Rabbis deliver “words of Torah” each Shabbat, musing and commenting on the weekly Torah portion. Here are some of the texts I’ve shared with my community.
Maidenhead, Parashat Vayeshev 13 December 2025 / 23 Kislev 5786 It is a coincidence of the Jewish calendar that Parashat Vayeshev almost always coincides with Chanukkah. At first glance, these two narratives seem to pull in opposite directions....
Maidenhead 22 November 2025 / 2 Kislev 5786 Rock Shabbat @ Maidenhead You may have seen the 2022 film "Elvis" directed by Baz Luhrmann. I remember a scene when young Elvis stands on stage, paralysed by shyness. Then something shifts. He begins to...
Maidenhead Synagogue Parashat Chayye Sarah - 15 November 2025 / 24 Cheshvan 5786 Service led by the B'nei Mitzvah class Last Sunday, during our morning study session, we discussed something that matters deeply to your generation: social media. You...
Maidenhead Synagogue 7 November 2025 / 17 Cheshvan 5786 Abraham’s tent is often described as a model of religious life for progressive Jews, a tent of inclusivity. It is an inviting image, but it raises two serious questions. First: inclusion into...
Parashat Lech-Lecha 1 November 2025 / 10 Cheshvan 5786 Maidenhead Synagogue One of my teachers at Leo Baeck College, Rabbi Shoshana Boyd-Gelfand, once asked us a question that has stayed with me throughout my rabbinate: "What is your parashah? What...
Maidenhead Synagogue Sukkot 5786 - 6 & 7 October 2025 When we stand before a sukkah, what do we see? It's apparently a simple question. After all, we're looking at a temporary booth made of wood and branches, decorated perhaps with paper chains...
Maidenhead Synagogue - Yom Kippur 586 2nd October 2025 / 10 Tishrei 5786 This past Thursday, just two days after Rosh Hashanah, the tradition asked us to fast. Not for Yom Kippur, that comes today, but for Gedaliah, a governor of Jerusalem who was...
Maidenhead Synagogue 10 Tishri 5786 / 1st October 2025 Tonight, we begin the day of Yom Kippur with a paradox. The holiest day of our year opens not with praise, not with petition, but with a legal procedure: the annulment of vows. Before we...
Parashat Vayelekh – Shabbat Shuva 27 September 2025 / 5 Tishrei 5786 "Vayelech Moshe"—Moses went. Two words that stop me every year. Here is Moses, one hundred and twenty years old, on his last day of leadership, and the Torah tells us he went. Not...