This past August at the height of the London riots a 24-year-old university graduate named Natasha Reid stole a flat-screen TV from the Comet store in Enfield.

Many people are simply too busy for existential questions.
"The meaning of life? - I've half an hour to get the family dinner on the table!" "Meaning? I'll give you meaning! The lady next door's got chemo and needs a lift to the hospital." The hustle of everyday, caring for our neighbour: who has got time for philosophy?

These people are probably natural givers.

The most astute description of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur I ever read came from an essay by a non-Jewish student on a basic Judaism course. The teacher had spent much time explaining the customs and traditions of these Yamim Noraim, these "Days of Awe", but the student had heard and understood something else.

Over the next few days marquees will be popping up in various places to serve as prayer venues for the High Holy Days.

In recent years it seems that there has been a growing division within the diaspora Jewish community between the supporters of a "secure" Israel, on the one hand, and the promoters of a "just" Israel, on the other. But the landscape of Jewish attitudes has been changing.

A couple of years ago, Rabbi Norman Lamm, the respected chancellor of Yeshiva University, caused a stir when he predicted the demise of non-Orthodox Judaism in the USA. It would soon be time to say Kaddish over the Conservative and Reform movements, he told the Jerusalem Post.

Certainly, Conservative Judaism appears to be in the grip of accelerating decline.

It was early February 1971. The three-man Apollo 14 crew had just completed their mission and were returning home. Edgar D. Mitchell, the lunar module pilot, gazed out of the window of the command module Kitty Hawk as it hurtled towards its landing target in the Pacific Ocean.

The use of religion as a tool of oppression of women is hardly a new concern.

Legend has it that the Emperor Napoleon came to Jerusalem on the fast of Tishah b'Av.