Faith is to stand in relation with the creator, and know my sins require punishment. Trust is to stand beyond relation with the creator, and therefore have an unreckoned future of goodness. Foolishness is not to know Him, wisdom is to relate to Him through intermediaries, and faith is to relate to Him directly through […]
The Cruel, the Less Cruel, and the Kind
They say the opposite of cruelty is kindness, and that the opposite of hate is love, but it is rare to find a man of unalloyed cruelty and hatred. A man of pure hatred is like a man without legs, a tragedy, but an exception that proves the rule. Most of us are cruel and […]
Every argument, every compromise, every concession to pragmatism, every demarcation and limit and definition driven into the ground seeking solid bedrock for anchoring the chains, they make me sick. There are only two places I can actually live, sub-rational nihilism and faith. Subrational nihilism, the power of it — this is the good stuff. Let […]
Objective Reality Is For Meeting G-d
“Facts don’t care about your feelings,” some Jews say. I do wonder, though. If facts don’t care about your feelings, why is Rosh Hashana called the “day of the beginning of your action”? In many other words: Once upon a time, centuries ago, few would have recognized a real facts/feelings distinction, if “facts” mean shared […]
Every year, Reb Shlomo ‘the Yellow’, the melamed of Nevel, would walk to Lubavitch to spend the Simchat Torah festival with his rebbe, Rabbi Sholom DovBer. Even in his later years when his strength had failed him, he refused to climb onto a wagon for even a minute; every step of the way was taken […]
What A Jew Wants (Doesn’t Matter)
In a sense, an anti-Semite might be forgiven for attributing all evil to the Jews, as there is no evil we will not learn, argue about, contemplate during Shmoneh Esrei, dream about on Shabbos, and master. The anti-Semite thinks the Jews want to conquer the world. Like all good ideas, he stole this from the […]
Nature, free will, and headache (relief).
Lessons from an old enemy.
The Bar Mitzvah Lesson: A Tragedy
Is Jewish Religious Tolerance Condescending?