A Constituent of the Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues
Liberal Judaism -- Supporting the Leo Baeck College-Centre for Jewish Education

NEWSLETTER MAY 2004 -

Those of you who came to either our Friday evening service or the Saturday Adult Education session at the end of April will know that we experienced something quite different from our usual sessions. We were privileged to have a visit from Eran Shafir, who is the Israeli emissary to Liberal Judaism. His service contained most of the elements of a normal service, but he spoke about using the Siddur as a colouring book – providing the outline so that we could fill in the colours and details and bring the service to life. This he then proceeded to do in a way which, for me at least, made me see some of the regular prayers etc in a quite different way. His theme was the ‘oneness’ of everything – how the world and all its people are all one, because God is one

The Saturday session was about Israel – all the many Israels which we don’t see from the news media – as well as taking a look at the context and realities of some of the aspects which we see all too often. I think Beverly summed up how we felt by the end – that in spite of thinking we are pretty close to Israel we really don’t know it at all. I think the most encouraging thing about the session was that Eran, while being realistic and down to earth to the point of being at times quite sceptical, remains optimistic and positive that things will improve – though even he does not claim to know how or when!

Byron and I have both applied to go on the LJ Leadership course at the end of June, in Israel, which will be lead by Eran. Its purpose is to allow a group of people from Liberal communities to work together and share common experiences so that they will be able to continue to network (dreadful word!) on their return, to the benefit of all the communities. Combined with that is the chance to learn about Israel and in particular how Progressive Judaism operates there and the efforts being made to bring people together. I think we both came away from this weekend feeling even more inspired about the prospect. I hope we will both be able to feed back the knowledge and experience over the coming months and years so that we can all gain from it. We’ll keep you posted no doubt. Plenty of Newsletter material for the future, Byron?

— Jenny Lawrence