As we approach #YomKippur, the holy of holies of Jewish time, here are ten ideas which might help you focus your prayers and ensure you have a meaningful and life-changing experience. 1. Life is short. However much life expectancy has risen, we will not, in one lifetime, be able to achieve everything we might wish to achieve. This life is all we have. How shall we use it well?

This Sunday, Jews will spend the day fasting to mark the saddest day in the Jewish calendar, the Ninth of Av. On this day we remember the destruction of the two Temples, the first by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon in 586BC; the second by Titus in AD70. We also remember some of the other tragic events to have befallen our people through the ages.

#Shavuot begins this Saturday night and celebrates the moment when the #Jewish people received the #Torah at Mt #Sinai. Today #God might have only had a 280-character Tweet, but thankfully we have threads! So here is an extended thought on the "Ten Commandments"... What the Israelites heard at Sinai has become known as the “Ten Commandments.” But this description raises obvious problems.

What is so special about #Shabbat? Three things. First, it introduces in the most vivid way the idea of limits. We can’t produce, consume and deplete our resources constantly with no constraints and no thought for future generations. Second, it creates for one day a week a world in which values are not determined by money or its equivalent. On Shabbat you can’t buy or sell or pay for someone’s services. It is the most tangible expression of the moral limits of markets.

The section of the Hebrew Bible Jews will read this week remains one of the most counterintuitive passages in all of religious literature. Moses is addressing the Israelites just days before their release. They have been exiles for 210 years. After an initial period of affluence and ease, they have been oppressed, enslaved, and their male children killed in an act of slow genocide.