Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays

What we do as individuals may be a trivial episode; what we attain as Israel causes us to grow into the infinite.

On Tisha B’av, he said, ver ken essen (who can eat)? On Yom Kippur, he said, since a Jew is like an angel, ver darf essen (who needs to eat)?

Let us beware lest we reduce the Bible to literature, Jewish observance to good manners, the Talmud to Emily Post.

Jewish existence is not only the adherence to particular doctrines and observances but primarily the living in the spiritual order of the Jewish people, the living in the Jews of the past and with the Jews of the present.

We have no answer to ultimate problems. We really don’t know. In this not knowing, in this sense of embarrassment, lies the key to opening the wells of creativity.

Again and again we are taught that the Torah is not an end in itself. It is the gate through which one enters the court in which one finds awe of heaven.

Ceremonies end in routine, and routine is the great enemy of the spirit.

Ceremonies are created for the purpose of signifying: mitzvot were given for the purpose of sanctifying. This is their function: to refine, to ennoble, to sanctify man. They confer holiness upon us, whether or not we know exactly what they signify. A mitzvah is more than man’s reference to God; it is also God’s reference to man.

The essence of Judaism is the awareness of the reciprocity of God and man, of man’s togetherness with Him who abides in eternal otherness.