A Bride for One Night: Talmud Tales

Torah, like koan study, often reveals itself to us precisely when we come to the limits of our own powers, our capacity to coerce an answer from it by dint of our rationality. This insight had seemed to come upon me from the outside, first as a glimmer of light from the Torah and then as an explosion of it.

Relationships are difficult, even for these archetypal figures. But they take place in a moral context—the family as the place within which, even if we have to struggle with others and ourselves, we learn what it is to be human.

Rabbi Soloveitchik speaks with a passion of the modern “man of faith” who feels a dialectical tension between the pull of the covenantal community and the socioethical responsibilities of modern life. Interaction, and not withdrawal, is the creative response.

“Pay attention to the wisdom in this story! That is the realm in which life-affirming significance can be found. The details are the frame through which the lesson can be taught.”

However, theologians of the other monotheistic religions find it somewhat hard to accept Judaism’s affirmation that God is not merely the source of the Torah but is also bound by it. Opponents argue that such a statement is incredibility piled on top of paradox. Would an infinite, universal, all-powerful One care enough to intervene in “trivial” hu