Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays

Is it not the essence of prophetic Judaism to say: It is God who spoke to me, therefore I want to fulfill His will?

Let us beware lest we reduce the Bible to literature, Jewish observance to good manners, the Talmud to Emily Post.

Perhaps the most striking expression of the relationship between the Torah and the people is the classical maxim by Rabbi Simeon ben Menasya, Palestinian Tanna of the second century, and contemporary of Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi, in his interpretation of Exodus 31:14, You shall keep the Sabbath therefore, for it is holy unto you. “The words ‘unto you,’”

Scratch the skin of any person and you come upon sorrow, frustration, unhappiness. People are pretentious. Everybody looks proud; inside he is heartbroken.

Minhagim have often stultified Jewish life. According to Rabbenu Tam, the word minhag consists of the same four letters as the word gehinom.ai

Judaism does not stand on ceremonies … Jewish piety is an answer to God, expressed in the language of mitzvot rather than in the language of “ceremonies.”

Who is a Jew? A person whose integrity decays when unmoved by the knowledge of wrong done to other people.

In carrying out a mitzvah we acknowledge the fact of God being concerned with our fulfillment of His will. XV

The establishment or destruction of the kingly dignity of God occurs now and in the present, through and in us.