I have long believed that the most important rule of customer satisfaction is: Under-promise; over-deliver. While the second part isn’t always easy, the first is, so let me get that out of the way.

I am writing at 10:00 on Monday morning. As soon as I have finished this blog post, Bernice and I will be driving to Zichron, from where, tomorrow morning, we will leave for the airport to fly to Portugal.

These are not, I’m starting to feel, the optimal conditions for writing a blog post. First, there is, inevitably, a bit of pressure. We want to leave Maale Adumim in time to arrive in Zichron, or, more accurately, Binyamina (where Raphael’s new gan is located) in time to pick him up. We have, in fairness, plenty of time, even allowing for unexpected hold-ups on the way, which can, of course, these days, range from a minor accident on the road half a kilometre ahead to a ballistic missile attack from Iran.

In addition, this week, my mind has been too full of other, individually trivial but cumulatively significant, concerns. Or rather, my mind has not, it seems, been full enough of them. Let me explain. This last couple of weeks should have been punctuated by steady, leisurely progress, working our way through our to-do list for preparing for a trip to Portugal. However, any normal activity over the last few weeks has been sabotaged – wonderfully and spiritually upliftingly sabotaged, but nevertheless, sabotaged – by the on-off, stop-go procession of the Tishrei chagim. This has left Bernice and I in no state of mind to work systematically and in an ordered fashion through our list.

Somehow, I completed the packing yesterday, and discovered that, once again, the pile of games, books, children’s clothes, staple foodstuffs, snacky kiddie treats, grape juice, and more arcane other stuff than you can imagine, a pile that seemed to occupy the entire salon, managed to Mary Pop-in to two regulation suitcases, and weighed in, astonishingly, at under 35 kilos. Of course, with each trip, the maximum case weight I can manage to lift over the lip of the hatch of our hatchback drops by a few hundred grams, so that 2025’s 17-kilo case is the bicep equivalent of 2020’s 23-kilo case.

Normally, completing the packing means just that. This time, it was only the overture to remembering a frighteningly large number of items – from the charger for my shaver to the crochet hook I use for catching the threads of my tzitzit and looping them through the eyehole so that they don’t tangle in the washing machine – and having to partially unpack and repack.

While my mind has been full of extra socks and sink drainers, I have been unable to allocate any room for ‘What on earth am I going to write about this week?’, so that, in addition to the time pressure, I am also feeling topic pressure.

All of which is a long-winded (500 words so far, so we’re already a third of the way through and we haven’t said anything yet) way of under-promising.

At this point, it occurs to me that, since I doubt my ability, this particular week, to over-deliver, bringing up the subject of over-delivery probably counts as a tactical error. However, it’s too late now. I certainly don’t have time for any rewrites. Most weeks, my post is more or less a stream of semi-consciousness. This week, that is going to be even truer than normal.’

I had thought of reflecting, this week, on how my post of last week has been overtaken by events. However, on rereading it, I don’t feel that there is much I need to adjust. It has been a good week – especially at the start – but I don’t think any rational player believes we are going to get very much further through Trump’s 20 points. (Incidentally, CoPilot tells me that the 21^st point in the Peace Plan – which mysteriously disappeared before the plan was published, and on whose disappearance I commented last week – was a proposal that Trump himself would lead the transitional authority overseeing Gaza’s post-conflict governance. Presumably it was eventually felt that that was rather a demeaning post for a king.)

If I’m going to get even close to 1500 words, and leave on time for Binyamina, I think a change of subject is called for, and it must, perforce, be an abrupt one. This would be a good place for a road sign warning of an upcoming and frighteningly sharp segue in the road ahead.

The difference between Donald Trump’s character humour and Patricia Routledge’s, it seems to me, is that Trump makes no attempt to conceal the fact that he is fully aware of how humorous people find what they may mistakenly believe is his apparent lack of self-awareness of his arrogance and pomposity. Patricia Routledge, on the other hand, was at her best (and at her best nobody was better) at portraying characters who were genuinely unaware of how funny their feeling of self-importance was. For my money, her portrayal of Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced Bouquet) was her least subtle and least successful portrayal. (Viewing figures, in fairness, suggest otherwise.) If all you know of Routledge’s work is that portrayal in the sitcom Keeping Up Appearances, then you are missing a great deal. In comedy, she was never funnier than in her ‘Kitty’ monologues written by the hugely talented and sadly missed Victoria Wood. You can see an example, brilliant but plucked at random, here. (It only lasts 3 minutes; please do visit.)

For a slightly longer (5-minute) excerpt from a characterisation which is more nuanced, where the humour is more gentle and the pathos more front and centre, you can find an extract from Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads here. Viewing it again now, I am acutely aware of how centred it is in a particular geographical area, social milieu and historical moment of mid-late 20^th Century Britain, and I fear some of you may not find much here to grab hold of. Sadly, that will be your loss, because, as is true of all of Bennett’s monologues to camera, this is TV writing of the highest calibre, executed to perfection by an actress who was in complete command of the dramatic material.

On the world stage, the death of Diane Keaton is undoubtedly larger, and certainly more untimely. It certainly falls, for me, into the category of memento mori. However, Patricia Routledge was, in her own way, equally a unique talent, who, just like Keaton, occupied a small patch of the dramatic landscape that nobody else did or could occupy, and who made that patch her own. Keaton, in fairness, also wandered further away from that patch, and with great success, but with both Routledge and Keaton, the mere mention of the name is enough to conjure up an entire character.

Okay. 1200 words is, if you are rounding up to the next half-thousand, 1500 words, and 11:15 is about as close as I can cut it without risking an overly speedy and potentially frosty drive up north. So this is as far as we go this week. Next week, adventures in Lisbon, if all goes as planned.

Blogger’s Note: Between writing the above on Monday morning before leaving Maale Adumim and rereading it on Monday evening in Zichron Yaakov before setting it up ro be published on Tuesday morning, I have discovered that J D Vance’s arrival in Israel tomorrow morning is expected to disrupt airport traffic between 10:30 and 13:00. Our flight is scheduled to leave at 13:55, but your guess is now as good as mine. And if this is the kind of challenge that is supposed to keep you young, why do I suddenly feel 10 years older? The only silver lining is that, if things go disastrously wrong tomorrow, that’s next week’s blog post sorted.

And, at 1334 words, that, dear reader, is that, for this week.

You find me, today (Sunday) riding the train up to Binyamina to spend the day with Esther and family. I am laden with not only my laptop – this is another chag Tuesday week, so publication date is Monday again – but also my arba minim (my four species), with the plan of showing them to Raphael, and helping him bentsch lulav in the sukka, even if my research this week has revealed that this is a custom not universally embraced. (The ‘in the sukka’ part, I hasten to add. Everyone agrees that bentsching lulav is a good thing.) If it were universal, of course, it would be about the only custom in Judaism that is (although there are some who disagree).

But I digress. For some of last week, I kidded myself that I might, after two weeks of the kind of geopolitical analysis that I feel totally unqualified for, be able to regale you with memories of seeing Robert Redford (a global master at what he did) on the big screen, or Patricia Routledge (an actress of extraordinary range and an English national treasure whose name, I suspect, means nothing to my native Israeli or transatlantic readers) on the small.

However, in the end, I see that I have no choice. There is, this week, only one game in town – although at time of writing it is still unclear exactly what that game is. This week’s post has to be dedicated to Trump’s 20.5-point plan. (If you know for certain whether it is a 21-point plan, as originally touted, or a 20-point plan, as increasingly mentioned lately, I’d appreciate clarification.)

So, let me set out my position. If the hostages, living and dead, are returned by Hamas to their families, then I will rejoice. Until then, I fail to understand the jubilation that has been very visible in some sectors of Israeli society and the world media. What we have at the moment is an agreement that Trump declares will bring eternal peace to the Middle East. Will all those who believe that Trump is capable of not exaggerating please go into that phone booth over there? Thank you. We also have a piece of paper with a Hamas signature on it. Will all those who believe that a Hamas signature is worth the paper it is written on please go into the same phone booth, as I see that there’s still plenty of room in there. Thank you. That leaves the rest of us. 

Yes, of course Qatar and Turkey’s endorsements are encouraging, although, again, if I shook either of their hands I would count my fingers afterwards. However, you will, I hope, allow me my caution. As I say, if the hostages, alive and dead, are returned by Hamas, then I will rejoice. Until then, I will remain non-committal.

What is very clear is that, in the first phase of the agreement, the return of the hostages will come at a very heavy price. Although Netanyahu has been commendably insistent on the handful of master-terrorists that will not be part of the exchange of convicted terrorist and arrested suspects for the hostages, very, very many of those likely to be released are murdering terrorists.

For me, one of the major lessons that Israel has to learn from this whole horrifying experience is that terrorist prisoners in Israeli prisons are an encouragement to the abduction by terrorists of innocent civilians. As soon as is possible, Israel should pass legislation making the existing death penalty mandatory for all convicted terrorist murderers. If we have no terrorist murderers to release, we will have removed a major incentive for the abduction of civilian or military hostages.

Of course, such prisoners are a potential source of sometimes vital intelligence information. If I were the head of the secret service, I would propose to the Prime Minister that, in the case of terrorist murderer prisoners who may have useful information, we should, after their conviction, stage their execution, and remove them to a secret underground facility where they can be interrogated until such time as they are deemed no longer useful, and then executed.

Please excuse my cold-blooded proposal. I am not the same person I was two years ago, Exactly two years ago, I, in common with all of Israel, felt myself the target of an attempt at genocide. Since then, I, in common with all of Israel, and the Jewish people abroad, have felt myself the target of uninterrupted calls for genocide over a period of two years. At the same time, my country has been conducting a just war, in which, even accepting the casualty figures published by the wholly unreliable enemy, the ratio of civilian to combatant casualties resulting from the campaign we have conducted is judged by objective world experts to be the lowest ever achieved in such a conflict. At the same time, leading Western nations, governments and populations, have consistently accused Israel of genocide, a claim in such obvious ignorance or ignoring of the facts as to make it impossible not to judge it to be antisemitic.

So, yes, I am not the same person I was two years ago, and I am angry at the fact that I have been changed by events, actions and opinions aimed at me over that period.

As I write this, Hamas, who are required by the later phases of the agreement to disarm, are combing the streets of Gaza City, executing in public members of other terrorist organisations. This helps to explain my scepticism that anything will come of the later phases of the agreement. Nevertheless, if the hostages, alive and dead, are returned to their families, then those families will finally be able to begin their journey back from hell. In addition, the sacred pledge that Israel has always made to its citizens, not to leave anyone behind, will be to some extent restored, and the long and painful process of national healing will at last be able to begin. This will indeed be sufficient cause for rejoicing, and our prayers are that the next couple of days will indeed bring what we are all hoping and praying for.

PS: It is now 09:10 on Monday morning, and, as I write, news has broken that the first seven live hostages have been handed by the RedCross to the IDF: after 738 days, Eitan Mor, Gali and Ziv Berman, Matan Angrest, Omri Miran, Guy Gilboa-Dalal and Alon Ohel are no longer held in inhuman conditions by Hamas. In the coming hours, the other 13 hostages believed to be still alive are due to be released by Hamas in Khan Yunis: Evyatar David, Avinatan Or, Ariel Cunio, David Cunio, Nimrod Cohen, Bar Kuperstein, Yosef Chaim Ohana, Segev Kalfon, Elkana Bohbot, Maxim Herkin, Eitan Horn, Alon Ahel, and Rom Braslavski.

Of course I feel in a different place this morning from where I was yesterday. However, although the transfer to the Red Cross was conducted in Gaza City as required by the agreement, with no ceremony, and, apparently, with Hamas forbidding Gazans from filming the transit of the hostages, there are reports of preparations for a staged ceremony in Khan Yunis. This is the first indication that Hamas may ignore those clauses of the agreement that it is not ready to accept.

In addition, 28 hostages are believed to be dead, with their bodies still in Gaza: Tamir Nimrodi, Bipin Joshi, Tamir Adar, Sonthaya Akrasri, Muhammad al-Atarash, Sahar Baruch, Uriel Baruch, Inbar Hayman, Itay Chen, Amiram Cooper, Oz Daniel, Ronen Engel, Meny Godard, Ran Gvili, Tal Haimi, Asaf Hamami, Guy Illouz, Eitan Levi, Eliyahu Margalit, Joshua Mollel, Omer Neutra, Daniel Peretz, Dror Or, Suthisak Rintalak, Lior Rudaeff, Yossi Sharabi, Arie Zalmanowicz, Hadar Goldin.

It is not clear how many of these bodies are held by Hamaz, how many are in known graves, how many are in unknown locations. It is currently expected that a (possibly international) force, including Israeli personnel, will work within Gaza to locate and retrieve these bodies, so that they can be brought back to Israel for burial, and so that their 28 families can also begin to work towards some kind of closure.

Until such time as that happens, if it ever does, even the first phase of the agreement in incomplete. In my eyes, elation and celebration, such as we are hearing in the voices of the mainstream media reporting from Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, are inappropriate. I am feeling a partial sense of relief and gratitude, and a contentment that there are currently seven and, God willing, shortly another 13, families reunited with their loved ones. It is also tremendous to hear that all seven of those released to date are standing unaided.

So, at this stage, I wait, with a little more faith than I felt last night, and a little more optimism, but still with the expectation that, in the best-case scenario, the only lasting achievement of this agreement will be the return of Israelis to Israel, to attempt to begin a new life or to be buried with dignity.

May I be proven wrong, and may we all continue to hear good news.

I face a bit of a dilemma this week. Because Sukkot begins on Monday evening, I need to plan to publish this week’s post on Monday morning. I can’t honestly see myself writing it on Sunday, when I will be busy decorating the sukka, so I really need to write the post today (Friday). However, looking back, the last ten days seem like one almost unbroken string: get ready for shul, go to shul, daven in shul, come home from shul, eat, sleep, repeat, Not that I am complaining: I find the liturgy of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur profoundly moving and powerful and the traditional melodies very evocative; in addition, the sense of being unhurried in prayer is one I particularly value.

All of which means that all I could really think of to write about as I walked back and forth to shul repeatedly this week is prayer. I know that I wrote about prayer last week, and so this may seem an unwise choice. Nevertheless, because there were some things I left unsaid last week, and because I have received positive feedback, including from unexpected quarters, I decided to plunge in, and finish what I started last week.

And then we came home from shul last night, switched on our phones, and heard the news of the murderous attack on Heaton Park Shul in Manchester. I knew immediately that I could not ignore this appalling attack; I also realised how it actually led directly from what I was planning to write. So, on a day when my thoughts and prayers are with family and friends in Britain, at this critical time for Anglo-Jewry, let me share my reflections with you.

In discussions about organised religion and formalised prayer, one of the points often raised is the impossibility of a rule-based religion fitting all believers and all situations. How can a set liturgy be relevant every time we follow it? How can a liturgy written, or accrued, or hammered out centuries ago speak to the reality Jews face in 2025? (The same argument is sometimes made about the Torah. However, you don’t have to follow the weekly reading for many years to realise that it is always possible to find something in the rich text that speaks to that week’s headlines, every year anew.)

The liturgy blazed alive for me, and, I suspect, for many others, this Yamim Noraim as we read Avinu Malkeinu. This is a prayer with a very long history. The Talmud records Rabbi Akiva (died 135 CE) reciting two verses each beginning Avinu Malkeinu (Our Father, Our King) in a prayer to end a drought (apparently successfully). The prayer book of Amram Gaon (9th century) had 25 verses. Mahzor Vitry (early 12th century) has more than 40 verses and added the explanation that the prayer accumulated additional verses that were added ad hoc on various occasions and thereafter retained. This evolution continued over the centuries, so that each of the traditions of Judaism currently recites its own version of the prayer. Our Polish tradition has 44 verses, each constituting an appeal to our Father, our King.

During the Ten Days of Repentance, in particular, our liturgy constantly defines our relation to God in two contrasting ways. We acknowledge Him as our Father; we allow ourselves to appeal to Him to show fatherly mercy on us, in this role. At the same time, we acknowledge Him as our King, and stress our total dependence on His being gracious to us as His loyal subjects.

The 44 verses of Avinu Malkeinu are wide-ranging, but fall into a small number of clearly-defined categories. There are those that appeal to God, at this period in the year when the fate of all living beings is signed and sealed for the coming year, to look kindly on us and inscribe us for life. Others request that the specific evils, either that others plan to visit on us or that occur naturally, be thwarted. Others appeal to God to show mercy for the sake of holy martyrs, or, if not, then for His own sake.

I want to focus on six verses near the beginning of the prayer.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ בַּטֵּל מֵעָלֵֽינוּ כָּל גְּזֵרוֹת קָשׁוֹת
אבינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ בַּטֵּל מַחְשְׁ֒בוֹת שׂוֹנְ֒אֵֽינוּ
אבינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ הָפֵר עֲצַת אוֹיְ֒בֵֽינו
אבינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ כַּלֵּה כָּל צַר וּמַשְׂטִין מֵעָלֵֽינוּ
אבינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ סְתוֹם פִּיּוֹת מַשְׂטִינֵֽנוּ וּמְ֒קַטְרִיגֵֽנוּ
אבינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ כַּלֵּה דֶּֽבֶר וְחֶֽרֶב וְרָעָב וּשְׁ֒בִי וּמַשְׁחִית וְעָוֹן וּשְׁ֒מַד מִבְּ֒נֵי בְרִיתֶֽךָ

Our Father, our King! annul all harsh decrees concerning us.
Our Father, our King! annul the designs of those who hate us.
Our Father, our King! thwart the plans of our enemies.
Our Father, Our King! rid us of every oppressor and adversary.
Our Father, Our King! seal the mouths of our adversaries and accusers.
Our Father, Our King! remove pestilence, sword, famine, captivity, destruction, [the burden of] iniquity and religious persecution from the members of Your covenant.

Reciting this repeatedly over the 25 hours of Yom Kippur, I kept coming back to two observations. First, how can it be that these words were incorporated into our liturgy hundreds of years ago, and yet, if we were looking to add new verses relevant to the state of the Jewish People in Israel and in the diaspora in October 2025, in Tishrei 5786, we would quickly realise that there is no need to? These six verses reflect, with word-perfect relevance, where we find ourselves today.

The second realisation was that, having lived most of my life in what I believed was a different kind of world, I find, over the last two years, that I am in fact living in the same world as the Jews have occupied for millenia. The fifty or so years after the end of the Shoah were, for the Jews of the free world, a golden age, and that golden age is now over. You may also feel that it was never, in fact, more than an age plated in fool’s gold. Suddenly, the horrifying stories of the tortures inflicted on the leading Rabbis in medieval times do not seem like a distant memory; rather, they seem to vividly pre-echo the reality that we seem to have been plunged into on Simchat Torah two years ago.

The news of the attack in Manchester serves only to intensify that feeling. The noises coming out of Britain since yesterday morning intensify it further. You may, like some of the mainstream media, argue that it is premature to assign motive to the attacker, to which I would reply that, if his first name is Jihad, he at least seems clear about his motive.

Keir Starmer has declared to the Anglo-Jewish community that he will do “everything in my power to guarantee you the security you deserve”. This is, of course, the same Keir Starmer who has accepted without question Hamas propaganda lies about ‘starvation’ in Gaza, and has thereby tacitly supported the accusations of genocide against Israel. It is the same Keir Starmer who has threatened to arrest Israel’s prime minister as a war criminal. It is the same Keir Starmer who rewarded the butchers of October 7 by ‘recognising’ the ‘state’ of ‘Palestine’. It is the same Keir Starmer who has failed to ensure the policing of Britain’s streets, and has instead given them over to pro-Hamas demonstrators, allowing them to publicise their equating of Zionism with Judaism and thereby to globalise the intifada, viewing British Jews as complicit in Israel’s ‘war crimes’ and deserving to do for the crime of genocide.

The British Home Secretary has expressed disappointment at the pro-Palestinian marches that took place in Britain on Thursday, despite appeals from the police to cancel them, in order to free up police to increase patrols in Jewish areas. She said that the protestors “could have stepped back and just given a community that has suffered deep loss just a day or two”. She failed to state exactly how long a wait was appropriate before resuming calling for the death of all Jews.

At some point yesterday evening, I realised that, to be honest, today’s reality for the Jews is not in any way comparable to what it has been for the last two millenia. Unlike in 1492, or 1290, or 1938, or 1147, or 1903, or any one of hundreds of other dates, persecuted Jews have a home to go to, in Israel. It is, of course, true that they will not be guaranteed a life of untroubled safety here; nobody needs reminding that Israel is subject to terror attacks. However, from where I’m standing, living in a country where the government, the security forces, the local authorities, are all primarily concerned for my safety makes the Israeli experience, even in 2025, qualitatively different from the British one.

And so, I am left this morning with a question. In the middle of the night last night, a family member posted on their WhatsApp status a single word in white on a black background: Dayenu! Enough! I want to ask them what they mean by that, and I want to ask all my friends and family in England what it will take for them to accept that enough is enough – ‘Dayenu!’ – and that the place for Jews is the Jewish homeland.

The England that I grew up in, that had a national culture and ethos that I was proud to identify with, is, quite simply, no longer. It has been sacrificed on the altar of multi-culturalism, and its democratic values have been undermined by anti-democratic forces that exploit Britain’s democracy in order to impose their alien values. In the subsequent battle for the heart of Britain, either the Caliphate or the extreme right seems certain to triumph. Neither will provide a place for Jews to live a secure and meaningful life.

One last liturgical comment. In the Musaf Amida on Shabbat, we say: ‘May it be Your will, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, to lead us in joy back to our land, and to plant us within its borders.’

I think there are two massive messages here. The first is that we are not praying to be brought back to Israel. That is going to happen, ultimately, one way or another. What we pray is that we should come back in joy, rather than under duress. This is the choice facing the Anglo-Jewish community (indeed, facing Jewish communities throughout the diaspora) at this precise moment. The second message is the wish that God plant us within the borders of the land. The soil of Eretz Yisrael is the natural soil in which Jews can flourish. It is here, and only here, that we can be truly rooted.

Our gates, and our hearts, are open. May the diaspora join Israel in a resurgence that will populate the under-populated areas of Israel and open up the Negev, revive the economy, strengthen the military, reignite Zionist spirit, and help the country towards a national healing it so desperately needs. Come for your sakes and your children’s sakes, and come for our sakes as well. Now more than ever we need each other home, here.