Blog posts

Rabbi Gabriel Kanter-Webber
Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue
Saturday 18 October 2025¹

1. The first ten days of November is one of my favourite times of year. Why? Two words: poppy rage. This is the time of year when I can kick back, relax, and watch with amusement as people work themselves into apoplexy over which politicians aren’t wearing poppies. 2025 I think set the record, because it was only the 19th of October when the first such article appeared in the press: “Fury as woke council ruins town’s … poppy display.”²
2. The comedian Mark Steel has said that this is the time of year when “Good Morning Britain will feature a retired security guard who’s had a kidney removed and replaced with a poppy.” And, he adds: “The Sun will feature a family from Swansea who chopped their neighbour’s tree down because an apple fell off it and thumped on the ground during the two minutes’ silence. ‘How dare it insult our war heroes?’ they’ll say. ‘If it wasn’t for them, that tree would be German.’”³
3. To be clear, I have nothing against poppy-wearing as a way of commemorating those who lost their lives defending this country. That is a perfectly creditable thing to do.
4. What I find objectionable is the use of the poppy as a purity test. Those who set themselves a reminder for the 1st of November to dust off their binoculars, check that Sadiq Khan is wearing a poppy 24/7, and screech if he isn’t, aren’t doing so in remembrance of those who lost their lives in the two world wars. They’re using the war dead as a pretext for puerile political point-scoring. These people are prone to start sentences: ‘Did our forefathers lay down their lives just so…’ – well, did our forefathers lay down their lives just so people can bully each other into wearing paper flowers? I think not.
5. Of course, the act of remembering war dead isn’t simple either. It has many nuances.
6. In this morning’s Torah portion, Abram put on his steel helmet and went to battle himself in what’s snappily known as the War of the Four Kings Against the Five Kings. At the end, after his victory, the King of Sodom, on whose side Abram had been fighting, offered him all of the spoils. He refused to take anything, even a thread or a sandal-strap,⁴ because – and this is the important bit – לֹא תֹאמַר אֲנִי הֶעֱשַׁרְתִּי אֶת־אַבְרָם: So that you will not be able to say: ‘I was the one who made Abram rich.’⁵
7. The Maharil Diskin, a 19th-century commentator, elaborates⁶ that the done thing, after a battle, was for the winner to recoup their expenses from the loser. But this was no ordinary battle: it was “not by natural means at all – [Abram] suffered no damage and lost nothing, neither life nor property”. The War of the Four Kings Against the Five Kings was won solely because of God’s intervention, and Abram wanted to make clear that there was only one message that should come out of it, that message being the glory of the Eternal One. It was imperative for Abram, the Maharil Diskin explains, that nobody would be able to misuse the story to burnish their own reputation: לֹא תֹאמַר אֲנִי הֶעֱשַׁרְתִּי אֶת־אַבְרָם, do not say: ‘I was the one who made Abram rich.’
8. Dr Amanda Chisholm, an academic in the War Studies department at King’s College London, points out that the act of remembrance associated with the poppy is subjective, selective and suspect:⁷ “[There is] a lot that we fail[] to remember. We [fail] to remember the vast amount of colonial armies who fought in brutal battles on behalf of the British Empire. We fail[] to remember the comfort women and prostitutes who continue to feature in military operations. Perhaps most importantly, we fail[] to [realise] how such practices of remembering also sustain … practices of military nostalgia – which in its various guises and practices has been proved to be terrible for women and the vast majority of men. Remembering Remembrance Day this way reinforces an everyday militarism in us all which … results in marginalising any voice or claim to knowledge that is not rooted in a masculine … military authority. It allows for military spending as necessary while welfare services continue to wither away. It enables particular military operations to continue despite the growing mental costs to the soldiers and their families […M]ilitarisation … depends upon these performative acts of remembering.”
9. I suspect Dr Chisholm would approve of Abram’s approach to controlling the narrative around his own war, which was to eschew any suggestion that material gain was an acceptable benefit from the battlefield, to eschew any glorification of violence, any stellification of military might.
10. As we approach Remembrance Sunday 2025, let us be sure to remember both wars in all their facets: the soldiers who died, the women, the colonial conscripts, the conscientious objectors who were shot by their own side, everyone who was caught up in such hellish circumstances. Let us remember that, while we owe our freedom to the sacrifice of soldiers in years gone by, we also owe our freedom to the absence of war around us. Giving thanks for those who laid down their lives does not mean we stand in awe of bloodshed. Taking pride in the medals in our family history does not mean indifference to the military horrors of the modern day.
11. And above all, let us remember that red paper flowers are not the be-all and end-all of being a good person. Remembrance is about people, not about poppies.

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Shavua tov!

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Notes

1. Genesis 14:14-24 ↩︎
2. Ryan Parry, “Poppy scandal: fury as woke council ruins town’s Remembrance Day poppy display after row over flying of Union flags” The Sun (19 October 2025). ↩︎
3. Mark Steel, “I called my kids Somme, Trench and Mustard Gas so I’ll never forget the war dead. What did you do?”, The Independent (1 November 2018). ↩︎
4. Genesis 14:23 ↩︎
5. Ibid. ↩︎
6. Maharil Diskin ad loc ↩︎
7. Amanda Chisholm, “Remembrance Day and the poppy: reflections from a militarised feminist”, London School of Economics (16 November 2015). ↩︎

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.

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to you by email:

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. ↩︎