MY SITE
Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow5/29/2023 --by Rabbi Shoshana What a glorious final week I got to enjoy in Birmingham and especially at the Birmingham Progressive Synagogue. First of all, the weather turned absolutely gorgeous. It was as if winter had never happened! I have been enjoying the beautiful gardens around town and also the delicate wildflowers. It’s hard to believe that it was just a few months ago that I was shuddering from the cold. Thank you Birmingham! But even more, my last week was glorious because of the many wonderful Jewish moments I enjoyed. On Wednesday, I finally got to experience my first Nisa Nashim book group. This group of Muslim and Jewish women has been gathering both on Zoom and in-person since 2020, with lively discussions about books by authors from both religious traditions. I have been very impressed by the openness of conversation among people of different faith groups in Birmingham, and the meeting on Wednesday night was no exception. We looked at Linda Grant’s raw and honest memoir of her mother’s dementia “Remind me who I am again,” and this provoked discussion of our obligations as daughters from Muslim and Jewish families. It was also the first of a number of encounters with cheesecake, which is always a good thing. My thanks to all of the women for their thoughtful contributions. On Thursday evening, a minyan of BPS members gathered on Zoom to launch the festival of Shavuot and for a quick tour through the five scrolls. We read segments from Ecclesiastes and Lamentations, some of the more salacious parts of the Scroll of Esther, and the lyrical first two chapters of the Song of Songs. We then read through the whole of the book of Ruth, with its encouraging message of the rewards for kindness. The next morning brought more sacred study, as we concluded our study of I Samuel and read David’s magnificent lament for Saul and Jonathan at the start of II Samuel.
And then there were the concluding events at BPS: a well-attended dinner on Friday night, and then the grand finale on Shabbat and Shavuot morning. It was my great joy to invite up four of the five people who have finalised their conversions in the months that I’ve been at BPS. I made good on one of my goals by making sure that everyone in attendance learned the song “Siman tov v’mazel tov,” which we sang four times over the morning! We enjoyed cheesecake both on Friday evening and following services on Shabbat morning, and I made sure to coral those in attendance on Saturday for a photo together. I love this photo, which reflects the great diversity of the BPS community. The very next morning, I boarded an early flight to Dublin. I’m now at the start of a peaceful week in southeastern Ireland with my sister and her family. I’m looking forward to a relatively quiet time after the whirlwind of activity over the last week. At the same time, I am missing those I have had the joy to get to know in this short time. It’s been remarkable to me how close I’ve come to feel to many of the members of this congregation on the opposite side of the world. I’m very thankful to have had this extraordinary experience.
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Saying Farewell5/25/2023 --by Rabbi Margaret Three months have flown by and I am feeling a mixture of sadness and excitement as I prepare to leave Adelaide. I have had a wonderful three months here, but I am looking forward to travelling in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand with David, and even more to returning home after what will be five months away and seeing our children again. I am glad to be ending my time here with a celebration of Shavuot. Shavuot feels a Cinderella festival, here as in the UK. It does not have powerful symbols like the Seder and the Succah. Even when it is celebrated, it is remembered more for cheesecake than Torah. At Beit Shalom, I am looking forward to the Shavuot Oneg, which will be held on Friday night and which hosts a cheese cake competition. But I am also looking forward to our Tikkun Leyl Shavuot, on the night of Shavuot, when we will engage in the study of Torah. The festival of Shavuot is foundational to Judaism. It marks the Covenant at Sinai, which was the beginning of our history as a people who were not just runaway slaves but had a purpose. It celebrates the giving of the Torah, which is at the heart of Judaism. The study of Torah is a practice which distinguishes our religion. From early in our history, it was universal for men. In our time, not only Progressive but also Orthodox women have been able to participate fully too, and to reclaim our heritage in the Torah. For me, it is a source of joy, excitement and challenge. I have greatly enjoyed teaching ‘Difficult Torah’ whilst I have been in Adelaide. We have looked at some of the more obscure passages in Leviticus and the troubling narratives about Dinah and Tamar and Judah (not to be confused with Tamar, King David’s daughter). Progressive Judaism has sometimes ignored these passages, presenting an uplifting but misleading picture of the Torah. The Torah is certainly a moral guide and there is much we can learn from it about how we live, even in the 21st century. But there is also much that reflects its time, 2-3000 years ago, and it has been stimulating to explore what that meant for us. I have also learnt during my time in Australia that our Jewish history, though long, is very brief in comparison to the history of the indigenous people here. Scientific evidence now suggests that history goes back some 60,000 years, an unimaginable timescale. I have been fascinated to learn about the indigenous peoples whilst I am here but have been left with many questions. This Shabbat, the Breakfast Club will be talking about ‘The Voice’, a move to give the aboriginal people a separate Voice to parliament. It is a debate of enormous significance to the future of the country and I will observe with interest how it progresses from the distance of the United Kingdom.
I have been trying to thinking of parallels in the UK, and although none are exact, the nearest may be that we address our history as an Empire. We enslaved people, plundered their resources and encouraged them to come to Britain only to subject them to racial discrimination and abuse. We have to address the injustices that have been perpetrated. Maybe our communities can learn from each other about how we do this. There has been so much learning for me in the last three months. There has also been much joy. I have loved meeting people and hearing their stories: about their family history in Adelaide, how they came here, their lives and travels and the history of Beit Shalom. I will miss the community and it is strange that I will not be returning as rabbi to Birmingham Progressive Synagogue, which after 28 years will always be ‘my’ community, although I am looking forward to a new phase in my life. As I leave, and say farewell to Beit Shalom with sadness, all my good wishes go to the congregation and to Shoshana as she returns as their rabbi. Thank you, Shoshana and Beit Shalom, for giving me this precious opportunity. The King and I5/14/2023 --by Rabbi Shoshana About thirty people attended our 11:00 am Shabbat morning service either in-person or over Zoom at Birmingham Progressive Synagogue on May 6. This represented a slight dip in attendance from recent weeks, when I’ve been gratified to see as many as fifty either in the sanctuary or joining us from their homes. Still, considering the competition for their attention that morning, thirty was quite a fantastic effort, and many more people that I’d been expecting. Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you would have noticed that the start of service corresponded with the start of the coronation ceremony in Westminster Abbey. I was very touched that so many BPS members had chosen to spend their Shabbat morning at synagogue rather than glued to their televisions. The idea of the monarchy rankles me both as an American and an Australian. I don’t recall being raised with a particular anti-monarchist bent. I think it’s just something many Americans imbibe along with the Pledge of Allegiance. I moved my family to Australia in 2006, and my older son became a Cub Scout that same year. How surprised I was when he was asked to swear an oath to the Queen of Australia! In Australia, the queen was a benign, distant figure who appeared on our money and served as an excuse for everything to be called Royal: the Royal Service for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals or the Royal Flying Doctors Service. Of course, as an Australian I’m also aware that the actual head of the country is the Governor-General, who serves at the pleasure of the British monarch. I’m also aware that, in 1975, the then GG used his powers to dissolve the dysfunctional Australian parliament and dismiss the prime minister. I’ve been amused to learn as a third-generation American Democrat, that I’m also a republican—someone who believes that Australia should eventually move towards becoming a republic without an allegiance to the British monarch. On my first Shabbat at Birmingham Progressive Synagogue, I turned to the prayers at the end of the Torah service, in which we ask for God’s blessings for our community, for the nation and for the State of Israel. I saw that I was expected to offer a prayer for “Our Sovereign Lady, Queen Elizabeth and the whole royal family.” I appreciated that this prayer was sadly out-of-date, but I wasn’t sure I knew what the appropriate updated wording would be. The congregation, happily, read the prayer together for the benefit of “Our Sovereign Lord, King Charles.” I have been joining them in the prayer ever since, although it still feels very odd to do so. I also found the symbolism of the coronation odd—especially the explicitly religious and Christian tone of it. I was troubled by the idea that God had personally chosen King Charles as king, as demonstrated by the crown placed on his head by the Archbishop of Canterbury, head of the Church of England. Inviting leaders of other faith traditions to bring their own blessings didn’t do much to mollify me. Of course, I wish King Charles all the very best, but to me that doesn’t equate with the idea that God has personally blessed him as opposed to the rest of us. However, I must confess that I have participated in just a little bit of coronation cheer. On Monday 1 May, which is a public holiday in the UK, I visited the Bristol Cathedral. The found that the place was absolutely packed full of people on hand to attend an event called “Sing for the King.” A choir of 650 voices had been assembled to sing the best-known coronation anthem “Zadok the Priest” to honour the 650 years since the church had seen its status raised to that of a cathedral. It so happens that I learned “Zadok the Priest” way back in high school and still remembered it well. I approached a fellow soprano to ask if I could look on her music with her, and she readily agreed. Once we had belted out the song, we stood for an hour as various choirs sang through the rest of George Handel’s coronation anthems, and then we sang “Zadok the Priest” again. It was honestly one of the most joyful experiences I can remember, and I’m still amazed that I just happened to be there on that particular occasion.
The following Sunday, the day after the coronation, I attended the evensong service at St. Philip’s Cathedral here in Birmingham. I have enjoyed evensong services on numerous occasions since I’ve been in the UK and especially have loved rediscovering the rich British choral tradition. On this occasion, the cathedral was relatively full for a special service in honour of the coronation. A number of local dignitaries were on hand as well, and the music was absolutely splendid. Of course, the choir sang “Zadok the Priest!” At the end of the service, we all rose and sang the updated British national anthem “God Save the King.” I suppose if Americans can sing a national anthem nearly entirely dedicated to praise of a particular flag, the British can sing a song which never speaks about the welfare of anyone living here but the king. Although the melody is terribly dreary, at least the Australian national anthem does talk about Australians! Despite my reservations about “God Save the King,” it was a really beautiful hour of music and prayer, and I’m glad that I got to be there for the experience. The priests in residence were happy to have their photos taken afterwards, relieved that the weeks of preparation and hard work for the event were over. And now we all carry on with our lives, which for me means only two more weeks left in this fascinating city! Remembering5/7/2023 --by Rabbi Margaret Last week, unusually for me, I was up at dawn. It was April 25th, ANZAC day and I decided that if I wanted to get to know about Australia I should be at the 6am service in our local memorial garden. So I joined other people walking in silence and by 6am the garden was full. There were veterans, young people and children, all waiting respectfully under the stars in the darkness. The service was Christian and it took me by surprise. On Remembrance Day in Britain, although the service is basically Christian, other faiths are involved and there is a sensitivity to their presence. In Britain, whilst Remembrance Day for some is still about national identity, I think for most people now it is about remembering with sorrow ‘the pity of war’, in Wilfred Owen’s phrase. There is also a belated but growing recognition that it was not just British men who died in the World Wars but men from Africa, the Indian subcontinentand other parts of the world. ANZAC day seemed to be very much a national day, remembering specifically Australian and New Zealand troops who died in vast numbers on the first day of the attack on Gallipoli. The attack has become significant in the story that Australians tell, as exemplified by this quote from the National Museum of Australia: "On 25 April 1915 Australian soldiers landed at what is now called Anzac Cove on the Gallipoli Peninsula. For the vast majority of the 16,000 Australians and New Zealanders who landed on that day, it was their first experience of combat. By that evening, 2,000 of them had been killed or wounded. The Gallipoli campaign was a military failure. However, the traits that were shown there - bravery, ingenuity, endurance and mateship – have become enshrined as defining aspects of the Australian character." https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/gallipoli-landing I am still realising that Australia is a young country, though ancient too. The same can be said of Israel, and coincidentally, Yom HaAtzmaut, Israel Independence Day also fell last week. However, this year, the celebration felt muted. Israel is a divided country. It always has been, but that is now more evident than ever. The Israeli Government seems determined to overturn some of the checks and balances and that respect the rights of non-Jews and non-Orthodox Jews. Thousands have turned out to demonstrate and make it clear that is not the country they want to be in. The future of the country feels uncertain and it seems to be moving away from the ideal of equality for all citizens enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. I often recall the saying of the Talmud that the Second Temple was destroyed because of sinat chinam, groundless hatred. National identity is complex and changing. Britain, too, is having to redefine its identity now it no longer has an empire and it is proving a painful process, with the country turning in on itself and becoming insular and xenophobic. How we remember affects how we think about ourselves. Last week I saw one way Australia remembers. This week I have been learning about another way of remembering at Uluru, formerly known as Ayers Rock but now acknowledged as a sacred site for the First People. It has proved fascinated and thought provoking, and something I may return to. Where am I this week?5/2/2023 --by Rabbi Shoshana
I’ll admit that I was quite surprised when I learned that Birmingham Progressive Synagogue still holds its Friday evening services solely on Zoom. It actually makes sense for this community, whose members in some cases need over an hour to travel to the synagogue even without the traffic of late Friday afternoons. The 6:30 pm Friday time slot is now generally known as “candlelighting” rather than Friday evening services. In my two months here, I’ve generally led 30 minutes of singing, along with candlelighting and the prayers over wine and challah. One of my first purchases here was a lightweight, waterproof guitar case for transporting my borrowed guitar around town. My feeling was that if I was only going to be on Zoom, people would get a greater sense of spirit and enthusiasm if I played along on the guitar. At this point, my guitar has been to many different locations: Eve, the lovely ritual coordinator here, has arranged for me to visit a new home each week! Most Friday afternoons, I’ve loaded the guitar into the back of Margaret’s very small car and driven north, south, east or west as required. Following our short service time, I get treated to Shabbat dinner. On several occasions, I’ve even been hosted overnight and enjoyed further conversations over coffee the next morning. Sometimes, it’s been an intimate gathering with just my hosts for company. Other times, I’ve been one of a number of guests. Some recollections from two of my most memorable Friday evenings, which both happened to be considerably to the west. Just this last week, I drove an hour from Birmingham to the little hamlet of Wellington where Eve and her husband Jim have lived for many decades. The view from their back porch is the photo at the top of this blog entry. They live surrounded by farm country, and the feel couldn’t be more different from busy Birmingham. On Friday night, the dining room was packed full of guests from nearby—meaning less than a half hour drive! I was amazed to meet these Jews who somehow managed to find each other before the Internet and had become family for each other. I was delighted to discover that many of them were enthusiastic singers with beautiful voices. It was a joy to have a whole chorus on hand as we sang a number of Shabbat favourites. After a quiet night sleeping in this 250 year-old house, I had my coffee in the morning and then Eve and I drove in for Shabbat morning services. My other recollection is from late March. Longtime congregants David and Val picked me up at 3:30 pm on Friday afternoon to drive to Welshpool, just over the border into Wales. Google Maps tells me that its 67 miles/100 kilometres to Welshpool. It took three hours to get there! I don’t know whether the traffic is that terrible every Friday, or whether it was just because the school term had ended that day. I sat in the backseat of the car and enjoyed watching the green pastures roll very slowly by. More than a dozen people had journeyed in from around northern Wales for the evening, which was shared on Zoom for the very first time. I had great difficulty getting everyone to stop talking long enough for me to run the service, which was joined by twenty people from their own homes. When it was time for kiddush, our host apologetically had no wine to offer—only single malt whisky! Again, a disparate group of people living in a very non-Jewish corner of the world who had somehow managed to connect. In a few weeks, I’ll be travelling to the Warwick area for another Shabbat gathering. This group held its own Pesach seder for 15 people last month, and it sounds like it was a great success. Local regional communities seem like a wonderful way to be together as part of a congregation whose members are scattered all across the Midlands. How wonderful it is to see people finding each other! Pesach in the Southern Hemisphere4/21/2023 --by Rabbi Margaret
Pesach has come and gone and in the southern hemisphere it was different and yet the same. I missed the symbolism of spring. I love to be out in the country in England and see the young lambs just after we have sung in the Hallel Psalms, ‘The mountains skipped like lambs’. The words of Song of Songs, which also feature in our Liberal Haggadah, ‘The flowers appear on the earth and the voice of the turtle dove appears in our land’, ring true as blossoms appear and snowdrops and crocuses scatter the ground. The symbolism of the green herbs isn’t the same when Pesach isn’t a spring festival. But despite that, Pesach was a celebration that remained significant and meaningful here. The message of freedom is not one that is confined to a season of the year. It is international and eternal. This year, although much further from Ukraine, we remembered the conflict there and the loss of freedom. We also recalled the Russian soldiers, conscripted as the Egyptian horsemen must have been and dying as a result of a war they did not choose. I enjoyed two seders. One was at the home of members. They had an original Haggadah, which had been updated over the years so that, alongside the more traditional material, it had a strong message of social justice, peace and care for the world. There were some beautiful touches and I particularly enjoyed singing the modern Israeli song ‘Bashanah ha-ba-ah’ instead of ‘L’Shanah haBa-ah biYerushalayim’- it had a better tune and a wider message of hope. At the communal seder, I scattered readings on the theme of ‘Leaving Home’ through the evening and people seemed to enjoy discussing their experiences with their neighbours. I taught some tunes and learnt some tunes, including the rousing and popular ‘There’s no seder like our seder.’ It was a delight to involve the children and I discovered I knew the grandparents of one child who was particularly keen to take part. I also made other connections with people I knew in England. It really is a small world. Just as in England, the last day of Pesach is a Cinderella festival, and there were a handful of people evening and morning. But as I have often found, even four people can hold an intimate and meaningful service. And so, we brought the festival to a close with Hallel and I felt the same joy that I always feel on singing these Psalms of thanksgiving. Celebrating Pesach!4/11/2023 --by Rabbi Shoshana On Monday, I learned that the seder that I had been invited to on Wednesday night would need to be cancelled due to illness. I invited the three others who had been intending to celebrate to my flat, and got myself organised to put on a seder with a little over 48 hours notice. Luckily, in Birmingham, it’s not that hard: I drove the five or so minutes from Birmingham Progressive Synagogue to Central Synagogue, one of two Orthodox congregations in Birmingham. Central Synagogue houses the all-important Central Deli, with a vast selection of Pesach products for your seder table. I bought regular matzah (Rakusen’s of Yorkshire—flamed baked!), whole wheat matzah, vegetarian broth cubes, and a yahrtzeit candle. I got to take home a precious box of shmurah matzah for free, courtesy of the Chabad synagogue in nearby Solihull. Shmurah matzah is handmade, and the flour has been watched since the wheat was planted. The sealed box contained three round matzot, baked by Tiferet Ha’Matzot in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine! On the back of the box was a map of Ukraine in the colours of the flat, with the words in English and Cyrillic “Kindness brings redemption.” The seder at my home was simple but joyous. There was an abundance of food, thanks to my guests as well as a few tried-and-trued recipes from my back pocket. My guests were two recent converts to Judaism, and one husband. Neither of the two new Jews had ever attended a seder at someone’s home before. One had come to the second night seder held at the synagogue, while the other one had only other conducted a seder entirely by herself! I had already spoken with a number of synagogue members who had told me that they didn’t usually conduct a seder for the first night if they knew they would be attending at the synagogue on the second night. Others do hold a seder at home, but only for their immediate family. All of this was quite a contrast to what Passover looks like in Adelaide. On the one hand, matzah and just about any other kosher-for-Passover item can be a precious commodity. For the last number of years, we’ve relied on a single branch of the national supermarket Coles to magic up just the right quantity of Pesach products. They’ve failed to do so—repeatedly. Some years there’s an abundance of matzah; other years they sell out weeks before the festival and leave the Jewish community in a panic. I felt a bit like a kid in a candy shop wandering through the Central Deli with all of its products for sale. Next year, I think we’ll probably end up returning to old system of bulk-ordering before the festival to make sure that everyone has the Pesach foods that they need. On the other hand, Beit Shalom Synagogue has an abundance of Passover seders. A number of households open up their homes to 15, 20 and sometimes even more guests. The congregation’s leadership makes a point to check in with active members and make sure that they have a place for the first night seder. There’s a second night seder as well, but often those who attend are more peripheral to the community and so less likely to have a place. I was pleasantly surprised to see a note on the synagogue’s Facebook page just a few hours before the seder offering up a place for two people who were still looking for an invite. I can understand the reluctance of BPS members to put on large seders. It’s a lot of work. A lot! Even those who make and freeze dishes in advance end up working like crazy the last day or two before Pesach. But apparently, many feel it’s worth the effort, since they end up inviting guests back year after year. Both synagogues host second night seders, and these also require lots of work and planning. Beit Shalom’s seder is catered, often with different people being asked to prepare different components of the meal. This used to be the case in Birmingham, but for the last number of years the seder has been pot luck: everyone brings a dish from home to contribute to the celebration. I admit to being a little concerned about how well this would go, but the end result was fantastic. Who knew you could make so many delicious dishes that were also kosher for Passover? And the desserts were beyond amazing: the hazelnut meringue and the meringue filled with lemon curd were the standouts! Still so much work to coordinate the event, set the tables, and clean up the piles of dishes at the end of the night. BPS even has its own set of dishes just for the seder, stored in large plastic tubs the rest of the year. About sixty people ranging in age from 5 to 97 gathered for the evening, and I do believe a good time was had by all! There is a really big event coming up this weekend: a three-faiths Iftar (Ramadan break-fast) hosted by the synagogue. This evening is part of a larger effort by a number of BPS members to support asylum seekers in the UK, even as the government here moves in draconian directions on this issue. 20 asylum seekers will be part of the crowd, which will also include 30 Muslims, 20 Christians and 20 Jews. But I will sadly be absent, since this is the one and only weekend that it will be possible to travel to Scotland to meet up with a dear friend. I wish them every success on what sounds like a remarkable evening. Leaving Home4/3/2023 This week I visited the Adelaide Migration museum. It told the remarkable stories of immigrants from all over the world, though also acknowledging the effect that migration had had on the native population. The pattern had changed over the years. At first immigrants were mostly British or Irish, and for several years in the 1950s-60s there had been a ‘whites only’ policy. Now, migrants came from all over the world, including Africa and Asia.
At the same time, I have been learning about the different journeys members of Beit Shalom have made. Several are from South Africa. A 95-year old woman told me how she had grown up there and her husband had served in the British Air Force. She only made the journey here after he had died, to be with her children. Two families with young children had come here because life had become too difficult in South Africa and it no longer felt safe to live there. Others members came to Adelaide as refugees. One, Andrew Steiner, who survived a harrowing childhood in Nazi-occupied Hungary, designed the beautiful stained glass windows at the Synagogue and a sculpture in memory of the Holocaust which is sited at the entrance of the Migration Museum. Others fled from Egypt. Some saw the danger coming as soon as the State of Israel was established; others left after the Suez conflict, when it was no longer safe to be Jewish. One of them, Ed Argy, is the only remaining founder member of the congregation. I am planning this year’s Communal Seder around the theme ‘Leaving home.’ The story of the Exodus can seem like ancient history, but it continues to resonate. For the Israelites leaving Egypt, joy at their delivery from slavery must have been mingled with sadness and anxiety about leaving the familiar and going into the unknown. That story has echoes in so many lives today. Refugees continue to flee to safety, taking with them memories of home which are sweet as well as bitter. An exhibition at the Migration museum showed exquisitely made coffee pots and water jugs which Arab refugees had brought with them as reminders of the home they had lost. Pesach is a time to remember our stories, tell them and listen to the stories of others. I feel privileged to have listened to some amazing stories over the years in Birmingham and have been particularly struck by the resilience of migrants who leave one home and find another. I am glad to be hearing more stories in this country of migrants (though I am not forgetting the indigenous people - I will come back to this topic another time). --Margaret Jacobi Figuring Things Out3/28/2023 “You’ve just changed our tradition,” remarked one of those attending the funeral I’d just conducted. At the end of the ceremony, I’d asked those in attendance to form two lines back to the cars for the mourners to pass through. “Normally, the mourners sit in the chapel, and we all go up to them and wish them long life. But that’s okay—you’re teaching us something new.” I was absolutely speechless! Here I’d just altered a long-standing practice of the community, and I was being congratulated on doing it differently. How utterly surprising! My first funeral in Birmingham was for a long-time 86-year-old member of the synagogue. The service and burial took place at Witton Cemetery, about 4 miles/6 km from the synagogue. The very large Jewish section is owned by the Orthodox synagogue Singers Hill, with a small area set aside for burials by Birmingham Progressive Synagogue. Julie, who works for the congregation, called me up last week and offered to meet me at the cemetery so that I could familiarise myself with the place and practices. This was my second time attempting Birmingham roads, and it was just terrifying. Honestly, I’ve concluded that Birmingham drivers are among the best in the world. This is the only possible way that I’ve avoided a collision so far! There is a certain randomness to how lanes appear and disappear, often right in the middle of roundabouts/traffic circles. You think that the lane you’re in is going to get you onto the correct road, and then lo and behold you need to be one lane over to the left, but there’s a car there, so you go all the way around the roundabout again and make a second attempt. Signs telling you the speed limit seem to be much less common than speed cameras. I just travel the same speed as everyone else and hope for the best. I’ve given up on Google Maps and switched to Waze after google told me to use the right lane to turn right and then gave 10 seconds notice to cut over three lanes to the left. Even Waze is a bit worrisome, but not quite as bad. After fifteen minutes of white-knuckled driving, I pulled up to the cemetery and gave myself a high five. Witton Cemetery is just lovely. It helps to have a good supply of rain to keep the grass green, as opposed to the much drier cemeteries in South Australia. The graves are much less packed in, and so there is a sense of spaciousness and serenity that I really appreciated. Near the entrance to the Jewish section there stands a small chapel, which Margaret refers to as the ohel--or tent. The structure apparently is as old as the cemetery itself, which dates back to 1868. The stained glass windows are just beautiful. I was also touched to see a plaque memorialising those from the community who had died in the Blitz and whose bodies had never been found. I met Julie and also Glenn, the caretaker of the cemetery. Glenn has exactly the right sense of humour for his job, and he is also clearly very good at what he does. He explained to me about the electric bier, which has been known to go rogue on occasion. This worried me a bit until I saw him wink at me. They both explained how much of the service would take place in the chapel, with the burial to take place near the end of the ceremony. I learned from Julie that no mechanical digging equipment is utilised at the ceremony; the graves are dug entirely manually! Funerals normally do not take place before noon to allow a minimum of four hours to prepare the grave. This family had consented to allowing me to bury old prayerbooks with their father. I brought along four large paper bags to go in the grave. Family members assisted with filling in the grave, and then the cemetery staff filled in the rest.
Armed with a pretty good eulogy and a copy of the prayerbook used for funeral services, I felt well prepared for the funeral—until I got there! Then I realised that I had very little idea of what to do. Should I have the congregation escort the coffin to the chapel or wait inside? At what point should we move from the chapel to the grave? When would we go back? I suddenly worried that there might be a dozen or more moments in the service when I might “get it wrong.” Each community has certain expectations of some rituals, and none more than funerals. I was so grateful to the kind member who reassured me that although I’d done it differently, that was completely acceptable. In the end, it was a beautiful experience for me and hopefully everyone else too. We had four generations of family members present, including a gorgeous six-month-old baby. More family members joined us on Zoom from as far away as Arizona. It felt like a wonderful celebration of a life well-lived. Connections Expected and Unexpected3/19/2023 It has been a week of meeting people and discovering connections, expected and unexpected. On a personal level, we travelled to Melbourne and met my three ‘Australian cousins’, two of whom I had never met. My mother’s sister and her husband had moved to Australia in the 1960s when life became intolerable for them in Pakistan. Then as now, the British made immigration very difficult and although they had British family they were refused entry. We had a wonderful time, catching up on our family history and just enjoying being together. I also met Rabbi Fred Morgan and Sue after 25 years or more. Fred has been my first teacher of midrash, before I started to study for the rabbinate, and I still quote him when I teach midrash myself. Sue reminded me that we had bonded at the Greenham Common protest against the siting of nuclear missiles in England. I met members of the congregation who had fascinating stories to tell. Amongst them was an unsettling meeting with a congregant whose brother had died a few weeks after getting married in London. It turned out my father had conducted both the wedding and funeral and although I was young at the time, I remembered how shaken he and the congregation had been. More happily, I was struck on the same visit by the incredible view just outside the congregant’s house. It brought home to me that whatever the similarities between Birmingham and Adelaide, these were very different cities. The view was across woods to the ocean, just a few miles (or here I should say kilometres) away. The drive to the house had taken me along steep, windy roads through forested hills. The sky was blue, the trunks of the eucalyptus trees white, and there were signs warning about koala bears. I can see why people stay here, although Birmingham has different things to offer. Another congregant greeted me as she was gardening. She had a vast expanse of garden and clearly loved being outdoors. She told me they used to have a bigger place right out in the country, and she clearly still missed it. I went away with home grown spinach and a sorrel plant. I had a different sort of meeting at the Cheder this week which left me excited. Teenage boys are not the easiest group to teach but they have also given me some of my greatest moments of learning and excitement. In Birmingham, we have a Kabbalat Torah class, in which we encourage boys and girls who have had their Bnei Mitzvah to continue learning, which most of them do. So I’m used to slightly older children, and it has been a real joy over the years to see them mature from the beginning of their teenage years into adulthood. (It also helped me parent my teenagers knowing that teenagers did grow into responsible adults eventually!).
This Sunday, I helped to teach the 11-12 year olds who were approaching their Bar Mitzvah. We had suggested they choose names for their classes and one of the boys, who clearly had an interest in wolves, suggested that we call the class Ze’ev, Hebrew for wolf. So we decided to explore why that would be a good name for their class. What emerged was that in their class there would be togetherness like a pack; hunting for knowledge; keen sight to examine Torah; keen hearing to listen to each other and a keen sense of smell to think about the spiritual, which was beyond hearing and sight. In the coming weeks, we’ll see if they live up to that, but immediately afterwards we talked about what it was like to be the only Jew in their class or their school and they thoughtfully drew what Judaism meant to them so I’m looking forward to what will emerge over the rest of my time here. Rabbi Shoshana Kaminsky has been the rabbi of Beit Shalom in Adelaide, South Australia for the last sixteen years. She's very happy to be serving Birmingham Progressive Synagogue for the next three months.
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