Welcome to the Palace: the invisible, sacred palace in time which our people has carried with us on all our journeys across the planet. Once every seven days, for over three thousand years, we have left the blood, sweat and tears of the work week, and have stepped into Shabbat--a vision of the world at peace.

A balanced Jewish life allows and even requires us to move constantly back and forth between the two equally essential modes of doubt and faith.

The purpose of this book, ultimately, is to help us to open our hearts. Use the book...if it helps.  If not, then close the book, and pray.

pp 52-53

The Divine Presence which dwells inside, in sacred space: within a backyard sukkah, underneath a wedding canopy, in the ancient desert tabernacle, in Jewish homes illumined by Shabbos candles, inside our mother’s womb, and in a synagogue alive with prayer.

pp 54-55

there have been several important attempts to map the outlines of Jewish faith, and none more influential than that of Rabbi Moses ben Maimon in the 12th century. His Thirteen Articles of Faith were rendered poetically in the song Yigdal.

pp 58-59

We are not the only ones praying, according to these ancient poems. The sky prays, the sun prays, the trees pray, the birds pray, the ocean prays...each in their own language. Each sings to God, out of their own longing.

pp 60-61

Winds, strings and percussion are all summoned for the spiritual experience which transcends words: the prayer of melody, harmony and rhythm

pp 62-63

According to one ancient Jewish fantasy, the body of the first human being stretched from one end of the earth to the other.

pp 66-67

One voice calls out to the others, summoning them to join together in prayer. The nine bend and bow, responding that they have become a minyan, a quorum at prayer.

pp 22-23, 68-69

The evening and morning creation prayers speak of our daily journey between light and darkness, the most familiar and profound transformation of our lives.

pp 24-25, 70-71

Words of Torah have been mother’s milk for us. Like milk, they give us life, and come from deep within the one who loves us....our parent, our teacher, and God.

pp 26-27, 72-73

In the last moments before the soul departs from the body, a Jew hopes for the strength and lucidity to utter the six words of the Shma, “the watchword of Jewish faith.” These six words first appear in Deuteronomy, spoken by Moses as he approaches the end of his life.  With the first two words, he summons the Israelite multitude to an attentive silence.  The four words that follow invoke the mystery of echad/One.

pp 28-29, 74-75

We humans tend to fray at the edges. We become distracted and conflicted, desiring many things at once, torn between ideas, thinking and feeling chaotically, and suffering from our own disintegration. V’ahavta is a call to integration and wholeness, three times insisting on bechol: “with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might.”

pp 76-77

With promise and threat, the v’haya im shamo’a conjures our hopes and our fears. Its visions of the future, necessarily, will fade and be replaced by a wholly unpredictable reality. But that new reality will have been born, in fulfillment of this prayer's prophecy, out of the choices we make in each present moment.

pp 78-79

As children, we live by instinct and impulse.  The passage from childhood to adulthood, which we must traverse repeatedly throughout our lives, is the movement to consciousness and self-control, which the tzitzit prayer refers to as “remembering” and “freedom” respectively.

pp 30-31, 80-83

How the opening occurs is not explained.  We are redeemed one by one and we are redeemed all together.  God is redeemer; but we must redeem ourselves and each other.  The opening comes when least expected.  It may not even look like an opening.  One legend has it that the sea did not part until the Israelites walked in up to their nostrils.  Redemption comes at the last possible moment.  We bring it about through our own efforts but it comes upon us by surprise and beyond our control.

pp 36-37, 84-85

There we take our stand, feet planted together, presenting ourselves, imperfect but fully human. The animals, the grain and the oil we offer are our own energies, thoughts and emotions. In daily worship, we learn to relinquish and to receive in return the elemental substances of our lives.

pp 38-39, 86-87

In the Avot, first benediction of the Amidah, we bind our own profoundly solitary encounter with God to that of our earliest ancestors. We stand in community not only with the founders of our religion, whom we invoke by name, but also with their mysterious precursor, mighty teacher of universal religion, the priest of El Elyon.

pp 40-41, 88-89

wind and rain, sickness and healing, closings and openings, risings and fallings. Life and death are two of the many transformations within this fluid, never still universe, and God is the molten core within.

pp 90-91

In the kedushah, the liturgist-playwright transforms our synagogue into the cosmic throne-room. We and our friends become the seraphim and the chayot, crying out the words that blazed in the minds of the visionary prophets.