Rabbi Sacks: If someone told you about a place where Muslim families have moved home to get their children into a Jewish school, you might not believe them, but that's what you're looking at here. King David Birmingham is a Jewish school where more than half the pupils aren't Jewish. Their parents have chosen to send them here rather than to a secular alternative.
Perhaps Britain is more religious than we care to admit.
These days it often feels as if faith is under attack. We're told that God is a delusion and religion a divisive, even a destructive force.
But as we approach Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, I want to explore a different side of faith and the role it plays - or could play - in Britain today.
From primary school children to a former Prime Minister, from ancient texts to modern media, I've found some unlikely allies.
John Humphrys (TV presenter and journalist): I want to know why it all is and maybe, maybe one way of finding that is to find God.
Tony Blair (former Prime Minister): If you are somebody of faith, then it's an integral part of what you are as a human being.
Dr. Ilana Tahan (museum curator): Here, there is holiness, there is spirituality.
John Humphrys: It's six o'clock. Good morning. This is Today with Carolyn Quinn and John Humphreys. The BBC has been given rare access to the man thought most likely to be Mr Putin's successor, Sergei Ivanov, a former general in the KGB and now first deputy prime minister. Our Moscow correspondent Richard Garfin travelled with him in Siberia.
Rabbi Sacks: In a few moments, something really quite extraordinary is going to happen. Every morning at the listening peak of Britain's most influential news programme, the Radio 4 Today studio turns briefly into a pulpit.
For exactly two minutes and 45 seconds, the secular news makes way for what I call the olds, a thought for today based on the sacred wisdom of yesterday.
Carolyn Quinn: Coming up to 12 minutes to eight now, it's time for Thought for the Day. The speaker here with us in our studio this morning is the Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks. Good morning.
Rabbi Sacks: Good morning. Yesterday came the news that house prices may rise yet higher to 10 times annual income. I think that's scandalous.
You often hear these days that Britain is a secular society, but against all the odds, faith still survives here.
Today, we worship the shopping centre and the property pages, hoping they'll bring happiness.
The Bible has a word for this. It's called idolatry.
I want to understand why the voice of religion continues to be listened to, and I'm not the only one.
For heaven's sake, let's put people first.
John: And that was Thought for the Day with the Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks. The time is 10 to 8.
Rabbi Sacks: Last year, the Today program's devoutly agnostic presenter, John Humphreys, unexpectedly approached me about another series he was making, Humphreys in Search of God.
He wanted to ask why, even when we haven't found it, we keep searching for faith.
Carolyn: Well, that's all from us. Coming up next on BBC Radio 4 is Desert Island Discs. Good morning.
Rabbi Sacks: Now it's my turn to ask the questions. We've just finished today's Today, Britain's leading news programme, and in the middle of this international news, everything stops for a little word of religion. I mean, it's odd, isn't it?
John: Yes. Distinctly odd. But I tell you what, you have to be a very, very brave editor of the Today program to try to change it. I remember, not long after I joined the programme, the then editor was extremely hostile to Thought for the Day and said, “I'm going to get rid of it.” Oh, you'd have thought we'd suggested turning Britain into a republic and having Adolf Hitler as the Pope or something. It was a disaster. People went mad. But why?
Rabbi Sacks: Well, what do you make of it? What do you make of it? You did a series of radio conversations. I did one with you. And you got a huge postbag. Massive. Thousands of letters.
John: I've never had a postbag like that in my life.
Rabbi Sacks: So what do you make of it? People think this is a totally secular society, and at the same time, people really care about religion. Exactly. What is it, do you think?
John: Well, I've come to the conclusion, I think, that what people want is not necessarily God, because they don't know, most of us don't have a clue who or what God is, but they just want certain questions answered.
Rabbi Sacks: Well, they're the big why questions, aren't they? Why am I here? Why is the universe here? What gives my life meaning?
John: Exactly.
Rabbi Sacks: How should I live? And I think not the least, where do I find a sense of belonging? And nothing is answering those questions.
Science is telling us we're a concatenation of chemicals, we're a bunch of selfish genes. Well, you know, I mean, I'm fine, but as Peggy Lee used to say, ‘Iis that all there is?’
John: What a great song. Yes. That's exactly the point, isn't it? And the trouble is, in a way, you guys, by you guys, I mean religious leaders, don't help us, the lay people, I think, because when we press you and press you and press you, in the end, what you say is, at the heart of it, there's a mystery. And actually, we don't know either. Do you accept that?
Rabbi Sacks: Well, I do. I mean, it seems to me that the more we know, the more we know, we don't know. But we do always find our eyes lifting beyond the visible horizon. And it seems to me that it's not an accident we're here.
Somebody created us in love. You don't need to travel to Alpha Centauri to discover we're not alone. All you got to do is pray.
John: Ah, not very scientific, that. What's there when you pray? Because you see, I've never been quite clear to whom you're praying. I have tried. I've tried listening to the still small voice and all that. Nothing ever came back to me.
Rabbi Sacks: Look, we're sitting here in a studio, you're broadcasting to a great number of invisible presences.
John: That's true.
Rabbi Sacks: I pray because I know that there is a listening presence that gives me strength when I feel I can't go on, gives me hope when I despair.
John: I don't, I think, need a supernatural being to find hope in humanity. My hope is in humanity. Humanity is, as it were, God. I've never put it quite like that before. That's a bit barmy.
Rabbi Sacks: No, I understand that. But where I think we part company, John, is because although I didn't lose any family in the Holocaust, once I really understood what had happened, I could no longer believe in human beings.
John: But you could believe in the God who allowed it to happen.
Rabbi Sacks: I believed in the God who taught us another way. God says every human being has dignity. Every human being has integrity, and therefore we have to construct societies that honour that. Free, decent, just societies.
John: To be a decent society, does it have to be a God-fearing society?
Rabbi Sacks: I don't know when a Godless one ever really succeeded. And actually, John, I wanted to ask you, you did that series, Humphreys in Search of God. What made you search? I wish I knew the answer to that, Jonathan. I think probably if I knew the answer to that, I wouldn't have embarked on the search. Look, you've said it already in the course of our conversation.
I want to know why it all is. And maybe, maybe one way of finding that is to find God, whatever that may mean. But the trouble is, I suspect I'm no closer to doing that now than I was at the start of that series.
Rabbi Sacks: Keep searching.
John: I will.
Rabbi Sacks: If John Humphreys is an agnostic who wants to talk about religion, then my next ally in the defence of faith is the opposite.
I'm on my way to meet a man who, for 10 years as Prime Minister, followed the advice of his press officer that ‘We don't do God.’ Except that, of course, privately, he did do God. He still does.
We've known one another a while, and whenever we've met and spoken privately, you've been very eloquent about faith and the role of religion in life, but you chose never to speak about it publicly. Why was that?
Tony Blair: Well, I did once, when I was the Labour Party leader, and this is where Alastair Campbell's famous maxim about ‘We don't do God’ came into play, because I did an interview, and he said to me before the interview, “They'll say that you're saying that you can't be a Christian, vote anything other than Labour.”
And I said, “No, I'm going to make it absolutely clear that that's not what I'm saying, but I think it's important we're able to talk about faith. It shouldn't be something that's off limits.”
So I gave the interview. The headline came out, “If you're a Christian, you've got to vote Labour.” He said, “I told you that would happen.” So I kind of then decided, well, it wasn't.
It's also partly because if faith does matter to you, in a sense, you don't want it to appear as if you're using it as a political prop.
Rabbi Sacks: There were a couple of moments when really, I got the feeling that faith shaped your outlook on things. And I'm thinking, for instance, of the Make Poverty History campaign, which really flowed from the biblical idea of debt relief. Did you feel that was a religiously important thing to do?
Tony Blair: Yes, I don't think that Make Poverty History would ever have worked without the commitment of the churches, the other faiths in our society who were behind it. But I think there was a deeper statement about the type of world that people wanted to live in. And I think it expressed itself in quite a profoundly religious way, even though, of course, there were lots of people who were engaged in Make Poverty History, who wouldn't regard themselves as religious at all.
Rabbi Sacks: The other occasion was the Northern Ireland peace process. Everyone else had seen religion as the problem, but you also saw it as part of the solution. Was that the case?
Tony Blair: Yes, and that's why the involvement of the religious leaders from both the Protestant and the Catholic side was immensely important. When people are divided along religious grounds, it is not just sensible, it is essential that people who believe in a different way of expressing faith stand up, are counted and move opinion. And they did it.
Rabbi Sacks: I mean, we know, I suppose, that all too often in history, people have killed in the name of the God of life, hated in the name of the God of love and made war in the name of the God of peace. How do we stop that? How do we find a better way?
Tony Blair: Any great cause or belief is always capable of being warped and perverted. I mean, I still find it incredible when you look back on Christian times, you realise what some of the Christians did out in the Holy Land, when the whole towns and villages and every man, woman and child in them was killed. You know, these terrible things happen, but that is not about God, it's about human beings.
Rabbi Sacks: Talking about the Holy Land, you've taken on the greatest of all challenges to bring peace to a region that really has seen violence in the name of religion. What is your programme or your vision?
Tony Blair: I really believe there is no alternative but to creating peace there. You know, of course, there are political agreements that are necessary, there's political progress that's necessary, but you can't ignore the fact that this is also about Jews and Muslims and, indeed, Christians and people of other faiths living together.
It couldn't possibly be resolved in circumstances where there are people of one faith who believe that it is their right, or even worse, their duty, to eliminate people of another.
Rabbi Sacks: Was there a moment when you felt faith really carried you through the strains and stresses of public leadership, just as a source of strength?
Tony Blair: All the way through. If you are somebody of faith, then it's an integral part of what you are as a human being. And so, obviously, when you're under enormous pressure, and the job of Prime Minister is a job of huge stress and pressure, then it's fundamental to how you're able to carry yourself.
Rabbi Sacks: I do get the feeling that although we're often called a very secular society, religion really is interwoven into British history, British culture, British institutions. There's Westminster Abbey just opposite the Houses of Parliament. There really has been that interweaving, hasn't there, then and perhaps still now?
Tony Blair: My view is that faith is a vital part of the future. That it is something that is modern, that it is part of progress, and that it should not be either an interesting part of our tradition or history or the property of fanatics. And I think there is a danger that faith becomes like that.
When I look at the future and think of the world I want my children to grow up in, of course I want the good material things in life for them, but I never want them to forget their obligation to the other.
And also the important thing, which is a sense that there is something more important than you, which is I think really almost the basis of the religious ethic.
Rabbi Sacks: Thank you.
Tony Blair: Thank you, John. Chief Rabbi, I should say.
Rabbi Sacks: Tony Blair needs no persuading about the value of religion, but there are many who are much more sceptical. For three centuries, some of the finest minds in Europe have been telling us that religion is dying. We should rely instead on knowledge and reason.
For those who put their faith in secular rationalism, London's British Library is a cathedral. And yet today I've come to see an exhibition that proves that this world of secular thought can still make room for the sacred.
This is a remarkable exhibition, bringing together some of the most treasured sacred texts of the three Abrahamic faiths - Judaism, Christianity and Islam. All three are religions of revelation, religions in which God speaks. All three are peoples of the book.
The reason these books are so stunningly beautiful is that for those who commissioned and produced them, they were, quite simply, a record of the word of God, which meant the meaning of the universe as disclosed by its Creator.
That's something no other discipline has ever been able to disclose. Not science, not history, not sociology.
They tell us how, not why. They tell us what is, not what ought to be. And that's one reason religion will never be obsolete.
We are meaning-seeking animals, the only known life form capable of asking the question, ‘Why?’
Dr. Ilana Tahan (museum curator): The Torah that you're looking at, Chief Rabbi, is the legacy of Solomon da Costa Atias. He decided to donate to the British Museum 180 rare Hebrew books and several scrolls. So what we're looking at here is a piece of history.
Rabbi Sacks: And this particular one comes from the 15th century?
Dr. Tahan: Yes, and it is a Sepharadi Torah scroll.
Rabbi Sacks: It's beautifully done, but what strikes me so much is that this is exactly what a Torah scroll looks like today. This is our holiest object and our most precious possession because somehow in those words, we had this eternal record of communication from heaven to earth, which is why, really, it became the founding document of Judaism and the thing we opened to know our destiny.
We are, each one of us, a letter in that scroll.
Dr. Tahan: What I like about the Torah scroll is that it's painstakingly written down by a professional scribe. He must, of course, go through a ritual before he starts writing the holy words.
Here, there is holiness, there is spirituality.
Rabbi Sacks: And what it really represents is the realisation of this extraordinary idea that the God of everywhere can be reached anywhere. And the way we reach him is not through power or through land, but through the word.
And that, I think, is what's so fundamental about the Torah.
Dr. Tahan: Absolutely.
Rabbi Sacks: Thank you.
Who would have thought that these ancient texts would still be taught today and that they would still speak to a new generation?
Esther Cohen (teacher): What did you notice about Avi that's special? How could you tell that he's Jewish? Yes.
Here at King David School, Birmingham, the teachers are still doing what Moses asked them to do 33 centuries ago. “Teach these things diligently to your children.”
Rabbi Sacks: It's a Jewish school. What makes it unusual is that the Jewish community here in Birmingham is so small that there aren't enough Jewish children to fill the places. So about half the children are Muslim and there are Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and others.
Esther: Jafar, how do you show your love to Hashem? You give money to the poor people. All different ways of showing love to Hashem.
Rabbi Sacks: Their parents prefer the religious teachings and values of King David School to any of the secular alternatives. Faith matters to them.
Steve Langford, Head Teacher: Families are queuing up with long waiting lists to come to this school because they realise that being a faith school with a strong religious ethos gives something wonderful to the children in their lives.
Rabbi Sacks: This is an unashamedly Jewish school. So what do you think attracts non-Jewish parents to it? That's a question often asked and it comes with several different answers. And a central one is the fact it is a Jewish school, a religious school, meaning it has a strong ethos, even though it's not their own religion.
Tahir Abbas (parent and governor): I was trying to find a school that would best capture my children's needs, educational as well as spiritual. And it felt very right to move very close to this school and choose to choose this school as the place for my children. There are many traditions in Islam that are also found in Judaism. So there isn't a great deal of conflict at all on many areas indeed.
And it doesn't really compromise their sense of their Islamic Muslim identity. And in fact, it strengthens it.
Rabbi Sacks: And how do they get their Muslim education?
Tahir: At home, we work with them. We teach them Arabic. We give them Islamic history. We send them out to Saturday clubs and classes where they meet with other children and interact and share and go on trips and so on.
And so it's a wonderful opportunity to be here at the school, but also at home to be able to balance things out really.
Rabbi Sacks: I get the feeling that sometimes in this complex world, we have to be a bit bilingual.
Tahir: Yes, absolutely. And here is an opportunity to become familiar, to learn about another faith, to appreciate sharing, working together, understanding together, because we're humans ultimately. And humanity is more important than political, ideological differences that sometimes can come into play.
Rabbi Sacks: King David Birmingham is an unusual school. But what it shows is a more general truth that faith can unite, not just divide. Whether a school represents one religion or many, it can teach children to value each individual's faith, because for each of us, that is our story, our heritage, who we are.
Esther: Hello!
Children! We've got a new pupil for our class. This is the Chief Rabbi.
Rabbi Sacks: Hi, guys. Good morning.
Religious education is the one area where children are taught separately. This is a Jewish group learning about Judaism.
So what have you been learning about today? Yeah?
Child: We've been talking about Bilaam and Balak.
Rabbi Sacks: Bilaam and Balak!
Esther: Children need to make sense of the world around them, especially the world we live in at the moment, which is very, very confusing.
Rabbi Sacks: Esther, a lot of people criticise faith schools. They say they're not what we need in a multicultural Britain. Why do you think it's important to have a school like this, a Jewish school teaching Jewish children?
Esther: The reason I'm so passionate about the school is because Judaism is a very easy religion to draw morals from, lessons for their own everyday life - be it of tolerance, be it of good behaviour, be it of showing empathy and understanding towards other children around the school.
Rabbi Sacks: You see, Esther, I very much feel that faith matters to kids, because kids want something to believe in. They want to have a moral code that will guide them through life. And sometimes my most searching questions come from young children, and you can't fake it with young children.
Child: Why doesn't he, like, stop the fighting straight away?
Rabbi Sacks: Because Hashem wants us to work it out for ourselves.
Esther: I think faith actually gives them permission to want peace, but children cannot see God as somebody who wants war.
Rabbi Sacks: It's when we teach children that we kind of think, what kind of world do I want my children to build? And that can lead us away from war to peace and from fanaticism towards tolerance.
Esther: Absolutely, absolutely.
Rabbi Sacks: You don't ever fight, do you? Once in a while. And do your parents like seeing you fight?
Schools like King David Birmingham are one way of teaching children the fundamental truth that just as my faith matters to me, so your very different faith matters to you.
Therefore, we must make space for one another. We must respect one another. Otherwise, the conflicts that have scarred so much of human history will continue long into the future.
The children have been learning a song about shalom, salaam, which means peace and more than peace. It means the ability to live together despite our differences. Because if we were completely different, we couldn't communicate.
But if we were totally the same, we'd have nothing to say.
These children are learning what God wants each of us to be. Agents of hope.
[children singing]
I've seen some of the paradoxes of faith in Britain today. A news programme that takes time every day for religious reflection. A broadcaster who, though he doesn't believe in God, keeps searching for Him.
A Prime Minister of deep personal faith, who never spoke about it in public. And a Jewish school, where the pupils come from many faiths. I doubt whether you'd find these things anywhere else.
When I see children - Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Hindu and Sikh - sing together about peace, I see them plant a seed of hope in the garden of the future that may yet surprise us by its beauty.
As the Jewish New Year begins, let's pray for peace. Let's have the courage to hope.
May God teach us to cherish life. May God write us in the Book of Life.
