Mission Statement

I am a 22 year old Jewish girl from North London and I am on the hunt. No, not for a nice Jewish boy but for the ‘perfect synagogue’. It has to be friendly, welcoming, interesting and well …to be honest, I’m not sure.

Join me on a journey through our Jewish community; to the shtetl and beyond, one synagogue at a time!

Edgware & District Reform Synagogue

I am a 22 year old Jewish girl from North London and I am on the hunt. No, not for a nice Jewish boy but for the ‘perfect synagogue’. It has to be friendly, welcoming, interesting and well …to be honest, I’m not sure.

Join me on a journey through our Jewish community; to the shtetl and beyond, one synagogue at a time!

Bushey United Synagogue 

My father admitted defeat as he entered the pay and display car park up the road from the synagogue.

A short walk leads us to the five florescent jackets guarding the gates of the synagogue. Once approached us with a slightly serious, yet jovial, manner and a beige spiral wire curling from his ear.

He asked my father what brought us to the synagogue that morning, to which my father, with his barrasterial training, took a few seconds of thought before eloquently articulating ‘Saturday.’ Sadly, this only provoked more probing from the powered up accountant before us. Eventually my father explained that he needed to drive my brother to something near by and was visiting synagogue before picking him up. In a car. On a shabbos.

Satisfied with the honesty, the yellow jacket crime fighter proceeded to examine the contents of my father’s tallis bag before diligently asking if we were in possession of mobile phones.

Eventually he was content with his checks and allowed us to go through, following a woman in a pink bob wig, comical glasses, a tutu and high-heeled boots. The young child beside her was dressed in a more muted tutu outfit.

The synagogue interior is bright and modern. Downstairs, the mochitza stands beside the bimah. Upstairs, there is a relatively small ladies balcony; triangular shaped round the airspace above the bimah and the ark, only fitting a couple of rows in.

From on high, I could see that men generally wore suits that included slight shirt and tie colour varieties centred around blue, with the occasional pink and purples winking through. The ladies wore a variety of head coverings above modest outfits, as outlined in the signs on the doors to the ladies sections and in the newsletter.

The newsletter also held a cast list for the leyners this morning and a small biography for the pricipal leyner, the Bar Mitzva boy. This outlined important information, such as his interest of computer games and his limelight moment in the JC.

Leyning began with a reminder to be quiet, one that was only moderately adhered to, until it was time for the Bar Mitzva boy to ascend the bimah, when the congregation burst into a joyful rendition of ‘Mazel Tov and Simen Tov’. Then the congregation carefully listened to him quietly weave through his parsha. Upon finishing, the congregation once again sang ‘Mazel Tov and Simen Tov’, albeit in a more relaxed fashion, whilst a strange little boy towards the back of the men’s section silently performed a sit down version of gangnam style across the room, presumably towards the ladies section.

During the concluding prayers, chatter began to escalate, though a loud, firm hand on the bimah sternly brought attention back to the young chazzan, who uncomfortably smiled at the source of the sound.

Before Adon Olam, we were reminded to not consume food until after Kiddush had been said. Whist the chazzan lead the congregation in a final singsong, I chatted with the lady next to me and she gave me directions to the Kiddush, which most consisted of follow the large hungry masses.

Somewhere near the ‘Nut Free Zone’ in a slightly less bright and modern hall, Kiddush was made and all revelled in consuming. My father and I left the synagogue through a car park, which had been inhabited by a swarm of children playing football in their kippot.

Bushey United seems to be a rather neurotic community. I have never been reminded of rules so much in any other synagogue. I do wonder what provoked them to publish a bullet pointed synagogue etiquette list, which prohibited applause along with modesty laws, no mobile phone or eating before Kiddush – not to mention the yellow-jacket-wearing-interrogating-bag-checking welcome committed.

On the other hand, it is a large, healthy community situated outside the competitive shtetl, so it doesn’t need to spend it’s time courting visitors. Instead, it seems to focus on protecting the service environment for present members as well as keeping them engaged – only a quick glance past the etiquette list in the newsletter shows this – not to mention the healthy mix of ages and child presence.

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To read more from Belle of the Bimahs, go to belleofthebimahs.com or follow her on twitter@belleofthebimah

You can’t help but love Sarah Lightman. Like her work, she is witty, emotionally honest and accessible. Oh, and she bakes. Within moments we are talking about ovaries, autobiographical art and Sarah’s shul scene…

LR: What’s the strangest response you’ve ever had about your art?

SL: One response that I’ll never forget was when I showed my “Dumped Before Valentine’s” Series, in San Francisco, as part of the touring show I co-curated, Graphic Details Confessional Comics by Jewish Women. These drawings describe being broken up with just before Valentine’s Day, a number of years ago. A gentleman, actually to be more explicit, a middle-aged happily married established academic, saw my work, and said he was about to cry. It had reminded him of similar experiences in his youth.  I was pretty taken aback as I had forgotten that romantic mishaps are not just the terrain of young women!

It was also wonderful reminder of the universality of the experiences I address. And how our individual memories are often shared experiences. I may address me, my family, my love life, and my body, in these drawings, but none of my stories are unique. For example, my new series “And God Remembered Sarah” has a title which references the Matriarch’s own struggle to have a family in Genesis. My drawings focus on eggs and egg boxes as I think about starting family and all the unknowns involved. I show these drawings to people around the world and I always get such a strong immediate response. It is amazing. It really ceases to be about me any more, my work just vocalises an anxiety shared by so many…

LR: Autobiographical art- tell us more about that.

SL: My area of interest and research is autobiographical visual memoir – in diaries, comics and graphic novels. I am particularly interested in how women use these spaces to talk about their lives, especially traumatic events; cancer, divorce, mental illness, miscarriages and disfunctional families. Sounds depressing? Well my holiday reading is always pretty heavy.  I am the one in the deck chair reading about suicide and child abuse, while everyone else is reading Danielle Steele!

LR: Objects in your take on all sorts of meanings in your work. So (pretending to be a Freudian analyst) tell us more about your associations/ relationships to the chair, the eggs, a table, a dress?

SL: I love one my most recent sequences about the “Half Full Half Empty”. Every few days I drew a half full glass of water and wrote about what I was feeling. The glasses of water don’t change, I change. I’m drawing together my internal and external reality and the ups and downs of life. Through making these drawings I can monitor whether I feel good, whether I am enjoying my work, whether my then-boyfriend was behaving well to me.  And the sheer repetitiveness of this very simple act is reassuring – perhaps nothing is resolved, but still thoughts are managed and acknowledged, (and images are made!) so there is a sense of accomplishment.

LR: Jewish laydeez in the Torah – you pretty much wrote yourself a leading role in the ‘good book’. What’s The Book of Sarah about?

SL: I started The Book of Sarah when I was in my undergraduate at the Slade  School of Art over 16 years ago. I was moving out of a “religious phase”- I’d felt frustrated that Jewish learning was so textual and non-visual. Also art school encourages you to create, to invent, to be an individual, to step out on your own. It was quite different from the religious world where women in the orthodox circle I was in were still asking male authorities for permission to be Rabbis, to give sermons in synagogues, things like that.  Even when I approached important religious texts, I was always required to read the male commentators first as the primary authorities. It made intellectual endeavour feel so limiting and biased, and de-emphasized any female contribution.

I also felt uncomfortable with how the male characters in the Bible were so central. Yes, there are some women who make an impact, but not an equal number of heroes to heroines. When my namesake, the Matriarch Sarah gets her own chapter, “Chayye Sarah” it is actually just to mention she dies, the rest of the chapter is all about other people and events. I wanted her/ myself to headline. For all these reasons, I started a Bible book of my work. Taking, me, a flawed woman, as a central character, and finding meaning in my life, in stories that others could resonate with as well. I was to be a female textual and visual commentator on my own story. I have made make work that bridges my Jewish life and knowledge, as well as the experiences I have as a modern woman in the world. Another title for the publication is The Hampstead Bible, as I grew up in Hampstead.

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The Book of Sarah will be exhibited until 1st June at Occupy My Time Gallery: Enclave 9, Resolution Way, Deptford, London, SE8 4NT . On the 30th May Sarah will be joined by Dr Nadia Valman and Dr Rachel Garfield to discuss her artwork. You can book a free ticket by clicking here.

My father usually likes to arrive at synagogue some time between 10.15 and 10.30. Now he has given getting a entire family unit to the synagogue, he has the freedom to actually chose this infinitely more punctual time, and I have found our arrival a slightly more stressful ordeal. He tends to park within sight of the shoma shabbas families merrily making their way to shul and, tallis bag in hand, my father may even wish them a ‘good shabbos’ as he locks the car with the remote control on the key ring.

Talking to members of various orthodox shuls on my travels, I have noticed that everyone seems to have a certain time they wish to arrive, however, this time can vary widely, even between members of the same congregation.

Orthodox communities tend to take lateness in their stride; a possible biproduct of orthodox culture that places an emphasis on religion through the home and community, therefore, the synagogue is an important part of Judaism but not the centre of it.

This culture seems to have carried over to the massorti movement, when I turned up to the 10am Assif service at 10.15 to awkwardly pray with half a dozen people for almost an hour until the congregation started to grow rapidly and did not stop growing right up until Adon Olam.

Reform services tend to start between 10 and 10.30 and, strangely enough, the stated time on the website is actually stuck to! Furthermore, lateness can be extremely noticeable and rude. The same can be said for Liberal services, which tend to start at 11am or even 3pm (WCLS).

So, why all these different timings? I have my thoughts .  .

Reform, Progressive and Liberal Judaism are solid breakaway organisations. They are still young and recently created; not as organically grown, nor with the years to organically grow. The services reflect this. They start at a set time, everyone uses the same books, in which the musical parts are labelled, parts read aloud by the congregaton are recited precisely and in time with each other and harmonies from choir or instruments are more likely to come from written manuscript. This is a world away from orthodoxy, where the harmonies depend on who got out of bed that morning and latecomers may be seen bowing and stepping to themselves in a corner before taking notice of the team of beards on the bimah. In some cases, the most disorganised Reform service is like a well oiled machine compared to it’s orthodox counterpart, and they need to be.

A reformist culture is one that focuses on implementing conscious and calculated changes to an older one, and that requires commitment and organisation; it’s the difference between consciously leaving out features to make a statement or just being forgetful and lazy. Also, being a reformist culture, they’re more likely to make changes to accommodate it’s members, e.g. giving them a lie in. An older, stable community that aims for continuation may not require the same sort of commitment, especially when they have a buoyant membership list accompanied by substantial subscriptions and a dependable minyan. Furthermore, Orthodoxy also places more emphasis on religion throughout one’s life, and not just what one does on a Saturday morning, thus less importance is placed upon a punctual arrival.

There is no correct and incorrect approach to synagogue punctuality, indeed, the beauty is in the variety. So no fear! There will be a synagogue out there to suit the length of your Saturday morning lie in.

Shavuot commemorates the Children of Israel receiving the Torah on Mount Sinai after 40 years of wandering around in the spiritual and physical wilderness of the desert.

I am a 22 year old Jewish girl from North London and I am on the hunt. No, not for a nice Jewish boy but for the ‘perfect synagogue’. It has to be friendly, welcoming, interesting and well …to be honest, I’m not sure.

Join me on a journey through our Jewish community; to the shtetl and beyond, one synagogue at a time!

Alei Tzion

Around the corner from the London School of Jewish Studies, I thrust open the car door with my foot as two bemused CST men wish me a good shabbas. My father doesn’t do subtle parking. We walked along the sunny Hendon street, passing many a ‘good shabbas’ before entering the front building of the school-turned-synagogue.

My father checked multiple times with the woman sitting behind a computer at the front desk if the youthful gathering in the room on our left was the main service. With disbelief, he entered and I made my way through a number of buggies, small children and young parents to reach the women’s entrance.

My hunt for a siddur led me to a modestly filled bookshelf at the end of the corridor; a lady mentioned that all-Hebrew siddurim are rather popular. With a rare and dilapidated English translation Artscroll in my hands, I walked through the open door into the ladies’ service. The sweet, American ‘shabbat shalom’ from the Rabbizen by the door almost covered up the slight awkwardness from my rooky mistake; everyone was standing, thus I stuck out as a visitor.

Blue upholstered chairs assembled in rows either side of a tall white curtain mochitza [separating men and women] transformed this classroom into the site for a large minyan. The back half of the ladies section faced the front wall (on which the ark stood along from the mochitza on our right) and the front half faced the mochitza. Head coverings were a rarity amongst this fervent crowd of smartly dress girls in their twenties; eyes rarely wondering from the pages, some closed in prayer. Flowing knee length skirts and long sleeved tops were a norm, though one woman wore a layered red dress and sky high heals that would have fitted in any nightclub.

Through the mochitza, I could see a couple of less well follicled heads that gave me hope that my father would not necessarily be the conspicuous elder amongst the signs of youth, such as the trilby worn near a white sheet that swayed back and forth in devotion toward the wooden box and red velvet curtain of the Arc.

The davening was indeed very competent. It was a shame that I missed the leyning. It seems the lack of years of the congregants seems to fuel their speed, so the entire service was completed long before midday.

Oblivious to the completion that was occurring around me, I enlisted the help of the Rabbitzen on her greeting rounds to help me find the correct page in the siddur. She sat in the adjacent chair and guided me through the two final pages of the service whilst asking kindly questions.

The curtains of the mochitza were then swiftly opened for the Rabbi to greet the whole congregation as a father to his young children. His sermon quickly mentioned Rashi’s commentary on sexual impropriety before encouraging the congregants to take steps beyond the Jewish law to be good Jews.

Then the recently white caped male stood in front of the congregation to give the announcements for the week. In pink shirt and distinctively hipster knitted vest, he would have looked alien, and possibly garish, in any other United Synagogue congregation. Here he was the perfect adornment and leader; emphasising the forwardness of this congregation, almost purely through mere aesthetic contrast with other Chairmen and women who fulfil this role throughout North London.

The Kiddush was outside in the sunshine, where my father and I chatted to the Rabbetzin, who mentioned the rarity of Bar Mitzvas in this incredibly young congregation before introducing us to a young girl, whose name staggered my father with it’s ‘shtetle-ness’. My father rather quickly led us away without our usual Kiddush gander and who-knows-who competition; I believe he felt alienated by the comparative infancy of congregation and disappointed by the Kiddush (even though I was extremely impressed by the pink cupcakes).

This is a surprising, exciting and, indeed youthful congregation with a lovely parental Rabbi/Rabbizen package to match. Indeed, one could be very happy here.

I looked back on the sunlit youth, whose cheerful chatter blew up into the blue sky, enclosed in the quiet, safe streets of religious Hendon, as my father and I made our way back to the car and the rest of the world.

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To read more from Belle of the Bimahs, go to belleofthebimahs.com or follow her on twitter@belleofthebimah

I write this in response to a question, a question raised recently during discussion of a friend’s rabbi’s sermon on the seder. The rabbi said that, in the middle the seder and the re-telling of the story, he was asked whether the Jews had left Egypt yet. The answer was no. The logical next question was, “So when will they leave?” The answer, surprisingly, is that they don’t. There is no defining point in the seder at which the Jews leave slavery and are then free. In fact, the ‘re-telling of the story’ isn’t really a re-telling of a story at all. Rather, the entire seder vacillates between slavery and freedom, and draws on texts from across centuries, without much sense of chronology or concern for the order of events.

This may be ironic, considering the word seder means ‘order’, and we might expect a little more organisation in the order of the telling. Or, is the seder doing something different? This discussion got me thinking about the concept of time in literature, and writers who have played with the use of narrative in time and memory.

Marcel Proust wrote a famous work called ‘A La Recherche du Temps Perdu’, ‘In Search of Lost Time’, which is effectively an autobiography, but with a difference. Rather than just tell his story, there is no simple narrative, events are out of sequence, and often difficult to understand, much like the seder. Samuel Beckett, when writing about Marcel Proust in 1931, said that Proust distinguished between ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’ memory. He explained voluntary memory by comparing it to a clothes-line, where “the images of his past dirty linen [are] redeemed and […] infallibly complacent servants of his reminiscential needs”. This is memory remembered in an ordinary, chronological sense, which is easy to recount, much like the clothes-line where clothes are arranged in a sensible, linear order. According to Beckett, Proust focuses in his novel on memory that is involuntary, that is,

[where] is stored the essence of ourselves, the best of our many selves and their concretions […] when we escape into the spacious annexe of mental alienation, in sleep or the rare dispensation of waking madness.

This is memory that is triggered by something, an object, a word, a smell, or anything which induces a powerful recollection of something past, and goes beyond the simple memory of it. The important aspect of this kind of memory is that it is not simply a memory; it is somehow more significant in that it will evoke a reaction, be it emotional, nostalgic or the beginning of a flood of a chain of memories, not thought about for a long time.

To illustrate, in Proust’s Search for Lost Time he describes a scene in which he is given a tea-soaked Madeleine cake to eat. In itself it is no grand memory, but the taste recalls for him a powerful recollection of his childhood. Here it is the taste of the infusion that conjures up a powerful reminiscence, not just of eating the cake as a child, but everything else encapsulated in that memory; his house, family, visitors, Sunday afternoon activities etc.

He says that the sensation not only came to him, but it invaded him (envahi), and isolated him (isolé), as he is entirely engrossed in the spiral of what he is remembering. This kind of memory is special, it is vivid, because it transports him to another point in time, a time now only contained within his memory but which is recalled in its entirety through the object that caused it. The memory is almost tangibly dredged up into the present, and the past becomes accessible to him in the present time, and is linked to the present through the madeleine, as though a tunnel has been created to link the two.

To return to Pesach, this gives us some possible insight into the use of the seder plate. We have objects – seemingly random ones – through which we are supposed to remember the exodus from Egypt. Are they just symbols? No, their power isn’t just in their symbolism. Objects, such as in the case of Proust’s Madeleine, can conjure up memories much more powerful than just re-telling can achieve. When we look at/smell/taste each object on the seder plate, we are being drawn into the “waking madness” of a literary understanding of time, and simultaneously, we are moved into the past whilst the past is brought into our present, creating a link between the story and us. Though we are far removed from the story, in this way we become a part of it, and ‘remember’ it in a way that we couldn’t otherwise do.

But what do we do with these memories once we conjure them? How do we make sense of these moments of time that we are recalling? According to a time theorist named Bergson, time only makes sense in terms of what has come before and what will come after. He compares a moment to a musical note. By itself the note is meaningless, but when placed in an order with other notes, the phrase then takes on meaning and beauty. Bergson calls this notion of time “la durée”, a consciousness of time from within. In the same way, Proustian recollections are not merely appreciated as memories within themselves, but take on a greater significance. They are “examined and integrated into the intellectual momemtum of finding out its significance within a whole”.

When Proust is taken by his madeleine recollections, the narrator almost straightaway asks, “Where did it come from? What does it mean? How do I understand it?”  There seems to be an urgent need to make sense of the memory, to give it a context and thus a place within the narrator’s existence.

 Proust answers his questions by saying that the thing to do is to “créer”, to create, to use the memory to gain an overall comprehension of time in terms of the way we perceive it from within. And so to apply this to Pesach, I wonder if this is what we are doing. We ask questions – four of them to be precise – and then we answer them, using all the words of those who have come before us and tried to make sense of this monumental incident in our history that we are trying to remember. All the songs, the rambling text, the meal – this is the context within which we are placing our memories, in order to make sense of the moments in time we have conjured.

And so to conclude, the seder, branded as our opportunity to tell the Pesach story, to me is falsely advertised. The seder is a work of literary art, that uses text and music from across the centuries to fashion something new. It is something that provides a framework and a context for us, within which our aim isn’t merely to recount a story, but rather to remember an exodus of which we have no memory. The impossible task of remembering something we never experienced is much better achieved through methods that are meaningful. As was observed at the beginning, to consider the seder as a chronological recount makes no sense; rather we conjure up sensory experiences that evoke a more powerful understanding of the exodus, whilst the creation of the seder service is designed without recourse to chronology, and transcends time in such a way that it doesn’t matter that we weren’t there. As such, we can be a part of it and it can be a part of us as well.

I also encounter personal challenges in both communities, and I have struggled with my wholehearted participation in both. In both worlds, I experience an area of personal discomfort, and a genuine conflict in beliefs and values.

Anyone who is passionate about their football club knows the chants that inspire their players, or the songs that positively define their tribe in opposition to one’s rivals. But as someone who actively endorses liberal 21st century Western values, the literal meaning of these songs can often provoke discomfort. For example, can I really internally justify singing a song about burning all people from Liverpool at the stake?

So how does this bizarre analogy relate to prayer? As a proud agnostic (I believe that there is no way of knowing whether of not there exists a God or a higher divine entity), I have experienced personal conflict and discomfort in trying to resonate my positive participation in prayer with my internal rejection of the literal meaning of religious language. How can I publicly declare that God is one if I do not fully endorse idea of God’s existence?

After discussing this question with philosophers, rabbis and friends, I realise that I am not the only one who feels this. Many of us seem to find something extremely meaningful in the ritual, practice and feeling of public worship, yet at the same time we question if not reject the literal meaning behind it. The search for consistency amongst our belief and practice can present a serious challenge or even a crisis of identity.

One solution is a re-evaluation of the use religious language. Instead of being literalists or ‘religious realists’ about the meaning of religious language, we could look to non-realist ways of interpreting prayer. These interpretations do not require religious discourse to refer to something ‘true’ in external reality, but instead contain genuine and heartfelt meaning through alternative interpretations.

It can be useful to be instrumental in my use of prayer and religious language. Instead of asking the question, ‘What do these words mean?’ I instead ask, ‘What do these words do for me?’ or ‘What corrective effects does this ritual and practice have on my behaviour, emotions and feelings?’

Heschel writes, ‘Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living. It is all we can offer in return for the mystery by which we live’ (Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, p20), and there is certainly a sense to which regular ritual can help manage the astounding task of understanding the nature our existence. The beauty of public worship is that it can be multifaceted in purpose. It can transcend and diminish one’s own personal ego, or it can be the means for which an individual understands themselves and the wider world.

Of course, the earlier football analogy is limited. I do not endorse the same values as many of my fellow supporters, and draw absolute red lines that are not mirrored in my practice of public worship. However, the meanings I take from both worlds are remarkably similar.

I find worth in the power of community, how incredible it is that I am part of something much larger than myself. As I sit in synagogue on a Friday night, or gather with friends for a grassroots minyan, I surround myself with people who constitute my community, sharing the same history, experiences, emotional investment and common human values.

Added to this, the fact that this space is one where others obtain a spiritual and/or divine connection only enhances my feeling of community bonds. If everyone were to share my agnostic outlook, then this wouldn’t be the Judaism I know or connect to. It’s essential that the space has the purpose of divine communication, even if personally I don’t experience it.

I value tremendously the ability to intimately reconnect to an aspect of myself through prayer. When I enter a synagogue, I am not looking outwards to connect to ‘something’, but looking inwards to connect to a key part of who I am. Prayer, for me, is a journey of individual self-discovery, and a reminder of a crucial aspect of my personality.
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If you thought that this article was interesting, think the analogy was a complete farce, or even just want to chip in your own two cents in this discussion, please join myself and co-presenter Robin Moss for a discussion on ‘How do we pray without God?. The event is organized through LEAPP (Learning Eating and Praying Progressively) in Willesden Green on 27th February from 8.00pm-10.00pm. To find out more, get in touch with ‘Leapp London’ on Facebook.

I am a 22 year old Jewish girl from North London and I am on the hunt. No, not for a nice Jewish boy but for the ‘perfect synagogue’. It has to be friendly, welcoming, interesting and well …to be honest, I’m not sure.

Join me on a journey through our Jewish community; to the shtetl and beyond, one synagogue at a time!

Muswell Hill United Synagogue 

From the outside, Muswell Hill United looks like a mini Kinloss, with the Roll Royce front design. I followed my father through the front door, past a man giving sweets to children. Suddenly my father stopped walking when he remembered my gender and looked around inquisitively until he approached a couple of mothers nearby and asked them to take me to the Ladies’ section, as if I was five years old and this was a public swimming pool. These matriarchs looked at this twenty-two year-old specimen standing before them with their own toddlers tugging at every available limb on their body as my father disappeared. They decided to defy his wishes to literally take me to the section, probably thinking that past Bat Mitzva age, a simple hand gesture accompanied with words should suffice.

A door to the right of the entrance to the synagogue opens to the stairs that lead to a mirror, a box of scarves, a notice reminding married ladies to cover their heads and door decorated with an extra reminder for head-coverings and a chart of vacant seats in the Ladies section. Upon opening the door, I realised that this list was indeed irrelevant. There was an abundance of seating in the smart, half filled ladies’ gallery.

The gallery forms an L shaped to the square room. The relatively deep and tiered seating is modestly upholstered in a building that feels tinted by a drowsy yellowy tinge that imposes on building of it’s kind over time. The hall has a reasonable capacity and yet still seems cosy. This is possibly achieved by the depth of the ladies section and the raised bimah, which made the source of  the leyning and preaching voices feel like they were equi-distance between the sexes.

I came into the room just as the Rabbi was saying some words about the parsha this week and between the way in which he took the trouble to turn and look at all the faces in the room on both levels and the way the room was laid out, I felt slightly more involved with the proceedings.

This feeling of involvement eventually dissipated when I settled myself amongst the ladies without a prayer book in hand – all I could find on the shelves were festival siddurs. I then submerged into my spectator roll, carefully taking in the action in front of me on the bimah and the entertainment behind me from the ladies’ section.

The ladies were dressed intelligently; not as fashionably as Kinloss ladies nor as opulently as Edware United ladies in their more shiny fabrics. The Muswell Hill ladies wore quiter tones in well fitting and tailored styles, possibly from the Mangos and Zaras of the high street, and possibly the nicer parts of Marks and Spencers. The hats also tended to be of the quietly fashionable nature, with a number a fascinators mixed in for good measure.

I enjoyed the interjections given by the Rabbi during the endless stream of men boarding and departing the bimah, which were immediately accompanied by a surround-sound of commentaries from the female voices behind and next to me. A variety of subjects was covered between the identification of each person on the bimah and a possible evaluation on the reading. Of course, the commentary became increasingly interesting as restlessness grew amongst the congregation after an hour of leyning. One of the ringleaders of the friendly gaggle apologetically mentioned to me, the identified visitor, that the leyning rarely takes an hour and twenty minutes, as it did that day.

The restlessness became excitement when a tall, younger man entered the bimah just before the torah was to be put to bed for another week. Whilst the Rabbi spoke and the men were making exact and eccentric gestures to each other, the ladies frantically asked each other who this handsome man could be. One mentioned that she thought he was the entertainer, however, her opinion changed when he picked up the Torah scroll and was directed in his rotation like a dopey Adonis. At that point, it was decided that he had to be a member of the family. I felt like I was sitting amongst the panel of Loose Women commenting on a synagogue version of Big Brother. Brilliant.

After the Torah was safely returned to the Ark, the lady next to me noticed my empty lap and embarked upon a mission for a spare siddur hiding in the shelves. Eventually she returned from her kind adventure and handed me the Artscroll book for me to follow the service in, though I was only ever a couple of pages away from becoming mercilessly lost again.

Eventually we arrived at the sermon and the spotlight was on the Bar Mitzva boy and, more importantly, his parents who had become close friends with the Rabbi ever since he was appointed. He emphasised the parents’ identity as ‘Muswell Hill People’ and impressed upon the congregation how these were the sort of people who ‘muck in’ and make cross-generational jokes about football teams. It is very rare to find a synagogue with this sort of identity bred into the walls of the building, suggesting that their congregation is distinctive and possible better than others from the bimah is an interesting Rabbinical approach.

At first I wondered if I felt comfortable with this tribal method, now I realise that if you tell a congregation that they are a kind, friendly congregation then this idea planted in their mind will blossom into action. Only minutes later the chairman of the synagogue emphasised the Rabbi’s sermon by asking for people to come along and help take down the succah, a perfect opportunity for the congregants to exhibit their ‘mucking in’ skills, including, as he specified, the ladies.

From what I can gather, this is a nice, jolly community with an approachable, kind-hearted Rabbi. Perfect for ‘Muswell Hill people’, though I daresay I live in Arkley . .

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To read more from Belle of the Bimahs, go to belleofthebimahs.com or follow her on twitter@belleofthebimah