Every loss recapitulates earlier losses, but every affirmation of identity echoes earlier moments of clarity.

Jazz exemplifies artistic activity that is at once individual and communal, performance that is both repetitive and innovative, each participant sometimes providing background support and sometimes flying free.

Orthodox Judaism is a thicket of detailed injunctions, Biblical commandments elaborated during centuries of prohibited proselytizing, functioning to limit interaction with outsiders. At the opposite extreme, Islam, still the most rapidly expanding of faiths, demands little immediate knowledge from those who would convert. The convert is permitted to enter and then to learn by participation, although there are plenty of detailed regulations and abstruse theological ideas to be pursued later, and the regulations do effectively separate believers from nonbelievers.

Solutions to problems often depend upon how they're defined.

The family is changing not disappearing. We have to broaden our understanding of it, look for the new metaphors.

What would it be like to have not only color vision but culture vision, the ability to see the multiple worlds of others.

Most higher education is devoted to affirming the traditions and origins of an existing elite and transmitting them to new members.