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

My word for today is zikaron, remembrance. It’s the name the rabbis chose for Rosh Hashanah when they called the date Yom Hazikaron, the Day of Remembrance, when we bring to mind what matters most in life, when we travel down to the core of our heart, where we and God can listen to one another undistracted, if only for a few indelible moments.

By God I don’t mean some external entity. I’m thinking rather of the voice which speaks as the truth inside our conscience, as love within our heart, and which flows likes a singing river through our very brain and body, filling us with the vibrancy of life. On Rosh Hashanah, we listen to the God of life, the creative spirit which animates and flows through all being. It calls us from the periphery to the centre, from the inevitable diversions of screens and mobile phones to the ultimate questions: Who am I? Why am I here? What matters? Rosh Hashanah summons us from distraction to Remembrance.

Who am I? The traditional answer is: a being fashioned in God’s image. If ‘there are seventy faces to Torah’, then this verse is no exception. But all the interpretations have this in common: they speak of the gifts and privileges of being human. We have a heart to listen and understand. We have a conscience to tell right from wrong. We have a spirit capable of intuiting beauty and experiencing wonder. We have a mind to weight what best to do and a body which enables us to act. We have empathy and imagination to intuit how the world feels to others. We have language with which to articulate care and compassion, to profess concern and protest injustice.

Why am I here? To make the most of life, to use the gift of life for the good of others and ourselves. My grandfather loved the words at the heart of the prayers devoted to the subject of memory:

zacharti lach – I remember unto you the faithful devotion of your youth, the love of your bridal days, how you followed me through the wilderness, a land unsown.

They were his tribute to my grandmother, with whom he was married for 58 years and together with whom he did indeed have to flee Nazi Europe to a country, if not unsown, certainly unknown. But the words meant more; they express the very reason for living: to behave with chesed, loving kindness, to family and stranger, Jew and non-Jew, alike; to have love, not hate, at the centre of one’s heart, whatever life might bring; and to be prepared to follow the sacred call to what justice and goodness demand, however much courage this may take. That is why we are here.

What matters, then? Everything.

Attah zocher – You, God, remember all deeds, ever…

This sentence is not about cowing us into constant anxiety before a God who refuses to let go of our smallest mistakes. Rather, these are words of encouragement: No word or act is too small to make a difference. Never feel ‘there’s nothing I can do’. Every kind deed is lodged somewhere, in someone’s heart. Who knows? Perhaps what you did for that girl ten years ago is quietly growing inside her into the inspiration to go and help another child who was not yet even born back then? Never think: ‘Why bother?’ Never give up.

These may feel like small, all but irrelevant, matters to write about when the world seems at the brink; when history is at not just at one, but at several junctures more perilous than for generations. But just this is what we have within our capacity to set with courage, intelligence and determination against hatred, violence, terror, famine, floods and the increasing threats of wars: our plain humanity, individual and collective. It is the weakest, it is also the most powerful, force in all the world.

Therefore, on this Day of Remembrance, we must strengthen ourselves with our truest, deepest values and muster our stamina and spirit, so that we draw together in solidarity to think, feel, work and struggle for life. As our prayers tell us over and again: ‘Remember us for life, O God of life.’

Leshanah Tovah – May this be a good, worthwhile, safe and peaceful year.