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that everyday behavior which allows the extremists to find a foothold. And the degree to which we do not speak out against the everyday mistreatment of the ger is precisely the degree to which we are complicit with it. The racism in Israel takes place in daily offensiveness and cruelty precisely because it is not stamped out as unacceptable by us, by our religious authorities, by our political authorities. We do have a responsibility and a capability of action. Separation, that is, becomes dangerous when it is not qualified by the necessary injunction to deal kindly with the stranger. Be different, be separate, be holy, yes - but that comes along with the command to treat others in a kindly way: that is the essence of Torah. This then is the tension with which we as Jews are destined to live - with maintaining our difference without leading us into mistreating others for their difference. The command to be holy means nothing without the parallel and equally active command to treat the stranger in a kindly fashion.

One result of insisting on your difference, your holiness, your chosenness without the requirement to be menschlich to those it is difficult to be menschlich towards is, precisely, racism.

In Germany today, you see a menschlich response to refugees that is the result of years of education about the Holocaust and the treatment of others. In Poland today, you see nothing similar - indeed you experience regular and direct anti-Semitism - because of the same years being devoid of education in such matters. Society is changed, menschlichkeit takes shape, because enough people teach, embody, demand it.

I will finish with another story. My Dutch friend Yopie Prins visited this year from America. When we swapped the usual stories about what was happening, she said calmly that she had just adopted five Syrian children. What? I exploded. Well, she said, they came over as refugees with their mother who died of cancer a few weeks after they arrived. The family would have been split up.

So what else could I do? Needless to say, I thought immediately of a lot of other responses she might have had, and was in awe at her commitment, her decency, and her life-changing decision: a new family! A new, very other family. I told Theo, a Dutchman, about it, and he immediately said, I bet her family saved Jews in the war. And he was right. Her family had saved Jews what else could you do? - so now here was she saving Syrians - what else could you do? To be a mensch can be taught, passed on, encouraged. When we think this year on Yom Kippur about what we have done, I hope we can all find a space to think about what we might do to make the world a better place, not just with charity, repentance and prayer, but with the everyday acts that change lives too over time for the better. It is, as the Torah says, "not baffling, not beyond reach; the thing is very close to you, in your heart and in your mouth to do it".

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