Sunday 9 November 2008

Diary 36 is here...

http://www.sofer.co.uk/html/diary_36.html

takes you to my new diary about the contribution of digital photography to sofrut.

Saturday 1 November 2008

Letter to the JC - printed 31st Oct 08

Well, it was very nice to get a letter in the JC but not so nice to have all the joy, fun and soul edited out of it for the sake of space, which created a somewhat dry missive. Just in case anybody is interested in what I actually wrote rather than what it looks like I wrote, the full text is below:

Dear Editor,

Given a combination of a recent trip to Israel and the High Holy Days, I recently had the good fortune to attend services at many many different synagogues both there and in England. From Selichot onwards I have, in no particular order or implied preference, been to services with the following:

Masorti in North London,
Heathrow Airport Terminal 5 with various charedim
Yemenites in a converted Israeli bomb shelter in Re'ut (just outside
Modi'in),
Traditional Ashkenazi (though with Israeli pronunciation) also in
Re'ut,
Sefardi in a synagogue split in two shared with the aforementioned
Ashkenazim, who were shokelling to a bucket of water with a hosepipe in it for
Tashlich (which the Yemenites don't appear to do at all)
Davenned at the Kotel with a random group of chassidim who invited me into
Ma'ariv,
Spent Shabbat and Yom Kippur at two different modern Orthodox congregations
in Talpiot.
Then back in sunny Ilford once more spent Shabbat, Sukkot, Sh'mini Atseret
and Simchat Torah (that's a lot of alliteration) variously in:
Reform,
Liberal (the longest walk to shul),
United,
Federation
and Chabad - where I was treated to the rabbi being physically flipped over during Kaddish!

And do you know what?

They all had different customs and different siddurim/machzorim, but they were all full of Jews. They all read from the same Torah and they all prayed to the same God.

Who'd have thought it?