Sunny Govan.com: You call your ministers `rabbis'. Is a Rabbi the equivalent of a Catholic Priest or an Anglican Vicar?
Jonathan Gorsky: Not really. The key role of the Rabbi is that of a teacher. Judaism revolves around texts, especially the five books of Moses. They represent the Jewish encounter with God at Mount Sinai, the crucial event in Jewish history and tradition. In transmitting that tradition, we must have people that are able to teach the text, as well as the thousands of years of literature that has developed from it. Teaching and study is crucial in Judaism. This explains not only the role of the rabbi but much else in Jewish tradition.

Sunny Govan.com: Tradition seems to be very important in Judaism. For instance, should all Jews wear those little skullcaps like the one your are wearing?
Jonathan Gorsky: It is called a `Kipah'. Most Jewish men wear it in the synagogue and during religious observance at home. It is simply an expression of reverence and humility. It reminds us that there is that which is above our heads and that we don't know it all. It is a reminder that we are always in the presence of God. But in general the great majority of Jews do not wear the Kipah outside the synagogue, and look much the same as anyone else.

Sunny Govan.com: But some Jewish men really do look quite different, with long black coats, beards, black hats and prayer shawls, etc. What is that all about?
Jonathan Gorsky: The people who do this are strictly orthodox. They preserve the style of dress their great grandparents wore in Eastern Europe for several hundred years. This was the heartland of Jewish culture in the 19th century when Western European Jews were admitted to civil society after centuries of being marginalised. The 19th century was also an age when the world was making progress in many different directions. Some Jews were immensely excited by the progress, and believed that God could be found in the massive historical developments. Consequently, tradition had to be adapted, especially the services of the synagogue.

But many Eastern European Jews saw these changes as a threat, to be resisted at all costs. They claimed that every Jewish practice was sacred and precious, originating in God's revelation at Sinai or divinely inspired thereafter, and had to be maintained until the end of time. They viewed the 19th century with considerable trepidation. For them, and now for their descendants, these are time-honoured ways and they are not going to change to change their style of clothing just to follow fashion.

Sunny Govan.com: But what is the point?
Jonathan Gorsky: I think we must remember the fate of these Jewish societies in Eastern Europe. They bore the brunt of the Holocaust. So for their descendants to dress as their parents and grandparents did gives a sense of continuity. They are trying to preserve something of their world, which was broken and destroyed around them.

Sunny Govan.com:Some people believe it is time to put the Holocaust behind, and move on. The younger generation say, "We did not do this to you. Why do you keep putting us all on a guilt trip?"
Jonathan Gorsky:Try to understand the impact that the Holocaust had upon the Jewish community. Perhaps one-third of the Jewish people was destroyed. We are a very small people throughout the world, and to lose six million people, especially the way we did, is devastating.

It takes a long time to be able to talk about an experience like that. It is only recently that many of the survivors have felt able to write their memoirs. The Holocaust could happen again - actually has been replicated in Rwanda and Cambodia. When the Holocaust survivors pick up their newspapers and see that some Europeans vote for Neo-fascist parties, or read of ethnic cleansing and see pictures of emaciated prisoners behind barbed wire, memories come flooding back. The object is not to put people on a guilt trip, but to keep the lessons of the past alive. They feel they must remind everyone of what we humans are capable of doing to each other.

Like most Jews today, I grew up in the shadow of these events and only gradually discovered what had happened. Now we are trying to move on and make a better world.

Sunny Govan.com: How do you do that? I have never met a Jew who has ever put any pressure on me to convert to Judaism.
Jonathan Gorsky: You probably never will. There is a difference between having a mission in the world and actually wanting people to become Jewish. But we have always had a sense of mission. Once we were the only chosen people of God, in a pagan world. It is very difficult to imagine a world where this little people were the only people who had any sense of God at all. But now we live in a Christian society, and alongside Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus, who also believe in God, even if in a different way. When you believe that all the good and righteous people of the world are precious in the eyes of God and will be so in what we call the world to come - a world restored to its proper state, as God originally intended - there is no need to persuade people to be anything other than what they are.

Sunny Govan.com: What does Judaism bring to the modern world?
Jonathan Gorsky: I think my answer to that would be a feeling for the holiness of creation. The Jewish year is very richly endowed with special days and festivals. Each one reveals a different aspect of our relationship with God.

Take the experience of the Sabbath. On Friday nights we remind ourselves of the spirituality of all things. `The earth is the Lord's' as the Psalms say. In this day and age, it is very important to be reminded of that. We have ransacked our environment and are only just coming to terms with the consequences of what we have done in the last 200 years. During the Sabbath rest, we restore a sense of holiness. We withdraw from much of the life of the world - no televisions, no fax machines. We close our shops, and we do not travel unnecessarily. The Sabbath is celebrated in the home and the family's table suddenly becomes a place of holiness. We stand back and appreciate the dimensions of the space and time in which one lives and reassert the sense of God's presence.

Another example: During our eight-day Festival of Tabernacles we move out of our homes, whether we are poor or rich, and eat our meals in a fragile dwelling. The one requirement of that dwelling is that it won't blow down in a normal wind. We live as we lived in the wilderness. This is a tremendous message that seems to stand over and against the materialism of the modern world. If my faith gave me little else other than that, it would be worth it.

Sunny Govan.com: What do Jews believe about life after physical death?
Jonathan Gorsky: That is hard to pin down. There is an element within us that transcends the physical and is of God. That element would be eternal and is restored to God. So a core belief of Judaism is that life does not terminate when we leave this world.

When we try to move beyond that we have various opinions, but the notion of resurrection is certainly very important as it was in the time of Jesus. We refer to it at least three times in the Orthodox service, when the greatness of God is praised in terms of his capacity to revive the dead.

Sunny Govan.com: What is it about Jesus that Jews reject?
Jonathan Gorsky: One has to distinguish between Jesus the person and Jesus as the Son of God in the Trinitarian sense. Jesus and his first followers were all Jews and very much a part of the Jewish world of their time. That is the common ground between us. There is a growing interest in the teaching of Jesus and its relation to Jewish traditions. Jesus would be recognised as a great teacher, and as such, would be accepted by many Jews. But the Christian claim that he was the Son of God is theologically virtually unbridgeable.

Sunny Govan.com:Christians and Jews both believe the Bible is the Word of God. But your Bible is quite different, isn't it?
Jonathan Gorsky: We use only what you call The Old Testament. And the order of the books is different - the origin of that is very complicated and not entirely clear. And by English standards our Bible is back to front. You open it at the `back', because Hebrew is read in the opposite way from English.

Sunny Govan.com: If a Christian family asked Jewish friends home for a meal, what should they be sensitive about?
Jonathan Gorsky: We try to follow the Biblical dietary laws. We eat meat only from animals that have cloven hooves and chew the cud, which cuts out pork and rabbit. We slaughter animals in a particular way. If we must take the life of an animal we try to do it with the minimum of cruelty. So that means meat should come from a `Kosher' butcher shop. Jewish visitors would ask that meat not be served with dairy products. For example, a roast beef sandwich would be out of the question unless it was made with vegetarian margarine. We eat most of the usual fish if they have fins and scales, but not shellfish. Most poultry meat is fine, but get it from the kosher butcher.

Ask your guests in advance, if possible, as there is a wide range of different observances. You will find that there is a great deal that they can eat, but it is best to stick to acceptable fish or vegetarian cooking.

Sunny Govan.com:Alcohol?
Jonathan Gorsky: No problem, but in moderation.

Sunny Govan.com:What is `Zionism'?
Jonathan Gorsky: It describes those who believe that to have a Jewish state is significant and vital. The fact that one has a religious affinity with the Holy Land or Israel does not necessarily make you a Zionist. There are many Jews who live in Jerusalem who love the land dearly but would not wish to be described as Zionists.

Sunny Govan.com: So how does the average Jew feel about the State of Israel?
Jonathan Gorsky: Israel was formed only three years after the end of the Holocaust so there is often a profound emotional attachment, particularly for the older generation whether they are religious or not. So Israel is seen as a place where Jews feel at home. A great many of us have families in Israel. Religious Jews might go and study in Israel, so they have their places of learning, their teachers, their Rabbis there. And then of course you have those who are deeply religious, and sense the holiness of the land. To pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem is in a sense different from praying anywhere else because we believe that the Divine presence can be experienced there in a way that is radically different from any other place in the world, even though the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD.

Sunny Govan.com: I think most non-Jews would be very hesitant about going into a synagogue. Can you describe what happens there?
Jonathan Gorsky: First, if people wish to visit synagogues they are very welcome, although it is wise to let the synagogue secretary know. This is not for religious reasons, but we do have concerns about security. There are, alas, people in society who still do not view synagogues with favour. But bona fide visitors will always be made welcome, even if they simply want to see what is going on.

What they would see is a community at prayer. The services vary in length. A Saturday morning service can take a few hours, afternoon or evening service ten or fifteen minutes. Friday night services take about half an hour. The Day of Atonement takes the whole day and so on. Many of our prayers come originally from the Bible. We stand quietly in prayer and we recite a set of blessings, which are appropriate for the day.

The other central thing to the service is the reading from the scroll of the Torah. In the orthodox tradition we go through the entire Pentateuch once a year. We read a portion each week and finish at the end of the year. All men wear prayer shawls in the orthodox tradition. In the reform and progressive groups some women might wear prayer shawls as well. Today there is no special sort of garb or clothing for a Rabbi. Honoured guests might be invited to sit at the eastern wall. Synagogues face Jerusalem, and in this country they should be facing east.

In orthodox services a difficulty for visitors is that most of the service is conducted in Hebrew.

Sunny Govan.com: Do most Jews understand Hebrew?
Jonathan Gorsky: Most Jews understand some. We learn it as children, but if we only use it once a week, it is just not enough.

Sunny Govan.com: Do Jewish people have a private relationship with God as well as a `corporate' one? What I mean is, does a Jew feel comfortable just talking to God about the ordinary issues of his or her life?
Jonathan Gorsky: This is a very interesting question. We are so identified with the notion of community that I think many people would virtually identify prayer with the services of the synagogue. But I think many people would pray for themselves. The pressures of modern life mean that perhaps private prayer is not necessarily as focal as it ought to be. There are moments however when the opposite is true. For example, when women light their candles on Friday evening, children remember their mothers standing for far longer than is necessary with eyes covered with the candle. That is a moment of intense personal prayer.

Sunny Govan.com:Are you concerned about anti-Semitism in Britain?
Jonathan Gorsky: Jews in Britain have not suffered from serious anti-semitic prejudice for many years. Today, if you made a list of concerns, anti-Semitism would probably come somewhere around number 10.

Occasionally you hear about a swastika daubed on a synagogue wall and older people who remember the past may see it in the context of their experiences, but in general, Jews are well integrated into British society.

The fact that we differ on some matters does not mean that there has to be hostility. On the contrary, there is so much we agree on about how we are to live our lives, and this should and can be shared and appreciated. God created the whole world, not just the Jewish bit!