Sublime

In private encounters and public addresses,410 the Rebbe emphasized that only through countering default cynicism and actively embracing educated optimism can we see the true import of our lives and move toward reaching our highest potential.

A person once came to R. Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezeritch, and asked him, “Rebbe, our Sages tell us that we must bless G-d when something good happens, and in the same way, we should bless G-d when something negative happens.10 How can this be actualized?”

A medieval sage, Rabbi Asher ben Yehiel (Rosh, 1250?–1327), insists that this mitzvah of receiving people warmly applies not just to one-on-one encounters but also to the way we carry ourselves in public. “Let not your face be angry toward passersby,” he says, “but receive them with a friendly countenance.”48 How we comport ourselves in the world

Rabbi Yosef Hershman, “Parshat Lech Lecha: Go It Alone,” Ohr Somayach website, November 9, 2019.

In the words of the twentieth-century mystic Abraham Isaac Kook, “Originally, before he was sweetened, he perceived acutely the depth of ugliness and contamination in which this lowly world is immersed. Therefore he blazed with zeal to eradicate the spirit of impurity and those clinging to it. After being sweetened, he perceives every spark of

inseparable, arrogance and bitachon are mutually

when I assumed the lotus position to meditate every day, Abraham also crossed his legs. But only to the degree that I was in the stream; only to the degree that I had given myself to Jewish spiritual consciousness; only to the degree that I practiced it every day and thus became part of it; only to the degree that its koans became my koans. On the