The Jewish New Year begins on Wednesday night. It is a time for prayer and reflection when, rather than drink champagne and pop balloons, we gather in synagogues to pray for life, health and Peace in the New Year.

On 24th February 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine. It was just days after my mother passed away and I was devastated by her passing and the invasion. Over two and a half years later that war has claimed thousands of lives, destroyed towns and villages, displaced millions both internally and outside of the country and injured far too many civilians as well as combatants. I will pray for an end to this horrific war.

Then on October 7th 2023 a brutal invasion into Southern Israel by Hamas terrorists killed 1200 men, women and children – many were raped, tortured and burned, some in front of their families. 250 hostages were taken into Gaza where over a hundred remain, either dead or alive in horrific, underground tunnels. Since that day every moment of my happiness has been tempered by the knowledge that yet another war is taking place in the “holy land”. With both these wars I have “skin in the game”.

For 20 years I was closely connected with the Jewish community in Lviv, Ukraine. I have friends there still as well as friends in Kyev. I fear for their safety and their future.

I have family and friends in Israel, many of whom have been called upon to serve in the army in yet one more war in a long list of conflicts in the short history of that country.

Today I thought about the Six-Day-War which began on 5th June 1967. Surrounded by enemies on all sides Israel managed to survive against all the logical odds against her. 5th June was the date of my parents’ 28th Wedding Anniversary. It was not a day of celebration for mum and dad. The very next day, on the 6th June 1967 my brother and I queued with my mother and her best friend and her two children outside the Lyceum ballroom. Inside were rails of clothes donated by clothing manufacturers (much of the rag trade in those days was dominated by first and second generation Jewish immigrants) and the clothes were being sold to raise money to buy supplies for the young Jewish state.

Since that Six-Day-war there have been wars and skirmishes in Israel with ever more sophisticated and destructive weaponry and more entrenched hatred on both sides.

Is their room in my heart and my brain to cry for Sudan, for the Rohingya refugees languishing in Bangladesh, for the victims of Syria’s despotic regime, for the women of Afghanistan who have lost any chance of what we would call “life”. What of those suffering catastrophic natural disasters or the ravages and famines caused by climate change and here, at home, do I care about the homeless, those living in poverty and pensioners wondering how to keep warm this winter?

Of course I care and yet my vote in a ballot box no longer holds hope and meaning for me. I am more than lucky to be able to take my sadness outside where I can feed two lambs who make me smile. I am able to go into the paddock where I can prune a tree and offer the goats branches and leaves to munch.

And indoors the cats jump into my lap and soothe me.

I am able to pick pumpkins and prepare a dish for the many guests who will join us to celebrate the New Year

In two days’ time we will all sit together, eat together, pray together and raise our voices together and recite the names of the hostages and continue to add extra candles for them as we light our festival candles. Each of us will have our own thoughts as we dip our apples into Gables honey and pray for a year of life and health but, above all, for peace for ALL human beings in the Holy Land, in Ukraine and all around our beautiful, troubled world.

Shana Tova – wishing family, friends and everyone life, health, happiness and peace.