My late father came to Britain as a refugee. His family were poor and found it hard to adjust. But he loved Britain and taught us, his children, to love it too. It wasn’t until I’d grown-up that I understood why. In 1939 there were 3 ½ million Jews in Poland. After the war, almost none. If Britain had not given him refuge, he would have died. I wouldn’t have been born. That is why I too bless this country.

This has been Refugee Week, and the Refugee Council has been making us aware of their plight. Sadly, there are still parts of the world where whole groups are at risk. As I speak, 300 refugees from Zimbabwe are engaged in a hunger strike in Britain in protest against their deportation orders. If they’re forced back they will, they say, face imprisonment, torture or worse.

I know you can’t force an individual, let alone a country, to save someone else’s life. And yes, there are always fears that letting in some will encourage others, less at risk; and that among the genuine asylum seekers there are also some who aren’t. And yet.

Tomorrow Jews throughout the world will be reading the 13th chapter of the book of numbers which tells the story of how Moses sent spies to spy out the land. Look, he said, at the land and its people - and also the cities: are they walled or unwalled? They went, they came back, and ten of the twelve told a demoralising story. The cities have high walls, they said, and the people are strong. They’re undefeatable. Yet as the Bible elsewhere makes clear, the spies were quite wrong. What mistake did they make?

Our sages give a fascinating answer. The spies saw the walls around the cities and concluded that if the cities are strong, the people are strong. It’s a natural assumption but the truth is the opposite. If cities are surrounded by high walls against invaders, that’s a sign that the people are weak and afraid. It’s when you see a city without walls, that you know the people who live there are strong.

And so its proved to be. Historically it’s been the countries most open to refugees that were the strongest: the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, Britain and America in the 18th and 19th. Why? Because refugees almost always give back more than they received. Helping others, we are helped. And perhaps in some deeper moral sense: we save something quintessentially human in ourselves.

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