1st day Rosh Hashanah 5784
Are you in the mood at this point in our service for something a bit different? A bit of light relief maybe? I hope so. I want to try something out with you. The sermon slot is probably not normally associated with light relief but anyway I’m going to talk to you a bit about Rosh Hashanah, the New Year - but I’m going to ask you to do something, something participatory, if you can. (Don’t worry...Read more...
Erev Rosh Hashanah 5784
You can listen to Rabbi Miriam's sermon here or read it below.
We do a lot of our internal communications on a platform called “slack”. Whilst discussing the communication to the community around the announcement of my stepping down, I messaged back, “please can we remember I haven’t died!” Immediately an automated response from...Read more...
Selichot 5783
You can listen to Rabbi Deborah's sermon here or read it below.
This evening I wanted to tell you about a man named Dashrath Manjhi. He was from a village in the East Indian state of Bihar called Gehlaur. He fell in love with a woman named Falguni Devi and they were married. Like many villagers they had to climb mountains daily to get the water, food, medicines, and...Read more...
Sermon Nitzavim
You can listen to Rabbi Miriam's sermon here or read it below
Government can’t be that different a place to work than any other offices. So, when big issues arise it’s so hard not to imagine the conversations going on behind the big imposing doors of Westminster being rather similar to a school staff room, a shul office or any major company.
“Well...Read more...
Shabbat Ki Tavo
You can listen to Rabbi Howard's sermon here or read it below
Cami’s outstanding introduction to her Torah portion homed in some key themes: the theological problems with reward and punishment in the text, then her psychologically acute description of how she saw Moses as attempting to encourage the Israelites to be the ‘best versions of themselves’ and this...Read more...
Shabbat Shemesh
You can listen to Rabbi Miriam's sermon here or read it below
Shabbat Shemesh is a very quiet one in our house. While Jonni and I are left with our own memories of summers spent with RSY and the videos we can play in our memories, of life-long friends enjoying crazy, wholesome fun in boarding schools and run down activity...Read more...
Shabbat B’midbar
You can listen to Rabbi Howard's sermon here or read it below
When Susan shared her thoughts with us earlier, one of the themes that caught my attention was this question of whether as Jews we want to be counted - to stand up and be counted, recognised in our group identity by the powers that be; or whether we wanted to be quiet, to slip under the radar, as...Read more...
You can listen to Rabbi Deborah's sermon here or read it below
A number of years ago at the conference of the European Union for Progressive Judaism in London, a question was posed by (or in the name of) Jeremy Leigh. It was remarked that sitting in large fancy rooms eating dinner has been a hallmark of many moments in Jewish history. And so we were asked, if someone was...Read more...
73.6% of statistics are made up
Apparently
Or at least that’s what the internet told me- and it could be right, or at least it sounds about right, it makes the point I want it to make anyway, so I’ll use it.
I suppose it’s a bit like that thing that Einstein said about the definition of insanity being doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Or maybe it was...Read more...
Shabbat Va-yiggash
You can listen to Rabbi Howard's sermon here or read it below.
Okay, I have a quiz question for you: what connects these three people? David Hockney, Gwyneth Paltrow and the novelist Ian McEwan? I’ll give you some time to think about.
This is the time of the year when the newspapers are full of quizzes, puzzles, games – I suppose they reckon that people...Read more...
Shabbat Tol'dot
You can listen to Rabbi Miriam's sermon here or read it below.
“Lo alecha ham'lacha ligmor, V'lo ata ben chorim l'hibatil mimena”
It’s not up to you to finish the work but neither are you free to abstain from it.
I, like many of you, have been singing these words since I was little, in school, in shul, on camp and understood this quote from pirkei...Read more...
Yom Kippur Ne'ilah 5783
So – here we are at Neilah: this is the service tradition calls ‘Closing’, which makes sense (it’s the end of this marathon day we’ve had, 25 hours) : so it’s Closing Time, and we put in our last orders (so to speak), our last pleas, our last requests, And because it’s closing time, the energy is changing, we are moving from the solemnity of Yizkor,...Read more...
Yom Kippur Shacharit 5783 - Bitachon
You can listen to Rabbi Deborah's sermon here or read it below.
At some point in my journey to the rabbinate I learnt a secret- when rabbis are a bit dubious about the content of liturgy, they avoid reading the English. I learnt this the hard way, leading Hallel, our festival psalms for the first time.
I found myself...Read more...
Kol Nidre 5783
You can listen to Rabbi Miriam's sermon here or read it below.
Sat at the side of the hospice bed there is a quiet tranquillity. There is an inevitability, a certainty that is painful and yet reassuring. We know what to do and how to behave when given absolutes of how things will definitely play out. The certainty allows people to relax into their roles. To...Read more...
2nd day Rosh Hashanah 5783
You can listen to Rabbi Howard's sermon here or read it below.
A snail walks into a police station and says to the desk sergeant, “Two turtles attacked me!”. The desk sergeant opens up a file and says “Okay, describe exactly what happened”. The snail says, “I don’t really remember, it all happened so fast”.
It all happened so fast. We’ll come back...Read more...
1st day Rosh Hashanah 5783
You can listen to Rabbi Tony's sermon here or read it below.
Let me begin by wishing you all another happy and healthy New Year. It’s great to be back here, thankfully inside once again, and it’s even better seeing you all looking so eager and upbeat.
“How are you?”
“I’m really good, thank you, Rabbi. Hundred...Read more...
Erev Rosh Hashanah 5783
You can listen to Rabbi Miriam's sermon here or read it below.
Imperfection is good. It means we aren’t finished.
After one of those early-in-our-relationship Friday night dinners with the lovely people who would years later become my in-laws, on our way home as we were sharing news of our respective week, I remember joking to Jonni: “Does your...Read more...
Selichot 5782.
You can listen to Rabbi Deborah's sermon here or read it below.
Everyone’s got their favourite bit of our new building. Mine, and I know I’m not alone in this, is upstairs in our kindergarten. There, every time the children go to wash their hands after messy play, they’re greeted by a buffet of taps. Our kindergarten team wanted to make sure every...Read more...
Shoftim 5782
On Wednesday this week we took our nephew visiting from Israel to see Matilda the musical in the west end. Roald Dahl’s story of a small, smart, and brave girl who stands up...Read more...
Shabbat Pinchas 5782
You can listen to Rabbi Deborah's sermon here or read below.
Imagine what it’s like to live in constant fear that people will find out that you aren’t who you say you are?
To feel your whole existence rests upon a secret, a lie, a story that if people knew might jeopardize everything you have come to love, everything that has made you who you are and allows you to care for your...Read more...
Shabbat Balak 5782
You can listen to Rabbi Deborah's sermon here or read below.
What do The Phantom of the Opera, Red Skull from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Kylo Ren from Star Wars, Scar from The Lion King, The Joker, Captain Hook and Bilam from this week’s parasha have in common?
I’m hoping I managed to get a cultural reference in there that works for most of the...Read more...
Shabbat Bamidbar 5782
You can listen to Rabbi Deborah's sermon here or read below.
Taking part in a census can be pretty boring- sorry to any demographers in the shul this morning- but you aren’t allowed to refuse. In the UK you can be taken to court if you do so. There’s even a fine of a £1000 waiting for anyone who actively chooses not to participate.
While this may be as...Read more...
Shabbat B'chukkotai 5782
You can listen to Rabbi Miram's sermon here or read below.
On weeks like this I don’t feel I have a choice. I have an obligation to speak out against the Torah portion. The theology is not just flawed, it is harmful to people.
When you feel you have been unjustly on the receiving end of God’s harsh punishment it is horrifically...Read more...
Shabbat B’Har 5782
You can listen to Rabbi Miram's sermon here or read below.
It’s not surprising that a huge number of our B’nei Mitzvah are referencing the pandemic in their Friday night readings and divrei torah. I’m struck however by how many of them mention a slower pace with far fewer demands being made of them. The escape from the gruelling timetable of school...Read more...
Emor- purity and seeing blemishes in others
You can listen to Rabbi Deborah's sermon here or read below.
When I was training to be a rabbi we had a course on biblical scholarship. Each week was devoted to a theme, with one week devoted to the study of women's commentaries on Torah. When introducing the topic to us, the teacher commented, ‘you’ll find some of these texts are...Read more...
7th Day Pesach- On Regarding the Pain of Others
You can listen to Rabbi Deborah's sermon here or read below.
On boxing day 2004 my mum burst through the door of the internet cafe I was sitting in, she said ‘I need the computer, Jane A and her daughter are missing’.
Jane A was my mum’s childhood best friend, her parents, my grandparents’ neighbors and close confidants. When I heard...Read more...
Shabbat Acharei Mot 5781
You can listen to Rabbi Miriam's sermon here or read below.
It’s just one line in a eulogy: “he/she arrived in the UK with no English, no money and filled with fear.” And yet the legacy of the successful career, the lifelong now-grieving widow, the children, grandchildren and great- grandchildren makes the arrival seem so easy that it diminishes the line of...Read more...
Shabbat M'tzora 5782
You can listen to Rabbi Tony's sermon here or read below.
My father – Miriam’s grandfather, Chessy and Ben’s great-grandfather - was one of the founders of South West Essex Reform Synagogue, 65 years ago. Dad, Ron Bayfield died of Covid in late March 2020 and I’m extremely grateful to FRS for allowing me to give the sermon today – it’s not every synagogue...Read more...
Shabbat Ki Tissa 5782
You can listen to Rabbi Howard's sermon here or read below.
One’s heart goes out to those Israelites in our Torah portion today. In modern terminology we might say they were a traumatised people - oppressed for generations they had just experienced the most tumultuous upheavals it’s possible to imagine. The land they were living in, the only land they knew,...Read more...
