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TFTW Archive 2025 October

Shabbat Lech L'cha

Dear Members and Friends,

Did Abraham speak Hebrew? When God called to him to ‘go forth’ and leave his homeland, his family and his father’s house, what language did he hear? Was it Hebrew, or an earlier form of Hebrew, or Aramaic, Hebrew’s sister language and the lingua franca of Jews for many centuries?

It is this geographical move that the Torah relates in this week’s parashah – the story of one man, uprooting himself from the place of his birth to a ‘land which God would show [him]’. Abraham’s story is one of great risk and danger - he takes with him his wife, Sarah, his nephew Lot, and ‘all the souls they had made’ in Haran. He is not a young man; he is seventy-five when he leaves the familiarity of what was his home. He is to encounter warfare, the abduction of his wife Sarah, domestic conflict when he has a child, Ishmael, with her maidservant, Hagar, and is forced by Sarah and by God to banish the mother and child into the desert. When eventually, Sarah and Abraham have a child, Isaac, he is tested painfully by God and the boy almost loses his life.

And the journey importantly includes a covenant made by God promising that he will become the father of many nations and will inherit a land.

His journey is not only a physical journey from one land to another, but a spiritual journey, a continual conversation with God from that first moment of Lech L’cha – ‘Go for yourself’ – the literal meaning of the imperative lech - ‘go’ from the Hebrew root halach, and ‘l’cha’ for yourself. In these two words, a whole word of faith, identity and language is opened up for Abraham and for his descendants.

Although the Hebrew Bible is written, for the most part in Hebrew (most of Daniel and some parts of Ezra are written in Imperial Aramaic of the Babylonian court), scholars debate whether Abraham – if he lived – would have spoken an earlier form of Hebrew – proto-Hebrew, or Aramaic – he had moved to Haran from his birthplace Mesopotamia, where he may have spoken Sumerian.

Today we read his words in Hebrew, just as we read God’s words of creation and his communication with humanity in Hebrew. The language has become our l’shon ha-kodesh – our sacred language. So the question of whether Abraham actually spoke Hebrew is not necessarily a historical one, but a theological one.

Like every student of Judaism and Hebrew, Abraham’s journey includes this language of faith and identity. It is through Hebrew that he gains understanding about God, about the covenant, about a new identity which he is creating even in his advanced years.

The call by God to Abraham gave birth to three thousand years of prayer, poetry and prophecy. It is what connects all Jews – whether in communities here in the UK, or across the oceans, and with Israelis. Today, some say, miraculously, Hebrew has become a living language, a modern, revived language based on the grammatical structure and vocabulary of the Hebrew Bible and integrating thousands of words from other languages.

Hebrew is a symbol of our identity. It is more than grammar and vocabulary. We do not have to know how to read Hebrew, we are already using Hebrew words in our everyday life – shalom, shabbat, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, challah, Pesach, seder, the Shema, the Amidah. All these words are in our own vernacular, they help us to nurture our own inner faith and understanding of Judaism. Every day we are navigating our own Jewish world and the world beyond where it would be so easy to assimilate and lose any sense of our Jewish identity.

Hebrew grounds us in that Jewish identity, in our spiritual journeys, in our observance of our Jewish faith.

Did Abraham speak Hebrew? We will probably never know, but his journey of faith and identity is also our journey – one of learning, absorbing and shaping our own conversation with the deepest part of ourselves, that some people call God.

Shabbat Shalom,

Alexandra Wright

Shabbat Noach/Wrapping Ourselves in Light

Dear Members and Friends,  

As we move deeper into autumn, the sun rises later and sets earlier. With Daylight Savings ending this weekend, we suddenly find our days cut short as the darkness of winter looms closer. For some of us, the lengthening evenings are a source of cozy comfort, giving us a chance to curl up with a good book or favorite movie, relaxing as the long winter nights approach. For others, the lack of daylight can cause a sense of listlessness or even sorrow as we miss the sun’s rays.  

Jewish tradition is not unaware of the anxiety caused by the shortening days. The Talmud (Avodah Zarah 8a) tells a story of Adam, the first human being, who sees the days grow shorter after the autumnal equinox, and does not yet understand this is the normal pattern of the world. He despairs, believing the world is ending. He spends eight days fasting and praying. After the winter solstice, as the days began to lengthen, he realized that it is simply the state of the world for the daylight to change with the seasons.  

It can be easy to despair, as Adam does, when the world around us feels dark; whether a literal darkness of the shortened autumn days, or the emotional darkness of social and political turmoil around us. Perhaps we can even understand Adam’s assumption that the long periods of darkness herald ‘the end of the world’. In those moments of anxiety, the Talmud reminds us that this is the natural order of the world: there are moments of darkness, followed by moments of increased light; there are long, difficult nights that precede beautiful sunrises and change.  

Last week, we read the Creation Story in the opening lines of the Torah. Interestingly, light is created before the sun, moon or stars. The Midrash (Genesis Rabbah 3:4), a collection of rabbinic legends and writing, teaches that the Creator was wrapped in a cloak of light, and initial light of creation was a reflection of this divine garment. 

Aside from enjoying the rabbinic meticulousness to address the origin of light preceding the creation of the sun, I find a deep comfort in this midrash. We need not rely only on daylight for illumination in our lives. We need not become despondent nor despair on the long, dark, winter nights. There was light before there was even a sun, and thus, even without the sun, there can be countless sources of light in our own lives.  

How might we emulate God in this story and wrap ourselves in a cloak of light?  

Let us hold tightly to sources of joy and laughter that can carry us through difficult times. Let us radiate light to others, combining our efforts to weave a proverbial garment of light that reflects across our whole world. Let us seek out the moments of hope and happiness that can sustain us, even during the long nights.  

Shabbat Shalom, 

Lily

Shabbat Bereshit

Dear Members and Friends,

I share with you the words we spoke just a few days ago as we celebrated Simchat Torah - the festival at which we conclude our reading of the Five Books of Moses with the death and burial of Moses, and begin again with the story of creation in Genesis.

The return of the living hostages to Israel and to their families is a source of joy and immense relief. The return of some of the dead must also bring a sense of coming home for their loved ones now that they are able to give them a proper burial and say a final farewell to them. But there are still hostages no longer alive, whose whereabouts are unknown, among them Dror Or, a resident of Kibbutz Be’eri, murdered on October 7th with his wife, Yonat. The LJS had the honour of ‘adopting’ Dror in the months before we knew of his death. His body has still not been returned to his family. May we hold his and Yonat’s memory and the anguish of his children, parents and siblings in our hearts.

There is a longing to rejoice and to celebrate the return of the hostages, but as we saw in the faces of those in Hostages Square on Monday, there is also acute pain at the losses that have been sustained over these past years – Israeli and Palestinian. And we are deluded if we believe that our joy is complete and absolute. For beyond the repair and renewal of a devastated landscape in Gaza, beyond the slow return of Israeli residents to their burnt-out kibbutzim and homes which are slowly being rebuilt, and Gazans to their razed villages and towns, are broken bodies, broken hearts and minds and a single, faint thread of hope that the fragile peace process will hold, that a second phase will not be held back, that sense will triumph over madness, compassion over revenge, and human yearning for an ordinary, peaceful life over violence and terror.

Never have our prayers felt more earnest, more pleading than over these last two years; never have we yearned more for God’s intervention in the human drama of war and brutality. Can we trust our own free-will, the choices we make for ourselves? Can we put our faith in a God who longs for our faithfulness, but who is saddened and disappointed in our alienation and estrangement from a covenant which requires a universal ethical imperative of love and righteousness.

‘It is with a mixture of joy, relief and grief that we celebrate Simchat Torah this morning. Joy that the remaining living hostages have been released and reunited with their families, relief that the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is holding and grief for the loss of life that has occurred over these past years on all sides of the war.

We ask God to bring healing and strength to the men who have returned home today and all the hostages who endured captivity for days and months and the two long years of this war. Grant them comfort and health, strength and peace. May they return to active life together with all whom they live, together with all those injured, wounded and bereaved in the attack on Simchat Torah 2023 and in the war that followed.

We mourn all those who died in the massacre on October 7, those who have died in captivity and the tens of thousands who have died in the two-year war. May their souls be bound up in the bond of everlasting life and their families find consolation in the memories they cherish of loved ones.

And we pray that the strength and determination of the world’s leaders will help to bring an enduring peace to Israel and Palestine. We know that fear and hatred will not be dispelled until there is a process of truth and reconciliation for both peoples.

Then, in the words of the prophet: ‘Each person shall sit under their vine and under their fig tree and none shall make them afraid’ (Micah 4:4).

Let that time come soon, and in our time, so that with Kohelet we shall affirm the hope that the time ahead will be eit shalom - ‘a time for peace.’ Keyn yehi ratzon. Amen.

Shabbat Shalom,

Alexandra Wright

The prayer is based partly on words written by MK Rabbi Gilad Kariv, former Executive Director of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism.

Shabbat Ha'azinu

Dear Members and Friends,  

We now find ourselves in a beautiful moment of transition between the conclusion of the serious days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and the joyous days of the holidays of Sukkot and Simchat Torah. Sukkot, the Festival of Booths, recalls the Israelites’ journey through the wilderness, reenacting the booths they built to shelter themselves along the way.  

Sukkot has always been one of my favourite holidays. I love sitting out in the sukkah and enjoying the crisp autumn air, all the harvest-themed foods, and the opportunity to invite friends and family to gather for a festive meal.  

Our classical texts go into extensive detail about how to construct a sukkah. While these endless pages of debates on height and materials may seem arduous to sort through, I believe there are deeper messages that hold relevance to us today. For example, the Talmud (Sukkah 5a) says that a sukkah must be at least ten handbreadths tall, based on the height of the Ark of the Covenant which held the Ten Commandments. The rabbis imagine that the Presence of God hovers ten handbreadths above the ground, and thus, to include God in our sukkah, we cannot build it too short. Simultaneously, another rabbi argues that a sukkah which is shorter than ten handbreadths is simply too small for someone to reasonably sit inside and eat.  

I love this passage because it highlights two important aspects of inclusion and accessibility. The first answer gives us a spiritual and emotional reason to build our sukkot in a particular way: if we want to include the Divine Presence in our celebrations, then we have to be willing to build an accommodating structure. If we apply this same perspective to inclusion in the broader community and world, we find ourselves asking exactly what needs to be done to make our spaces accessible. The first answer reflects an emotional approach to ensure that our communities are inclusive.  

The second answer is equally important, as it speaks to the logistical questions that arise when we strive to create an inclusive space. It is not enough simply to want to be accessible, we must consider the physical and practical steps needed to achieve accessibility and inclusion. The rabbis do not say to build a sukkah in whichever way we please and then make accommodations, rather, they challenge us to build a space that is accessible to both people and God from the beginning.  

As we move into this new Jewish year, let us be inspired to build our communities and homes with a focus on inclusive thinking, let us challenge ourselves to consider whose voices we may still not hear and how to ensure they are included, and may we build open doors to welcome one another.  

Shabbat Shalom, 

Lily  

Wed, 19 November 2025 28 Cheshvan 5786