First week at school and a very busy weekend.

I have completed my first week of my fourth year and I have to stay that I am very upbeat about my courses, there is a good range of classes covering a good mixture between vocational/practical and purely academic. Last week was a little disrupted because of the festivals, but now the HHD season is finally and fully over I can get on with normal work under a normal schedule.

On Wednesday I had lunch in the NNLS succah and on Thursday I returned there for the evening service, and then it was the weekend which as it turned out was rather busy. On Friday I headed down to KLS, where I shall be spending my 4th year placement, this was just to do some legal/adminestive  things.

I then returned to Central London and went to the Routes (LJ) supper-club which was great. Good company (more people than usual), interesting Torah and wonderful food. Then on Saturday I went to Finchley Progressive Synagogue (it was a Bat-Mitzvah) so very busy. Sunday I went to LJ Educational Networking seminar which was very interesting and one of the first times that I represented KLS formally.

I am, I have to say, rather tired. But I am nevertheless looking forward to the first uninterrupted week at school.

New School Year

On Monday a New School Year will start my fourth at rabbinical-school, and I think I am, for the first time entirely upbeat and positive.  I am really looking forward to it my classes which looking manageable if challenging and my practical placement.  Although looking forward to school starting is normal for me, there had to be a reason after all that I lingered in the groves of academe as long as I did. It was not however, how I have experienced rabbinical-school. My first semester was engulfed in chaos, see the blog for 2010 if you are interested. And although I was settled and looking forward to restarting school for my second semester it was defiantly tinged with sorrow that my YII was drawing to a close and I would soon be parted from Israel and so many great friends with whom I had shared the most life changing (and best so far) year of my life.
My second year got off to a rough start too and I was sufficiently unhappy that it clouded my fourth semester as well. I think looking back that I was probably depressed (and because I didn't know it I was getting treatment).
And although I was more settled in my third year I cannot say I was every really really looking forward to my work and classes restarting.
But things are different now, I am impatient for it to start, and I am feeling up-beat so much so that I am certain that the little things that go wrong (as is certain to happen from time to time) will be a source of humour and colour in my life rather than big deals.

On Friday I had a meeting with my new personal trainer, all part of the get healthy campaign. I also discovered a rather interesting leftwing book shop and came away with a couple of books.

So far succot has been pleasant, and although I don't have a succah (first floor flat and all that) I do have a lulav and Etrog.

The project for Limmud is all but done. Part of my activities for tomorrow are making another view of it. I am meeting up with Matthew, Mandy, Ali and prahapes someother friends tomorrow afternoon/evening.

All is basically well.

Yom Kippur sermon two

Yom Kippur Morning 2013

Rabbi Mordecai Yosef Leiner (1801-1854), the Ishbitzer Rebbe, was a radical, idiosyncratic and indeed iconoclastic thinker and Hasidic teacher. He was the most novel thinker to emerge from the most radical school of hasidic thought, that of Kotzk-Przysuch, sometimes referred to as 'the Polish-School'

The Ishibitzer was a colleague-disciple of Kotzker Rebbe, more often known as Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk (1787-1859). Rabbi Mendel of Kotzk was in turn the disciple of Simcha Bunim of Peshisha (1765-1827). Together these three great teachers provided leadership to this most innovative of hassidic communities. After the deaths of the Ishbitzer in 1854 and Rabbi Mendel in 1859, the radicalism of their movement ceased and it became like any other hasidic dynasty. Indeed by the middle of the 19^th century the early light and fire of the hasidic movement had largely gone out.

But for a while, maybe as much as sixty years, the hasidic school of Kotzk-Przysuch was radical indeed. Somewhat anti-nominal these three leaders, and their hasidim were concerned more with the deeper meanings of the halakhah than with a minute details of its extremities. They were also radical in liturgical terms as well making alterations to the siddur and attempting to really pray the prayers (a concern shared by other early hasidic groups as well).

There teachings are challenging, not so much because they are intellectually difficult but because of what the implications are. It is not by chance that many of the sayings of these three teachers are recorded in both Liberal and Reform prayer books. But their teachings are not just challenging, they also reflect the personal challenges these three teachers faced, ones that were reflected in contemporary and latter western philosophy and philosophers, such as Soren Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and latter the existentialist.

All three, Rabbi Simcha Bunim of Peshisha, the Kotzker, and the Ishbitzer face problems of Jewish life and Judaism which are all too recognisable to us today. Rabbi Simcha Bunim, for example, was trained as a pharmacist, wore western dress and even attended treater performances. He was very concerned with how an authentic and meaningful Jewish life could be continued in the modern-world, his successor the Kotzker was also concerned with authenticity although in his writings his concern with authenticity has been transformed into a burning concern with אמת truth. For Rabbi Menachem Morgensztern anything short of the complete truth was falsehood and tantamount to idolatry.

What we have of the writings of all three of these teachers is from their students, they wrote nothing first had themselves. While the records of Simcha Bunim and the Kotzker are short and in a simply (very easily accessible style) those of the Ishbitzer recorded in the two volumes of the Mei HaShiloach are couched in complex language and though the prism of kabbalah and kabbalistic metaphor. Although unsurprisingly in the hands of the Ishbitzer familiar kabbalistic concepts take on new (and sometimes radically different meanings).  

This is the most palpable feeling I took away from studying some of his writings, the sense of the 'shock of the old'.

In his re-reading of Biblical Narratives, characters who are normally presented negatively, Esau, Zimri (whom you may remember was stabbed though the loans by Pinchas) and indeed others.

Such a radical re-taling of Biblical narratives from an unusual perspective is both useful and I would say necessary because familiarity the feeling that we remember what the Bible says, or what we think it says.

Can blind us to what it actually has to say to us, here and now. Familiarity does indeed bread contempt.

On Rosh HaShanah we are unlikely to hear the radical theological challenge of the Akadah, because we have hard it read so many times and know before we even start that in the end God will intervene and Isaac will not be sacrificed.

Today's Torah reading(s) also offer the challenge of familiarity parts of readings at least will be familiar, or even very familiarly from the liturgy both traditional parts and, indeed new parts in Liberal and Reform prayer books. Parts might even be familiar from popular culture such as the opening monolog of Transporting.

But wether our reading is familiar or less familiar it still carries a powerful and radical message. One addressed both to the individual, but also to the community to which that individual (that we belong). A message of the conditionality of the covenant, but a message that reassures that not only is power to act within our hands it is within our very being.

God begins his address to the Israelites, though Moses by saying, You (in the plural) and then listing the types of people, in summary Everyone was there. Then there is a rather unusual verse:

 And not only with you do I make this sworn covenant, but with those who are standing here with us       today before the Eternal One our God, and equally with those who are not here with us today.

The classical commentators ask, reasonably enough if everyone was standing before God, who are these others? And one of the answers offered is that they are future generations, us included.

 Just as during Passover and the Sader the individual is meant to feel 'as if', they personally had been redeemed from Egypt.

 

Here too, the individual can (maybe even should) feel as if the choice of entering into the covenant, or not had been set before them.

 No, it is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it.

 

And as Simcha Bunim and the Kotzker would have argued it is a personal and personally authentic covenant.

On the subject of Teshuvah (repentance) the Ishbitzer was again unusual in his thinking he did not really think of sins as a problem. For him what was the real problem was the belief that once you had sinned that was that. Indeed for the Ishbitzer this was Adam Harisson's sin. Not eating from the tree, not blaming eve but the belief that once he had sinned that was it.

Again as our reading this Yom Kippur reminded us, the ability for returning is within us all.

 Gamar Hatimah Tovah.

 

Yom Kippur sermon one

Exit Though the Gift-shop

The architecture of many museums, art galleries, and other places of artistic or cultural significance is often configured in such away that at the end of a tour or visit, before leaving and returning to the world beyond the gallery's door, one passes though the gift-shop. This commercialisation of culture is of very necessary from the perspective of the individual institution, as it is though such commercial enterprises that they meet much of their running costs, if not in fact funding their war-chest for the acquisition of new artefacts for their collections and for the nation. In the case of some major British museums one of the senior management team will be in charge of and responsible for the smooth running of the museum-shop. These shops have both expanded, great and altered since my time visiting them on school-outings. Both the range and quality of their merchandise has changed, almost in fact beyond recognition. The British Museum for example has serval shops from one in which you can buy the normal range of post cards, pen, pencils, and other assorted odds and ends aimed at children and priced accordingly though to a shop which specialises in replicas of some of the sculptures housed in the hallowed halls of the museum which a well-to-do visitor may well have seen and loved so much that they wont one for their very own. As an aside as a boy from Stoke-on-Trent I am gratified that their most expensive item is replica of the Portland verse made to order by Wedgwood.

And as the adage goes, 'if you have to ask the price, then you cannot afford it'.

But whether small or large, priced in pennies or in hundreds (or even thousands) of pounds the basic principle underlying the transaction is the same.

Nor is the museum-shop as exit unique to England, indeed I think it must be rather universal.

During my year in Israel I had the opportunity of visiting a fairly largely number of museums there, from the Israel Museum and Bialik's house though to minor art galleries and archaeological sites tucked away in small places in the peripheries of the county. In Israel too one exited though the gift shop, only there the gifts on offer were different. Some where common to all Israeli museums. Olive-wood in various shapes and forms, small bottles of oil scent with frankincense. Other girts however, were more connected with the place. I still have my hamsa from Binyamina and as a result remember the museum about the history of the town. 

Again the basic idea underlying these museum-door transactions is a straightforward one. The museum gains valuable funds, but museum goer has perhaps gained even more than the museum has. 

The art gallery or museum goer, has encountered the other. They might even have come to a deeper understanding of themselves. Yet, they must return to world outside the walls of the museum, the perches of something, anything, from the museum shop is an attempt to take something of the museum experience away with us, and indeed to pass it on to someone else.

From the time of the Enlightenment onwards, certainly from the time of French Revaluation onwards, trips to galleries and museums has largely replaced the classical idea of the religious pilgrimage. Far more people have been to museums than have gone on pilgrimage.

The medieval pilgrimage too, would have concluded with the opportunity for the pilgrim to buy keepsakes of their their pilgrimage. In the Jewish tradition, from the Biblical period onwards, had three main pilgrimages. Passover, Shavout, and Succot.

Succot brings the period of the High Holy Days to a close, and in biblical times many, many people would have already been in Jerusalem on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year.  

It is now almost two thousand years since the destruction of the Second Temple and the end of pilgrimage as a major theme in Judaism.

To be sure some elements of pilgrimage continued, and continue in Judaism. To the grave sites of famous rabbis and to various Biblical locations, not to mention the interesting phenomenon of the 'secular Jewish pilgrimage'.

Nevertheless and all that said, pilgrimages slipped from the Jewish mainstream.

The rabbis who invented, or re-invented Judaism had to copy with the lost of the martial and physical.

In the place sacrifices, liturgy. In place of passover in the Temple the remarkable achievement that is seder shell pasche.

Each festival was given something unique, and new something which reflected its past but something which had be transformed.

Rosh Hashanah, has the sound of the shofar, Yom Kippur has, among other things Kol Nidrei.

There is a much used metaphor for the Days of awe, that of a journey. And it is much used because it is both powerful and accurate. Taken together Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and the days between take us, if we let them, on a journey.

Unlike our ancient counterparts we have untaken a virtual we have not walked to Jerusalem to Temple to make our offerings see the rituals performed and then return changed. We have rather, prayed, study and mediated together and individually.

The word Teshuvah normally translated as repentance, in Hebrew contains the word for return, however transforming the Days of Awe are, however much they are a journey, in the end we need to return to world outside of the synagogue.

Just as those who came before, had to return from Jerusalem to their homes. From sacred places and holy times, to the secular and the mundane. I am sure that in ancient times there were people ready and willing to sell the pilgrims moments to help them hold onto something of their experiences.

There are no market stools at the end of our journey from which we could buy mementos, nor when the journey ends as it will shortly we will not leave though any gift-shops. We can however, take something of the season and from our journey with us.

If we can carry some fragments from our journey during the days of awe into our day-to-day lives. Then when the last note of last shofar call has faded away, and we have returned then our journey together will most assuredly not have been wasted.

גמר חתימה טובה 

 

Yom Kippur and the end of summer

The Summer is decidedly over! At Rosh Hashanah it was over 30 degrees peeking at 33 degrees in Eastbourne I am now back in the flat after Yom Kippur and its really chilly, with cold gusty winds black and grey clouds rashing across the sky. It feels like late Autumn rather than early September.

Anyway, yom Kippur went really well (although I had fewer people than at Rosh Hashanah) I was happy with how I lead the services, the Torah readings went well. I was also pleased with my two sermons one was really only Okay-though good, but the other was good-though-very good, so generally I am happy. Oh the Israel study session was also a success. They asked to be sent additional information, which really is a good sign.

After Yom Kippur mum, dad and me had a really nice meal in a local restaurant I spent the night in the hotel before returning to London the next day after seeing mum and dad safely to Euston.  It being sunday traveling was harder than it needed to be though.

Funnily we meet a Menorah member at Euston as well as seeing J. Mags at Victoria. I am now catching up with emails and other stuff that I left undone before the holiday (although I'll go to bed early today because I am still shattered after YK).

It is odd though because of the time, I've had the whole of the HHDs before school started so my first school related thing is tomorrow. But marker one of the year is already gone. I have a feeling that this year is going to go very very fast.

Any way I'll post my sermons at some point.

Onwards and up wards (Oh and 657 days and counting)

Some Photos from Eastbourne

Here, if I can make it work are some photos from Rosh Hashanah at Eastbourne.

This is just me with Eastbourne's Safer Torah, in its High Holy Day white, its easy to lift and carry but a little difficult to read, although I did a good job.  The real challenge will be on Yom Kippur. 

Sorry about the lighting, we had to draw the curtains because of how bright and hot the sunlight was. 32 degrees. Too hot, to be leading Rosh Hashanah services really. 

Me with mum and dad in the church hall where services were being held.

Now I should go and enjoy the rest of shabbat, and then get on with preparations for Yom Kippur. 

Rosh Hashanah in Eastbourne

I am now back in my flat in London, and am very pleased to be. Although Eastbourne is a wonderful community and the service went well I was very tired by the end. As I as things went well we were meeting in a church, 'Christ the King'. But the room was very pleasant and the congregation participatory and nice.
I felt much happier with the service this year, I am more used to Liberal liturgy than I was. I was also happy with my Torah reading, although the scroll is not great I think it must have been prepared and so was much better than I had been led to believe it would be.  On Erev Rosh Hashanah I preached, and on the morning I gave a study session. After some feed back I am going  to add a D'var Torah to my Yom Kippur services as well as a sermon on Kol Nideri.  After the service some of us went for lunch in  a near by restaurant before I saw mum and dad safely to Euston and came back to the flat.  (The weather in Eastbourne was hot, too hot really) but now its raining and feels very autumnal.  I still have a lot to do for Yom Kippur, hopefully will be able to have a skype meeting about that. And there still remains much to do with the new flat and moving.

But here is more or less what I said on Erev Rosh Hashanah.

There is a brilliant paper by Auerbach entitled, 'The Scar of Odysseus', in which he describes the essential and fundamental differences between classical Greek Literature and the narratives found in the Hebrew Bible.  In its most basic form his argument is that classical Greek Literature describes both physical characteristics and emotional events in great detail, even as in the title of his paper, to the scar on the foot of Odysseus, by means of which his maid is able recognise him on his return home to Ithaca, Homer, the author in question, then goes on to relate the hunting accident in the course of which the scar was received.  All this detail interrupts the flow of the narrative.
Nothing could stand in more contrast to this style of narrative than that other ancient form, that found in the Tanach.
The example of Biblical narrative that Auerbach uses to illustrate his point is that of the Akedah, the binding of Isaac, which we will read tomorrow. But he could, in truth, have chosen almost any of the narratives of the Bible.
What did Abraham look like? We do not know, what did Isaac look like? What happened on the journey together? Even the question of, 'How old was Isaac?', A child?, A young man?, or even perhaps a fully grown adult.
All these details are left out. They are left for us, and for the midrash to read into the text.  So rare are descriptions in the Bible, and in Biblical narrative that there is a special term to describe them פרט תאורי literally a detailed description.  But even then this will be a word here, or a short phase there rather than the paragraphs of extended Homeric poetry.
For example Joseph is given a description. ויהי יוסף יפה-תאר ויפה מארה and Joseph was fair of complexion and good to look at.

And that's it. Now imagine what Homer might have done? But whenever a detailed description is given it signals something of importances or significance.  In the case of this description of Joseph it introduces the whole incident of Pontifar's wife.

What of the story that is the focus of our Rosh Hashanah service tonight and tomorrow? What of the Akedah? It is full of details, or at least half details, ones which beg questions but offer few imminent answers.

Abraham rose early, the journey took three days, Isaac and Abraham were accompanied by two young men. All deals each on opportunity for exegesis and midrash.

All of these add to what is already a strange and troubling story.

Who is even the main protagonist, the hero of our tale.  As Odysseus is the hero of the odyssey. Is it Abraham who was prepared to sacrifice his son?, Isaac who permitted himself to be bound?, Sarah who is absent from the whole narrative, or maybe as Yehuda Amichai suggested it was the Ram? The ram was after all the only creature to die, to be killed during the Akedah.

The ram's horn is still blown on Rosh Hashanah, and the shofar and its primal music are perhaps the most potent symbols of the season, is the ram the hero then?

In ten days time we will meet again for Yom Kippur.  What is the stand out story for that solemn day?  I would suggest that rather than any of the Torah readings the main story of note for Yom Kippur is that of Jonah, that short book about that strange prophet read on the holiest day of year.

Who is the hero there?, Jonah? Human certainly, but a hero, I think not. The king of Nineveh who repented so speedily? Again I think it most unlikely. The common sailors who tried so hard not to throw Jonah over board, maybe...maybe, they certainly appear as righteous people and although pagans they are given positive afterstories by the midrash.

No I would argue that the hero of the Jonah story and therefore of the whole day, is the vine which grew up overnight to shade Jonah and was killed the next day simply to teach Jonah a life lesson. After all, Jonah, nineveh, sailors and the whale are all alive and more or less well at the end of the book. Only the vine has died.

Both the vine outside Nineveh and the Ram on the mountain are silent characters both of whom can be overlooked, even in the Akedah Abraham's attention had to be drawn to the ram entangled in the brush. And both the Ram and Vine are the sole fatalities in both these narratives where no-one else dies.

Greek epic poetry maybe rich in description and fully of details, but classical Hebrew narrative has a power all of its own. Odysseus, Euryclea and Agamenon do not feel real whereas, Jonah, Abrahama and Isaac do. At least to me.

Some details can and do matter, and overlooked people can change not only our lives but also the world.

The sound of the shofar calls to mind the season, the work of teshuvah and the call of God to action and changed. This year may we spare a though for otherwise unsung heroes of the world the Ram and the Vine included.

And take comfort form the knowledge that some acts we undertake can course profound changes.

May we be inscribed in the book of life for a good year.

Ken Yehi Razton.

Getting ready for Rosh Hashanah

As I type I am sitting in my hotel room in Eastbourne, I can actually hear the seagulls on the sea, and for that matter the sound of holiday makers enjoying the last of summer. Its actually very summer like. Shortly I will head off to lead the evening services for Rosh Hashanah.  I am feeling pretty up-beat about it. My sermon is good and I am happy with my study session for tomorrow and with my Torah reading (we will have to see how things actually go.)
  But I certainly feel much happier this year than I did last, and so much more so than my first time leading in Coventry.
It has made me think about the past, last year in Manchester, two years ago in Coventry and amazing three years ago in Jerusalem. Before that things blur into the many, many High Holy Day seasons I spent at Menorah.
( I am also getting to grips with Yom Kippur, sermons, readings, and study sessions) but I still have a bunch of stuff to do.
On the new flat front, there is still some stuff to do, admin stuff mostly.  Last week Emily's mum was over from Canada. To help with the move, and it was really really useful to have her around to help. It was also fun, especially I think for Emily.
Mainly work, but some fun things also, a window shopping trip to London proper.
Any this is really no time to be blogging. I am going for a short walk before services.

Shannah Tovah to one and all.

May 5774 be year of blessings and joys for all who read this.