Travel update (perhaps that should be Lack of Travel update): No official Portuguese site has yet acknowledged the fact that Portugal has closed its doors to Israelis. I have not yet received a reply to my query through the Portuguese Government website. The Israeli Portuguese news website has no update. Facebook is full of questions, but no answers, from Israelis (some of them people who have received preliminary approval of their applications for Portuguese citizenship under the ‘Law of Return’ that Iberia introduced some years ago).

Meanwhile, TAP has cancelled our return flight from Portugal (so we may not be able to get there but at least we won’t be able to get back), and moved us to the following day (a Thursday, which makes preparations for Shabbat exciting, but we feel up to the challenge).

Watch this space for further updates, as, when, and (I increasingly feel) if they become available.

As I grow older, I am increasingly mocked by my close family for the fact that I have lost the ability to act spontaneously. This is a very unfair accusation. I can still be spontaneous….it just takes me longer than it used to.

My thoughts have turned to spontaneity this week because of the Jewish calendar. As I write this on Sunday, we are midway between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, in the sixth day of the period known as the Ten Days of Repentance. This is a period when we are called upon to contemplate our actions of the last year, consider how we have fallen short of ideal behaviours, acknowledge our sins, resolve to do better in the coming year, and plan to make that possible.

While this is a set of activities bound up in Orthodox Jewish rituals, liturgy and traditions over the Yamim Nora’im, the Days of Awe, a surprisingly large number of Israelis, secular as well as religious, spend time (particularly on Yom Kippur) conducting some form of heshbon nefesh (literally ‘spiritual accounting’). Clearly (as shown also by the practice in the Christian West of adopting New Year resolutions), taking stock and vowing to turn over a new leaf are activities that speak to humankind. We strive to be self-improving individuals.

Precisely because this is so thoroughly ritualised in Orthodox Judaism, there is a very real danger that the process can become mechanical, automatic, unthinking. The pre-eminent twentieth-century Jewish theologian Rav Joseph Soloveitchik identified some mitzvot (commandments) for which the execution of the mitzvah is sufficient, and some for which it is not.

When we build our sukkah next week, and dwell in it, the ‘mere’ act of dwelling will be enough to fulfil the mitzvah. Even when a Jew is asleep in his sukkah, he is fulfilling the mitzvah. However, when we pray, ‘merely’ reciting the words is not enough. There must also be conscious intent, and it is only through such intent that we fulfil the mitzvah.

Repentance is an example of the second kind of mitzvah. Mere performance of the rituals and recitation of the prayers does not achieve true repentance. It must be a heartfelt process.

This leads some people to feel, understandably, that the rituals, and the formulaic prayers (many of them repeated word for word four times throughout Yom Kippur) actually get in the way of genuine repentance. They feel their spontaneity stifled, and they feel the prayers do not speak to, or come from, their heart.

For me, however, who is not by nature spontaneous, the liturgy offers a way in. I find that reading the familiar words prepares me to be receptive to more personal thoughts of repentance, and creates an atmosphere where I can look inward without feeling self-conscious. The prayer (not every prayer, and not even every year, but at some precious times) is a launching-pad for my own heshbon nefesh.

I am, I know, fortunate, that my Hebrew is good enough, and the prayers are familiar enough to me, for me to understand what I am reading. Of course, someone not so lucky can read the prayers in their own language. However, as I have said before, and will doubtless say again, any translation is, at best, a pale reflection of the original.

Yom Kippur, a day stripped of all distractions – a day when we are not rushing home to eat, and when bathroom breaks are uncharacteristically few and far between – is a day when I can dwell on every word of a prayer, and take the time for it to unfurl within me. These are words that were refined in the mouths and hearts of righteous men centuries ago, and that come down to me bathed in the tears and mounted in the cries of the generations of worshippers since. For me personally, they are words that I sang in the shul choir almost 60 years ago, that have echoed in my ears sung by leaders of prayer in Ilford, Swansea, Gilo, East Talpiot and Ma’ale Adumim. My life is measured out in them.

I recognise, of course, that not everyone responds to these rituals and this liturgy in this way. There are many to whom these things do not speak. I used to think that these were people who rejected ritual and embraced spontaneity. But, increasingly, I suspect that all of humanity welcomes ritual. Both of our children created their own, unique, wedding ceremonies. However, those ceremonies contained many elements that drew on rituals from a variety of sources, and were variations on a clear theme.

I know someone who is very unhappy with synagogue services. He feels unable to pray at his own, considered and measured, pace; the lack of decorum and multiple distractions interfere with his concentration. He therefore chooses to pray by himself, in the open air. However, I know that he has favourite spots that he always goes to, and he has created his own routine.

There may be some people who can, with no pre-determined structure, stop what they are doing and, at any moment, turn to God and speak to him directly. Tevye the Milkman is one such person. I have always envied him his personal relationship with God. For most people, I believe, a supporting framework offers a guided path into the appropriate frame of mind. For me personally, the Orthodox liturgy, annealed in the furnaces and ice-baths of Jewish history, represents my best chance of feeling a connection with God. It does not always – or even often – work, but I firmly believe that if you don’t show up, you can’t win. If I keep giving it a shot, I won’t miss the occasions when it does work.

In the spirit of repentance, I now turn to each of you: if, in the course of the last year, in anything I have written in this blog, or said to you, or failed to say to you, or in any way that I have behaved towards you, I have upset or offended you, then I sincerely ask your forgiveness.

Meanwhile, Tao appears not to be upsetting or offending anyone,