Leshanah Tovah, I wish everyone a good and worthwhile, peaceful and happy year.

Following my plan to write about one key word each day, my second choice is sefer, book, because again and again over the High Holydays we ask to be written in God’s book of life, sefer hachayyim.

The image of the book can be daunting. Drawn from the Bible, it is developed in the Talmud into the idea that God opens, examines and inscribes in the books of the destiny in which the future fate of all living beings is recorded. As the famous mediaeval meditation Untenah Tokef describes, ‘On Rosh Hashanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed, who shall live and who shall die…’ Taken too literally, this prayer has put people off coming to the synagogue. Does God really seal our fate? Is God’s sentence necessarily just?

Surely not. I’ve always understand the image of the book, and this powerful prayer also, somewhat differently. We do not know what fate lies before us, what the unfolding pages of our destiny may bring. Many events to be recorded in the book of our lives will not be of our choosing, for good or bad: how long we and those we love will live; whether the world will be at peace or at war.

The purpose of this sharp reminder of the unknown nature of tomorrow is not to reduce us to helpless passivity but to urge us to write in the book of our own life, and to do so now. The script is ours, for concern or indifference, generosity or meanness, love or hate.

The words are what we do, – not what we do for a living, though that may be part of it, – but what we do because it truly matters, because that is where our heart is, what Wordsworth described as our

little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love.                  (Lines Written above Tintern Abbey)

I sometimes think the ink on the page is our deeds, and the blank space all around, wordless, but without which the words have no meaning, is who we are.

We don’t only write in the book of our own life. Our words and deeds inscribe themselves in the books of the hearts of everyone around us, whether we intend it, or like it, or not. Perhaps our chapter in ‘God’s book’ is composed of the sum of all the impacts our conduct has had on everyone with whom we have ever interacted. No kind word or gesture of compassion goes unnoticed. Nor do our moments of anger and injustice evaporate into the ether. Everything matters.

I believe, too, that we write in the vast book of nature, as individuals and collective humanity. If we could understand their language, the birds, forests, elephants and albatrosses would have much to say about our copy. We must urgently renew our respect for this book. For what our behaviour inscribes in it will be read back to our children, with consequences.

Books are testimony, a record of accountability. That is why those who hate truth have so often sought to burn them. But the book of who we are is indestructible. It is written in our conscience, inscribed in the hearts of everyone we know.

These books of our lives can’t be reduced to tweets. But short synopses are produced after our days are over: ‘She was a blessing to all who knew her;’ ‘He spread kindness wherever he went’. While time is before us, and the page still has room, we should write as richly and fully as possible. For the words are in our heart and the pen is the deeds of our hands.