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 slack hits the conversation, “It looks like you are talking about a bereavement, have you notified the Chevra Kadisha?” Well, I’m hoping it's many decades before I need that kind of ritual washing, but transitions that involve ritual water are going to be my new venture. A place to mark the moments we have longed for, or those we wished we had never had to face, marked in a way which helps us accept life as it is, even if it isn’t always as we would want it to be.
That “accepting life as it is”, is a mantra I am going to be getting used to this year for myself, because even when doing something of completely my own volition, being given the funding opportunities to realise my own dreams and drive my passion project forward, standing here tonight makes it all too real what I am also giving up. These next nine months will be filled with all the challenges of letting go of something so incredibly important to me. Maybe it’s a glimpse of what it might feel like to make up the bed in your child’s university room and drive away.
I love this community, I love all of you (yes, even those who know you drive me mad) and I love the privileged position of being your rabbi. Being involved in your lives through the celebrations and the pain is not something I have ever taken for granted.
With so many different words you have expressed your joy for me in taking these steps into a venture which you know is born from such personal pain and from acceptance. Yet many of you have also expressed your sadness and anxiety telling me that “I am FRS” and can’t imagine the community without me at the helm. I think in those words you do yourselves a massive disservice. I am not FRS, you are.
You have already started telling me it’s the individual blessings I give which makes FRS feel personal. But those moments are only special because everyone hears me put into words what they already know of the incredible person I’m addressing on the bimah or under the chuppah. You have marked milestones and held people through the hard times, shown up to demonstrate your solidarity and danced at the simchas. You have made life more meaningful by marking time and you have done so with the stamping feet of the B’nei Mitzvah aliyot, the photos in Tree of Life, the mazel tov in weekly emails and the bereavement notices we’ve opened in our shared grief. It may seem just part of life but it’s not the words of the blessing that make FRS, it’s the blessing-worthy members who are FRS.
You even debate from a place of kindness and respect. Judaism has always taught us we don’t have to agree on everything, that since Hillel and Shammai, discussion has been an integral part of what makes a dynamic community. I was once accused of making AGMs boring because people didn’t argue anymore, but you enable a breadth of ideas to sit together in this space. Whether it is how we express our love for Israel or our Jewish practice, knowing you don’t have to agree on everything is also how to be FRS.
You have told me that services I lead are so special but it is you who gives this place spirituality. By bringing hearts, willing to be moved by the incredible music that Cantor Zoe has woven into the fabric of everything we do, and brining minds, open to new ideas, creativity and change. We don’t have “The FRS Way” to get stale and rote. We think about what feels right for any given opportunity and you aren’t afraid to try it and see what it does for you. It’s not my service-leading that makes FRS, it’s that open-hearted, open-mindedness which is rare for a congregation that makes FRS the community it is.
I’ve been told no one will ever volunteer again - who will step up without “being Miriam’d”. But I know a new verb will evolve to give name to people taking on roles that are big, meaningful and that change lives because it is you who has ensured we are a community which is as good at looking inwardly at our Judaism as it is looking out and knowing our responsibility in the world. You have campaigned, cooked, cared for and collaborated to change the lives of others with the pride of doing it, not for me but in the name of FRS.
I’ve been reminded of quite how many moments I have accompanied you and your families through and those relationships mean so much to me. You are all part of those relationships which make this community feel like a family and while the role changes I hope my sense of belonging will not. This place is all about the people you have known forever and those you made to feel welcome the moment they walked in the door. The babies you’ve watched turn into B’nei Mitzvah and then into parents at Kuddle Up. You walk life’s journey together, collecting people on the way. That is community and every single one of you make it this way.
I am not FRS but I do worry how much FRS is me. I love the integral part of my identity that this place plays. I identify myself in relationship to FRS in a not too dissimilar way as my identity includes wife and mum, I would apologise to Jonni and Ben for such a statement if I didn’t think they already knew all too well! Yet my rational self also knows that identity is fluid, we add to our identities and each chapter, each role informs the next. You have taught me far more than I have given to this community and for that I am truly grateful. You will also teach me how to be a member, how to take from all that is on offer to nourish me in my new role and you will teach me how to find my space in community to give back in the way so many of you do with such generosity.
This is our other home, our third space, not the synagogue but our synagogue. You built it with such hard work, determination and the bold confidence that is a very FRS way. You built it for moments we have already loved together in these last 18 months. From Simchat Torah madness to tears of reflection and joy. For learning together, making together, playing together, praying together. You have built these walls for those of you who sit here today, and for those generations not yet sitting here. This is our home and will continue to be the place that I feel most comfortable and most moved to pray and to enjoy my Jewish life.
This gorgeous building, like my mikveh moments will mark both an ending and lots of new beginnings. I will always see it with the pride of it representing how much we achieved together, while you enabled me to serve you as your rabbi and its doors will continue to swing open to welcome in many many new chapters which follow.
A chapter of transition during this academic year while I continue to love this role and recognise it as my last opportunities to drive you mad with crazy ideas (thank goodness tomorrow is a Saracens match day so my last Rosh Hashanah in post could be one with a venue to excite – even if no Erev Rosh Hashanah will ever top the sun setting in the stands as we sang from the rugby pitch). The doors will swing open inviting you to see, even more clearly, the rest of your wonderful clergy team for the incredible leadership and talents they each bring, without my big personality inadvertently stealing the credit. The doors will swing open to new clergy and professionals adding to the gifts this team already exudes. The doors will swing open to new opportunities for you to all step up and shape the community in your image. You are FRS, and FRS will always be me. Both our identities will be shaped by the other and both of us will open this new chapter with confidence and joy.
May 5784 be one which shapes British Jewry for the better.
