It’s seven months this week since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Many atrocities have been committed by President Putin over that time. In common with many people across the UK and notably in the Jewish community, a number of families in EHRS have opened their homes to Ukrainian refugees, providing a safe place to be for the duration of Putin’s war of colonialism and empire building. When you speak to our Ukrainian guests they will remind you that this is the second invasion of Ukraine by Russia, not the first. In 2014 Russia invaded Donbas and Crimea, then successfully wresting Crimea away from Ukraine and incorporating it into the Russian empire.
I spoke about the horror of the war last Shabbat, and that sermon for Shabbat Nitzavim is now on the EHRS website but today, for Rosh Hashanah, I begin wholly positive which I witnessed in Ukraine five years before 2014 and which could serve as a model for us here in EHRS as we enter a year that is bound to be very challenging.
In 2009 I visited the Jewish community of Kerch in Crimea, which was then in the Ukraine. It was like visiting long lost family that you never knew you had – a thriving Reform Jewish community centre visited often by hundreds of people in a day which enabled the Jews of the town to overcome the privations of extreme poverty by sheer good heartedness.
One of the joys of being in Kerch is the way they feed you. Often visiting groups are embarrassed by the community’s generosity – but it really is a major source of pride to them that there is a hard working kitchen at the heart of the Synagogue – ensuring that a square meal is available to all of the children at the Cheder or youth clubs and to the many elderly people who love the shul’s warmth.
It’s Crimea so stuffed fish and prunes, beetroot and black bread, home grown cherries and home reared eggs feature heavily on the menu.
Our first meal in the community was with many of the elderly members. The men all wore their medals – having been a Second World War veteran is very notable in the community. Kerch put up such a valiant defence against the Nazis, who had massacred thousands of the town’s Jewish inhabitants after a forced march just five miles out of the town, that it is known as one of the twelve hero cities of the former Soviet Union. What was so remarkable to me was that this community, who when you visited their flats were deprived of proper heating, decent lighting, comfortable furniture and so much more, saw their synagogue as the place where they could share warmth of so many different kinds.
Here in London we are inevitably going to enter a tough year of rising heating and food costs with very difficult economic circumstances to live through. Your Synagogue is, like it is for the people of Kerch, part of the solution. Edgware and Hendon Reform Synagogue is a warm place, it is a place of hospitality and it is a place of togetherness. My sermon is an invitation to open your eyes to what we are and what we could be
On the Sunday in Sukkot, 16th October, there will be a great opportunity to experience everything that you could open your eyes to through your Edgware and Hendon Reform Synagogue community at our EHRS Fest. For this special morning, nearly 50 stalls will give you the opportunity to browse all the different activities that make this Synagogue so much more than a place of worship. You will never need to say again ‘I am not religious so I don’t come to shul’ once you see what shul can mean.
Open your eyes to our new Shaking Sixties Together Group, come together with each other in our Phoenix and Genesis mutual support groups, enjoy a film with others in our Telly Addicts Together Group, work out how our Synagogue can combat climate change in our Environmental Action Team, bring your musical talent or interest to our Shirah Band or our choir where new singers are very welcome or just enjoy a fantastic concert at our monthly Stonegrove Serenade. That’s just six of the more than fifty opportunities to be warm and together this year for nothing more than your membership contribution. At EHRS being part of shul is way more than a religious experience, it is also an way to be part of a community, to know that you are valued, welcome and safe.
Our EHRS Fest will also be a place to open your eyes to the world around us. Our Let’s Talk Mental health initiative addressed the real issues in the lives of all our generations as deal with the challenges that 2020’s life brings. We are now able to re-open our winter shelter for local homeless people, which had to close during the worst of the Covid pandemic and will soon be recruiting volunteers to help our warm community building keep people literally off the cold streets.
And of course here you can open your eyes to Jewish learning and spirituality. It may be through our regulars like our Talmud Class or our Cornerstone Basic Judaism programme and our Hebrew begins with Shalom learning group or through any of the shiurim that bring Judaism alive. It may be through a parallel service that just inspires you, our Early Risers service and Sunday Shacharit that bring small groups together for prayer, our services for the soul that enlighten our liturgy with poetry and outdoor experiences.
This Synagogue can be your warm house, your Bayit Cham, a great way to help yourself and your family through a challenging year ahead. Please book in to the EHRS fest on our Synagogue website, the first two hundred to do so will share a free lunch! 120 people already have so join them to make 5783 a great year to enjoy being a member of this great shul. At EHRS there is such a thing as a free lunch – that, here and in Kerch is part of the meaning of community!
We read the Torah portion of Hagar and Ishmael every year on Rosh Hashanah. Everything is going wrong for both of them. Thrown out of their home, wandering the desert, in a desperate state. The story turns for the better when Hagar’s perception of her terrible situation changes. What she experiences as an angel, opens her eyes to see that there is water available to sustain her and her son Ishmael. With open eyes the two of them are able to survive and to rebuild their lives so that Ishmael becomes the ancestor of a people. The same happens to Abraham in tomorrow’s Torah portion, just as he is about to destroy any hope of the future by sacrificing his son Isaac. In his experience of an angel God opens Abraham’s eyes and he now sees that he should spare his son and instead sacrifice the ram caught in a thicket by the horns that become our shofar. In every morning service we sing a song of request that our eyes will be opened – ha’eir eyneynu l’toratecha – please God open our eyes to your Torah. Please open our eyes to the possibilities that Judaism and Jewish community can bring to us.
It is perhaps the most natural thing to do in difficult circumstances to close your eyes to possibilities. It feels safe not to take any risks, not to change our behaviours that we are used to, not to move forwards but to stay where we are. Judaism though is a call to forward motion. Both the Hagar and the Abraham story would get nowhere if their protagonists had not opened their eyes to another possibility, to a new opportunity.
This year, just days before Rosh Hashanah, our whole nation has had no choice but to open our eyes to a different future, where Queen Elizabeth II is not our monarch any more. Soon when you look to the front of our Synagogue the plaque which prays for the Royal Family, the government and the nation, will be replaced by a new plaque beginning with prayers for the welfare of King Charles. It’s a good thing it doesn’t mention the Prime Minister by name or we would be calling in the engraver every other year. In seriousness though the change is unsettling and hence a nation mourned, but we must open our eyes to the possibilities in our relationship with the Royal Family as it moves on a generation, open eyes look forwards not backwards.
Every Jewish New Year we celebrate the year ahead, not the one that has just passed. We may hold onto regrets from the past year. Everyone of us will know that they could have made better choices, could have been there for people in a better way, could have made more of a difference when they were needed. But we celebrate the year ahead in order to move forwards with eyes open to the possibilities of the future.
Rabbi Hayim of Zenze told this tale to his Chasidim: A man is lost in the forest. He has been wandering many days and nights and cannot find his way. Finally he meets another man – and says to him. “My friend, I am lost, I have been trying to find the way for many days and nights, but I cannot. Can you show me the way?”
The other man answers, “I too am lost. Yet I can tell you this: do not go the way I have gone – that way does not lead anywhere. Let us search for the way together.” That is what we can be as a community – we can search for the way together.
L’Shanah Tovah – towards a good year.
