‘A community is where they know your name and where they miss you when you are not there.’

simhah, usually translated as ‘joy’. What it really means is the happiness we share, or better still, the happiness we make by sharing.

To give and not receive, to act rather than be acted on, to be free and not dependent on other human beings, to be dependent on God alone: these are what give Judaism its distinctive tone of voice.

Judaism is not about the truths we know, but about the truths we live.

Law has the highest dignity in Judaism, because it is the most basic institution of a free society.

To the mythological mind, conflict was written into the structure of the cosmos.

Darkhei shalom is essentially hessed universalized and applied to those who are not members of our faith.

Our particularity is our universality. Only by being what we uniquely are, can we respect other people for what they uniquely are.

know that God empowers us to take risks, forgives our failings, lifts us when we fall and believes in us more than we believe in ourselves – that is one way, the best I know, to write, in the record of our days, a story worth leaving as our legacy to those who come after us, of whose future we are the guardians.