Writing a sermon at the start of my rabbinic career, I was looking for an opening story. My father came to my rescue, reminding me of his favourite one about the vicar, the imam and the rabbi being summoned by God.
Told that another flood was coming in three days, they went back to their respective communities to break the bad news. The vicar and imam encouraged their communities to repent and pray. But the rabbi said: “Friends, we have three days to learn how to live under water.”
I finished Nottingham Liberal Synagogue’s first ever recorded Friday night service with this joke because that was how it felt at the time, three days before the lockdown. The world was turning upside down and there was very little time to understand what was going on.
The Shabbat services proved such a great success among our members that we purchased a Zoom licence and started our own YouTube channel, which our fantastic community development worker Wendy Prestney is looking after.
Like most synagogues around the globe, we are now a Zoom community offering services, Havdalah ceremonies, the Tanach study group, cheder, book club, quiz evenings, educational classes and skill-sharing activities,.
We have even managed to organise a virtual community centre, where members can learn French or modern and biblical Hebrew and enjoy sessions on mindfulness, Jewish spirituality, art and photography.
Our emergency care group, launched at the time of lockdown, is now just known as the care group. It connects with every member of our synagogue and helps those in need or isolation. We have a group of 25 volunteers.
For Shavuot, we have organised a surprise delivery of cheesecake and a greetings card (designed by our talented artist Alex Mottier) to each member of the community.
Another Shavuot activity is the NLS masterchef cheesecake competition with daily recipes from members including Malteser, almond and vegan. Check them out on our NLS YouTube channel.
Although we are also involved with a few ongoing social justice projects in Nottingham, the pandemic has halted some vital work.
One casualty has been the weekly hot meals at Salaam-Shalom kitchen — our joint charity with the Muslim community. Instead we support our partner organisation Himmah with donations of money and food both from the synagogue and individuals. Food is now delivered to people’s homes.
We have also managed to move the three refugees we are looking after to Nottingham from Eastwood, where they were verbally abused on a daily basis by their neighbours. The move is thanks to the huge efforts of our president Peter Strauss and we support them with food and other goods. By helping others, we help ourselves.
Like all of my colleagues, I’ve realised through this most challenging time how truly blessed I am to be the rabbi of such a caring, creative and dynamic community and being able to work with dedicated members of staff and so many volunteers.
Rabbi Tanya Sakhnovich is minister of Nottingham Liberal Synagogue
