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Harvey Belovski, rabbi at Golders Green United Synagogue: 
A couple of days ago, I spoke at Rimon, the school of which I am the religious principal.  I love chatting to the children and one of them asked me a question.  She said ‘When we’ve finished a book, why bother to read it all again; perhaps we should try something different next time.’ Some context: this past week, every Jewish community in the world completed the annual cycle of reading the Torah – the Five Books of Moses – in synagogue.  And within five minutes of finishing, we started all over again from the first verse of Genesis: ‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth’. 
Her question is perceptive, although it isn’t new.  We have all reread favourite books, eager to savour the story, the ideas or the message again.  But none of us would read the same book every year, however good it is. There’s a lovely Jewish teaching that the cycle of the year is more like a spiral staircase than a two-dimensional circle.  With each revolution, we return to the same place, a floor higher than last time.  We see the same trees and buildings, but from a better vantage point.  Similarly, with each passing year, we repeat the same celebrations and commemorations, but with elevated perspectives and a deeper understanding of how they can change us and our world. 
The fourth-century Christian theologian, Augustine, said something similar about the Bible – ‘The Bible was composed in such a way that as beginners mature, its meaning grows with them’.  I’ll go with Augustine on this one.  No matter how many times I’ve read the Hebrew text of the Bible, I always find new ideas, questions and depths.  It’s actually like a new book each time. I believe that finding hidden depth in familiar things isn’t confined to reading the Bible; its something we can all do.  The ‘thing’ could be a treasured book, or a favourite song.  When we listen carefully to the music or the words, we can uncover something new about ourselves or others.  And perhaps we can find renewed depths in tired relationships by paying better attention to a friend’s words and their body-language.  It may even be that the more familiar – the more times we’ve read that book, listened to that song or had the same conversation – the further up that spiral staircase we’ve travelled.