Sublime

When you judge someone favorably, the Hasidic master Rebbe Nahman of Bratzlav (1772–1810) teaches, you elevate them and bring out the best that they are capable of being.

Can we combine simchah and responsibility? Is it possible to have purpose and direction, and at the same time to let loose and feel free? Yes. This is the type of happiness that comes from kabbalas ol, accepting G-d’s yoke. On the one hand, a person lets go of his self-consciousness, but he does not sink into emptiness; he connects to a force that

The way to remain firm is by using the, power of speech. Even if you fall, be resolute and speak words of truth — words of Torah and prayer and the fear of Heaven. Talk to God. Talk to your friends also, and especially your teacher. Speech has a great power to remind a person of God’s presence and give him strength even in situations which are very

At a dramatic point in the scriptural tale, Harbonah (a eunuch in the palace of King Ahasuerus) advises the king to hang the Jews’ arch-enemy, Haman. The Midrash attributes this counsel to Elijah, who was impersonating Harbonah.19

Many religious people think that concessions to human limitations are incompatible with divine law. An eternal truth should not be qualified by socioeconomic realities or cultural norms. Halacha’s pragmatism bespeaks a different understanding of Judaism.

That is, when I live my own life and I do not need other people, [then I can pray to God alone]. For “When a person needs other people, his life is not life” (Beitzah 32b)-that is, his life is not his life, because he lives off other people. But when I do not need other people and I live my own life, then I will be able to praise God and to pray be

In this world, however, it is simply impossible to resolve these questions on any intellectual level, and anyone who delves into these branches of study will sink and be lost there, since about such people it is written, “All those who come to her will not return” (Proverbs 2:19). This is because it is impossible to find God there [in these sorts o

There are people who do not have a good word for anybody. They always look on the bad side of people. The source of their life-force is in the forces of the Other Side, which is called “the end of all flesh” (Genesis 6:13). Such people are constantly trying to make an end of things. They are highly destructive. Their accusations and slander arouse

this act of enclothing (hitlabbeshut), epitomized in the zoharic sentiment that God and Torah are one, is the kabbalistic way of articulating the theopoetic mystery of incarnation, the paradox of the delimitation of the limitless, the ideational underpinning of the hal-akhic basis for the mystical ideal of devequt, communion with and conjunction to