What is piety? Is it abandonment of the world?

Is it scrupulous performance of rites or fanatic zeal?

Let us observe the pious man and probe into his soul.

We shall discover in it that which transcends man,

That which surmounts the visible and available,

Steadily preventing him from immersing himself in sensation or ambition,

From yielding to passion or slaving for a career.

For him life takes place amid horizons beyond the span of years.

     He senses the significant in small things,

     he is alive to the sublime in common acts and simple thoughts.

...

Dr Mel Scult, our scholar in residence for the weekend of April 23-25, 2004, distributed this prayer with this attribution: "It will be found in its entirety in Kaplan's 1945 prayerbook p. 424. The essay on which it is based may be found in Susannah Heschel Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, page 305."