Blog posts

Rabbi Gabriel Kanter-Webber
One Church, Florence Road
Sunday 16 November 2025

1. In 2008, the Jewish Chronicle ran an ask-the-rabbi feature posing the question: “Is it forbidden for Jews to enter a church?” Rather alarmingly, the orthodox answer was: yes, it is. Apparently: “One cannot simply enter a church without some aspect of the church entering you.”¹
2. Much more forward-thinking than the Jewish Chronicle in 2008 is a 9th-century rabbinic text written in Jerusalem. At the time, the city was under the rule of the Abbasid Empire. The holy Temple Mount was, by and large, closed to Jews. We might imagine that Jewish-Muslim relations were rather tense. And yet we read: “The people in whose hands the Temple is today [that is, the Muslims] have made it into a unique, superlative and honourable place of worship.”²
3. In other words, we don’t deny that holiness – in Hebrew, קְדֻשָּׁה – is contagious. To that extent, the Jewish Chronicle was right: I cannot simply enter a church without some aspect of the church entering me. A person of one faith can’t enter the space of another faith and be unaffected. But here’s the thing: we should welcome that impact. We should relish it. It is fantastic when anybody constructs a holy space, wherever it may be. No one religion owns the copyright to the concept of קְדֻשָּׁה. Stepping into a place of worship is always an awe-inspiring experience. The magnificence of a mosque will not turn a Sikh into a Muslim, and the splendour of a synagogue will not turn a Hindu into a Jew. Why would we steer clear of each other when we could, instead, share and enhance the קְדֻשָּׁה, we all have to offer?
4. My teacher, Professor Melissa Raphael, says that “[h]oliness is … a category of willed relation, rather than being a material property of objects.”³ In other words, the קְדֻשָּׁה, the holiness, in this room, about which I’ve spoken so highly, doesn’t come from the room. It isn’t a feature of the architecture. It isn’t in the bricks or the beams or the brackets. The holiness of this church derives from the people who built, maintained and breathed life into it – and from those who are here today, breathing our own, infinitely varied, קְדֻשָּׁה to mark Interfaith Week. Our spaces are holy, our work is holy, because we will it to be holy, and we act together, in relationship with each other, to achieve that.
5. My sadness and frustration at a world of religious intolerance is tempered by the fact that Brighton and Hove is, for the most part, an exception. The open-mindedness, understanding and solidarity in our city exemplifies how to respect the dignity and nobility of every faith group.
6. After the terrorist attack on Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester, my ’phone was buzzing non-stop with supportive messages from faith partners across Brighton and Hove, and my synagogue was particularly honoured to welcome the vice-chair of the Muslim Forum to our service two days later. Then news broke of the terrorist attack on Peacehaven Mosque, and of course I went straight over to reciprocate. Holiness inheres in willed relation. Our relationships with each other breed holiness.
7. By standing here, something of the church has entered me. Something of all of your different faiths has entered me. It makes me truly happy to say that. And, I hope, that something of Judaism has entered all of you.
8. I conclude with another 9th-century rabbinic text:⁴ “If one sees a crowd of people, one should say: blessed be the One who is wise in secrets, for just as each face in the crowd is different from the other, the thoughts behind each of them are not them the same, but rather each person – this one and that one – has a unique mind of their own.” And let us say: amen.

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Notes

1. Rabbi Naftali Brawer, “Is it forbidden for Jews to enter a church?“, The Jewish Chronicle (21 August 2008). ↩︎
2. Pitron Torah, Urbach edition p 339 ↩︎
3. Melissa Raphael, The Female Face of God in Auschwitz: a Jewish feminist theology of the Holocaust (London: Routledge, 2003): 83. ↩︎
4. Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Pinchas 1 ↩︎

Rabbi Gabriel Kanter-Webber
Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue
Saturday 15 November 2025¹ — Zachary’s bar mitzvah

1. The story of Rebekah offering water to Eliezer’s camels is very often understood as a story about kindness to animals.² The servant, we’re told, was looking for a woman with an innate sensitivity to the beasts’ thirst, because only such a person would be a suitable wife for Isaac.
2. But one commentator – just one – comes up with a totally different explanation, which I find persuasive and also kind of hilarious. The Beit ha-Levi, writing in the 19th century, suggests³ that Eliezer’s test was nothing to do with kindness animals. Instead, he was looking for three qualities: helpfulness, common sense, and tact. He tested her helpfulness by asking for a drink of water. An unhelpful or standoffish woman would simply refuse. Then, he watched to see what she did after he’d taken a sip from her pot. If she took the remaining water back for the other members of her household, אינה בהשכלה, she lacked common sense, because for all she knew Eliezer might have cooties. Yes, really, that’s what the Beit ha-Levi says: “Who knows … whether his mouth is clean from disease!” Then, the final test was whether she had tact. Perhaps she would save her family from his cooties by simply emptying the pot onto the ground. But that would be rude: it would humiliate Eliezer. She passed this test by coming up with a face-saving way out of the dilemma – offering it to the camels, who, we presume, would be fine sharing water with their master.
3. This is a fascinating re-rendering of the text. And, as I said, I find it very persuasive. Kindness to animals is great, but it’s not exactly the be-all and end-all of being a good person. Helpfulness, common sense and tact are, perhaps, a better range of indicators of decency.
4. Of course, identifying someone as decent doesn’t mean that they’ll be a good fit romantically. Dr Helen Fisher is a biological anthropologist who has spent her career putting people who are in love under a brain scanner.⁴ That sounds fun. Perhaps unsurprisingly, though, she ended up having to concede that “the thoughts, emotions and motivations associated with romantic love may be so varied … that the full set of dynamic, parallel neural systems involved may be impossible to record”.⁵ And the conclusion to her essay drops the science-talk altogether, and ends with the words: “Everywhere people sing for love, pray for love, work for love, live for love, kill for love and die for love … Nothing will extinguish the human drive to love.”⁶
5. Zachary, in the run-up to today, I asked you what becoming bar mitzvah meant to you. And you said: “It means I have more religious responsibilities. I am not sure what they are but I know I am meant to have them.”
6. I think that means you’ve passed another test of being a good person, one that Eliezer never even thought of, and that’s honesty. I’m really pleased that you felt able to tell me you’re a bit uncertain about what comes next… and actually that’s probably the right answer. When it comes to anything connected with Judaism, ‘I don’t know’ is always a good bet!
7. Indeed, when it comes to anything not connected with Judaism, ‘I don’t know’ is also a good bet. That’s where Dr Helen Fisher went with her musings on the neurological basis of love. And, really, that’s where Eliezer should have gone with the ridiculous mission on which he was sent to find a wife for someone who wasn’t him. How was he supposed to manage that?!
8. Technically, Zachary, this morning you came of age according to Jewish law. That means that all of the duties, and privileges, of Jewish adults are now yours. Of course, just as we don’t expect you to know and understand all of them right away, we don’t expect you to do all of them right away: not least the getting married bit.
9. But, when you get round to enjoying all that Jewish adulthood has to offer, the skills, traits and characteristics you’ve shown throughout the process of becoming bar mitzvah will be lifelong assets: your honesty, your hard work and perseverance, and, of course, your willingness to play a sheep at every opportunity that’s been offered to you.
10. You’ve done yourself and your family proud this morning, and we wish you מזל טוב.

Comments are welcome at the bottom of the page. Please note that they are premoderated and anything abusive simply won’t be published.

Remember that all of my sermons, handouts and so on can be found here.

Shavua tov!

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Notes

1. Genesis 24:10-20 ↩︎
2. See eg Kli Yakar to Genesis 24:14, who links the root of the Hebrew word ‘camel’, ג־מ־ל, with the word גמילות, ‘lovingkindness’, based on this episode; Eva Landman, A Kindergarten Manual for Jewish Religious Schools (Cincinnati: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1918): 85-89; JPS Torah Commentary to Genesis 24:14; John D Rayner, “Judaism and animal welfare: overview and some questions”, lecture 591 (18 March 2000). ↩︎
3. Beit ha-Levi to Genesis 24:14 ↩︎
4. Helen Fisher, “The drive to love: the neural mechanism for mate selection” in Robert J Sternberg and Karin Weis (eds), The New Psychology of Love (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 87-115: 91ff. ↩︎
5. Ibid: 99. ↩︎
6. Ibid: 107. ↩︎