Sublime

What distinguishes the concept of tzedakah is, firstly, an absolute refusal on the part of the sages to romanticize poverty. It is not, for them, a blessed state. It is an unmitigated evil.

The theme of table-as-altar

In Judaism, supporting the poor is not viewed as an above-and-beyond act of generosity. It’s more like ensuring fair procedures in a courtroom, which we should do not only when we’re feeling generous, but all the time, because it’s necessary to ensure justice.

Rabbi Greenberg explained that we lost 30 percent of the Jewish people during the war, but more than 80 percent of the scholars, mystics, and teachers who could pass on ancient traditions.

God asks one individual – eventually a family, a tribe, a collection of tribes, a nation – to serve as an exemplary role-model, to be as it were a living case-study in what it is to live closely and continuously in the presence of God. This is – as Jewish history testifies – a weighty and risk-laden responsibility. Since

By providing appropriate venues for those students to encounter each other at different levels, we foster the types of conversations that neither advanced nor beginner students would have if they were limited to interactions with those at their own skill level.

the power of Judaism is clear to those truly engaged in its complex struggles and searchings for truth and divinity. Instead of focusing on new ideas, the Jewish community would be better served by connecting to the original “big ideas” of our heritage: Torah, avodah, and gemilut hasadim,

Could it be that today’s society has made Jewish identity superfluous?

After the churban (destruction), the Rabbis taught that there would be no further prophecy. God had self-limited again. But through Talmud Torah (study of Torah), God’s will could be discerned.