Sublime

IN THE REBBE’S OFT-REPEATED words—paraphrasing the Mishnah408—”hamaaseh hu ha’ikar,” which means that the essential thing is the deed, not abstract study. Otherwise, teachings and words, no matter how beautiful, wise, or aesthetic, are devarim beteilim “empty expressions” and their

Judaism is not a religion for the individual seeker alone; it is a vision for how human beings ought to live together in pursuit of the right and the good.

We ask ourselves, What do I have to let go of to move forward? I will act compassionately toward all. I will remember that my strength comes from the Eternal.

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.

If in Israel Jews were ungovernable, in the Diaspora they were unconquerable.

how can the American Jewish community foster more Empowered Jews?

reading and every new interpretation. The rabbinic understanding of the dynamic of Oral Torah—ever growing and always the key to fixing the meaning of Written Torah for each particular time and place—is profoundly compatible with a Process understanding and is strongly rooted in the metaphysics that Process articulates.

Rav Saadia Gaon (ninth-century Baghdad) teaches in his Sefer Emunot ve-De’ot, “The Blessed Creator does not allow [God’s] power to interfere in the least with the actions of people, nor does God compel them to be either obedient or disobedient.”

Rabbi Soloveitchik speaks with a passion of the modern “man of faith” who feels a dialectical tension between the pull of the covenantal community and the socioethical responsibilities of modern life. Interaction, and not withdrawal, is the creative response.