This is The Sun’s thirty-third anniversary issue. How grateful I am that this improbable dream continues; that my ardor for the work is undiminished. I’m married to The Sun, I expect, till death do us part.
Thirty-three has never been just another number to me. Jesus was said to have been thirty-three years old when he was crucified, and I’m a Jew who sometimes prays to Jesus. For numerologists thirty-three symbolizes a high level of spiritual development, and the number also makes an appearance in Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, and numerous other religions. There are even — you guessed it — thirty-three principal religions in the world today, according to Mircea Eliade’s The Concise Guide to World Religions. As a kid, I listened to music on vinyl LPs that played at 33â…“ revolutions per minute, and sometimes I’d become mesmerized by a record spinning round and round — the closest I got, in those days, to an altered state of consciousness.
