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TFTW Archive 2025 April

Counting Omer - Journey Towards Compassionate and Inclusive Community.

Dear Members and Friends,

Today is the fifth day of the Omer.

What exactly is the Omer? At its most ancient roots, the Omer – Hebrew for "sheaf" – connects us to the agricultural rhythms of the ancient Middle East. It marked the period between the barley harvest, which began on Pesach, and the wheat harvest, culminating forty-nine days later with the festival of Shavuot. For our ancestors, this was a time of anxious anticipation. A successful wheat harvest was a matter of survival. Understandably, this season was charged with hope, uncertainty, and prayer.

Liturgically, the Omer links Pesach and Shavuot. Pesach celebrates liberation—freedom from slavery, tyranny, and oppression. Shavuot marks the receiving of the Torah at Sinai. Therefore, this period marks the transformation from a newly freed, perhaps slightly chaotic, group of ex-slaves to a people with vision, identity, and order.

What does this ancient practice of counting sheaves offer us, modern Jews in the 21st century?

We all know the psychology of counting and anticipation. Sometimes, we count down the days until holidays, birthdays, exam results, and paydays. We count when something matters deeply.

This past week has been one of anticipation for many in our community and beyond. The UK Supreme Court delivered a ruling concerning the legal definition of ‘woman’, affirming it as referring to biological sex.

Some of you may feel uncomfortable with a rabbi raising this issue in a Thought for the Week. After all, this is a legal matter, not a spiritual one. Others may feel that within Progressive Judaism, our support for LGBTQ+ people is better offered quietly, without public declarations. However, I believe it is not only appropriate but necessary to acknowledge this moment. Let me explain why.

Firstly, this is not an abstract issue. We have trans people in our community. They are not theoretical case studies. They are our friends, congregants, colleagues and family members. Some of our current and future rabbis in this country have transitioned or may be considering doing so. This ruling is not merely about legal matters. For some, it touches the core of their identity, safety, and sense of belonging. Not talking about them might make them feel unnoticed and send the wrong message to the community, as if they do not exist.

Secondly, however one interprets the legal or philosophical dilemmas of this issue, what matters most is how we speak about them. These topics are deeply sensitive and polarising. That is precisely why we must discuss them with care, kindness, and compassion. Ignoring this topic will only support the least kind approaches. As Elie Wiesel once said, ‘Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.’ There is nothing wrong with holding different views, but we need to be mindful of the impact that our words might have on people when we express our positions. As a religious community, we are called not to amplify divisions but to build bridges.

This brings us back to the deeper meaning of the Omer. The Omer marks the journey from ‘freedom from’ to ‘freedom for.’ ‘Freedom from’ is about breaking chains – liberation from external obstacles. But ‘freedom for’ asks a deeper question: What will we do with that freedom? What responsibilities will we take on? The Jewish story did not end at the Red Sea. It continued to Sinai. Our freedom was not complete until it was combined with a covenant — a commitment to justice, compassion, and law.

Counting the Omer is not just about waiting for wheat. It is about becoming worthy of the Covenant. It is about transforming anxiety into purpose and freedom into responsibility. We are fortunate to live in a free society. Let’s use our freedom to build a compassionate and inclusive community.

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach,

Rabbi Igor

Shabbat Tzav/Ha-Gadol/Pesach

Dear Members and Friends,
My son’s little black cat has found a new resting place on the desk just behind me where she has seated herself on the Book of Exodus, part of the Commentator’s Bible. Its soft binding isn’t perhaps as comfortable as her rug or the armchair she makes her own, but it brings her near to me and I can feel her quiet presence just behind me, especially when she stretches out towards me in what always seems like a request for me to swivel round on my chair and speak to her or stroke her soft black head.
Although we have moved into the Book of Leviticus and the priests’ cultic manual in our weekly readings, I have not replaced Exodus on the shelf, because we shall be telling the story of the Exodus from Egypt at our sedarim, as well as reading the account of the first Pesach on the first morning of the festival.
I have been asking myself – what is the ikkar – what is the central message and principle of Pesach? Is it to look back and remember that we were slaves in Egypt and that God brought us out from there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm?  Is it to recall the suffering and bitterness of slavery, the cruelty of Pharaoh’s taskmasters?  Perhaps it is to focus on the slaughter of a lamb to be roasted and eaten by households as they made their preparations to flee after more than four centuries in a foreign land, and so to connect ourselves with that first Pesach meal on the last night in Egypt.
The stories, blessings and rituals we will share at our sedarim immerse us in the past: each of the four cups of wine remind us of God’s promises to Moses, the yachatz (the breaking of the matzah into two) is a symbol of the misery and poverty of slavery, the maror (bitter herbs) remind us of the bitterness suffered by the Israelites as slaves; the texture of the charoset is the clay and the straw out of which the mortar was made by the slaves who built the great store cities for Pharaoh, the zeroa (lamb bone) a reminder of the paschal sacrifice to God who passed over the houses of the children of Israel.
We are required to relive our past. It may be our mythic past, but on the night of Pesach it becomes real and immediate to us. And whether we are born Jews and have celebrated Pesach since we were young, or whether we come to the festival as adults and are experiencing our first seder, the telling of the story and the rituals are always fresh and different for each one of us. We understand the story in a new light, because our world has changed, because we are different. So when we are required to ‘see ourselves as if we were the ones who actually went out of Egypt’, it is as though for the very first time. Why? Because we cannot be complacent about slavery and oppression, because we should be shocked, revulsed and indignant when one people or one person abuses another, disempowers them, robs them of their autonomy and voice.
But there is another requirement at our seder. Even before the Israelites are freed from Egypt, God makes a promise about the future: ‘I will deliver you… I will redeem you…I will take you to Me for a people, and I will be your God.’  Future redemption, the Exodus of the future, as the rabbis called it, suffuses not only the Haggadah, but our daily liturgy in which we proclaim God’s sovereignty over the earth, address God as the One who brings redemption, who is the source of eternal life and who, in the Aleynu, we ask to help us to perfect the world.
The symbolic foods we ingest make us look back, but even more, they help us imagine a different future – spring, new life, the hidden matzah which transforms itself from the bread of poverty into the Afikoman, the hidden and hoped-for future.
Without pushing the boundaries of the image, the little black cat who sits on the Book of Exodus, reminds me of two things: the closed book of Exodus and Pesach as a once-upon-a-time event in the past, when we look back, enclosing that moment of Jewish freedom within the bounds of our particular narrative. 
But when she lifts herself to come closer to me, the past is no longer a closed book. The Exodus becomes a universal symbol of redemption for the world – the eradication of all moral deviancy, the knowledge that we can repair our moral compass and strengthen our hope.
The little cat’s quiet breathing presence, reaching out towards me, schools me in ways to become more astute, more sensitive, more hopeful that there are pathways to universal freedom and human dignity.
Shabbat Shalom and Chag Pesach Sameach,
Alexandra Wright

Shabbat Vayikra / Please Help Shape the Future of Israel and the Jewish People

Dear Members and Friends,

Over the past year and a half, many of you have asked the same powerful question: “What can I do to support Israeli democracy and security?”

Until now, our focus as British Jews has largely been on local issues—rising antisemitism, community safety, and trying to influence the UK government’s response to global events. But many of us have felt that wasn’t enough and something more was needed.

Now, there is something more you can do. Jews around the world will soon have the opportunity to vote in the World Zionist Congress (WZC) elections — a democratic process that helps shape the future of Israel and the global Jewry.

This week’s Torah portion is called ‘Vayikra’, which means ‘He called.’ In it, God called upon Moses and spoke to him in the Tent of Meeting. Today, we are all called to act, to shape the future for all of us.

The World Zionist Congress (WZC) serves as the democratic cornerstone for world Jewry, a "Parliament of the Jewish People," convening every five years. Integral to Israel's democratic fabric, the WZC election empowers voices shaping Israeli society.

Through the WZC elections, Jews around the world can cast a vote that will influence policy and $1 billion in budget decisions in Israel and advocate for democracy, pluralism, security, and humanitarian causes.

To be eligible to register to vote, you must:

  • be Jewish
  • be 18 years or older by 30 June 2025
  • be a permanent UK resident
  • accept the Jerusalem Program
  • have not voted in the November 2022 Knesset election or another WZC election elsewhere.
  • Voter registration will be open from 8 April to 13 May.

Please open this link and put your email to receive reminders to register for the voting when it is open.

www.arzenu.uk/registration

The actual voting will take place from 8 to 12 June, but you must register for it before.

Why is it important?

Wed, 30 April 2025 2 Iyar 5785