"To begin with, for you to be here now trillions of drifting atoms had somehow to assemble in an intricate and curiously obliging manner to create you. It's an arrangement so specialised and particular that it has never been tried before and will only exist this once. For the next many years (we hope) these tiny particles will uncomplainingly engage in all the billions of deft, co-operative efforts necessary to keep you intact and let you experience the supremely agreeable but generally under-appreciated state known as existence.

Balak 5769 - 4th July 2009

The story of Balak, towards the end of the Book of Numbers is one of its highlights. Balak is a Moabite king. He's worried about the advancing Israelites so he sends for the services of the pagan prophet Balaam. Now, Balaam is not just any old foreign prophet; he is a highly sought-after, freelance, professional curser. It sounds like the best job in the bible. If you want a top of the range curse for your enemies, Balaam ben Peor's your man! King Balak, it seems, is wealthy and is willing to pay Balaam extra for a top-of-the-range curse. Balaam knows nothing about the Israelites, but hey it's just a job and he'll curse anyone if the money's right.

Korach 5768 - 28 June 2008

For most of my childhood, my family belonged to Brighton & Hove New Synagogue; and right through my childhood - you'll appreciate the kind of child I must have been - I wondered how long it could stay ‘new'. More than fifty years after it was established, it has now changed its name to Brighton Reform Synagogue. Similarly, Glasgow New Synagogue celebrated its 75^th anniversary this year by becoming Glasgow Reform Synagogue. Not far from here is a sister congregation by the name of Middlesex New Synagogue. It's been New for almost 50 years now.

The Labour Party first used the term New Labour in the early 90s, a few years before coming to power. In Henley's by-election this week, I suppose New Labour seemed a little less ‘new'. Mind you, when New Amsterdam became New York in the 17^th century, who'd have know how long that would still be ‘new'!

We have a study group in this community (perhaps no longer new) that meets to study a chapter from the Book of Kohelet, Ecclesiastes, before the service on the last Shabbat of each month, so they met this morning. There are lots of great verses in Kohelet, but one phrase in particular has become something of a Jewish expression. As it happens it appears more than once, but never quite in the form that has become the expression. Here it is. Eyn chadash tachat ha-shemesh. Literally it means ‘there is nothing New under the sun'. Eyn chadash tachat ha-shemesh.

Beha’alotcha 5768 - 14 June 2008

Here's the story. The Israelites are a slave people. They build pyramids for their Egyptian masters. They receive no pay. Their taskmasters beat them into forced labour. Then comes a miraculous exodus. Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt to freedom. This, they believe, can be nothing less than the work of God.

They travel through the desert to Mount Sinai where they experience that unique moment of revelation that we commemorated last week at Shavuot. As the story is presented in the Biblical text, God first brings us out of slavery and then, at Sinai, we enter a covenant, a special relationship with God. Leaving Sinai and heading towards the Promised Land, God is providing the water and plenty of delicious, nutricious manna for on the way. Things are really going well.

Except, these are the Israelites we're talking about. "If only we had meat to eat!" they whinge. "Remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt! The cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic!" - "Oy... now it's just this miraculous manna-from-heaven stuff. Boring!"

Metzorah 5768 - 12 April 2008

Amy was my first Bat Mitzvah student. Her father was Jewish but her mother was not. Of course Amy knew quite a lot about Christianity, but her mother was happy for Amy to be Jewish, and so that is how they brought her up. They wanted Amy to know about and respect other religions and faiths, but they wanted her to be grounded in a tradition of her own, and that tradition was Judaism.

I sometimes think of her at this time of year because there are these two Torah portions part way into the Book of Leviticus: last week's called Tazria, and this week's, Metzorah. They infamously describe in great detail some rather unpleasant skin ailments, often translated as ‘leprosy' although it also occurs in cloth and in buildings. As I was concerned about the possibility of some kind of dry-rot under the floor of our Victorian house at the time, I was almost relieved that Amy was reading the bit about ritual impurity caused in childbirth. Her father didn't seem to mind... I'm not so sure what her mother made of it.

Mishpatim 5768 - 2nd February 2008 

Over six years ago a small advert appeared in Loot, the classified ad newspaper. It said "Join me. Send one passport-sized photograph" followed by a post office box number. The advert gave no reason or any other detail. Are you the sort of person who would have replied? A few did... and then hundreds and then thousands. What's most bizarre is that none of them knew what they were joining, even Danny Wallace who started it. It could have been anything. "It was a piece of whimsy," he says, "A silly half-project. But thanks to a huge and diverse group of perfect strangers, it became something much bigger. I'm still trying to work out how."

Chayyey Sarah 5768 - 3rd November 2007

Last night, following the Friday night service, a number of us took the opportunity to stay on for one of our ‘chavurah suppers'. If you missed out there's actually another one in a fortnight's time. Always good food, good company, a great atmosphere. Sometimes we sing our way through the meal, but someone had put the set of songbooks somewhere ‘safe' for the redecorating, so the raucous singing had to wait for birkat ha-mazon, the table-tapping grace after meals.

The text we use here is actually based on one I prepared for RSY, the Reform Youth movement, while I was a rabbinic student. They wanted the whole of Grace after Meals on two sides of A4, which means you kind of have to be in a Youth Movement to be young enough to read such a small font, but they did with my help also take the opportunity to make the liturgical text their own. Many of these changes have made it into the new Reform Prayerbook that will be published in a few months. Unfortunately the draft siddur that you are holding contains only the Shabbat services or I would invite you to turn to the Grace after Meals. There you would find one of the blessings where - just as we have in the Amidah in our services - we have named the matriarchs as well as the patriarchs; our foremothers as well as our threefathers.

For over four months now, four-year-old Madeleine McCann has been missing. I don’t think it’s just because I’m a parent of five-year-olds that I found the news, back in May, so disturbing. “There but for the grace of God go I” some might say – though that kind of suggests that it’s through God’s ill-grace that the McCanns are suffering their ordeal. “They’re just two respectable doctors and an innocent little girl, good Catholics who even had an audience with the Pope, none of whom deserve this” – though that kind of suggests that there might be other parents, non-religious people or small children who do deserve it. Perhaps more terrifying still is the current suspicion that Kate and Gerry McCann may themselves be involved in Madeleine’s disappearance. Surely it’s unthinkable.

Yet every year – as we will in a few minutes – we read an unthinkable story. Abraham prepares to sacrifice his son Isaac. Perhaps it’s less shocking because it’s not today’s news, it’s ‘just’ a Bible story. Or if you find it harder to dismiss Bible stories, perhaps it’s still troubling but not quite so terrifying because it’s all part of the divine plan and, after all, it is God who’s giving Abraham his instructions. But as I have said before, when someone hears God speak so clearly, so literally (let alone so immorally) then I simply don’t believe they are hearing the word of God. That’s just not how it works. And nor is it how I believe we read the Bible. To hold such a simplistic, fundamentalist view of God and revelation is – to coin a phrase – a case of “The God Delusion.”

Emor 5767 - 5 May 2007

About 17 years ago, on a sunny afternoon, I was standing under a chuppah. That's something I do relatively often now as it's part of my job description, but this was long, long before I was a rabbi, so I wasn't officiating. And that sunny afternoon was before Vanessa and I were married, so it wasn't my own wedding either, which was another time that I was under a chuppah. On this particular occasion I was the best man. It's seventeen years ago and the memory of it is now a bit hazy. I think I'd remembered the rings but forgotten my kippah. But one moment in particular still sticks in my mind. In retrospect it might have been a clue to how I ended up becoming a rabbi, though not a Reform one.

Let me explain. Some time during the ceremony, between the couple's first and second sip of wine, a wasp had landed in the cup and was busily drowning in kiddush wine.  (It can't be a pleasant way to go.) And what I remember was the surreal conversation that took place between the groom, the rabbi and me, right in the middle of the wedding ceremony; in fact I don't think anyone else was aware of the discussion. To be honest, I'm not sure how much we cared for the plight of the wasp, or even really for the halachic conundrum that it posed, but it somehow seemed seductively important to establish whether or not the cup of wine was still kosher.

Va'era 5767 - 20 January 2007

When Ben chose to read a poem by Malorie Blackman for his study passage, he had no idea quite how relevant it would turn out to be. The poem is from Knife Edge, the second book in a trilogy called Noughts and Crosses. Her inspiration is said to have been noticing once when she needed a plaster that it was colour-toned to blend in with a white person's skin rather than her own black skin. The fictional world she creates has two distinctive features: it is blacks rather than whites who are predominant, and secondly that prejudice and racism are more apparent than in our world - though that was before this week's Big Brother and the question on everyone's lips: Is Jade Goody racist?

Noach 5767 - 28 October 2006

Often when we read the Torah, our natural tendency is to try to understand it in its historical context. Even the story of Noah and the Flood is no exception and many scholars of ancient Near-Eastern literature have compared this part of Genesis with a number of similar Mesopotamian Flood Epics dating from more than 3000 years ago. But for us, our holy texts, however they are rooted, are not consigned or constrained to the past. It has always been our practice to make the Torah live in the present, to impact - albeit through interpretation or indirectly - to impact on our lives as we lead them. Our hope is that our tradition, even when it speaks in the language of the past, can still speak to us in the present...

And then there are those verses that sound like they could have been written just yesterday, or - even more alarmingly - that they might be written in the near future.

B’reishit 5767 - 21 October 2006

It’s just last weekend, with the festival of Simchat Torah, that we began again in our Torah reading cycle at the beginning of Genesis. In just one chapter we heard the Biblical account of the creation of the entire Universe and then – with the first three verses of chapter 2 – that God rested on the seventh day thereby setting the precedent for our weekly Shabbat.  

Today, and unusually in our Reform cycle, the Torah reading picked up exactly where we left off last Shabbat. Having described six days of creation, culminating in the creation of human beings, male and female together, and then the Sabbath Day, what comes next? Well the story starts all over again and tells it differently. No carefully structured six days, in fact this version seems to focus on the creation of a single, solitary human being from earth with the breath of life added as God’s finishing touch. At this stage Adam is more of a species than a name. From the adamah God fashioned an adam. From the earth God fashioned an earthling. The wordplay works in Hebrew and it even works in English if earthlings don’t make you immediately think of Martians as well! In this second version of the creation story though, plants (and much later, animals) seem like an afterthought. And it’s only in this second version that instead of men and women being created at the same time that we have the single adam from whom a second human, a mate, is formed. 

Nitzavim-Vayeilech 5766 - 16 September 2006

A few moments ago, towards the end of the Torah service, we would normally have announced the fact that a new Hebrew month begins in the coming week. It's a prayer that we include - in theory at least - about once every four weeks. The simple announcement of the new month in the fixed Hebrew calendar goes back to the 4^th century, but the prayer we now use in the Torah service was introduced as recently as the 19^th century, making it the latest addition to the Orthodox service. Our version is the same as the one you'd find in Singer's for example. (The prayers for the current monarch or for the State of Israel are of course newer, but are considered to be part of the series of prayers for the community which are much older). Reform Judaism, which interestingly dates back to the same sort of time as this last change to the liturgy for traditionalists, has continued what you could call a tradition of liturgical development and innovation, right up to the draft new siddur that we are using today. Even if it's true, I suppose saying that Judaism has a tradition of innovation is a bit of an oxymoron. (For the person sitting next to you who didn't know the term oxymoron, it means a phrase that contradicts itself, not an idiot who lives near Bushey.) So our new prayerbook when it appears in its final form in about 15 months will be another part of that Jewish tradition of innovation.

Korach 5766 – 23 June 2006

In an Orthodox synagogue, if you’re a Cohen, you may have the honour of being the first one called up to the Torah reading in synagogue. The other perk for being a Cohen is that a father will ritually ‘buy back’ his 31-day old first-born son from you in a ceremony called Pidyon ha-Ben that is in fact derived from a verse in the earlier part of this week’s portion. Back in biblical society, being a Cohen was an enviable position, but nowadays the long list of benefits pretty well ends at being the first aliyah, and the odd pidyon ha-ben gig. On the downside, you can’t set foot in a cemetery (unless it’s for your immediate family) and you’d better not fall in love with a proselyte or a divorcee, because you’d be forbidden to marry her. If you’re a Cohen, tradition has it that you’re descended through the male line from Aaron, but it seems that by now many people who think they are a Cohen, or indeed are called Cohen, aren’t; and there are others who don’t realise it but are! Even a century after the destruction of the Temple, in the second century, there was doubt about the pedigree of some who claimed to be a Cohen; and in the Middle Ages, it was ruled that pidyon ha-ben-money should be given back to the father after the ceremony because by then all priests were merely ‘presumed priests’ and may not be entitled to keep the money. You may understand why Reform has abolished this dubious hereditary caste system and gives aliyot in services simply on the basis of honour and merit. And you’re very welcome to fall in love with a convert or a divorcee… or indeed a divorced convert.

Tazria-Metzora / Rosh Chodesh / Atzma’ut 5766 - 29 April 2006

This week’s Torah portion is the double portion of Tazria-Metzora. When some people refer to the portion of Tazria, you may notice them do so with a knowing smile. Tazria is a short parasha – only two chapters, and the first deals with ancient purification rites after defilement through childbirth. It’s difficult stuff to read if you’re squeamish or sensitive but the other chapter in Tazria deals, in rather graphic detail, with various oozing or scaly skin afflictions, so when the portion is Tazria then many people naturally prefer to focus on the bit about ritual impurity in childbirth. – There’s not a lot of choice. The first Bat Mitzvah I ever taught was for this week of Tazria. The Rabbi of the community had suggested that perhaps the Bat Mitzvah could be on another date –to get a ‘better’ portion, and the Chair of Ritual had the same idea. But the family were keen on that particular date and were happy to live with the Torah portion. So Tazria it was…

After the cycle of our Torah portions was interrupted last week by the special reading for Pesach, this week we return to Leviticus. After the two first parshiot in Leviticus dealing with the details of animal sacrifice, it's good at last to come to something we can get our teeth into - which I suppose is the right expression for a Chapter of Leviticus dealing with the laws of kashrut. The text is surprisingly straightforward: the way to distinguish between animals that are permitted and those that are forbidden and then a list of examples. As the rhyme goes: ‘All the animals that we eat chew the cud and have split feet.' The examples given are cases that need special care because the animal fulfils one criterion but not the other: a camel chews the cud but doesn't have a proper cloven hoof and a pig has cloven hooves but doesn't chew the cud.

Tetzavveh / Zachor 5766 - 11 March 2006

When I was a school teacher I very much enjoyed teaching right across the age range, but I especially remember my sixth formers. Perhaps it's that the A' level groups were a little smaller; perhaps it was the challenge and reward of teaching at a higher academic level; perhaps it was something particular about students of that age, children becoming young adults. Of course you get glimpses in younger children of the adults they may become, even in 4 year olds, certainly in 13 year olds, but there's something special about sixth-formers and the relationships you build with them as a teacher.

Some sixth-formers are more memorable than others but I remember one in particular because when he finished his A' levels he bought me a mug. Ten years later I still have the mug. It has probably lasted this long because I'm not a great tea or coffee drinker but somehow this week it ended up on my desk. His class and I had a running joke about their dependence on calculators when I and indeed they could actually work out the answer more quickly in their heads or on paper, and their repeated need took up the values of physical constants over and over again that I had somehow committed to memory. Of course I have forgotten nearly all of them now, but instead I can irritate people by remembering which page the torah service is on and how many Psalms there are in the Bible.

Bo 5766 - 4 February 2006

There was a time that I used to give my sermons titles. The fact is I never announced the title of a sermon, it just kind of had a title - ‘cos it felt like it deserved one or something - but it actually served no purpose. It didn't matter if the title was significant or completely arbitrary or beautifully encapsulated the content with out giving too much away, nobody ever knew the title but me.

Now my sermons just get titles like Bo - 4^th February 2006 brackets Joshua's Bar Mitzvah. But if today's sermon had a real title it would be "It's About Time". So now you want to know why. - Two different reasons: the first reason is the story, the place in the Exodus narrative that we have reached. It has been a slow build-up from setting the scene of Egyptian slavery, Moses' birth, two Torah readings highlighting his reluctance to take on his role in leading the Israelites out of slavery, nine plagues spun out with Pharaoh repeatedly changing his mind and hardening his heart until finally, in Joshua's reading for us this morning, the tenth plague and a hurried Israelite exit stage east with accompanying mixed multitude. At long last, or - if you remember the title that never was It's About Time.

Va'era 5766 - 28 January 2006

Let me translate. Or more accurately, let me read you the original of which that was the Hebrew translation...

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

In Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, when Alice asks Humpty Dumpty (who seems very clever at explaining words) what "slithy" means, he replies,  ‘Well, "slithy" means "lithe and slimy." "Lithe" is the same as "active." You see it's like a portmanteau-there are two meanings packed up into one word.'