MY THANKS TO the Jewish students who, as I describe in the Prologue, set me thinking about Jewish identity in the modern world, and to the Hong Kong Jewish community, on whom I first tried out some of the ideas in this book.
No one could have had two more delightful people to work with than Alys Yablon, my editor at The Free Press, and Louise Greenberg, my literary agent. Together they helped me wrestle the text into coherence, and whatever merits it has is largely due to their tactful and ever-patient perfectionism.
As with all I do, I owe a large debt of thanks to my wonderful office team: Malcolm Lachs, Syma Weinberg, Jeremy Newmark, Alan Greenbatt, Yael Jackson, Paula Pitts, Joanna Benarroch, Marion Silverstone, Lilian Isaacs, Lara Kallenberg and Rabbi Dr. Julian Shindler. Daily and without complaint, they have shared the burdens of the Chief Rabbinate and made these years a pleasure and privilege.
I recall too, with a deep sense of gratitude, the people who helped me on my own Jewish journey: the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, both of blessed memory; and Rabbi Nachum Rabinovitch, my teacher and mentor for twelve years.
More than with any other book I have written, while writing this I held constantly in mind our children, Joshua, Dina and Gila, and our daughter-in-law Eve. Psalm 127 calls children “God’s heritage and reward,” and I thank Him daily for ours. By the time the book is published, Elaine and I will, God willing, have celebrated our thirtieth wedding anniversary. We married young, long before I thought of becoming a rabbi, and through those years she has been the joy of my life. Nothing I have done could I have done without her.
Ultimately, this book is a token of thanks to my mother (may she have many more years of health) and my late father. My father was a simple man who lived by simple truths. He had a hard life; he came to the West as a child fleeing from persecution, and he had to leave school at the age of fourteen to support his family. When I was young, I used to ask him many questions about Judaism, and his answer was always the same. “Jonathan,” he used to say, “I didn’t have an education, and so I do not know the answers to your questions. But one day you will have the education I missed, and then you will teach me the answers.” Could anyone have been given a greater gift than that? He was a proud Jew, and he wanted his children to go further than he could, along the path of faith. My three brothers, Brian, Alan, and Eliot, and I have tried in our different ways to do just that, and I dedicate this book to his memory.