The Midrash relates the following episode: In the days of the Roman Empire, in the city of Tzipori, a town just west of Tiberius lived a simple man named Yusta. He served as the local tailor, sitting and sewing all day at his spot along the main street of the town. During a visit to Rome,[…]
How many Jews in the UK? Somewhere between three hundred thousand to four hundred thousand? How many of those are kosher observant? As a most optimistic guess perhaps fifty percent? So we are looking at best at 175,000 kosher observant Jews in the UK. How many kashrut authorities? Certainly four main ones in London, another[…]
A number of years ago the Bournemouth Hebrew Congregation made headlines in the Jewish press because they banned Masorti leader Louis Jacobs from receiving a call up to the Torah on the occasion of his grandson’s Bar Mitzvah. To be sure, this wasn’t their own decision. It came straight from the top of the then[…]
A young man once recalled the following: When I was a teenager I was forced to go on walks around the neighbourhood with my Grandma. The doctor said she needed daily exercise but we lived in a rough neighbourhood. Mom made me go with her to make sure no one gives her problems. At[…]
Three boys were walking along in Regents Park when they heard shrieks coming from a nearby pond. They looked and lo and behold it’s Jeremy Corbyn. The boys jumped in and rescued him. Ever the grateful one, he offered them each whatever they want. The first boy says, “I always dreamed of becoming a pilot.[…]
Rosh Hashanah is the day when we gaze upon the sunset of a year gone by; a year filled with so much universal pain and upheaval; a year riddled with so much chaos, turmoil and tribulation; a year in which yet more lives were devastated by the treacherous arm of terror; a year in which[…]
Last month I read a comment written by someone on social network on the final day of his saying Kaddish for his parent. He wrote about feeling the effect of the Kaddish during the first month of reciting it, then thereafter, nothing. Several others chimed in posting similar remarks, empathising with his experience. I was[…]
I remember some years ago I would often recommend at Yizkor that people take a moment during my speech to close their eyes and just think about their loved one. There was one member who took exception. He told me then how he had lost his father twenty years prior and how not a day[…]