David Lang

I have studied and I have gone to shul.

I've never had a lobster.

I've never had a pork chop.

You know, there's certain things that are important to me, and I think that trying to understand my background...

is where my religious interest comes in, not in the practice of being Jewish, but in trying to uncover what being Jewish could mean.

which is a very Jewish thing, what would you say?

Do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you.

I think the thing that I've gotten out of all of my study and my religious background, such as it is, is that there are rules that you can imagine living by, that you can aim for, and with some work and effort and discipline and commitment, you might be able to achieve some of those.

And some of those things may lead us into a better way of dealing with each other.

So for me, I think my moral compass comes from things that I learned, or at least I think I learned from my religion.

I would like to think that Judaism has prescriptions for how everyone in the world should live, not just Jews.

It has prescriptions for how Jews are supposed to live with everyone else in the world.

And I would think that those prescriptions that I have inherited are universal.

And when I see them not universal, it creates a great rift inside of me.

Not a lot of my pieces have 18 movements, but I definitely felt like when I got to around 16 or 17, 18 began looking pretty good.

I was so happy when I found this in The Wealth of Nations because it really seemed like an essential statement of what you want out of your government and what you want out of your society.

Here's the whole text of that movement.

The secret?

The very simple secret.

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.