Sublime

Within the limits of human intelligence, we can climb at least part of the way to heaven, but the purpose of the climb is the return to earth, knowing that here is where God wants us to be and where he has given us work to do. Judaism contains mysteries, but its ultimate purpose is not mysterious at all. It is to honour the image of God in other

The sum of the Rabbis’ educational and halachic efforts was that participation in religious life was democratized.

Therefore we should see ourselves throughout the year as if our deeds and those of the world are evenly poised between good and bad, so that our next act may change both the balance of our lives and that of the world.

Lashon hatov – one of the most important tasks of a leader, a parent, or a friend – is focused praise.

a free society must be a moral society, for without the rule of law, constrained by the overarching imperatives of the right and the good, freedom will eventually degenerate into tyranny, and liberty, painfully won, will be lost.

The Rambam lists among those who have no share in the World to Come someone who “imposes a rule of fear on the community, not for the sake of Heaven.” Such a person “rules over a community by force, so that people are greatly afraid and terrified of him,” doing so “for his own glory and personal interests.” The

free society—that precarious balance between the conflicting principles of liberty and order—exists not through the rule of law alone, but through a system of education that allows every individual to internalize the law and thus become its master, not its slave.

The Judaism I discovered in that class, however—and that I’ve continued to explore since then—bore little resemblance to that idea of “religion.” Its sacred texts are not books of dogma. Rather, as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks put it, Judaism’s “canonical texts are anthologies of argument.”

I am a Jew because our ancestors were the first to see that the world is driven by a moral purpose,