From Rabbi Pete Tobias, of the Liberal Synagogue, Elstree

I’ve been doing a lot of travelling lately. I’ve just returned from a trip to the Lake District and thanks to the wonders of modern technology, the voice of Alan Dedicoat guided my wife and me safely there on the SatNav, while the delectable Lynn Bowles got us back again!

But a couple of days before that, I paid a visit to a small village in Austria and had the pleasure of flying . The voice that guided me then wasn’t from a SatNav, it was the air hostess. She dispensed the obligatory instructions about emergency exits and lifejackets that no one really listens to. But as one of her colleagues was standing right next to me when she was doing her bit, I felt I ought to look attentive. And I’m glad I did.

Because the spiel about oxygen masks – ‘fit your own mask before helping others’ – suddenly enabled me to make sense of a quote by my 2000 year-old friend Rabbi Hillel. He once said ‘If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?’

That had always baffled me, but in the context of oxygen masks, it became clear. Our first responsibility is always to look after ourselves, because if we don’t, we can’t assume that others will. ‘If I am not for myself, then who will be for me?’ So we must fit our own oxygen mask first.

But, once we have looked after ourselves, and fitted our mask to ensure we are breathing properly, we have an obligation to assist others with theirs. ‘But if I am only for myself, what am I?’ We cannot sit breathing comfortably while others around us are struggling

And if not now, when? The need to take proper care of ourselves is a daily challenge; there are so many occasions when we might find ourselves needing to grab hold of that metaphorical oxygen mask to help us breath a little more easily.

And when we’ve done that, we owe it to ourselves, our fellow human beings and to our Creator to look around and see if there’s anyone else who needs out help. Taking care of ourselves and others – it’s actually the basis of human society.

Thanks to Rabbi Hillel for spotting that two thousand years ago – and to Lisa on that flight to Austria for helping me to understand it.