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| Home » Writings, Speeches, Broadcasts » Thought for the Day » 2003 |
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| Chanukah |
| 17/12/2003 |
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Thought For The Day - 17 December 2003
In two days time we'll begin celebrating Hanukah, the Jewish festival of lights, best known for our custom of lighting for eight days the candelabrum we call the menorah, symbol of the one that once stood in the temple in Jerusalem. The interesting thing about Hanukkah, though, is the way its significance changed over time.
We can read the first draft of the story in the first and second books of Maccabees. They tell of how Antiochus IV, one o... |
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| Chanukah |
| 10/12/2003 |
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Thought For The Day - 10 December 2003
My attention was caught this week by two contrasting stories from the world of art. The first was Tate Gallery's Turner Prize, awarded to a potter whose work was described in the press as specialising in pornographic and paedophile imagery with titles like "We've found the body of your child" - worthy company for such previous winners as the unmade bed, the elephant dung and, of course, the pickled sheep.
What I wonder will future ages make of ... |
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| Science |
| 3/12/2003 |
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Thought For The Day - 3 December 2003
Congratulations to Donald Rumsfeld on winning this year's Plain English Campaign award - for those immortal words, "As we know, there are known knowns . . . We also know there are known unknowns; but there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know." Not much you can add to that really. It's a bit like the poems of Robert Browning about which it used to be said, that there were only two people who could understand them: Robert ... |
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| Yom Kippur |
| 1/10/2003 |
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Thought For The Day - 1 October 2003
At this time of the year I can almost feel the approach of Judaism's holiest day, Yom Kippur - the Day of Atonement - which begins this coming Sunday night. It's a day we spend in fasting and prayer, pouring out our hearts to God, saying sorry for the wrong we've done and asking him to grant atonement. A solemn time, though there can be some unintentionally amusing moments.
I remember one year when a synagogue was so oversubscribed that... |
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