The Love That Says No.

When I was Chief Rabbi each year before Rosh Hashanah used to make a television film for the BBC.

It was an interesting challenge. 99.5% of the viewers weren't Jewish because Jews are only half a percent of the population of Britain.

Besides which many, even most of them,

weren't religious believers at all. Britain is quite a secular society. So how do you explain to a non-Jewish,

non-religious audience what Chouva is? It occurred to me that one dramatic way of doing so was

thinking about addiction.

After all, to cure an addiction, you have to go through most of the stages of Chuvah.

You have to recognize that taking drugs is wrong, what we call charata.

You have to undertake to act differently in the future, what we call Shinui Maase.

And we have to be able to resist temptation when it comes our way again,

what Maimonides defined as Chuvagumura complete repentance.

So, I spent a day at a rehabilitation centre for heroin addicts.

I found it incredibly moving here were kids 16 to 18 years old.

Most of them came from broken homes. Some of them had suffered abuse when young others

simply neglect. They'd had a terrible past. Trouble was by seeking refuge in drugs, they were

going to have an even more terrible future.

The people running the centre were amazing, and they were changing lives.

But to me, the most remarkable moment happened when I was speaking to the head of the centre,

a young woman with, I remember, pink hair and punk clothes.

Yet when she spoke,

it was as if I was hearing the divine presence. You see, I asked her what it was that the centre did for the young addicts that helped them change their lives. She replied,

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