Sublime

Which brings us back to Moses and Vayak’hel. By placing community at the heart of the religious life and by giving it a home in space and time – the synagogue and Shabbat – Moses was showing the power of community for good, as the episode of the golden calf had shown its power for bad. Jewish spirituality is for the most part profoundly communal. H

Saadia Gaon was correct in asserting that Israel is a people only by virtue of its Torah,74 that the only assurance for Israel’s peoplehood is the Torah. On the other hand, Rabbi Halevi reminds us, “If there were no Jews, there would be no Torah.”75

For Jonas, Diaspora is not a matter of geography; it is a matter of existential distance from life lived truly. In rabbinic parlance, one might say that we are no longer capable of observing God’s will completely.

Education, in Judaism, is active, not passive. It is about honing the mind, sharpening the intellect, through question and answer, challenge and response.

The essence of Judaism is the awareness of the reciprocity of God and man, of man’s togetherness with Him who abides in eternal otherness.

One of the most stunning gestures of Judaism was to overturn the whole idea of a hierarchy of knowledge,18 for if there are inequalities of learning, they will be replicated through all other social structures, giving some people unwarranted power over others. This is the great insight of the Jewish vision, from which all else followed: A free soci

Ceremonies end in routine, and routine is the great enemy of the spirit.

To see one’s own point of view as relative to that of others means to live in concrete relationships and to think out one’s own ideas in relationship to the thought of others.

Their days are often exhausting, because they have put themselves out for people, and those people fill their days with requests and demands. But they are living at a fuller amplitude, activating deeper parts of themselves and taking on broader responsibilities. They have decided that, as C. S. Lewis put it, “The load, or weight, or burden of my ne