This Shabbat is called Shabbat Chazon, the Shabbat of Vision. But it’s not the comforting, inspiring kind of vision we might expect from a sacred day of rest. The vision we receive comes from the prophet Isaiah, and it is raw, disturbing, even bitter: a vision of a people who have turned away from justice, whose rituals have become empty gestures, whose society is crumbling beneath the weight of its own corruption.
Isaiah cries out, not because the Temple lies in ruins, but because the soul of the people is in disrepair.
It’s a hard message to sit with. Especially on Shabbat. Especially in summertime. But maybe that’s the point. We aren’t meant to look away this week. Shabbat Chazon and Tisha B’Av force us to look directly at what we might otherwise try to ignore: destruction, loss, grief, exile. And we are asked: what caused it? What still causes it?
The book of Devarim, which we begin reading this week, is also full of retrospection. Moses recalls the missteps and rebellions of the Israelites. But he doesn’t retell them to humiliate; he tells them so that the people can choose differently this time. Isaiah does the same. His vision is fierce, but it’s also full of hope. The haftarah ends with these words:
“Zion shall be redeemed with justice, and those who return to her with righteousness.” (Isaiah 1:27)
Redemption doesn’t come by waiting or wishing. It comes when we restore justice, when we repair what is broken. When we stop thinking holiness lives only in ancient buildings and start seeing it in how we treat one another.
And that, perhaps, is the hidden mercy of this week. Because even Tisha B’Av, the darkest day of the Jewish calendar, holds within it the first seeds of rebuilding. In fact, tradition says that the Messianic Age will begin on Tisha B’Av. Not out of triumph, but out of grief. Out of the realisation that what was can never be again, and yet something new might still grow.
Isaiah’s vision is not a punishment. It is a wake-up call. And Shabbat Chazon is our opportunity to prepare ourselves and transform. To step into the ashes with clear eyes and open hearts. To face what has been destroyed, and commit again to building a Judaism, a world, that is more just, more compassionate, more worthy of its sacred calling.
May this Shabbat hold space for both the sorrow and the dream. And may we, like our ancestors before us, find the strength to build from the rubble something that will last. Not because it is grand, but because it is good.
Balak feared what he could not control. He saw the Israelites from afar, numerous, restless, full of stories he didn’t know. And so he did what frightened rulers have often done. He summoned a voice to curse them. He hired Balaam to speak them out of existence.
But something extraordinary happened. The prophet who came to curse found himself unable to do so. Instead, standing on the heights, Balaam saw the people not as a threat but as a tapestry of beauty. And from his lips came words no one had planned: Mah tovu ohalecha Ya’akov, mishkenotecha Yisrael. How good are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel.
A blessing emerged where a curse had been commissioned.
The Torah doesn’t often deal in such irony. This moment stands out precisely because it reminds us that there are forces in the world, both divine and human, that refuse to let hatred have the final word. That even those who approach with malice may, by grace or by mistake, stumble into truth.
It would be tempting to dismiss the episode as mythic whimsy. But we have made Balaam’s words our own. Each morning, as we enter our sanctuaries, we recite his blessing. We take the words of a reluctant outsider and bind them to the threshold of our prayer.
This is not forgetfulness. It is spiritual audacity. To take what was never intended for us and sanctify it. To weave even the voice of an enemy into our liturgy is to affirm that transformation is possible and that nothing, not even ill will, is beyond redemption.
As we enter Shabbat, perhaps we carry this quiet confidence. That we are a people not only of memory but of reimagining. That the ancient reflex to curse can still be interrupted. That even in times of fear, blessing may yet slip through.
And when it does, we will recognise it. We will gather it. And we will teach our children to sing it.
“Miriam died there and was buried there. The community had no water, and they assembled against Moses and Aaron.” (Numbers 20:1-2)
The Torah, a text that lovingly dwells on the smallest details, who begat whom, the exact dimensions of the Tabernacle, the precise ingredients for incense, rushes past Miriam’s death with heartbreaking brevity. No eulogy for the woman who saved Moses as a baby. No mourning period for the prophetess who danced at the sea. No tribute to her decades of quiet leadership. Just a burial in the wilderness, and then, the well runs dry.
Why this silence? Why does the woman who led the Israelites in their first song of freedom exit the story with barely a whisper?
The Rabbis of the Talmud recognised something crucial: when Miriam died, the water disappeared. They understood that some people are so essential to a community’s life that their absence creates a void we can actually feel. They taught that a miraculous well had travelled with the Israelites throughout their wilderness journey because of her merit. Without her, both literal and spiritual sustenance vanished. Miriam wasn’t just a prophetess or Moses’ sister, she was the wellspring that kept an entire people alive in the desert.
And yet, the Torah tells us almost nothing about her death. No ceremony. No acknowledgment of all she had done. She simply disappears from the narrative, and only then do we realise what we’ve lost.
This pattern feels painfully familiar. How often do we fail to celebrate those who sustain us until they’re gone? How often do communities lose their quiet heroes, the grandmothers who cook for everyone, the friends who always listen, the activists who show up to every meeting, and only notice their absence when the well runs dry?
Think of queer Jews, especially our trans women, our elders living with HIV, those rejected by family and faith. They know intimately what it means to disappear from the communal story. They’ve been told their lives don’t belong in our sacred narrative. Their contributions go unrecorded, their wisdom unheard. And when they are gone, their absence is felt not in memorials or tributes, but in the sudden realisation that something vital is missing, a crisis we notice too late.
Tomorrow, London celebrates Pride, and the timing feels significant. Pride is joyfully, unapologetically loud, and it needs to be. It’s a song of liberation, like the one Miriam led at the sea. It’s colour and rhythm and the promise of water in a dry land. It’s a celebration of love in all its forms, a refusal to be silenced.
But Pride is also, necessarily, a form of remembering. Behind every rainbow flag and joyful parade lives the memory of those whose voices were silenced, by shame, by violence, by indifference. Pride carries the spirits of our Miriams, the ones who kept communities alive through the darkest times and who were buried without the ceremony they deserved.
And what of Moses in our Torah portion? After Miriam’s death, when the people cry out in thirst, he strikes the rock in anger. The traditional reading focuses on his disobedience to God’s command. But perhaps there’s something deeper here. Perhaps Moses isn’t just frustrated with the people’s complaints. Perhaps he’s grieving. Perhaps he’s lashing out at a world that let his sister disappear so easily, that gave him and the entire community no space to process their loss.
The LGBTQ+ community knows this feeling intimately. Grief without ritual. Anger without acknowledgment. Joy without safety. And yet, like Moses, we keep moving forward. We keep showing up at the rock, hoping water will flow.
But here’s where we can do better than the wilderness generation. We don’t just wait for wells to appear. We dig them ourselves. We name our Miriams while they’re still with us. We create space in synagogues, schools, and family gatherings for those whose presence has gone unnoticed.
In many Jewish communities today, we’re learning to tell the fuller story. We’re adding Miriam’s Cup to our Passover seders, recognising her role in the liberation narrative. We’re lifting up the voices that have been marginalised, making room for stories that have been buried.
This is sacred work. When we break the silence around those who have been forgotten, when we honour the ones who sustained us without recognition, we participate in a kind of resurrection. The well begins to flow again.
This Pride Shabbat, let us refuse to let anyone disappear without a trace. Let us mourn out loud for those we’ve lost. Let us celebrate the Miriams among us, the teachers, the caregivers, the activists, the quiet heroes who keep our communities alive.
Because water doesn’t only come from striking rocks. It flows from memory, from love, from the commitment to ensure that no one’s story is lost to silence.
When we make space for the voices that have been buried, when we listen deeply to those who have been ignored, we might just find the well bubbling up again, not through miracles, but through the sacred act of remembering.
When London Pride unfolds tomorrow, may we carry Miriam’s memory with us. May we sing her song of liberation while also holding space for those who never got to sing their own. And may we build communities where every story matters, where every voice is heard, where no one disappears into silence.
The well is still there, waiting. We just need to recognise it, honour it, and drink deeply from its waters.
In this week’s parasha, we encounter more than a leadership challenge. Some mystical sources reveal Korach as the reincarnation of Cain, while Moses carries the spirit of Abel. That ancient sibling tale of envy, wounded entitlement, and primal rage reappears in the sands of the wilderness.
Cain’s jealousy began with offerings. His gift from the ground was rejected while Abel’s was accepted. That silent rejection twisted into violence. Korach, too, had status, wealth, and prestige. Yet he believed Moses had received too much. He framed his protest with holy language: “All Israel are holy,” he claimed. But like Cain, he disguised deep insecurity as moral principle.
Kabbalistic commentators emphasise a haunting symmetry. The earth that once covered Abel’s blood now opens to swallow Korach and his followers. This is not a dramatic coincidence. It is divine measure-for-measure justice. The earth remembers. It does not forget.
The same commentators also draw our attention to the names of Moses and Korach: Moses emerges from the water, flexible, patient, nurturing. Korach shares a root with “ice” (kerach), which is cold, rigid, and unyielding. In a personal context, this asks us: are we flowing and forgiving or hardening and withholding? Ice fractures. Water nourishes.
The reading of Parashat Korach calls for truthful courage and not for comfortable spiritual solutions. This is not a Shabbat moment to distract or defuse. Instead, it is an invitation to look into ancient patterns within ourselves and to name envy without shame, to notice where cold rigidity has replaced curiosity or compassion.
Korach refuses to release his bitterness. Moses, at great cost, does not. Which character will you echo?
In this sermon, Rabbi Adrian Schell continues the courageous conversation taking place in his community, addressing grief, moral disorientation, and hope in turbulent times. Drawing on Numbers Chapter 10, he explores the symbolic power of the silver trumpets: tools that call to community, to action, and to memory. Just as the Israelites finally moved when the cloud lifted and the trumpets sounded, so too must we today take small, purposeful steps—together—toward justice and peace.
He reflects on the recent traumatic legacy, the needs of the hostages and victims, and the heavy responsibility of wielding power with integrity. Yet, this message is not only about confrontation or critique, it’s about cultivating spiritual resilience and moral courage. Hope isn’t naïveté; it’s the stubborn refusal to accept violence as inevitable, the belief that justice and security can coexist. He asks us to hold complexity without despair, to teach our children strength and compassion, and to answer the call of those trumpets, whether in times of movement or celebration.
It’s a call to mourn with dignity, protest without hate, and act without losing faith in a shared future. If not now, when?
Last week, Julian stood here and shared a sermon that many of us are still carrying. He gave voice to what many have been feeling for months now, grief, frustration, moral disorientation, and yes, even exhaustion. His words were generous, wise, and brave. He reminded us that love for Israel and criticism of its actions are not mutually exclusive, and that Jewish values, our values, must guide us even, and especially, when we are heartbroken.
Julian spoke not just about Gaza or government decisions, but about inherited trauma. About how conflict, once embedded in the soul of a people, can pass from parent to child like an unwanted heirloom.
He drew a line from Northern Ireland to the Middle East, from terror attacks to the silence that often follows, from despair to the thin hope that peace might one day rise.
In our Torah reading for today, Numbers 10, we’re handed silver trumpets, crafted not for music, but for memory. They gather the people, signal the journey, summon help, and declare festivals. They are tools of community, and also of clarity.
And then, for the first time in the book of Numbers, the Israelites move. The cloud lifts, and the wilderness becomes not just a backdrop, but a pathway. They march.
Isn’t it striking? After chapters of preparation, census, roles, rules, purification, positioning, finally, they just… go.
There’s no grand speech. No miraculous sign. Just a cloud lifting, and trumpets sounding.
Maybe that’s all we get sometimes.
Not certainty. Not justice, fully realised. Just a signal. A sound that tells us: it’s time. Time to take the next step. Even if we’re not sure exactly where we’re going.
The Haftarah brings us to another march. Around Jericho. Seven days of silence, then shouts and shofar blasts, and the walls tumble down.
It’s a dramatic image, powerful, victorious. But it’s also messy. What comes after the walls fall is war. Possession. A complicated promise fulfilled in a complicated world.
Still, I keep thinking about that marching. About the people walking around the city, day after day, unsure if anything is happening. It takes faith to walk when the walls don’t yet show cracks.
That’s where we are now, I think. Marching. Sometimes talking, sometimes silent.
Carrying our frustration and our heartbreak and our principles all at once. Wanting peace, demanding dignity for our people and others, and wondering if our words make a difference. If our values can still shape something in a world that feels so stuck.
Julian reminded us last week that we must not forget the hostages, the victims of 7 October, and the pain that still bleeds in Israel. That’s not negotiable. It is sacred memory. And sacred responsibility.
But he also said something harder, and just as important: that what we do with power matters. That how we wield it, politically, militarily, morally, shapes how the world sees not just Israel, but Judaism.
So here’s the pastoral voice I want to offer you this morning, building on his:
You are allowed to be torn. You are allowed to be angry. You are allowed to expect more from your leaders, on all sides. And you are still allowed to hope.
Hope is not naïve. It’s not a hashtag. In Jewish life, it’s something closer to stubbornness. The refusal to accept that violence is inevitable. The insistence that we can be both secure and just. The faith that even if the cloud lifts slowly, we still move. One step. Another. Together.
The trumpets in our parashah are not blown only in times of war. They’re also sounded on our days of joy, u’v’yom simchatchem, the Torah says.
On the festivals. At new moons, on Rosh HaShanah. When we gather not in fear but in celebration.
Imagine that. The same instrument that calls us to arms also calls us to dance.
Our challenge is to teach our children both sounds. Not to shield them from the pain, nor to let them drown in it. To help them understand what we’re fighting for, not just who we’re fighting against.
And more than that: to show them that being Jewish is not only a defence, it’s a calling. To justice. To compassion. To community. To spiritual courage.
So yes, Julian was right. We are in pain. But pain is not our only truth.
We are also capable of healing. Of holding complexity. Of lifting each other when the journey is long.
The trumpets are still sounding.
They’re calling us to speak thoughtfully. To act courageously. To mourn with dignity. To protest without hate. And to hold, deep within us, the stubborn belief that peace is possible, because justice is possible, and we have not given up on either.
There are portions in Torah that comfort. Others disturb. Parashat Naso offers us both.
Nestled among instructions about the camp and Nazirite vows, we find an ancient, bewildering ritual: the ordeal of the sotah, the trial for a woman suspected of adultery. It’s hard to read. A woman stands accused, not by witnesses or evidence, but by the jealous suspicion of her husband. She is brought before a priest, her hair unbound, a grain offering in hand. She is made to drink “bitter waters” mixed with dust from the sanctuary floor and ink from a scroll bearing God’s name.
We flinch. Rightly so. Because even if the ritual ends without punishment, the entire episode is a theatre of humiliation. And if her body swells and she suffers illness, the verdict is cast. Guilty or not, it is she who pays the cost of suspicion.
So, how do we read this text today, especially at the gates of Pride Month, a season when we affirm dignity, resist shame, and honour those who have too long been told that their love or gender makes them “other”? Let me offer not an answer, but a path.
The bitter water of the sotah is mixed with dust from the sanctuary. The holiest place. Earth and holiness stirred into a potion meant to judge a woman’s worth.
And here is the contradiction: how can something born of sacred ground become the tool of shame?
But perhaps this is the Torah’s quiet subversion. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch once taught that dust is a symbol of common origin. From the dust, we are all made. From the dust, we return. (Hirsch Commentary on Numbers 5:17)
The dust of the sanctuary says: You belong here too.
Yes, the ritual is problematic. Yes, it emerges from a patriarchal world where a woman’s value was entangled with a man’s honour. But perhaps within the ritual’s dust lies a seed of truth we can reclaim , that every body brought before God carries something holy. That God dwells not only in perfection, but in pain, in process, in protest.
Imagine now, not a woman before a priest, but a young person, perhaps trans, perhaps queer, standing before a religious community. Not to be shamed, but to be seen. Not with suspicion, but with celebration.
That is the reversal Pride calls us toward.
The Torah may speak in the language of its time, but we, its readers, are called to speak in the language of our own. We name the pain of exclusion, and we respond with the rituals of affirmation. We mix our dust with hope.
This is the gift of Progressive Judaism. We do not read Torah to freeze time. We read it to transform time. And that includes calling out what wounds and blessing what heals.
Midrash Tanchuma teaches that the sotah ritual exists not because God wishes to punish, but because God wishes to heal a broken relationship. The point, say some sages, was to stop a man from taking violence into his own hands. To introduce delay, to make space for something softer than rage. (based on Midrash Tanchuma, Naso 5)
Now, imagine what it would mean if our communities applied that logic more widely. When suspicion arises about someone’s identity, or discomfort about the unfamiliar, what if we slowed down? What if we resisted judgement, made space for honest encounter? Could we turn bitterness into belonging?
The sotah text gives us a script, one that, in its time, perhaps offered protection. But Pride gives us a counter-liturgy. Where the sotah drank words erased, we speak words affirmed. Where her body became a canvas for divine punishment, we honour the body as a vessel of the divine image.
And we remember, too, those who have been made invisible: people expelled from camps, families, and sanctuaries, not because they broke a law, but because they broke a mould.
In this light, Pride Month isn’t just a celebration. It’s a sacred protest. A reweaving of the text.
So maybe the most radical message in this week’s portion is that dust can speak.
Dust, from which we were formed. Dust, mixed with holy ink. Dust that remembers every footstep, those who came in fear, and those who returned in pride.
Let us be the generation that reclaims the dust, not for bitterness, but for blessing. Let our sanctuaries be places where no one is tested for worthiness, but everyone is told: You are already whole. You are already holy.
Not long ago, in an exchange about the Torah portions Acharei Mot–Kedoshim, Adam and I discussed the following question that is still echoing in my mind: “Do you think modern communities do enough to help people return from their ‘wilderness moments’?”
It’s a question worth holding for a while.
We know the wilderness well in our tradition. It’s the place where Israel wandered, lost and disoriented. A place of testing and trial, but also of revelation. Sinai happened in the wilderness, not in the comfort of a promised land. Elijah found God not in the fire or the storm, but in the still small voice, alone, broken, and afraid in the desert.
So, what does it mean for someone today to find themselves in such a wilderness?
It might be grief. Or shame. Or addiction. A moment of spiritual dislocation. A crisis in a relationship. A political or moral misstep. Or simply a slow, quiet drift away from the centre of community life. And often, the real pain isn’t the wilderness itself. It’s the sense that no one is waiting for you at the edge of it.
In ancient Israel, the scapegoat carried the people’s sins into the wilderness and was never meant to return. But we are not goats. And our tradition doesn’t end in Leviticus. It journeys through the prophets and into rabbinic Judaism, where repentance, teshuvah, is not only possible but essential. As the High Holy Day liturgy reminds us, gates of return remain open, even when we are closed off to ourselves.
But here’s the challenge: communities often struggle to embody that. We’re good at welcoming people in. But are we good at helping people back?
Adam made a clever link to the language of cancel culture. We are right, I think, to set boundaries when harm is done. And yes, there are times when stepping away from the centre is necessary for healing, for the individual and the community alike. But exile is not the end of the story. Or it shouldn’t be.
Teshuvah is more than saying “I’m sorry.” It’s about changed behaviour. It’s about building trust again, not just with others, but with ourselves and with God. And for that journey to be possible, there must be a path home.
So, what does a compassionate path back look like?
Perhaps it begins with not pretending to be surprised when people falter. Perhaps it looks like a hand gently extended, not only when someone is crawling back in tears, but even before they know they’ve lost their way. Adam offered a striking parallel. Just as God remained with Israel in the desert, not erasing their missteps, but guiding with a pillar of fire by night and cloud by day, so too might a community become that quiet presence beside someone searching for a way home. Not forcing return. Not abandoning either. It means not locking the gates behind those who step outside the camp, but standing near them, holding a lantern, saying: “When you’re ready, we’re still here.” Teshuvah is personal, but no one should have to walk it alone.
It also means accountability. Not all wounds are private. Some require public acknowledgement. Some paths back are winding and painful. But if we are to reflect the God we pray to, the One who is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in kindness, then surely, we must learn to be the same.
The prophet Micah said, “What does God require of you? To do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.” Justice and mercy. Not one without the other.
I wonder what it would feel like if every community had a visible way to accompany those in wilderness moments. Not just with slogans or ideals, but with real, lived practices of return. Quiet conversations. Restorative processes. Rituals that don’t erase the past but transform it into something teachable, even holy.
As summer begins, and our own synagogue life ebbs and flows with holidays, exams, and travels, maybe now is a good time to reflect: how can we prepare our own hearts, and our community, to be a place that believes in return? Not naively. Not recklessly. But with the dignity, discipline, and compassion our tradition calls for.
After all, Torah begins in a garden and ends on a mountain overlooking a land not yet entered. But every moment in between is wilderness. And somehow, it’s where we learned who we are.
There is something profound in how we speak of Shabbat—not merely as rest, but as a deliberate setting aside of our labours, a gentle lowering of the world from our shoulders. In Parashat B’har, we encounter Shmita, the Sabbatical year, which extends this sacred pause to the land itself. Every seventh year, fields lie fallow, debts dissolve, and our grip on ownership slackens. One might be forgiven for viewing this solely as clever economic policy or ecological wisdom—an ancient system of redistribution. Yet beneath these practical considerations pulses something far more intimate.
The concluding passages of Bechukotai offer a curious shift. After the sombre litany of warnings and consequences, God’s voice softens: “I will remember My covenant with Jacob… and I will remember the land.” (Leviticus 26:42) This inclusion of the land—not merely the people—invites deeper contemplation.
Resh Lakish offers us a striking parable. He envisions a king with three sons who are raised not by the king himself, but by a devoted handmaiden. Each time the king enquires after his children, he also asks about the handmaiden—recognising that she helped nurture them. In the same way, suggests the midrash, God remembers the land because the land has helped raise us.
This single turn transforms everything. The earth is not passive scenery against which human drama unfolds. It is not a resource awaiting conquest or exploitation. It is, rather, a caregiver. A witness. A second mother. The phrase “Mother Nature” emerges not as mere poetic sentiment but as what Resh Lakish recognises as a profoundly Jewish theological truth.
The land, therefore, is not merely the setting of our narrative but a covenant partner. It shapes our seasons, nourishes our bodies, cradles our footsteps—bearing witness to every choice we make. This is why Shmita transcends agricultural policy to become spiritual practice.
To allow the land its seventh-year rest reflects a remarkable trust—trust that sufficiency will persist, that survival doesn’t demand unceasing accumulation, and that our worth isn’t measured by our output. We matter—even when not producing, building, purchasing, earning. So too does the land.
Living this truth proves challenging. In a culture that gauges success through harvests and headlines, genuine rest becomes an act of resistance. Of faith. Of remembrance.
Shabbat offers this rhythm weekly. A chance to loosen our grip. To value presence over possession. Like Shmita, it restores balance not only to the world but within ourselves.
The parashah concludes with God recalling the land not as property but as partner. This is the heartbeat beneath the legalities, the poetry woven through the pauses: an invitation to approach the earth with dignity, to craft a life characterised not by acquisition but by care.
Perhaps when we permit the land to breathe, we rediscover our own breath. Not as owners but as kin. Not as rulers but as companions in a world yearning to be honoured and made whole.
In Parashat Emor, we find one of the Torah’s more difficult passages — a section that limits which kohanim, which priests, can serve at the altar. A priest with a visible difference — blind, lame, injured, or with a disfigurement — is instructed not to offer the sacred sacrifices.
To modern ears, this can feel jarring. It brushes up against our values of equality, inclusion, and dignity. But maybe we can approach this not as a closed door but as a doorway into deeper conversation.
The Torah’s world is not our world. It was shaped by ritual systems, by concepts of purity, and by the human longing to bring order and beauty into worship. The ancient altar was the centre of that structure, and the priests were meant to embody its wholeness — not because others were less valued, but because ritual asked for symbols. Wholeness, in this context, was symbolic.
But symbols aren’t always how God sees.
Elsewhere in our tradition, we’re reminded again and again that God’s vision is different. The prophet Isaiah declares, “My thoughts are not your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9) And in Pirkei Avot, we’re taught, “Do not look at the vessel, but at what it contains.” (4:20)
The Torah may have given the kohanim their roles, but it gives each of us our worth.
In fact, the priest who is not permitted to serve at the altar is still honoured with the title kohen. He may not perform the central rituals, but he is still part of the priesthood. Still called. Still holy.
That subtle detail matters.
We live in a world where many people carry visible and invisible differences — bodies that don’t move in expected ways, minds that work with different rhythms, faces and stories that challenge easy categories. The Torah passage reminds us not just to reflect on who served in the Temple, but to ask who serves now. Who teaches, who leads, who belongs — in our communities, our sanctuaries, our hearts?
Holiness isn’t only what we see on the outside. Often, it lives in the places we least expect — in quiet faith, in stubborn hope, and in the beauty of imperfection.
What kind of wholeness do we honour? Is it symmetry, polish, and ease? Or is it courage, kindness, and presence?
For me, holiness is where wholeness is not about appearing perfect but about being present and being cherished.
This week, our Torah portion Acharei Mot–Kedoshim coincides with the 80th anniversary of VE Day – Victory in Europe Day. There’s something profoundly moving about this conjunction: readings that speak of holiness and remembrance, paired with a date that marks both tremendous suffering and ultimate liberation.
Our double portion opens with Acharei Mot – literally “after the death” – referencing the passing of Aaron’s sons. It continues with Kedoshim – “you shall be holy.”
This progression – from death to holiness – mirrors precisely the journey our people have travelled since the Shoah.
When we think about VE Day, 8 May 1945, what images come to mind?
[Pictures: Marking VE80 at the Wimbledon War Memorial on May 8th, 2025]
Perhaps the iconic photographs of celebrations in Trafalgar Square, or soldiers embracing loved ones they feared they might never see again. But as Kenneth Jacobson of the Anti-Defamation League reminds us, alongside those images of jubilation were the heartbreaking photographs of emaciated Jews in concentration camps and the piles of bodies discovered in Nazi death camps.
I remember a conversation I had years ago with a survivor. “When liberation came,” she told me, “I wasn’t dancing. I was numb. I had lost everyone. Freedom meant facing what remained.” Her words stay with me – a crucial reminder that victory came too late for six million of our people.
The Allied military victory undoubtedly saved the world from tyranny. But for European Jewry, it was bittersweet. By D-Day in June 1944, approximately four million Jews had already been murdered. Our people faced what Jacobson calls “the worst possible combination of factors” – a murderous foe committed to our destruction, populations throughout Europe steeped in antisemitism, – American isolationism that gave space for Nazi aggression, and restrictive immigration policies that barred escape.
Everything, it seemed, was working against the Jewish people.
And yet.
In Leviticus 19:2, we read, “You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.” What follows is a remarkable ethical blueprint – instructions about caring for the poor, treating others fairly, loving your neighbour, and welcoming the stranger. In the midst of ritual law comes this profound social vision.
Isn’t that the essence of our response after the Holocaust? From the ashes of destruction, we chose life. From the depths of trauma, we rebuilt.
The survivors’ will to live, the establishment of the State of Israel, the liberation of Soviet Jewry, the flourishing of Jewish communities worldwide – all testify to our commitment to holiness, to creating a better world.
This is what Rabbi Jonathan Sacks called our “defiant hope” – not a naïve optimism, but a determined choice to build even after devastation.
One of the veterans I spoke to recently said something I hope not to forget: “We didn’t just fight against something. We fought for something. For a world where people could live in dignity.”
That idea – that we stand for something, not just against something – echoes through our Torah portion.
Kedoshim tihyu – you shall be holy – is a positive command. Holiness isn’t merely the absence of wrong; it’s the active presence of right.
After the Holocaust, Jews around the world embraced this call to positive action. We didn’t just say “never again” to hatred; we said “yes” to justice, to human dignity, to tikkun olam – repairing our broken world.
Yet today, we face troubling realities. Since October 7th, antisemitism has surged in ways unseen since World War II. The J7 Annual Report on Antisemitism highlights dramatic rises in incidents across seven major countries – Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Our parasha teaches us that holiness requires vigilance. It demands that we stand up for what’s right, that we speak truth, that we protect the vulnerable.
So what does that mean for us, eight decades after VE Day, as we face new challenges?
First, we must remember. Not just with ritual observance, but with full hearts. We carry the stories of those who perished and those who survived. Their lives, their strength, their silence and their words – all are part of our sacred inheritance.
Second, we must recognise that remembering isn’t enough. Our Torah doesn’t just ask us to recall the past – it commands us to build a just society.
The ethical demands of Kedoshim are not optional; they are the architecture of holiness.
Third, we must find the balance between vigilance and hope. Yes, we must be clear-eyed about the threats we face. But we must also be dreamers, visionaries who look beyond the headlines and see the world as it could be.
There’s a Chasidic teaching most of you know, but which is most appropriate to recall at this moment. Rabbi Simcha Bunim taught that everyone should carry two notes, one in each pocket. One says, “For my sake was the world created.” The other says, “I am but dust and ashes.”
We need both truths – the humility to know our fragility and the confidence to know our worth.
As we mark eighty years since the end of the war in Europe, we stand in that tension – between remembrance and renewal, between grief and determination. The Nazis sought to destroy not just Jewish bodies but Jewish values. Our most powerful response is to live those values more fully.
Kedoshim tihyu – you shall be holy. Not just as individuals, but as a community. Not just in ritual, but in how we treat each other and all humanity. Not just in memory of what was lost, but in service of what can yet be built.
May we honour the past by creating a future worthy of those we remember.
Shabbat Shalom.
This sermon is dedicated to Margot Friedländer, a remarkable woman. May her memory be for a blessing.
