My heart goes out with love & support for trans people - my friends, colleagues, congregants - whose identity, rights & daily lives have been thrown into worry & fear by the ruling of the UK Supreme Court, at a time when trans & LGBTQI+ rights are under intense attack around the world. 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈❤💔❤️‍🩹

We were lucky enough to catch this unusual concert at the National Taichung Theatre. They played Robert Fuchs, a wonderful Austrian composer whom I’ve come to love, but whose music is hardly ever played in Britain. An evening of rarities, and we got to meet the artists.

Queer, the new Luca Guadagnino film starring Daniel Craig, is a visually gorgeous, richly symbolic film exploring the limitlesssness of yearning. I absolutely loved it. Leslie Manville is also extraordinary in it, as she is in everything.

I’m appalled by the government’s decision not to compensate the #Waspi Women, a dreadful betrayal after assuring them, when in opposition, that they would do something to address the injustice caused by Tory decisions.

I’m pleased that my MP has voted for the Assisted Dying Bill, so that this important, necessary and humane discussion can continue.

Great new production of Tales of Hoffmann at Covent Garden, with my darling Juan Diego Flórez and lots of ballet thrown in.

Though competition is tough, Netanyahu is Israel’s worst problem.
Dear friends of Israel, please consider switching your support from Israel’s current prime minister and his government to Israeli civil society. This is a heartbreaking choice, in a very bad moment, but it’s time you made it.

Thanks to Andrea & Rolando for organising a wonderful 20th anniversary celebration for Sukkat Shalom: Edinburgh Liberal Jewish Community. I am blessed as a rabbi to have such a fantastic, warm & intellectually stimulating congregation, & we are blessed to have committed people like Rolando & Andrea.

Mozart orchestra – Mahler orchestra! Spry Leonidas Kavakos conducting from the violin in Mozart, then 97-year-old Herbert Blomstedt sitting to conduct Mahler’s mighty 9th, moulding every transcendent phrase as he slowly turned the pages of the score, like an aged wizard conjuring the music from air

Demolishing a Palestinian school is not Zionism.

Violence against Palestinians is not Zionism.

Oppression of Palestinians is not Zionism.

Zionism is believing in the right of the Jewish people to live in our indigenous homeland…doesn’t everyone deserve at least that much?

📢 Worry about #COVID19 in England rose with case rates but fell during lockdowns and after vaccine rollout. Those at higher risk or from minoritised ethnic groups were more worried. No evidence fear-based government impacted on levels of worry.

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It’s not as though the Department for Education has anything else to occupy its time, like crumbling schools and plummeting numbers of underpaid teachers. This sounds like 1950s FBI stuff.

When life gives you lemons — pretend they’re etrogs. The postal service deprived my Edinburgh congregation of our etrogim this Sukkot (boo!) but we made do. I decided that, since the blessing only mentions the lulav (palm branch) we could still make the blessing.

What do you do with a bar-mitzvah boy who can’t deliver his talk above a whisper? Get his mum to repeat each paragraph after him. Worked okay. We heard about why it isn’t polite to use an elephant as a wall of your sukkah.