The Chief Rabbi's intellectual buddies for his annual Rosh Hashanah broadcast on BBC1 on Tuesday night (entitled "What is the point of religion?") will be Lord "Blue Labour" Glasman and political scientist Robert Putnam.

Putnam is an expert on community and social connection best known for his 2000 book Bowling Alone. Less well known is that the Harvard prof, who was raised a Methodist, converted to Judaism when he married a Jewish woman.