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?
(Please scroll down for the full transcript)
Julian’s sermon can be watched here:
Shabbat shalom.
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.
If not now, when?
Shabbat shalom.
