Sublime

In the Talmud, Rabbi Eliezer suggests that people should live every day with the same moral intensity as they would if it were their last. Rosh Hashanah-Yom Kippur teach that we should perform every act as if our life depended on it because, in fact, it does.

rabbis as teachers are in critical demand. And after a year running Hadar, I knew that my life’s focus was not only to build one specific community but also to spread the model of Empowered Judaism.

We are thus obligated to affirm our own worth.33 “Just as a person believes in God,” the Hasidic master Rabbi Zadok Ha-Kohen of Lublin (1823–1900) teaches, “one must also34 believe in oneself.”35 How we see ourselves profoundly shapes who and what we become.

Israel Levinthal.

Jews in the academies of Eretz Yisrael and Babylonia (where Jews had lived since the destruction of the First Temple and exile of 586 BCE) studied the Mishnah in depth, exploring its implications, debating the logic of its rulings, telling their own stories, providing anecdotal illustrations of principles articulated, and more. Over the next few

what would it take to build the ideal learning community—one that fostered Empowered Jews in an environment where they didn’t need to compromise a core part of their identity? Fortunately,

We ask that our hands be open and our hearts be pure so that our lives can be of service and, together with all beings, we will bring forth blessing.

The prohibition on embarrassing another is one of Judaism’s cardinal sins, they say, and one should sooner die than transgress

The Rebbe interjected, “Just as it is forbidden to speak disparagingly about someone else—even if speaking the absolute truth—it is also forbidden to speak negatively about oneself!”414 It is important to free ourselves