成人快手

A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with Baroness Julia Neuberger, Rabbi of West London Synagogue

Good morning.

Last year, when I was writing a book about antisemitism, I kept thinking about how my father used to talk about red traffic lights as being anti-Semitic. It was a joke, of course, but it tells you that, back in the 1950s and 60s, you could joke about antisemitism. You couldn鈥檛 do that now. Nor could you joke about Islamophobia. Both are all too real, festering in sections of our society. Meanwhile, there is anti-Christian feeling in India and Egypt, persecution of Muslims in Myanmar, anti-Muslim feeling in India, and so on and so on.

The optimistic view of the world, that we would all learn to live together, recognising differences and enjoying them, learning from them, is waning. The nationalistic view, 鈥榶ou have to be like us鈥�, is gaining strength. Yet most of us have ancestors who were immigrants to the UK at some point. Romans, Normans, Saxons, Hanoverians鈥�.. not to mention Huguenots fleeing persecution, the Windrush generation, Jews from Russia and Poland, East African Asians, the free Poles after World War II, the vast numbers from the commonwealth who came to help rebuild Britain after World War II. I could go on鈥︹��. We鈥檙e all a mixture, which makes our society richer and more fun, and gives us much better food.

But there鈥檚 an ugly mood afoot that鈥檚 turning against that mixture, the cosmopolitanism, the buzz of many languages in our cities, the restaurants from everywhere in the world. It鈥檚 ugly because it is filled with the hatred of difference. So let鈥檚 celebrate difference instead, and rejoice in it, and say along with the Psalmist: 鈥淏ehold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!鈥� I鈥檇 add in sisters too.

But the point is clear. Things are so obviously much better if we live together in harmony and peace. Let鈥檚 make 2020 the year of trying to make that happen.