Monthly Archives: February 2016

News

Liz Berg’s Bat Mitzvah

Saturday 13 February saw a very special event for Kehillat Kernow, that is the Bat Mitzvah of Liz Berg. Liz is an accomplished shaliach tzibbur (prayer leader), so one might have asked why has she decided to be Bat Mitzvah as an adult. Before the service began, she gave a moving account of what had led her to this moment. Liz has spent her life fighting with determination, but also with tact and respect for the elders of the congregations she has belonged to, for the right of women to take a full part in the Jewish service. She feels she has achieved this right here in Cornwall and so decided to mark her sixtieth birthday with the Jewish coming-of-age ceremony. The parsha (Torah portion) for the week was Terumah, from the Book of Exodus. Terumah means offering, or lifting-up, and tells how the Israelites freely offered up gifts to God to enable the building of the desert sanctuary which they were to carry around with them for forty years. They were wanderers but God dwelt amongst them.

Liz certainly lifted up her voice as she intoned the Hebrew text with great skill and melody. There to offer her gentle support was Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner, who travelled down to Cornwall to lead the service. The congregation were treated to a great Shabbat gift, as Rabbi Laura offered up her own voice and wisdom to everyone there and we all followed, recited and sung the songs and prayers of the service with renewed understanding and feeling.

After the service, Liz put on a tasty lunch for the congregation which was enlivened with much conversation. Is there anything new under the sun? It seems so each time.

Jeremy’s Notes

Terumah

If a person strikes his male or female slave in the eye and blinds it, he shall set the slave free in compensation for the eye. What on earth is anyone doing with slaves? you might ask. Well, this was a new law given in a place and a time when slavery was the order of the day. Remember, too, that, not much more than a century ago, slaves were treated with little or no justice at all in the south of the United States. Nor would it would have been very different in the British colonies of the Caribbean some time before. What we have in Mishpatim is the beginning of a code of personal and social justice which, when it was given, was breathtaking in its humanity (or divinity). When you lend money to My people, to the poor man among you, do not press him for repayment… If you take your neighbour’s garment as security [for a loan], you must return it to him before sunset… with what shall he sleep?… Do not follow the majority to do evil… If you see the donkey of someone you hate lying under its load, you might want to refrain from helping him, but you must make every effort to help him. Now that’s a hard one, but in one sentence it teaches us compassion for both man and beast.

The mishpatim of Mishpatim are accompanied by the sealing of the Covenant, which, in one of their moments of greatness, the people promise to keep “with a single voice”. We also witness Moses ascending the mountain and entering the presence of God. What an awesome scene this is!

When it comes to this week’s parsha of Terumah, the writer is keeping schtum. You can find out about it, however, by coming this Saturday at 10.30 to hear Liz Berg, whose Bat Mitzvah it is, and Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner, who will be leading the service. After kiddush Rabbi Laura will be leading a discussion, as already announced, on ‘Strangers in the Land’.

Jeremy’s Notes

Strangers in the land

On Saturday 13 February, we will be celebrating the Bat Mitzvah of one of Kehillat Kernow’s prayer leaders, Liz Berg.  Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner will be coming down to Cornwall to lead the service. Rabbi Laura will also run a guided discussion after the service on the subject of the stranger. This is particularly pertinent at present as we make our way through the book of Exodus, where the Israelites exchange the settled life of strangers in Egypt for that of wanderers in the desert. The experience of being strangers haunts the Jewish people throughout its history, in the Torah, in Tanach, and right up to the present day. Kehillat Kernow is now a settled community in the ancient land of Cornwall, one of a fellowship of communities in Britain. At the same time, we are now witnessing the suffering of peoples being forced to flee their homes and become strangers in neighbouring countries in the Middle East and in Europe.  We cannot ignore this phenomenon.

Elkan's View

Elkan’s View from Netanya

Dear Friends,

I attach the current Elkan’s view which I hope you will enjoy.

Elkan’s view was originally created to fill a gap for Radlett synagogue before the appointment of their new Rabbi. Happily he is now in post, and I will therefore only be writing on the first weekend of the calendar month.

Warmest regards,

Elkan

ELKAN’S VIEW FROM NETANYA 3RD FEBRUARY 2016

One of the great fascinations of historians is imagining what would have occurred if history had been different. Foremost among these for Jewish historians is what might have happened if Jews had made Aliyah in significant numbers to Palestine in the 1920s. Chaim Weitzman issued a famous cry “Jews where are you?” but the expected mass immigration from Eastern Europe did not take place. Had it done so the State of Israel might well have come into being before the Second World War and the Holocaust might not have occurred.

I have just finished reading a novel called “The Ambassador” by Yehudah Avner and Matt Rees. Avner had a distinguished career as Israeli ambassador in the UK, and his book “the Prime Ministers” is essential reading for anyone interested in modern Israel. In this novel the authors imagine what would have happened if the 1937 report of the Peel commission had been accepted by the Arabs, and the State of Israel had come into being. Dan Lavi, an Israeli married to an American paediatrician, is sent to be Israel’s ambassador to Hitler. His relations with the Nazi state are monitored not by its Foreign Office but by the Gestapo, but he succeeds in arranging for hundreds of thousands of Jews, stripped of all their valuables, to emigrate to Israel. Despite his excellent relations with Adolf-Eichmann however this does not happen fast enough for some Nazis, and there are dramatic scenes in the notorious villa at Wannsee in 1942. Eventually the gas chambers at Auschwitz are destroyed by the Israeli air force and Lavi becomes President of the State of Israel and receives as German ambassador one of his friends who had led the Nazi resistance.

This is one of the great “what ifs” of Jewish history. Sometimes as a people we have failed to grasp opportunities and the chance to create a viable state in Palestine before the Arab nationalism and anti-Semitism of the late 30s and early 40s is one of the great opportunities that we missed as a people. We need to be careful not to miss opportunities again.