Sublime

God asks one individual – eventually a family, a tribe, a collection of tribes, a nation – to serve as an exemplary role-model, to be as it were a living case-study in what it is to live closely and continuously in the presence of God. This is – as Jewish history testifies – a weighty and risk-laden responsibility. Since

The natural world consists of causes and effects, events that, given the circumstances, could not be otherwise. The human world is different. It is made in freedom out of choices made possible by ideas. What we think shapes what we do.

Justice in the Hebrew Bible is thus more than a matter of law. It restores a broken order.

The example of Abraham tells us that obedience is not enough.

how can I serve God while practising my profession? It is precisely in our day-to-day relationships, at work or among friends, in our dealings with people and the integrity, sensitivity and generosity we bring to bear on them, that we most add or subtract to the respect those around us have for the values by which we live. Here, the greatest of bib

Lurianic kabbalah is at best a metaphor, not a prescription, for the forms of social action I have described in this book. But it remains a compelling metaphor none the less.

The Jews, therefore, stand right at the center of the perennial attempt to give human life the dignity of a purpose.”7

How can there be a stable relationship between two free individuals? How can one person’s freedom respect that of another while endowing the bond between them with permanence so that it becomes the basis of trust?

Applying inflexible rules to a constantly shifting political landscape destroys societies.