If Yom Kippur was a day of heaven in heaven, then preparing for Succot has been like heaven on earth (only a bit more rushed). ‘No eating, no drinking’, these are not only part of the laws of Yom Kippur, but also how the Talmudic sage known as Rav describes his image of  heaven, ‘No jealousy, no envy, just basking in the presence of God’. Surrounded by so many people to whom I feel close, with beautiful music and prayers filled with the spirits of our people, parts of Yom Kippur felt just like that. Thank you!

It’s therefore wonderful to come down to earth with a bang, – the first nail in the Succah. ‘Those who are careful in keeping the commandments begin to build their Succah at once after the conclusion of Yom Kippur’, says the Shulchan Aruch, the 16^th century code of Jewish Law. It’s struck me more than once – as I strike the nails at 11.00pm and try to ensure that the first beams of the heavy structure are firmly enough in place to make it unlikely that I’ll be sued by anyone sitting under them, – that though I’m being careful about putting up my Succah, I’m being careless about loving my neighbours as myself. 
 
But, much as I love Succah building and believe it should be in the top five of everybody’s favourite Jewish practices, it was not my very best moment this year. That came two days later, when we began to harvest the potatoes growing in the Synagogue garden. Leslie Lyndon and I notified Gan Alon, and all the children came to participate. Digging up potatoes is always exciting; after all, one never knows if there will actually be any potatoes there, or how many or how large they will turn out be.
 
The children loved the activity, and so did we! There were plenty of large potatoes, small potatoes, red potatoes and white potatoes, and everyone had a turn at gathering them in. There was big boxful for Gan Alon to share. In fact there are several bowls full of them in the synagogue kitchen and I fantasise about a potato Kiddush: mashed potatoes, roast potatoes, baked potatoes and chips. Please note the word ‘fantasise’. What I’d really like is for people to take some home in return for a donation of their choice to a charity concerned with hunger.
 
This is really what Succot is about; joy and gratitude before God for the earth’s blessings, without which none of us could live. A Succah should be beautiful, to reflect the earth’s beauty, hung with its bounty to show thankfulness for the world’s generosity, and full of people to share the earth’s blessings together.
 
That these matters must never be taken for granted was brought home to be forcefully when my friend and colleague Rabbi Marc Soloway told me of the prayer he has written in the wake of the floods in Boulder, Colorado, which have wrecked his synagogue, parts of his home and the homes of numerous members of his community.
 
We will be saying this prayer in our services, and are supporting the local emergency appeal.
 
May the rain and the sun be for a blessing!  Chag Sameach

I imagine we are all touched today by a certain awe, an inner sense of the solemnity, depth and power of Yom Kippur, which commences with dusk this evening. We may also feel a shadow of fear for this day, above all days, is the measure of our life and the lives of our family. It is a day of great friendship and closeness; a day on which to cherish those we love and tell them so. It is also a day which may bring tears, and the benedictions of those who used to place their hands on our heads and ask God to protect us, or who once stood beside us in blessing, or whom we ourselves used to bless, may reach us only through an open and raw heart and from another world.

Still, we take strength from the fact that we are not just a congregation of those now living, but of all our family and people across time. With us in our services are Hillel and Rabbi Akiva, our great-great-grandparents, those elders who were our friends and guides in matters of wisdom and kindness during our childhood, and whose seats are no longer next to us but in our memories and hearts. They are all there with us, somehow, and their intuited blessings seek us out.

For all these reasons the heart is open now, as it may not be so readily through the busyness of all the year.

What is in our hearts? 

Of course, we have hopes and prayers for everything and everyone. We want it all, for the whole world and for ourselves: peace, especially in the Middle East and Israel, but everywhere; safety for the millions of refugees, from Syria, the Congo and from violence anywhere; an end to thirst and hunger, especially for children; a stop to our destruction of the beautiful natural world, the treasury not only of the very oxygen we breathe but of the wonder which purifies our souls; an end to hatred and a new respect for one another, of whatever faith or colour we may be, together with a renewed reverence for the beauty of this earth. For all these much needed blessings we not only pray but dedicate ourselves to work.

What else may be in our hearts? What more do we want?

We want safety for those we love. May they go out in peace and come home in peace. May God protect every hair on their heads, guard their longings and their dreams and prevent the arrows of anguish from striking their hearts. I believe this remains our prayer for those we have, even when we know it has at times been in vain, when nothing came forward and protected the person we love or kept him or her by our side. For those we have lost, our prayer is that they be at peace with God and that our memories transmute, in so far as this is possible, from an intermittent stream of pain to a steady source of blessing.

What further might there be in our hearts?

There is at once a question and a longing: God, guide me in my life. Help me to hear your voice, in all people, all life and everything that happens; help me to listen to your voice from within my conscience and my heart. Lead me to do what is good and just; don’t let me give hurt. Teach me, purify me and forgive me where I have failed. Be with me as loving-kindness, fairness and goodness. Help me live my life.
 
Wishing everybody Shabbat Shalom, Shanah Tovah and Gmar Chatimah Tovah

Customs related to the beginning of Yom Kippur, especially when it begins on Friday night
 
People often ask these questions, so I hope the following may be helpful:
 
Does one make Kiddush at the meal before the fast?
No. It is not yet Yom Tov (or, this year, Shabbat), and it is effectively a weekday meal. It is fitting to begin the meal, both before and after the fast, with the Hamotzi blessing over a challah or loaf of bread, and to conclude with the Grace after Meals.
It is also customary to lay the table beautifully, as for Yom Tov.
 
Does one light candles before Yom Kippur?
Yes. The widely accepted practice is to light candles in the Shabbat candlesticks (this year it is in fact also Shabbat), saying the traditional blessing over them, which in this case concludes, Lehadlik ner shel Shabbat veYom Hakippurim.
This is followed by the Shehecheyanu blessing.
The candles should be lit last thing, after the meal, as the act of lighting them is traditionally understood to usher in Shabbat, Yom Tov and the fast for those who perform it. (But one can make a mental stipulation if one still has to drive to shul, or wants to eat a last apple, so long as one finishes before 7.04 when Shabbat and the fast are ‘brought in by heaven’.)
 
Many people have the custom of lighting a Yahrzeit candle before Yom Kippur for all those they have lost.
 
What does one traditionally wear on Yom Kippur?
The tradition is, if possible, to wear white and not to wear jewellery. This is understood to be in imitation of the angels who (apparently!) dress in white. It also reminds us of shrouds, thus humbling the heart.
 
The services are long and often hard to follow; can I bring reading material to the synagogue?
Yes, certainly. Anything which stirs the heart and awakens the soul is appropriate. Concentration in the prayers does not mean following every word, but rather participating in the creation of an open spirit of heartfelt reflection.
 
It is a firm principle to give Tzedakah generously on (that is before and or after) Yom Kippur.

The treat of two wonderful days in Israel and the two opposite poles of life.
 
I went with my cousin to the old Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives. I don’t know from when the earliest graves here date; but the terraced mountainside, the innumerable rows of stones, many with their legend long effaced by time and the wind; the view down to the Old City from the east, and the Golden Gates, sealed until the arrival of the Messiah, – make the visitor feel like a noisy traveller from the bubble of time into the world of timelessness. Here, if anywhere, surely the dead must lie in peace. And when the Messiah’s trumpet wakens them, even then they won’t have far to walk, and their rest will scarcely be disturbed.
 
To reach the upper terraces of the cemetery you climb through tiny, strangely beautiful lanes enclosed between high walls. To the unfamiliar visitor one entrance looks very much like another. ‘Where’s the camel for the tourists?’ my cousin asked the cab-driver, ‘and the old man who’s always here?’ At length we find them. From his small patch of shade beneath a meagre tree the old man discourages us, ‘No, no there’s no sisters Wittenberg here. I’ve been here fifty years; they’re not here’. He does however provides us with the number of the Chevra Kaddisha, who direct us, and is gracious when proved wrong.
 
It’s six years since I stood by the graves of my father’s sisters, lying head to foot, their deaths separated by more than six decades. ‘The first sister in the Jewish Quarter’ reads the short inscription on my aunt Steffi’s stone, brief testament to her immense popularity as the nurse in the Magen David Adom’s clinic in the Old City.
 
The inscription on Eva’s grave is longer. ‘Our precious daughter and sister’ it reads, ‘Chava Elka, daughter of Raphael z’l, taken in the midst of her days’. She was not yet twenty-one when she died. ‘The doctor said, “She needs red wine and chicken”, I remember my father telling me, “Who had money in those days for such things?” The inscription continues, ‘Grand-daughter of Rabbi Ya’acov, son of Avraham Chaim Freimann, who died on the nineteenth of Tevet 5698 (1937) , and of Rebbetzin Rachel, daughter of Rabbi Yisrael Meir, who was killed in the Shoah for the sanctification of God’s name, in Shevat 5704 (1943). May God avenge her blood. May their souls be bound up in the bond of life.’
 
So the family decided to memorialise those family members here to whose burial place they had no access, my great-grandfather who lies in the old Jewish cemetery of Holleschau in the Czechoslovakia, which, I imagine, his surviving  descendants must have felt they would never be allowed to visit, and my great-grandmother whose ashes were washed away by the Vistula river, or still lie somewhere in those devastated acres.
 
Who put that inscription there? My grandparents, of course, to mark the grave of their beloved daughter. But that cannot have been so, because my grandfather’s name is followed by the abbreviation z’l, ‘may he be remembered for a blessing’, so he was no longer alive when the inscription was determined. He died in 1954, when the cemetery was in Jordanian hands, inaccessible to Jews until after the Six Day War. So it must have been my grandmother who created this testament to both her parents and her daughter, 25 years after their deaths.
 
How little peace blessed the troubled lives of those who now lie here, embraced in eternal peace. And how little he told me, and how little I asked, when my father was alive, about the history which framed his life, and formed his heart.
 
Then to the wedding of Celli and Franzi. Love at first sight. ‘We felt it the moment we first saw you together’, said all their friends and family with one voice. Loving families, prayers, music, dancing, and the hillsides of Jerusalem echo to the voice of happiness and joy, bridegroom and bride.

Those not uninitiated into the unique culture of our youth movement Noam’s pre-Camp may be ignorant of the fact that one of the great highlight of such occasions has for many years been the ‘death match’.
 
I should qualify this by saying that it’s a highlight of a highlight, pre-Camp being itself a high point of the year, with over 120 young leaders studying, learning and training to be ready to run camp itself. Pre-Camp took place this year in a beautiful farm in South West Wales; on Thursday morning the sounds of the Shema meditation emerged graciously from barns and huts to the tranquil accompaniment of the lowing of cows and the twittering of swallows.
 
It’s not just a death match at pre-Camp; it’s a rabbinic death match. I’m ignorant of what by now faded cultural icon gave this ill-named event its lugubrious title; but I can assure you that it’s taken seriously and I’ve had the pleasure of entering (and, mercifully, leaving) the ring on several occasions. The true master however is without doubt Rabbi Joel Levy, who relishes such events, which I have also come to enjoy. Round the rabbinic table (what other death match has pens and note-paper provided?) the entire pre-Camp eagerly gathers.
 
What did we fight about? Actually we didn’t decide until about two hours beforehand. (Are many battles like that?) But someone said, ‘We’ve been discussing why Judaism needs so many obscure and complex texts. It’s an issue around here’. So we took it as our theme.
 
The motion was that ‘Too many texts are crushing the spirit out of Judaism’. Devil’s advocate, I proposed it. I won’t tell you what I said just in case anyone ends up believing it, but I feel I managed to rise to the occasion and present half-truths and distortions with tolerable eloquence. Maybe everyone needs the opportunity to be a hypocrite now and then.
 
No, said Rabbi Joel, sacred text is the key constant through all the vagaries of Jewish history. It is the true core of our culture, and Judaism has developed beautiful and sophisticated ways of re-interpreting it. Yes, its study demands knowledge and dedication. But isn’t that discipline a good thing? And shouldn’t it be a matter of basic pride to learn to read the texts of our own tradition!
 
The rules of the death match are that after the first round anyone can tap either speaker on the shoulder, take their chair and argue their position. That’s the real beauty of it at pre-Camp, powerful argument with tens of young people giving their opinions. The queue grew at either side of the table, but the queue to argue for our sacred texts was longer and its speakers drew greater applause. Our texts are our democracy. Recourse to our sacred writings is the arbiter in Judaism, not autocracy or power. Our texts are endlessly engaging; here you find every colour of opinion. Here we debate our values as equals. Through our texts we find our spirituality. We must own our texts, not leave the right to interpret to others. ‘Don’t choose ignorance’, pleaded Rabbi Daniella, ‘Go and learn!’
 
We ended with a short debrief. I didn’t want anybody to be under the illusion that I’d meant what I’d said. This was an argument I was happy to lose in style.
 
Afterwards half a dozen young leaders in their twenties gathered enthusiastically around Rabbis Daniella, Joel and I: ‘How can we create more opportunities to learn? How could we mentor teenagers who struggle with it all?’ They won’t go unanswered!
 
After the death-match, this is new life. It’s exciting for the future and for us all. Come learn!

A man once said to his rabbi, ‘I read thirty-nine explanations of the verse “Lift up your eyes and behold, who created these” but I never understood it. Then one night I saw for myself the beauty of the stars.” “You must write that down”, said the rabbi, impressed. “Then there’d just be forty explanations, instead of thirty-nine”, replied the man.
 
Who hasn’t looked up and, seeing the moon and the stars, stopped and watched and then walked on feeling as if infinity itself had washed out the heart with dew? A woodpecker came to the feeder in the pine tree the other day, bringing glory, with its red on its head and under its tummy and the black and white on the end of its wings.
 
Despite everything, it’s a wonderful world. ‘Look up’, says Isaiah, ‘and see, who created these?’ My God is not some hidden being who made that bird with a sort of superhuman hand, only larger, that we cannot comprehend; my God is in the life of that bird and the freedom of all birds, and beyond, beyond, in the germ and the life of all things.
 
And despite everything we do wrong in the human world, despite the harshness of fate and the cruelties we inflict, there’s still hope, courage, kindness, goodness, and love.
 
I visited David Jackson this week. I miss him around the synagogue which, when he had at least a portion of his health, he attended assiduously. He was among the first at every service, and was never absent from any class. He would sit in my Talmud Shiur, his text full of notes, with a grin on his face and some pun on his lips while Safi, my previous dog, sat knowingly behind him and David, imagining we weren’t all watching, furtively passed him broken sticks of Kit-Kat and curls of croissant.
 
I visited him at Lady Sarah Cohen. His health wasn’t the greatest but his heart and his soul certainly were. ‘I go over in my mind the important words’, he told me, ‘Tikvah,hope; chesed, loving-kindness; chaim, life; emunah, faith; tovah, goodness’. He’s written nine books of poetry over the last years. Here’s a verse from ‘Friendliness’
          Be neighbourly – be genial-
          Benevolence exude,
          Have an amiable – affectionate
          Agreeable attitude. 
 
If I had the contacts I’d introduce him and Caitlin Moran to each other. She wrote last week about the advice she’d leave to her daughter: ‘Just resolve to shine, constantly and steadily, like a warm lamp in the corner, and people will want to move towards you in order to feel happy…You will be bright and constant in a world of flux.’
 
Shabbat Nachamu, the Shabbat of Consolation comes right after the three weeks of anguish culminating in the fast of the Ninth of Av. It teaches us that there’s joy in the world, as well as sorrow, and hope as well as pain. Above it all, it tells us never to despair of life. It’s a beautiful world, and any of us and all of us can help to make it and keep it that way.

‘With my own eyes I’ve seen cruelty and misery. I don’t understand. I weep.’
 
This line may serve as a summary of that scroll of extraordinary force and impact which we read on the night of Tishah Be’Av. Its English name is Lamentations, no doubt after the Latin. But the Hebrew title is more powerful: Eichah, which simply means ‘How’.
 
It is not clear whether the word, with which three of the five chapters of the book commence, indicates a question or an exclamation:
           Young children say to their mothers ‘Where is bread and wine?’
           Then die slowly in their mothers’ laps.
Is the writer asking ‘why?’ Or his heart silenced by an inexpressible ‘how’?
 
The author, by tradition the Prophet Jeremiah, has witnessed the sacking of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. But it feels as if the eyes which observe that scene in the sixth century BCE are the same eyes which have seen the destruction of innumerable cities and villages across ages, the same cruelty and the same suffering. The voice which attempts to describe them says the same words, ‘How!’ ‘Why?’ beyond which lies that vast incomprehensibility which covers like dust the broken interiors of houses and the bodies of those who once inhabited them in peace.  Here is Jerusalem, burnt and plundered by the Romans; here are the villages of Biafra and Cambodia, the suburbs of the cities of Syria.
 
Why think such horrible thoughts? Why keep such a day as Tishah Be’Av, which combines, at least until the afternoon, the strictures of fasting with the laws of mourning, so that we do not eat or drink or greet one another warmly, but sit on the ground or on low chairs, and reflect? Not many years before he died my father asked me to prepare a list of martyred members of the family and to put it every Ninth of Av next to a candle on the table.
 
Struggling with my own question, it seems to me that the heart of Tishah Be’Av is solidarity. The Bible contains the terrible image of the man who, to further his own ends, treads mercilessly on the heads of the poor. We don’t know if he sees them but doesn’t care, or if he doesn’t even notice them at all.
 
I don’t want to be that person, neither through what I do nor what I fail to do. I have a terrible fear that I belong to a civilisation which does sometimes place its heels on the eyeballs of the wretched, though it makes sure they are at the far ends of the earth, or in hidden rooms, or behind walls, where nobody will take heed. I don’t want to make myself a part of it. I have a horror of being subject to cruelty, and an equal horror of being or becoming cruel.
 
On Tishah Be’Av we sit on the ground because we as a people have often been the victims of gross violence. Equally, we sit symbolically side by side with all who currently are such victims, for this is where our heart and conscience belong.
 
I had thought Yom Kippur and Tishah Be’Av, Judaism’s two twenty-five hour fasts, were totally different days. After all, Yom Kippur is about goodness, forgiveness and love. But now I realise that love begins right here, in the determination to dedicate ourselves to kindness, awareness, pity and healing.

Last Sunday I was invited to speak at the end of year celebrations of the Bravanese community. Because their own centre was burnt down in a racist attack, the event was held at the North London Business Park, a location spacious enough to accommodate the several hundred adults and children who participated. It is an annual festivity, timed this year to precede Ramadan, which begins on the new moon of the month of Menachem Av.
 
When the Community Security Trust contacted me on the morning after the fire to inform me of what happened and to suggest that the Bravanese community, with whom I already had good relations, might appreciate it if I got in touch, I did so at once and with a whole heart. Jews of all denominations, Christians and civic leaders responded in exactly the same way.
 
For me there was a special reason in addition to the obvious abhorrence at such an attack (which could equally well have been perpetrated against our own congregation.) My grandfather described in his memoirs how, when the great Boerneplatz Synagogue was engulfed by flames on the morning after Kristallnacht, there was a large crowd present. It wasn’t the case that nobody knew. Only, no one did anything to put out the fire. Those who weren’t actually implicated in the violence, or silently supported it, were no doubt too afraid to take action and just the fewest of the courageous few later found covert ways, hidden from the ever menacing SA and SS, of manifesting their support.
 
These associations were in my mind last Sunday as I listened to the speeches, recitals from the Koran and songs of which the afternoon was composed. Perhaps that’s why what moved me most were not just the warm words of the leaders of the Bravanese community, to whose courtesy I have become accustomed. I was struck most by the police and the local councillors. They did not speak as officials whose duty had compelled them to forgo their Sunday afternoon and give due voice to their formal support. Their words were heart-felt, filled with real sorrow for what had happened, full of warmth: ‘How could anyone do such a terrible thing to this peace-loving community, who fled here from persecution in Somalia, and with whom I’ve lived side-by-side for twenty years?’ ‘We’ve stood together in the past. And we’ll be standing together in the new building we’re going to make sure you soon get, and it’s going to be even better than what you had before’.
 
I was reminded of the words of my teacher, Rabbi Hugo Gryn, as he reflected back after surviving Auschwitz on his home town of Berehovo and the implications of the fact that Christians and Jews had lived side by side without ever really knowing one another: ‘That I spend much of my time working for better understanding between religious groups and fighting racism…is partly because I know that you can only be safe and secure in a society that practises tolerance, cherishes harmony and can celebrate difference’.
 
With the fast of Tisha be’Av drawing near I thought too of the tradition that the Messiah is born on the very same date as the Temples in Jerusalem were burnt down. Even the flames of destruction can be understood to shed light, in which we see with an urgent clarity our hopes, our vision and our responsibilities.

Four days in Israel, where it’s wonderful to be: here are some of the matters which have engaged, excited, troubled, and inspired me;
–          Met colleagues who created Kasuvot or ‘Listening’, a pastoral service for Israel’s hospitals. How can they develop it, gain recognition for chaplaincy as a true profession? Later I learn about multi-faith chaplaincy at Haifa’s Ramban Hospital, Jewish, Muslim, Druze.
–          At the Israel Trauma Centre with Prof. Danny Brom, thinking about the programme ‘Peace of Mind’ (when soldiers come, like the unit we hosted, for hours of discussion and debrief, while cared for by Jewish communities abroad). 25 units are waiting for invitations: how can regular funding be found? When will we host our next group? I watch the film about the unit who was with us: snow, Claire welcoming,  Mitzpah trotting by, one of the soldiers explaining how much it meant for them. ‘One hadn’t talked about what it felt like…’ Our community all learnt too, and loved it.
–          At Yad Vashem, searching for anything on the Jewish Hospital in Poznan. My great-aunt’s husband was a doctor there until December 1939. Then Ostrow-Lubelski, then perhaps Treblinka. In the huge data-base, an entry by a relative who grew up with my mother’s mother. I walk out through the gateway designed by Roman Halter. Later, conversation with relatives puzzling for hours over letters. A postcard sent to Kanitz in 1893 with congratulations on the birth of a second daughter, – that was my grandmother Ella. 
–          At the Conservative Yeshivah, with rabbis Joel and Shaya, and the Kelim group from London (which includes Mossy): three impassioned evening debates ‘Why Believe?’ ‘Why Observe? ‘Why Learn?’ High energy: we want a Judaism with the spiritual discipline which develops the quality of our consciousness, guides our actions, and yet argues the real moral issues of the universal world. Yirat Shamayim withTikkun Olam – Awe of Heaven and social justice. Everything I care about debated with a passion! There’s a great future for Masorti Judaism. (How do we work with the Yeshivah more; bring its excitement to London, take more of us to its heart in Jerusalem? We shall!)
–          In the Knesset, listening with Rabbinical Assembly colleagues to MK Avraham Mitznah. He comes across well: Iran, Syria, Jordan, (Israel helps with the refugees, quietly, below the radar). Then a difficult meeting MK Meir Shitreet to petition him in the name of UK, Israeli and US Rabbis for Human Rights (of all denominations) to work on the deeply troubling bill about the Negev  Bedouin. Let ancestral lands be kept, villages be recognised…Painful, worrying.
–          In the Jerusalem Botanical gardens: ‘The porcupines come out at night. They display their quills like a peacock. Both humans and animals generally retreat’. European, Australian, Mediterranean, herb and bonsai gardens. The motto is ‘Plants grow people’. I know it’s true. Ecology goes deeper than religious divides: there’ll be a walkway of the faiths; ‘The plants in the sacred texts are basically the same – we all depend on wheat, olives, dates…’ We want everyone to come here, religious, not religious, jews, Muslims, Christians, children, elderly…‘Will you bring people here from London?’ Definitely! ‘A three-day botanical trek in Israel’s hills?’ Tomorrow if I could! 
–          I meet a friend who’d just done her Masters in not-for-profit management. ‘There’s a revolution in  caring for the elderly; how to make homes becomes communities. In the US whole towns are studying to be elderly friendly.’ Send me literature please!
–          Long conversations with a family. Next month it’ll be the fifth wedding in Israel I’ll be privileged to help conduct. Ketubah. Music. Feelings. (One time the photographer said ‘Do that again for the camera.’ He’d miss the groom giving the ring. ‘No way!’ and, rarely for me, I gave the man a lecture.)
–          ‘Yonatan!’ – I turn round, ‘Shmuel!’ (I taught him English, he taught me Judaism, thirty years ago). ‘What are you working at?’ ‘Where food and Jewish culture meet’: he writes, cooks, researches: Did you know that Rabbi Moses Isserles (Krakow, C16) says that what’s called Lokchen here was known as Varmicelli by our ancestors? He does a night time tour through Jerusalem’s challah bakeries, testing the flour, tasting the dough). Yes, he can lecture in English; eating is international – very Jewish too. Heard of Gefiltefest? No! Come to London? Sure!

Over the last days I’ve found myself thinking again and again of my friend Yehoshua Hass. He’s not been alive these last few years; he was my father’s age and died at roughly the same time, about five years ago.
 
It must be because I’ve spent the last two days in Brussels, at an intensive meeting of European Masorti rabbis, joined later by lay leaders. It’s been wonderful to learn Torah together and my thoughts haven’t strayed during our sessions (especially as I’ve been chairing most of them). But I’ve made a point of walking everywhere we’ve gone, and as I’ve wandered the streets (‘Take off your kippah’, I was told in no uncertain terms, ‘This part of the city isn’t safe if you show you’re Jewish’) my thoughts have wandered too.
 
I met Yehoshua on Mount Zion; he was a painter and had set up his easel in the courtyard of a monastery. For some reason I can’t recall we fell to talking of French romantic poetry; it must have been some line from Baudelaire. We became friends, and I spent many Shabbat afternoons at his home with his family, with whom I’m still friends.
 
I learnt his life story partly from him, partly from his wife after he was gone. Most of it, of course, I’ll never know, as one never does, even about our closest companions. That’s what I think about now, in Brussels: ‘Did he live here, perhaps, in this street, or in that house over there?’
 
‘I was out when the Gestapo came for the family’, he told me one day. ‘Someone said to me: “Don’t go home; the Germans are waiting for you there.”’ He must first have found a hiding place somewhere in the alleyways of this city, then over the border in France. He crossed the Pyrenees with a group of young escapees, over what become known as theChemin de la Liberte, climbing at night the steep and freezing peaks. His group became lost and some of his companions died of the cold. But he made it to Spain, to his beautiful Mediterranean, and his beloved Land of Israel. After the war he returned to Europe briefly, on some mission for the Hagannah. He was a romantic and I learnt after he’d gone that there’d been at least a couple of broken-hearted, and no doubt stunningly beautiful, girls between Brussels and the South of France.
 
When I met him he’d just moved to Jerusalem from the north, where he’d lived by the sea. The sun, the wind, the waves, the bright Mediterranean colours: Naomi Shemer’s song ‘Od lo ahavti di’ gives perfect voice to the world he loved so much: ‘The wind and the hot sun against my face; Oh I haven’t loved enough’.
 
Yehoshua was a painter and a teacher of art. What he painted most often was Jerusalem; dark green, grey green, deep Italian red, and there were the olive trees and the steep tiled roofs against the sky. He loved it here.
 
Back in Brussels I find myself thinking about him in every gap between our study sessions, and how he fled, and where he hid, and how he built Jerusalem, and what about him, and my own father, I will never know.

‘We sat and wept’, said the leader of the Somali Bravanese community to me when we met. It wasn’t just a building which the fire at their community centre in Muswell Hill destroyed in the early hours of last Wednesday, but their second home, where their children went to study after school, where they felt safe, supported and cared for. The place was everything one would call a true community: a centre of solidarity, celebration, learning, culture, care and prayer. There was a sense of shock as we spoke, as of the loss of part of the very heart of a family.
 
But the following shall not be lost: strong and effective civic solidarity; deep trust that when hate or misfortune strikes no community will be left to stand alone; kindness between neighbours whether of the same or of a different religion; hope and aspiration for a better future for all children; closeness and co-operation rooted in the faith which unites all Faiths, – our shared belief in goodness, kindness, justice and peace.
 
It’s heartening that, like other local rabbis, I have received numerous messages of support to pass on to the community. As Rabbi David Mason of Muswell Hill Synagogue, a close neighbour of the centre, said: “We will work to ensure that the Bravanese community have all the support they need and that this disgraceful incident does not disrupt the harmony that exists between all our local communities.”
 
Together with other neighbours and fellow congregations we must try to help the community rebuild not just the fabric of what can be seen, bricks and roofing, but of what cannot be seen, trust, hope and human fellowship. In this we must be guided at all times by the needs and sensitivities of the Bravanese community.
 
Although I’ve been a guest on more than one occasion at the Bravanese centre, I’ve never troubled until now to find out where Brava actually is. It’s a city in Somalia on the Indian Ocean, whose people have been persecuted for reasons all too familiar to Jews: high aspiration, high achievement, and simply for being different. Coming here, Bravanese people faced many struggles, first to remain in this country and then to build community through activities like those which take place in the centre in Muswell Hill. The Somali Bravanese Welfare Association in Barnet (the centre is exactly on the Haringey border) lists the following services:

• Advice, information and support for the Somali Bravanese community.
• Befriending and outreach service for older, socially isolated community members.
• Accompanying community members to appointments where there may be language difficulties.
• English classes. 
• IT training centre.
• After schools programme for local children aged 11+. 
• Social, recreational and cultural events and activities.

 
Together with many others, I’m in touch with the leaders of the community and will pass on details of what is needed as they become clear.
 
There is always the danger that tragedies and hate crimes are exploited by groups wanting to manipulate them for causes of their own. What matters here is something far deeper and far more basic. It demands of us all a threefold affirmation: of our common and equal humanity, of our mutual interdependence, and of the unique value of each one of us and of every community.