak and painful. The other prisoners, tortured by the Apartheid regime in South Africa’s jails, would sing, whether from horror, fear or solidarity, while their fellow victims of the regime, innocent as they themselves were except for protesting the tyranny of their government, were taken for execution. And today, the priests, rabbis, imams and population of Minnesota and elsewhere who stand against the extra-judicial murders of their townsfolk, sing. Song is indefatigable in its protest.

The poets and musicians may themselves be killed; those who hate freedom will continue to seek them out and murder them, but their poetry and songs cannot be put to death:

You took away all the oceans and all the room.
You gave me my shoe-size in earth with bars around it.
Where did it get you? Nowhere.
You left me my lips, and they shape words, even in silence.
~ Osip Mandelstam

And even when those lips can no longer make words, – Stalin had Mandelstam exiled and he died in transit – the words they shaped continued to be learnt by heart, whispered while tyranny reigns, but sung when freedom returns.

For there exists a deeper music to which the human soul, and the spirit of every being, responds. This music belongs to no one, which is why it cannot be locked away. It is the vibrancy, the rhythm and resonance of life itself, of infinity, of God if you will, of the sacred energy as it flows through all creation, through everything that exists. Only the hard heart cannot hear it; that is why the cruel in spirit persecute those who can.

It is this song, taught Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh-Leib of Ger, that the Children of Israel sang when Pharaoh was defeated, not on account of his death, but from the joy of liberty. And in their own song of freedom, they sung the freedom song of all creation. For the Torah says: ‘They sung this song,’ but to what does this refer? he asks, rejecting the obvious answer that it refers to the words which follow in the text. No, he insists, this points to the song that has existed from the moment of creation, the music which is present but concealed in all things, and which although so often unheard, is the invisible essence and source of energy of all that exists. It is the song of the earth ‘from whose corners we hear music;’ of the trees of the forest which clap their hands and dance, and of the wild geese, pulsing forth in honks and powerful wingbeats as they traverse the sky: ‘A voice calls out in desolate places: make straight the pathway through the wilderness for God.’ It is the song which shall be sung in the time to come, when the world is redeemed.

Is this true? One doesn’t hear such music in the headlines about brutality, murder, injustice, contempt and incitement to hatred that fill the virtual realms of social media and the press. There is little if any testament to such music in the reports from witnesses to mass killing, secret murder, torture, sadism, lying, deceit and pretence, a literature so vast and horrible that it’s unbearable to contemplate for long, but which must also be heard and heeded. Song, or sob, which is the deeper reality? The answer must be both, or else we too will join the heartless throng.

But the singing remains, inalienable, even when inaudible. For it derives from a source which flows deeper and sustains life more truly than the selfishness, fear, envy and anger, the failure of compassion and imagination, which shrink the heart.

And were it not for this singing, humanity would have no hope.