The sum of the Rabbis’ educational and halachic efforts was that participation in religious life was democratized.

In the absence of business and work pressures, parents suddenly can listen better to children. In the absence of school and extracurricular pressures, children can hear their parents. Being is itself transformed. The state of inner wellbeing expands.

I have felt moral revulsion at my self-indulgence that I had been too busy and had not detected the depths of my friend’s needs. I knew that my rationalizations at the time were true, but I know that Maimonides’ words were also true—I had not taken them seriously enough. No act is too trivial.

In Judaism, theology, dogma, and values are encapsulated in gestures; ultimate truths are expressed in what appear to be external and everyday acts.

only when there is peace, with abundant resources and an untrammeled right to live, will the world be structured to sustain the infinite value of the human being. This is the heart of Judaism, the dream. Jewish

The Sadducees insisted that only the written Torah was authoritative. The Pharisees affirmed that side by side with the written Torah there was a parallel revelation at Sinai of principles and categories with which humans could interpret, apply, and develop the Law. That body of revelation given over to humans was called the Torah Sheh-B’ Al Peh

effect, Mattathias was operating out of a covenantal model in which humans could not “leave it all to God” but had to initiate some action to save the Torah and the Jews.

†In time, learning became the equivalent to biblical ritual acts: “The

believe the heart of the matter was that the sects ended up with two different conceptions of the covenant.