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From Julia Neuberger Senior Rabbi at the west London Synagogue:

After this broadcast, I’m off ‘on the road’ with one of my rabbi colleagues, to visit some of our housebound members and blow the shofar- the ram’s horn- for them, for the second day of Jewish new year. We won’t blow it as well as our shofar blower at the services yesterday who managed a full four minutes for the final blast, with people holding their breath as his puff gradually ran out. But at least they will get to hear the haunting sound of the New Year, calling us Jews to account. For the tension in synagogue during the day is quite considerable, the level of concentration very high, and you can feel how important people feel it is to be there, to meet their fellow congregants, to be part of the community once again.

The centrepiece of the service, the reading from the Torah, is from Genesis, the story of the binding of Isaac. For Christians this is the sacrifice of Isaac. But for us Jews, the whole point is that God doesn’t want Abraham to sacrifice his son, that the angel says ‘Stop!’ There’s a ram caught in the thicket behind you. You can sacrifice that.’ The message is that human sacrifice is wrong- and, ultimately, all human life is sacred. That’s why our toast is ‘L’chayyim’, ‘to life’, when we drink. That’s why we think you must do everything to preserve life.

But it also means we can’t put out of our minds the atrocities and killing of people world-wide. And for us in Europe we need to remember the desperate migrants who are trying to reach our shores, whom Europe does not want, and the huge number of them dying- 1,530 feared drowned so far in 2018- in their attempt. If ‘l’chayyim’ is to mean anything, it must be to save the lives of these desperate people, children amongst them. This Jewish New Year, as migrants are largely forgotten, we need to remember them, and fight for their lives. L’chayyim. To life. Happy New Year.

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