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.

Spirituality is also concerned with shaping our actions and, through them, touching the tender part of our souls. As action and passion interact, we are slowly changed, moving closer and closer to the ideal of a true sage enunciated in the Talmud—one whose inside and outside match. Spirituality means transforming oneself; a religious tradition is a

The first demand made of a Jew is goodness. Nothing else is more important, no command more central. Tied to the consciousness of God is the need to be good. A verse from the biblical Book of Leviticus reads: “You shall not pick your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger: I am

Spirituality is a constant striving to keep in mind the truth that the intangible is ultimate, that the moral world spins on the axis of what we cannot see.

Large spirits grow larger through love, and love is real only through deed. A love that is only feeling, that stays inside, becomes a solitary entanglement of soul. True love involves an expression of emotion, an outpouring of soul. For in focusing on others, we are returned to our deeper selves. Like all deep acts, love teaches us about ourselves

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.

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.

For all its power, science cannot be the meaning of our lives or tell us why to get up in the morning. Supreme at how questions, science does not answer why. That is the function of faith.

Different traditions offer distinct answers. Centuries ago, the Buddha decided that desire makes us unhappy. If we did not want, we would not feel frustration and longing. Extinguish desire, destroy all attachment and wanting, and there will be no more unhappiness. He devoted himself to teaching his disciples how to want nothing.