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Welcome to Kolot, the podcast of The Ark Synagogue, a bold, experiential and caring Progressive Jewish community in Northwood, London.
Through sermons, reflections and conversations from across our community, Kolot explores Jewish life, learning and values in the world we live in today. Rooted in tradition and open to new perspectives, these episodes bring together voices that inspire thought, connection and belonging.
Whether you are Jewish, exploring Judaism, or simply looking for meaningful reflection, you are warmly welcome.
To learn more about The Ark Synagogue, visit arksynagogue.org.
Everyone’s gone to the mount already and
they’re waiting,
waiting to see, waiting in great quiet
– even, strangely, the camels and the donkeys –
In this quiet not a bird twitters
or children on their fathers’ shoulders.
An overwhelming quiet, as if before some
wondrous thing. Still – I wanted time
to hang out the laundry,
time for myself to freshen up
and I warmed the baby’s milk so he won’t get
hungry —
and God forbid, cry at the wrong moment,
however long till then. You can expect
the laundry to dry – but the baby?
No one knew.
And I saw that a soft breeze, like the breath of a
sleeping man, passed
through the laundry and ballooned the belly
of my nightgown and the Sabbath tablecloth
was a white sail in the middle of the desert
and we left there on the sky-blue
far away to the place where
we’ll split open pomegranates and eat their juice
to the place where
love is
the ineffable name.
Hava Pincas-Cohen (transl. Miriyam Glazer) (1955–2022)
As dawn broke, I thought of the moment that Jews in congregations around the globe would, like a Mexican wave, from Oceania through Hawaii, rise in anticipation of once more enacting the moment of Revelation at Sinai.
To be at Sinai is to receive Torah. To be at Sinai is to encounter the Divine. To be at Sinai is to be with our People, Israel. Theologians and scholars, poets and animators — every thought contributes to what occurred and what occurs at Sinai. How powerful to experience God in the midst of the mundane, the realism of the contemporary Israeli writer and poet Hava Pincas-Cohen’s brush with the Divine at Sinai. It reminds us that moments of sanctity require careful crafting or openness to the possibility of unexpected holiness. The extraordinary punctuates the ordinary, the miraculous order of existence.
Whilst the pompous pious may understand themselves at Sinai to be at the pinnacle of religiosity, Sinai is just as accessible to those who consider themselves utterly secular and devoid of God, for the foundational moment is undeniable. Torah is both Law Book and Lore Book, a record of our origins to be narrated and embellished in every age.
Until the Kibbutz Movement made Shavuot a highlight of their revival and elevation of agriculture in the Land of Israel, the historical motif of Matan Torah, the Giving of Torah, dominated the festival and still is the major feature of our own celebration. In urbanised living, prayer and the slowly increasing popularity of pulling an all-nighter — a study session often supplemented by film and culture before a dawn Shacharit and recitation of Aseret Divrot, the Ten Commandments — prevails. In the UK, allotment holders eschew the idea of celebrating on their patch, for our earth is yet to produce and a sheaf of rhubarb doesn’t quite have the cachet of wheat!
I was therefore delighted at what my algorithms harvested.
I am not sure if you can find the beautifully illustrated Instagram post from ‘@jewishfarmernetwork’. They wrote:
“Tomorrow night we celebrate the festival of Shavuot. On this holiday, we honour the first fruits of the season, celebrate receiving the Torah at Mt Sinai and complete the Omer counting journey, through fields of grain, from barley to wheat.
Wheat is arguably the most important seed for Jewish people, as we are a people of bread. In fact, this whole season is a choreographed psycho-spiritual journey to bring us from the simplicity of a whole grain used primarily for animal fodder (barley) to the more refined grain capable of transformation into something so holy as bread. What gives us the bread that graced the elaborate table in the innermost sanctuary of the Holy Temple and the bread that graces our Shabbat tables every week.”
True connection to the land and appreciation that can pass by most of us urbanised beings. Connecting the movement through the Omer, from barley to wheat harvest, from animal feed to bread, they introduce this inspiring midrash (Bereishit Rabbah 11:6):
“Everything that was created in the first six days of creation needs finishing: mustard needs sweetening, lupine needs sweetening, wheat needs grinding and even humanity needs fixing.”
In our Tikkun Leyl Shavuot study sessions, our Rabbis presented ancient through contemporary texts to consider who we are, how we are formed and our imperfections. Our colleague and friend, Rabbi Neil Janes, is exploring the issue of extremism attempting to become the mainstream. That is not a thought I want to pursue at this glorious moment. Rather, he introduced the rabbinic notion (Vayikra Rabbah 9:9) that Matan Torah, the Giving of Torah at Sinai, occurred because the People stood as one. The one moment of perfection.
Yet perfection is not our reality and whilst we pray HaRachaman, Hu y’zakeinu limot hag’ulah, “May the Merciful One make us worthy to witness the time of redemption”, if that were to mean time — and any effort on our part — stopping, I am unconvinced of its desirability. Our lives, as Rabbi Janes is doing and we strive towards, are lived through all their trials, tribulations and highs, constantly striving towards but never quite reaching the moment when sublime tranquillity consumes us: perfection.
For as Rabbi Arthur Green states (in his commentary on the Sefat Emet, Lech L’cha):
Thank you, God, for all that nervous energy. Life as an angel might have been easier — standing still to do Your bidding. But it is our walking, our ever climbing (and sometimes falling!) from rung to rung that makes us human. Despite all the struggle and pain that go along with growing, we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Amen.