Every time I go to synagogue with my husband and kids, one or two passages will leap off the prayer book page and touch me deeply. Here’s one I gravitated toward last Friday at Temple Beth Elohim, on the eve of my nephew’s bar mitzvah:

“In this circle of hope, in the presence of the sacred, may the heart come to know itself and its best, finding a fresh impulse to love the good.”

–From “Gates of Prayer: The New Union of Prayer” (page 68)