ParshaNut: 54 Journeys into the World of Torah Commentary

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

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

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

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

the point of it all – the sacrifices, the purity laws, the holiness codes, all of it – is to come close to God. We are being trained, throughout Leviticus, to see the ultimate Oneness that underlies the dizzyingly manifold nature of our existence.

This is not a religion for individuals; it is the religion of a people. These people need me, and I need them. We cannot escape from one another.

the real power of this moment lay in a kind of parody of magic.

the indeterminacy of it all appeals to me.

But it may be that the true test of our faith is not whether we are willing to smash the idols of our enemies, but whether we are willing to smash our own.