Sublime

the faith of a man who has considered the very real possibility that chaos and bloodshed are simply all there is.

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

We cultivate the practice of responding to ourselves and others with compassion and kindness.

to contemplate what is beyond duality, we must ponder the suspension of all opposition, even the opposition of opposites that have been rendered (non) identical in their opposition.

From this vantage point, it is possible to view the life of Schneerson as a form of self-effacement, which rendered him feminine in relation to his predecessor, a point immortalized in the fact that he is buried to the left of his father-in-law.

The ritual directives can serve this role as they are, kabbalistically imagined, limbs of the body of the Torah, a notion of corporeality that is not inconsequential to understanding the apophatic embodiment we are seeking to articulate in these reflections.

The Hebrew contains an extraordinary play on words, untranslatable into English.

Elijah’s ethical paradigm—mishnat ḥasidim—is incumbent upon anyone truly devoted.

when the essence is garbed in the Torah, it can be comprehended.