Jews read the books of Moses not just as history but as divine command. The question to which they are an answer is not, "What happened?" but rather, "How then shall I live?" And it's only with the exodus that the life of the commands really begins.

When you've got Jews and Christians, Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus removing graffiti from buildings, or getting drug dealers off the street, that's side by side. When you do that, you take it from the very elevated level of interfaith dialogue to the street level of neighbors. You get them working side by side, and they become friends. Friendship sometimes counts for more than interfaith agreement or understanding. Friendship is deeply human.

When money rules, we remember the price of things and forget the value of things, and that is dangerous.

Why did God create mankind? Because God likes stories.

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

Volunteering has been undervalued in Britain for a long time. Often it has been seen as a kind of cut-price, amateur version of work that would be better done by the state. When politicians speak about it, people hear in the background the sound of budgets being cut.

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.