Studies in Spirituality (Covenant & Conversation Book 9)

The people who change the world, whether in small or epic ways, are those who turn peak experiences into daily routines, who know that the details matter, and who have developed the discipline of hard work, sustained over time. Judaism’s greatness is

Lose the concept of sacrifice within a society, and sooner or later marriage falters, parenthood declines, and the society slowly ages and dies. My

Where what we want to do meets what needs to be done, that is where God wants us to be.

When it says “be holy” it means, according to Nahmanides, practise self-restraint even in the domain of the permitted. Don’t be a glutton, even if what you are eating is kosher.

God enters our lives as a call from the future. It is as if we hear Him beckoning to us from the far horizon of time, urging us to take a journey and undertake a task that, in ways we cannot fully understand, we were created for. That is the meaning of the word vocation, literally “a calling,” a mission, a task to which we are summoned.

is a fundamental feature of Jewish spirituality. We believe that we cannot predict the future when it comes to human beings. We make the future by our choices. The script has not yet been written. The future is radically open.

Do not believe that the future is written. It isn’t. There is no fate we cannot change, no prediction we cannot defy. We are not predestined to fail; neither are we pre-ordained to succeed.

Though others may lose faith in us, and though we may even lose faith in ourselves, God never loses faith in us.

We love what we are willing to make sacrifices for.

The Talmud (Nidda 70b) says it simply. It asks: What should you do to become rich? It answers: Work hard and behave honestly. But, says the Talmud, many have tried this and did not become rich. Back comes the answer: You must pray to God from whom all wealth comes. In which case, asks the Talmud, why work hard? Because, answers the