Year in review 2025

[liv]

My mother died in March. That feels like basically the only thing that happened this year, but of course it's not. Theoretically you stay in full mourning for a parent for a whole year (which hasn't ended yet); I haven't quite managed that, as done properly it's really quite intense, no social gatherings or live music for example, but it has definitely been the major theme in my life. And helping Dad to figure out what his life will be like as a widow.

I continued to be a student rabbi, making it through to the halfway point of my studies. I took on more and more complex rabbinic work, and got to know the incoming first year students. (We're the grownups now, there is actually only one finalist ahead of my cohort.) My much awaited and also somewhat dreaded trip to Israel got cancelled, due to the decision point coinciding with the particularly scary time when Israel was actively at war with Iran. I did some other short travel, even making it to Germany and Sweden.

Significant events:

• Mum went from being officially terminally ill but mostly coping at the beginning of the year, to the drugs not working and being in a lot of pain in January-February, to actively dying. March-April was all the immediate aftermath of her death.
• I had a few days with jack in Skegness, which I remember basically nothing about because it was in the middle of the final weeks of Mum's life. I think we stayed in a cute tiny house and did a bit of walking in the countryside. I have more memories of our trip to Norfolk in May.
• I spent a very intense and overwhelming week in Germany at an Abrahamic faith retreat.
• doseybat and verazea got married on a lightship on the Thames, and my partners had a Jewish blessing of their 20-year-old marriage, both on the same weekend.
• I did a completely absurd amount of travelling for the High Holy Days, first day Rosh HaShanah in Southampton, second day in the Isle of Wight accompanied by the intrepid cjwatson, Shabbat Shuva in Stoke, Yom Kippur in Cornwall where I had to respond to the first fatal antisemitic attack in this country in my lifetime, Succot back home in Cambridge, a very flying visit to Sweden for the Shabbat during Succot with ghoti_mhic_uait, and back for Simchat Torah and returning to college.

Reading Basically the only thing I did with my unexpected free summer was to read a bunch of novels and actually get round to writing them up! Since then, because of all the aforementioned travel, I have also read:

• The Incandescent by Emily Tesh. This ought to have been my favourite book ever, because I totally loved Some desperate glory and I am a complete sucker for school stories from the POV of teachers. It is very good, definitely stands out over several other Dark Academia / Harry Potter for grownups books that have come out recently. Saffy Walden is probably the character most like me I've ever seen in fiction and I do feel really quite called out by this book; it's very clear about how much damage a well-meaning person can do when they're over-invested in their own competence and a bit overly dedicated to their job. The portrayal of the school and the English class system and all the stuff that JKR fundamentally doesn't get is pitch perfect. But somehow the pacing didn't quite work for me; the plot twist where the big bad threat is not averted but actually happens should be breathtaking but Tesh pulls her punches by time skipping to the happy ending, and it all seems a bit too simple. So a lot to admire, but it's not quite the perfect book I hoped for. This Liz Bourke review will probably give you a pretty good idea whether you will enjoy the book!
  
  
• The Summer Book by Tove Jansson. This was recommended by my Principal during a panel discussion on books that changed our lives, and I'd been meaning to read it for a while. It's very lovely and not much like anything else; I really admired the characterization of the motherless Sophia and her grumpy but caring grandmother. It's a kind of series of vignettes which in some ways is as much about the island as the people, but absolutely one of the best portrayals I've seen of a young child who is astute but lacks world knowledge. In a way nothing happens in it, but it's still very absorbing.
  
  
• Last friends by Jane Gardam. I picked this up in a charity shop because I forgot to take my Kindle to Cornwall when I had long train journeys. It's actually the third in the Old Filth trilogy and I wasn't totally convinced by the first two. It's good in the way that Gardam's books are always good, really deep character exploration particularly of people who are a bit weird in some way. The characters in LF are in the 2010s the last survivors of the generation directly affected by WW2. They are off-puttingly posh but also extremely real people as Gardam's characters always are.

So 10 books this year, of which Some Desperate Glory was definitely the stand-out.

Games Nothing really dominated this year, we've been dipping in to this and that. Still a fair amount of Innovation. When we have a bit more brain, Apiary. Very much a gamers' game and jack is much better at it than me. With the kids, bouncing between Dominion (usually the base game), which A likes, and Ascension which most of the rest of the family prefer. Continuing with party games like Apples to Apples and Bezzerwizzer (which is Trivial Pursuits with actually enjoyable gameplay) and the surprisingly challenging Chameleon. We got a bunch of games for end of year gifting season so I'll talk more about them in the new year.

Video games, mainly Wordatro, which is mostly just brain-soothing solving anagrams, with occasional forays into Roguebook when I have time to play a longer game. It's very pretty and all the cards are solid, but after a few plays it starts to suffer from the fact that it's all procedurally generated and there's no real plot. On the phone, Backpack Brawl (specifically that one and not lots of other games with similar names, the maker is Azur Interactive), where you merge items which are then used in an automated fight. It's supposedly PvP but I suspect all the 'opponents' are just scripts, you never have to wait to start a game or have someone quit on you midway or lose because the internet connection drops midgame. Fake PvP is totally fine with me! And my daily puzzles are Bracket City and recently The Daily Spell (thanks to radiantfracture for the extremely relevant rec!)

Media Um, not really? I watched I think two films in the entire year, Tron: Ares (2025) with cjwatson for his birthday, right at the end of its cinema run so we had to go all the way to Bedford, and we were just about the only people in the cinema. It is exactly what I wanted from a sequel to Tron, and I ended up asking for the Nine Inch Nails soundtrack for my birthday. Is it a good film if you're not precisely my age and from my subculture with nostalgia for the original Tron? No, no it is not, but it was perfect for me.

And yesterday Wake up, dead man (2025) with jack, because I foolishly went to a big 40^th birthday party where it was inconvenient to mask (food, dancing, loud background noise but lots of people I wanted to talk to), and have come away with a horrible cold and wasn't well enough for much else other than vegetating in front of a screen. Anyway it is perhaps not quite as awesome as the first two Benoit Blanc pieces, but twisty and full of memorably unpleasant characters. Basically no TV, I think we've managed a smattering of episodes of Owl House across the year and that's it. I listened to no music whatsoever. I've just started to get the hang of podcasts but nothing very systematic. Mostly All else is commentary from Alyth.

Culture:

• Ballet Shoes in the theatre with ghoti_mhic_uait.
  
• Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique at my first ever Prom with my family of origin.

Places:

• Lincolnshire with jack in February
  
• Norfolk with jack in May
  
• Northamptonshire a few times to hang out with jack's Mum, and once for a retreat supporting lay service leaders
  
• Brighton for P'tite Soeur's birthday
  
• Educational trip to Portsmouth with ghoti_mhic_uait and the kids
  
• Vallendar, Germany
  
• Stockholm, Sweden with ghoti_mhic_uait. Aside from the visit to the Progressive community which was the purpose of the trip, we made it to Skogskyrkogården the famous cemetery (thanks to blue_mai for letting me know that this world heritage site was near where I used to live, years ago!) and the delightful transport museum.
  
• Manchester to visit angelofthenorth and housemates, and for the golden anniversary of very old friends of Mum's

Plague:
Did not get Covid this year, did get a couple of very bad colds including the one that's knocked me out this week. I was vaccinated (school reimbursed me for the exorbitant cost) in spring before Pesach, but haven't managed to get an autumn / winter booster. I hoped to get a dose before travelling for the High Holy Days but availability didn't start until mid-October, too late not only for me but for the start of school and university terms. And since then I've been so busy I just haven't got round to it, I will try again in January. Most of my family also managed to avoid the plague, so I suppose that's something. My immune-compromised sister-out-law did catch it but seems to have come through ok.

Rabbinic work:
Reform services in:

• Hull
  
• Mosaic Reform (Stanmore), several times as I was covering the rabbi's sabbatical leave. Including first day Pesach.
  
• Kehillat Kernow (Cornwall), Shabbat and Yom Kippur
  
• South Hampshire, Rosh HaShanah
  
• Isle of Wight, Rosh HaShanah
  
• Oaks Lane (Essex), as part of a complex, team-lead Shavuot
  
• Bromley (including chanting the Torah portion in public for the first time, with the special 'shalshelet' note)
  
• Edgware and Hendon (shiva prayers, as part of placement)
  
• Amazingly enough since they don't approve of rabbis, two services in my own home community in Cambridge, once co-leading with cjwatson who is building up service leading skills, and once as a pickup because the person on the rota dropped out at the last minute due to illness
  

Liberal services in:

• Birmingham
  
• ELELS (Woodford) for placement
  
• Mosaic Liberal

Orthodox services in Stoke-on-Trent, Shabbat Shuva plus one stone setting. Non-denominational but Reform-ish Seder at Mosaic, joint across all three communities.

Teaching:

• Coached one young man for bar mitzvah
  
• Continued to teach Hebrew to adult beginners and improvers in Cambridge
  
• One-off conversion class sessions for Mosaic
  
• One-off conversion class sessions for Shaarei Tzedek (Whetstone)

Dreamwidth
13 posts this year, same as last year but most of them are locked posts about Mum with occasional general diary updates. Didn't really write any essays. I read everything, I'm still appreciating the people I met via the friending meme two years ago, but I'm not exactly reciprocating as well as I'd like.

End of year name and pronouns update No change from last year. Rachel or Liv if you know me in person or online, Dr B if you're being formal. She/her > Neopronouns eg zie/hir > they or he. No shortenings / nicknames for my first names, no thankyou to Mrs. I am not a rabbi yet and should not be referred to as Rabbi, but if you're curious, if everything goes to plan I will eventually be 'Rabbi Dr B' in formal contexts, or 'R Rachel' informally.

Previous versions: [2004] [2005] [2006] [2007] [2008] [2009] [2010] [2011] [2012] [2013] [2014] [2017] [2018] [2019] [2020] [2021] [2022] [2023][2024] Amazingly this is my 19th review of the year; I've been going since 2004 but there were a couple of years in the middle I missed out.