Sublime

Rabbi Irving “Yitz” Greenberg, all human beings are endowed with three “intrinsic dignities”: infinite worth, equality, and uniqueness.10

Rabbi Saadia Gaon teaches that “the Jews are a people by virtue of Torah.”

The principle is the same each time: expertise, not tradition, is the key to a flourishing society.

Judaism’s “possibilism” about human nature, its conviction that we can choose the good even if we often don’t.

In the Talmud, Rabbi Eliezer suggests that people should live every day with the same moral intensity as they would if it were their last. Rosh Hashanah-Yom Kippur teach that we should perform every act as if our life depended on it because, in fact, it does.

doesn’t water down the tradition to be inclusive.

the centuriesold mission statement of the Jewish people, expressed by Shimon Ha-Tzaddik (Pirke Avot 1:2): “The world stands on three things: Torah study, worship/service, and acts of lovingkindness.”

Commenting on the relationship of scholasticism and mysticism in medieval Christian philosophy, Heidegger wrote, “Philosophy as a rationalistic structure, detached from life, is powerless; mysticism as irrational experience is aimless.”

Hesed can be translated and defined in a variety of ways, and its precise definition is a subject of scholarly debate.