Sublime

The greater the person, the more scrupulous he should be in all such things, doing more than the strict letter of the law requires.

Ancient Israel was the only civilization to set its golden age in not-yet-realized time, because a free human being lives toward the future.

That is what we as Jews are meant to do: to have the courage to be different, to challenge the idols of the age, to be true to our faith while seeking to be a blessing to others regardless of their faith.

Contrariwise, without religion, in the long run ethics tends to lose touch with reverence, respect, responsibility and restraint.

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

He had striven to appreciate music and poetry, Russian literature and the history of ideas. He knew that one can live a life without these things, but it will be a smaller, more circumscribed and impoverished life. How much more so in the case of faith.

What distinguishes the concept of tzedakah is, firstly, an absolute refusal on the part of the sages to romanticize poverty. It is not, for them, a blessed state. It is an unmitigated evil.

To be the citizen of a state, or a resident in a neighbourhood, is inevitably to be involved in collective fate of some kind.

In the synagogue, Jews were able to keep alive the three things on which their existence depended, Torah or Jewish study, avodah or Jewish worship, and gemilut hassadim, acts of social welfare.28