Then last week, just a week before Rosh Hashana, The Times' front page headline ran: Hawking: God did not create the universe.

Seemingly Stephen Hawking, who is dubbed as "Britain's most eminent scientist", has moved from his previously religiously accepting position of wanting to "know the mind of God" to the stance that there is no need for a belief in God to understand the origin of the universe.

So what's new? For two centuries scientists have been arrogantly proclaiming that God is dead. Why is this latest onslaught from Hawking and Dawkins and Co any more dangerous than previous atheistic attacks?

At a time when the fundamentalist elements of the three major faiths - Christianity, Judaism and Islam - are all gaining adherents, why do we need to worry about the popular media-led rantings of a few scientists whose belief in their own every-changing scientific theories is just as basically illogical as religious faith?

As leading scientist Jon Butterworth said: "All scientific knowledge is provisional."

Yet presumably the issue is such a cause for concern that our Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks chose to devote his Rosh Hashana broadcast to grappling with the atheist argument.

What is so alarming about this latest atheistic assault on all faiths is that it has been brilliantly orchestrated by a baying media to coincide with the visit to Britain next week of Pope Benedict XVI.

Ever since the Catholic paedophilia scandal broke earlier this year, the media have been baying for the pontiff's blood as Dawkins threatened to have the Pope arrested on charges of "crimes against humanity".

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Reminds you of similar threatened charges against Israeli leaders like Tzipi Livni by Hamas supporters who cleverly manipulate our legal system when the legal system of the country they venerate - Iran - is one of the most barbaric in the world today.

More recently, some of the popular media tried to stir up further trouble by claiming that our Jewish community would be "mortally offended" by the fact that the Pope's visit was timed to coincide with Yom Kippur.

Since when was the Pope Jewish that he had to keep the 25-hour fast?

Fortunately, the Board of Deputies scotched that rumour as those responsible for the papal visit moved an interfaith meeting to the morning of next Friday so that Jewish attendees will have time to attend and eat to their hearts' content before the fast.

True Judaism and Catholicism have a chequered past. Far too many Jews suffered during the times of the Crusades and Spanish Inquisition from Catholic persecution.

But since the Nostra Aetate of 1965, in which the Catholic Church radically changed its attitude to Judaism, all that has become past history.

In fact, when the Pope came to Manchester's Heaton Park in 1982 most of the local Jewish community was thrilled by the visit, except for a certain prominent Orthodox rabbi who refused to meet the pontiff just because of the presence there of a Reform rabbi.

Fortunately, on the issue of interfaith dialogue with our community, Jews have moved on and this time there is no issue whatsoever about whether Progressive representatives should meet the pontiff alongside the Orthodox.

But it is indeed a sad reflection on the militant anti-religious state of prominent sections of this country that the papal visit should cause such outrage.

Atheism is so ingrained in the fibre of modern Britain that our previous prime minister Tony Blair had for some time to hide his Catholic faith and claim that he did not "do God".

This state of affairs and the fact that certain practices abhorrent to all the major religions are enshrined as absolutely untouchable by our amoral and atheistic society should urge us Jews to strengthen our allegiances with our sister faiths and defend the right of their leaders to feel welcome on British soil.

In that spirit, I hope the Yom Kippur visit of the Pope passes peacefully.

Eruv won't interfere with anyone's lifestyle

NOTHING changes! In the 1970s, when a not-yet materialised eruv was first mooted for north Manchester's Broughton Park and Prestwich, the letters columns of our newspaper were full of people protesting against the making of the Jewish area in which they freely chose to live into an enclosed ghetto, separating them from their non-Jewish neighbours. When in the 1990s the north-west London eruv was proposed, it met with similar opposition from Jewish inhabitants of posh Hampstead, as well as from a barrage of opposition from the charedi right who still refuse to use the eruv for supposed halachic reasons.

For both these reasons a further attempt at a Broughton Park/Prestwich eruv seems to be shelved until the coming of the Messiah when we'll all be living together in harmony in Jerusalem - impossible to imagine!

A brave attempt to erect an eruv in Manchester's Whitefield is predictably being met with criticism from local Jews who fear being segregated from their non-Jewish neighbours.

Fear not! Once the eruv is duly erected you won't even notice it and nobody, except your consciences, will stop you from carrying on your previous lifestyles.

Why can't we all live and let live and allow our neighbours to live as they think fit?

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