OF SERPENTS AND SOCIAL MEDIA As we start the drama of Creation, it is always worth remembering that the Torah speaks to us and about us. Let us set the scene: Eve and the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Did the serpent lie? In the account in the parasha, the serpent cunningly says to Eve: “Did G-d actually tell you that you couldn’t eat from any tree in the garden?” Eve replies: “We have been told that we can eat from any tree in the garden, except, from the tree in the middle. G-d has said that we mustn’t...
The Broken Etrog – by Rabbi Mendel Cohen It had been a difficult year. Poor weather, dangerous travel conditions and high tariffs had made it almost impossible for the Jews of Ukraine to import etrogim (citrons) for the holiday of Sukkot. The etrogim—waved together with the lulav bundle every Sukkot after the recitation of special blessings—were normally brought from faraway Italy or even the Holy Land, but that year there were almost none to be found. In the city of Berditchev, home to tens of thousands of Jews, there was but one etrog. Of course, it was given to the town’s...
PARENT AND TEACHER The Times reported this week that more than 700,000 people have fled Russia, to avoid the military draft. This calls to my mind an earlier era of refuseniks – Jews who were denied permission to leave the Soviet Union for Israel. Under communism, it was forbidden to teach Torah. An underground network was set up in Moscow to teach Torah at all levels. It was managed from London by Dayan Ehrentreu and a man from Hendon called Ernie Hirsch. Together, they have the merit of bringing hundreds of young Russians closer to their Jewish roots. I was...
GO FOR GROWTH In my Rosh HaShana sermon I quoted the well-known story of the Chassidic Master, Zusha of Hanipol (1718-1800), who said that he was not worried that on the Day of Judgement they will ask him: “Zusha, why weren’t you like Moses? Zusha, why weren’t you like King David?” “I will reply: ‘I’m not a Moses. I’m not a David.’ But I am worried that they will say to me: ‘Zusha, why were you not Zusha? Why were you not the Zusha you could have been?’” We all acknowledge that we have different talents and different limitations. Each...
ROYAL CHOICES The pageantry of the Queen’s funeral was a once-in-a-lifetime event, watched by billions of people, across the world. But perhaps, even more impressive was the respect and affection shown to the Queen by hundreds of thousands of people from the time she died. The crowds outside the palaces. The queues to file past her coffin in Westminster Hall. The throngs lining the route of the funeral. We have parallels in Judaism. The days of national mourning for the Queen have their echo in Jewish law, which states that when a Monarch or Nasi dies, everyone tears a garment...
