when we speak of God, we are speaking of “the life force and spirituality that is in each creation.” And that includes us. In this theology, we are one with God. Our separateness is just an illusion. Moses stands outside of the Tabernacle because he senses the presence of God and assumes that he is other than that presence. But in truth, Moses is a

the foundational Jewish act: recognizing the one divine source of all of creation.

That’s the paradigm. That’s how the Torah wants us to deal with the leper. Help him. And bring him back in.

Judah, however, truly sees things as they are. He not only recognizes the items placed before him, he also recognizes that he is in the wrong, and that Tamar must be set free. His recognition is a profound one, for it causes him to see himself differently, and to redirect his actions based on new information.

Kamtza and Bar Kamtza are like matter and antimatter, thesis and synthesis, light and shadow. To hate one and love the other is to lose sight of the essential similarity between the two, and thereby to engage in a useless and all-consuming kind of violence. The War of Gog and Magog, and all struggles for total annihilation, emerge from the clash of

any object invested with religious sanctity can, over time, become a substitute for the real thing.

the indeterminacy of it all appeals to me.

the very thing that once was meant to remind people of God could, over time, cause them to forget about God.

We are carrying around with us all the horrors of the past.