Berachot - on feeling shame

I watched a clip recently of a worried man asking the Lubavitcher rebbe a question. The man was worried about encountering women while doing his kiruv work. The rebbe said to him. Don’t worry about the women, worry about yourself. And I thought how wise Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson was. There are two responses to the shameful feeling the man has when he encounters women. One is to make the mechitza higher and cover the women up more, and the other is to look at the sources of shame in yourself, without changing the environment you are in.

I’m interested in the role of shame in our lives. I think it’s worth exploring.

Let’s start at the very beginning, which is a very good place to start. We once lived in Eden, where we were warned not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of good and bad:

וּמֵעֵץ הַדַּעַת טוֹב וָרָע לֹא תֹאכַל The Torah tells us:

וַיִּהְיוּ שְׁנֵיהֶם עֲרוּמִּים הָאָדָם וְאִשְׁתּוֹ וְלֹא יִתְבֹּשָׁשׁוּ The two of them were naked, yet they felt no shame. But then one thing leads to another. First she eats from the tree, and then she gives the fruit to him. And the first thing that happens is that they realise they are naked. They sew together fig leaves and cover themselves. Suddenly, they feel shame.

I want to start with what Maimonides says about this. Near the very beginning of The Guide for the Perplexed, he looks very carefully at the story of the Tree of Knowledge. He says Adam and Eve were created by God with intellect — a form of human perfection that allows us to distinguish between true and false. But everything changes in a mouthful. It is only when Eve, and then Adam, eat the fruit that they acquire the knowledge of: הַדַּעַת טוֹב וָרָע Good and bad.

Maimonides says that “the distinction between good and bad is a matter of general agreement and not intellectual activity.” This is the world of human convention: the world we create together. Our cultures, beliefs, customs, flags, identities and values all belong here. It’s not the world simply as it is; it’s the extraordinary world of meaning that human beings create.

The anthropologist Clifford Geertz, drawing on Max Weber, famously described the human being as an animal suspended in “webs of significance he himself has spun.”

I want to expand that web to include language, identity, thoughts and feelings. I want to include Torah and our interpretations of it. I want to put lighting candles on Friday night in there — and what I think it says about me when I do it. And I want to point out that we are usually blind to the thick webs we spin ourselves. We’d all like to think we’re not. We’d like to think that what we see is simply what is. But over and over again I see people blind to their own privilege, assumptions and entitlement. And I have my own blind spots...

Maimonides gives us nakedness as an example of these two different modes: true and false, and good and bad. Adam and Eve were naked before they ate the fruit. They were naked afterwards. That fact did not change. What changed was what their nakedness meant.

After eating, Maimonides says, Adam became absorbed in judging things according to good and bad: “His state of mind changed so that he considered bad what he had not considered bad before.” That is a radical idea.

It means recognising that what is generally agreed — what seems obviously good or bad, proper or improper — does not belong to the same category as true and false.

Recognising that my deepest values are human-taught values rather than scientific propositions doesn’t make me believe them any less strongly. It makes me recognise what kind of claim I am making — and that another human being may inhabit a different web of meaning because of how they were raised, educated and formed. For Maimonides, then, the arrival of shame is evidence of something humanity has lost.

But there are other ways to cut the apple.

The anonymous author of Orchot Tzaddikim, writing in Germany in the fifteenth century, treats shame in this story of Adam and Eve as evidence of something humanity has gained. Orchot Tzaddikim makes an extraordinary connection between intellect and shame. He writes: הַשֵּׂכֶל הוּא הַבּוּשָׁה, וְהַבּוּשָׁה הוּא הַשֵּׂכֶל “Intellect is shame, and shame is intellect.” Shame can help us become better versions of ourselves.

Elsewhere the book warns against the kind of pride that makes us certain our own opinion is best, because once I am absolutely certain that I am right, I lose some of my capacity to learn.

Rabbinic Judaism takes bushah and kavod enormously seriously. They run like a river of red ink through the pages of the Talmud. We clearly shouldn’t shame other people. But I don’t think that means we should never feel shame ourselves.

Shame can be useful when we are prepared to look behind it.

Imagine that after shul today you drive home and have the impulse to duck when you see your rabbi. I don’t think we should change the halakhah about driving on Shabbat. I think perhaps we should notice that little prick of shame. It’s like the prick of shame we might feel when we walk past a beggar and keep our hand in our pocket. I don’t think we have to give away all our money to as not to feel the shame. But that uncomfortable little feeling might be reminding us of something true about what we owe to the poor.

I once felt shame when I was offered the chance to lead benching. I didn’t want to admit that I couldn’t confidently do it. I felt ashamed of my ignorance.

In retrospect, I think I should have listened to the shame — but held it lightly enough to say: I’m not confident about leading benching. Can you help me?

Perhaps that is what shame is useful for. Not as a verdict on who we are, but as information. A little uncomfortable signal saying: there is something here worth looking at.

We can’t go back to Eden, to that world before we knew good and bad, before we felt shame.

We live inside the webs of meaning we have inherited and the ones we keep spinning ourselves. But we can hold those webs a little more lightly. We can notice the shame without being crushed by it. We can notice our certainty without assuming it is truth. We can ask what our discomfort is trying to tell us.

And perhaps, occasionally, we can discover that there is still so much more to learn.

On marking time

Tonight is the last chance to count the Omer. Since Pesach, we’ve been counting for 49 days. Ideally you would say it at 9.30 tonight when the sun has set, but the old Ashkenazi custom has long tolerated counting the Omer before sunset. Sephardi custom is stricter about waiting until full nightfall.

Rabbi Chaim Weiner is a champion of old Ashkenazi traditions, and he insists he does not want the Mitzvah of counting the Omer to disappear. He wants people in our community in London to see it done and how to do it after the Kabbalat Shabbat services that fall between Pesach and Shavuot.

Recently, while visiting Zikhron Ya'akov, Rabbi Chaim found himself thinking about what the Vilna Gaon would say on the subject. The central synagogue in Zichron, Ohel Yaakov, is so popular with Jews of all kinds on Kabbalat Shabbat, that it can be difficult for the smaller neighbourhood shuls to gather a minyan. It is so popular that Rabbi Chaim couldn’t find a siddur to use when he was there a few weeks ago. He scratched around to the back of the shelf and found an old Siddur with a faded blue cover.

Inside was a footnote listing the customs of the Vilna Gaon. The footnote in the old siddur explained that the Vilna Gaon (The Gra) would go home after the service and repeat the Shema after dark, but did not repeat the counting of the Omer. This suggests that the Gra was happy with counting the Omer before nightfall. The note referenced the Mishnah Berurah and its accompanying Biur Halachah on counting the Omer. The Biur Halachah notes an important dispute, including a version introduced with the phrase yesh omrim, “there are some who say.” Some authorities argue that today the mitzvah of counting the Omer is only, זכר למקדש, a remembrance of the Temple service, rather than a full Torah obligation, because the original biblical mitzvah depended on the bringing of the Omer offering in the Temple itself. According to those opinions, the obligation today is a custom rather than a full obligation, and therefore there is more room for flexibility about exactly when one counts.

This makes the old Ashkenazi practice especially striking. Communities in northern Europe were already praying Maariv and reciting the evening Shema before full nightfall during the long summer evenings, even though Shema is itself a Torah obligation. In northern Europe it was simply too difficult to wait until sunset to pray.

Why become more exacting about the timing of the Omer than about the timing of Shema?

The Shema, after all, is a Torah obligation. If communities are prepared to rely on early times for Shema, why become suddenly strict about the Omer, which many authorities regard as rabbinic today?

This debate about when we say the evening Shema goes back centuries.

In the second Rashi comment on the first Massechet of the Talmud, Rashi explains that the Shema recited in synagogue before nightfall does not fully discharge the Torah level obligation. One should recite the Shema again later at night before going to sleep. Tosafot challenge Rashi and defend the widespread Ashkenazi practice of praying Maariv early. They bring several arguments, including the idea that halakhic time is not only astronomical.

One of the Tosafists, Ri Hazeken, points out that Jewish law sometimes follows social rhythms rather than pure celestial calculation. In fact, it’s mandated that way in the Torah itself where the times for Shema are “when you lie down and when you rise up."

That is social time, time as lived by human behaviour, not just counted by a clock.

In northern Europe, where summer sunsets come extremely late, Ashkenazi communities adapted. People could not realistically wait until very late at night every evening for communal prayer. So, communities developed around an earlier social definition of evening. The Vilna Gaon was famously uncomfortable with some of these leniencies and preferred astronomical timings to human ones. In general, he showed discomfort with ordinary communal life and preferred to study alone. Still, Rabbi Chaim likes to joke that perhaps even the Gra himself, might have found room for the old Ashkenazi custom here.

But we will never know.

A few days later, Rabbi Chaim went back to Ohel Yaakov hoping to find the old blue siddur again.

But this time he couldn’t find it.

Dvar Torah Pesach Day 7 2026

Rabbis, friends. That was a beautiful Hallel wasn’t it. I’m going to talk now about the less than beautiful part of our tradition. Some might even call it the yicky part, blood. But I want to convince you that not everything essential is pretty. Sometimes the hard part is the best part.

Today we read in the Maftir from Bamidbar (Numbers) Chapter 28:18 ‘You must offer up a fire-offering, an ascent-offering to God: two young bulls, one ram, and seven one-year-old lambs.’ (In English you miss that ascent offering is the Orlah sacrifice) וְהִקְרַבְתֶּ֨ם אִשֶּׁ֤ה עֹלָה֙ לַֽיהֹוָ֔ה פָּרִ֧ים בְּנֵי־בָקָ֛ר שְׁנַ֖יִם וְאַ֣יִל אֶחָ֑ד וְשִׁבְעָ֤ה כְבָשִׂים֙ בְּנֵ֣י שָׁנָ֔ה תְּמִימִ֖ם יִהְי֥וּ לָכֶֽם׃

Honestly before I started doing Daf Yomi, my eyes would glaze over at this stuff. For the last few months in the Daf Yomi world, the subject has been the sacrifices in the Temple. Much ink and time has been spent on working out the details of this system. You might have thought I would have preferred to skip to something more relevant to my life as the sacrifices are all Temple related and since 70 ACE, we no longer have a Temple. In the Shacharit I went to last year, here at NNLS, we would leave out the Mishnah on how the sacrifices work. And honestly, I was grateful for less praying that time in the morning. But actually, through Daf Yomi, I’ve learned a few things that have enriched my understanding of our long and winding tradition.

I learned that there are lots of different types of sacrifices and they all function slightly differently. Bear with me here while I share some details.

For example, in the Olah sacrifice that we read about this morning – the whole thing goes to God. It’s all burned up. While in the Shelamim sacrifice, some gets burned up, some goes to the Priest, and some goes to the one who brought it.

The other thing I learned was that in all Temple sacrifices, the blood goes through a precise ritual, and each stage counts.

First the animal is first slaughtered (shechitah), then a priest receives the blood (kabbalat ha-dam), carries it to the altar (holachat ha-dam), and finally dashes or sprinkles it on the altar (zerikah), with any remainder poured at the base.

To summarise, the steps related to blood are Shechitah → Kabbalah → Holachah → Zerikah.

It’s Pesach now so let’s look at the Korban Pesach in the Temple...

The animal is slaughtered (shechita) by a member of a registered group of Israelites. A kohen receives (kabbalah) the blood in a vessel. The blood is passed hand-to-hand in lines of kohanim to the altar. That’s Holachah. It is then dashed (zerikah) on the altar in a highly coordinated, public ritual done by many priests at once. It is then roasted and eaten by the registered group.

Let’s not be squeamish about blood. Dam as it is known in Hebrew. Dam as my friend Pam pointed out is the root of Adama, Adom and Adam. In our tradition, blood is essential and according to the laws of Kashrut, we don’t eat blood because blood is the root of life.

We don’t eat it, but we have to deal with it. We can’t pretend it isn’t there. Let’s follow the blood. A man has 5 to 6 litres of blood in his body coursing about in his veins and arteries. A woman has 4–5 litres. Unless she is pregnant or breast feeding or post-menopausal, she is reminded monthly of the blood in her body.

If you’re a man, you’re reminded of the blood in your body less frequently, but we really are basar v’ dam.

There are two acts involving visible blood that make us distinctly Jewish. I experienced them both recently. One was a bris and one was a Pesach Seder. Both are connected by the verse “בדמייך חיי / בְּדָמַיִךְ חֲיִי — b’damayich chayi” which comes from Book of Ezekiel 16:6

“..and I said to you: In your bloods, live. And I said to you: In your bloods, live.”

It appears twice in the verse, and the word for blood is in the plural damayich which give the rabbis lots to work with.

The original context in Ezekiel 16 is a shocking allegory. God describes Israel as an abandoned newborn, cast into a field, still covered in blood from birth. No one washes her, salts her, or dresses her. She is left to die naked and alone. God passes by and says: “In your bloods — live.”

This is a terrible scene and still has the power to shock if you read it today. The image is not spiritualised. It is about vulnerability, nakedness and survival. Israel’s life begins not in purity, but in blood.

I heard the reference to b’damayich chayi” in the prayers at Yonathan and Melissa’s baby’s brit recently. But in the hagaddah, it was a lot harder to find. It’s left out of some Hagaddot. But it’s there if you dig deep enough in the Magid section, it’s there in some Haggadot.

Rashi looks at the part of the quote that says: ‘you were naked and bare” and says this verse is proof‑text to teach that: When the time came for God to redeem Israel from Egypt, they had no mitzvot yet to engage in because they were spiritually “naked.” They were naked of Mitzvot (It was pre-Sinai) So God gave them two proto mitzvot of Brit Milah and Korban Pesach.

Why these two? Because these are the two moments when the Jewish people enter particular Jewish covenantal life. Both say: Jewish life begins here. Both involve action before redemption. Parents must be willing to risk their child’s life to be circumcised, a high price of entry.

In Egypt, the Israelites had to mark themselves out with a sign in blood on their houses. I imagine quite a risky business at the time. Interestingly, the two most practised Jewish mitzvot today are brit milah and attending a Pesach Seder, which survive long after any other mitzvot are abandoned.

In constructing the Liturgy of the brit Milah and the words of the Haggadah, by including the verse from Ezekiel, b’damayich chayei, rabbis are saying something deeply counter-modern. Jewish life does not begin in comfort, ideas, or belief. It begins in vulnerability, risk, and embodied commitment. Before Torah at Sinai. Before law. Before theology. Well before the Jewish Enlightenment in Western Europe… There is blood.

The covenant is not abstract. It is physical and costly. It challenges modern sensibilities. We like to think Jewish life is about ethics, ideas, justice, universalism. But this verse from Ezekiel says: Jewish life begins in particularity. And while blood is where life is for everyone, our tradition turns it into a particular sign for us.

Our tradition is not all pretty and all beautiful and all relatable, but we need to retain those weird, gory and sometimes boring parts, that can turn out to be the essential parts.

בדמייך חיי In your bloods, live

So next year wherever you are for your Pesach seder, if your Haggadah leaves out this section, you’ll have something to say about it.

Chag Sameach ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sources

Pesach Haggadah, Magid, First Fruits Declaration 6 “AND GREAT” – As it is said: “I let you grow wild like meadow plants, and you grew and matured and came forth in all your glory, your breasts full and your hair grown, and you were naked and exposed.” “And I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your own blood – and I said to you, ‘In your blood, live!’ and I said, ‘In your blood, live!’”

Ezekiel 16

Rashi says on ‘you were naked and bare’ in Ezekiel 16.

‘i. e. bare of all merit earned through the fulfilment of God’s commands. God therefore gave them two commands, relating respectively to the blood of the paschal-lamb and the blood of the circumcision, for that night they circumcised themselves, as it is said (Ezekiel 16:6) “[When I passed over thee] I saw thee wallowing in thy bloods (בְּדָמַיִךְ is plural)” i. e. in two kinds of blood.’

Mechilta deRabbi Yishmael (Bo Parasha 5) Attributed to: Rabbi Yishmael (2nd century ACE), a Tanna of the early rabbinic period.

When I passed over thee I saw thee wallowing in thy bloods (בְּדָמַיִךְ is plural)” i. e. in two kinds of blood. In Parasha 5, the Mechilta says: “בְּדָמַיִךְ חֲיִי — בְּדַם פֶּסַח וּבְדַם מִילָה” “In your blood, live — in the blood of the Pesach and in the blood of circumcision.”

Bechor shor This is Joseph ben Isaac of Orleans, a prominent 12th-century North French rabbi who says about Genesis 17:11:1 "And it will be a sign of the covenant between Me and you". A symbol for men And the blood of niddah [menstrual blood] that women guard, and tell their openings to their husbands, this is to them the blood of the covenant.

Nizzahon Vetus Anonymous Jewish apologetic text that originated in 13th-century Germany. Based on a Hebrew document written in the Middle Ages recording Jewish arguments against Christianity as expressed at that time. The Nizzahon Vetus starts from the position of Jewish weakness. Bitter fate, being reviled, accused of eating Christian children and their blood.

And they shall take of the blood" [Exod. 12:7] refers to three drops: "Put it on the lintel" refers to one, "and on the two side-posts" refers to two more. Thus, the passage refers to three types of blood - [the blood of the pascal lamb], of circumcision, and of the menstruant woman.

Ephod Bad – 19th century commentary by Lithuanian rabbi Binyamin David Rabinowitz

‘These positive commandments were an expression of absolute love for and loyalty toward God. They were also a proof that Israel’s repentance was repentance out of love rather than repentance out of fear of God. It also proved that they were now worthy of participating in the service of the divine.

We can now understand why Moses commands the people to set aside and also to take the Passover lamb. It wasn't simply enough for the people to have a lamb. They had to publicly take the lamb so that people would witness their repudiation of idolatry. The lamb would make much noise and it would be apparent to everyone that they had taken it for a sacrifice. This would arouse the Egyptians to kill the Israelites and, therefore, the Israelites actions would truly be self-sacrifice. Also the smell of the roasting meat would waft through the neighborhood so everyone would know what the Israelites were doing. The Israelites would have been convinced that the Egyptians would certainly want to kill them. Their willingness to risk martyrdom would certainly make them worthy of redemption. This also explains why the circumcision was also necessary. Without recovering from their circumcision, the Israelites might have believed they could defend themselves. Now that they were in a weakened state, they realized that they were totally dependent upon God. Prior to their circumcision they might have reasoned that the Egyptians had been weakened by the plagues – now they were weakened by the circumcision so that they were dependent upon God.’ ------------------------

Mishapatim dvar torah

Why did you come to shul this morning? I usually tell people disingenuously that it’s to hear the next chapter in the parasha, or to be part of the davening or to hopefully hear Rabbi Chaim speak or to chat with my friends at the kiddish. It’s handy seeing everyone at one time, isn’t it?

But what I don’t usually tell people because it’s too personal perhaps, is this idea expressed in the Talmud in Berachot 6a and b, that God is found between. Between two people studying and between three judges judging and between ten people in a minyan praying. What I mean by this is that on a desert island, I can experience God and transcendence, but only in community do I experience the joys of a system with a particular calendar, language and tradition. So, God is in-between us in a minyan, here today. No one person owns it alone. It’s a lot to explain to someone who asks me casually why I come to shul every week.

Last week, we read the ten commandments in the parasha. The moment of the encounter at Sinai. There was thunder, lightning, and a peak moment of connection with God. Moses was up the mountain. Today we are down to earth with a thud, in the parasha called Mishpatim. The laws or mitzvot. We are in between, in between the peak of Sinai and the everyday laws of Mishpatim.

Mishpatim is the parsha with the second most number of laws among all the 54 parashot. Most of the laws of Mishpatim are ethical living spelled out, and there are also laws that are purely ritual laws mixed in too. Those laws are sometimes called cultic regulations, or they are dismissed as ceremonial laws. In Mishpatim, all these laws are included. It’s not either or, it’s both.

For example, right in the middle of civil legislation, Mishpatim mentions: 1. the laws of Shabbat. 2. three pilgrimage festivals. 3. Bringing first fruits to the Temple, 4. Not boiling a kid in its mother’s milk 5. How to do sacrifices properly.

What is the point of the torah’s particularist rituals here? I want to make a case that this is an essential part of our story.

Those strange Torah cultic laws are what make us Jewish today. Those laws are later refined and changed and sometimes squeezed out entirely through the process of the Mishnah, the Talmud, the Shulchan Aruch and responsa until today. Today we are rabbinic Jews within a living system that still breathes life into all of us in some way. That’s what I love about our tradition. It’s the part that makes us different to everyone else. The weirdness of being Jewish in a non-Jewish world. That we go to shul on Saturday, or that we light candles and eat challah on Friday night or that we refuse to eat a cheeseburger or still celebrate Pesach despite the Temple being long gone. We can feel it in our kishkes. We do it and then we think of why we do it.

So what actually makes us Jewish now, what puts that feeling in our kishkes, or in our children’s kishkes? Many Jews might answer, we ca ne proud of our glorious ethical laws. Care for the vulnerable. Protection of the stranger. Justice in the courts. Mishpatim certainly teaches that. In fact, over and over, the Torah reminds us: You shall love the ger or stranger as you love yourself. But ethics alone does not make us uniquely Jewish.

Ethics, Justice and Compassion are universal, or at least I wish they were. And if Judaism was only a moral message, we could/should insist on it loudly. We might sometimes think if we say it loud enough, maybe the world would give us a seat at the table, when they see how good we are. ‘We are just like you’ we cry. ‘In fact, our rule is we love the stranger as we love ourselves.’ But if that was truly our only rule, we would also gradually dissolve into the wider moral culture around us. Maybe that’s because we as Jews don’t love ourselves enough as Jews. Ethics are necessary. But they are not enough to sustain us past one generation. How do we love being Jewish, and teach our children to love being Jewish?

Have you heard the question asked by many post Holocaust theologians: ‘is Jewish life centred around Sinai or Auschwitz?’ Today the question would be: is Jewish identity centred around Gaza or Sinai? But if that’s the central organising event of Jewish life, then Jewish life is defined by antisemitism and fear, and not love of being Jewish, of Jewish joy and of pride.

I think there’s another orientation, and that’s in the parasha today. It’s in the in between space, between the transcendence of Sinai and the everyday rules of Mishpatim, and more than that, between the ethically grounded laws of mishpatim and the particular ritual ones. Mishpatim suggests that what sustains Jewish life is not choosing between ethics and ritual but binding them together. What makes us Jewish now is not just that we imagine our ancestors once shared a moment at Sinai. It’s a way of understanding our shared practise today and loving what makes us different.

Here are some examples. We have all come to shul this particular day that we call Shabbat. Our homes that have mezuzot on our doors, look different to the homes of our neighbours. We all give tzedakah, feeling automatically obligated. We know many of the words to the same tefillot today, and we know when to bounce three times on our heels even when we’re not sure why. We feel like we ourselves were liberated from Egypt. We plan our Pesach seders and sing Chad Gadya to the tunes of our childhood. We taste the bitter maror, and the sweet haroset that our hands can make without looking up the recipe on the internet. I particularly love Friday nights when I bless my particular children, and I know they love that moment too.

Yes, transcendence is wonderful, but it is by nature universal and can be felt lots of places like in Mozart’s requiem and in the poems of Mary Oliver. But there is also wonder and love of ourselves to be felt, in the particular in between small moments of Jewish life.

Jewish life today is not sustained by catastrophe. Not Auschwitz. Not Gaza. Not antisemitism, and not even Sinai alone. People can’t build a future on trauma. And it can’t live forever at the peak of revelation.

So where is Jewish life actually centred? Perhaps it is here, in Mishpatim. It is not either/or. It is in the inbetween. In between the universal and the particular. In between the lovely stories and the strange laws. In the shared structures we understand that make community possible. It is not dramatic and big, it’s small and particular.

We are heirs to a tradition that refused to choose between ethics and ritual, between personal transcendence and group responsibility. We obeyed and then we understood.

Here we are together, living in that in-between space between what’s going on in our own heads and in each other’s heads... Shema Israel Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad.

Never mind encountering God at Sinai, this is why I come to shul. Together between ten of us showing up to pray on this particular Shabbat morning and listening to each other is where God is always now.

Conversation on a long plane journey

This is my Instagram post from 8 June 2024.

I was on the beach in Sardinia with friends on the 8th of June 2024, when we heard the news that four hostages were rescued by the IDF from Gaza. Although we had never met the four hostages, we were so happy that they were free. I know there were four because we held up four fingers in the pictures that we took of ourselves just feeling happy in the midst of a year of very little good news for our people.

For ages I watched the video of two of the hostages, in t-shirts and very short, cropped hair, looking out of the open helicopter at Israel below. There was something so beautiful about it. When thanked by one of the hostages, the soldier in charge of the operation said to him: This is the most important job we can do’

I used to watch that video over and over again imagining what it must feel like to look out at Israel - after being held hostage for so long in Gaza, and to feel free and safe and human again.

Today I flew back from Israel, where I had spent a week meeting wonderful, intelligent, thoughtful, generous people. My head and heart were full. I had decided not to pay to choose my seat and so Whizz-air allocated me a middle seat one row before the last row of the plane.

As I walked down the plane to find my seat counting the rows as I went, I recognized the person on the aisle seat in my row. He saw I looked.

As I sat down in my seat, I introduced myself. He said his name was Andrei. I took out the book I was reading - Hostages by Eli Sharabi. He said ‘ah he wrote a book. I’m writing one too and drawing it.’ When I looked back at him slightly quizzically, he said: ‘Yes, it’s me. You recognised me.’

It was Andrei Kozlov, whose face I had seen on a thousand posters and whose fate was once important to me. He was a hostage and now he was a person.

We talked. I was hesitant to ask him questions He said the day he was rescued was the happiest day of his life. They were fed the very bare minimum. There were three of them kept together. All three are doing ok. He’s doing ok too / he has his trauma and depression but even in bad moments - it’s part of a bigger understanding.

His family don’t understand what he lives with now. His mother is forever changed. They all are. He spent a year in America painting. He slept badly last night. He thought he could sleep a bit on the plane. When he woke up, he wondered if they had offered snacks in the plane. I insisted he take my northern Israel salad that I had bought at the airport. He looked at the sun setting out of the window and at Israel below as the plane took off. Before he lived in Israel, he was from St Petersburg. I said I had always wanted to see the art in the Hermitage, he said he had visited the Hermitage at least 20 times. He had studied marketing and advertising. We had that in common. He was going to London to visit some galleries. He showed me a painting of his on his phone. It was of men trapped in a globe, with people staring at them. It was painted from the wound and not the scar. He said he had homework to do before starting to work again or building a life.

He said he had been working at the Nova festival on October 07, and by 9.30 he had already been taken hostage and was in Gaza. He had visited the Nova site three times since then.

I tried not to talk to him like he was a hostage. I tried to talk like he was a 29-year-old man around the age of my son. I showed him some of my portfolio and we talked advertising. I had also tried to read the book he was reading by Rick Ruben, and I saw he was also struggling to finish it. But sometimes when I said I was impatient to land already, and it was another three hours to wait. I realised how ridiculous it sounded. He asked me if I really wanted to make Aliyah. I said it was a fantasy. We talked. He was a good listener. I tried to explain how some Jews in my community are very concerned with the pain of Palestinians in Gaza, it felt uncomfortable. I thought I shouldn’t have told him that part of the story. He said it was war. He said he didn’t believe peace in the Middle East was possible.

I noticed my own discomfort and wondered why. Because he was famous? Because I wanted to really talk as humans, but didn’t want to just put him in the Hostage box? I kicked myself for telling him about those in my community who were not as concerned for the hostages in Gaza as they are for the people of Gaza. We didn’t talk for a while after that.

He offered me the packet of chewy sweets he went to buy on the flight. I accepted them. It became easier to talk again.

I finished the Eli Sharabi book and offered it to him. He didn’t want to read it or any Frankl book he said, because he had his own experience. I said I understood because when he was explaining his experience, I could understand it but couldn’t put words to it accurately. It was completely new. I said I hoped the world would hear his new perspective, and that’s what I meant when I said he was intelligent, educated, thoughtful and creative. He said he understood.

I showed him the pictures of us celebrating and holding up four fingers in Sardinia, for the four hostages who were released. He was delighted to see that some people in the world shared his delight of the day he called the best day of his life.

Books referred to:

The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin

Hostage by Eli Sharabi

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

You can see Andrei's art here

Dvar Torah: Parashat Devarim Shabbat Devarim / Erev Tisha B’Av

I’ve been thinking of getting a tattoo. Not something trendy or artistic—but a line in Yiddish: ס׳איז שווער צו זײַן אַ ייִד “It’s hard to be a Jew.”

I don’t really want to get a tattoo, but those words are starting to feel truer today than ever before. Even here, in the UK, in the 21st century, where we live with safety and freedom, it’s starting to feel, once again, a little hard to be a Jew.

Not hard in the way it was for our great grandparents, surviving pogroms or murdered in the Holocaust. Not even like it was for our family and friends in Israel reeling from the massacre of October 07, and more recently sitting in bomb shelters under ballistic missile fire. Yes, social media is an annoying sewer of antisemitism, and yes, Jews are not welcome at Pride events or at some comedy clubs. That pain is real, but it’s not what I’m talking about.

Here’s what I mean. It’s hard to be a Jew when you see other Jews as enemies. It’s hard when the community you love doesn’t recognize the Jew you are as fully valid. It’s hard when the threads that bind us start to fray—not because of outside pressure, but because of what we do to one another.

I come from a South African, shtetl-rooted background. Some of you grew up here in the German Liberal or British Reform world. Different accents. Different worldviews. And sometimes, we find it hard to understand one another. We speak the same language—but we don’t always hear each other. That’s the pain I feel the most. <> And it’s exactly the pain that this week’s Torah portion, and this moment in our Jewish calendar, dares us to face. This week, we begin the final book of the Torah: Sefer Devarim. In Parashat Devarim, Moses tells the Jewish people how they got to this moment, before their entry into the land of Canaan. It opens softly: “These are the words that Moshe spoke to all Israel…” (Devarim 1:1) These are the words of Moshe’s parting speeches—his final testimony to a people on the cusp of a new beginning. After forty years of wandering, they are about to enter the Land. And Moshe, who will not go with them, gathers his people and speaks to them.

After 40 years in the desert, there’s now a lot of them, and Moses says: ‘How can I bear unaided the trouble of you, and the burden, and the bickering!’ (Devarim 1:12). Let’s look at each of these qualities – through Rashi’s commentary that he takes lock stock and barrel from Sifrei devarim 12.1, a book of commentary that was compiled around 220 ACE.

Rashi says the trouble of you means the Israelites were troublesome. ‘If one perceived that an opponent in a lawsuit was about to be a victor in the case, he would say I have more witnesses to bring and further proof to introduce or I will add more judges to the judges who are already sitting.’

On the burden, Rashi says ‘the Israelites were like apikorsim. If Moses went to work early, they would say what problems is he having at home. And if he went to work late, they would say, what do you think, He is sitting and devising evil schemes against you and is plotting against you.’

The third description the bickering means they were contentious or combative. In summary the people were a pain in the neck, they suspected Moshe of corruption, and of bias. They didn’t give him the benefit of the doubt. They would just go on and on. And that wore Moses down. It exhausted him.

I know these people. I am these people. We haven’t changed much, have we?

So, from Parashat Devarim – the difficulties before we enter the Promised land, to Tisha B’Av, the tragedies while losing the Promised Land till today

Tonight is the start of Tisha B’Av, the day we mourn our greatest communal traumas. It started as a day of mourning for the destructions of the first and second Temple, the Beitar massacre, and the banning of Jews from Jerusalem and now it includes mourning for the massacres of the Crusades, the expulsions from Spain and from England, and it is also the day Charedi Jews mark the Holocaust. Tishah b’Av addresses the pain of the Jewish people, as Yiddin.

Tonight, we’ll sit on the floor and read Eikhah, the Book of Lamentations written in response to the destruction of the first Temple. We’ll dim the lights, set aside comfort, and lean into grief. No greetings. No Torah study, except for texts about destruction. For extra pain, I highly recommend the Talmud in Gittin from daf 55b to 58a, that describes the failure of leadership and Zealots burning their own food supplies. It describes what happens when judgement fails, when kindness to each other and humility and accountability fails.

Tisha B’Av is not only about destruction done to us by our enemies. The rabbis of the Talmud ask: Why was the Second Temple destroyed? The answer they give is that it wasn’t because of Roman military might. The answer is sinat chinam— our baseless hatred for each other. Mistrust. Division. The erosion of the bonds of community from within. We are not just grieving what was done to us – our Jewish bodies. We are grieving what we have done—and still do—to each other.

The rabbis of the Talmud recognize that the Temple was not lost in a single moment of military defeat, but through countless small failures of heart, and lack of judgement, each one a missed opportunity to choose compassion over pride. At least that version of events gives us some agency. If only we were nicer to each other, maybe that would protect us from those who seek to kill us and take us hostage. I used to scoff at the idea that we can make that naïve exchange of please don’t hurt me, look how nice I am. Or how German Jews were surprised about how they were treated by the Germans from 1933 onwards considering how German, they saw themselves compared to Ost-Juden. Now, sitting in the hotseat of history, I’m starting to think that maybe that’s actually true. The less fractured we are, the more we can work together to protect ourselves from the agony that is done to us, over and over and over again.

So maybe I’ll get that tattoo on one arm: ס׳איז שווער צו זײַן אַ ייִד — It’s hard to be a Jew.

But on the other? I can imagine a different tattoo: אַהֲבַת חִנָּם — Love freely given.

If sinat chinam destroyed the centre of our Jewish world, maybe ahavat chinam can help rebuild a better Jewish world. And it starts with me feeling my pain and making space for your pain too. We’re all hurting.

This Shabbat, and this Tisha B’Av, I want to ask…Eicha How can we build trust back? What words have we spoken, or withheld, that have hurt others? Where have we assumed the worst instead of believing the best? Where can we listen with more curiosity, and speak with more compassion?

Tisha B’Av doesn’t let us skip to the happy ending. We first have to sit with the pain. We have to name what’s been lost. We have to mourn what was done to us and feel the pain where it hurts. We have to sit in the discomfort, because that’s where the healing could potentially happen.

At the end of Eikhah, after all the pain, comes my favourite line in the service, where we return the Torah to the ark on Shabbat morning. After all the pain described in the book of Eikhah, we beseech God. We hark back to the innocent days before any damage was done to us. We say: we’ll come back to you God but first you come back to us.

We say: “Hashivenu Hashem eilecha v’nashuvah, chadeish yameinu k’kedem.” “Return us to You, God—and we shall return. Renew our days as of old.” (Eikhah 5:21)

Alevei

Shabbat Parah

Today is shabbat Parah which is one of the special shabbatot to get us to start thinking about an upcoming festival. Yes, Purim is now in our rear-view mirror and Pesach is coming towards us at full speed. It’s time to get ready… Today we read the first section of Chukkat which is about the red heifer preparation.

In Numbers 19:1-22, the Israelites are commanded to sacrifice a red heifer without blemish, burning it entirely outside the camp. Its ashes, mixed with water, are used for ceremonial cleansing. Anyone who touches a corpse becomes unclean for seven days and must undergo purification using this mixture of water and ashes from the red heifer.

The connection with Pesach is that the Talmud, in Pesachim, discusses the necessity of ritual purity before sharing in the Passover meal, emphasizing that those who are impure cannot eat the korban Pesach. Pesachim 92a -clarifies that someone who can become pure through the Parah Adumah (red heifer) ritual must do so in time to participate in the Passover meal.

In preparing for this dvar torah, I saw many opinions about this red heifer purity ritual from people far, far wiser than me. Starting with King Solomon the wisest of them all… Where King Solomon, traditionally the author of Kohellet says “All this have I tested in wisdom. I said, "I will be wise", but it was far from me. Yoma 14a teaches that he is referring specifically to the Red Heifer.

Rambam categorized this mitzvah as a chok—a divine decree beyond full human comprehension. He acknowledged its paradoxical nature: the ashes purified the impure but rendered the pure impure. It is the realm of the supra-rational. Rambam explains that a chok—a divine law without an apparent rational explanation—teaches humility. He says that while some commandments have clear reasons, others, like the Red Heifer ritual, transcend human understanding. Accepting chukim demonstrate that divine wisdom surpasses human intellect.

The anonymous author of Sefer haChinuch understood to be a student of Rambam says he provided an explanation for many commandments but with this one, ‘his hand are weak and mouth scared to utter a word, as the depth of this commandment is too deep and filled with secrecy’.

In Bamidbar Rabbah 19:3, a 12th- century midrashic commentary on the Book of Numbers teaches that even wise King Solomon, who investigated the matter, in the end could not fully grasp it. The Midrash says only Moses is told the rationale for the red Heifer by God, which Moses doesn’t share with us.

Jay Schlesinger drew my attention to Dr Joseph Weinstein, who notes that to make soap, one needs three components: an alkali, from ash, water and fat, and he wonders if soap-making was a trade secret of the Kohanim.

So many attempts to reconcile this strange Mitzvah…

Another response to this mitzvah is to walk away from it entirely. To see it as further evidence that our tradition is arcane and irrelevant. Those that don’t walk away, have tried over the centuries to find reasons for the place of this ritual in our lives, including it in our torah reading cycle, and even re-reading it again today.

Moshe Halberthal, in one of my favourite books, called People of the Book, looks at how interpretation works. In particular, he looks at canon and the principle of charity. Canon is when we seal a text and say we are not changing it anymore. Charity here is not charity as we usually think of it, by giving money. This view of charity is a way of looking at another’s statements as a way to shed some light on them, to see that they have light to shed. Uncharitable readings see the text in the service of an unjust cause. I’ve seen that approach around antisemitic, out-of-context quotes from the Talmud that demonstrate how wicked Judaism is. It breaks my heart.

Moshe Halberthal says that when it comes to our canonical texts like the Torah and the Mishnah and the Talmud, charitable readings are more generous in showing the work in the best light. I’m in the charitable camp.

So maybe that’s why the need to make sense of Parah Adumah doesn’t bother me at all. There is so much in our tradition and in our liturgy that rubs me the wrong way, that makes no sense to me, that’s a stone in my shoe. But I love it all, the good and the bad and the confusing. My love is unconditional. I love being Jewish and being part of a long and wide tradition that I swim in. I don’t need to understand it all, to reconcile it all or to explain it all. Even more so when I discovered Rambam, the Talmud and NNLS. I belong here and it belongs to me.

So, I don’t believe we should all believe the same thing, or that I should cancel you if you don’t believe the same thing as me, or that we should eliminate or change the parts of our prayers and rituals that don’t agree with my beliefs. I believe in showing up and helping out. I believe in finding your community and sustaining it. I believe we are stronger together with all our differences.

Shabbat Parah reminds us that our tradition is not always about understanding every detail. Sometimes it’s about showing up with humility, embracing the mystery, and connecting to something larger than ourselves. I love being part of this community, and I hope that we can all continue to find strength in our shared practices and diverse beliefs.