Jewish holidays / fast days, yamim tovim, and yamim nora'im

Originally published in New London News: Journal of the New London Synagogue, 2:6 (November 1970). Hasidism is justly considered to be a fresh and original Jewish movement not so much because it created new Jewish institutions but because it read new ideas into the older forms. A good example is the treatment the festival of Hanukkah…...

Originally published in The Jewish Chronicle. Ever since the stereotyped formula for the Yom Kippur confession of sin was introduced, sensitive people have been bothered by the dishonesty involved in a man declaring before his God that he is guilty of certain offences he knows he has never committed. It is all very well seeing ourselves…...

Originally published in The Jewish Gazette, September (year unknown). But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord . . . (Jonah I, 3) Jonah, the prophet of the Lord, knew, remarks the Midrash, that God is everywhere, that you cannot fly from Him in space. What then was the purpose…...

Originally published in The Jewish Chronicle, 8 September 1972. The spiritual stocktaking traditionally encouraged at this period of the year stresses the social aspect. It is the plural we who have “sinned before Thee.” Not that individual self-scrutiny is unimportant, but it is by its very nature a private matter between a man and his Maker…....

Originally published in The Jewish Gazette, 24 March 1972. “You have said: ‘It is useless to serve God: what do we gain from the Lord of Hosts by observing His rules and behaving with deference?’” (Malachai 4: 14) In the Haftarah for Shabbat Ha-Gadol, from the Book of Malachai, the prophet, complains that the people see…...

Originally published in The Jewish Chronicle, 24 March 1972. After the defeat of Nazism and the world’s realisation of the horrors of this obscene philosophy, decent men and women everywhere had come to believe that antisemitism would never again rear its head either as an instrument of national politics or as the criminal intent of perverse…...

Originally published in the Jewish Chronicle. On Pesach, it is not only children who are encouraged to ask questions. Where children are not present at the Seder, the adults ask the questions of one another. Even when a man celebrates the Seder on his own, the rule is that he must ask the questions to himself,…...

Originally published in the Jewish Chronicle, 10 December 1971. We asked “the rabbi” to give us his personal interpretation of the meaning of the Festival of Light. The Talmud (Shabbat 21b) asks why we keep Chanucah. Every Jewish equivalent of Macaulay’s schoolboy knows the answer given there: “When the Greeks entered the Temple, they defiled all…...

Originally published in the Rosh Hashanah pamphlet of the Central Synagogue, Manchester, 1952. New Year’s Message from Rabbi Dr. L. Jacobs, B.A. Dear Member, Once again I am writing to you to wish you and your family a very happy and prosperous, new year and to discuss with you our tasks for the future. I…...

Sermon probably delivered in the late 1950s. “And if the Holy One, Blessed be He, had not brought us out of Egypt, then we and our sons and our sons’ sons would still be slaves in Egypt.” The best way of truly describing a thing is to point out in what way it differs from its…...

Sermon delivered in synagogue on Rosh Hashanah, probably no later than 1953. “And she went, and sat her down over against him a good way off, as it were a bow shot: for she said, Let me not look upon the death of the child: and she sat over against him and lift up her…...

Originally published in Venture 1.1 (April 1956), pp. 3-4. A significant omission Search the Passover Haggadah from beginning to end and you will nowhere find the name of Moses. The one man responsible for the Exodus is apparently overlooked when Jews recall the deliverance of their people from bondage. This can hardly be a coincidence. Surely…...

Sermon originally delivered c. 1956. The Talmud relates how four old, worn out teachers of Judaism were walking in ancient Palestine soon after the land had been laid in waste by the barbaric hordes of Roman invaders. The Temple lay in ruins, the glory of the ancient Jewish state was a thing of the past, the…...

Originally published in Venture 2:4 (September 1958); transcript of a sermon preached at the New West End Synagogue on the seventh day of Passover, 5718 (11th April 1958). And the Lord said unto Moses: ‘Wherefore criest thou unto Me? Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward.’ —(Ex. xiv, 15) The Israelites were trapped in the desert…....

Sermon preached at the New West, End Synagogue Rosh Ha-Shanah 5719 (15th September, 1958). So they went both of them together (Gen. xxii, 8) Abraham and his son, Isaac, walking together along the road leading to the mount where the supreme sacrifice was to be made, parents and children united in faith, this is a…...

Originally published in The Jewish Chronicle, 13th April 1973. The festival of Passover revives the eternally relevant message of freedom. The Exodus from Egypt came about because slavery is an abomination and because every man has a right to determine his own destiny and be free from dictation on how he should think, act and express…...

Originally published in The Jewish Chronicle, 21st September 1973. Every day our senses are assailed by fresh reports of muggings, mindless hooliganism, odious crimes, politically motivated bombings and other horrors. Yet for all this, ours is by no means the least compassionate of ages. There is probably less cruelty and callousness committed by man against man…...

Originally published in Chayenu 13:3/4 (1949), p. 2. Not least of the evils of slavery is that it encases the slave in a mental iron lung. The slave, though aware of the disabilities of slavery, yet comes to hate freedom because he has learnt to rely on his master and he cannot bear the thought of facing…...

Originally published in Jewish Youth, September 1954. We greet each other, in this country, on Rosh Hashanah eve, with “A Happy New Year”, a very free translation of the traditional Hebrew greeting Shanah Tovah, meaning a good year. The fact is that nowhere in the prayers for the High Festivals do we ask for personal happiness…....

Originally published in Western Wall, March 1954. There is an intimate relationship in Jewish tradition between Passover, the festival of freedom and Shabuoth, the festival commemorating the giving of the Law. This relationship is a favourite theme of Jewish religious thinkers who, not content with demonstrating that freedom and law are compatible, go further and assert…...