Rabbi on a Narrow Bridge

And then came the Holy Blessed One and slew the Angel of Death - Reflections on the Death Penalty in Israel

rabbi@newlondon.org.uk (Rabbi Jeremy Gordon) — Wed, 1 Apr 2026 13:35:00 +0100

I didn’t want to do a political sermon on the First Day of Pesach – I get it, we were all up late last night and everything before that. And I wasn’t – looking at the passage of this new piece of legislation in Israel – right up until I was reflecting on the last line of the Seder.So … here we go. I didn’t want to do a political sermon on the First Day of Pesach – I get it, we were all up

What To Do in the Aftermath of the Attack on the Ambulances of Hatzolah in Golders Green

rabbi@newlondon.org.uk (Rabbi Jeremy Gordon) — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 20:20:00 GMT

What To Do in the Aftermath of the Attack on the Ambulances of Hatzolah in Golders GreenThe destruction of ambulances is appalling and utterly unacceptable. It’s also been predictable and predicted. It’s an attack on not only the Jewish Community of this country, but on all British citizens and the very notion of what it means to be British. There’s police work to be done, political work to

Goats, Flies and Freedom in an Unsafe World - Reflections on the Shabbat Before the New Moon of Nissan

rabbi@newlondon.org.uk (Rabbi Jeremy Gordon) — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 12:56:00 GMT

Pesach is coming – first night Wednesday 1st April. It’s an odd time to be preparing to celebrate freedom. There are those sprinting back and forth to shelters, and many more for whom shelter feels a far-off dream. That’s not even merely about Iran, Lebanon, Israel and others experiencing militarised conflict. There was an attack yesterday on a Synagogue in Michigan. One of my Detroit-based

Jewish Reflections on War and Peace

rabbi@newlondon.org.uk (Rabbi Jeremy Gordon) — Fri, 6 Mar 2026 10:59:00 GMT

This is something I wrote in, I think 2018. A long time ago. Long before these most recent trials. It's in my book, Spiritual Vagabondry but I haven't posted it before here. Judaism believes in peace, loves peace and prays and works towards peace. The greatest visions of the Bible are of the wolf lying down with lamb (Isaiah 11) and of swords being beaten into ploughshares (Isaiah

Learning from Bad Bunny ... And Hen Mazzig

rabbi@newlondon.org.uk (Rabbi Jeremy Gordon) — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 12:53:00 GMT

Learning from a Puerto Rican RapperI caught the Superbowl Half-Time Show on Monday morning. My, American, rabbinic colleagues were already posting about it. The Israeli writer, Hen Mazzig, suggested ‘Bad Bunny’ offered a “masterclass in a lesson every minority community needs to learn”. I think his analysis might be the most interesting take on antisemitism and how to defeat it I’ve

When the Bar Mitzvah Has Prepared the Wrong Haftarah

rabbi@newlondon.org.uk (Rabbi Jeremy Gordon) — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 12:43:00 GMT

I wrote this several years ago and have held off posting until this year.It's not about any current young member of the Synagogue I serveOn the Shabbat before Purim, the Mesorah states we should read the regular Torah reading (almost always Parshat Tetzaveh) then the special Maftir Zachor “Remember what Amalek did to you,” (Deut 25:17) from a second scroll. The obligation to remember Amalek

On Archbishops, Queens and Chassidic Rebbes

rabbi@newlondon.org.uk (Rabbi Jeremy Gordon) — Fri, 6 Feb 2026 11:35:00 GMT

I’ve had an unusually ‘Church-intensive’ couple of weeks. On 28th January, I was St Paul’s to watch as Archbishop Sarah Mullaly was ‘elected and confirmed’ as Archbishop of Canterbury. I got to know the, then, Bishop of London during her time in this diocese and, in particular, at the exceptional evening on the Terminally Ill (Adults) Bill she spoke at, hosted here at New London.Then, I spent two

How to Defeat Tyrants - Parashat Bo

rabbi@newlondon.org.uk (Rabbi Jeremy Gordon) — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 13:46:00 GMT

I want to pick up, as it were, from the sermon I gave a couple of weeks ago.Way back then – who can remember such a time – I suggested that there is something prototypically Jewish about getting up the nose of Pharaoh and wannabe autocrats ever since.I cited the work of Jose Faur, who suggested that, at the heart of the discomfort felt towards Jews of Pharoah after Pharoah and Furer after

Reflections on Mental Health in Jewish Community - In Honour of JAMI Mental Health Shabbat

rabbi@newlondon.org.uk (Rabbi Jeremy Gordon) — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 12:29:00 GMT

We are delighted to partner with JAMI, the mental health service for the Jewish Community on this Shabbat on which we read the plague of darkness. JAMI are also running a Parent Café this Sunday, 11am focussed on supporting parents managing children's anxiety, especially around the online world. The biblical plague of darkness is referred to with an extra word Aphela, alongside the

Annoying Pharoahs Since ...

rabbi@newlondon.org.uk (Rabbi Jeremy Gordon) — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 13:13:00 GMT

https://truah.org/welcome-to-our-store/ I read, over my winter break, the new book by my friend and successor as Rabbi at St Albans Masorti Synagogue, A Spark of Total Darkness. There’s a Chapter on Hierarchy or Authority which focuses on a line from the Nishmat prayer, we recited this morning – Ain Lanu Melekh Ele Atah – there is no Sovereign other than You - God. It is, claims Rabbi

The Banality of Good and Evil - Reflections on a Great Book in Contemporary and Earlier Times

rabbi@newlondon.org.uk (Rabbi Jeremy Gordon) — Fri, 9 Jan 2026 12:59:00 GMT

This week, against the backdrop of the news of our time and the opening of the Book of Exodus, I’ve been reflecting on David Blumenthal’s The Banality of Good and Evil, a book which would make it onto my desert island shortlist.Blumenthal’s book is an enquiry into how NOT everyone folded into the superficially attractive genocidal horror of Nazism. It’s steeped in sociological and

Three Ways With Chanukah

rabbi@newlondon.org.uk (Rabbi Jeremy Gordon) — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 09:59:00 GMT

Is the moral of Chanukah, is the moral of all contemporary Jewish life, 'they hate us', 'oppose assimilation' or 'spread light'?I want to share three modes of understanding the Festival of Chanukah, both of which are very much alive in our contemporary times.The first takes, as its core text, the Al HaNissim prayer, dropped into the Amidah and Grace After Mealsימֵי מַתִּתְיָהו בֶּן יוֹחָנָן

The Cardinal Bea Memorial Lecture 2011 - Heschel, Soloveitchik, Bayfield and the Point of Jewish - Christian Interfaith Dialogue

rabbi@newlondon.org.uk (Rabbi Jeremy Gordon) — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 11:56:00 GMT

I was invited to give this lecture by the remarkable Sisters of Sion, way back in 2011. But with the 60th Anniversary of Nostra Aetate in the news, I'm realising I never posted it before so ... here you go. The Cardinal Bea Memorial Lecture 2011 Lord Harries, Baroness Richardson, Friends, Particularly the Sisters of Sion, I am most grateful for the honour of this invitation to

O That my Words Were Written Down - A Sermon to be shared at the Churches of St Mary's and St James, NW6 on Remembrance Sunday 2025

rabbi@newlondon.org.uk (Rabbi Jeremy Gordon) — Fri, 7 Nov 2025 11:02:00 GMT

I’ve been reflecting on the reading from today’s service, the reading from the Hebrew Bible[1] – ‘O that my words were written down! O that they were inscribed in a book! מִי־יִתֵּ֣ן אֵ֭פוֹ וְיִכָּתְב֣וּן מִלָּ֑י On a day like today, it reminds me of the last words of the great Jewish historian, Simon Dubnow, born in 1860.

On the Meaning of Friendship - a sermon on Lech Lecha

rabbi@newlondon.org.uk (Rabbi Jeremy Gordon) — Sun, 2 Nov 2025 17:01:00 GMT

Right at the opening of this week’s reading God calls Abraham. Get the sense that God has been looking for someone to be in a relationship with. Sense that been looking for a while. God’s tried turning to Adam and Eve, and then Noah, sense that hasn’t worked, quite. Now with Abraham it feels different, sense that it works. What is the thing that God is looking for, and finds in the call to

Walter Benjamin and the Unicorn

rabbi@newlondon.org.uk (Rabbi Jeremy Gordon) — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 17:22:00 +0100

If this sermon had a title – and I have a fondness for the thing you sometimes see outside Churches where the title of the sermon is posted for all to see – if this sermon had a title, the title would be ‘Walter Benjamin and the Unicorn’ The Walter Benjamin piece is inspired by a pilgrimage my wife and I made to Benjamin’s last resting place in Portbou, right on the Spanish side of the

On Language - Its Uses and Abuses - Kol Nidrei

rabbi@newlondon.org.uk (Rabbi Jeremy Gordon) — Wed, 1 Oct 2025 12:21:00 +0100

For the sin which we have committed before You with an utterance of the lips. And for the sin which we have committed before You by impurity of speech. For the sin which we have committed before You by foolish talk. And for the sin which we have committed before You by scoffing. For the sin which we have committed before You by speaking evil of another human being. And for

The Presence of Absence and the Absence of Presence - Yizkor 5786

rabbi@newlondon.org.uk (Rabbi Jeremy Gordon) — Wed, 1 Oct 2025 12:10:00 +0100

I want to talk about a Kabbalistic term – Reshimu. It means impression or trace. The term is used in Lurianic Kabbalah to refer to the presence of God even after the Infinite presence of the Divine retreated from the world right at the very start of creation. Creation begins, in the Lurianic imagination, with God retreating away, while leaving behind a Reshimu that can still, sometimes, be

Neilah - For This, Ships Are Built

rabbi@newlondon.org.uk (Rabbi Jeremy Gordon) — Wed, 1 Oct 2025 11:59:00 +0100

A colleague of mine, Rabbi Paul Arberman, recently shared a sentence he heard from his mother: “A ship in harbor,” said Mrs Arberman, “is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for”. I’ve been thinking about the phrase – originally attributed to John A. Shedd – in the context of these bruising times and in the context of this day of retreat, this time of Neilah. We’ve been in harbour. It’s

A Rosh Hashanah Message - The Things that Happen Behind a Veil of Ignorance

rabbi@newlondon.org.uk (Rabbi Jeremy Gordon) — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 10:31:00 +0100

May Pundak and Dr Rula Hardal on Receiving the Innagural Vivian Silver Impact Award It is, again, a difficult year for writing Rosh Hashanah sermons. I don't expect much sympathy. It's easier to write a sermon than spend even a minute as a captive in some godforsaken tunnel under Gaza. It's easier too, to write a sermon than to spend even a minute in some Gazan not-very-safe refuge. But I've

A Rosh Hashannah Message - On Jews and Windows

rabbi@newlondon.org.uk (Rabbi Jeremy Gordon) — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 10:12:00 +0100

On this eve of Rosh Hashanah, my mind has returned to a passage in the Talmud I last thought about when we revealed the magnificent Cyril Korn stained glass at the Synagogue. Rabbi Chiya bar Abba said in the name of Rabbi Yochanan: "A person should only pray in a house with windows.” (Brachot 34a) It’s an instruction that makes its way into the Shulchan Arukh where it is combined with an

Cancelling Artists - Questions Rabbis (This Rabbi) Get Asked

rabbi@newlondon.org.uk (Rabbi Jeremy Gordon) — Sun, 17 Aug 2025 15:24:00 +0100

Subject: After a long time ... Dear Jeremy I wonder if you would mind sharing your thoughts on an internal dilemma I have. I am no longer a member of a synagogue so have no other rabbi to ask. A number of high-profile people in the arts/media have shared views in respect of the Israel/Gaza situation which I regard as anti-semitic, even a statement such as ‘Free Palestine’. An

On the 80th Anniversary of the Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

rabbi@newlondon.org.uk (Rabbi Jeremy Gordon) — Fri, 8 Aug 2025 16:16:00 +0100

I reread this week the speech given by Terumi Tanaka at the ceremony to present the Nobel Peace Prize to the organisation he co-chairs, Nihon Hidankyo, the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organisations. It is, as you will be aware, the 80th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I’ve been looking at the footage of that time, listening to

Marching to Save Hostages

rabbi@newlondon.org.uk (Rabbi Jeremy Gordon) — Fri, 8 Aug 2025 11:04:00 +0100

There is a National March for the Hostages this Sunday. Click here to register and be sent the start location. We gather from 2pm and march to Downing Street for a rally at 4pm. The March is organised by the Board of Deputies and sponsored by all (non-Chareidi) religious denominations, including Masorti Judaism, as well as communal leadership organisations and the Hostages and Missing

The Weaponization of Language and Its Discontents

rabbi@newlondon.org.uk (Rabbi Jeremy Gordon) — Fri, 4 Jul 2025 13:20:00 +0100

This week, some idiot took a murderous chant, chanted by another idiot, livestreamed by the BBC at Glastonbury, and sprayed it on the side of a telephone box not so far from my home. I’m grateful to the Council team who ensured its prompt removal, but we really, really shouldn’t be here.Death and life are in the power of the tongue, teaches Proverbs. I know that verse well. Language can bring