Something to celebrate after all the festivals

As one ends October feeling ‘festivalled out’, it is really satisfying to get on with the rest of life. Not that it really stops over the holidays, what with sermons, family meals, and the beginning of Parliamentary term. What I love when it’s all over is that the message of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur- about resolving to do better and being judged by what we do and not what we say - has to inform the next bit of our lives.

That’s why my GOAT role - ‘government of all the talents’ - is so satisfying. I’m there to promote volunteering in general and within the public services in particular. I review how people who volunteer in our hospitals or prisons are treated. I discover volunteers who will meet and greet you in your neighbourhood police station now as well as in hospitals. And the hospital ‘meeters and greeters’ say they know they are really useful to patients and family and friends, but their REAL use is helping young medical students and housemen find their way round these huge and complicated- and often very badly signposted- edifices. I love what I do, and the fact it feels so Jewish. It isn’t, of course.

The UK comes at or near the top of every survey of how many people in a society volunteer. It’s very British. But it is also very Jewish. And with Mitzvah Day coming up, which celebrates the Jewishness of volunteering and aims to get us all out there helping others, doing something for its own sake, for free, I am all too aware of just how much it is part of our religious tradition, our culture - and, in many cases, our personal upbringing.

I am so convinced that volunteers can bring things paid staff cannot do - like give peer support to people who have breast cancer, say, because they’ve had it- that I would like to create even more ways for people to use their experience to benefit others. That might be intergenerational - older people helping children with reading, or history - because they were there. Or it might cross communities. Jews and Muslims together, for instance.

I’m not too bothered about why people volunteer - it’s usually for a mix of reasons, of which altruism plays a part. But I love the fact that they do. And that most of us have services given to us by volunteers as well as volunteering to help others. We’re often very critical of our society for its selfishness. If you look at how many of us volunteer, and how often, you wouldn’t feel so bad. And that’s really something to celebrate after all the festivals.

Baroness Neuberger