Yom Kippur the Jewish day of atonement is the most sacred moment in the Jewish year. Long ago, when the Temple stood in Jerusalem, the holiest person, the high priest, entered the holiest place, the holy of holies, on the holiest day, Yom Kippur, and offered an atonement sacrifice for the sins of the people. For two thousand years we have had no temple, no sacrifices, and no high priest. Instead, wherever people gather to pray, that becomes a fragment of the temple. Whenever we offer God a broken heart, that is more precious to Him than sacrifice. And when we admit our wrongdoings and ask for God's forgiveness, we too find atonement. That is the meaning of the day.

Music: Kol Nidrei [Naftali Hershdick - BBC have it, not an orchestral version]

That was Kol Nidrei, the prayer with which the evening service begins. For centuries its melody has set the mood for a day of intense solemnity. For the whole of yom kippur, we don't eat or drink, wash or wear leather shoes. We spend most of our time in the synagogue in prayer. And though the Jewish calendar is full of holy days, I don't think there's another time when we feel so close to God or Him so close to us.

We imagine Him looking at our life, examining our conduct, and we pray that He finds some saving grace in what we've done, or at the very least that in compassion He gives us another chance. We ask him to "Write us in the book of life," and give us another year on earth so that we can do good to others, and write them in the book of life.

For me the idea at the heart of the Day of Atonement is the freedom God has given us, to choose this way or that, and with freedom comes responsibility.

We don't believe that humanity is inherently evil, tainted with scar of original sin.

But we also don't believe that we're naturally good either or that we find it easy to overcome our more negative instincts: fear, anger, envy, rivalry, and all the other emotions that lead us to act in destructive ways.

Instead we believe that we always have a choice - as Moses put it long ago: "between the blessing and the curse, good and evil, life and death." And the fact that we have a choice means that we'll sometimes get it wrong.

Heaven knows, God never expected us to be perfect. But he did ask us to acknowledge our mistakes, and apologise to those we've hurt, and put right whatever we can, and try to be better in the future. That's what we mean by teshuvah, repentance, and selichah, forgiveness, the great themes of this holy day.

And so we pray to God: shema koleinu, "Hear our voice, O Lord our God, have pity and compassion for us, and listen with favour to our prayer."

Music: Shema Koleinu [Lionel Rosenfeld / Shabbaton]

One of the most powerful messages of Yom Kippur is time itself and how we use it. It's God's greatest gift, and he gives it to all of us on roughly equal terms. Whether we're rich or poor, famous or anonymous, there are still only 24 hours a day, seven days in a week, and a span of years that's all too short. And the very fact that we spend a day in the synagogue reflecting on our life helps us to focus on what's important and what isn't.

One of the toughest tasks I had when I was a congregational rabbi was officiating at funerals. Somehow I had to bring comfort to a grieving family and pay a tribute to someone I often hardly knew. So, before the service, I would always ask one or more of the members of the family to tell me about the deceased and what they would remember them for. And the answers were usually very similar. They spoke about his or her love for the family; about their kindness as a parent; about their sense of pride and loyalty toward their faith; about the help they gave others when help was needed.

And it was then I realised that the things that seem so important at the time, the things we spend so much of our lives pursuing - success, honour, wealth, fame - really don't count that much in the scheme of things. No one ever asked me to say about someone who had died, what an expensive car he drove, what a fine house she built, the kind of clothes they wore or the holidays they took. And I doubt whether too many people left this life thinking: if only I'd spent more time at committee meetings or in the office.

There are things that are urgent, and others that are important. The trouble is that the urgent can often make us forget the important. If the phone rings, we answer it. If work beckons, we go. But what about one of our children who needs our time; or a marriage partner who needs affection. We're sometimes so busy making a living that we hardly have the time to live.

Which is why holy days make such a difference. They're when we make time for the things that are important but not urgent; when we reconnect with our ideals; when we ask ourselves, what are we here for and what difference have we made through what we've done. "Teach us to number our days," says the Psalm, "that we may get a heart of wisdom." That too is part of the message of Yom Kippur.

Music: Eli Gerstner and the Chevra: Ana Hashem

That was Eli Gerstner and the Chevra singing a line from Psalm 116: Dear God, I am your servant, and the child of your servants; help me to be free.

I think back at this time to some of the people I've known and what they taught about life and how we use it. I think of the late Ansell Harris, one of Anglo-Jewry's more unforgettable characters. He was obstinate, single-minded, impossible to argue with and equally impossible not to admire. He had what Albert Einstein called that "almost fanatical love of justice" that went with being a Jew.

It was something he learned from his parents, who had set up a refuge for immigrant children fleeing Nazi Germany. Throughout his adult life that memory drove him to seek out suffering and offer its victims practical help. He became honorary treasurer of the aid agency, Oxfam, and in the last decade of his life devoted his energies to UK Jewish Aid and International Development, whose role is to provide medical, educational, social and financial help to people in distress regardless of their religion or ethnicity.

Through it he was instrumental in bringing humanitarian aid to Bosnia, Kosovo, Albania and Macedonia. He set up a water filtration plant in Mozambique, a mobile ophthalmic clinic in Zimbabwe, and a student exchange for Tibetan exiles. His energy was prodigious, his moral passion inexhaustible. He never tired of reminding us that as Jews we had a responsibility to work across the borders of faith and be a blessing to humanity as a whole, seeking neither recognition nor reward.

At the memorial service held after he died, one of the speakers was the British peer, Lord Bhatia, whom he had come to know through his work for Oxfam. It was clear from the tone of his tribute that the two men shared a moral vision and had been close friends. In the course of his remarks, Lord Bhatia told a lovely story. Ansell, he said, loved music, but only on the condition that he chose it himself. He hated background music in public places.

On one of their trips to India, he tried to get the airport staff to turn off the music coming over the public address system. He failed. He tried it again on the plane, and again he failed. Arriving at the hotel, he heard more music in the lobby and stormed up to the receptionist, insisting that it be turned off. This time he succeeded. "I have no doubt, Ansell, that you are now in heaven with the Lord and His choir of angels," said Lord Bhatia, "But whatever you do, don't ask God to turn the music off."

What held them together, one a passionate Jew, the other a no less committed Muslim? The answer is that they cared for something larger than their respective faith communities. They cared for humanity. When they saw disease, poverty and despair, they didn't stop to ask who was suffering; they acted. They knew that tears are a universal language, and help a universal command. They saw faith not as a secluded castle but as a window onto a wider world. They saw God's image in the face of a stranger, and heard His call in the cry of a starving child.

Does faith make us great or does it make us small? On this question, the future of our world depends. Jews, Christians and Muslims can live together in friendship so long as we never forget those things that transcend religious difference - of which human suffering is one. When we focus, not on ourselves, but on those who need our help, our separate journeys converge and we become joint builders of a more gracious world.

Music: shomer yisrael

I think too about the late Sue Burns. Sue suffered from a rare spinal condition called osteosclerosis. Its effect was devastating. It meant that she was completely unable to stand or sit, even in a wheel chair. As her condition deteriorated, she was condemned to live her life horizontally, permanently confined to bed and in almost constant pain. More than most she had reason to believe that life had dealt her the unkindest of blows. She saw it differently.

There must, she said, be a reason why this has happened to me. It is God's way of allowing me to do something I could not have done otherwise. She set about thinking what it might be. She realised that though she was almost unable to move, she could bring the world to her bedside. She had phone lines installed. She taught herself how to use a computer, and databases. And on that slender foundation she built a network of relationships that became the Tikvah Help Line. Tikvah means hope, and Sue gave people hope.

She contacted and made herself available to others who suffered serious illness or handicap. She became their advisor, mentor and friend. She devoted time to promoting Jewish Care, the superb welfare agency of British Jewry. When she was awarded the MBE by the Queen for her work, she became the first person to be taken into Buckingham Palace on a bed, and to receive it lying down. Typically she said that the honour was not for her but for all her fellow sufferers. She had no time for self-regard at all.

The astonishing thing was that in the years I knew her I never saw her without a smile, even at our last meeting. She had asked to see me, and when I arrived she told me she was about to die. She was exhausted and knew she could no longer continue the struggle. But even then she didn't complain. Gently, knowing that the moment was hard for me as well as for her, she said goodbye, her graciousness, dignity and defiant humour intact to the end. As I left her I said a prayer to God. Thank you for creating a world in which there are such people. Sue Burns taught me, as she taught others, what it is to triumph over tragedy and turn affliction into blessing.

And so, as Yom Kippur draws near, I find myself praying: God of life, teach us to cherish life. Bless us so that we can be a blessing to others. There is too much pain and anguish and anger in our world. Help us heal a little of that pain; ease even a fraction of the anguish; and turn anger to more constructive ends. The time you have given us on earth is short. Therefore teach us to use our days to serve you by honouring your image in other people. Help us when we fail; forgive us the mistakes we make; show us the path to your presence; and write us, your children, in the book of life.

Music: Kaddish Titkabal [Shabbaton]

What an extraordinary idea forgiveness is, and how little we understand its power. It means that we are not held captive by the past; that we can begin again, and mend relationships that are broken, and bring healing in place of hate.

Our world has too much hate. Perhaps it always did. But something has changed since that day, two years ago, when two fully laden jumbo jets crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York, a third into the Pentagon, and a fourth, in which the passengers fought back, into a field. 9/11 2001 still haunts us, with the vision it opened up of the sheer power we now have to create havoc and destruction on a massive scale.

What is it that leads people into terror? Why is it that in conflict zones throughout the world, human beings are set against one another in anger and aggression?

The answer usually lies in the past, in the feeling that one's people or faith or nation or culture have been wronged - and that wrong must be avenged, by harming those who you believe inflicted harm in the first place. That's how the cycle of vengeance and retaliation begins, and once it begins, it has no obvious end. Bloodshed begets anger which begets more bloodshed and the result is continuing tragedy.

There is only one idea strong enough to cut through the vicious circle, and that is repentance and forgiveness: admitting the faults of our side, understanding the pain on the other side, drawing a line over the past, and turning toward a future of coexistence and peace. Forgiving doesn't mean forgetting, but it does mean the ability to shake hands with your former enemies and start again, free of the burden of injury and anger.

I don't think I'll ever forget the day I stood at Ground Zero, that still unhealed scar in the middle of New York, awed by the sheer scale of the destruction. I was there with other religious leaders from around the world: the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Chief Rabbi of Israel, and leaders from the world of Islam. There were Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and others, and we each said prayers for peace and healing and mutual respect. I think we all realised, then and there, that there was another way; that the animosities and estrangements between religions weren't inevitable or written indelibly into the human script; that we can make space for one another and recognise that the world is enriched by our diversity, not threatened by our differences.

But first we have to apologise to those we've harmed, and accept the apologies of those who have harmed us. Where hate wounds, forgiveness heals. If our faith taught us only this, it would be enough.

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