I saw social commentator and humorist Fran Lebowitz on her UK tour. She was candid, hilarious and truthful as always. Yet coming so soon after the overturning of Roe v Wade, the evening conversation with Lebowitz felt darker and more angry than her show on Netflix. (For a powerful Jewish midrashic response to this news I share with you a powerful piece written by my colleague Rabbi Margaret Jacobi).

One audience member asked Fran: ‘The world is getting worse: what do we do?’ Her response, in not evading the terror of our current reality, took the audience half way to an answer. At our community meeting last week we offered the other half of the answer: we ‘show that another world is possible.’

Here’s a version of my contribution at that meeting:

I read recently about the government slashing the budget for rewilding projects saying that the land is required for farming. The explanation is that in the face of food shortages we will need more land for the production of food.

Rewilding as a policy involves careful setting aside of land and withdrawal of human interference allowing brambles, trees and wild herbivores to create a self-regulating system which will, through natural process, revitalise the land. Re-wilding as a policy for land management has been given powerful impetus in the face of climate collapse. The apocalyptic scenario of drought, desertification and climate refugees, possibly leading to this planet becoming uninhabitable for human beings, terrifies us and calls on us to radically transform how we relate to land. Rewilding is a response to this apocalyptic nightmare.

Food shortages are becoming catastrophic. The blocking of the Ukrainian grain harvest leaving the country through the Black Sea ports is already causing devastating hunger in East Africa and soaring food prices the world over. It is likely that there is a deliberate strategy at play from Putin’s Russia: to destabilise our society through food and fuel scarcity and a new refugee crisis. Putin’s war is creating another terrifying apocalyptic scenario. Turning land over to intensive farming is a response to this apocalyptic nightmare.

This news item interests me not for the specifics of the policy but for the terrifying choose-your-own-apocalypse dilemma with which the government framed its choice. It is unclear whether our political leadership will be able to inspire us with a non-apocalyptic vision for the future. This then is a vital role for faith communities and civil society.

I envision our community rising to the task to which the current reality calls us in two key areas:

Firstly, we are to be a place of comfort. Drawing up texts, rituals and practices from the deep well of our tradition we will find ways to remain present in, and witness to, the current reality. We will support one another in the work of grief, truth-telling and comfort that will be required. We will find ways to support one another on a practical level too as the instability of the world is felt within the porous boundaries of our community.

Secondly, we are to model a just and loving way for human beings to be together. We are to be a community of love where the sovereign heart learns to overflow in blessing as we honour the uniqueness of each one of us. We are to be a community of justice where we practice using the muscle of courage as we learn how to hold one another to account and respectively challenge one another to in turn become more just.

On Sunday we elected Rachel, Marco, Donald and Sam as new trustees to join Martin, Adam, Allison and Lois as we honoured Debbie and Stephanie for their commitment. The new team faces important practical questions including:

what are our short term and longer term goals?;

how do we provide the right infrastructure for the education of our children?;

what is the right staffing structure to lead our community towards growth?

All of these, and the many other, practical questions are in service of these bigger questions:

how can we be an oasis of comfort in a swamp of terror?;

how do we become resilient people who feel fear and yet choose to act from love?;

how do we become courageous people who feel shame yet choose to act justly?

‘Ose Shalom bimromav hu ya’asei shalom aleynu…

May He who makes peace in His heights, make peace on all of us...’

Just as for God’s peace to ripple out in the world He must first make peace in His realm so too are we invited to respond in our community, ready for our justice, love and peace to ripple out to the world beyond.

The cost of living crisis, war in Ukraine, famine in East Africa, forced deportations of asylum seekers.

Are you frightened for our future? Are you struggling to hope? Do you feel powerless to make a difference?

This summer-into-autumn the Makor Hayim community will travel from despair seeking hope, from struggle seeking steadfastness and from powerlessness seeking possibility. This challenging path will take us directly through the fear itself. Strengthened by the authority of joy and the clarity of pleasure we can face the dangers ahead. Will you join us on this journey?

‘Yamim Noraim’ - the Hebrew words for High Holidays - literally translate as the ‘days of fear’ and invite the questions which might save us:-

• How can the Torah’s understanding of fear help us understand these fearful times?;

• What is the relationship between dangers in the wider world and my internal experience?;

• What is the difference between fear of people and fear of heaven/God?;

• How can fear of God become love of God?;

• How can we learn to act from love rather than fear?

Through learning, listening, lamenting, davening/prayer, meditating, singing, visioning, dancing and eating together we will work with, through and beyond these questions ready for renewed just action and renewed loving consciousness.

The journey begins at Tisha B’Av (Sunday 7th August; afternoon to evening) when we take a day out to grieve for the brokenness we witness on the personal, communal, national and international level. Resourced through our tears and then through the freedom of summer we will enter the month of Elul in which we will learn more in community about how to be honest with one another, recognising that the transformation of humanity begins in each of our homes and in our community. At Selichot (Saturday 24 September; evening) we will take another courageous step towards our fear as we begin the practice of honesty and letting go, repentance and forgiveness. On Rosh Hashanah (Sunday 25th September evening through to 26 September) we hear the shofar and stand before the truth in all her majesty, attentive to the new perspective on fear that she invokes. Nourished with apples and honey we are ready for the Days of Repentance, including Shabbat Shuva (Friday evening 30 September - 1 October), in which fear moves within us. On Yom Kippur (evening Tuesday 4 October - to the following evening), we offer up honesty and humility and invite love. Will we be received? With the fog of fear lifted, life itself returns with feasting and dancing as we enter the vibrant colours of Sukkot (evening Sunday 9 October), the dancing joy of Simchat Torah (evening Sunday 16 October) and resourced and nourished, we will be ready for the winter ahead.

As a child, the High Holy Days meant avoiding school, dusting off rarely-worn white outfits, and sidling out of the main service to count down the hours before I could finally break fast on my grandma’s plava and a cup of tea. Much as I enjoyed the familiarity of the tunes, the formality of my community’s service didn’t exactly stir my soul. Spending the High Holy Days in Jerusalem in my late teens introduced me to alien rituals, like lying down on the floor during the Yom Kippur Musaf temple service, that opened my eyes to an experience that was far more meaningful and moving - literally!

This past year I joined Makor Hayim and during our Builders Shabbat, I responded to my name with the word, ‘Hineni,’ meaning ‘here I am’. This was more than a register; it was a chance for me to use the language of my ancestors to declare to fellow builders, ‘I am prepared – I am ready.’

Ready for what? On the one hand, I had an answer: I’d recently moved to Willesden Green and felt ready to connect with a local, inclusive Jewish community. On the other hand, my ‘Hineni’ was a leap of faith. I was saying to my new community, like an uncertain Moses said to God at the burning bush, ‘Hineni’ - I’m here to listen to whatever you have to say, but I don’t yet know what you need from me.

Fast forward a few months, and I am excited to have joined the Makor Hayim High Holy Days core team, along with Sam Glatman, Léa Bernier, Ed Teeger, and Rabbi Daniel. We’re following in the footsteps of all the Makor Hayimites from years past, whose ‘Hineni’ led them to co-create such memorable High Holy Days.

Importantly, chaggim at Makor Hayim have always been the result of a team effort. Whether you’re drawn to security or service-leading, welcoming or wardening, running a meditation or marketing, I invite you to join us, knowing that together, we will make a moving, meaningful High Holy Days for the whole community.

First, simply ask yourself:

• What would my ideal High Holy Days look like?

• What steps can I take to make these days meaningful for me and for others?

Next, sign up to join us, in person or by zoom, on 12 June for Hineni-fest, a garden party and afternoon tea, where we will launch this year’s High Holy Days. I hope to see you there!

And if you can’t make it, but have a High Holy Day idea you’d like to help make happen, just drop me an email at michalih@makorhayim.org.

We are a community of Builders and leaders, and all have a place in building Makor Hayim. Becoming a trustee is a fantastic way to step up this commitment and leadership, and contribute your skills and thinking to making sure that we have a strong operational framework to support our community’s growth.

As a registered charity, Makor Hayim has a Board of Trustees, which looks after its governance, operations, finances and policies. Some of the trustees are stepping down, so we are putting in place a process to recruit for 4 new trustees by the end of June (the process is quite tight as the Board really needs new people soon!).

We want to build a system that enables Builders who have other commitments to participate as trustees and make every effort to do so. At the same time, becoming a trustee is an important responsibility for our community and we would want people to seriously consider their ability to commit before doing so:

• In general, trustee meetings are held once a month and last for two hours, usually on Thursdays from 7pm-9pm.

• In order to spread responsibilities, the role of chair, setting of agenda, time keeping and recording of action items are rotated for each meeting.

• The trustees also attend each community meeting and each AGM, in total about four each year, held on a Sunday afternoon from 3pm to 4pm.

• Trustees also make progress between meetings and we expect that trustees might have to put 2-4 hours a week building relationships with Builders and working on matters between meetings.

The process for recruiting new trustees this time will be the following:

1. Information Session - Monday 30th May, 8.15-9pm on Zoom

We will have an information session where trustees Debbie Danon & Stephanie Brada will explain the process more in depth, and anyone can come and ask questions about what becoming a trustee would entail.

2. 1 to 1 conversations with existing Trustees - Wednesday 1 or Thursday 2 June

Any interested builders are invited to have 1 to 1 conversations with Martin/other trustees to get more information and make an informed decision.

3. Applications to become a new trustee close on 3 June.

You can find the simple application form here. It should take 20-30 minutes.

4. Facilitated conversations in case there are more applicants than positions

Rather than resorting to a vote, in case there are more than 4 applicants, we would organise a facilitated conversation between all the applicants. This would ensure that people with a good balance of skills and experience would step up as Trustees at this stage, in order to avoid resorting to elections. Applicants can be offered other leadership positions, and/or the opportunity to join the Board at a later stage. In the unlikely case we can’t find a solution then, we would resort to elections as per our constitution

5. Announcement of the Trustees standing for election - Friday 10th June

This will include a list of all the Builders standing to be trustees as well as their current leadership or membership roles in MH teams.

6. General Meeting voting in and welcoming new trustees - Sunday 26th June

At the General meeting, builders would be invited to vote in the new trustees. There will then be a small ceremony to thank those that gave their time until now, and to welcome the new trustees to the Board.

We look forward to hearing from you!

This week we are going to look at Shavuot and its origins as an agrarian festival. In ancient times, the grain harvest lasted 7 weeks and represented a season of gladness. It began with the harvesting of the barley during Pesach and ended with the harvesting of the wheat at Shavuot. Shavuot is thus the concluding festival of the grain harvest. It is indeed known as the Feast of Weeks because it takes place on the first day after seven cycles of seven days, with each week known in Hebrew as Shavua and its plural being Shavuot or “weeks”.

During the existence of the Temple in Jerusalem, an offering of two loaves of bread from the wheat harvest was made on Shavuot. Shavuot is also the festival on which the first harvest of fruit trees was brought to the Temple, hence its other name, Chag HaBikurim, or the Feast of First Fruits. Although we don’t think of grain as representing a fruit, wheat and barley nevertheless represent fruits of the Earth given to us by Hashem in addition to the other 5 first fruits, i.e. grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives and dates.

For those who wish to read more about how our views on the agrarian nature of this feast relate to our attitude nowadays towards the land and our food supply, please follow the link to this Huffington post article on A Call For An Agrarian Torah:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/shavuot-a-call-for-an-agrarian-torah_b_3283903

It is 49 days from 2nd night Pesach to Shavuot, from liberation to revelation. It is a mitzvah to count those days that lead us out of fear and to Mount Sinai where we experience Torah. Freedom is frightening, it forces us to face what happened in the past, to acknowledge that we were slaves and part of the system that enslaved us and to start to think about what it might be to chose differently.

This year more so than ever before, as I look back on the last two extraordinary and difficult years, I feel the need for a structure that supports me to move away from fear, shame and grief and back to prayer. This mitzvah of counting the Omer feels like a ladder, one step each day in the ascent towards redemption.

We find only the blessing and the formula for Counting the Omer in our Siddur. Traditionally Counting the Omer consists of five distinct steps: opening with a meditation, saying the blessing, reciting the count, reading psalm 67, and closing with a prayer on behalf of those still in captivity. It felt important to me to follow that traditional formula and I’ve collected the prayers here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-MG0aaMVLPy8igmiPS3UcQXKIdyj3aKAo2BBrJ00UDs/edit?usp=sharing) .

The opening meditation rests our attention on bringing the letters of the unique name of God together, just as we do when we bring the four tzitzit (fringes) on the corners of the tallit together for the Shema. An acknowledgement of the brokenness of the world and of God’s pain and our role in healing. We then state our readiness to perform the mitzvah. It was important to me to include the grammatically correct prayers in the Hebrew so I am speaking of myself. I also include both feminine and masculine God language for the blessing. We read psalm 67 because it contains 49 words rejoicing in God’s blessing. Then there is a choice of prayers to ask for God’s strength in repairing the world and rescuing those in danger.

I write this to lean on your support, and to support you, to perform this mitzvah of counting each day for 7 weeks.

I've used the following sources both for this blog and for the prayer sheet https://www.ritualwell.org/ritual/five-steps-counting-omer https://www.sefaria.org/Siddur_Ashkenaz

I recently delivered a short D’var Torah at the most recent Hineni team meeting and wanted to share what I explored.

Hineni stands as one of the five core values of Makor Hayim. Meaning ‘here I am’ it is part of our collective commitment to the leadership of our beautiful community with the belief that ‘every one of us, Jewish or Allies, whatever our backgrounds, strengths, and relationships with Judaism, has something of value to offer and the power to make change’. The Makor Hayim Hineni team is responsible for helping to welcome new Builders into the community- we do this through 1-2-1 meet-ups with new Builders where we discuss what they are interested in and how they might be able to draw on their interests to contribute to building community together.

As part of the Hineni team I really enjoy my 1-2-1 sessions and I go into them holding two values. The first being curiosity about what new Builders are passionate about. In addition to curiosity, I’m driven by a desire to get to know new Builders on a deeper level. I was particularly interested in this idea of wanting to know and understand them. I began to think about what it meant to do this on a deeper level. I found that the depth I was seeking from new relationships came from the heart. After a discussion with Rabbi Daniel about this I looked to the Sh’ma, and I was drawn to two words on the third line. Specifically, b’chol l’vav’cha meaning ‘with all you heart’. These words struck me as inherently powerful, and I questioned what these words meant to me and how I do my Hineni 1-2-1’s.

I feel that it is important to go into my 1-2-1’s with my heart open and to strive for connection with all my heart. In practice for me that looks like story sharing. Hearing from Builders and witnessing their stories and then sharing my own story from deep within me. My hope is that through this profound story sharing, a deep relationship is formed.

I invited the rest of the Hineni team to think about what it means for us to go forward with all our hearts and continue to create deep and meaningful relationships.

The Hineni team is currently looking to expand and build our capacity to support new Builders. If you think you would be able to help us in committing to the leadership of our community, please get in contact with Allison: allisonzionts@makorhayim.org or Angela: angela@makorhayim.org.

Ursula Mittwoch, front centre in black, at the age of 26 in 1950, beneath the Portico of UCL

Ursula Mittwoch was an unusual geneticist who forged her reputation working with Professor Lionel Penrose on chromosomal disorders in the early days of cytogenetics, yet who declared later that she “didn’t much like chromosomes”. She became Professor of Genetics at UCL. She blazed her own luminous path through the second half of the 20th century.

Despite more than 200 publications, including 14 Nature papers through the 1960s alone, many as a single author, her work perhaps did not receive the recognition it deserved, at least among geneticists; but her bold insights into the sexes were appreciated by the media and she wrote regularly (often with a waspish sense of humour) for magazines like New Scientist. In fact, her thinking was decades ahead of its time, more in tune with the renewed interest in epigenetics of recent years. Today, when so many people rebel against a binary definition of sexes, Ursula’s work shows that sex determination is far from a simple switch governed by Mendelian genes but reflects a ‘threshold dichotomy’ – in effect, a quantitative rather than a qualitative difference. To be sure, our genes stack the quantitative odds towards one sex or another, yet the spectrum in between leaves plenty of scope for intersexuality.

Ursula being presented with the painting Mitochondria in Action by Odra Noel, to celebrate her 90th birthday. With (from left) Profs John Allen, Sue Povey, Dallas Swallow and the author, in the Housman Room at UCL in 2014

Ursula was an exemplary scientist. Like the best scientists, Ursula’s ideas reached beyond science, linking myths and history with deep human preoccupations. Commenting on the timing of ‘ensoulment’ – the gradual ‘becoming’ of a human person – Ursula called attention to the ‘exotic error’ of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas: the notion that ensoulment occurs gradually during embryogenesis, and is complete at 40 days in male embryos, compared with 90 days in female embryos (Mittwoch, 1995). ‘The apparent bizarreness of this idea’, she said, ‘owes less to embryology than to the extreme reluctance of most present-day molecular biologists to take on board quantitative, as opposed to histological and biochemical aspects of development, and to consider the importance of time’. The faster metabolic rate of human males could explain why men have a shorter life expectancy than women, Ursula observed wryly, so ‘even if female ensoulment is delayed for 7 weeks, women would seem to be amply recompensed by the expectation that the reverse process of the soul’s departure will be delayed by at least 5 years.’

In her own case, we can be grateful it was delayed much longer than that, for Ursula died in 2021 at the age of 97. She had been active, sociable, and intellectually engaged to the end. Even at the age of 97 with her failing memory, she still read textbooks on brain wiring and Mendel. Few lives were better spent.

The Makor Hayim community is built on five values, one of which is ‘chesed’ - loving kindness. Our community code of conduct says that we will be ‘radically relational’ and build a community of kindness, care and friendship, showing up for each other’s joys and struggles, investing time in getting to know one another and looking after ourselves.

And what does this mean for us in practice? We have a small chesed team who meet monthly to plan events and come up with new ideas about how we can support each other, as well as a much wider group of community members who get involved in acts of chesed on a regular or ad-hoc basis, but to make this value a reality we need everyone in the community to take a role in chesed.

As a team we play a particular role around key life cycle moments: when someone has a baby, we organsie a food rota - and this requires people to make and deliver meals. When someone experiences a bereavement, we organise meals to be made and dropped off for the shiva nights and have set up a twice weekly kaddish group which all of the community are invited to participate in. When someone is unwell or struggling in some way, we will be in touch to see if there is anything that they need or send a card, although in the future if we are able to recruit more volunteers we would like to be more able to do the mitzvah of Bikur Cholim - visiting the sick (there have obviously been some challenges to this during the pandemic). During the first wave of Covid-19, we identified people who may need additional support and organised telephone check-ins and tech support to help everyone get access to Zoom services.

But we don’t want to only be radically relational and kind at times of need, we also sent birthday cards to everyone in the community for a year to celebrate everyone’s milestones - no matter how big or small. Although we love the idea, we have struggled to recruit enough volunteers to keep this up going forwards, but have made other opportunities to connect and develop friendships such as through the Hannukah Mystery Maccabee gift exchange and organising volunteers to bake and deliver cakes around key Jewish holidays. We have also organised several online intergenerational teas where older members of the community have shared their life stories with the community. Again, this takes people volunteering to share their experiences and needs volunteers to interview, record and organise the events.

We have had so much positive feedback about the difference these activities have made, sometimes just receiving a card and knowing that the community is thinking of them, as well as real friendships and connections that have been made.

If you would like to get more involved in any of the activities described above or have your own ideas we would love to hear from you - contact chesed@makorhayim.org, or fill in this very short survey which we use to help build a list of people we can call on for ad-hoc chesed activities.

On Monday 14 March, Major Hayim hosted the NYC-based Jewish a capella band Pizmon for the second time. Pizmon originally reached out to us during the pandemic to perform in our shul via Zoom. The singing team hosted them, and it was an incredible success. We couldn’t stop singing their song Nachamu!

When they reached out to us again saying they would visit the UK this March and asking whether they could perform at Makor Hayim, we said yes without blinking! Martin and Lauretta offered to host the concert. Around 15 of us had a delicious pot luck dinner together with the band before the concert, and 7 of us joined on Zoom.

Pizmon performed around 10 beautiful a capella Jewish songs, which you can rewatch here in the Full recording of the concert (password: PizmonMH1!). It was incredibly beautiful and moving to see them perform in person!

They also taught us to sing a song: Mekimi, from Psalms 113:6-9, Also included in the Hallel service. They provided us with Sheet music and lyrics and we divided in 4 voice groups to learn the parts with different Pizmon members. The result is spectacular! Take 3 minutes of your time to watch our performance, it will make your day: Mekimi major hayim performance

Thanks again to everyone that came, to Martin and Lauretta for their hospitality and to Rabbi Daniel, Kati and Ed for hosting Pizmon members in their homes. We have already asked them to come back next year! If you’d like to make a donation to Pizmon to thank them for the concert you can do so here.

Shabbat remains the centrepiece of Jewish life. It is the home that we return to every week, helping us to build healthy habits, remind us of what is really important, and that while the struggles we face can feel awful, in the fullness of time, they too shall pass.

What lifts Shabbat out of being a withdrawal from the world, and instead, just a withdrawal from creation in the world, is the ability to share it with others.

And that is what we did on Shabbat Beyachad on 4 March 2022.

21 Builders and guests joined 3 Shabbat tables across London. We ate, we sang together, we sat and we spoke. We put down the work screens and enjoyed the pleasure of human company, the wisdom of conversation, the deliciousness of good food.

Lea Bernier led her first service with Ed Teeger, and Kati Hoffmann hosted her first Shabbat dinner (with 10 people!), where she used her Shabbat candles for the first time. They both demonstrated what it means to live the value of hineini – stepping up to lead in an area new to both of them.

We also had challot delivered to hosts and special kiddush prayer booklets – designed by Charlotte Fischer, with quotations, questions and reflections, shared to stimulate conversation.

At Ed’s house, by 01:00, he was tired, and so decided to go to bed, leaving his guests there. When he awoke to lead shacharit the next day, he found that his Shabbat guest fairies had cleaned up his whole house!

Overall, it was a wonderful time to be together again. As one person said in the evaluation: they learnt that ‘in-person informal time together is joyful, lifegiving and fundamental to strengthening our community!’

If you want to join in – either as a host of a guest or join the Shabbat Beyachad Team – for the next Shabbat Beyachad, please add these dates to your diary: Friday 27 May and Friday 14 October (yes, during Sukkot).

If you have any questions, please email daniel.mackintosh@gmail.com.

Fermentation, catalysed by yeast and lacto-basili microorganisms naturally present in the air or on the surface of food, is foundational to our ability over thousands of years to not only transform food - as when grape juice becomes wine, and flour becomes bread - but also to preserve food such as when cucumbers become pickles and cabbage becomes sour kraut.

At our recent conference of rabbis, my colleague Rabbi Shulamit Ambalu intrigued me as she explained, while holding a jar of her 2022 marmalade, how food preservation is simultaneously preservation and transformation.

As the month of Nissan arrives and the yeast-transformed-crumbs at the back of our kitchen cupboards, at the bottom of our toasters and behind our ears cry out to be disposed of, the Torah is calling us to pay attention to the interconnectedness of transformation and preservation.

Exactly half a year ago Rosh Hashanah/Yom Kippur invited us to spiritual/verbal transformation. Pesach invites us to material transformation.

The flavour of the oranges preserved as marmalade are transformed by the presence of cinnamon or cardamom; the taste of cucumbers preserved as pickles are transformed by the dill or bay leaves.

As we embark on this radical spring clean once again we might begin with frustration: did the prayer at the start of the Haggadah for the destruction of chametz not work? Do I have to do it again?

And then as we move the sofa to sweep underneath it we might just notice how the position of the sofa preserved certain patterns of behaviour this year. As we pay attention to our material environment we might ask: how are the pictures on our walls, the orientation of our kitchen table and the objects on my bedside table flavouring my life? Perhaps the cucumbers are now calling out for a bit of garlic in addition to the dill and the oranges are curious about what it would be like to switch cinnamon for ginger? Perhaps that particular lamp is still delicious or maybe the flavour could be improved?

Pesach itself is a model for us. The story of the Exodus from Egypt has been ingeniously preserved and yet manifest in an infinity of Haggadahs that tell the story preserved in different flavours. At a time when Russia is fighting a war to violently preserve a nationalist story, Pesach calls on us to consciously preserve a story that affirms the right of all humans to flourish.

As we prepare the flavours in which we will preserve our people’s story for another year, may our Pesach cleaning transform our homes, offering our lives new flavours, new possibility and new hope.

How long have you been a Builder at Makor Hayim?

I joined the community of Hampstead Reform Jewish Community 39 years ago. It then became Shir Hayim and is now Makor Hayim.

How have you seen the community change over the last couple of years with the coming together of Shir Hayim and Willesden Minyan?

The community has doubled in size in the last couple of years with many younger people, family groups as well as more mature members. It felt like we were an old established tree and have been invigorated by these new Builders who I hope will be actively involved in supporting the community, even when the support work is mundane but still needs to be done.

Tell us about your work as a teacher

Teaching has been the second love of my life after my husband, David. When I was 15, I heard an impassioned speaker, a lady called Mrs Peters. She was opening a school for children on the autistic continuum. I can still hear her saying, "I have 4 spaces to offer and over 200 parents willing to move homes if I could offer their child a place. Do I offer a place to a child of 14 as this will be their last chance for education, or do I offer it to a 5 year old who lays on the floor and screams, only eating by gnawing at bones?”. I knew then that I would become a teacher and whilst still at school, during the holidays I would get my dad to drive me to Mrs Peter's school and help with the children. When Mrs Peters found out I planned to train as teacher, she stood in front of me saying "when you are trained, do not come and work in a special school. You have to teach in mainstream schools for at least 4 years so you know where you are aiming for with our children'.

I trained, then went to work in a Secondary school in Ponders End where my timetable changed every Monday morning for the first 4 weeks and the deputy head saw me arrive at 7am ready to banda (carbon copying!) off every hand written worksheet I needed. I had to beg for exercise books and writing equipment from other departments as I was in the role of Head of Modern Languages and they threw in European Studies as a bonus. So all funding was being kept for the new person who started in January. I was there for one term and I bought my own textbooks to create each lesson.

My next school was a very large comprehensive of 1500 pupils in Edmonton. I spent many happy years there. The lower school was one side of the North Circular and the upper school on the other. The staff I made friends with are still close friends today. The children were fabulous. I ran lunch clubs with other teachers - twice a week was knitting club and twice a week was gardening club and both were open to all. In the summer the smell of warm tomatoes, cucumbers, grapes, lettuces and more on children's desks after lunch was lovely and they were so proud.

There were challenges. One afternoon one of my form brought an air rifle into our double English lesson, marched up and down shouting. After locking it in a cupboard after he reluctantly handed it over, I asked the deputy head to call the parents and we all met with the boy concerned who wanted to deal with his sisters boyfriend after school. The issue was resolved.

It was hard work with 400 books to mark each week and with 2 buses to get to and from school. I arrived early, left late and worked in any spare time possible. I had extra subjects added to my timetable every year, as did everyone, so the timetable was covered. I was comfortable when I was asked to work with the 'special needs children'. Some teachers did not find this fulfilling but I was happy to support any child to make their learning a positive experience. If one method of teaching did not work, I found another way. Behaviour improved as they achieved more and became able to show their true selves. I knew I needed to move back into the special needs sector.

I moved to another borough in the 1980s to be the Head of Infants in a school for children exhibiting Emotional and Behavioural difficulties - as it was then called. It was a primary school but there were teenagers there up to 16. Every child who came to the school joined my class for a while. The school was in a 3 storey house and basement, there were 4 classrooms, a woodwork room, the kitchen and dining room in the basement. The caretaker lived on the top floor and I remember arriving one morning to be greeted with the words 'We've been hit by lightening, if anyone sees moving walls or ceilings shout a warning and we must all get out!"

Wanting to help reduce children coming into Special Education, I trained at the Institute of Education and was an advisor in an Emotional Behaviour Difficulties team. I was linked to 33 schools and designed strategies to help a child react/respond differently/positively.

I loved teaching, so after 27 years I decided to go back into hands-on teaching, doing the work I trained others to do to support 1:1 children in mainstream - peripatetic. I worked in 3 schools each week and worked with hundreds of children in mainstream education and supported staff and parents. I believe that children get one chance at childhood and it needs to be as positive and as happy as possible and my role was to help them do that at school.

Do you have any hobbies?

I love gardening and truly believe I'm the caretaker of my garden. I won an award for being the most environmentally friendly garden in Camden several years ago! I love walking with David, visiting Heritage and National Trust places, sewing, drawing and sketching and spending time with family and friends.

Where are you most happiest?

With those I love, wherever we are, is ok.

Why did you volunteer to be a Trustee/the Treasurer at Makor Hayim?

I've been on the Council/Trustee since 2003. I felt that if members didn't step up, then nothing gets done and the community suffers, so I volunteered to be the Treasurer at a Community Meeting when nobody else did. It is a privilege to support and help Makor Hayim in this voluntary role. I really care about the people and want to see the community build on it's past roots, and to see it grow and flourish in the future.

Jewish History is fundamental to the lives and experiences of Jews, whether they consciously know it or not. Since the destruction of the Temple in 70CE, Jews have been scattered throughout the world, connected by liturgy and tradition, and by the stories we tell each other about who we are, where we come from, and how both of those things create who we are. In the Makor Hayim vision, it says:

We believe that Jewish teaching and history offer us deep wells of wisdom that is alive and relevant today. By bringing this wisdom into dialogue with our own lives, we believe it can help us to remember who we are, rediscover our humanity, and challenge us to return back into the world as more just and loving people.

Given the amount of time and the geographic scope of the subject, however, four sessions of 75 minutes were never going to be more than an introduction. The aim of this Navigating Judaism course, therefore, was to give an overview of the most important “milestones” to allow participants to firmly locate themselves and give them tools to pursue their own interests.

My underlying suggestion was that three concepts are crucial in understanding Jewish history. Firstly, catastrophe: events which, in the words of Alan Mintz, “convulse or vitiate shared assumptions.” Much of Jewish history is about not just building, but re-building. Secondly, we need to acknowledge minhag, the local differences in custom and rite which can confuse the newcomer. These are historical phenomena: Ashkenaz and Sepharad developed along different lines for reasons which can be explained historically, and which structure the past in particular ways. The fate of Ladino-speaking Jews in the Holocaust, for example, was conditioned partly by their inability to understand German orders in the camps, in contrast to Yiddish-speaking prisoners. Similar problems affected highly assimilated Jews from countries such as Hungary.

Thirdly, however, we need to bear in mind broyges, the uncreative differences which lead to the old joke about a Jew on a desert island who built two synagogues: one to go to, and the other not to be seen dead in.

Session 1 introduced these key ideas, by asking the question “Who is Jewish History for and about?” There is a recurring tension between self-identification, mutual recognition, and external classification that has to be engaged with. I am Jewish because I say I am, and because others recognise me as such: in a fundamentally social religion, how could it be otherwise? We need a minyan to say certain prayers or do certain things. But that means all the members of the minyan must accept each other as valid. The degree to which this tension plays out struck me with particular force while working in an archive recently with accounts of life in the Belsen Displaced Persons’ Camp. Just months after the end of the war, an observer wrote:

There are in Belsen two absolutely separate and distinct groups - the [religious] Kehilla and the [secular Zionist] Central Jewish Committee. Each body has its own post office, Search Bureau and its own stores. The stores of the Central Jewish Committee are distributed to all irrespective of religious conviction or belief. If people apply to the Kehilla for supplies they are asked if they are Shomrei Hadath (strictly orthodox).

The distinction between the so called orthodox and unorthodox has reached a stage that the Kehilla considers it wrong, in fact almost a crime, for any part of their members to visit the Beth Chalutz or the Children’s Home or to be friendly even personally with any who work in the Central Jewish Committee. This attitude is producing a sharp reaction in the so called “other” camp.

An external observer might find this almost comical. Surely after surviving an event as terrible as the Holocaust, religious and political differences could be set aside? But actually this was a sign of recovery, as individuals worked through trauma and simple survival, and reasserted who they were. The definitions we explored drew lines in different ways, hopefully providing us with ways of thinking about our own journeys from self-identification to communal membership.

Week 2 began the narrative in earnest, tracing the development of Jewish religious texts against some of the historical changes. Eras of Jewish law and custom are eras of Jewish history: it is not a coincidence, for example, that the Haggadah, with its concluding wish that we are reunited “Next year in Jerusalem!” appears in the aftermath of the Bar-Kochba Revolt, which was the final serious attempt to secure an independent political entity until 1948. Similarly, the Selichot written in response to the Crusades would structure thinking about future (and previous) catastrophes for centuries. And all of this is to be found in the structure of a page of Talmud: with Zugot speaking to Tanaim speaking to Amoraim, and so on…dialectical disagreement between sages, driving Jewish life forward, but always looking over its shoulder.

Week 3 covered the broadest span, taking in the period from the “establishment” of Christianity in the Roman Empire to Napoleon’s tempered “emancipation” of the Jews of France in 1808. Looking at the documents setting out the conditions of Jewish life in Muslim Spain, or the proscriptions of the Fourth Lateran Council, it was curious to see the continuities. The desire to mark Jews out, to brand their mutual recognition from the outside. The underlying belief that Jews have a “hidden” nature that must be unveiled, either by Inquisition or by an official naming system.

Week 4 was the hardest, because it covered the recent past. We can sigh for the sufferings of the twelfth century but we weep for those of the twentieth. The session revolved around 1896 and Herzl’s writing of The Jewish State. Not as a political statement but as a moment in which it became clear that the strategies of assimilation, accommodation and emigration which had been the hallmarks of the nineteenth century had failed. And because the grotesque, bestial racism directed at Dreyfus spoke of the debt antisemitism has to other forms of racism. They are all the result of European colonial anxiety: the awareness that the colonised resented and despised the coloniser, and the walls of colour-based prejudice which were erected as a result. Ironically, it was Disraeli who oversaw the suppression of the Indian Mutiny and presented Queen Victoria with Empire in India. But Disraeli was dogged by antisemitism. Jews could “pass” as “white” but in 1867 Anthony Trollope described his protagonist Anton Trendellsohn as “dark as a man can be, and yet show no sign of colour in his blood.” The stereotype of the converso, the Marranos, outwardly conforming but privately Jewish, upset the visually-derived prejudice of Empire. How, after all, could the antisemite distinguish Jew from non-Jew? The answers proposed in the nineteenth century were about blood: and the only way to extirpate blood is annihilation. The Holocaust saw all the different varieties of Jew-hatred, religious, racial, and otherwise, coalesce into murder.

It is a somber note to conclude on, and the tribulations of the state of Israel make for a very cautious coda. “What kind of people will we be?” asked Fela Scheps in her wartime diary. She died in the first weeks after liberation at Belsen, but her question challenges us still.

Feedback from the course - collected partly by online questionnaire was positive. This is a representative comment:

I loved the time lines. maps and pictures which brought the lectures to life and grounded them for me.I really enjoyed the lectures, being able to ask questions and discuss things as a whole group and in break out groups. I liked being taught and could not believe how much was being covered. Who knew you could cover so much history in four weeks. It helped ground me, let me rethink ideas. Your way of teaching let me think from more perspectives in a non threatening way to my established ideas. I am ready for more. Thank you for all your work in creating this course for us. Perhaps we could return to some areas and look at them in greater depth?

There are so many areas to explore. As one participant noted, the glories of Muslim Spain got only a brief mention, and the vibrant communities of Eastern Europe were discussed through the single glorious image by Roman Vishniac at the head of this post.

But history is ongoing, and we must call a halt somewhere and somehow. There is always: next year.

Kati, what do you do for a living?

At the moment, I am writing my PhD in Global Health. I’m an ICU nurse by profession and work weekend shifts to support my studies.

What's it been like for you in the last couple of years under these extraordinary circumstances?

I was based in Nepal for a research project when the pandemic started. After my return to the UK, I went back full-time into ICU nursing. The work throughout the pandemic has been very hard. The NHS was already in a very vulnerable position when the pandemic hit due to 10+ years of systematic underfunding by the Tory government. The number of patients, combined with understaffing, lack of PPE and other material made it very difficult, especially during the surges. The NHS runs on a lot of goodwill by incredibly dedicated staff, and it makes me sad to see that many of my colleagues have burnt out or left the profession.

Have you learned anything about yourself over this period?

I think I have realised where my limits were. I worked a lot and did not look after myself very well. I thought I could just hang in until this is over. But the pandemic has been a marathon, not a sprint. I think (hope!) I became better at paying more attention to my feelings and needs, asserting my boundaries, giving my body more time to rest, and my mind more time to process.

The first year of the pandemic felt like firefighting, and (whilst well-intended), I found the “NHS hero”- narrative quite problematic. It put a lot of pressure on staff who felt even less able to seek support, and kind of removed the necessity to pay us appropriately. Like many of my colleagues I am feeling quite demoralised about the absence of a pay rise that would at least account for inflation, and the working conditions are no better. Though we have fewer patients, almost all of them are unvaccinated. It’s hard sometimes to not take certain things to heart, for example when people tell me “Covid is no big deal” or when I hear people speak about conspiracy theories or complain about the inconvenience of wearing masks or getting tested. That’s work in progress.

I understand you are also a PhD student?

Yes, I am based at King’s College London, and I was lucky to get funding for a project I am super excited about.

What is the subject of your PhD?

My project deals with PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) in women in Low- and Middle- Income Countries. I am planning to do field research in rural Ethiopia later this year to understand better why there are lower rates of PTSD despite higher trauma exposure in this population.

What do you like to do to unwind when you're not working or studying?

I love climbing, dancing, practicing yoga, meditation, listening to music, reading, and learning Hebrew with Ed.

When and where are you at your happiest?

When I am travelling and connecting with people from different cultures, learning about their way of living. In the before-times, I used to travel a lot and I miss it.

Why did you join Makor Hayim?

I am friends with Yon and Stacy and Stacy introduced me to the community. I am perceiving everyone at Makor Hayim as very warm, welcoming, and inclusive. I feel a strong sense of community and I very much like the activist bits too. 

You come along to the Navigating Judaism course - what do you get out of joining these sessions?

I love the Navigating Judaism course! It’s such a friendly environment to learn together and from each other. So much I didn’t know that I yet need to learn!

What's been your most meaningful experience at Makor Hayim?

I loved the in-person events that I was lucky to attend last year. That was Erev Rosh Hashanah at Ed’s place and the Tea Party at Martin and Lauretta's home. It was so lovely to finally see other community Builders in 3D.  I hope many more events will happen this year!

God is absent. The kingdom is ruled by the desires of shadow-King Achashverosh. Lacking vision and bereft of values, the shadow-King unknowingly becomes a mouthpiece for the upsets of those around him. The scene is set for Haman’s jealousy to become the organising principle of government policy. War and destruction are upon us!

Haman’s troops advance; we sit, terrified bystanders to the violence that will unfold.

Mordecai, the one who was exiled, declares the evil of Haman. He despairs. He laments. He mourns.

Esther has faith: she focuses beyond the palace-powered-by-upset-and-desire, she listens beyond trauma, she reaches out beyond fear: she makes space for the Steady Stillness. Might this be the return of God?

Esther, powered by Steady Stillness, sits with the 1,700 people arrested across the 47 cities of the Kingdom.

Esther, powered by the Steady Stillness, shelters in the city metro as the bombs fall.

Esther, powered by Steady Stillness says: ‘Go, assemble all the people and fast on my behalf.’ (Esther 4:16)

***

In this moment of terror and despair I call on you to lean into Jewish sacred mythic time.

I call on you to reach beyond the scientific materialism of our contemporary age to our ancestral knowledge that all human hearts are one heart.

I call on you to reach beyond the cynicism of our age to our ancestral knowledge that religious devotion in one place can change reality in another.

I call on you to heed Esther’s request that we fast on her behalf!

When we rest on Shabbat we are resting after the six days of creation.

When we eat matzah and Pesach we are leaving Egypt.

When we heed Esther’s call to fast on the fast of Esther, the day before Purim, we accompany her in prison cell, in her bomb shelter and in the battlefield. We offer her solidarity in whichever palace she has to enter in order to stand up to tyranny.

I have never felt called on to fast on the fast of Esther in my life before. This year I have heard Esther’s call.

If you too have heard the call please join this WhatsApp group for us to plan this day of lament on the fast of Esther (15 - 16th March).

Please spread the call. Who knows: perhaps relief and rescue will come from elsewhere? (4:14)

25/2/22

Why does God have so many names in the Torah?

If God isn’t an object to which someone could assign a name, but is, as the Hebrew Bible affirms, being itself, why does God have, or need, a name – let alone the 70 names used for God in the Hebrew Bible, 90 more in the rabbinic literature, and more again in Kabbalah?

The reason God must have not just one name, but many names, is because God’s presence in the world is not abstract, but personal and relational. God acts in the manifold times and spaces of our history. God addresses us, is petitioned by us, loved by us.

The patriarchs and matriarchs would have known God by the Canaanite name El. Later divine names include Shalom (peace), Ha Kaddosh (the holy one), Ro’’eh Yisroel (shepherd) Lord of Hosts or Tzevaot (armies); El HaGibor (hero or strong one), Hamakom (the place) and so forth.

But perhaps the most important and familiar name became Adonai, the pronounceable form of the four Hebrew letters of God’s name, letters (JHWH), and which is found about 6,600 times in the Hebrew Bible. Like a lot of Jewish feminists, I find Adonai problematic in so far as the concept of lordship seems to ordain domination as part of the very fabric of the cosmos. ‘Adonai’ can, after all, also be used by slaves to masters, subjects to kings, wives to husbands. Similarly, aside from the Shekhinah (what came to be the only feminine divine name for the quasi-maternal care and protection of God’s indwelling presence) nowhere in classical Judaism is God called Queen and Mother in ways that would match those names of Father and King. Why, one might ask, would a maternal image offend against a Jewish theology that affirms love and life?

But I’m also convinced that the tradition ultimately countermands or transcends its own patriarchy. The most intriguing and powerful of the divine names are highly mysterious and elusive. For example, with the name Hashem (the Name), God both demands a name and denies that any one name can comprehend the divine. Or again, in manes like Ein Sof – the Infinite, Endless one, or Eyheh Asher Eyeh – I will be who I will be - God names God-self as unnameable. With such names God says I am not an idol: you have no power to summon or create me, or, indeed, destroy me (hence texts containing God’s name must be deposited in a genizah or synagogue archive, or buried in a cemetery).

Finally, it’s worth reflecting on how when we write the proper name G-D with a dash between the G and the D – we might be queering all the divine names. We might be signalling that there is still an empty space where celebration of the feminine and the non-binary divine are missing. We might also be suggesting the grief of human suffering has caused an abyssal fracture in God’s heart, and that just as, in the end, there is the pit, and in the beginning, the womb, all our theology comes from and to darkness and silence.

What are you doing in Nepal? I am an operations officer for the British Gurkhas Nepal. I coordinate visits, plan against crisis (eg earthquake, pandemic), and support Gurkha recruiting.

What made you move there? I was offered the two-year job and jumped at the opportunity; it sounded like an adventure I couldn’t decline.

How long will you be there for? I will be returning in the summer. I will certainly miss Nepal however I will be glad to be in the same time zone as friends and family.

What's the culture like in Nepal?

A shock! But a really good one. Beautiful landscape, exciting climate, and truly interesting people. It’s a really exciting place to live and work.

Where are you living? I live in accommodation with other unaccompanied colleagues on a beautiful camp with a view of the Annapurna range almost daily.

What's been the most surreal experience you've encountered since you've been there? Having to carry a slingshot around like Denice the Menace after being attacked by monkeys living on camp.

What's the best thing about living in Nepal? A nice holiday from British politics! Plus running silly distances around the Himalayas.

What do you miss most about living outside of the UK? Undoubtedly seeing family and friends (and nice wine and fish and chips).

Why did you decide to become a Builder at Makor Hayim? To connect with my heritage and be part of a community, serving others.

What's been your most meaningful experience at Makor Hayim? During the High Holy Days when, after so long just online, hearing people singing together. Even though I was connected virtually.

‘The study of Torah leads to them all’ - Mishnah Peah 1:1

For every Torah insight I share, our Community Builder and chair of the Ma Tovu team, Rachel Diamond-Hunter can respond by suggesting a podcast she has listened to that conveys a similar insight in a different way. Does that make these podcasts equivalent to - or better than the Torah?!? Is their wisdom also Torah?

Two Shabbats ago, in response to our study of the wisdom of Yitro (Moshe’s gentile father-in-law) in Shemot/Exodus 18, our Shabbat morning study group asked this question: what is the status of the wisdom of gentiles?; can the wisdom of gentiles be classified as Torah?

The opportunity to learn with/from you on Shabbat morning is one of the highlights of my week. We begin by dedicating our learning to that which our hearts wish to lift up and acknowledge: a dear friend who we are intentional towards their healing from sickness; an ancestor whose influence we are grateful for; a past experience that calls for transformation; a loved one who has past away; a teacher we have learnt from. We say the bracha (blessing) for Torah study and off we go…

The learning usually precedes something like this: I introduce the specific text we will be focusing on and hand over to Gay - who embodies the Torah-imbibing power of years of regular synagogue attendance - to describe the larger context of the text within the parsha. Gaby will read the Torah text for us from the Sefaria source sheet on the shared-screen. I’ll focus on a few key words or themes before introducing the biblical and rabbinic inter-texts through which we will re-read and find new meaning in the Torah text. Martin will read these texts for us and I’ll draw out the connections before opening it up for responses. Ed will connect this teaching to Torah more broadly before Stephanie connects it to our contemporary condition: everyone will be invited to contribute. When we close our Torah study for the morning, with gratitude for one another’s insights, we come to realise that the world doesn’t quite look the same as it did at the start.

This method of study is based on the rabbinic approach to Torah: the text of Torah cannot be read naked. For rabbinic Judaism the written Torah (the text) comes to life when clothed in the oral Torah (the spoken word of study). And so each year I approach Torah in clothed from the wardrobe of a particular teacher. I read their discourses/essays on the parsha whilst paying attention to any moment where I feel moved. I then find the biblical or rabbinic sources that they quoted on Sefaria, put them on a source sheet and include an extract of that teacher’s discourse. For years I turned to the psychoanalytic essays of Aviva Zornberg. Then, with Anne and Daniel at our early morning pre-shul study sessions at Hashomer House, we turned together to the work of the legendary twentieth century Israeli teacher Nechama Leibowitz. Last year I chose to study/teach Torah with the chasidic thinker the Sefat Emet (real name: Rabbi Yehudah Leib Alter, Poland 1847 - 1905) drawing on the English translation of Rabbi Arthur Green.

The Sefat Emet’s teachings focus on the inner life of the Jew. He invariably, and ingeniously, connects the narrative of the parsha with each of our own spiritual quests for the Divine - the ‘innermost point’ as he calls it - within. As the world turned inwards in Covid-times, the Sefat Emet guided us from a chaotic world towards the possibility of inner peace. This year we have embarked on a journey back out into the messiness of the world guided by Torah in the clothing of the contemporary American theologian Rabbi Shai Held. Rabbi Held is an expert on social-activist-theologian Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and writes a Torah commentary deeply concerned with the guidance the Torah gives us for daily behaviour.

He concludes regarding gentile wisdom that ‘although Torah is endless in its depth and riches, there is vital wisdom to be found elsewhere, too. The Torah itself teaches that Torah alone is not enough.’

This week it’s my turn to recommend a podcast that conveys this message powerfully. In each episode of Podrash Rabbi Leon Wiener-Dow (a contemporary theologian and exponent of the work of my hero Franz Rosenzweig) listens to a ‘secular’ podcast and brings it into dialogue with texts from Torah. The ‘gentile wisdom’ is deepened through Torah and Torah is turned in new ways by the ‘gentile wisdom’. This is the task of our Torah study in Makor Hayim: to offer Torah to the wider world and to allow the wider world to offer itself to Torah.

May our Torah study nourish our inner life and guide us to act justly as we step out into the messiness of the world.

If you are interested in deepening your Torah learning, here are some possibilities…

• Join our Shabbat morning study group which is part of our online Shabbat morning service most weeks starting at 10:30am.

• Study Torah with a friend or fellow Community-Builder. Email me if you’re interested in being matched with a study-partner.

• Buy a parsha-commentary book such as those suggested above.

• Join Anne and myself at 8am on Wednesdays in a Willesden Green cafe between now and Purim for a deep-dive into the book of Esther. Details will be shared here.

The purpose of Navigating Judaism is to help produce autonomous Jews - that is, people who can actively experience and meaningfully contribute to the community. The Life-Cycle is central to this: one of the most important aspects of Jewish community is gathering to celebrate and to mourn; constructing each other, ourselves, and our community as we do so. It is noteworthy that the attack on Tree of Life in Pittsburgh in 2018 and the hostage crisis in Colleyville, Texas, this past Shabbat, had life-cycle events at their heart: in Pittsburgh a baby-naming and in Colleyville a bar mitzvah.

Jonathan Boyarin has written of the tension in Judaism between community in time (that is, of common memory and understanding of the world) and community in space (when and where we gather together). As he puts it, ““...interaction among Jews need not be based on all Jews living together in the same space. If we devote more of our energies to resurrecting our ancestors, then Jews can derive much of the interactive sustenance we need from living together in time.” (Storm from Paradise, p.128) It is a truism of Jewish history that problems posed by a lack of “space” (the destruction of the Temple) have been responded to by repurposing time as space - as we do every Friday evening, when the action of lighting candles creates a bubble of sacred time. Similarly, when we begin services with mah tovu, we transform a fragile web of electronic impulses into a virtual tabernacle, the sanctuary created by intention no more (or less) real than the tents of Jacob, or the homes of Rachel.

This idea of “interactive sustenance” has become an even more central part of our lives in the last two years since COVID became a part of our lives, as the constraints on gathering, meeting, or even seeing each other have demanded creative responses. The Colleyville crisis was livestreamed because the bar mitzvah was being held in COVID-secure conditions, with only a small number physically present in synagogue. Much more positively, the success of the “New Builders’ Shabbat” which I was privileged to experience last Friday evening is testament to how effectively Jewish ritual can be repurposed or invented to meet the needs of the moment.

But to New Builders the personal and liturgical calendars can need a considerable depth of explanation, both symbolic and practical. Why do Jewish couples meet under a chuppah for marriage? What is the significance and meaning of brit milah? Why do Jews sit shiva? How should I behave at these occasions? What should I expect to see, hear, and do on these occasions of personal and communal significance? In five sessions, we attempted to examine and answer questions around the life-cycle, led by Rabbi Daniel and enriched by the presence of our elders: Ed, Lois and Gay, who translated observance into anecdote and story. This powerfully illustrated why halachically the life cycle begins in adulthood with partnership: because the role of the life cycle is to transmit values to the next generation which will arise from love and partnership. How do we know what to do next? We ask those who have done it before.

Feedback from the group was very positive. Donald and Kati both reflected on the value of the sessions:

As a new Builder, Navigating Judaism improved my understanding of key life cycle Jewish rituals, their historic roots and relevance to everyday life in our progressive community . Without making us feel out of place, the friendly Makor Hayim folk led us through a complete life cycle and mapped Torah wisdom into our modern world realities applying refreshingly progressive opinions.The rituals and dealing with death and mourning were especially poignant and meaningful.

I absolutely LOVED the Navigating Judaism course and I am very much looking forward to the next course starting soon. What I liked most about the course is that not only those on the conversion path were attending but also other members from the community, especially elders, and I liked that it felt like a collaboration, and not like a classroom situation. I liked that we were invited and encouraged to question and discuss, that made everything we’ve learnt really accessible.

As we begin another series of sessions, this time on Jewish History, I hope that this unit will be as informative, thought-provoking, and helpful as the last.