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A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with Rabbi Warren Elf

Good morning.

Today is the Epiphany, which falls on the 12th day after Christmas. Epiphany means 'revelation' and is the day when the Magi – the wise men who visited the child Jesus, bringing their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

And today also celebrates the Birth of Guru Gobind Singh, the last of the 10 human Gurus of the Sikh faith. Born in 1666 he is known for creating the Khalsa, a community of committed Sikhs who wore visible symbols of their faith and trained as warriors. Today the Khalsa refers to the community of baptised Sikhs who have undergone the Amrit initiation ceremony.

In Judaism, we have a similar immersion ceremony to the one Jesus went through when he was baptised and the one that members of the Khalsa undergo. Tevilah, immersion in a ritual bath, called a Mikveh, or a natural confluence of water is something that people undergo when they convert to Judaism or before special occasions, such as the Sabbath or getting married, or after periods of ritual impurity – which can be for a variety of reasons.

Interestingly the word Mikveh is also from the same root as the Hebrew word for hope or trust. This suggests that to be baptised or to undergo Tevilah is about putting our trust in something that we believe to be a source of hope for us, at that time and throughout our lives.

So my prayer today is that I can trust enough and have hope that faith, belief and the way we live our lives can give us the confidence to find rituals and actions to enable us to work for a better future, this year and always.

Amen.