I was in London for Shabbat with 30 other lecturers in a big Torah festival sponsored by the Mizrachi movement with thousands of participants. Here is what Rabbi Reuven Taragin
of Israel said on Shabbat.
It seems to me that it’s important, and not only for British ears:
“It’s not enough to care for yourself. In Parshat Kedoshim we learn how each of us can, and should, sanctify our lives – by behaving well, by being kind to the elderly and the poor, by loving our fellow man as ourselves, and more. But then comes Parshat Emor, which starts with a directive: ‘Emor – Say!’ Tell your message to the whole world. Do not be satisfied with just self-correction.
“The root of ‘say’ (alef-mem-reish) actually appears three times in the first verse so that we get the point. We do not live only as individuals and communities. We are a nation that has a great message to convey to the whole world.
“We should not simply ‘copy and paste’ other people’s cultures, and we should not think that the Jewish message is relevant only to our personal lives. Faced with terrorism and anti-Semitism and with various ethical and moral crises in the world, the Jewish nation should not
feel ashamed to finally sound its own original Jewish voice. They are waiting to hear us.”