DON MCLEAN
The Jewish New Year is coming up very shortly. Exactly when, Don? Well I'm not sure but someone who'll tell me is here now. I'm delighted to welcome Dr Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi:
So can you answer that question for me please. When actually is the Jewish New Year?

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
Yes. Just under a fortnight now, Saturday and Sunday - we begin Friday night - and a week before, that's next Saturday night, we begin our special prayers in our midnight prayers so you feel it's close.

DON MCLEAN
Yes, a nice build up. I think we all like a nice build up and it's nice to know that you're doing things properly.

DON MCLEAN
Rabbi Jonathan, since you were here last I know you've been busy with family events. Your daughter got married recently:

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
Just a couple of weeks ago. It was such a moving occasion.

You see my Mum, bless her, wanted a daughter very much and after four boys I think she just gave up, so when we had a daughter - her first grand-daughter - it was something very special and we've been waiting a long time for this. It was just beautiful; just beautiful.

DON MCLEAN
But how did you feel yourself? My daughter got married twelve years ago last week actually and I think it was one of the worst days of my life. I really felt that it was the end of an era. I was quite saddened on the day:

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
No - Jewish weddings are always very joyous, sometimes totally over the top and I'm afraid I was dangerously sentimental. On sharp and decisive action on the part of the family stopped me bursting into a rendering of "Sunrise Sunset" from Fiddler on the Roof from which I think they would never have recovered Don.

DON MCLEAN
No, no because when you hear that there's not a dry eye anywhere is there anyway?

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
Well there wasn't. It was just lovely.

DON MCLEAN
I've got to say, I heard your 'Thought for the Day' last Thursday in which you spoke very movingly about a friend of yours and his daughter who were killed shortly before her wedding:

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
Just the night before her wedding. That was Dr David Applebaum who was one of the heroes really of the current conflict. Somebody who was always first at the scene whenever there was a terrorist bombing ...

DON MCLEAN
He was a paramedic official?

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
He organised Jerusalem's Emergency medical services and would treat anyone - Jew or Arab, Israeli, Palestinian - anyone regardless of race or creed and save so many lives and his daughter was just getting married the next day and he said to her - her name was Nava: ' ... let's have a coffee together' and they were sitting in the cafe in Jerusalem when the bomb went off and the day they should have had the wedding both of them were buried. Terribly sad. Terribly sad.

DON MCLEAN
Every day in the News we seem to read about another suicide bombing and I'm not just talking about the Holy Land; it appears to be a worldwide event now:

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
It's a terrible curse. You know I go back 3300 years to the last days of Moses life and he was talking to the next generation, the people who were going to cross the Jordan and see the Promised Land that he was never going to see, and what message did he want to give them and he said to them: 'The sea I have set before you, the blessing and the curse; life and death - choose life'.

And it seems to me that in conflict zones around the world if only people would remember those two words 'choose life' and we'd find peaceful solutions to our conflicts.

DON MCLEAN
Well all faiths, no matter what faith they are, they all condemn the taking of life don't they?

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
Sure. And yet you still find people driven to extremes by religious beliefs and I feel those beliefs must be blasphemous because the one thing G-d gives each of us is life and when the Bible says He made us in his image I think he was trying to say treat life as holy; all the rest will be no problem just so long as you treat life as holy.

DON MCLEAN
You mentioned blasphemy there and I've got a quote actually from your 'Thought for the Day'. It says: 'One who dies for the sake of faith is called a martyr' you say 'but one who kills for the sake of faith is a blasphemer because he desecrates the one thing on which G-d has set his image - life itself'.

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
I'd like to see all religious leaders of all faiths coming out clearly and categorically, this is not the way. G-d gave us language, reason, the political process, diplomacy. Whatever you want to achieve you can achieve by peaceful ends. That's what Ghandi told us. This is what the great people of history always told us. You will get to what you seek through peace. You will never get what you seek through calculated acts of violence against the innocent.

DON MCLEAN
Well many Moslems, particularly in this country, are very very concerned we read that their religion has become tainted by these fanatics - I suppose that's the only word you can use isn't it?

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
Yes, and all we have to do here Don is remember that there were wonderful periods in which Jews and Moslems lived very peaceably together in the Golden Age of Spain - [ ... ] as it was called then - and therefore Islam is fundamentally a religion of peace and it seems to me that that's the way we have to take. It's tough. We've just got to; there's now no alternative.

DON MCLEAN
Well we so often, whenever you're on this programme, we talk about the fact that can Jew and Arab share the Holy Land together. I mean they must do mustn't they and it's such a small area as well isn't it?

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
It's a tiny place. You know I don't know if you've ever been to the Kruger National Park in South Africa. Have you been there?

DON MCLEAN
No, I've not. I've been to South Africa but I've never been to the National Park:

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
It's a kind of safari park where you see animals in their natural habitat and it's a big Park. I got an extraordinary shock when somebody told me this whole Park is bigger than the entire State of Israel. It's a tiny little place.

DON MCLEAN
Yes. Well that's put it into perspective for us and I suppose it's what, it's smaller than Wales isn't it? Am I right?

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
Yes.

DON MCLEAN
The Chief Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks is here with me in the studio and last Thursday he was on Radio 4 giving his 'Thought for the Day' and of course that was because it was 9/11, the second anniversary. We were very moved by the TV pictures that we saw on the News that night weren't we?

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
Yes. I don't think any of us who watched it at the time will ever forget it and I was there at Ground Zero ....

DON MCLEAN
Well I've been to Ground Zero as well:

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
... a couple of months later with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Chief Rabbi of Israel, many Moslem clerics from around the world - all the world's faiths - and we all said prayers for peace and reconciliation and I was just struck by the power of all those faiths coming together and then I realised there was so little stopping us from learning to live together.

DON MCLEAN
Because the important thing is that people of all faiths were killed there; it wasn't just as though it was just Christian people say who were killed. People of all faiths died:

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
People of all faiths and there were some extraordinary stories.

I mean there was an extraordinary story of a very religious Jew who was up there on the 70th Floor and he was running down and he saw a Moslem at prayer - I mean this is a true story - and he said: My friend, I don't mind what G-d you're praying to but get the hell out of here !!! The two of them ran down together and he save his life. I mean it was just a moment that transcended any of us. It was just about ultimates: Are we holding life precious? That's really it.

DON MCLEAN
The thing that I remember - I'm sure we've all got memories of the time - was seeing people on the television walking about with tear-stained faces and photographs of their loved ones saying Have you seen this person? That's the thing that'll live in my memory and of course over three thousand children lost a parent. Many of them actually spoke didn't they the other day? How will they come to terms with this as they grow up do you think?

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
Well I think you never really forget someone you lose but like all of us bereavement is healed over time and speaking personally, when I lost my later father six years ago I was devastated for a long time and then I suddenly realised that all this time I'd been thinking he wasn't here any longer and the I suddenly realised he was. I could hear his voice in my ear telling me all the things he used to tell me and that's when I came to terms with loss.

DON MCLEAN
The people who actually perpetrated this dreadful act of terrorism were hoping to spread hatred between various groups. Now you've often talked about the fear of the stranger. How can we avoid suspicion of others who are different from ourselves?

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
There's a lovely line in the Bible that says: Never oppress a stranger because you know what it feels like to be a stranger; you were once strangers in the Land of Egypt.

I mean we are all strangers to someone and just go on a foreign holiday and you know what it feels like and you know what it feels like to be alone without a friend. Suddenly all you've got to do is say Well that's what the other person is feeling and sometimes a welcome and a smile, just make a stranger feel at home.

DON MCLEAN
It would be a terrible same wouldn't it, if because of things like this people stopped wearing symbols of their identity for instance. I mean the cuppel that you're wearing on your head, Sikhs who wear their turbans. It would be awful wouldn't it if people stopped doing that out of fear?

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
Well they really never should because all these symbols - my head covering, the Moslem one, the Sikh one - are all ways of saying we're aware of something above us and that really has got to be the way; that we learn to control ourselves down here, be aware that somebody is watching us and that there is someone to whom we have to make a reckoning.

DON MCLEAN
I must ask you, what year is it in the Jewish calendar?

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
Well it's a fairly substantial number. We're in year 5764 which takes us back to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, so it's a while now.

DON MCLEAN
How easy is it to live in a calendar that's out of sync with the rest of the country?

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
Well I don't think it is, Don. You know Jews always had one love more than any other. Our favourite institution was the school because our favourite people are children and it's very interesting that to this day the Jewish New Year and the academic year are more or less at the same time.

DON MCLEAN
Ah you see, I hadn't thought of that. You're absolutely right.

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
Yes, absolutely.

We get a lot of cards. I am about to write mine in the next day or two.

DON MCLEAN
And I know that you will be celebrating obviously with your family but you'll also be on BBC1 Television on the - I believe it's the 24th isn't it?

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
Yes, and the theme will be 'Agents of Hope'. Do we, can we bring hope into the world?

DON MCLEAN
Fabulous. Unfortunately that's quite late at night but don't worry, I shall alert all my listeners to it.

RABBI DR JONATHAN SACKS
Our Father, our King. We are your children and like children we sometimes fight. Teach us to be at peace with one another by being at peace with ourselves and teach us to be at peace with ourselves by being secure in your forgiveness and love.

You've give us one gift, the gift of life. Help us to use it well in obedience to you and generosity to those around us. Teach us to see your image in those who are not in our image and your presence in the face of a stranger, so that by reaching out in love we may turn enemies into friends and become your family on earth as you are our parent in Heaven.

DON MCLEAN
Followers of the Jewish faith are looking forward to Rosh HaShannah, Jewish New Year.

We pray for all Jewish people in this country especially those known to us as friends and colleagues. We rejoice with them in their celebrations. We pray for Jews scattered all over the world many, who because of circumstance or location are unable to practise their faith and we pray for all the people of the Holy Land be they Christian, Moslem or Jewish who cry out for peace.