Blog posts

Rabbi Gabriel Kanter-Webber
Based on an address to the Conference of Liberal Rabbis and Cantors

1. Until very, very recently, I would be extremely careful to wear a kippah only for the bare minimum amount of time to avoid being sacked. I was strongly of the view that my commitment to Judaism should be marked through my actions rather than my headgear; and that if I could only remember God’s presence thanks to a bit of fabric, that’s a problem. I always held to the words of Lily Montagu: it is “the thoughts which prevail under the hat [that] lead … to God, not the hat itself”.¹
2. Then, on Yom Kippur afternoon – after the news of the Manchester synagogue attack² had sunk in – I had a few minutes between services to take a walk around the block and get some fresh air. Ordinarily, I would have taken my kippah off the second I left the bimah, but that afternoon, I thought: ‘Nah. I’ll keep it on. We’re all being told not to congregate outside the building, to be vigilant… and I’ll do those things, but I’m not going to hide the fact that I’m Jewish.’
3. Three days later, Peacehaven Mosque, just a few miles from where I live, was subject to a racist arson attack.³ I went straight over there to show solidarity with the community’s leaders. And I thought: ‘I should wear a kippah for this. I’m not just going because I’m a lovely person; I’m going because I’m a Jew supporting my Muslim friends and colleagues.’
4. Then the next day, I had a meeting at Brighton College (a large boarding school) for a volunteer role I do entirely unrelated to my being a rabbi. And I thought: ‘Maybe there’ll be Jewish pupils or teachers who’d want a chat about what’s been happening over the last few days. I’ll put my kippah on to show who I am.’
5. And it basically just stayed on. Which surprised me.
6. And it surprised my daughter, who’s been delightedly chortling: “Daddy two hairclip!” every time she sees the top of my head.
7. In some ways, suddenly finding a kippah permanently attached to my person has made me uncomfortable. As someone vociferously sick to the back teeth of the ‘We’re Doomed!’ narrative of antisemitism, it felt really weird that I’d basically allowed a terrorist to set my agenda and decide my Jewish practice for me.
8. So I looked at some of the sources. A 17th-century commentary suggests that that is exactly what I should be doing: “It seems to me that there is an absolute prohibition [on going about bare-headed] because … it is now a universal custom among the goyyim that, immediately when they sit down, they remove their hats. Thus this falls within the purview of You shall not live by their precepts (Leviticus 18:3).”⁴ In other words, as soon as non-Jews start or stop doing something, Jews become obliged – with the full force of a biblical commandment – to do the opposite.
9. That feels rather silly. In particular, what exactly are the limits to this principle? Non-Jews have a custom of not wearing shoes made of cheese: does that mean that Jewish law requires me to wear mozzarella moccasins?
10. Fortunately, in the 20th century a more sensible approach takes root thanks to Rabbi Moshe Feinstein: “Worldly pleasures do not become forbidden simply because goyyim make them into precepts.”⁵
11. And quite right too. Firstly, there’s an obvious risk of cutting off our noses to spite our faces. Take the example of hot honey, which is, for some reason, currently very ‘in’ in the culinary scene.⁶ Would anyone really argue that Jews should be deprived of it purely because it’s popular in the secular world? Secondly, and more fundamentally, there’s something deeply problematic about effectively giving non-Jews the power to legislate Jewish law. Why should non-Jews be able, by their behaviour, literally to change the content of a biblical commandment to which I am subject?
12. On the other hand, is that not exactly what I’m doing in reaction to the Manchester attack? One might argue that Jihad Al-Shamie (ימח שמו) tried to terrify Jews, and that, because he did that, I’m doing the opposite of what he wanted.
13. No. That analysis is flawed, because there’s an additional step in my chain of reasoning. I’m not wearing a kippah in reaction to the event of the Manchester attack. I’m wearing a kippah in reaction to the developing needs of the community – Jewish and non-Jewish – after the Manchester attack. There’s an increased need to be brave. There’s an increased need to be visible. There’s an increased need to invite and encourage conversation.
14. And then there’s my specific context in Brighton, in which certain elements within the local Jewish community are intentionally stoking perturbation and despair by falsely claiming that Jews on our city’s streets are in constant mortal peril.⁷ Here, then, there’s an increased need for me to prove these voices wrong. My job security depends on Jewish people continuing to thrive in Brighton and Hove, and I don’t want them scared off by irresponsible press coverage. I want to be able to say: ‘I walk these streets every day, visibly Jewish, a kippah on my head and, usually, a youth movement hoodie with a massive Magen David on my back, and I’m yet to be knifed in the kidneys. Stop overstating the threat. Stop fearmongering.’
15. Claude Montefiore, one of the founders of Liberal Judaism, said: “I don’t want to reopen the hat arguments.”⁸
16. But actually, I kind of do want to reopen the hat arguments. How have you reacted to the question of being visibly Jewish in a strange and uncertain time? Comment below, contact me above, chat with your friends, post online. Let’s get talking and find a way forward!

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.

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Notes

1. Lily Montagu, letter to her girls’ club, June 1954, repr in Ellen M Umansky, Lily Montagu: sermons, addresses, letters and prayers (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1985), 212-219: 215.. ↩︎
2. See eg “Statement on fatal Manchester synagogue attack”, Muslim Council of Britain (2 October 2025). ↩︎
3. See eg Nathan Bevan, “Reward of £10k for mosque arson information”, BBC News (17 October 2025). ↩︎
4. Taz to Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chayyim 8:2 ↩︎
5. Iggrot Moshe, Yoreh De’ah, responsum 4:11 ↩︎
6. See eg Abha Shah, “Some like it spicy? Best food with hot honey”, The Standard (1 October 2025). ↩︎
7. George Chesterton, “My ‘tolerant’ hometown of Brighton has become a hotbed of racism”, The Telegraph (20 August 2025). ↩︎
8. Letter to Rabbi Israel Mattuck, 28 April 1935. ↩︎

Rabbi Gabriel Kanter-Webber
Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue
Saturday 18 October 2025¹ — bar mitzvah of Leo

1. What is time? According to the 1920s sci-fi writer Ray Cummings, time is “what keeps everything from happening at once”.²
2. So, then, time is what means that you, Leo, are having your bar mitzvah this morning, while your sisters have some years still to go. Time is what means that we all knew when to arrive, and that we, hopefully, got enough sleep overnight to prepare us for such a special day.
3. Time is also key to the Torah portion which you read so beautifully for us: the first four days of Creation.
4. On the first day, God created light. This had to happen on the first day: in fact, by definition, whenever it happened would be the first day. Abarbanel, a Torah commentator who lived in 15th-century Portugal, explains: “The blessed Creator realised that the light was good, in order that we could use it to measure out our days. When things were eternally dark, it is impossible to mark time or to distinguish one act from another. Yet God also saw that, if it were eternally light, we likewise could not mark time.”³
5. In other words, until there was darkness – until it became possible to mark time – there could be no evening, there could be no morning, there could be no first day. Everything would, in the words of the Doctor, be “a big ball of wibbley-wobbley, timey-wimey stuff”.⁴
6. More to the point, if we lived in a world filled always and only with light, if our entire lives were like an endless Icelandic summer, we would be impoverished. We’re human beings and we need contrast.
7. When you wrote to me, Leo, you told me that your two favourite subjects at school are science and art, because “they allow [you] to make [your] own decisions and choices”. Science and art are, in many ways, extremely contrasting subjects, but you’ve rightly noticed that they also have a lot in common.
8. Similarly, the existence of light allows us to explore the world around us, but the existence of darkness allows us to explore the worlds around us. As the poet Diane Ackerman has said: “What we call ‘night’ is the time we spend facing the secret reaches of space, where other solar systems … dwell. Don’t think of night as the absence of day; think of it as a kind of freedom. Turned away from our sun, we see the dawning of far-flung galaxies. We are no longer sun-blind to the star-coated universe we inhabit.”⁵
9. The Genesis narrative you read, Leo, doesn’t mention other planets, yet there they are in the sky, obviously created, uniquely visible to us thanks to the darkness God ordained on the first day. Conventionally, we might say that nighttime is simply a time to recharge our iPads and wait for the next morning. But we should also say that daytime is a time to count down until the next evening, until darkness falls and we can celebrate the beauty of the universe, and the beauty of the time which is being marked.
10. A bar mitzvah is time-marking par excellence. 13 trips around the sun it took you to get to this moment. You’ve had to fit a huge amount of hard work on top of your science and art and all the other things you do with your life. Isn’t it lucky that not everything happens all at once! You’ve done your family proud, 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 1:1-19 ↩︎
2. Ray Cummings, The Girl in the Golden Atom (1923; repr Westport, Connecticut: Hyperion Press, 1974): 46. ↩︎
3. Abarbanel to Genesis 1 ↩︎
4. Steven Moffat, “Blink”, Doctor Who (BBC One: 9 June 2007). ↩︎
5. Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses (New York: Vintage Books, 1990): 245. ↩︎