I learnt pity, sympathy, and what it was like to be at the other end of the stick. Such lessons can't be learnt in lecture halls.

It was admitted by the early rabbis that the sectarians could be as full of good works as eggs were full of meat.

I was certainly open for something being on the edge of a nervous breakdown, perplexed by my own sexuality. I was gay.

The secular world is more spiritual than it thinks, just as the ecclesiastical world is more materialist than it cares to acknowledge.

The Christian use of religion as a personal love affair both shocked me, and attracted me.

My mother was a modern woman with a limited interest in religion. When the sun set and the fast of the Day of Atonement ended, she shot from the synagogue like a rocket to dance the Charleston.

In speaking of Jesus, I must speak about Christianity because I do not think it possible or profitable to divide the two.