The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays

Passover is the holiday of faith; Sukkot is the holiday of faithfulness.

I have felt moral revulsion at my self-indulgence that I had been too busy and had not detected the depths of my friend’s needs. I knew that my rationalizations at the time were true, but I know that Maimonides’ words were also true—I had not taken them seriously enough. No act is too trivial.

If goodness will not be imposed by power, then the human must be educated toward perfection. The rabbis conceive of God as teacher and pedagogue—teaching Torah to Israel and to the world. This also explains why, in the words of Ethics of the Fathers (chapter 6, Mishnah 2), “the only truly free person is one who studies Torah.”

One can view this layering of time in which past, present, and future coexist from the perspective of God before whom there is no passage of time but only eternity.

The human being—the most distinctive, unique life of all the animals—is judged by the Torah to have crossed a threshold and become godlike (an image of God). Having reached this level, human life shares in the reverence and value that is associated with the Divine. To

The Last Supper was probably a seder.

the course of thousands of years, the shofar’s meaning has been embroidered upon in many different ways. As Maimonides interpreted it: “Wake up from your deep sleep, you who are fast asleep, search your deeds and repent; remember your Creator … examine your souls, mend your ways and deeds.

Through the Jewish way of life and the holidays, the Torah seeks to nurture the infinite love and unending faith needed to sustain people until perfection is achieved.

The Shabbat offers an alternative: a rhythm of work and abstinence, an alternation of creatorhood and creaturehood.