‘There are two reasons,’ my father used to explain, why the cat can’t say the Grace after Meals. Firstly, she can’t read; secondly she never thinks she’s had enough.’ He was referring specifically to the verse which, as it happens, we read in the Torah tomorrow: ‘You shall eat and be satisfied, and bless the Lord your God.’ Our dogs have since acquired a similar trait to Fluffy, the cat of my childhood.

Judaism is a culture of blessing. I didn’t know the phrase hakarat hatov until a friend from Glasgow days drew it to my attention. It means recognising and appreciating the good which has been done to us. She phoned unexpectedly from Israel to thank me for publicly acknowledging how much her family had helped my father, my brother and I after our mother died. ‘Thank you for the hakarat hatov,’ she said.

There was a lot to be grateful to them for. They, the Gaba family, took us into their home almost every Friday night for many months, taught us the Shabbat songs, made wonderful meals of which my favourite part was always the jelly with tiny air bubbles in it, then saw us safely home. The two daughters took me to play with zoo animals while the boys challenged my brother at chess. Sadly, neither of the girls is living anymore; Phyllis was knocked down by a car and Judith, who’d phoned me scarcely twelve months ago, died just weeks ago of cancer.

Whenever I think of hachnasat orchim, hospitality and welcome, I think of that family; they are my role model for what chesed, true kindness, means.

The textual basis of hakarat hatov is the Mishnah’s insistence that we bless life for the good we receive. The formula is simple: ‘Blessed are you God…who is good and does good.’ Strangely, I’ve only heard this blessing recited twice in my life – and once it was by me. The parallel blessing Baruch Dayan Ha’emet , the Job-like ‘what can we do but accept this’ acknowledgement of bad tidings which is said at funerals, I’ve heard a hundred times. These proportion are surely wrong.

The emotional and spiritual reasons for acknowledging the good are that this creates an environment of generosity and appreciation. It’s an antidote to our culture of entitlement, in which we don’t even notice privileges because we simply take them as given. The last eighteen months have made many of us more aware of many basic aspects of our lives to which we may have given little thought before: what it means to have flour to bake good bread; the importance of faithful friends and helpful neighbours; the loveliness of what we may previously have seen as just a park or only a tree.

A young woman training for the priesthood offered a beautiful Thought for the Day on Radio 4 in the middle of the first lockdown. ‘Behold the lilies of the field,’ she quoted, ‘They toil not neither do they spin.’ I can’t recall her exact words, but they amounted to this: I’d always thought about the theology, about trusting God and not worrying. But walking in the park with my immune-compromised husband, I said to myself: ‘No; just look at the flowers. Behold them; just look.’

This week has reminded me once again of hakarat hatov because I’ve had the privilege of officiating at three weddings. I always ask the couple to tell me about the values with which they’ve been brought up that they want to take with them into the home they hope to build together. In each case this week, the bride and groom wrote about their parents and grandparents with tender appreciation. Yesterday, as I repeated some of her words under the wedding canopy, I watched the bride’s parents reach for and tightly hold each other’s hands.

In our too-fast-moving, grab-and-eat consume culture, if we noticed and acknowledged life’s gifts and appreciated one another more, we would be a less hurting and less hurtful society and cherish the world with more care.

Sometimes one does crazy things.

I’m not a follower of football, but I had to watch the Euro Final. My excuse: ‘People will talk about it, so I need to know what happened.’

I hadn’t the nerves to sit calmly through the whole game, but I did see the penalties. My heart went out to the players who didn’t score. I don’t know how these young men have the guts to come up for their kick, or how they cope afterwards if pressure gets the better of them and the ball doesn’t go where it went every single time on a hundred practice runs.

Friends told me later how they realised the moment they saw by whom England’s last three penalties were taken that there’d be trouble if the ball didn’t hit the back of the net. ‘I knew instantly,’ wrote Bukayo Saka.

I left it too late to write in the press how passionately our community is opposed to racism and how deeply we feel solidarity with these courageous players. But I had to do something. On Tuesday evening the feeling grabbed me that I had to show my respect by going to the mural of Marcus Rashford, disgracefully defaced the previous night. Minutes later I was on the road.

I got to South Manchester around 2.00am. I chatted with the one other person there. ‘I needed to be here,’ he said. We added our messages to the outpouring of love which the wall had by now become.

Before I’d set off, I’d phoned Rabbi Weiner for advice: ‘Is this crazy?’ His answer was great: ‘Yes. But sometimes we need to do crazy things.’

I’m glad I went. My reasons are obvious, but here they are:

If we let racism pass without showing our face, we’re the silent majority who’re assumed to condone it.

That’s true, whoever the victims. But these footballers are true moral heroes. Through these bleak lockdowns, it’s Marcus Rashford who lifted our spirits by insisting children who needed them got free school meals, including during the holidays. He made the government think again; he showed how one person can make all the difference. He’s our nation’s conscience, and he’s not the only one in that England team.

There’s something personal as well. My parents were thrown out of Germany by Nazi racism. Out of loyalty to my family, I had an absolute duty to protest the abuse to which these footballers were so vilely subjected.

I went in the name of my community and everything Judaism stands for. In my head was the phrase sinat chinam, ‘causeless hate’. This Sunday is Tishah Be’Av, the fast when we remember the misery destructiveness brings. The rabbis blame the burning of the Temple on just such causeless hate, which brings only misery as hate always does.

Causeless hate is only overcome by ahavat chinam, causeless love. That’s why, of all the messages pinned on that Manchester wall, one stood out, signed simply by Kate:

There will always be hate in this world unfortunately but there is much, much, much more love.

Where do we go now? For sure we must stand alongside the victims and potential victims of racism and bullying. Race hate must be challenged. Social media platforms have work to do.

But is there something more?

Sinat chinam is usually translated as ‘causeless hate’ but ‘pointless hate’ explains it better. Hate gets us nowhere, but does it always come from nowhere? It’s certainly not the fault of those it targets. But are there cruelties and injustices in our world which pour their poisonous fertilisers on the soils which make hurts grows into hates? Ahavat chinam, causeless love, needs to consider this too.

Meanwhile I wish I could give Marcus Rashford a hug and tell him he and his colleagues are heroes of our heart and conscience.

I hadn’t even heard of it, until I received an email from interfaith activist Julie Siddiqi to participate in a service in the grounds of what was once Coventry Cathedral, and an invitation to attend a thanksgiving service for the NHS at St Paul’s.

July 4 is Britain’s first ever Thank You Day and sixteen million Brits are preparing to take part. It’s the culmination of a month of community, including Volunteer Week, Loneliness Awareness Week, Refugee Week, Small Charity Week and many other ways of making and celebrating connections across our society. The day is supported by as diverse a group of organisations as the NHS, the Football Association (who’ll be even more thankful if England gets through to the Euro semi-finals) and the Church of England.

Each of the thirteen founders of Thank You Day is devoted to community. It’s moving to read their stories here. May Parsons, matron at University Hospital Coventry, gave one of the first Covid vaccination in the world (outside of clinical trials). Sonny Purba and his son Sameer have been calling people isolated during Covid; they say volunteering ‘has brought them closer together as father and son.’

This all fits well with Judaism, which is a thank you religion. The day begins with the prayer ‘Modeh Ani, I give thanks before you, living God, for restoring my soul in mercy.’ What this really means is ‘Thank you for another day of life.’ I don’t always succeed, but I try to start each morning with those lines, not by looking at my phone.

Saying blessings is a discipline of gratitude. ‘Baruch Attah, blessed are you, God,’ should also be translated as ‘Thank you…’ The words can easily degenerate into a pious formula, what the rabbis called mitzvat anashim melummadah, a mitzvah done by rote. But sometimes they jump out. It’s happened to me a few times, that I’ve lain down on the ground, wanting to put my heart as close to the earth as possible and say with all my being ‘Thank you! It’s a wonderful world!’

It may seem odd to write of ‘discipline’ in this context. But there’s much to be said for cultivating a spirit of gratitude. I know people who won’t go to sleep before recalling five things they’ve appreciated each day.

The ideal is to have a grateful and gracious consciousness. No one can accomplish this all the time. There’s much in the world to be less than grateful for. Why should someone mistreated, or injured by cruel fortune, feel grateful while they absorb the blow?

What we really want to avoid, though, is a bitter and resentful mind. Most of us have tasted those feelings and the flavour isn’t pleasant. While we may not always be able to escape them, we don’t want them to take up residence in our consciousness. For many of us this may sometimes be a struggle in which the help of others and the quiet and beauty of nature are indispensable allies.

The rabbis of the 1^st century were deeply aware of this challenge. They puzzled over the familiar phrase in the Shema commanding us to love God ‘bechol me’odecha – with all your might.’ The words translate literally as ‘with all your very-ness.’ But what does that mean? Working carefully with the Hebrew, they explained:

Whatever measure of fortune God metes out to you, acknowledge God most profoundly.

In Hebrew ‘acknowledge’ and ‘thank’ are the same word.

I think of this instruction when I meet people who take their tough fate with good grace, like the man with Parkinson’s, of whom his wife said after he died, ‘He never ever complained. He would look out into the garden and see the good in every day.’

Contemporary life often incites us into a culture of entitlement, of ‘I need’ and ‘I want.’ Thank You Day encourages us to replace, or at least supplement, these demands with two questions: ‘What can I contribute?’ and ‘How can I say thank you?’