蜜芽传媒

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

Good morning.

It鈥檚 the Jewish Sabbath today, a day of prayer and rest and reflection. But I am always struck by how many Jewish people will need to be working nevertheless. Doctors, nurses, dentists, for a start- some just dealing with emergencies, others on a roster to staff a busy hospital Accident and Emergency department, or a maternity ward. And they do it because they don鈥檛 want to make other people鈥檚 lives more difficult by asking for the same day off, every week. Some will get to a service before their shift starts. Others will simply stop briefly and say a quick prayer. Still others will just get on with the job, and, for some, it is literally about saving lives.

There鈥檚 a rabbinic saying that argues that a person who saves one human life is to be compared with someone who saves a whole world. And so, if your job is about saving lives, you can override the commandment to rest on the Sabbath. Right at the end of the film Schindler鈥檚 List, that saying becomes an important mantra. As Oskar Schindler was preparing to flee from the Allied advance, the Jews he had protected and cared for gave him a gold ring, made from gold fillings, with those words inscribed on it- and gave him an affidavit in case he were to be captured. By saving them, they argued, he鈥檇 saved an entire world.

Doing something brave, even if you can鈥檛 save everyone, makes a huge difference to our world. We can all be braver, if we try. And so, today, in the week of Holocaust Memorial Day, I want to share the Jewish blessing that thanks God for keeping us alive: Baruch attah Adonai, eloheinu melech ha-olam, she-hecheyannu ve- kiyyemanu ve higianu lazman ha-zeh. We praise you, our sovereign our God, for keeping us alive, keeping us going, and allowing us to reach this time.

Thank you, God, for life itself.