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A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg

Good Morning.

My son is an accomplished climber. I’m not; I’ve no head for heights.

‘I can’t do this,’ I said as we stood at the summit of Benn Eighe, a beautiful mountain in the northwest of Scotland. I stared uneasily at the ridge ahead, the grey scree falling steeply away below.

‘It’s not as bad as it looks,’ my son assured me. Mercifully he was right, ninety per cent of the way. For the rest, I took as my motto ‘Don’t look now,’ and stared firmly at my hands, not at the drop beneath.

The climb (which, I admit, was wonderful in the end) reminded me of the ancient description of the Jewish New Year, coming this weekend, when ‘all who enter the world pass before God like bnei maron.’ Unsure what those Hebrew words meant, later rabbis suggested they might refer to the steep ascent up Mount Meron in the Galilee, so narrow no two can walk side by side.

It's a metaphor of how God sees each of us as a unique individual, solely responsible for our choices and actions.

‘But that’s not true,’ commented a friend. ‘What about those in front of and behind us? And the people whose voices we carry inside us, in our heads and hearts? We’re never truly alone.’

I’m less sure. Our mass communication era is also an age of deep isolation. Social media aren’t a substitute for a community which cares. Loneliness is real.

So I pray that however lonely life’s path, we try to walk side by side, and where the way is too steep and narrow, we reach out a hand from before or behind, and give each other the courage to keep going.

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