competing lures that tempt us and distract us from God’s lure, the consequences of our choices on others and ourselves—these remain sources of suffering and evil: the

The ignoramus and those like him among the multitude consider that which exists only with reference to the human individual. Every ignoramus imagines that all that is exists with a view to his individual sake; it is as if there were nothing that exists except him. And if something happens to him that is contrary to what he wishes, he makes the

a Messiah, to be coming, can never arrive. Once the Messiah arrives, the Messiah would no longer be coming. At that point one could no longer believe in the Messiah’s coming.

The fact that we will wander to the corners of the earth is presented as a great opportunity, itself a source of blessing.

Jakob Petuchowski, Studies in Modern Theology and Prayer

The wholeness and integrity of shalom means not making yourself small because others would have you shrink from your own greatness. Shleimut, wholeness, means offering to the world the fullness of who you are at your best:

we are embodied souls and soulful bodies.

We offer a wide array of excuses for our subjective aim perverting God’s initial aim, which leaves God in covenant, hence vulnerable:

Human beings, like all living creatures, are events.