The best things I’ve ever learned were not content. They were some sort of contrast with someone else’s way of thinking that at first seemed really strange to me, that I allowed in, that I allowed to question me.

I feel like some of the things we’re learning scientifically, or maybe that those of us who aren’t scientists are being invited in a new way to take in, is how even — so we say one of the things that feels most reliable is, you look up and the sky is blue, right? But that the sky is not blue; [

laughs

] that our eyes make color of light. So even... See more

But also, even the spaces between letters and words is as important, also, [

laughs

] as the letters that you learn. There’s such richness. It’s so layered, that experience.

And so we know that education isn’t a guarantee of moral sensitivity, but he taught us that memory is the ingredient.

how memory is in fact the thing that can join knowledge and ethics.

I found this teaching that you did on — and so one of the things you say about Elie Wiesel, it sounds like you all talked a lot about “moral madness” — and boy, does that sound like an apt way to talk about the world at this part, in this century, right now — and that the way to meet that is not necessarily a kind of straightforward sanity. I kept... See more

There’s a place for simplicity, too, but there’s often a speed — we’re moving with such speed, instead of taking time to really question, how am I seeing this, and how am I perceiving, and how am I hearing, and what am I missing? And who’s missing around the table? And what tools are we missing in our work? And what are we taking for granted? Those... See more

Why is there difference, if everything is part of one God?

And that’s really the driving question for many mystical texts.

perhaps Elie Wiesel’s favorite phrase was “and yet.”