Announcer: preamble… Now on BBC1, as the Jewish community prepares to celebrate the feast of Rosh Hashanah, which heralds the Jewish New Year, the Chief Rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sacks, addresses the issue of just what it is to be Jewish today. Some scenes contain flashing lights.
Rabbi Sacks: For many people today, religion is a little like this funfair, time out from the real world, something you do on weekends, a self-contained experience with no connection to the rest of life. In fact, if you look at your newspapers for the bit about religion, you'll probably find it tucked somewhere between gardening and the travel page. God has become part of the leisure industry.
But on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the Jewish New Year and the Day of Atonement, we're brought face to face with a quite different idea. That faith is part of the texture of life itself. It shapes who we are and what we do.
And I think that's a truer picture of what religion really is. It isn't a rollercoaster ride, five minutes of fear and trembling, when you can forget the rest of the world. Faith is the way we see the world, the landscape of our ideals. And it makes us grow because it teaches us that we can succeed against the odds and do great things.
We're as big as the things in which we believe. So this year, I want to see how Jewish faith has shaped the lives of some people in some very different walks of life.
[music]
[Rabbi Sacks makes the blessing over affixing a mezuzah to a doorpost]
The theme of Rosh Hashanah is life. Especially new life, the miracle of childbirth.
So I wanted to talk to Robert Winston, one of Britain's leading fertility specialists.
Prof. Robert Winston: Listen, first, I think this is the first IVF baby born from a Turkish parent. This is the first child born as a result of screening for genetic disorders back in 1990. She's now eight. And many of them are women who were trying for 12, 15, 18 years to get pregnant. So there's some very, very sad and hard stories.
And that's a birthday party we had for a thousand babies.
Rabbi Sacks: One of the things that strikes me on this holiest set of days in the Jewish year, on Rosh Hashanah, all the biblical readings that we have are about women who can't have children, who pray to have children. Sarah, Rachel, Hannah.
Did you feel that your faith was, as it were, endorsing what you were doing about the tragedy of infertility?
Robert: Yes, I think there has been a compulsion. I mean, the story of Hannah, for example, is an obvious example, because the distress that she palpably exhibits in that story is so clear. There's a cry.
Rachel always makes a scream. It's the most extraordinary statement.
Rabbi Sacks: Give me children or else I'm dead.
Robert: Yes, or else I die. And that pain is really something which I think is felt in modern times. It's not just in a primitive society, but it's something which I think all people feel.
And I suppose, I mean, if one was going to link my work with Jewish values, I think essentially there's no question it's been a major lead and guidance because there is this notion of life, the respect for life, which is bound up, I think, with the idea of Rosh Hashanah.
Rabbi Sacks: The great theme of the High Holy Days is justice. God sits in judgement on our lives. So to meet someone for whom that idea has been an inspiration, I've come to see Hazel Cosgrove, the first woman in Scotland to become a judge.
So when did you first decide you wanted to go into law?
Judge Hazel Cosgrove: Well, I grew up in Glasgow, and I was very influenced during my teenage years by what I learned at the Hebrew classes.
Rabbi Sacks: What was it in particular? I studied the Hebrew Bible, and it was the message that comes through from the texts of the basic human rights, of the dignity, inalienable dignity of the individual human being, and of the concept of equality before the law. “Just as justice shalt thou pursue, that thou mayest live.”
And it seemed to be clear from these words that a system of justice, which is accessible to all, fair and impartial, is the very lifeblood of a community. And these notions of human rights have their roots in the Hebrew Bible and have developed in rabbinic law long before any European convention on human rights.
And it seemed to me that the passion for justice, which we find in the Bible, is inspirational, and studying the law seemed to be a natural progression from that.
[music]
Rabbi Sacks: Rosh Hashanah is about time. A year has just passed, a new one is about to begin.
And so I've come to the Millennium Dome, this massive tribute to a thousand years, to ask the question, what is time? Is it something that just passes, or something from which we learn?
In Judaism, the real guardians of time are our teachers. They're the ones who join our past to our future by teaching our children where we came from and where we're going to. And that's why I've come here to meet Daniel Rynhold, a young teacher.
So, Daniel, this is, when it's ready, going to be one of the great educational ventures of all time. What is the connection between education and time?
Daniel Rynhold: Well, education, apart from being passing on of information, is also very much to do with the passing on of values and ideals. And the manner in which we acquire our values and ideals is through a sense of community with the past. And through placing ourselves within a narrative that continues from the past that we can carry through to the future.
Rabbi Sacks: So for you, education isn't just something that takes place in the classroom?
Daniel: No, absolutely not. Within Judaism, faith has generally been embodied, rather than in a set of beliefs, in a set of actions. We're actually told that there are certain actions that we're supposed to do. And I think it's actually through constantly acting, this is a way that we educate and create education as well as faith.
Rabbi Sacks: Judaism is a religion of the family.
So I've come here to the National Theatre to meet actress Maureen Lipman to talk about what family means to her.
Maureen Lipman: It's very, very important. It's ritual which makes us feel rooted to the past and rooted to the future.
At the beginning of this show, I come into sight playing Aunt Eller churning butter, at the end of quite a long sequence which establishes a beautiful dawn. And my words to myself, ‘There are roots growing from my feet through this wooden stage.’ And those roots are Oklahoma roots, you know.
So that hopefully by the time, you know, (I'm now speaking with a Jewish accent rather than an Oklahoma one). It is to do with that feeling of the earth beneath your feet. And I think that's a conscious race memory that we don't hopefully have to strive for.
It's something that comes with...
Rabbi Sacks: We take our roots with us.
Maureen: I think so. We have to take our roots with us in our case, don't we? But the family thing is not just a Jewish thing, it's an immigrant thing, isn't it? Because what have you got but your flesh and blood and a few pots and pans when you come over here and they say ’What's your name? And you say, ‘Ich vergessen,’ meaning I've forgotten, and you're Ike Ferguson for the rest of your life, the old joke.
That is what you carry with you. It's the shell on your back. It's your home and it's your tradition.
Rabbi Sacks: A great rabbi, Yisrael Salanter, once said, ‘When I was young, I tried to change the world, but the world didn't change. So I tried to change my town, but the town didn't change. Then I tried to change my family, but my family didn't change. And then I realised, first, I must change myself.’
That, for me, is the dazzling truth at the heart of faith. Because we can change ourselves, we can begin to change the world, and we can change ourselves because God is with us, telling us that our aspirations are not illusions, our hopes are not just dreams.
Faith is what leads ordinary people to live extraordinary lives.
Do you feel there's some sense in which our faith as Jews actually encourages us to play a key role in wider society?
Judge Hazel Cosgrove: I think that's right. I'm very conscious of living in two separate and distinct cultures, the secular legal world and the traditional world of Jewish values.
But it's a great privilege to be able to give and take from both and to try and achieve a synthesis between the two. The Scots and the Jews have much in common. They have a love of the Old Testament, strong family traditions, a strong tradition of education, of communal spirit, and an enlightened legal system.
So they are two cultures which it is possible to combine.
Rabbi Sacks: Do people ever accuse you of playing God?
Prof. Robert Winston: Well, they do, but I don't think that we're playing God. I think what we're doing is promoting life. We're using what has been given to us for the best possible benefit. I mean, obviously, in the field that I'm working, there are constant ethical dilemmas, but I can absolutely truthfully say that the Jewish principles have always been a very solid basis for making decisions.
And you don't need to impose your views on other people, but they provide a guide for how you might approach them with other people who are not Jewish.
I mean, in Judaism, there's such strong logic, which is so attractive. There's a pragmatism, which is immensely valuable, which, I mean, helps one to find one's way through what are actually very difficult journeys sometimes.
Rabbi Sacks: The Bible actually, in one of the very famous verses, talks about handing on the tradition to our children.
Daniel Rynhold: Yes, I mean, it's something that as Jews we say twice every day, morning and evening, “v’shinantam levanecha,” that we should teach to our children, the Torah, and pass it on. It's something that's part of our everyday life and has been put into the services daily. Right.
Rabbi Sacks: So, again, that's education as something we're all commanded to do as parents in the context of the home. And it builds the home and the school as really the two key institutions of Jewish life, doesn't it?
Daniel: It does. It, in a sense, puts the responsibility of being a teacher upon all of us, not just those who are qualified as professional teachers. Teaching is something that we are meant to do, whether we're actually qualified in doing it in a school environment or whether we should be doing it in a home environment or, indeed, in any other environment that we might find ourselves in.
Rabbi Sacks: Jewish humour.
Maureen Lipman: Jewish humour.
Rabbi Sacks: Is there such a thing? Is all humour a universal language?
Maureen: Well, there's the humour of self-defence, isn't there? And maybe a great deal of humour comes from making people laugh before they throw a conker at you. I think that, again it comes back to being an outsider in a possibly hostile environment. That if you can make people laugh, you can probably befriend them and bestride cultural differences. That's the incredible thing about humour.
We are embarrassed by anything that's too Jewish because it's raising our head above the parapet. At the end of the day, humour is probably one's saving grace in whatever situation.
Rabbi Sacks: Humour is what protects hope in difficult situations, doesn't it? Or keeps your humanity when everything around you is taking it away.
Maureen: That's right, yes.
Rabbi Sacks: When you think about your feelings on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, these are days that must mean a great deal to you because these are days of judgement.
Hazel: That's right. I have this powerful image of God sitting on the throne as a Judge and I understand the difficult decisions that a judge has to make, but we all have a hearing before God, who listens patiently, and if we say we're sorry, He forgives us.
Maureen: Very often, I have the normal problems that you must have and that every person of every denomination has, of saying, where was He when that happened? And yet He was unquestionably there when I was ill, helped me through it, and I keep meaning to do a lot better. And that's what Yom Kippur is about, meaning to do a lot better. So I'll have another go this year.
Daniel: The key message for me… it's a time to pause and think and reflect on the kind of person you have been and the kind of person that you want to be. This is giving you the opportunity, saying, ‘Stop, you have these days, and reflect.’
Rabbi Sacks: What does the word faith mean to you?
Robert: I think it's a very, very difficult issue. I mean, I'm constantly troubled by what I feel and what I believe. But certainly in Rosh Hashanah, it's undoubtedly, to my mind, the ultimate respect for human life, which is one of the key aspects of faith.
Rabbi Sacks: I've met and spoken to four people, among the millions for whom faith has made a difference, not just in isolated moments, but to the whole tenor and texture of their lives.
It led Hazel Cosgrove to pursue justice as a judge, Robert Winston to bring new life into the world. It led Daniel Rynhold to become a teacher, handing on the heritage of the past to a new generation.
And Maureen Lipman? Well, Maureen helps us laugh, which, for me, is the great triumph of hope over despair.
And that's what faith is, not an escape from reality, but the strength to face reality and the courage to change it for ourselves and, above all, for others. I think we undervalue faith.
Sometimes we forget the power faith has to give us ideals and the strength to live by them. It helps us build families and communities held together by the rituals and traditions that we share. Faith gives us strength in tough times, knowing that God is with us and we're not alone.
Faith is the bridge across which we walk. From what we are to what we might become.
So, as the Jewish New Year begins, may God help us write our own chapter in the Book of Life.
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