‘L’Shana Tovah’ (a good year) to all this blog’s Jewish readers.
Tonight at sunset the festival of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year starts. It is said in Judaism to be the date that is the birthday of the world, the start of the Hebrew calendar year of 5778 and also is a time of solemn repentance for Jews. At this time we wish for a sweet new year and mark that wish by eating apples and honey. I do not intend this article to be a long exposition on the theology and laws of Rosh Hashanah, partly because it is not necessary for this article but also because groups like Chabad have done a much better job of that than I could ever have done.
What I do wish to say is that it is customary for Jews to give to charity at this time of year and although it is a Mitzvah or commandment to give to charity and do good works all year round, it is especially important to do so on such an auspicious occasion as the New Year.
This year as in previous years this blog is going to feature a New Year charity. It’s one that I support and have supported in the past (it was one of the ‘wedding charities’ that we picked when my wife and I got married) and it would be a blessing if others could support as well.
Combat Stress is one of Britain’s smaller armed forces charities but they do a vital job in treating the unseen injuries that occur on the battlefield, the psychological scars that our servicemen and women carry back with them. It is easy to forget for us in civilian life that what our service personnel see and experience is often traumatic and can cause mental health problems after they are discharged from the military.
My eyes were opened to the extent of the problem of our service veterans being poorly served by existing mental health services when I attended a lecture by a Combat Stress representative. This man had not only served Queen and country himself, but his children had followed his footsteps and joined the UK military. He told us that for too many of those who had served in modern post WWII conflicts, the post war casualties from battlefield acquired mental illness had exceeded the number killed in combat. He told us that the number of deaths from suicide or substance abuse among the veterans of the Falklands War was higher than those who were killed in combat in that war. Having met many ex service personnel who have sadly descended into a situation where they self medicate with drink and drugs, as they had been left to rot post discharge, I can see a lot of credibility in the speaker’s statement.
We owe it to those who put their lives on the line to defend us to ensure that they can lead happy and whole lives once they are out of the military. One way that we can do this is to ensure that those service personnel who are afflicted by symptoms such as flashbacks, nightmares, hyper vigilance or other psychological disturbances, get the help that they truly deserve.
I urge all this blog’s readers no matter what their race, faith or creed to support Combat Stress, they do good work and help those who give so much to keep us and this nation safe.
Please donate whatever you can to the Combat Stress organisation and you can reach their website via the link below
https://www.combatstress.org.uk/
In order to lighten the mood somewhat and help people to look forward to a sweet new year, here is a lovely New Year song by The Fountainheads called ‘Dip Your Apple’ that I was sent recently and to which my toddler has been enthusiastically bouncing this lunchtime.
