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Shabbat starts on Friday at 6:05pm and ends on Saturday night at 7:03pm. The weekly Torah portion is Vayeilech and it is Shabbat Shuva.

Mincha continues at 1pm at A-P GF/459 Collins on Mon using the WhatsApp group to confirm numbers.

Weekly sushi & shiur is in recess until after Sukkot (usually on Wed at 1.10pm (after mincha) at A-P GF/459 Collins – and via zoom). Current topic: tax exempt status of Torah scholars. Details here and on the WhatsApp group.

Thought of the Week with thanks to Ya’akov Waller.

In the Haftarah of Shabbat Shuva, we read the prophet Hosea’s famous cry from which this Shabbat takes its name. To return from their fallen state, Hosea exhorts the nation to return to God, warning that reliance on foreign powers is no substitute because “Assyria will not save us”.

This impulse toward insularity feels especially prescient today, when Israel – both as a people and a state – often feels abandoned on the international stage.

But it is important not to allow that understandable impulse harden into a posture myopic or reckless inwardness.

For while Hosea teaches us the importance of self-sufficiency from Assyria or any other foreign power, the liturgy of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur remind us, again and again, of the centrality of Israel’s reputation in the eyes of world.

Thus, we beseech God to give honour to Israel (“ובכן תן כבוד ה׳ לעמך”), that honour being the necessary precondition to happiness in the land (“שמחה לארצך”), joy in Jerusalem (“ששון לעירך”), and ultimately the complete redemption.