Tag: Israel
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Hearing Requires Room for Every Story
Hearing is never a passive bureaucratic gesture. Twice a day, Jewish liturgy commands us to engage in a profound act of spiritual attention: “Hear, O Israel.” We know the Shema not as a polite request, but as the central spiritual imperative of our tradition. To hear is to bear witness to the Eternal, to internalise…
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We Will Not Hide
Again! I found myself staring at the news alerts yesterday, feeling that familiar, heavy tightening in my chest. Another attack. This time, a knife on the streets of Golders Green. The shock is instinctive, but if I am brutally honest with myself, the surprise is fading. And that fading surprise is perhaps the most terrifying…
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Beyond Silhouettes: Choosing People Over Labels
There is a particular comfort in “we and them” because it tidies a complicated world. The holiness of a community is found in its ability to recognise the individual within the mass. This requires a refusal to see a “refugee” or “man” as a monolith, insisting instead on seeing the Tzelem Elohim [Divine reflection] in…
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From Yom HaZikaron to Yom Ha’Atzma’ut
This week, as we mark Israel’s 78th year of independence, the movement from grief to sovereignty feels more demanding than ever. The pain across the region remains acute, the political reality deeply fractured. What does it mean for us, sitting here in London, to mark this anniversary today?It means that our response to loss cannot…
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Being Alive is Reason Enough
Life trains us to ask hard questions. We are skilled at complicating what is good, at asking what price was paid and who is left behind. We spill drops of wine at the Seder precisely because we carry the suffering of others inside our own joy.Yet the Song of the Sea suggests a different spiritual…
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Love, Justice, and the Soul of Israel
Rabbi Adrian Schell examines the moral test of the soul of Israel in this Pesach [Passover] sermon. Drawing on Deuteronomy and Song of Songs, he addresses the Kotel [Western Wall] bill and the Death Penalty Bill, arguing that liberation requires protecting the dignity of the stranger and the Soul of the Jewish State. True love…
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Beyond the Megillah
Purim usually brings laughter, but this year the news from the Middle East feels particularly heavy. As we watch regimes shift and sirens sound, how do we find the genuine courage to celebrate? I have been reflecting on the resilience of our friends in Israel and the humbling grace of the Baha’i community. Let us…
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Memory as a Sacred Obligation
The silence left behind by the stopped hostage clock is not the joyous quiet of a struggle won, but the heavy stillness of a cycle closed. In Parashat Beshallach, we read that Moses took the bones of Joseph with him out of Egypt. Even in a life or death escape, the leader of our people…
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The Festival of Contradictions
A Thought for Hanukkah Preparing for Hanukkah, I found myself reading a fascinating lecture by the scholar Yehoyada Amir, titled The Contradictory Sides of Hanukkah. It struck me how we often take the story of the Maccabees for granted, yet Amir reminds us that this festival has constantly shifted shape to suit the needs of…
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How Can We Rejoice? A Sukkot Message Two Years After October 7th
My sermon for Erev Sukkot addresses a direct and painful collision in the Jewish calendar: the beginning of ‘z’man simchateinu’, the season of our joy, falls on the exact second anniversary of the October 7th atrocities. It explores how the sukkah itself, with its flimsy walls and lesson in vulnerability, will not let us hide…
