The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays

when catastrophe shattered the vision, Jews spent their lives renewing it. The question is: From where can these people draw the strength to renew their dream again and again? The answer of Jewish tradition is: Give people just a foretaste of the fulfillment, and they will never give it up. The Shabbat is that taste.

A central task of this generation is to incorporate experiences such as the Holocaust and the rebirth of Israel into the religious understanding of the Jewish way. Shavuot should properly be called the holiday of the Continuous Giving of the Torah. It celebrates “what God and humans have wrought.”

The human is a future-oriented creature to whom hope is life-giving.

just as modern accounting has played a major role in creating a system of profits, so has the Jewish balance sheet of the soul yielded a high standard of moral living, a people of prophets.

Separated from the Jewish people before the development of the Talmud, the Beta Israel have preserved the biblical commandments and traditions. Seeing them in action makes one realize that different levels of meaning have unfolded in history.

Through the Jewish way of life and the holidays, the Torah seeks to nurture the infinite love and unending faith needed to sustain people until perfection is achieved.

No two family seders are alike. Each seder leader is a director who is challenged to fascinate the audience. Over the years I have observed every kind of seder director, from very traditional to very creative. Most lead a standard seder, but some have attained the level of auteur. Some can be compared to Alfred Hitchcock striving for mystery, surpr

a dream, a vision of the world in its perfect state, an Eden of order and beauty in which life emerges from the divine ground of existence. All life is related and intertwined, and the crown of physical creation is humankind.

Rejecting some Jewish beliefs, spiritualizing the old promises by transferring their focus from the land and people of Israel to personal salvation, yet preaching the basic religious love and consolation of Judaism to the world, they created Christianity.