A Letter in the Scroll: Understanding Our Jewish Identity and Exploring the Legacy of the World's Oldest Religion

Converts excepted, Jews do not become Jews. They are Jews by birth. Jewish identity, then, is not only a faith, but a fate. It is not an identity we assume, but one into which we are born.

A covenant is made when free agents, respecting one another’s freedom, bind themselves by a mutual promise to work together, to be loyal to one another, and to achieve together what neither can achieve alone. Keeping such a promise is called “faithfulness,”

freedom has an economic dimension. Not only does powerlessness enslave, so too does poverty.8 So no one is to forfeit his independence or dignity. One

The word tzedakah is usually translated as “charity,” but in fact it means social or distributive justice.

What the park is in space, Shabbat is in time. Shabbat is not simply a vacation, “free time,” time that is mine to dispose of as I wish. It differs from a vacation the way a park differs from a private garden. It is a world that exists only in virtue of it being shared by a community.

What, in the absence of a Temple and its sacrifices, would now lift the burden of sin and guilt?

The biblical answer lay in the rites of the High Priest on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

finite being is not free in a world in which an infinite power intervenes to prevent him acting or facing the consequences of his action. Only man can put out the fire. But man is not alone.

Faith is neither rational nor irrational. It is the courage to make a commitment to an Other, human or divine. It is the determination to turn “ought” into “is.”