I’m a ‘good jew’. Because I go to shul. On Rosh Hashanna AND Yom Kippur. Both days. I make sacrifice for my religion. I don’t play tennis. I give up the ‘never shower and shave on saturday morning’ rule for the day. I don’t eat for fu- for heaven’s sake. For 25 hours. Holy moly. That’s serious. But the starvation is not a punishment. Then we’d be Catholics. They punish, they beat, flagellate, rip their own flesh and repent. Boy do they repent. But they have a lot to repent for, generally. And because we live in a predominantly Christian society we’re tapped into that form of culture in which you sin, you have to repent. With blood. Or suffering. Or for really serious stuff; just a few ‘hail marys will do’.

Its different for Jews. We don’t ‘sin’. We slip up, make mistakes, have the odd lapse of an otherwise faultless character. So our ‘day of atonement’ is not about punishment or suffering. That’s just how it seems when viewed through the lens of Christian culture. What we do is pray. So devotedly, so passionately, with such feeling that we simply ignore the physical world, becoming like angels in the process. Easy. Only football grounds us to the physical world, otherwise we are heavenly. And angels don’t eat.

We have the best ‘cop out’ of all. We are two entities; a body and a soul. And today the soul apologises for the sins the body may have committed during the year. How brilliant is that? Try it in a court of law. “Sorry, yer honour, it woz me body wot done it; me soul’s pure as the driven faaarkin’ snow, honest”.

In the shema we say ‘the Lord is our G-d, the Lord is One’. And that’s rather cool. Because we only have One. Ok, lots of other religions are monotheistic NOW, its easy NOW. But back then there were hundreds of gods. The Romans had gods for everything from rainfall to jock-straps, from war to toga parties. The Greeks had more. The Hindus still do. With lots of arms and legs and elephants’ trunks and alien appendages and all sorts of weirdery. As did the Egyptians.

Then along comes Abraham and says: actually, there is only one G-d. (Sharp intake of breath from everyone). And what’s more, the patriarch continues, you can’t see him. He’s invisible!! Oh, and he’s literally everywhere at the same time, all the time, and can do anything your poxy gods can do, but all by himself and much better. The old gods are like the Leyton Orient back four compared to our G-d who is Manchester United, Real Madrid and the 1970 Brazil team all combined.

Unfortunately, brilliant though Abraham was, he failed to take a patent out on ‘One G-d’ so the concept was quickly nicked by the Muslims and Christians without any license fees changing hands.

But can you imagine, Ole Abe telling the people that all those gods, idols, statues and images that for hundreds if not thousands of years they’d been worshipping, praying to, sacrificing their cattle, sheep and children to, that they were no more and instead, here’s one you can’t see and who will never speak to you. But look out for burning bushes.

It was like McDonalds going vegan. Or low calorie. It was like the Queen saying she now wants her family to live like gypsies in caravans in Essex and create massive piles of rubbish all over the countryside and speak with Irish accents.

And that’s why the Jews are special. Because we invented G-d. Or he invented us. Either way, you have to find something to do on Yom Kippur to avoid thinking about food.

Shabbat Shalom

A xxxx