It was time for my six-month checkup. Six months after being treated for cancer, and suddenly there was a call from my doctor. “Your blood test looks great,” he told me. “You don’t need to come in.”

Tears ran down my face, and all I could think was to say Shehecheyanu, to thank God for keeping me alive.

I give thanks to the doctors and the technicians who helped me, for my wife and my children who stood by me, and for the One who gives life and heals all things.

The rabbis taught that we should say a hundred blessings every day. To be Jewish, they taught, was to open up to the miracles, to give thanks for everything around us. And to be a Jew was to turn our thankfulness into action.

It’s not enough, they taught, to give thanks for the food we eat. We must welcome the stranger and feed the hungry, and we must increase the miracles through our own daily actions.

To modern ears, these teachings sound religious. But the rabbis of old had no word for religion. Awe, thankfulness, visiting the sick, and feeding the hungry were just parts of being alive. To be a Jew was to be a yerai shaymaim, a person who lived in awe of heaven. And to be a Jew was to be a tzedek, a person who brought justice into the world.

And so I close today by giving thanks for a yerai shaymaim, a person who is as opposite of me and as like me as anyone can imagine.

This week, I read a book called For Small Creatures Such as We by Sasha Sagan, the daughter of the great astronomer Carl Sagan.

Like her father, Sasha Sagan is a rationalist and a secular Jew. She only believes what she can scientifically prove. But she is filled with awe for the way the universe works. And her title is full of anaveh – the humility that comes from knowing that we are part of a much larger world.

We’re totally opposite – the mystic and the rationalist. But perhaps, we’re both the same. And perhaps, that’s the greatest miracle of all – that people who are opposites can be thankful for each other.

May we all rejoice. May we sing in praise, and may share life’s bounty with each other.