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One New Man

As we are celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles, I was thinking of a well-known verse that relates to this holiday "On that day I will raise up the tabernacle of David, which has fallen down, and repair its damages; I will raise up its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old" (Amos 9:11).

I grew up in the United States in an upper middle-class Jewish family.  Although we went to the synagogue on all the Jewish holidays, the real religion in our home was humanism.  Intellectual achievement and education seemed to be celebrated above all else.  I don’t think any of us, except maybe my mother, really believed in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  My father was an automotive engineer and my mother died of cancer many years ago.  One of my two brothers died of an overdose on drugs when he was nineteen years old.  My remaining brother is a jazz musician/psychiat