Judaism speaks about Yirat Hashem, the awe one should feel before God.

The first mention of Jews in history, outside the Bible, is in a small stone tablet called the stele of Mernpetah. It is a fragment of an Egyptian record dating from about the twelfth century B.C.E.—over three thousand years ago. It reads “Israel is laid waste —his seed is no more.” The very first allusion to Jews in history boasts that they are de

One of the lessons of spirituality that Judaism teaches is that spirituality is not a solitary affair. True spirituality means a relationship with other human beings and with God.

Jews are one quarter of 1 percent of the world population. Yet they make up almost 30 percent of the world’s Nobel Prize winners. Such achievement is not bred in the genes. It is a product of centuries of insistence on the gift of the human mind. The great heroes of Jewish spirituality always include scholars and sages.

The Divine image is the part of ourselves we cannot point to. It is not in your eyes or your reason or your sense of humor. It is what makes each of us unique, unmistakably and ineffably ourselves—unlike any other human being who has ever lived or who will ever live. It is what makes us equal, for we are all in God’s image but different, for we are

Spirituality is a constant striving to keep in mind the truth that the intangible is ultimate, that the moral world spins on the axis of what we cannot see.

All that we can say about God is what the medieval Jewish philosopher Joseph Albo said: To truly understand God, one would have to be God. No other being is great enough to fathom the Divine.

On the Sabbath, every Jew is commanded to eat three good meals. Dining well is part of celebrating the Sabbath. Food, too, is a gift from God.

The paradox of pleasure is that seeking too much of it brings pain. Gluttony does not multiply the pleasure of food; it destroys it. Controlling pleasure increases it. Judaism helps to channel us into pathways of growth that are steady and permanent. A wise life of spirit is lived in equilibrium. “There is a time,” says the Book of Ecclesiastes, “f