Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Judaism's holiest days. At this time of the Jewish New Year we pray to God for one thing above all, the gift of life. We ask God, “kotveinu beSefer haChaim,” please write us in the Book of Life. But as we pray, religious faith has a question for us. Did we help inscribe other people in the Book of Life? Did we help others as we ask God to help us?
That question has become urgent in simple practical ways. Care in the community has made us suddenly aware of the responsibilities government has handed back to us, to look after those who are vulnerable and need our love.
For it to work, there has to be a community that cares. And that's where a faith community can make a difference throughout the cycle of life, teaching us to find God in sharing and giving.
And it begins with the young.
Here at the Norwood Family Centre in Hendon, North London, young children from across the Jewish community come with their parents to enjoy the toy library, a beautiful experiment in making sure that every child can share in the things all children love.
[to child]: Now what's going on with this shofar?
While the toy library is open to all families, Norwood also looks after 4,000 Jewish children and their families every year who are encountering serious problems such as financial hardship and marital breakdown, problems which we don't often like to admit are there.
God listens to those with special needs, but how do we learn to listen?
The Ravenswood Unity Project brings together children lucky enough to lead normal lives and children who have special needs.
Projects like this help children to understand that we're all part of one community. We each have something to give, to teach, to learn and to share.
Helper: Hold on.
Rabbi Sacks: A rabbi of the third century, Rabbi Yochanan, used to say, “Wherever you find God's greatness, there you find His humility.” And the proof, well, immediately after the Bible calls him the ‘great, mighty and awe-inspiring God,’ it says ‘He upholds the cause of the fatherless and the widow and loves the stranger, giving him food and clothing.’
I think that what Rabbi Yochanan meant was that we seek God not just by praying to Him in heaven, but by acting like Him on earth, by each of us finding ways of lessening other people's pain and isolation.
Tikva: I've got quite a common condition, but a very rare form of it, which has stiffened my body like a plank of wood.
Good afternoon, Tikva, can I help you?
Caller: I wonder if you can. I'm newly disabled.
Tikva: When the doctors told me 18 months ago that I was going to spend the rest of my life in bed, I thought maybe I could set up a helpline for people with disabilities and their carers under the auspices of Jewish Care.
It's a way of putting something back into the system instead of always taking out.
I might never leave this room, but I do tend to know exactly what's going on outside.
Rabbi Sacks: Here at Jewish Care's Rela Goldhill Lodge, people discover that a sense of community can help them affirm life, even in the midst of severe physical disability.
And there are other times when we need the support of a community, facing unemployment, for example.
Caller: Could you send to me an application form?
Rabbi Sacks: Losing a job hurts. It hurts us. It hurts our families. And at times like these, it's become a nationwide problem.
Man: She got the job.
She applied for it and she got it. And I couldn't get…
Man 2: Just take a bit of courage from it. It will happen.
Facilitator: Well, good morning, everyone. Welcome to our job search seminar.
Rabbi Sacks: This employment resource centre is one way in which a community helps people to find their way back to work.
One of the themes of the New Year is the story of the binding of Isaac, the great trial in which Abraham and Sarah so nearly lost their child. But there are those in our time for whom the binding of Isaac isn't an ancient story.
It's still a painful memory… of Auschwitz and Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen, the concentration camps, the Holocaust, the greatest trial of faith of all time. How do those who saw the angel of death survive, and still wish to be written in the Book of Life?
Survivor: I have some very lovely memories from home.
Survivor 2: I had everything that my mum and dad could afford to give me. I was happy.
Survivor 3: The very fact that I might have had a mother and a father, that must have been happiness.
Survivor 4: My life stopped at eight years old.
Survivor: They've taken some of the six years of my life away. Coming here was like day and night, day and night. It is wonderful, it is wonderful. Every one of us feels the same, that this opened all we need.
Rabbi Sacks: At the Holocaust Survivor Centre, people come together to remember and talk. Even half a century later, those who lived through the valley of the shadow of the concentration camps can still feel the pain.
[talking to the people] The strangest thing happened to me, 25 years later.
They've lived full and successful lives. But as their children leave home and they face retirement, they realise how important it is not to feel left alone with their memories.
[talking to the people] We started the custom that on Tisha B'Av, in the afternoon, they should always show a film about the Shoah, and bring the young people in and have a survivor talk or somebody talk.
But today, there are other wars and other survivors.
Bosnian refugee: I came here from Bosnia. I escaped from the war with my family. We have a little boy. Our lives were all the time in danger.
When we came in this country, we thought we are alone here, because we didn't know anyone when we came. But soon we discovered that we are not alone. In fact, we have a lot of friends here.
Rabbi Sacks: Britain has become the home for many waves of newcomers. And a welcoming community can lessen the feeling of dislocation.
Bosnian refugee: Whatever we need, there is somebody who can help us. So it's really great. In my country, there is only a few Jewish people and they were not very organised. So it was lovely to see that there is somebody who cares and who can help.
Rabbi Sacks: But whether we're new arrivals or we've lived here all our lives, we still need places where we can find friendship and feel we belong.
Man: Years ago, you could walk down Whitechapel, you met friends, everybody was welcome. Today, you go home, you bolt your door at 4 o'clock or 5 o'clock and you don't see daylight.
Woman: So we have a day centre in the daytime and we're not scared. We all come out and we love it.
Rabbi Sacks: This Jewish Care day centre is just one of the many places in which the elderly and those living alone can come together in what might otherwise be a society of strangers.
Woman: I found out that I had qualities I never knew I had when I was young.
Man: There's painting, there's craft, there's dancing, there's exercise. They've got something to do here.
Woman: I wouldn't stay away one afternoon or one morning, I wouldn't. I'm afraid I'll miss them. I don't know why.
Rabbi Sacks: And for many, there comes a time when residential care is the only option. But even here, a sense of community and family is important.
Man: I feel like I'm on a holiday. That's exactly how I feel.
[residents singing]
Rabbi Sacks: One of the most moving of our prayers on these days of penitence is the one where we say, “Al tashlichienu l’eit zikna” - “Don't cast us aside when we're old. When our strength fails, do not forsake us.”
It's in places like this where that prayer is answered.
Nightingale House in South London is one of the largest independent homes in Europe and looks after 400 people. And it's here and in other centres like it that you see so clearly how caring adds extra months and years to people's lives by giving them new interests and friendships.
[music]
Most of the people here are still active and vigorous, young in spirit if not in flesh. But there are others who, in the midst of their years, can suffer the most terrible blows, like Alzheimer's disease, making them totally dependent on others.
There can be few more wrenching experiences than seeing a life derailed in midcourse as the mind no longer connects. But even here, care can work its human miracle, bringing sparks of life to those who once seemed almost to have forgotten it.
Woman: Daddy came here in March this year. My ideal afternoon or my ideal visit with Daddy is to come and take him down to the coffee shop and just have a chat and let him watch other people going by. He has Alzheimer's disease, so obviously he needs constant care. He has a lot of personality and character. Here he's like a flower that's just blossomed because he's come to life again.
Entertainers: Come on along, come on along, come on along Let me take you by the hand To the man, to the man Who's the leader...
Woman: We know he's being well looked after. We know that he's getting the care and attention. We know he's getting the stimulation. He has people who care about him, he's surrounded by love.
[shofar blowing]
Rabbi Sacks: There's a force which drives these communities, the Jewish faith that for 4,000 years has helped to celebrate life as the gift of God.
And so, as Jews around the world prepare for the New Year, we remember what the prophets taught us, that God cares about what we do, not only inside the house of prayer, but outside as well.
Did we share our bread with the needy? Did we lift up those who had fallen? Did we recognise the image of God in other people? These are the questions faith asks us.
I've tried to show how one community cares, and there are many such communities throughout Britain, of other faiths or none. But in each, if you listen carefully, you can hear the still, small sound of the presence of God - transforming lives, healing wounds, and easing pain.
God, said Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk, doesn't live in the heavens. He lives where we let Him in, and when we care for others, we let Him in.
On the Jewish New Year, we pray, God, teach us to see life as Your most precious gift, and may we share with others what You have given us.
