Chief Rabbi Mirvis, Bill Benjamin Chair of the UJIA, Vivian Wineman President of the Board of Deputies, Rabbanim, Excellencies,  my Lords, Ladies and gentlemen:

There is a sound, a unique Jewish sound, that we hear at this time of year. Some of us hear it this month if we go to prayers in the morning, and all of us will hear it next week in synagogue on Rosh Hashanah. It is the sound of the shofar.

According to our tradition it is a sound that that reaches back as far as creation and reaches forward to the time of redemption. And in between, in a truly remarkable way, the hoarse cry of the ram's horn gives expression to Jewish history, in all its tragedy and triumph, all its pain and all its joy. Later this evening we will have the pleasure of listening to the magnificent Simon Schama who told the Story of the Jews in 5 stunning TV documentaries. The sound of the shofar punctuates that story in all its multifaceted complexity. The shofar, we are taught, recalls the anguished binding of Isaac, the momentous revelation of Mount Sinai; it sounded victory at the battle of Jericho and freedom for slaves in the Jubilee year. Even in our lifetimes, key moments in the history of the state of Israel - the recapture of the western wall, the sirens of the gulf war, the arrival of the Ethiopian aliya - are all evoked by that haunting, wordless voice of the Jewish experience.

I think about what we have been through this past summer, the people of Israel, and all those who care about Israel.  I think about it and try to give expression to all we have felt: the pain, the fear, the pride, the unity. And I hear the voice of the shofar.

If you were in Israel this summer and turned on the radio, you would have heard Israeli music, talk shows, sports commentary – the energetic, optimistic normality of Israeli life. But over these broadcasts at regular intervals you would hear announcements: azaka b'ashdod, azaka b'veersheva – siren in Ashdod, siren in Beersheba, warnings of incoming missiles, telling people to rush to the shelters. That dissonance, the multi-layered complexity of our life in our land, that is the sound of the shofar.

It's a sound that reflects the many different things we learned this summer: the realisation that Iranian missiles could reach as far as Netanya and Hadera; the knowledge that attack tunnels had been dug beneath our feet, deep into the south; that Hamas was intent on new forms of attack, from the sea and  by drones. But  at the same time the things we learned about ourselves: the incredible  dignity of the  parents of the three teenagers Naftali, Eyal and Gilad; our own forgotten capacity for unity and common purpose, not just across the entire political spectrum, but across the whole of society, with an entire country welcoming residents from the south for some respite, or making daytrips to Sderot and Ashkelon to keep the shops in business.

At one point during the fighting, I asked my son Aaron, who was a paratrooper in Gaza, how he was managing for food. It was the 9 days, the mourning period when traditionally we don’t eat meat or listen to music. He said the army rabbinate had ruled that the religious soldiers should eat meat and listen to music. For morale? I asked. No, he said. So that there shouldn’t be any distinction between the religious and secular guys.

These voices of fear, of apprehension, of unity, of pride, they are sound of the shofar.

And that sound is still with us. As ISIS rampages to our north, as Hizbollah threatens to renew its attacks, and terrorist groups continue to encroach in the Sinai. As the centrifuges in Iran are still spinning towards an unthinkable Islamist nuclear weapon.

Yet at the same time we note that the Arab world refused to support Hamas, that there is a striking alignment of strategic interests with pragmatic Arab leaders who share our assessment of the danger of Jihadist aspirations in the region. And amidst all this geopolitical tumult and upheaval, this week thousands of Israelis went to hear Lady Gaga perform in Park Hayarkon, while as we sit here entrepreneurs from all over the world are at the Israeli innovation festival in Tel Aviv. Can all these realities truly coexist? Yes they can, they have, they must, in that primal, versatile, resonant sound of the shofar.

It was a hard, painful summer for Israelis, but something else made it harder still. And that was the sense that so many people around the world didn’t understand, maybe even didn’t want to understand, what this was about.

Can people forget so quickly, Israelis asked themselves, that just a few years ago we pulled out of Gaza, every inch? That there was no blockade, there were no restrictions, until Hamas took over, trashed the greenhouses we left behind, and started firing missiles on Israel?

And if they can’t remember years, Israelis asked, can they not remember just months ago, when Israel begged Hamas not to escalate the violence into a war which could only have losers?

And if not months then weeks. Can they not remember that Israel accepted and implemented every one of the 11 ceasefire proposals while Hamas rejected or violated every single one?

Can they truly not see the difference between a country using arms to protect its civilians and those who use civilians to shield their weapons? The difference between the IDF, which is conducting painstaking investigations into its own conduct to find out how more lives might have been saved, and Hamas, which— at the behest of its backers in Iran and Qatar—is trying to explain why, despite their funding, more Israelis were not killed.

These voices of forgetfulness and selective blindness, of moral equivalence, or— even worse—moral inversion, lend even greater importance to the voices of principled moral clarity that we have heard over the past few months. Among them I am pleased to say has been the voice of the British government which has clearly recognized the nature of Hamas, its culpability for this conflict, and Israel's right - indeed its obligation - to defend its citizens. And it has been equally resolute in standing firmly against the resurgence of incidents of anti-Semitism and the campaign of boycotts and discrimination.

Because that sound of the shofar, the expression of the  multi-layered experience of the Jewish people, captures what we feel not just in Israel, but here in the UK too. When  trade unions resolve to boycott the only country in the Middle East with free trade unions. When, at the Edinburgh festival, violent rioters prevent Israeli productions from performing for the first time.   When supermarkets   cave into hooliganism by taking Israeli and even non-Israeli kosher products off their shelves.

In this environment a new generation of the Jewish people is coming of age. Fed on a relentless diet of media distortions, they leave school and go to universities where voices for Israel are rare and often silenced. Their experiences of Israel are not 1967, or 73, or Entebbe, but Israel apartheid week, with fake security barriers, and hostile motions for academic boycotts.

How in this environment can we raise a generation who will raise their heads as Jews, who will have passionate, meaningful, sustainable relationship with Israel?

Here in the UK there is one organisation which, more than any other, takes on the responsibility of nurturing that spirit. That is UJIA. It is UJIA that, across the community, works to instil Jewish identity, Jewish knowledge, and Jewish pride in the future of this community: through a dozen youth groups, through scores of summer camps and youth programs, through countless school activities, and most of all through Israel trips.

This past summer 1,200 young British Jews visited Israel on summer programs. Under the leadership of Bill Benjamin, Michael Wieger, and the entire professional team, along with the astonishing team of dedicated madrichim whom Zehava and I were delighted to host in our home yesterday, UJIA brought them to Israel, inspired them with the reality, and above all sent the message that this is not a holiday destination where in times of trouble you keep away. It is our home from home, our people, our family, so that in times of need you don’t step back but draw even closer.

UJIA  doesn't just nurture a relationship with Israel. Its models it. It shows how this community's care for Israel is tangible, helping disadvantaged kids rebuild their lives at Kibbutz Eshbal, strengthening education in Shlomi, training new cohorts of doctors in Tzfat.When kids from the UK  visit Israel they can see in the Galilee the concrete projects that would not have happened without this community's support. They know that, in the incredible story of the Jewish people, these are the pages their parents have written. And they know that soon it will be time for them to write their own.

The shofar is a voice which encapsulates the tensions, the highs and the lows, of Jewish experience. But if it were only that, the sound would have died out long ago. It is also a call to action. Says one rabbi of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah, it is like a fire alarm. It is important to hear it, but if you only hear it, disaster will ensue. You have to hear it and act. UJIA takes the voice of Jewish experience, and turns it into a call for action.

And I think the shofar is one more thing: it is a promise. A promise that if we heed that call for action, if we take that step, we will see truly miraculous results.

Some 30 years ago I visited refuseniks, Jews who were being persecuted in the former soviet union. And before I went I was given all sort of Jewish items to give to them. Prayer books, bibles, prayer shawls, tefillin, At the airport I was stopped by the KGB, taken to a room and interrogated. And they went through my case and confiscated all the Jewish items. Except for one. Except for a shofar. Perhaps they had no idea what it was. But the only thing I was able to give the refuseniks in Moscow, who are today living in Jerusalem, was that shofar, that a voice of Jewish experience, that  call to action, and  that  promise that we too can rise and together write the next page of Jewish history.

Shana tova, thank you.