A German-Trained American Rabbi in Yorkshire

Since my interviews last year, I have consistently maintained that if there is something odd or confusing encountered in any of the changes to our services that have come up while I have led services, that I would much prefer that the questions be asked directly to me than spoken about in frustration where I an unable to aid in the dialogue. If something comes up, I encourage you to email me at: rabbi@sinaileeds.uk with the heading “Ask the Rabbi” and I will happily answer them in order in this space. This week, the question was: “Why two days of Rosh Hashanah in Reform Judaism but not two days of Chag (holiday) for the pilgrimage festivals? (And why isn’t there a second day of Yom Kippur!?)” We can quickly deal with Yom Kippur. The answer as to why there has never been a doubling of days of observance lies in pekuach nefesh —the saving of a life. Two days of complete fasting is simply much more dangerous than one, which for healthy people is not dangerous. Isn’t it nice to hav...

There is a danger of too often stressing the limitations of translation. We always want the door to be open into Judaism instead of closed, and constantly raving that our texts can only be appreciated in Hebrew can be off-putting to those that have struggled to learn Hebrew or those whose relationship with Judaism comes primarily through other gateways than through Hebrew texts. Still, there are moments where there is a particular joy at learning or teaching something that simply cannot be seen outside of Hebrew context. One of my favourites is contemplating the singular and plural uses of “you” in the first two paragraphs of the Shema. The first paragraph, the V’ahavta, exclusively uses the second person singular while the second, the “vayim shemo’a” uses the second person plural. Unless you are from certain southern states in the USA where “y’all” can be used or in Philadelphia where “yous” is entirely appropriate, we read both identically in English as “You shall love the ...

Rabbi Paul Moses Strasko - Sinai Sermon - 21st Sept 2019 from Sinai on Vimeo .

It is always a pleasure to encounter “Torah’s Greatest Hits.” You know them: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself,” “You shall have no other gods before me,” “Go forth from the land of your ancestors,” and so many others that feel like the motherhood and apple pie of our tradition such as this week’s, “Justice, Justice shall you pursue.” The Greatest Hits give us the multiple pleasures of instant recognition (I know that verse in Torah!) and tribal satisfaction (look, that is something worth still repeating and contemplating millennia later!) Yet the very familiarity that we have with such verses also minimize the probability that we challenge ourselves on what the verses and words mean, and even more importantly that we are willing to look at them completely differently. Perhaps this is a great opportunity, as there are only three, words, and two of them are repeated: “ Tzedek, Tzedek tirdof .” The first challenge is actually the repeated word itself. “Tzedek tirdof ” ...

Since my interviews last year, I have consistently maintained that if there is something odd or confusing encountered in any of the changes to our services that have come up while I have led services, that I would much prefer that the questions be asked directly to me than spoken about in frustration where I am unable to aid in the dialogue. If something comes up, I encourage you to email me at  rabbi@sinaileeds.uk  with the heading “Ask the Rabbi” and I will happily answer them in order in this space. This week, the question was  “ What did you mean when you said that it was your job to make us uncomfortable? ” In chapter 3 of Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point,” the author speaks of the “stickiness” factor in marketing, that is, the ability of a product to become a “social epidemic” or something that is passed on far and wide. For a slogan, message, or marketing campaign to be “sticky,” it must successfully juxtapose the target audience with a good and needed p...

My first experience in marketing came as an IT analyst sent to support a new marketing group at the University of Pennsylvania Health System. As one never knows where we are going to find truth, I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that one of the clearest statements of understanding life came from one of the consultants in the room. “We always need to remember that when a patient has a good experience with a doctor, they will tell two or three people. When they have a bad experience with a doctor, they will tell ten.” You can replace “doctor” with pretty much anything and the truth still holds. Look at Yelp restaurant reviews. Actually, look at the entire algorithmic underpinnings of social media. It seems like Torah happened early upon this wisdom. In Parashat Re’eh we hear the opening salvo that will later explode in Ki Tavo . “See, this day I set before you a blessing and a curse: blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Eternal your God that I enjoin you on this ...

Rabbi Paul Moses Strasko - Sinai Sermon - 24th August 2019 from Sinai on Vimeo .

Since my interviews last year, I have consistently maintained that if there is something odd or confusing encountered in any of the changes to our services that have come up while I have led services, that I would much prefer that the questions be asked directly to me than spoken about in frustration where I am unable to aid in the dialogue. If something comes up, I encourage you to email me at  rabbi@sinaileeds.uk  with the heading “Ask the Rabbi” and I will happily answer them in order in this space. This week, the question was  “Am I a bad Jew?”    OK, full disclosure, this question wasn’t really asked, at least not in this way. This formulation is more of a response to a variety of conversations over the last weeks regarding specific halakhic (Jewish legal) customs, rulings and interpretations. Although seldom said directly, this pattern of thought comes in response to one of several prompts: being told by someone that self-identifies or presents as “...

   Yes, I am about to be a bit controversial. As a Jew and rabbi passionate about Reform and willing to stridently defend from within Jewish tradition the authenticity of Reform, I try to choose my criticisms of Reform carefully. Over the years, the one element of our stream that has most consistently frustrated me is our removal of “offensive” texts and/or our use alternative texts to the exclusion of the more traditional. This is not to suggest that alternative texts are not important and effective. For example, our siddur offers eight pages of potential alternative readings after the Shema for those that wish to explore texts other than the three that are historically associated with the Shema. But offering choice and alternatives is far different than removing completely.    The removal of texts reflects the choices made in the wake of the Haskalah (Jewish enlightenment) by what are known as the “radical reformers” at the end of the 19 th century. Early R...

Rabbi Paul Moses Strasko - Sinai Sermon - 17th August 2019 from Sinai on Vimeo .

   Since my interviews last year, I have consistently maintained that if there is something odd or confusing encountered in any of the changes to our services that have come up while I have led services, that I would much prefer that the questions be asked directly to me than spoken about in frustration where I am unable to aid in the dialogue. If something comes up, I encourage you to email me at  rabbi@sinaileeds.uk  with the heading “Ask the Rabbi” and I will happily answer them in order in this space. This week, the question was  “Why do we still have a choir for the High Holy Days?”    Although many of us have a view of choir that varies from “That is what we used to do,” to “that is what my parents used to do,” we actually get to go back much further, as in the First Temple further, in order to look at the authenticity and importance of choirs in Jewish tradition. In 1 Chronicles 15:16 we read, “David ordered the officers of the Levites t...

    Even if we intellectually accept that The Eternal has no human attributes, nor, as per Maimonides, “[is the Eternal] affected by physical phenomena and that that there is no comparison whatsoever to [the Eternal]” we are still stuck (or blessed?) with the language of the Torah which is filled with physical attributes used to describe the Divine.    Sometimes the language is easy to see as metaphorical. In this week’s Parashah, Vaetchanan , we read one of the seven times in Torah that “with a strong hand and an outstretched arm” the Eternal brought is out of our slavery in Egypt. Unless Chagall is drawing a blue wind forming itself through a misty manifestation of divine will into half-imagined mighty fingers, it is pretty easy to understand how this can be accepted as symbolic language. Yet the language of some passages makes a literal and anthropomorphic God much harder to set aside.    “ Vaetchanan ” translates as “and I pleaded.” Vaetchanan...