Welcome from James Woodward, Sarum College Principal
It is my very great pleasure and privilege to welcome and introduce to you Rabbi Shoshana Boyd Gelfand.
You can read about her in the programme. She is a rabbi and a writer, a radio broadcaster, an enabler and thinker and encourager. She inhabits a space and gives voice to the adventure of discovering truth which is sheer gift and much needed in this incredibly fragile world of ours.
Let me tell you about what Shoshana brings into our learning space.
At Sarum, where she is a regular teacher, we love her voice and wisdom; her heartfulness and life. She is a passionate advocate for learning that is deep and radical as it mines for truth and builds bridges.
Shoshana once said, “All human beings are like our biblical ancestors – fragile receptacles for divine breath.”
First. Shoshana is a passionate advocate for and participator in interfaith dialogue. At the opening of an interfaith dialogue in the London School of Economics she articulated her belief that the lack of contact and engagement between individuals of different religious traditions breeds prejudice and hatred. She made a passionate plea for us to understand one another by allowing our preconceptions to melt away. It is not enough however, she said, to be nice to one another. We must also develop a rapport allowing for an honest dialogue, a dialogue open to questions, no matter how tricky they may seem.
Second. Shoshana is an extraordinarily skilled teacher. She has brought this generative skill into Sarum thanks to a chance encounter with Dr Jayme Reaves over a podcast series from the Bible society which focused on the experiences of violence against women in Scripture. They met up and the rest is history. Regularly they co-lead a short course called reading scripture together. From there individual perspectives and histories they take the text seriously, turning it over, asking questions and noticing gaps. Many lives and perspectives have been transformed in these teaching and learning encounters.
Third and finally, Shoshana shows us what friendship means, how to listen, why we should take notice and time with and for each other. Shoshana is a “chaver” (pronounced ‘HA-vare’) of Sarum – a deep, soul friend as iron sharpens iron – studying, learning, thinking, and teaching with us. In this friendship we learn to be faithful to Gods commandments and heal a bit of our brokenness.
Graduands, colleagues, friends – please join with me in welcoming our 2025 presentation day speaker, Shoshana Boyd Gelfand.
Rabbi Shoshana Boyd Gelfand
A rabbi named Zusya died and went to stand before the judgment seat of God. As he waited for God to appear, he grew nervous thinking about his life and how little he had done. He began to imagine that God was going to ask him, “Why weren’t you Moses or why weren’t you Solomon or why weren’t you David?” But when God appeared, the rabbi was surprised. God simply asked, “Why weren’t you Zusya?”
– Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim
We just heard this story from a Hasidic Jewish master about Zusya. The message, I hope is clear: follow your calling, don’t try to be anyone but yourself. It’s a perfect message for you as you complete your course of study at Sarum. But that’s not the only reason why I chose it. The truth is that I also needed it as a message to myself. I need to remember, particularly this morning, that I am Shoshana, a Jew, a rabbi, and someone who does not normally find herself standing at the altar of a church on Shabbat morning. In fact, not even Jesus spent his Shabbat morning at Church. He would have been in synagogue!
But still I stand before you – as a Jew, as a Rabbi, on Shabbat morning. To be honest, it feels a bit strange to be here instead of praying and reading the Torah with my own community in London (although huge thanks to James and the team for preparing Shabbat dinner for me last night and joining me in the Jewish prayers to welcome the Sabbath). I’m here because I have a deep affection for those of you who have been my students and for Sarum College as a whole, a place where meaningful conversations and learning between Christians and Jews are possible.
In my courses at Sarum, I have never pretended to be anything other than what I am – a Jew in conversation with my Christian brothers and sisters. My calling here has been to help my students understand the community that Jesus was born into, lived in, and died in. As a Jew who studies that time period and who is also deeply interested in the development of early Christianity, I can offer you that window into his life. But I cannot offer an authentic Christian message. That’s not who I am.
So when I was asked to speak this morning, I wondered what I could say and realised I could only bring you what I have – a Jewish message that perhaps offers some insight into Jesus’s world as well as our own. So I offer you a short teaching on this week’s Torah portion, the part of the Jewish lectionary that Jesus and his community would have used this week as a springboard for their learning.
This week, Jews around the world are reading from the book of Exodus, Chapter 27, the section we call Tetzavah. It’s about clothing – the priestly robes. (How did you know to schedule this celebration on the week where we delve into the deep meaning of robes!)
The Exodus text contains obsessive detailed instructions to Aharon about the clothing that he and his family should wear when carrying out their priestly duties. As we were putting on our robes earlier, we could see that they both unify us as a community of learners, but they also make distinctions between us in terms of the variety of subjects and institutions where we have learned. As you donned your robes today, it was part of a transformative ritual, communicating to us all that you have studied and absorbed your subject. You have passed rigorous examinations. In donning these robes, you are being welcomed into this community as a seeker of knowledge. But this transformation is not only about your knowledge. In the course of your studies, you have not only taken in information, you have explored the depths of your own soul and that encounter with your course material has transformed you in some way. Your studies have moved you, perhaps even called you, to embrace your personal Zusya and bring your unique gift to the world. That’s why we are celebrating you today and that is why you are deserving of these detailed robes that you are wearing.
But the story in Exodus 27 is not just about the details of the high priests’ clothing. I’m also struck by what is NOT there in Exodus 27. It is rare to find even a paragraph of Exodus that doesn’t mention Moses. He is the main character of that book, and rightly so. But Exodus 27 doesn’t mention him – not once. The focus of this chapter is completely and utterly on Aharon and his family. If you were filming this chapter, you could give Moses the day off – his presence is not needed.
And therein, perhaps, lies a deeper message for us about leadership. There is no such thing as a solo leader. While Moses plays a leading role in the Exodus story, he is part of a leadership team: God shares the vision of a land of milk and honey with Moses, but there is absolutely no way that Moses can get the Israelites there alone. He needs Aharon as his communications and relationship expert; he needs Miriam as co-leader of a key constituency, the women; he needs Joshua’s military expertise, and he needs Yitro’s management consultancy and wisdom.
In giving this chapter over solely to Aharon, perhaps the Torah is teaching Moses to remember to share leadership – to make space for others. We all have our role to play. We cannot all be Moses – nor does God want us to be. Moses needs to be Moses, and to make space for Aharon and Zusya and everyone else.
So I want to take a moment to recognise the leadership team that helped each of you to reach this day: your families, your friends, your teachers, your communities – all of those without whom you could not have achieved what you have. While you may be the one wearing the robe, they deserve their chapter in this story as well.
And as I close, I’d like to extend the metaphor one step further. If the message of today’s Torah portion is about leaders ensuring that we make space for others, I want to acknowledge Sarum College and all of you for making space for me. It’s hard to believe how far Jewish-Christian dialogue has come in the past 80 years. One can argue that it is only since the Holocaust that Jews and Christians have begun to meet each other as equal dialogue partners as opposed to defining ourselves against each other. True dialogue means making space for your partner to show up in all their fullness, even when that feels uncomfortable and when their story doesn’t align nicely with your own.
I grew up in the Baptist bible belt of the American South. My sister and I were the only Jews in our entire school. My friends spent a good chunk of their energy trying to convert us and save our souls. They meant well – they genuinely believed we would burn in Hell – and they were trying to save us from that fate. It was done out of love, but it wasn’t respectful of Judaism as a legitimate path to the Divine. That community was not capable of making space for a Jewish narrative to sit authentically alongside a Christian narrative. It was too threatening to them.
Fast forward forty years and here I am at Sarum, a place where I can show up as a Jew and you welcome me, alongside all the complexities that may raise for your Christian narrative. In turn, you, my students, show up as serious Christians, with all the complexities that brings for me. And together, we share our religious commitments, we read Scripture together and gain new insights from how the other reads it, we notice where our interpretations don’t fit together easily, and we honour that as somehow part of God’s plan for us.
And that is why I am spending my Shabbat morning here in a Church – because in addition to being an observant Jew, I am a Jew who makes space for my Christian sisters and brothers – who in turn, make space for me.
I like to think of God smiling down upon us as we do so.
And so I would like to end with a verse from Scripture that captures that – Psalm 131:
Hinei ma tov u’manayim, shevet achim gam Yachad.
How good and joyous it is when brothers [and I’ll add sisters] dwell together
But instead of me simply reciting that verse, it feels more appropriate for us to do it together.
And I would like to invite you to sing it with me, in a tune that every Jewish schoolchild learns in nursery school. I can’t promise you that Jesus knew the tune, but he most certainly knew the words and the spirit in which we sing together:
[Sing]
Hinei ma tov u’manayim, shevet achim gam Yachad.
How good and joyous it is when brothers and sisters dwell – and sing – together
Thank you.
More about Sarum College learning programmes
Leave a Reply