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| Home » Writings, Speeches, Broadcasts » Credo » 2008 |
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| Something survives the worst tragedy, allowing us to rekindle the flame of faith. That is the message of Hanukah |
| 20/12/2008 |
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Hanukah, the Jewish festival of lights, begins tomorrow night. And as I light the candles I will carry with me an indelible memory of something that happened a few weeks ago, a kind of Hanukah in our time.
We had gathered, 274 rabbis from across
Europe, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the 'night of broken glass'. That night, 10 November 1938, Nazi fury broke out against Jews throughout
Germany and
Austria. 92 were killed. 30,000 were seized a... |
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| Fashioning the world anew with winged thoughts. As God makes the natural Universe with words, so we make or unmake social universes with words |
| 22/11/2008 |
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Barak Obama's presidential campaign was among other things a victory for the almost forgotten art of political rhetoric. His long, perfectly balanced sentences, his ability to shift pitch and perspective without losing narrative flow, his subtle evocations of two masters of the genre, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, were living demonstrations of the power of public speech to move imaginations and lift hearts. At its best, oratory is the music of the mind.
M... |
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| Happiness is to be found in being, not in having |
| 25/10/2008 |
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Difficult times, like the present financial crisis, can be transforming times. Without minimizing the pain, suffering itself can be a life changing experience if we let it open our eyes to what really matters, the true sources of happiness.
This is the message of the book Jews read last week as part of the festival of Tabernacles: Ecclesiastes, or in Hebrew Kohelet. Kohelet contains some of the finest prose in the Bible. Its phrases have passed into the language: 'the... |
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| Let us, this year, heed the cry of a child. |
| 27/9/2008 |
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As we suffer the effects of an economic downturn, spare a thought for those who have less. As we approach the Jewish New Year, with its prayers for all humanity, I think of the 72 million children throughout the world who still have no school to go to, and the 600 million people who lack basic sanitation. 33 million people are living with HIV, and more than a million die of malaria every year. Almost a billion people still live on less than a dollar a day. 10 million chi... |
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