C6: Hope

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The Problems

- Unfortunately it is very easy to list the
many problems of our society. Do not use these
to shock your audience. The idea is to focus them on the issues. Read the newspapers of the week when you are doing your programme and find the relevant stories. Current events will mean more than older ones.

- You can show them articles or you can summarise current events. Ask and discuss with your audience whether they are still surprised or shocked about horrific crimes that happen in our society.

Living together

- Try and find a visual way of explaining the difference between the political and civil aspects of society. You could cut out newspaper or magazine photos of people connected with each. (e.g. politicians, judges, & policeman for political society and mothers , clergymen and Rabbis for civil society).

- Alternatively you could list different places and institutions and ask your audience to classify them as either political or civil. (e.g. Houses of Parliament, law courts, jails, prisons and army bases for political society and community centres, Houses of worship, zoos and parks for social society).

-Discuss whether schools are political or civil institutions. (Schools can just teach what the state expects or they can get involved and concerned with the local community. Depending on the type of school, interest of teachers and attitudes of the pupils and parents, schools are often some kind of combination)

-What about Judaism? Challenge your audience to answer this. Use the 'Jewish history' paragraph on page two to explain how a civil society can even survive without a political one.

State solutions

Talk about this if you have studied, or know about, recent British political history. Obviously the account here is a very brief and simple summary of many highly complex issues, but the key point, that both maximal and minimal government have not been effective, stands up to scrutiny.

The Jewish Angle

- You could photocopy, hand out and analyse the first two chapters of Genesis. Underline every time the word good is mentioned. Notice what happens in the text after God talks about Adam being alone. God creates woman and man responds with the first poem in the Bible: "This is now bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman (isha) because she was taken from man (ish)" (Genesis 2.23). Until this point man has been called adam, man as part of nature. (The word adam signifies 'that which was taken from the earth'). Now for the first time man is called - indeed calls himself - ish, which means man as a person. Significantly, he does this only after he has named woman. The Torah is telling us that a human being must first say the name of another before they can know their own name. He or she must say 'you' before they can say 'I'. ie. relationship precedes identify. This deep point is the key to understanding the Jewish approach to society.

- Use the Superman analogy to explain the importance of relationships and how we invent characters "in our own image."

Getting personal

Which is the real face of British society? Is a glass half empty or half full? Both are true but are seen from different perspectives. This is why it is so hard to talk about 'society'. It means different things to different people. Making this point at the beginning of your programme will make it easier to explain the rest.

Community building

- Read out the story about changing the world to explain the idea of concentric circles of caring. - Talk about any local communal initiatives you know about that might be relevant. What does your synagogue do socially for the local Jewish community? Ask your audience to suggest projects that it could/should do.

Living with hope

- Ask your audience to all anonymously write down on a piece of paper ten things that describe an ideal society. Collect them in and read out a few. How many talk about solving social problems? How important are society's problems to us?

- Discuss whether they think they can do anything about it. Having grown up with Jewish customs and ideas, do they think that they are any more moral or responsible?

- Give some examples of the difference between hope and optimism.

- Hand out, or read out a translation of the Hatikvah. What do your audience think about when they sing it?

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