Judaism usefully distinguishes between the values of tzedakah and gemilut chasidim. Tzedakah refers to our requirement to provide materially for others; many Jews are familiar with Maimonides’ famous ladder of tzedakah. In Rambam’s golden ladder, the lowest rung occurs when we give unwillingly, while the seventh and highest level consists of an anonymous donor and recipient.

“What is dance? In a dance, the people who dance join together, and no one is left [alone]….The dancers kick the earth so as to ascend heavenward. Again and again, the dancer strikes at the lowest part of the world, because [the dancer] does not want to be there [but] longs to elevate…above the surface of the ground….The desire for ascent, for transcendence, makes revelation possible.” -Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

"For many people…the question about where you are from begins with how people define home. One definition of home is, it’s a place you think you can always go back to because it’s as much a pushpin location on a map as it is embedded in your consciousness. The decision to leave home…perhaps indicates a breach between self and other, a fissure, a crevice. Where we are from is an opening inside us. The objects inside a house, moveable as they are, are the telling expressions of what we think of as home, more than perhaps the structure of the houses themselves." -David Biespiel

“Is it possible to grasp how to die? Yes, on the condition of not refusing fear, of being ready, like Moses, to turn around to see the future. The future is not in front of us, but behind, in the traces of our steps on the ground of a mountain that we have just climbed, traces in which those who follow us and survive us will read what we are not yet given to see there.”

A twelfth grader in the house is all excitement, stands in the place where all is possible. Futures spill out like waters in a fountain, filling every crevice where doubt likes to linger. His unled life is ahead and everything shimmers on the water’s skin, like he did when I held him at three days old.

“Silence of the lips means not speaking. In contemplative silence, even the inner dialogue is stilled.…The tongue is the pen of the heart and to be silent demonstrates a high level of self-mastery. To be inwardly still, however, is to abide in a suspended state of receptive reverence.” -Alan Morinis

"It's worth remembering that it is often the small steps, not the giant leaps, that bring about the most lasting change.”- Queen Elizabeth II