QUOTE : I have social anxiety when people from such different parts of my life gather in the same room—I worried, for example, that the anti-religionists would try to bait the clergy—but Jack relishes social experiments. He asked his rabbi to say a blessing for the meal and I asked Tom to lead a moment of remembrance before dessert for those who couldn’t be with us. The a-religious, I decided, would just have to cope—and they did: several of them let me know that they’d found the prayers moving and “surprisingly meaningful.