Abraham is just some cisgender white male kid kicking cans in Silver Springs. He watches YouTube and plays Fortnite religiously but he is still not right. There’s something off about the way he looks at you. He sees too much. His skull can’t hold it all and ugly truths pour from his mouth. Abraham wants […]
I. Does It Make Sense To Write About Doubt? If I still struggled as I have in the worst nights, I would never arrive at these sentences, nor will those truly doubting care to read them. Doubt garbs herself with midnight veils woven from her own hair beyond which our powers of certainty cannot peer. […]
If knowledge is power, then Kaballah is idolatry. There is a reason we were discouraged from studying the holy sefirot, the arrangements of the divine lights, the permutations of the divine speech in their infinitely intricate manifestations. Upon meeting a system, there is an all-too-human tendency to conquer it, to bend it to one’s will, […]
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 […]
We know that Torah is compared to food, but have we ever stopped to consider the simplest of culinary considerations pertaining thereto, namely, what pairs with it? Don’t start naming wines; wine is also Torah, and this isn’t one of those weird gastropubs where everything is made from the same ingredient. The fact is, Torah […]
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 […]
If Antiochus was my Rebbe (and such a thing is thoroughly impossible) he’d tell me how beautiful Judaism is. Antiochus looks at his men, at his enemies, at his deities, and sees a sublime order. Each of them is part of a story, which is another way of saying they each want something that they […]
I Won’t Know What Pittsburgh Means
Sometimes, when I’m bored, I imagine something truly preposterous—a man of space and time. Such a man would not see the world the way we do. I like to think he’d divide things neatly into cubic meters, or perhaps (with a nod to the issue of establishing an absolute frame of reference for such a […]
If really you doubt the midrashic tortoise or the slaying banquet, feel free to take, my host, mezuzah from post, and let my friends come pouring in. If really you’re safe without the wrapped gauntlet or your plaited mail, then blunt black corners, let your threads flail, and come dance with us. If you fear […]
We are afraid He did it in six days. We are too trifling to be created in anything less than an eternity. Cats, fine, His. But Twitter? Never, never, in all His majesty and His meaning could He do such a thing. He deserves a stern reprimand once all our plans have wound down and […]
Previous page Next page