Truer words never spoken.
Read the whole thing from Rabbi Sacks.
"Jews became famous throughout the ages for putting education first. Where others built castles and palaces, Jews built schools and houses of study. From this flowed all the familiar achievements in which we take collective pride: the fact that Jews knew their texts even in ages of mass illiteracy; the record of Jewish scholarship and intellect; the astonishing over-representation of Jews among the shapers of the modern mind; the Jewish reputation, sometimes admired, sometimes feared, sometimes caricatured, for mental agility, argument, debate and the ability to see all sides of a disagreement."
"Children are naturally spiritual. They are fascinated by the vastness of the universe and our place in it. They have the same sense of wonder that we find in some of the greatest of the psalms. They love stories, songs and rituals. They like the shape and structure they give to time, and relationships, and the moral life. To be sure, skeptics and atheists have often derided religion as a child’s view of reality, but that only serves to strengthen the corollary that a child’s view of reality is instinctively, intuitively religious. Deprive a child of that by ridiculing faith, abandoning ritual and focusing instead on academic achievement and other forms of success, and you starve him or her of some of the most important elements of emotional and psychological well-being."
"You cannot build a healthy society out of emotionally unhealthy families, and angry and conflicted children. Faith begins in families. Hope is born in the home."
