Hopes for 2018. Or are they just blinkers?

One of the aspects of 2018 that appeals to me personally is that it will be my second calendar year in a job I actually enjoy.

That may sound pretty unimpressive but when you’ve spent ten years moving between six jobs, five of which were lousy fits – or, to be fair, to which I turned out to be hopelessly unfitted – finding one that I actually like is a remarkable uptick.

So it’s good to be starting a new year in it.

One of the aspects I enjoy of the job is that it involves quite a lot of work in Italy. Why should that appeal to me? It’s where I was born, but in the course of a long career, I’ve never had the opportunity to work there. Now, however, I’ve been working with Italian colleagues and developing relations with Italian clients, and it’s wonderfully rewarding.

As a child, I spoke Italian pretty well. Perhaps to near-native level. Today – well, it’s half a century on and things get rusty. So one of the things I’ve been doing is working on the language. Reading is one of the best ways of doing that.

Do you know Primo Levi’s book The Periodic Table? I liked it so much that I’m re-reading it. The beauty is that it’s extremely funny, which only intensifies the harrowing poignancy of the life story of a man who was one of the few survivors of the extermination camp at Auschwitz.

Primo Levi: an extraordinary history for an outstanding writer

The book’s title is derived from the profession Levi first chose, long before he became a writer. He was a chemist. Each chapter is associated with the name of an element from the Periodic Table. Near the end of one of the early chapters, Zinc, Levi explains that:

…I had always considered my origins a negligible if curious fact, a little amusing anomaly, like someone whose nose is bent or who has freckles; a Jew is someone who doesn’t decorate a tree at Christmas, who shouldn’t eat salami but does anyway, who learned a little Hebrew when he was thirteen and then forgot it.

That struck a cord, because it is so close to the way I feel about being a Jew myself. If I were more religious it would matter much more but, since I’m not, it remains for me simply a cultural idea – or, more importantly, a cultural emotion – which is far from defining who I am. It’s as essential to my character as is my imposing height (167 cm or 5’7”) or my spectacular hair colour (six decades to get it to this particular white, though it was well under way in just three).

That’s surely how these characteristics should be. Of some interest, maybe, but not the basis for any kind of real judgement. Sadly, for Levi, in the late 1930s, his origins wouldn’t long remain a mere curiosity. As racial laws were promulgated by the Fascist government, walls began to go up around him, with the doors in them closing one by one.

These days, of course, while anti-Semitism is hardly dead, it isn’t the force it once was. Nor is it by any means the main cause for the persecution of people on the basis of what they are, rather than what they have done. Today the groups suffering the most are Muslims or Blacks.

Something that brought this home to me particularly strongly was when I asked a black woman I’d just met, where she was from. It was an innocent question. Her accent said loud and clear that the answer was ‘Luton’, the town to which my wife and I had just moved. That was the answer I was expecting. But that’s not an innocent question to a black person.

She replied, “I’m from Cheltenham”.

Now Cheltenham and Luton are about as far apart as any two towns can be in England. Not geographically, though they’re hardly neighbours. The real distinction is social. Cheltenham is nice, a word you should pronounce ‘naice’. It’s wealthy. It has a fine girls’ school. It has a major British spying centre. It has a Tory MP. House prices are, I doubt not, astronomical.

Luton has two Labour MPs. It’s just a tad dust-blown. Its great advantage is that, for being this close to London, its house prices are amazingly cheap – perhaps a third to a half of the capital’s.

It’s hard to imagine anyone with her accent coming from Cheltenham.

Still, that was her answer, and we chatted a little about the town and her upbringing there before moving on to other subjects.

By the afternoon, she’d got to know me a little better. And suddenly, unprompted, she turned to me and said, “actually, I was born in Jamaica. I came to Cheltenham when I was five”.

All the weight of blackness was suddenly laid bare for me. Ask a white Englishman where he’s from and he tells you. Ask someone black, and there’s a moment at least when he has to be wondering, “are you checking on whether I’m an alien? Whether I don’t belong here?”

The attitudes that would ultimately inflict terrible suffering on Levi are still there. They just have different targets, for the most part, today.

Back to Levi’s book.

The following chapter, Iron, starts with the words:

Outside the walls of the Chemistry Institute it was night, the night of Europe: Chamberlain had returned outplayed from Munich, Hitler had entered Prague without firing a shot, Franco had subjugated Barcelona and was sitting in Madrid. Fascist Italy, a minor pirate, had occupied Albania, and the premonition of catastrophe was condensing like a viscous dew across the houses and in the streets, in careful talk and muted consciences.

Well, we’re not there yet. Reading those words on the brink of 2018 reminded me how much less bad things look today than they did in 1939. But then, they didn’t look so bad in 1930, but the 1939 catastrophe came anyway.

And yet, if we wanted to live, Levi tells us later, if we wanted in some way to take advantage of the youth that was flowing through our veins, there was no other resource… than voluntary blindness.

Yes. That’s what stops us preventing that kind of slide. And yet, if Levi chose voluntary blindness, with what he was facing, what’s to stop us doing the same?

I’m looking forward to another year in a job I like. It should be fun. But is that just me choosing blindness too?

Roman roots. And Jewish

One of the best aspects of my job, not exactly new any more though I’m still a week or so from my first anniversary, is that it takes me to Rome from time to time.

Why should that matter so much? Well, I was born in Rome. I left when I was thirteen, too young to have really learned the city, and until I started this job I’d only been back once or twice. Even so, it’s a place that holds a large place in my being, as I realise whenever I return. At times, the city feels eerily familiar – I know what’s around the next corner, I feel I belong, I feel I’ve come home.

The voices, too, I know. The same slangy loping Italian, flowing from cadence to cadence to leap up and start again. It’s the Italian I know best.

Not that I know Italian that well. I’m working on it, and I can keep up a conversation. But I’ve an accent that says “British” from feet away, and every now and then I can’t find the word I want, though I know it well and often remember it soon afterwards, kicking myself for having been forced to use some long phrase instead of the elegant term that would have said it so much better.

Even so, it was fun to be in a restaurant the other night with four colleagues. It was a typically Roman place, the one who chose it told me. I was just pleased he’d picked somewhere other than the restaurant he’d taken me to four or five times in the past, until I said to him, “is there only one place to eat in Rome, then?”

Now he’s from Milan, as is one of the others in that company. Both women were from Turin, though one of them actually lives in Rome. But you don’t get to be Roman by merely living there. So it gave me great joy to be able to announce, in my best English-accented Italian, “I hope you realise that I’m the only true Roman at this table.”

Jewish-style artichokes: a culinary delight of Rome

The food was excellent too. I particularly enjoyed the dish that involved artichokes flattened and fried. They’re called “carciofi all giudia”, artichokes in the Jewish style – not to be confused with Jerusalem artichokes which are a different vegetable altogether – a truly Roman specialty. And delicious.

It tickled me to be a Roman with Jewish roots enjoying a Roman delicacy of Jewish artichoke. In Rome.

Of such small pleasures a satisfied life is made.

The thing about Rome is that it’s the quintessentially Italian city. Or at any rate the strip of Italy that runs from, say, Bologna down to Rome is truly Italy. North of Italy you get cities like Turin which is practically French, or Milan which is essentially just southern Austria: you know, they believe in efficiency and value for money and all those boring northern European notions. In Rome, there’s a feeling that it doesn’t much matter if things take longer than planned (or better still, happen without a plan) or if you’re ripped off as you go, as long as you’re enjoying yourself. Strikes me as a sensible approach.

Romans say that Africa starts just below Rome, so that’s not really Italy any more either. Of course, Northerners say that Africa starts just above Rome, but what would a bunch of Southern Austrians know about that? Not that I care: I like Africa, or at least the bits I’ve seen.

To me, Rome’s not just the Italian capital, it’s the worthy capital. It sums up Italy, it speaks for the country. And I enjoy being there. Hence my often-repeated statement that it’s a good place to be born, so I’m sure it would be a good place to die – for years I thought I’d retire there.

As it happens, that looks unlikely now. Partly it’s the sheer cost of the city. But more importantly it’s because two of my sons, both born in England, seem well-established in Spain. The third son, who was born in Switzerland, now lives in the UK, but we’re not keen on staying there: the climate’s too sad – physically wet and grey for far too much of the time, politically wet and grey since the Brexit vote.

Valencia attracts us. Down by the sea. A glorious climate. Good food. Easygoing people. I’m looking forward to it.

To be honest, I’ve been attracted by Spain ever since I watched The Princess Bride. Do you remember the recurring line? It’s spoken with a strong mock-Spanish accent:

My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

It may not be an entirely accurate view of the Spanish soul, but it has something about it that attracts me. Enough, at least, to make me want to explore how plausible it is.

Should be as much fun as Rome.

Saying goodbye to Lionel Blue

As a young man in my first job, I suffered from the same problem as many my age: I found getting up in the mornings a terrible pain.

I invested in a radio clock. It was tuned to BBC Radio 4 and set to come on at 7:00 if I was feeling virtuous, 7:15 if I was feeling tired, which was more often the case. Either way, I wouldn’t get up but remained in bed, marginally awake, vaguely aware of the Today programme telling more all the latest ghastly happenings around the world. Just as it does still.

It was only at ten to eight that I would finally spring to life. Why? Because that was when ‘Thought for the Day’ came on, the Today programme’s five-minute nod to religion, when someone speaking for one or other of the many faiths, Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, or any other, gave us a snippet of holy thought designed to inspire and uplift. I found the tone sanctimonious and altogether far to forcedly cheery for the time of day, and from complete inertia I would leap into action and across the room to turn off the radio.

It amazes me still that I was somehow able, day after day, to be up, semi-washed, fully shaved, dressed and on the train to work at 8:12, even though the station was ten minutes walk away. Or, as I frequently discovered, a five-minute run.

Many years later, I found myself doing a great deal of driving for work. That meant listening to a lot of radio and, since I couldn’t be bothered to turn it off for five minutes, that included ‘Thought for the Day’. Little by little I came to appreciate it more: even if the speakers were sometimes immensely irritating for their obviously self-conscious wisdom, the wisdom itself was (occasionally) real.

No one, though, was as enlightening and also entertaining as Rabbi Lionel Blue. Every ‘Thought for the Day’ I heard of his was a joy and often insightful.

Lionel Blue, 1930-2016
He'll be missed

The one that sticks in my mind told two contrasting stories.

Blue was a hospital visitor, taking religious consolation to the sick and dying. Visiting one terminally ill man, he was struck by the attractive woman sitting in a waiting room near his ward. Told that his wife was with the patient, Blue took a seat near her. A little while later, the wife appeared and went up to the woman who had impressed him.

“You can go in now,” she said.

Blue later learned that she was the mistress, and the wife was leaving her a moment to say goodbye to her dying lover.

The other story concerned a funeral he attended in Paris. A wealthy middle class family was burying a son who’d died of Aids. There were many mourners in attendance, but one was conspicuous for his absence: the young man’s gay lover, in whose arms he had died, forbidden by the family from attending the burial.

For Blue, the first instance was a clear breach of all conventional morality, but in his view it was infused with love. The second conformed entirely to standard behaviour but, he felt, was untouched by love. He was well-placed to judge, as the first openly gay Rabbi in Britain, and a man who had suffered for his homosexuality as a young man. “To my surprise,” he once said, “my 70s are nicer than my 60s and my 60s than my 50s, and I wouldn't wish my teens and twenties on my enemies.”

To Blue, God was present in the first encounter, absent from the second.

That attitude sums up blue. Religion was a matter of love and of consolation, not of blind application of cold, inhumane regulation. It was something human, that spanned religions – he was closely acquainted with Christianity and no stranger to churches – and felt that faith was inherently bound into daily life. As he said:

Praying privately in churches, I began to discover that heaven was my true home and also that it was here and now, woven into this life.

It must be no surprise that a man of such attitudes was as much a friend of laughter as he was of love. He would end every ‘Thought for the Day’ with a joke. 

He died on 19 December, sadly impoverishing the legions of those who favour tolerance and moderation, at a time when we need them more than ever. So, in tribute to him, let me end with a similar joke, though not one I think he told.

A man climbs a hill to commune with God.

“Lord,” he says, “what is a million years to you?”

“A minute,” replies the Lord.

“And how about a million pounds?”

“A penny.”

“Could you give me a penny, Lord?”

“Certainly. In a minute.”

Best wishes to you, Rabbi Blue, and all our gratitude for the gentle kindness you gave us in a life well-lived.

Faith can move mountains – or hearts. Or it can kill shopkeepers...

I’ve met many people who are improved by their religious faith. Somehow, the teachings of their beliefs improve their naturally good qualities.

Sadly, however, the exact opposite can also apply. There are many for whom belief, and in particular the belief that all their basest instincts are endorsed by a supreme power, only emphasises their worst characteristics. Indeed, they treat it as authorisation to act on them.

Asad Shah, who was murdered on Good Friday, was a Glasgow shopkeeper viewed with great affection by the community he served. He regarded himself as a Muslim but liked to keep lines of communication open to other faiths – not long before he died he used Facebook to post the message “Good Friday and a very Happy Easter, especially to my beloved Christian nation.”

A community grieving for Asad Shah's death
Their slogan? “This is not who we are”

He also liked to distribute personalised Christmas cards to his customers. That reminded me of my Jewish grandmother who used to exchange Christmas cards, each and every year, with her neighbour, for decades. The fact that one of them was Jewish changed absolutely nothing in a small gesture that was intended to communicate goodwill and bring a little happiness. To both of them.

The general form in murder cases is for the presumed perpetrator to deny everything, plead not guilty and struggle to get off the hook. In this case, however, the defendant, Tanveer Ahmed, has taken the unusual step of issuing a statement, in his own words, through his lawyer:

This all happened for one reason and no other issues and no other intentions.

Asad Shah disrespected the messenger of Islam the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him. Mr Shah claimed to be a Prophet.

When 1,400 years ago the Prophet of Islam Muhammad peace be upon him has clearly said that “I am the final messenger of Allah there is no more prophets or messengers from God Allah after me.

“I am leaving you the final Quran. There is no changes. It is the final book of Allah and this is the final completion of Islam.”

Just to make a trivial point in passing, this communication makes me hope he isn’t the product of a British school system. Because if he is, it’s no testimonial to his teachers’ ability to teach him English.

The chilling part is the reference to Shah disrespecting the Prophet Muhammad. No wonder he had to die. Ahmed at the end of his statement tells us, “If I had not done this others would and there would have been more killing and violence in the world,” which is a glorious notion: he killed a man, by stabbing and beating him, in order to reduce the killing and violence in the world. That has all the rationality of NATO powers going to war to preserve international peace.

Mr Ahmed’s hatred was directed at the man who disrespected Islam, while claiming to be a Muslim. We hate no one as much as a traitor, do we? The man who turned his coat is far worse than the man who was always an open, avowed enemy.

To make things still graver, Shah belonged to a sect, the Ahmadiyya, whose members are not even allowed to refer to themselves as Muslims under the law of Pakistan. A man who persisted in calling himself a Muslim, though he belonged to a group deemed beyond the Pale by one of the world’s great Muslim Nations? No wonder he had to die. 

Especially if he disrespected Muhammad.

Treason, when it occurs in a religious context, has its own term: apostasy. And religious authorities who, down the ages, have never been reluctant to resort to fairly hideous forms of punishment, reserve the worst for the apostate. Catholics and Protestants burned each other with particular glee precisely because each side saw the other as traitors from inside the same Church, who had turned against it. Why, there was plenty of persecution even of Protestants by other Protestants.

Similarly, Stalin, despite having taken supreme power in what was then the Soviet Union, couldn’t rest until Trotsky had been murdered. Trotsky, reduced to a rootless exile, travelling from country to country until he found some kind of asylum in Mexico, thousands of miles from Russia and Stalin. Yet even there, Stalin could not bear to let him live, and sent in Ramón Mercader to see him off with an ice axe.

He contrived the murder in August 1940, the same month in which he signed the Nazi-Soviet pact. Stalin could shake the hand of Hitler, but couldn’t bear the thought that he was sharing the world with his old comrade from the St Petersburg barricades of 1917.

Just like Tanveer Ahmed, who couldn’t bear the idea that Asad Shah was drawing breath at the same time as he was.

Most of us take limited action against those we feel have betrayed us. A friendship ends. A professional relationship dies. Maybe a marriage leads to divorce. Generally, we stop short of violence. A long way short.

But when there’s a belief at stake? If what you’re doing is the will of God? Or, as in Stalin’s case – and Hitler’s – obeying the dictates of history? Why, what possible limits should you put on a righteous anger in the name of an unlimited cause?

As assuredly as Mercader wielded his ice axe, or the two sides of the Reformation wielded their bonfires, Tanveer Ahmed wielded his knife in the name of something they all saw as greater than themselves. Most often, against victims as hapless as Asad Shah. 

No wonder he had to die.

I know many people who have been helped to lead blameless, even praiseworthy lives by their beliefs. Unfortunately, however, belief can also have the opposite effect. Instead of intensifying the better instincts of man it can justify the worst – and sadly Asad Shah and his community have paid the price.

What Christianity can teach Islam. With a Jewish story to make the point

It is a truth universally acknowledged, or at any rate, a point of view widely acknowledged to be true by self-styled ‘Christian’ circles in the West, that Islam is a religion badly in need of an education.

And those same circles imply that no-one is better placed than they are to provide the necessary lessons.

That is a belief with a long pedigree or, at any rate, since a pedigree suggests nobility, a long track record. Certainly, it motivated Christendom in the Middle Ages, when it decided to teach Islam decency and a love of peace at swordpoint in the Crusades, and it continues today with tanks and drone attacks replacing such less flamboyant weaponry, in Iraq or Afghanistan.

One of my favourite Jewish stories concerns two friends working together in the City of London for many years: Moishe, of my people, and Seamus from County Cork.

One day, Seamus announced to Moishe that he would be travelling home to Ireland for the weekend and suggested that his friend might like to accompany him. Moishe was more than happy to accept the invitation, and the weekend started brilliantly with an outstanding dinner with the family on Friday evening, a day’s fishing by the local trout stream the next day, followed by another dinner, practically a banquet, with all the neighbourhood had to provide in the way of good company.

On Sunday morning, Seamus admitted slightly shamefacedly, ‘you know, I’m seen as the squire over here, and if I’m around on a Sunday morning, it’s generally expected that I attend mass.’

‘Why,’ says Moishe, ‘I’ve never been to a Catholic service. Would you mind if I joined you?’

Father O’Connor made no objection when Seamus told him that ‘though he’s not of our faith, my fiend Moishe would like to attend mass this morning.’

The service began and was going along just fine. Then there was a ring of a bell and a collecting plate came round. Seamus put in a ten euro note and Moishe did the same. A little later there was a second ring and another appearance of the plate, but this time Moishe had no ten euro notes left, so he put in a twenty. Not long before the end, there was a third ring of the bell, and this time he was obliged to contribute 50.

As they were walking back to the Church door, Seamus asked what he’d thought of the service.

‘Very interesting,’ replied Moishe, ‘in fact I’ve a few questions for your priest.’

They approach Father O’Connor, and Moishe asks his first question.

‘Tell me, that Jesus Christ. Wasn’t he a Jew?’

‘Why, yes, most certainly he was.’

‘And all those disciples, weren’t they Jews too?’

‘Yes, indeed, good God-fearing Jews, every one of them.’

Moishe shakes his head. ‘You mean we started this business? How on Earth did we let it slip from our control?’

To this day there are Christians who would deny that the religion is a business at all. Some point to the tale of Christ driving the moneylenders from the temple. But Christianity has evolved down the ages, and the mainstream has long known that there are certain naive aspects of the early Church that need a more sophisticated rationality, to help interpret them and accommodate them to reality.

These days the moneylenders don’t ply their trade in the temple. They basically own it.

Some years ago we went to St Peter’s in Rome. The entry charge made no concession to understatement. As we approached the door, we discovered that the men in the group, dressed in shorts on a baking hot Italian summer’s day, were going to have invest another fine sum in disposable plastic trousers, just to cover our knees.

Oh, yes. There was a good commercial brain behind that gig.

Yesterday, we visited the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. In passing, let me say that for sheer lofty beauty and an atmosphere of contemplative tranquility, I’ve never seen anywhere to surpass it.

As we approached the door, I pulled out my wallet ready to pay the undoubtedly steep entrance fee. And then I saw the sign: women would have to wrap themselves in skirts, available at the door, if their knees were showing, and the Mosque also provided headscarves to cover their hair. I checked to make sure I could cover this additional expenditure too.

And then — imagine my delight when I discovered that entrance was free (we were asked to make a donation on leaving, but without compulsion, and many visitors made none). I was also pleasantly surprised to learn that the over-skirts were being provided free of charge. And the staff on the door were welcoming women visitors with a smile and telling them that if they chose not to wear a headscarf, they didn’t have to.

Ah, yes. Islam has a lot to learn from Christianity. And Christians have a lot to teach it. But I’m in no hurry to see the lessons delivered or received.

The Blue Mosque looming majestically over our hotel

In Suleyman the Magnificent's Mosque,
Breda and Danielle show they can be respectful

And Danielle can even blend in

Postscript

There are certain drinks I can't abide outside their original environment. Guinness is a drink which I wouldn't normally touch if you paid me, but when I was in Dublin a few years ago, I drank it every evening.

Similarly, while in Istanbul, I've developed a strange predilection for Turkish coffee, which I've not felt anywhere else. Still, in one restaurant at least, it seemed the only safe option: an advertising poster rather suggested that they had no idea how to navigate the vagaries of the Western European varieties.

If you advertise cappuccino with an illustration of long espressos,
just what can you be trusted to serve up?

Mortifying the body to exalt the spirit. If that makes sense

My heart goes out to my Moslem friends: it’s the middle of Ramadan and in these latitudes that means the dawn to dusk fast lasts for around eighteen hours each day. And it’s going to get worse for the next couple of years, as Ramadan comes earlier and therefore includes more and more of the year’s longest days

It wouldn’t be so bad if the fast merely meant taking no food, but anyone following it strictly also takes no drink. Eighteen hours of dehydration? And this is supposed to be good for you?

In the heartland of Islam, the day never gets muuch longer than thirteen and a half hours, which means that the fast doesn't become quite as excruciating as it can here. But like all religions, the rules are the rules, and if you live by them you have to live by them in their rigid entirety, in spite of local conditions.

It puts me in mind of so many other bizarre restrictions imposed on their followers by organised religion. Take my own, Jewish, cultural roots for instance. Danielle, who likes milk in her coffee, couldn’t have it at an otherwise wonderful dinner at a Jewish friend’s. We’d had meat with the meal, so naturally no milk could be served.

We of course accepted the constraint with the best grace possible – with complete equanimity on my part, as it happens, since I prefer my coffee black, but that doesn’t stop me feeling for Danielle – and nodded our heads as though the word ‘naturally’ somehow summed things up completely. But what was ‘natural’ about it?

The basis of the interdiction is in the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 14:21. It tells us: ‘Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk.’ That, by the way, is the King James Authorised Version of the translation which people keep telling me is wonderful for its ‘poetry’. It always me wonder whether they’re confusing ‘poetry’ with ‘incomprehensibility’. What on earth is ‘seething’? Apart from the state into which such obscure language puts me?

Deuteronomy: making sure you understand the law.
When you can make sense of it

Let’s assume, as other translations do, that it means ‘cooking’ (New International Version: ‘Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk’. Less poetical, is it? At least I know what it means).

So we’re not supposed to cook a young goat in its mother’s milk. It’s not clear to me just why that should bother the creator of the universe and legislator of all life but, OK, maybe that is one of the miracles of the Godhead – infinite in his scope but able to focus on a matter of infinitesimal, even baffling, detail. So fine. As it happens I wasn’t planning on cooking kid in its mother’s milk anyway. We’d not eaten goat at dinner. And it was cow’s milk we were planning to put in the coffee.

But the wise have decided that applying the restriction from Deuteronomy means that you can’t serve any kind of milk at the same table, within three hours – some schools of thought say six – of using it to serve any kind of meat. Naturally. If I can’t see that, it’s just further evidence of my denseness, already displayed by my inability to appreciate the beauty of the King James Bible.

Incidentally, can you stand a little more poetry? Here’s the rest (actually the start) of Deuteronomy 14:21: ‘Ye shall not eat of anything that dieth of itself: thou shalt give it unto the stranger that is in thy gates, that he may eat it; or thou mayest sell it unto an alien: for thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God.’

Isn’t that nice? Don’t eat carrion yourself, it’s unclean, and you’re holy. On the other hand, if in your holiness you can make a buck or two by selling it to a foreigner, hey, why not? We’re not working to some kind of anti-business agenda here.

Not sure I understand the holiness any better than the poetry.

Meanwhile, back to my Moslem friends. Nearly half way, guys. Good luck with the rest. And just remember – at least you’re not living in northern Norway or Canada, where the sun doesn’t set at all in the summer.

What on earth do Moslems do in those regions, actually? Move away? Or try to fast for the entire month?

Crisis of faith

One of the unusual characteristics of British life is that about a third of our state-funded schools are associated with particular faiths: the Church of England, the Catholics, the Jews and most recently, perhaps to prove how wonderfully open in spirit we are, Islam.

Many people think that these schools, which make up about a third of the total, are rather better than the ordinary, run of the mill secular kind. A Christian education makes a better person, they feel, which rather flies in the face of the fact that Henry VIII, Generalissimo Franco and Tony Blair all thought of themselves as God-fearing Christians.

This inclination towards faith schools has led to the phenomenon of some middle class parents suddenly rediscovering God, usually when their eldest child is about four. They frequent the Church assiduously for the year before admission decisions are taken. I’ve often wondered whether they behave like the villagers in that excellent novel, George Eliot’s Silas Marner: they didn’t go to Church every single Sunday but would miss one here or there, so as not to give the impression they were trying to take an unfair advantage over their neighbours in the race to heaven.

I wonder whether the parents looking for a quick route to the local faith school do the same? Do they miss the occasional service so as not to be thought too zealous? Do they say ‘We’ll both do Easter, of course, but perhaps you can handle Whitsun on your own and I’ll do the Harvest Festival.’ The important thing is to make sure their faces are recognised in time for the Admissions interviews, so the child gets the important acknowledgement of belonging to a Church-going family.

I assume, though I don’t know, that this behaviour continues until a few months after the last child starts school. Then presumably they can allow their attendance at Church, their helping with Fetes, their contributions to the good causes to tail off. Which is all very well and fine, but what would happen if they had a late addition to the family? One of those children we tend to refer to as an afterthought or, less flatteringly, an accident? What then? How awkward it would be to have to start regularly attending Church again, with no good explanation of why they’d stopped.

All these difficulties surrounding Christian schools are multiplied many times over when it comes to a Jewish school. After all, to be born Jewish you have to have a Jewish mother (makes sense – you can never be sure of the father: where things go in from may be unclear, but there’s little doubt where they come out). This means if your mother isn’t Jewish, you actually have to be converted to become a Jew.

This can be extremely painful. At one time I worked with a young woman who was as Jewish as anyone I have ever met. She stuck firmly to the dietary rules, she kept all the festivals, she went to services in the local Synagogue. But it was her father, not her mother, who was Jewish. So when I met her she was undergoing the demanding process of conversion, poor thing, and was extremely nervous about being accepted.

My mother is Jewish, which gives me a free pass to Judaism. I kept wanting to say to my colleague, ‘here, take my entrance ticket. I’m not going to be using it.’ Sadly, however, that isn’t how these things work.

Fortunately, she had a sensible rabbi. Long before she had completed the process of conversion, she was called in to face a panel charged with deciding whether she could be accepted. Inevitably, that made her even more nervous. However, the panel had realised, as anyone who knew her had, that she was deeply Jewish, to the core of her soul, and as sincere a convert as anyone could possibly want. The panel was delighted with her, she was accepted and was over the moon with the decision.

Not so fortunate was a woman in a recent case before our brand new Supreme Court, here in Britain (founded in October). She had converted to Judaism from Catholicism, but before a congregation not recognised by Orthodox Jews as valid. So when she and her husband, who was born Jewish, applied for their son to be admitted to the Jewish Free School in North London, they were turned down, on the grounds that the boy was not a Jew.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that this was racial discrimination against the boy. The decision has greeted with consternation in the Jewish community. It seems that the greatest objection is that the decision means that non-Jewish judges will decide who is and who isn’t Jewish.

All this reminds me of the wonderful man, Rabbi Hugo Gryn, who spread his message of kindness and tolerance in this country right up to his death in 1996. Unfortunately, he was a Reform Rabbi and many in the Orthodox Community refused to pay him any tribute on his death, on the grounds that he was not a Jew.
I heard one of his friends responding on the radio. ‘What a pity they didn’t tell the Nazis he wasn’t Jewish,’ he pointed out, ‘it might have spared him the time he spent in Auschwitz.’