Sublime

a hyperliteral reading of the rabbinic dictum that the wicked are called “dead” even in their lives, whereas the righteous are called “living” even in their deaths.

“And Yael?” “She’s fine. She’s in Auschwitz.”

Torah takes concrete form in the specific people through whom it emerges into the light of day. God’s presence is manifest in their specific language, idiom, bodies, and culture.

One of the key questions the Torah addresses is: how do we create associations that honour both self and other, ‘I’ and ‘Thou’?

Through the act of self-sacrifice brought about by the all-consuming love one has for God, the individual causes the descent of the “supernal delight”

Avishai,

become Judaism’s most controversial proposition: that since mankind in its diversity cannot be reduced to a single image, so God cannot be reduced to a single faith or language. God exists in difference and thus chooses as His witness a people dedicated to difference.

We perceive the Blessing One not only through the ongoing process of creation, but also, perhaps more intensely, through the distillation of human listening into words.