My very first day as newly ordained Rabbi was at Woodford Progressive Synagogue. It was in July 1996 and it was a Monday. The thing is I didn’t really know what to do.
Shabbat was several days away. No one had died, I didn’t know if anyone was sick. All Bar and Bat Mitzvah lessons were covered and there were no classes arranged.
So what to do on my first day?
I asked a friend of mine who had recently begun a job running a theatre what he had done on his first day. He gave me some sound advice which I have used four times since. He said – ‘spend the first day going around the building opening every drawer and cupboard that you have access to. You’ll never know when you are going to need what’s in them – and you’ll soon be too busy to find what you need.’
That’s what I did – and that’s also what I did on my first day at Finchley Progressive Synagogue in 1999, my first day at Alyth Reform Synagogue in 2005 and on my first day here at EHRS, five years and two days ago in 2019. As you will know, now I have been your Rabbi for five years – I do seem to be able to find most things around the shul!
The first commitment I had, this week five years ago at EHRS was to run the Yom HaZikaron tekes or ceremony and the Yom HaAtzma’ut, Israel Independence Day event. What a different place we were in with respect to Israel in 2019. At the time in 2019 it was celebratory and light hearted and our Yom HaAtzma’ut was able to focus on celebrating the development of Israeli cuisine and all of its cultural influences.
Five years later we are fearful for Israel’s future. The war with Hamas in Gaza is causing so much pain to Israel and to Gaza’s civilians. Last week Keith Seigel, whose picture we have here to treasure his life as one of Hamas’s hostages, was featured in a propaganda video released by Hamas – he is thank God alive – but now 210 days in captivity.
Within these five years our community and all of the world has lived through the Covid pandemic. It radically changed what we had intended to achieve in my first couple of years here, as Covid and lockdowns struck the UK 9 months into my tenure. The deaths in our community from this new disease were tragic, including community leaders Rabbi Neil Kraft, Howard Moss and Mike Casale z’’l. We rose to the challenge as a community to change the way we ran everything whilst staying true to our EHRS values, but the trauma and displacement of those times is still with us.
A community of 3500 people, which has been around since the Second World War is inevitably going to experience all of the stages of life. Care for bereavement, for our members who have died and their families, is inevitably a big part of Rabbinic life here at EHRS and over my five years we have lost many beloved members and leaders.
Some of our members have chosen to move to other communities for all kinds of reasons. It was sad to lose Rabbi Emily and Ann Sadan and all that they uniquely brought to our community.
But our past five years have also been full of wonderful hellos – hundreds of new members have joined the Synagogue helping to keep us a more or less constant size but also bringing new talents, skills and interests into our volunteer and leadership corps. We have all witnessed beautiful baby namings, weddings and aufrufs and nearly 200 b’nei Mitzvah over those five years. We are truly a Synagogue with a lively future, le Dor Va Dor.
Five years ago, I began at EHRS having shared a vision with our recruiting group who asked me to present a five year (and actually a ten year) vision in my interview. I have been able to hold on to that vision with some satisfaction. The vision was all about building for the future, building relationships with our members, making EHRS an ever more engaging centre for a rich and fulfilling Judaism as we come to the start of the second quarter of the 21st Century.
It meant building a strong, creative and caring clergy team, knowing that Rabbis Danny Smith, Steven Katz and Neil Kraft were very soon to retire. And what terrific colleagues I now have here in Rabbi Debbie, Rabbi Tanya and Cantor Tamara.
It meant becoming an exemplary Synagogue for our next generations, tackling full on the challenge posed to community life of such a large percentage of our children attending Jewish Day Schools creatively and co-operatively. It meant revitalising our youth provision and helping Nagila to become more and more aligned with the lives of young parents.
If you could have seen the camps that our Youth leaders ran this past couple of weeks, experienced Nagila’s changes to become a full day care center for children, and come to any week’s Shabbat Stay and Play, you can see that we are getting there. It has been especially satisfying to see how our Education and Youth team under Marian Cohen’s leadership works so well together – we have broken down the departmental walls that were holding us back.
EHRS has truly grown as a Jewish Community Centre for our area over these five years – enjoying our Stonegrove Serenade concerts, numerous Together Groups and Let’s Talk Community Care sessions, and constant learning opportunities for adults. Something that especially delights me is to witness the empowerment of our members to make things happen for themselves and other from EcoJudaism and Opera and Art Appreciation interest groups to the Genesis and Phoenix and Coffee and Chat mutual support groups.
We have broadened our worship services over the past five years – introducing ever more popular Friday night alternative services and meaningful parallel Shabbat morning services so that there are many ways to encounter God and the community here.
We have also broadened our community – whole heartedly welcoming children with one Jewish parent (mother or father) whose parents have chosen to build the Jewish people by bringing up their children as Jews, and, I believe, carrying on our Emeritus Rabbis’ legacy of ensuring that EHRS is a great home for our LGBTQ+ members.
For me, that the end of this first five years includes watching from my office window as our community invests in its future with confidence by building our new courtyard and all of its facilities helps to make all the tough times worthwhile.
If you are a community leader you will know that building your community for the future is not the cheapest way of running a shul and often requires brave investment and a willingness to ask the community for support. But I believe it’s the only way, if we are to take our place in the generations of Judaism who in the words of our portion Acharei Mot – live by God’s laws and principles of human progress.
Our very Torah portion today takes us from the terrible experience of Aaron in losing his two sons to building the future.
Whether with Israel, with the tragic effects of Covid, with the losses of dear members of the Synagogue, the mission of a shul community is to keep building forwards, building on tradition, building with creativity. Being your partner in doing that has made these five very fulfilling years.
