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
Facing my retirement with complex feelings
As I near the end of my time as Senior Rabbi of my Synagogue I feel complex emotions. I am deeply grateful for the wonderful New North London community and the hundreds of people who have enriched my life. I feel loss, bewilderment, and uncertainty about my future. But I don’t doubt my decision to retire, and have every
EcoShabbat 2025: The love and the fear
I went to bed on Wednesday night unable to get the chorus from Beethoven’s Ninth out of my head.We’d just held our EcoJudaism vigil in Parliament Square, timed for the start of COP 30. Rabbis from every denomination, including the Chief Rabbi, were there (you don’t often see us all together) and children from Alma school. Nearby, a group
The Spirituality of Creation – a Jewish approach
‘Upon Three Things the World Stands:’ Simon the Just says confidently that the world stands on three things. But how securely does our world actually stand today? Given the climate and nature crisis, can we still take it for granted that, in the words of Ecclesiastes, ‘Generations come and go, but the world stands firm forever’? This essay, added