The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays
The Exile was an expiation of past sin and a test of their faithfulness. They were still God’s beloved people and the key to the outcome of history. Zion became the ever more shining symbol of a future state of blessing.
Irving Greenberg • The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays
The battle of Hanukkah is being fought again, not in military engagements but through creating family ties, competing educationally, communicating values and messages, holding and deepening loyalties. It
Irving Greenberg • The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays
Elias Bickerman, a noted scholar, has pointed out that Mattathias did not demand the right of freedom of religion, nor did he fight for individual conscience. This was “a conflict between earthly power and the law of the state of God”—opposition to a King’s order that was at variance with the commandments of God.
Irving Greenberg • The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays
As Heschel described it, the Shabbat is an exercise in “orchestration of time,” an attempt to shape a holy day—a day of special existence—out of the endless, undifferentiated flow of time.
Irving Greenberg • The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays
In a colossal medical misfeasance that compounded the tragedy of the Holocaust, thousands of prisoners died from food that was too rich for their weakened digestive systems.
Irving Greenberg • The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays
Separated from the Jewish people before the development of the Talmud, the Beta Israel have preserved the biblical commandments and traditions. Seeing them in action makes one realize that different levels of meaning have unfolded in history.
Irving Greenberg • The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays
the Jews should be a people rooted in their land (a place overflowing with the bounty of nature) and pursuing a life of justice and loving-kindness, at peace with neighbors—a living witness to the infinite possibilities of finite existence. Therefore, the central political concern of the Bible was Israelite sovereignty and independence in the land.
Irving Greenberg • The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays
To work is to create something new; to work is to add something, some value or accomplishment that was not there before.
Irving Greenberg • The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays
The day of Destruction is a culmination of the grief, but immediately thereafter—since nothing can be done to prevent the tragedy from happening—the psychological balance shifts toward the renewal of life.