Sublime

I don’t quite know what to say, so I mostly listen. I’ve found during the past forty-eight hours with Gail and Colin that my role as their rabbi is less to dispense wisdom—I wouldn’t dare—and more to engage in the very holy work of not running away.

The Rabbis were a more secular leadership than priests or prophets. Priests were born to holiness and were bound to ritually circumscribed lives. The Rabbis won their status through learning; unlike the priests, they were not bound to sacramental requirements different from the average Jew.

The silence that counts in Judaism is thus a listening silence – and listening is the supreme religious art. Listening means making space for others to speak and be heard.

Buber’s articulation of the paradox of prophecy comes to mind: “It is laid upon the stammering to bring the voice of Heaven to Earth?”

Despite this the Talmud understands the Torah to be commanding us to remonstrate even with our teacher or leader, should we see him doing something wrong.

From earliest rabbinic times there were such institutions as the tamchui, or mobile kitchen, which distributed food daily to whoever applied,

The great problem with dominant white theologians, especially white men, is their tendency to speak as if they and they alone can set the rules for thinking about God. That is why they seldom turn to the cultures of the poor, especially people of color, for resources to discourse about God. But I contend that the God of Jesus is primarily found

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

Moses received the Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua, and Joshua [transmitted it] to the elders, and the elders [transmitted it] to the prophets, and the prophets transmitted it to the members of the Great Assembly. They said three things, “Be deliberate in judgment, raise up many students, and make a fence around the Torah.” (Pirkei