We live in a risk averse society and the weak and sick are suffering, is the theory of Rabbi Julia Neuberger. By Peter Gruner

The Moral State We’re In by Julia Neuberger
Harper Collins, £16.99

JULIA Neuberger might not be here today if Britain had not accepted her mother as a refugee, desperate and without a home, fleeing the tyranny of Nazi Germany.
Her mother was taken in by a caring non-Jewish family, who despite fear of lack of approval from the community, thought it “the decent, civilised thing to do”, Dame Neuberger writes in her new book the Moral State We’re in.
She argues that the treatment of the weak and vulnerable has long been a way to judge a society.
Most people accept that a civilised society should be caring, yet the future for the weakest among us – the elderly, the mentally-ill, asylum seekers, and children in care – has never seemed bleaker.
At 55, married with two children, Britain’s first female rabbi, who is now a Liberal Democrat peer, has written a rallying call for those who fear the disintegration of community care in the relentless quest for personal safety and security.
Her stance is admirable – even if, in some places, the book assumes the slightly sermonising flavour of an extended Radio Four Thought for the Day slot.
Rabbi Neuberger attended South Hampstead High School before Cambridge University and lives near Primrose Hill.
She presents a worrying picture of a society that is so blind to the needs of others that morality has almost become a dirty word.
On top of that people are too fearful of doing the decent and civilised thing. She is suggesting that the Good Samaritan passes by on the other side of the road in case the injured man is faking it or concealing a knife.
People still give help at the side of a road following an accident but how long will it be before someone is sued for contributing to someone’s death by, for example, holding them the wrong way?
She blames the compensation culture and a risk-averse society where nurses, teachers, social and care workers ignore difficult issues, fearful of making mistakes that could result in legal claims.
The elderly man couldn’t get anyone to do his shopping but when his light-bulb failed the local authority sent out four workers to change it; one to hold the ladder, one to turn off the electricity at the mains, one to stay with the elderly person, and one to change the light bulb. True story.
We are raising a mollycoddled generation, she says. Children are being brought up by paranoid parents who are obsessed with irrational fears. Children aren’t allowed out to play on the streets because of a perceived threat from paedophiles.
Teachers aren’t allowed to apply sun cream because it might look like child abuse. Unions won’t allow them to take children on adventure courses for fear of being sued. You can’t take school photographs in case they are used in child pornography. Care-workers can’t give their charges a hug in case it is seen as a sexual advance.
Talking about her own childhood she said: “Although the 1950s were tough I think people were less selfish.”
Her years as chairwoman of the Camden and Islington Community Health Services Trust made her realise just how the mentally-ill suffer.
“Kindness to people with severe mental health problems often comes more from the owners of the cafés in which they sit for much of the day, or from staff in public libraries, than from the nurses and outreach workers who are in a position to really lend a hand,” she writes.
She adds: “If someone with mental illness becomes violent, staff are blamed. If they kill someone, staff are blamed. If they get lost to the system, staff get the blame. This makes staff very unwilling to take risks.
So, rather than worry about their patients and how they are cared for, increasingly they worry about the risk they pose to others.”
Rabbi Neuberger wants us to examine the way our easily panicked society is making things worse for people who are already in difficulty. She is scathing on our cruelty to the vulnerable young, and on our current passion for locking up more and more luckless people in prison.
As for asylum seekers, she says that Britain must think more positively about immigration, or given our low birth rate we will not be able to staff many of our services and industries.
“What kind of society is it that locks up children from asylum seeking families, that fails in its duty of kindness towards the stranger?” she asks. “Unless we rethink our social obligations and reassess the issue of trust, we will become even more cynical, even more atomistic, even more individualistic – and there will then really be no such thing as society.”