Ariel Burger — Be a Blessing | The On Being Project

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

What do religious people and traditions have to offer and teach as we do the work ahead of repairing, renewing, and remaking our societies, our life together?

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

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

It’s closest to Mount Sinai. It’s closest to the origin. But it’s really the white space around the edges that ultimately is most important, because that’s where we get to write our questions, and we get to expand and grow and evolve a tradition that, without us, would have long since become either dormant and rigid, or would’ve disappeared entirel... See more

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

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

And so part of the question is, what do we need to bring to educational moments and encounters, beyond a student’s brain or beyond a teacher’s brain, and beyond the knowledge that they’ve acquired; and how do we do that? How do we bring our hearts and our hands and feet into the learning experience so that we can really encounter something that cha... See more

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.

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