In the midst of our wreckage that I speak to you, both as a Jew and as a New Orleanian, because survival is not just a matter of urban planning, or of financial aid, or willfulness. It is something deeper. It is of the soul.

My sense of the meaning of Shavuot, a Jewish holiday that begins in the evening on May 14, has been deeply transformed by an ancient teaching from the Nag Hammadi library, a collection of Gnostic texts.

Jewish prayer begins with kavanah -- intention. It gives meaning to our rituals of marriage and birth and death. It inspires us to perform a mitzvah on a more conscious and ultimately more rewarding level. It lies at the heart of Jewish devotional life.

Let us learn together, celebrate together, act together to rescue and heal our Earth from the Crushers in our own society.

Forty years have passed since Dr. King and Rabbi Heschel worked and witnessed among us. Perhaps, like a biblical generation that represents a pregnant pause before a major transformation, we may be ready to act for a transformative rebirth in our time.

This process is rooted in the dark underside of the best teaching of Torah, "Love the stranger, the pariah, for you were strangers, pariahs, in the Land of Egypt." This is repeated 36 times in the Torah. Why? Because to repeat the command so often means it is being rejected, disobeyed.

We can rededicate the universal Temple of Planet Earth, as the Talmud describes the rededication of the ancient Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. We can hold back the devastation that global scorching is already wreaking on our lives.

Both "brothers," Palestine and Israel, today need to make the choice that begins with the new cease-fire, but must lead from there to a long-term truce; the truce must give time for compassion to flower where there was fear and rage.

The article says that although they knew about the discussions, the Israeli government "nevertheless" approved the assassination. The question I think we need to ask is whether the Israeli government ordered the assassination not "nevertheless" but "therefore."

Today, the people of the most powerful nation in the world, sometimes the most great-hearted and compassionate, sometimes the most violent and destructive, wake up to choose our leaders. Let us pray.

In the light of that Danger of Desolation hovering before us in our generation, let me offer what follows as a supplementary reading for this coming Shabbat, when Jews read the second portion of the Torah about God's decision to reverse and undo Creation with a flood.

We, all humankind, live in a sukkah, vulnerable. No great Twin Towers, no Pentacle of Power, is invincible. Only the shared knowledge of that truth can bring us peace.

On Yom Kippur about 2,500 years ago, Isaiah walked into a crowd that felt good because (having fasted for about 18 hours already) it felt bad. He called out that merely refraining from food and drink was not the point.

The three Abrahamic traditions all emerged in a region of our planet where rain is scarce, water is precious, and wellsprings are miraculous.

May the sounds of the Shofar awaken us out of our slumber and lead us to this higher calling of unity, to self-forgiveness, and to our duties to all humankind, to the meaning of life, and toward the knowledge that we are all inextricably bound together in unity.

Now is one of the best periods of my life. I'm harvesting so much of what I sowed in the world. And yet, when I look in the mirror before I put on my public face, I view this slightly stooped old man with wrinkles.

The path to openness, to the teshuva we truly, deeply seek, begins with asking better questions, bigger questions.

How does a whole community, a whole culture, get beyond trauma? Perhaps the Jewish wisdom of this very day can point in that direction.

We know why the ancient Temples burned. Today the role of Imperial Babylon and Imperial Rome is played by Big Oil, Big Coal, Big Gas.

What in truth would be the most meaningful blessing one could impart on a good friend, a significant other, a family member or colleague. What would I wish most for myself?

The blast of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah calls out to all of us: "Wake up! You have been sleeping!" The slumber is clear. The choice is ours. But to what is it that we awaken?

Marge Piercy's novel He, She and It appeared almost 20 years ago. My review appeared in Tikkun magazine in 1992. Now many aspects of her novel loom even more prophetic than they did before.