Category: Rabbis blog

Parshat Beshalach We are soon to celebrate the festival of Tu Bishvat – (hope to see you at our special Tu Bishvat Seder party) The 15th of Shevat celebrates the New year for the trees – this is recorded in the first Mishna of tractate Rosh Hashana. Technically this has many important ramifications in Jewish law. For example we are taught that each year we must give certain tithes (Jewish religious taxes). Tu Bishvat was important in defining which "tithe/tax" year a trees fruit belongs to. This makes a big difference as in the Sabbatical cycle we bring a second tithe up to Jerusalem to eat our food in holiness in the 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th year of the Sabbatical cycle. However in the 3rd and 6th year we give a tithe to the poor instead (this is separate to the general laws of Tzedakah which apply to those in need). But on a broader spiritual level Tu Bishvat has become a time to...

Parshat Bo https://youtu.be/kzLwXy-ZnwU The 9th plague is darkness. We are taught in the Midrash that for the first 3 days the Egyptians were unable to see and the next 3 days the darkness was so "thick" that they could not even move. Darkness in general is a function of exile. We all have times in our lives when we feel overwhelmed with what is happening around and to us. Psychological darkness can be even worse then its physical counterpart. The greatest tool we have to light up the darkness is Emunah - Faith and Trust in Hashem. The way to Emunah is not through philosophical introspection. As important as it is to analyse and look deep into ourselves this rarely ignites the light of faith. It is the simple action and commitment to follow the ways passed onto us throughout the ages that begins our journey to faith and to intimate relationship with Hashem.  Earlier this week I attended the 13th European Cantorial Convention...

Parshat Vaera  adapted from a teaching from the Lubavitcher Rebbe. This Monday Jan 27, HMD will mark 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. There are many stories that are told of how Jewish people both pious and simple sacrificed their lives in order observe Judaism and maintain their spiritual link with God and the Jewish people. (See https://shulbythesea.co.uk/parshat-vayechi-13th-january-2020/ for one story) In fact we are taught that any Jew killed throughout our history who was killed "for the sole reason of being a Jew" is considered to be a holy martyr. We say that they died "Al Kiddush Hashem"- for the sanctification of God. Our only response to such suffering can be to humble ourselves in the presence of a Holocaust survivor. We can not explain or rationalise the suffering. To quote from the story of the burning bush "the ground that they stand on is holy". The only true Jewish way react is to build up Jewish communities founded on Torah and Mitzvot with even greater vigour,...

Parshat Shemot One way to describe the document we call the Torah is "a sustained protest against empire and abuse of power". The book of Shemot begins by sketching the story of Moses and his development. Of all the stories the Torah could have chosen about Moses' "early years" it focusses on just 3. Story 1: Moses grows up in the palace of Pharoah as an adopted son of Pharoah's daughter Batya. He goes out to see his brothers (not just physically leaving the world of luxury and opulant royalty behind him but also conceptually too he "goes out" of his royal bubble to empathise with his true brothers), and encounters an Egyptian attempting to murder an Israelite. He looks this way and that and sees no one and so kills the Egyptian burying him and thus saves the Jew. Story 2: the next day he again comes out to his brothers and finds two Jews fighting and challenges them - "Wicked one why are...

Parshat Vayechi  I heard a moving story this week at my Rabbinic Conference in London which I would like to share. Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Jacobson, the key note speaker at our conference related how he had met a man called David Israel who was a successful business man living in South America. David Israel had come to Florida and met Rabbi Jacobson at a Shul where he was scheduled to speak. David Israel approached the Rabbi's lecturn and made an unusual request to be able to address the audience for a few mins. Rabbi Jacobson acceded the request and David Israel proceeded to relate the following story (which I will summarise as it was a lot longer than a few mins!) David Israel was a survivor of Aushwitz. He felt he wanted to share a particular story back in 1944... He was a cook in the camp kitchen and was under strict rules enforced by the capos. He was told in no uncertain...

Parshat Miketz Many of you this year will have seen my Car Menorah (photo outside the Fylde Borough Council). You may have wondered why I decided this year to put one on my car. I have had one before, quite a number  of years ago when I was Rabbi to students on campus. I suppose I became complacent in my role as a community Rabbi looking to light hearts and souls within the confines of the community but forgetting the Jewish imperative to look beyond. The recent fiasco over antisemitism within the labour party has certainly played its part in reigniting my passion for spreading the light beyond the confines of the Jewish community. I wanted to be able to celebrate my Judaism fully, openly and unabashedly and to share that with as many people as possible regardless of their faith. There are many messages that Chanukah symbolises but at its simplest level the light of the menorah represents the light of spirituality the Greeks were unable...

Parshat Vayeshev - by Rabbi Bergson A short idea to connect this Parsha to Chanukah - adapted from this weeks Bagel Shiur. Chanukah is more than just the story of how the Syrian-Greeks persecuted the Jews in the second Century BCE and our subsequent victory via the Hasmoneans/Macabbee, militarily and of course the miracle of the Menorah lights in the Second Temple. The story of Chanukah actually has a darker undertone. During this period the Greeks attempted to Helenise the Jewish people and in fact to great degree succeeded in particular in the northern part of Israel. The Collins dictionary has this entry for "Helenist" - (in the Hellenistic world) a non-Greek, esp a Jew, who adopted Greek culture The Hellenised Jews in turn persecuted those Jews who refused to assimilate. Chanukah is therefore also about one Jew persecuting and expressing intolerance to his brother. And of course this brotherly hatred is at the core of Parshas Vayeshev where Jacob's sons hate and are jealous of Joseph which leads them to eventually sell him into...

Parshat Vayishlach Below is an except from the new Chumash with commentary by Harav YB Soloveitchik (1903-1993)- who was one of the great post Holocaust Rabbinic leaders (philosopher and talmudic scholar)in America who formed the backbone of what is known as modern orthodoxy. Vayishlach describes Jacobs encounter and wrestle in the middle of the night with an anonymous attacker on his way back to the land of Canaan prior to meeting his brother Esav. “Yaakov was attacked for no apparent reason.  When Yaakov asked his attacker for his name, he said, ‘I cannot express my identity.’  The refusal of the anonymous attacker to identify himself represents one of the most horrible characteristics of our destiny – that the Jew never knows who will attack him. “At the turn of the century, socialist literature claimed that anti-Semitism was a result of capitalism, and if that capitalism were to be abolished, the same would hold true for anti-Semitism. Yet, when the socialists rose to power, they...