Wheat field with rain

Yom Kippur 5787

Yom Kippur, BPS 5787

Uncomfortable

וְהָיָה אִם־שָׁמֹֽעַ תִּשְׁמְ֒עוּ אֶל־מִצְוֹתַי

Now it shall be, if you hearken, yes, hearken to my commandments that I command you today, to love Adonai your God and to serve the Eternal with all your heart and with all your being: I will give forth the rain of your land in its due-time, the early rain and the late rain; and you will harvest your grain and your wine and your oil. And I will put grass in your fields for your cattle, and you will eat and you will be satisfied. Beware lest your hearts be seduced, so that you turn aside and serve other gods and bow down to them., and the anger of God flare up against you so that he shuts up the heavens and there is no rain, and the earth does not give forth its yield, and you perish quickly from off the good land that God is giving you!

A large collection of candles on a dark background

Kol Nidre 5787

Kol Nidre, BPS 5787

Standing Together in Joy and Strength, Courage and Resilience

Every morning I daven from this Siddur. It was a gift from my cousin Caroline when I got ordained as a Rabbi. It belonged to her late brother, Michael, who died of cancer when he was just 36. In the front of the Siddur the following words are inscribed: ‘To Master Michael Seidman on the occasion of this Barmitzvah, 15th January 1955. Wishing you lots of Mazal, Good Health and Happiness’. My cousin Michael had his Bar Mitzvah at Heaton Park shul in Manchester, the shul where my father went to Cheder, and where my sister and her family belong. It’s a close personal connection going back at least 3 generations.

Image of golden fragments on a blue background

Rosh Hashanah Day 5787

BPS Rosh HaShanah Day 5787

Uniquely Human:What Does This Mean in the New Age of the AI Revolution?

‘As we gather on this Rosh HaShanah, standing at the threshold between what has been and what might yet be, we find ourselves living through a moment unlike any our ancestors could have imagined. For centuries, human beings have created tools that extended our strength, our reach, and our knowledge. Now we have created machines that seem, in some ways, to mimic our thinking itself. Artificial intelligence can write poems, answer questions, diagnose illnesses, and even engage in conversation. It invites us to ask not only what these new technologies can do, but what they reveal about us. And on Rosh HaShanah, the day we return to the deepest questions of who we are and who we are becoming, that may be the most important question of all. If a machine can imitate human intelligence, what remains uniquely human? What is the spark within us that no algorithm can replicate? And how are we called, in this new year, to use our God-given wisdom responsibly and with compassion?’

Vector image of sunset

Erev Rosh Hashanah 5787

BPS, erev Rosh HaShanah 5787

The Power of the Story We Choose

I love my garden. Gardening is my joy, my pleasure, my therapy; my heartbreak and despair when the slugs gobble my parsley down to the stalk or, this summer, when carefully tended plants and flowers perished in the parched and scorching sun. Despite a large water butt storing harvested rainwater over the wet winter, the water ran out through this year’s 5 heat waves. The earth cried out in thirst.

Autumn leaves on a forest floor - sunlight through trees in the distance

Rosh HaShanah Morning 5786

Renewal and Return 

The evenings are drawing in. Even as we sense the sharpness of an early Autumn in the morning air, we marvel at the beauty of the leaves turning on the trees, the smell of decay as the dead leaves begin to rot underfoot and the conkers fall. The imprint of the year turning is embedded deep in the memory of our cells. 

Image of the planet earth nested in a field of flowers

Erev Rosh HaShanah 5786

 Trustees of God’s Creation 

Today we celebrate the creation of the earth – God’s creation of the seas and the skies, the trees and the flowers, all of earth’s creatures, from the tiniest insect to the mightiest ocean whale; to ourselves, human beings formed, according to our tradition, at the 11th hour, just before sunset on the 6th Day of Creation. Today, Rosh HaShanah, we celebrate the gift and the wonder of the magnificent, beautiful and fragile web of life that is planet Earth. 

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