Narrator: The Jewish New Year. The Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, considers the state of family life in Britain.
Rabbi Sacks: [recites wedding blessing] This is my favourite part of the job. All marriages are made in heaven, but on this occasion, heaven was not taking any chances.
He, the Almighty, arranged for your two families to belong to the same shul, for your two mothers to sit next to one another in shul. It was a failsafe formula and it worked.
Standing under the bridal canopy, the chuppah, with a new couple about to begin the adventure of marriage and the family and the work of love.
Love connects the two of you to one another and to God.
Family is the foundation of so much else, of faith and community and the future. It's about the place of loyalty and love in society and how much we value the things that don't have a price.
Faith, to me, is love made real in life. Nothing prepared me for the sheer miracle of raising a family. And seeing love build the future.
[with grandchildren] OK, let's go for it. Is that OK, do you think? It's drooping. OK.
And when our children had children, I felt the deepest joy of all.
[with grandchildren] Ari, what have you got there? You've got a crunchy biscuit. Well, he's entitled to one.
Would you like one? Do you know what? Ari made some biscuits, didn't you, Ari?
Child: I have one of them.
Rabbi Sacks: Yes? OK, he's going to make biscuits and drive a fire engine when he's bigger.
Now I understand why Judaism is such a child-centred religion.
It's what keeps our ancient faith young and full of joy and hope. It's a faith that teaches that the greatest of all spiritual challenges is the love and care we give our children. But today's society is in danger of forgetting that lesson.
Child: They're yummy, aren't they?
Child: Yeah, they're yummy.
Rabbi Sacks: Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is for Jews the anniversary of the creation of the universe. Yet in the synagogue, we read the biblical passages about the birth of a child to Sarah and to Hannah.
Every life is like a universe. So the birth of a child is like the birth of a universe.
It's as if God were saying to us, ‘You are My children. Love your children as I love you.’
Family, like faith, is a covenant of love, which is why caring for children is at the very centre of our faith. The stories about Sarah and Hannah and their much-wanted children are also about promises and obligations fulfilled. Our covenant with God and our promises and obligations to family and community.
But we're bringing children into a world that's fast and stressful. Many families are fragile and our social structures are fragmenting. So how are children faring? And are we honouring our covenant with them?
It's a question I raise because I fear that in our rush headlong into consumerism, we're in danger of leaving family life and children behind.
There's talk of recession, but we're still, it seems, too busy earning and buying to simply stop and spend time with them.
So, Oliver, you moved out here how long ago?
Oliver James: Well, we moved out here when my oldest child was three and we could afford to swap our gaff in Shepherd's Bush for this place. And so we thought that, you know, it would just be much nicer.
Rabbi Sacks: And it's an incredible place to grow up.
Oliver: Yes.
Rabbi Sacks: Psychologist Oliver James left London for a fuller family life in the country. He thinks we value money, success and status too much and it's making our children miserable.
We work too hard and we don't play with them enough.
Oliver James: In one sense, it's terribly simple. We are twice as mentally ill as people living in mainland Western Europe. That is because of the way we organise our society. We just take it for granted that profit is king and that money is all and we've so got used to that because in our individual lives we're so busy consuming and we just work much longer hours. You know, the average household worked 42 hours in 1980 in England, and now the average household works 56 hours.
It's a very big difference.
Rabbi Sacks: Do you think religion has a role here in, you know, consecrating family time and giving us an alternative set of values in which human worth is not necessarily measured in terms of what we earn or what we buy?
Oliver James: People who have a religious observance, they're less likely to be unfaithful, they're less likely to get divorced, they're less likely to be materialistic people who put money before the spiritual. So there's all sorts of complicated reasons why being religious may be good for you.
Rabbi Sacks: Oliver, you were writing about parents and children before you actually were a parent. How did having children affect you? I mean, did you learn through the experience? Did you feel you changed by it?
Oliver James: You know, I can't put it strongly enough. The extent to which they reconnect you with authentic feelings and authentic behaviour is unbelievable to me.
You know, people feel very unreal in the English-speaking world. This is something that God or whatever you want to call it, Nature, has provided to us. It's a wonderful opportunity for us to reconnect with what really matters.
Rabbi Sacks: I know I feel that, just to be a parent, is to have the privilege of being able to love.
Oliver: Yeah.
Rabbi Sacks: Much more important than the privilege of being loved, which is up to them.
And there's nothing more humanising or more beautiful or ultimately more meaningful.
It's a role that's warmly embraced by the Jewish mother.
Esther Rantzen: Welcome, welcome.
Rabbi Sacks: Hi, Esther. Nice to see you. Come in, please.
Esther: Good to see you.
Rabbi Sacks: Thank you.
Esther Rantzen brought up three children here.
Esther: Lemonade. Suit you?
Rabbi Sacks: Please.
Esther describes herself as an agnostic, but her Jewish identity remains.
Did you feel that somehow your Jewishness and your family background made you very conscious of the family and parenthood as a responsibility? It's something that goes with the faith.
Esther: I think so. I think I absorbed that at an emotional level. But as a child, sitting round the table, talking about eternal values with aunts and uncles and cousins and, obviously, my sister and my parents, it was terribly important.
Rabbi Sacks: You had dedicated family time when you were all together. How did you manage that?
Esther: We always had family supper around this table and everybody took it in turns to talk about their day so that we all had a bit of time and space.
And if things were going wrong in any of our lives, we shared it. And if things were going triumphantly well, we shared that too.
Rabbi Sacks: That's where I think religion helps because those rituals of family time are non-negotiable.
Esther: This bit of furniture we're sitting at is the most important bit of furniture. It's where we celebrate Sabbath and New Year and all sorts. But it's also where the family can actually enjoy time without an agenda. Just to talk about our lives.
Rabbi Sacks: And families need time and time needs its rituals.
Esther: Yes, absolutely.
Rabbi Sacks: I think Judaism is just a very child-centred faith and we'd love to share this with everyone because this is a universal that we think we have a special emphasis on.
Esther: There's a downside. I mean, we expect a lot of our children. The Jewish mother who is... I've got a son who's a medical student. Can you imagine how pleased that makes me? My son, the doctor. I haven't cut any umbilical cords with my kids, so maybe that's a mistake. That's a Jewish mistake, isn't it?
Rabbi Sacks: Yeah, we never let go of our kids. Our parents never let go of us but that's OK. That's OK.
Esther: Yeah, I agree.
Narrator: Most people think that strangers hurt children but it can be someone they know.
Rabbi Sacks: But not every family is a happy family. More than 20 years ago, Esther Rantzen set up Childline, the first free 24-hour helpline for children in danger or distress.
Esther: We can announce a brand-new idea in this country, the launch of a national helpline for children in trouble or danger. It's free. It's called Childline.
The first night we opened, October ‘86, 50,000 attempted calls. 50,000. The lines were jammed with children talking about abuse they were suffering but had never been able to ask for help, anybody else or tell anybody else about.
Rabbi Sacks: Childline has since been replicated all over the world with more than two million calls in the UK every year. Esther still helps out regularly on the phone line herself.
Esther: I was listening to a child the other day and what he was describing was parents at war. Not hurting each other physically but hurting each other emotionally, row after row, and this child listening to it, unable to intervene, unable to make things better, in the end escaping to his room.
Terrible. They'd lost sight of the child. You know, this little ghost-like figure there in the room - listening, hearing, absorbing their pain, wasn't real to them.
I wanted somehow to tap them on the shoulder and say, ‘Are you watching what you're doing to this kid?’ Lovely boy.
Rabbi Sacks: Besides family breakdown, there's the problem of isolation. Home-Start is a charity that supports families who are struggling.
[playing with child] He is fierce, isn't he?
There are parenting groups, social get-togethers, so important when families are spread far and wide.
Julie Henry (parent): I come here because it gives me a great opportunity to meet people, parents mostly, to communicate while my children play with other children. And we learn from each other. We're able to give each other advice.
Rabbi Sacks: And it's really tough if you're on your own, isn't it? Because you think, oh, why is this happening to me? And then you discover that other people have the same problems.
Julie: That’s right. And there's something, because you're not alone. So that's why this group is really good to attend once a week or two days a week, just to let it all out.
Rabbi Sacks: And does Joseph look forward to coming here?
Julie: Oh, yes. Every Wednesday we look forward to coming. Just to make noise here [Rabbi Sacks laughs with Julie] and do also. Make loud noise, run around as you like. Because where we live, the second floor, they're not allowed running around.
Rabbi Sacks: Oh I see.
Julie: So it's a great opportunity to bring things and he can do his own thing.
Edeline Peralta (parent): Off you go. Let's go to the park. Shut the door and off you go.
Rabbi Sacks: Parents can also turn to Home-Start for one-to-one support. As well as its family groups, the charity has a network of more than 15,000 volunteers who befriend families.
Edilene Peralta and her two young sons are visited one morning a week by Home-Start volunteer, Tania Romeo.
Tania: Where do you want to go first?
Edilene's husband works long hours and there are no relatives nearby to help out.
Tania: So how was your weekend then?
Edilene: Gilbert had a weekend off. He stayed with the kids for me and I had free time for myself.
Rabbi Sacks: Without Tania, Edeline, who came here from Brazil ten years ago, would be isolated. Tania had help from Home-Start herself after her third child was born.
Edilene: Tania, are you going to take any holiday with the kids?
Tania: No, I can't afford it this year.
Edilene: Oh dear.
Tania: We went just down to Butlins earlier on in the year for a week, but I can't afford it.
Rabbi Sacks: For both women, Home-Start has made their families stronger. Meeting people and sharing problems has been a lifeline, because bringing up children in our fractured society isn't always easy.
And people work long hours.
Tania: People work long hours.
Edilene: My husband, he works long, long hours. He leaves home quarter to six in the morning and he gets home eight-thirty, nine. Once, my son looked at me and said, “Mommy, Daddy has gone.” I said, “No!”
You know, that's broken my heart. And I said, “No, Daddy has not gone. Daddy's at work.”
But maybe because he stayed two or three days without seeing his daddy. And I said, no way. From today, just sleep in the afternoon and then keep awake until Dad gets home.
Rabbi Sacks: It's incredibly demanding.
Tania: It is, yeah. Yeah.
Rabbi Sacks: And just when you have people to share.
Tania: Yeah. just having somebody there to, I don't know, to talk about things with. You know, my family have their own problems, so they're not always there for me to talk to. They're not always there emotionally for me.
Rabbi Sacks: But in a sense, you know, certain things are under stress, but we're developing new ways of supporting one another.
Tania: Yes, yeah, like Home-Start, yeah, you know.
Narrator: Child of Our Time is the journey of a lifetime.
Rabbi Sacks: Professor Robert Winston is eight years into his large-scale study of contemporary childhood and child development with the BBC. He's also known for his scientific work at Imperial College London as a fertility specialist. Babies and families are his business.
But, you know, in some ways, you think children are better off now than they were?
Prof. Winston: Yes, I think what we're... You know, we tend to castigate ourselves a bit, but I think also we need to, because there are things we could do a hell of a lot better in our society. There's no question about that, I think.
A materialistic society does have advantages. The fact that children are better off means they have access to more activity, it means that they have more stimulation, and they might go to museums more often, for example. They might have different ways of playing. We have lost a sense of freedom on the street.
There's no question that we feel that our children are threatened outside the house, and that's sad. But we've substituted that to some extent with other activities. But, again, in order for that to really work, I think the parents have to be more involved than they perhaps currently are.
But we don't really respect the people who really nurture the next generation. That's a really valuable thing to remember, that actually caring for the next generation is the most significant thing that we can all do, and improve, in consequence, humankind.
But in Judaism, it's been an absolute theme, I think. And I think that that has resulted in the most surprising thing of all, which is actually Jews surviving, a very small group of people surviving. And I think that must be, for that... That must be one of the major reasons why we've survived.
Rabbi Sacks: I always think of you when we come close to Rosh Hashanah, to the Jewish New Year, because obviously our readings on that Day of Days, which is all about the birth of the universe, are about two women who couldn't have children, Sarah and the birth of Isaac, Hannah and the birth of Samuel.
And really, that is telling us something quite important. Don't worry about the birth of the universe. Think about one child.
Prof. Winston: There's something extraordinary there too. When Abraham turns around and says, I want to have somebody from my own loins, my own genetic child, is what is implied, I think, there. This notion that perhaps that's the greatest gift of all, that we bring in our own children from our own background.
Rabbi Sacks: And perhaps then the next greatest challenge is to fulfil the covenant in which we promise to love them.
All too often, we give our children money, not time; possessions, not ideals. They're left with material affluence and spiritual poverty. That can't be right.
But I'm hopeful. I've met people who are working hard to support struggling families where children are taking the strain of changes in our society.
And I know that in our own Jewish community, the centrality of family, faith and tradition still flourishes.
[music]
And I believe that Jewish faith has at the heart of its cherished traditions that eternal truth and insight. That a secure family built on the covenant of marriage is what children need.
[music]
Of all the ways of changing the world, the simplest and most powerful is the love we show our children, the time we give them and the space we make for them. The shape of tomorrow is written in the way we treat our children today.
[with his grandchildren, growls] You're going to wear one when you grow up. You are going to wear a tallit when you grow up. Oh, look, what's that boy wearing?
There's a Jewish story about a rabbi who was once so intent on his studies that he completely failed to hear his baby crying. His own father heard the child, went and comforted it and then came back and said, ‘My son, I don't know what it is that you're studying, but it isn't the will of God if it makes you deaf to the cry of a child.’
So, as we approach Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish anniversary of the birth of the universe, let's remember that every child is a universe. Let's renew our commitment to children, to the family, to love and to God.
