Why Be Jewish?

In an instructive fable, the Rabbis of the Talmud imagine that one day the evil impulse in human beings was captured and bound. Suddenly, no one had children, built houses, or took initiative, for our drives are complex and interrelated. Ambition, sexuality, even envy—all of them can be creative or calamitous.

tikkun olam, the repair of the world.

All that we can say about God is what the medieval Jewish philosopher Joseph Albo said: To truly understand God, one would have to be God. No other being is great enough to fathom the Divine.

We seek teshuva because in the Jewish tradition the aim of life is to grow in soul. That is why an old rabbinic saying asserts that a repentant sinner stands upon a height that not even the greatest tzaddik (righteous person) can reach. The growth that is required to acknowledge one’s sin, to seek to repair it, and to change one’s ways is enormous

What does it mean to control pleasure? “Indulge yourself in all things permitted to you,” says the Talmud. Do not shun love. Physical desire and pleasure are a great gift; they are both the pathway to and the expression of deeper intimacy. The very first commandment in the Bible is “be fruitful and multiply.” The Jewish tradition does not celebrate

Judaism speaks about Yirat Hashem, the awe one should feel before God.

To be healthy, a soul has to care about other things and other souls beside itself and its source. If all we attend to is our own cultivation, we are listening not to the call of the soul but the tyranny of the ego.

Judaism does not look on human beings as essentially sinful.

Judaism has seen more than its share of calamity, and anyone could excuse generations of Jews if their world view was morose and pessimistic. Yet for all the expressions of pain and sorrow that exist in such abundance in the Jewish tradition, the prevailing view is found in the words of a talmudic Rabbi: “There is no sadness in the presence of God.