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| Home » Writings, Speeches, Broadcasts » Credo » 2007 |
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| The Battle to Teach Moral Values is Won at School |
| 1/12/2007 |
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It was the original clash of civilisations, and one of the most fateful. Ancient Greece and ancient Israel met and collided. Jews won. Had they not done so, not only would there be no Judaism today. There would almost certainly be no Christianity or Islam either.
I refer to the events commemorated on Hanukkah, the eight-day Jewish festival of lights we are celebrating now. They happened twenty-two centuries ago, when Israel came under the rule of the Alexandrian empire. After Alexander... |
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| As Guardians of Our Children's Future We Must Keep Faith With the Past |
| 1/11/2007 |
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It was a request I couldn’t refuse. Alan Yentob, the documentary maker, was doing a programme on do-it-yourself psychotherapy: self-help. In the course of his research he had come across the work of the late Viktor Frankl, and saw on the back of one of his books that I had written an endorsement. Would I be willing to talk about the man and his ideas?
Well, when it comes to psychotherapy I am strictly an amateur, but I agreed, because for me Frankl had discovered a set of truths abou... |
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| Religion & Science are Twin Beacons of Humanity |
| 1/10/2007 |
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In 1997 a group of scientists issued a declaration in which, among other things, they argued that “human capabilities appear to differ in degree, not in kind, from those found among the higher animals. Humankind’s rich repertoire of thoughts, feelings, aspirations and hopes seems to arise from electrochemical brain processes, not from an immaterial soul."
Is that all we are? Where, on this definition, will we place the book of Psalms, King Lear, Monet’s water lilies or the Bodleian Lib... |
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| Freedom Can Only Walk in the Path of Forgiveness |
| 1/9/2007 |
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The Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, begins this Wednesday night. We call the time from then to the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, the ‘ten days of repentance’ and they are the supreme moments of holiness of Jewish time. The theme of these days is apology and forgiveness. We confess our sins, ask to be forgiven, and pray that we may be given another year of life to try again and do better next time.
Of all virtues, forgiveness is among the most important, and its absence the most... |
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