When I was a child living in North London my family did not attend synagogue.  We joined a local Reform one for a while – until my brother became Bar Mitzvah – but then we left; so, I was eight when I stopped attending classes.  Growing up, being Jewish was about what happened at home – on Friday evenings and festival eves – when, instead of going to bed after bath-time, freshly scrubbed, we dressed up for a special meal, and stood around the table, while my mother benched (blessed) and lit the candles.  With the exception of Seder night, that was all we did – no Kiddush or Motzi – but it was enough to feel a deep sense of celebration – and after we ate, my mother would always sing Yiddish and Hebrew songs.  Apart from those evenings my memories of preparing for Pesach, and my mother’s hazel-nut and chocolate ‘kisses’ (as she called them) are particularly vivid.   Even when it came to the ‘High Holy Days’, we never stepped foot in the synagogue.  But I was acutely aware of the approaching ‘New Year’ nevertheless:   In addition to the usual festive meal, my father bought my mother an exceptionally lovely bouquet of flowers, and all of us got something new to wear.

It was not until I attended my first Rosh Ha-Shanah services ever in 1984 at Radlett and Bushey Reform Synagogue, at the age of twenty-nine, just before I embarked on my rabbinic studies at Leo Baeck College that I began to discover what the Jewish New Year was all about.  I bought my first skirt-and-jacket suit for the occasion, but what struck me when I entered the vast sports hall where the services were held was that the ark-curtains were white.  By then, I had attended Shabbat services for a while, and not really noticed the ‘colour’ of the ark-curtains – but the white was very striking.  And when the portable ark was opened and I saw the scrolls also dressed in white, I knew that ‘white’ signified something important, and suddenly noticed that a few people were wearing white kippot and white tallitot (prayer-shawls).  When I returned on Kol Nidrey, and saw several people wearing white/cream clothes, and the rabbi – Barbara Borts – dressed in what looked like an elaborate old-fashioned white night-dress,  which I later learnt was called a kittel, I realised I had to find out why.