And I’ve spent a lot of time sitting down with small business owners, sharing a grinder and a cabinet while we talk about the future. And when I do, I always get asked the question, “But what can you do for the smallest state? How can we be heard?” It’s not what I can do for the smallest state. It’s what we can do.

What I’m saying is that you can find family in the most unconventional of places and the most unconventional of people. You can find it in the grandmother who patiently waits two hours in line to make sure her granddaughter has her Princess Merida costume. You can find it in the protective older brother who pops in The Fox and The Hound to make sure his little brother learns the power of sensitivity over brute strength and ill will. And you can find it in the stepfather who opens his heart, and opens his arms, to pose for photos in front of Cinderella’s Castle on their latest trip. We have to teach our children that we can find family where we need it, and that we need to find family for the sake of our children.

My father’s father used to have a small garden in his backyard. He would spend hours tending tomatoes and picking plums, filling basket after basket with fresh fruit he’d then give to his family. He would often hand me a fresh strawberry while he worked. The strawberries were tart and tiny. My tiny toddler nose wrinkled at the taste. He used to laugh at my reaction. He used to call me fishface. He died of colon cancer when I was barely three. And nearly two decades later, my mother’s father faces the same struggle in the fight for his life. But life is what we should celebrate-the lives of those we have lost, and the strength of the survivors who continue to fight. That’s why I Relay. I Relay For Life.

In the streets of Syria, families struggle to find normalcy in an uprising where the government imprisons you for trying to call for fairness, for justice. Seventy thousand are dead in a country that has spent two years trying to overthrow a regime that has proven they are unfit to rule. Seventy thousand people. That’s the entire population of Toledo, Spain, killed in a fight for freedom. That’s the entire city of Frankfurt, Germany, fallen in a struggle for security. That is the whole of Santa Fe, New Mexico, gone, because of the inability to heed President Kennedy’s words, and find common ground on which to preside.

A political candidate stands before you. They are decorated in accolades, from being the first student in their university’s history to deliver a commencement address, to graduating from Yale Law School at the top of their class. They have written articles that have been published in the Harvard Educational Review that are still cited today, and they served on the editorial board of the Yale Review of Law and Social Action. They have worked on countless campaigns since they were undergraduates, and had a bright political future and a successful law career. Their devotion to their family is bar none, and their spouse is likeable, even appearing approachable to the public. In a bid for the presidential race, you would think that the media would eat this candidate up, sing their praises from a mountaintop; and yet, when Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy for the President of the United States in early 2007, the media was less than receptive to her high hopes and aspirations.

The Star Wars franchise will maintain its image as a cultural icon and a unifier across age, gender, and socioeconomic status-as well as a propeller for the interest in science and the genre of sci-fi as a whole. In addition, Disney will be viewed as a strong company that can amass a monstrous cultural phenomenon and positively represent the franchise to longtime, diehard fans and a new generation of Star Wars aficionados alike.

When class ended, I approached my teacher at his desk while everyone else gathered up their books and headed off to lunch. I put my religious textbook down on his desk and waited for him to realize that I was standing there, as he himself packed up his leather briefcase and shrugged on his tweed coat. When he finally noticed me standing there, a look of pure defiance in my eyes, he sighed and sat back down, picking up my book and flipping through it halfheartedly. “This looks like a perfectly acceptable book,” I remember him saying. “See? You’re getting the education that you should. Isn’t that good enough?” I wanted to tell him about the faded swastikas in my other book, erased from the pages but not from my memories. I wanted to tell him about how the kids in class weren’t interested in hearing about the diplomatic relations that prevented the U.S. from entering the war. I wanted him to show us how important it was to learn about this tragedy in the ways it had been presented to me, through firsthand accounts and through books that helped young learners relate. When I opened my mouth to tell him these things, however, he stopped me once more. “You should go to lunch now-it’s a beautiful day, I bet everyone will be eating outside.”With that, he stood back up and sidestepped me on his way out the door.

It doesn’t matter how involved someone is in the temple, it doesn’t matter how often you come to services or how good your Hebrew is or how many dues you might owe. You’re always still welcome with open arms there, because the most important aspect of my synagogue is that it’s a place of peace. I dare you to sit in the empty sanctuary one Tuesday afternoon, when the sun is streaming through the high windows and the only thing that breaks your concentration is the occasional plane flying into the nearby airport, and not feel at peace with the entire world.