Well of Living Insight: Comments on the Siddur

I just need to keep pushing that doorway open, ever a little bit more, and not to be afraid.

When I face myself, I know that all this pre-occupation with doing is somehow an escape, a poor substitute for real living, so busy and yet so empty. Real living means remembering who I am, allowing my heart to well up with love for You, which is to say for all of being, as fully and freely as my lungs fill with air.

The lifeblood of Judaism is reinterpretation, and both the Kabbalists and the Hasidic authors were great masters of it.

We put it into words so that we, our conscious selves, can be part of it, not because God needs those words in order to hear what is in our heart.

The task is to keep remembering this as we get older and to allow room for both of those sacred processes: the faithful handing down of the teaching and the reshaping of it to fit the needs of each emerging generation.

True prayer, like great poetry, requires a delicate balancing act between speech and silence.

The specter of Nadav and Avihu, Aaron’s two young sons who approached the altar with too much enthusiasm, is never entirely absent from the Jewish imagination.

The way of Jewish tradition was always one of cumulative upbuilding.

The custom of having a place to wash upon entering a synagogue is one worthy of renewal.