Shana Tova - Reasons to be cheerful

It’s not been a pleasant year for Anglo Jewry – probably the worst in living memory. After two days of Rosh Hashana, British Jews will emerge from their shuls apprehensive about the 48-hour news cycle and where the next insult and racial abuse will come from.

But as this small piece of Jewish history plays out in little England, it’s important to focus on the bigger picture which behoves us to be thankful for so many blessings.

We should be thankful that we are privileged to be the generation that was able to return to Jerusalem and see it flourish as our reborn capital city, filled with academies of Torah never seen in our history. Thankful that, unlike the generation of the Holocaust, we now all have a Plan-B in the face of discrimination and threats. That our true home – which Robert Frost famously defined as “when you have to go there, they have to take you in” – just happens to have one of the most successful economies and one of the most powerful armies on the planet. And it’s always there for the cost of an airline ticket.

We should be thankful that, whilst wars have raged all around Israel  - and the last rebel enclave in Syria now faces  imminent massacre with the help of Russia and Iran  -  ‘Jacob has dwelt in quietude’ behind well-fortified borders and protected by high-tech domes, arrows and slings dreamed-up in Jewish brains. And that, despite the thousands of rockets that have been fired indiscriminately into our tiny sliver of land, the number of Jewish fatalities can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Thankful that we not only survived 8 years of Obama but have seen a total reversal of his policies under Donald Trump. The opening of the Jerusalem embassy, the censuring of UN bias and the cutting of US aid to UNRWA which always perpetuated the conflict and fuelled the hatred in their school textbooks.

And let’s be thankful for the Likud government and enduring leadership of Bibi Netanyahu who pushed through the controversial Nation State bill, so very important when nation statehood is being eroded by globalists across an increasingly dismal European continent.

And, coming back to Britain, let’s also be thankful for the dignity and fragrance of our MPs as compared with the ugliness of the House racists.