A German-Trained American Rabbi in Yorkshire

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...

Rabbi Paul Moses Strasko - Sinai Sermon - 10th August 2019 from Sinai on Vimeo .

   Although it is by no means new, it is quite an interesting exercise to compare the textual differences in Devarim (Deuteronomy or the 5 th Book of Moses) and the other books in the Torah, most especially Shemot (Exodus) and BaMidbar (Numbers). Since Devarim is a retelling of the narrative of the Israelite people from the escape from slavery through the forty years of wandering in the wilderness (Deuteronomy literally means “Second Law” from deuteros meaning second and numos meaning law) we get an opportunity to check for textual consistency.    In the academic world for the past two centuries this is looked upon through the lenses of textual criticism. Julius Wellhausen in 1878 famously wrote “ Geschichte Israels” or “The History of Israel,” the most well known and eventually influential book within a school of thought called the “Documentary Hypothesis.” Although this specific paradigm has been challenged and ultimately has collapsed in the last ...

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 you sometimes say ‘HaShem?’ Isn’t that either superstition of something associated with Orthodoxy?” I like to call this the Great Jewish Name Game. The simple answer to this question from me (which you know by now I cannot only give a simple answer-- it is a bit like a compulsion at this point to get as complicated as possible before I am done) is that I like to differentiate between offering a blessing and the teaching of a blessing. For exa...

Rabbi Paul Moses Strasko - Sinai Sermon - 3rd August 2019 from Sinai on Vimeo .

In “Tense Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma and Memory,” Michael Lambeck argues that rather than simply being objective or subjective, memory is performative.   In other words, memory is practice. One sees this in a therapeutic setting working with only-children versus children with siblings, especially siblings close in age. The siblings often recall more specific narrative details of their childhood than do only-children, whereas only-children will have punctuated memories of the main-events. The theory behind this is that the siblings will go into their room at night and recount the day to each other while the only child will be reminded by their parent(s) or guardian(s) of the events with enough impact to be worthy of family discussion.   This is not to try and weigh in on the debate of having one or multiple children, simply to say that if memory is performative, we will have different types of memory development based on those with whom we partner in life to make and ...