Sublime

The old Israel is replaced by the new. There is no longer a covenant with Abraham’s children. The new covenant is made with whoever heeds its call.

Jewish tradition, like every tradition, is designed to protect against oblivion, capturing ancient experiences in ritual and story and passing them between generations—and that Diarna is simply a higher-tech version of what everyone’s ancestors once did, passing along memories around a fire, technology expanding that warm, bright circle around the

peu de chances que le membre d’une tribu de Nouvelle-Guinée adhère au sionisme ou au nationalisme serbe, parce que ces récits ne font aucun cas de la Nouvelle-Guinée et de sa population. Comme les stars de cinéma, les hommes n’aiment que les scénarios qui leur réservent un rôle important.

Barbara Tuchman, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author and historian, once observed that of all the peoples of the world from three thousand years ago, it is only the Jews who live in the same place, speak the same language, and practice the same religion.

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,

It is also interesting to note that the Italian commentators of the Talmud say that Noah “was not a Hebrew,” and this is why Noah’s covenant with “God” is important (Di Segni).

The Mosaic books see the family as the great educational institution. The Babylonian exile added the synagogue. The period between the Maccabean uprising and the fall of Jerusalem saw the emergence of three other intellectual centers: the academy or yeshivah, the bet midrash or house of study, and the school. The school was for children, the bet

To return to where we started: the mishnah subtly makes the revolutionary claim that our ultimate worth as human beings is a function not of what we achieve in the world, but of the simple fact that we have been created by God.