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From: Rabbi Pete Tobias of the Liberal Synagogue, Elstree:

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Every week in synagogues a particular section from the Torah, the Five Books of Moses, is read and the week is referred to by the title given to that weekly portion. Last week was Lech L’cha, which literally means ‘get up and go!’ – God’s instruction to Abraham and his wife Sarah to leave their home and journey to a place that would be shown to them.

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Last week I also got up and went. I went to the Ukraine and Austria; a journey that took me through Poland, Italy and Switzerland on planes, buses and trains.

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It was a rewarding and very informative trip, rather different, I suspect, from the one that Abraham and Sarah took almost four thousand years ago. One major difference was that I ended up back in the place where I’d started: I returned home. For Abraham and Sarah, there was no going back. They had to find a new home.

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I remember my university days when every few months I seemed to be moving somewhere new. My motto was ‘home is where the stereo is’ – and in those distant days of amplifiers, speakers, cables and turntables, that was a significantly more complicated exercise than just plugging in a smart phone.

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As I travelled round obscure parts of Europe, spending each night in a different country, I was reminded of a line in the Liberal Jewish prayerbook for the Day of Atonement. It asks us to be mindful of those who are disadvantaged, especially ‘those who never seem to find a resting place in the family of the secure’. And by a random sequence of thoughts, I also remembered the lyrics of a song from a quarter of a century ago by Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, called ‘Home’. Everybody, he says, has somewhere, something or someone they call home.

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Home isn’t just a roof that covers your head, or wherever your music collection happens to be. It’s a place where you feel that you belong, something all of us need. And if we are fortunate enough to have ‘a resting place in the family of the secure’, may our thoughts and hearts be turned to those without somewhere, something or someone they can call home.