Britain, relative to the U.S., is a highly secular society. Philanthropy alone cannot fill the gap left by government cutbacks. And the sources of altruism go deep into our evolutionary past.

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the holy of holies of Jewish time. It is that rarest of phenomena, a Jewish festival without food. Instead it is a day of fasting and prayer, introspection and self-judgment when, collectively and repeatedly, we confess our sins and pray to be written into God's Book of Life.

There's always hope. You can lose everything else in the world, but Jews never lose hope.

Values are tapes we play on the Walkman of the mind: any tune we choose so long as it does not disturb others.

Governments cannot make marriages or turn feckless individuals into responsible citizens. That needs another kind of change agent.

As the political leaders of Europe meet to save the euro and European Union, so should religious leaders.

Freedom begins with what we teach our children. That is why Jews became a people whose passion is education, whose heroes are teachers and whose citadels are schools.