From the Middlesbrough Evening Gazette September 1939
The Jewish New Year
by Rabbi L Miller
THIS evening a New Fear in the the Jewish calendar will be ushered in by Jews the world over. With ancient ritual, time‑honoured ceremonies and spiritual devotions, Jews will celebrate the birth of the year 5700 in their calendar. This solemn season of the Jewish year will be observed by the Jewish fraternity with added solemnity by reason of the war.
As loyal citizens of this country English Jews will naturally do their duty and help in every possible way the country in its grim struggle. Similar sentiments animate all Jews who are fighting on the side of Britain.
Jews all over the world, cannot but passionately hope and pray for the success of Britain. Her cause is the cause of the Jews, and her cares are their cares. For the noble ideals of human freedom and liberty, tolerance and justice to all nations which this country is championing so vigorously in this conflict are part and parcel of the spiritual heritage of the Hebrew people. Jews are also profoundly conscious of the fact that if, heaven forbid, England were defeated, then the outlook and the future for the Jewish race would indeed be extremely grave. The triumph of Nazi tyranny and the consequent spreading of its pernicious influence would spell disaster for the Jew, in whichever country he resided.
The Hitler regime has meant for the Jewish people in the past few years ruthless oppression, a denial of the elementary right to live, cruel of bondage of body and mind and illimitable suffering. A whole community was martyred purely on the ground of race and religion. The organised anti‑Semitism, the deliberate and systematic ruination of the Jewish community in Germany will for ever be a foul blot on the name of that country. The countless Jews and non‑Aryans hounded out from Germany where they have lived as good and useful citizens for many centuries was the work of Nazism, with its totalitarian brutality, its inhuman persecutions and its spurning of all the fine and gracious qualities which make life worth living.
There can be no Jew anywhere who can be morally neutral and impervious to the high and lofty aims for which England stands. Even the Jews in Palestine, despite their just grievances concerning the Palestine policy which has been pursued, are offering their services enthusiastically and unstintedly in the cause of the allies. Already more than 50,000 Jews in Palestine have volunteered.
The sound of the Shofar (ram's horn) in the synagogues on this Jewish New Year will, with its clarion notes, be a rousing and stirring call to Jews to remember their obligations, responsibilities, and duties in this critical period in the history of the world. Their fervent hope is that victory will crown the efforts and exertions of this country and that a just and lasting peace and a world built on the foundations of freedom and justice to all peoples and races will be the fruits of this crucial struggle.