Rabbi Andrea’s Sermon 22nd November / 2nd Kislev 5786

“Re-digging the Wells of Isaac: A Journey towards Rehovot”

In Genesis 26 we find one of the most profound episodes of the Torah: the story of Isaac and the wells.

After a famine forces Isaac and his household to settle in the region of Gerar, the Torah tells us that Isaac reopens the wells that his father Abraham had originally dug, wells that the Philistines had blocked up after Abraham’s death. Isaac clears them, gives them the same names his father had given them, and then continues to dig new wells of his own. The first new wells provoke conflict, disputes over ownership and access, but eventually Isaac digs a well at Reḥovot, “broad spaces,” where there is finally room to flourish.

It seems like a simple pastoral tale. But our tradition, and especially our mystical tradition, saw in these wells a metaphor for spiritual life.

Let’s start with a bit of word play. The Kabbalists often distinguish between a bore (בּוֹר)— a pit, and a be’er (בְּאֵר)— a well. A pit is hollow, empty, static. A well, by contrast, is a place where living water rises from below. A bore contains only what is poured into it from above; a be’er yields water from within.

In this distinction lies an entire spiritual worldview. A bore represents knowledge received passively—tradition stored and preserved, but unmoving. A be’er represents internalised Torah. Torah that is not only inherited but actively drawn forth, renewed, and made alive by each generation. In the Kabbalistic imagination, a be’er is a human soul aligned with divine flow.

With this in mind, the story of Isaac and the wells shifts. Isaac is not merely maintaining family infrastructure, he is engaged in a spiritual practice. He reclaims the wells of his father, recovering and honouring inherited tradition. He clears away the debris, confronting the blockages and distortions that have accumulated. He digs new wells, bringing new insights and new practices that respond to his moment.

And the names Isaac gives to his wells—Esek עֵשֶׂק) Gen.26:20), Sitnah ( שִׂטְנָה26:21), Reḥovot      (רְחוֹבוֹת 26:22), are themselves markers of the inner process: contention, hostility, and finally openness and expansion. To internalise Torah we often must pass through these same stages.

This is what the Kabbalah teaches. But when I look at the succession of those names, I cannot help but think of the history of our synagogue.

Over the years, I have been privileged to meet members from all the generations of this shul, and to spend time absorbed in the minutes of Council meetings. From these encounters, a picture emerges of a community that has always been engaged in the work of digging, clearing, and re-digging wells.

When this synagogue was founded, it emerged with the purpose of conserving and at the same time actualising the Jewish past. It was never intended as a museum of memories, but as a be’er, a well of living Judaism, where inherited practice could flourish anew in a very different social and cultural environment.

From the very beginning, we found ourselves in dialogue, sometimes in tension, with the Reform movement of that period. These were not minor disputes.

Some were halachic, such as the painful question of funerals for stillborn infants. Traditional halachah does not allow a formal levoyah for a stillbirth; and there were historical reasons for this, rooted in an era when infant mortality was tragically common. In the 1960s, neither Liberal nor Reform frameworks knew how to respond pastorally. Yet, as the story is remembered in our community, Rabbi Rosenblum quietly set aside that prohibition and officiated at these ceremonies, meeting the family’s spiritual need to mourn, to grieve, to mark, and then to remember. It was a moment of matching tradition with compassion, of turning a pit of pain into a well of comfort.

But there were other tensions at play. We should be honest that, in the 1960s, the Reform movement in Britain was still influenced by an ideological anti-Zionism, something that feels almost unimaginable today, but that deeply shaped communal relationships of that era. [1]  Zionism and support for Israel have always been part of this synagogue’s ethos. I say this not only as a Reform Rabbi who personally stands in the Revisionist Zionist tradition, much to the dismay of certain far-left commentators who have publicly called for my dismissal, but as the custodian of a book on my shelf signed by Abba Eban, a gift to Rabbi Rosenblum when the great Zionist statesman visited Brighton.

From the outset, two guiding principles shaped our identity: a compassionate (not “lenient”, compassionate), approach to Jewish normative tradition, and an unequivocal support for the State of Israel as the beginning of our people’s redemption. These were not just political or procedural positions. They were expressions of our culture, of our Jewish culture. They were different spiritual strategies for accessing our wells.

Rabbi Rosenblum chose a path that valued tradition, but also understood that tradition is not truly honoured if it is frozen. A bore may store water, but eventually it turns stagnant. A be’er must stay open, flowing.

There is another aspect of our history that deserves to be remembered, perhaps especially today. The founders of our synagogue sought a form of Jewish observance that was relaxed, spiritually sincere, and, crucially, free of the separation between men and women. But this was not egalitarianism in the contemporary sense. It was a modest but meaningful adjustment: no mechitzah; families praying together; a community not divided by gender boundaries. Their intent was family unity, not yet full equality.

We are now a fully egalitarian congregation. But the journey from non-separation to equality has not been an easy one. It came with debates, lacerations, internal conflicts, and moments of real pain. There were heated arguments, principled resignations, and seasons in which it felt as though the very identity of the synagogue was being renegotiated. Many feared we were moving too quickly.

And yet, through all this, we kept digging. What began simply as a refusal to separate men and women gradually opened the way to something deeper: full gender equality in ritual participation, leadership, and spiritual voice. Not because we were imitating trends, but because we refused to fossilise. We refused to let our wells fill with the debris of “this is how things have always been.”

Like Isaac, we learned that preserving the past sometimes requires transforming it. Honouring Abraham’s wells means clearing them, widening them, and at times digging entirely new ones.

And today, this perspective is not optional. No young Jewish woman in our shul would accept a Bat Mitzvah “in a minor key”: without access to the Torah; without standing at the reading desk; without offering her d’var Torah with the same dignity as her male peers; without the option of wearing a tallit. Nor should she. A Judaism that relegates its daughters to second-class status is a Judaism that has stopped drawing from its own living water.

We have also changed, necessarily, in our relationship to the Shoah. For decades, Jewish identity in many parts of the world was constructed around the memory of the Holocaust. For our community this was not abstract. The generation that lived through the Shoah was present here in this very synagogue.

But those generations are no longer with us. The emotional immediacy, the first-hand testimony, the living memory, these have passed into history. And we face a new challenge: how do we transmit their stories without reducing Jewish identity to persecution and trauma? How do we ensure that our children inherit not only the memory of suffering but also the legacy of creativity, joy, resilience, Torah, and life?

We must resist the temptation to make the Shoah the centrepiece of Jewish identity for people who never met survivors. Memory is a well, not a pit. It must be a be’er, not a bore, a source of water, not a place to drown.

The world has changed. Our community has changed. The questions facing today’s Jews are not the questions of the 1950s or 1960s. They are not even the questions of twenty years ago. We live in a time of shifting identities, new family structures, new understandings of gender, and new theological sensibilities.

Younger Jews are asking not only, “What does Judaism command?” but also, “What does Judaism offer my life? What wells of meaning does it open for me?” They will not be moved by a Jewish identity based solely on suffering. They will not be inspired by a community that clings to the past without applying it to the present. They seek a Judaism that is alive, a be’er, not a bore.

And here the names of Isaac’s wells speak directly into our story.

Esekעֵשֶׂק— contention.

This is where Isaac first meets resistance, where his attempt to reopen a source of life is met with suspicion and territorial anxiety. We, too, have had our seasons of Esek: moments when even the smallest step toward inclusion, renewal, or deeper engagement with our own tradition provoked debate and defensiveness. There were years when internal conversations were tense, when every proposal seemed to threaten someone’s sense of stability, when some feared that new practices would erase the forms they cherished.

Sitnah—שִׂטְנָה— hostility, opposition.

If Esek is argument, Sitnah is something more visceral: resistance not only to the idea of change, but to the emotions it stirs. Isaac’s second well is not merely contested; it is actively opposed. We, too, have known times when resistance felt personal and painful, when members left, when friendships were strained under the weight of disagreement. Sitnah was felt in our debates about egalitarianism, about the role of women in leadership. It was felt in our wrestling with the memory of the Shoah, how to honour it without allowing it to define every dimension of Jewish identity; how to transmit memory without imprisoning the next generation in trauma. And yet, like Isaac, we did not stop at Sitnah. We absorbed the pain, we listened, we argued, we mourned, but we kept digging.

Reḥovot—רְחוֹבוֹת—“ broad spaces,” open space, the place where flourishing becomes possible.

Here the Torah says: ki hirchiv Adonai lanu—“for now God has made space for us.” Reḥovot is the well of emergence, the moment when persistence finally yields room to live. Isaac reaches Reḥovot only because he does not turn back; he digs until the earth gives way. So have we.

Our own Reḥovot is not a single moment. It is the community we have slowly, courageously become: rooted in tradition yet willing to interpret it anew; compassionate rather than rigid; egalitarian because dignity demands no less; a home where the memory of the Shoah is honoured without becoming the sole narrative of Jewish existence.

But Reḥovot is not a destination. It is a practice, a refusal to let the wells close again. And this is where we must speak clearly into our present reality.

We are now engaged in the redevelopment of our building: a necessary reshaping of the physical space so that it can continue to serve the spiritual needs of the next generations. For some, this has become yet another Esek, yet another Sitnah.

Let me say this with affection but also with firmness: We cannot allow ourselves to become prisoners of an architecture, physical or spiritual, designed for a different century, a different world, a different Jewish reality. The building of the 1960s was a tool, not a shrine. Our founders did not worship bricks and committee structures; they used them. They built a be’er, not a museum.

A Judaism that worships the physical building, as if these were the essence of the covenant, mistakes the frame for the painting.

Jewish tradition honours disagreement. But it also demands responsibility. As we continue to “dig” in the form of our redevelopment, we must uphold the ethical commitments that make a Jewish community worthy of its name.

First, we must sustain shared decision-making. Beit knesset means “house of gathering,” not “house of factions.” Our founders expected vigorous debate, but they also expected the community to move forward together, honouring decisions reached through due process, through majority, through sincerity. Respect for decisions does not mean silence; it means dignity.

Second, debates among Jews must remain among Jews. The Talmud warns against airing our disputes before outsiders. The halachic principle of dina de-malkhuta dina obliges us to respect civic authorities, but not to invite them into sacred disagreements that belong within the kehillah.

To bring non-Jewish actors into our internal conflicts, to weaponise external agencies against our own community, is to betray the privacy, the integrity, and the holiness of Jewish communal space. Our founders would never have tolerated such a breach.

Third, we must speak our views with our own names. Anonymous websites, whispered campaigns, these are not the ways of our people. Jewish moral life is built on accountability. Anonymous attacks corrode trust. They damage souls. They choke the wells.

A community is a covenant. A covenant needs signatures, not shadows.

Reḥovot demands transparency, courage, and mutual respect. That is how we keep the wells open. That is how we ensure that disagreement does not become hostility, that debate does not become sabotage, that memory does not become paralysis.

Our founders dug wells for their time. We must dig wells for ours. We honour them not by preserving their building exactly as it was, but by preserving their spirit, their bravery, their imagination, their refusal to accept that “it was better before.”

A synagogue that refuses to change becomes a pit. A synagogue that keeps digging becomes a well.

We cannot remain prisoners of the building, or the debates, or the assumptions of the 1960s. This synagogue, beautiful and beloved as it is, was never meant to be a shrine to the past. It was meant to be a be’er, a source of flowing water.

We cannot become merely caretakers of abandoned wells. We must continue digging, open new wells. Then we will hear the echo of Isaac’s words:

“Now God has made space for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.”

(1) S. A. Cohen, “Opposition to Zionism before and during the First World War,” Jewish Journal of Sociology, 1987; J. Romain, Tradition and Change: A History of Reform Judaism in Britain 1840–1995, London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1995, pp. 333 ff; L. Rigal and R. Rosenberg, Liberal Judaism: The First Hundred Years, London: Liberal Judaism, 2004, pp. 217–229.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Dr. Andrea Zanardo, PhD