A community that explores the meaning of our Jewishness in a creative and open way
KLS is a Liberal community where all genders sit together and participate as equals in services.
We mainly read from the standard Liberal Judaism service prayer book, Siddur Lev Chadash (‘New Heart’). It combines the core traditional prayers with contemporary readings, poems and meditations from a variety of Jewish sources.
Rabbi Lev leads most services, supported by members of our voluntary and lay leadership team. Training and support is given to anyone wishing to join this team, including Liberal Judaism’s acclaimed Ba’alei Tefillah lay leadership programme.
Services are in a mixture of English and Hebrew, accompanied by English translations. Transliterated prayer sheets (Hebrew using the Roman alphabet) are available so everyone including those not fluent in reading Hebrew can follow and join in.
Services are designed to be inclusive, accessible and welcoming, with pauses for explanation or reflection on the prayers being read.
We have a wide range of services to suit the different prayer needs of our members and to give expression to our Judaism in different ways. They cater for families as well as those wishing to study in smaller groups.
We hold special services for particular occasions throughout the year - for example, Interfaith servies and services marking Remembrance Day. We also hold services for all the main Jewish festivals.
All of our Festival, Shabbat morning, and most of our Shabbat evening services are livestreamed on our Facebook page and our YouTube channel. dd If you attend a service, you may be visible on the live stream, particularly if you are called to the Bimah. If you would rather not be on the stream make yourselves known to our livesteam operators.
Shabbat Services
Our busy secular world makes it difficult to ‘remember and observe’ the Sabbath day as a day of rest as the Torah instructs. At KLS we make it possible!
All Shabbat services are followed by a Kiddush, a chance for members to catch up and have a chat over some challah and wine.
We have a variety of successful different service formats but the usual pattern is as follows. However, do check our weekly bulletin (sign-up below) or contact the office for confirmation as sometimes these are subject to change.
We hold Shabbat services every Friday evening and Saturday morning.
Special services
From time to time we hold special themed services or invite a guest to speak on a particular topic of interest to the community.
Examples include:
Czech scrolls – A service to honour the memories of three Czech Jewish communities, Tabor, Rychnov and Blatna, which were lost in the Holocaust but whose scrolls are treasured by KLS.
Pride – A service and chavurah supper to celebrate the diversity and openness of our community and to acknowledge the work needed to spread this to some other countries where it is still a crime to be part of the LGBT community.
Recent talks with a guest speaker have been on the topics of mental health awareness, homelessness and human rights.