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From Rabbi Dr Harvey Belovski, rabbi of Golders Green Synagogue and CEO of University Jewish Chaplaincy:

Last week my wife and I celebrated 20 years in the rabbinate.Ìý I gave a brief speech about our time with the community and some of the wonderful people who’ve accompanied us on the journey.Ìý I came into the job with many grand ideas.Ìý Some I’ve achieved; others I’ll never achieve.Ìý But I’ve learned that seeing life as a journey rather than a destination is a helpful and very Jewish approach.Ìý I also mentioned a few stories; here’s one.

A while ago, I heard a visitor from another synagogue say, ‘Our rabbi is brilliant; he can speak for an hour about absolutely anything!’.Ìý Quick as a flash, one of my regulars replied, ‘Our rabbi is even better; he can speak for two hours about absolutely nothing!’

Despite the jollity and some rather good whisky, the Jewish community is currently marking the saddest week in the year.Ìý This culminates in a day of national mourning and fasting next Tuesday, when we remember miserable events in our history, particularly the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.Ìý These events seem very distant as they happened long ago, but they touch on issues that affect us all: fragmentation of families, dispersal of communities, loss of shared values.Ìý We mourn the loss of connections between people that can leave us feeling isolated and lonely.

There are over seven million one-person households in the UK – almost 30% of the total – and this figure is set to rise dramatically.Ìý Of course, many people are perfectly happy living alone, but lots would prefer not to.Ìý Loneliness may well be one of the most painful of all human experiences.Ìý And we can even experience loneliness and isolation when we are not alone.Ìý The great rabbi of Kotzk once said that there’s no place lonelier than a room full of people.Ìý When we can’t connect with others, when our internal lives are disintegrating, when the fabric of society is unravelling, we can be alone in a crowd.Ìý A room full of people is not necessarily a room of people together.

We’ve been fortunate to share the last 20 years with true friends.Ìý It’s a real blessing, one that’s especially meaningful in a fragmented world.

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