Sublime

Jesus must be understood as a comprehensible and yet, so to speak, crucifiable first-century Jew, whatever the theological or hermeneutical consequences.

Marc, a San Francisco ophthalmologist, was the first person to ever describe himself to me as a JUBU—a Jewish Buddhist. I’ve since learned that he is one among many, in a long line that goes back at least one hundred years.

in the twenty-first century—a Judaism that has been undersold and watered down. It is a Judaism where those who know its beauty are often unable or unwilling to connect to the larger Jewish community, and those on the front lines of the welcome wagon to Judaism have little skill or facility with Jewish texts to elucidate their beauty to others.

Brenner, complex though he was, was perhaps the cultural icon of the Second Aliyah. His work, still considered brilliant, surfaced issues with which Israel continues to wrestle. He would have undoubtedly done even more than he managed in his brief life, but he was murdered by an Arab mob in the 1921 Jaffa riots.

Rabbi Soloveitchik speaks with a passion of the modern “man of faith” who feels a dialectical tension between the pull of the covenantal community and the socioethical responsibilities of modern life. Interaction, and not withdrawal, is the creative response.

finally, a community that believes—but I mean really, really believes—that Torah has a contribution to make to the redemption of the world, and that ultimately the world will not be redeemed without Torah.

Were Jewry just a family, one could not join Judaism. Either one is born into a family or one is not. Such a pattern would make Jews a “master race” and turn the Torah into a doctrine of tribal improvement.

Jews in America are yearning for someone to show them the way into the meaning and deeper beauty of our tradition.