I have two thoughts about this dust, one common, the other ethereal. The common thought is this: If the dust is floating now, it will come down later. My kitchen will once again be dirty.

A more noble, enduring, even transforming thought pushes that mundane thought aside: The dust, of course, is always there, but I do not always see it. It takes a certain light, a certain attentiveness and a certain moment of stillness to see it. How many of us would have passed right by that burning bush in the desert thousands of years ago, giving it a wide berth, simply thinking "Man, that is hot" when in fact it would have been wiser to say "God, is that you?" If seeing what is evident requires attentiveness, stillness, even faith, how much more is required to see what is hidden.

What do we need to sense the love, caring and kindness that swirl around us? What do we need to imagine the desire of God? Can we know, see, feel holiness all around us? From what wellspring do the motivations for our everyday deeds flow—from the pools of selfishness or selflessness or from the place where those deep, pulsing waters converge?

This book tries to answer those questions. It is about reaching toward meaning through the everyday, about how Judaism structures time and about how time well framed can open us to the sacred. It is about pauses and preparation, birthdays and holidays, weddings and pilgrimages. It is a book about days and weeks and years, about hoping and remembering, about public times and private times. For every moment in time involves a choice: Do I stay or go, rest or act, buy or forgo, keep or give away, forgive or take revenge?

Truth and Meaning
A word, too, about truth. There is no such thing as cyberspace or La-La Land. Romeo and Juliet never lived; neither did Paul Bunyan nor his ox named Babe. There is no tooth

Moses and Aaron perform miracles before Pharaoh. Each Passover we join our friends and family around the seder table to retell and reenter the story of the Exodus.

fairy, nor are there little people. And George Washington did not chop down the cherry tree. Yet each one of these myths is a bearer of truth. Many of us meet others more frequently in cyberspace than at the supermarket.

To capture their truths, cultures create and gather up bundles of symbols and store them in their treasure trove of myths. Myths are not untrue: They are the garments of truth, what truth wears in earthly existence. Americans possess myths of their coming to the free world, of the bravery and the suffering they endured, of their friendship with the Indians, of their triumph in having made it through the first winter. Nations possess myths of their noble beginnings (often expressed in national anthems) and the values that they hope become ingrained in the souls of their citizens. Every society, every culture, has its myths.

For me, the question to ask about the stories in the Bible and in our tradition is not Did they happen? but What do they mean to us? Why did our ancestors savor them, preserve them and teach them diligently to their children? What lessons did our fathers and our mothers find in those stories? What truths do these stories possess for us? What questions do they answer? When we speak to our children, will we tell them these stories? Other stories? After all, the stories we give them will be the legacy of our lives.

All Jews answer these questions in their own way. I love the stories of my tradition. I don't agree with them all; I am not proud of them all. But I keep them anyway. Some I keep to feel close to my past. They are my only heirlooms from family long gone. They bear the souls of my past within them; they are my substitute for an ancestral trunk, a trunk that exile and oppression denied me. But most of all, I keep those stories because they keep me. They are my counsel, my identity, the wisdom that guides me as I make my choices every day

Authenticity and Change
Here is a story about change: From the earliest weeks of my marriage, I listened to my husband sing Friday-night Kiddush, the blessing over wine. He sang the melody, he said, that he learned from his father, who in turn learned it from his father before him. For years, I listened to that tune, believing I was hearing a faithful

When we study our sacred texts we enrich the Jewish tradition, and when we develop our own stories and interpretations we enlarge it.

rendition of a generations-old song. And then my in-laws came to visit for Shabbat. We invited my father-in-law to make Kiddush. I began to hum along, confident in the rhythm, the pace and the melody of the prayer. Not eight words in, I faltered. His was not my husband's melody. It had a different pace, different notes and a slightly different rhythm.

I cast a glance at my husband. He seemed not to notice. He was hearing the melody of his youth, the melody he thinks he sings. It was a lesson in cultural transmission. Why would I ever imagine that a song would behave as the printed word behaves, unchanged by time or by those who give voice to it? And why, by extension, would we ever expect a dynamic tradition like Judaism to clone itself—unyielding to change and mutation—generation after generation?

In the very process of preserving our past we often unwittingly change it. One day, the Talmud tells us (Menahot 29b), God allowed Moses to return to earth to visit the academy of the early rabbis. Moses slipped in and sat in the back. After listening to a lesson by the famed Rabbi Akiva, he became distressed, for he could not follow what the rabbi was saying. A student rose and asked Akiva, "Master, from where did you learn this?" And Rabbi Akiva replied, "It is a law given to Moses at Sinai."

The most authentic Judaism is a Judaism of change. The only vibrant Judaism is a Judaism of change. This book of Judaism could not have been written 12 months ago. And it is not the same book I would write a year from now. By then, new stories, new traditions, new insights, will have melded themselves into our common text. Knowingly and unknowingly we create new traditions wrapped in the language of the old. Out of the deeds of our daily lives, new ways are born, new ways that lead us back to our roots.

"Let the old become new and the new become holy." So said Rav Abraham Kook, a mystic and the first chief rabbi of modern Israel. So it is when each of us weaves the sacred into our lives. May this book help make that happen.

Throughout this book I have used a kind of shorthand to present the most common practices of contemporary Judaism. I may indicate that Conservative synagogues celebrate this way, Orthodox that way, the Reform another way and the Reconstructionists their way. And, for the most part, that is true—but not always. For variations exist even within the denominations. Tradition, local custom, the birthplace of a synagogue's founders, desired length of service, use of Jewish camp traditions brought home, aesthetics and politics all affect how any one synagogue, and any one Jew or family, will choose to express their Judaism.