Studies in Spirituality (Covenant & Conversation Book 9)

Judaism is not peace of mind. ‘The righteous have no rest, neither in this world nor the next’, says the Talmud.12 I remain in awe at the challenge God has set us: to be different, iconoclasts of the politically correct, to be God’s question-mark against the conventional wisdom of the age, to build, to change, to ‘mend’ the world until it becomes a

Within the limits of human intelligence, we can climb at least part of the way to heaven, but the purpose of the climb is the return to earth, knowing that here is where God wants us to be and where he has given us work to do. Judaism contains mysteries, but its ultimate purpose is not mysterious at all. It is to honour the image of God in other pe

The fundamental idea of Judaism was and is that we bring God into the world through daily acts and interactions, precisely as the book of Genesis portrays the religious drama in terms of ordinary lives. The home, the workplace and the marketplace are religious arenas no less than the synagogue.

More than the Bible is interested in the home God made for man, it is concerned with the home man makes for God. Fundamental to it is not the natural world God created but the social world we create.