The Human Challenge

When we know our purpose, commitment is an engagement, not a constraint

We begin every week by making the blessing of Havdalah at the end of the Shabbat. Included is the blessing Borei Meorei Ha'aish-"He who created the lights of fire." What we are really saying is, "May we have the right passion for the week."

After the sin of Adam and Eve all fruits i.e., all physical phenomena - were tainted with the sensation of physical pleasure disconnected from their spiritual purpose

The Torah is not a book about the thoughts of man about God. Rather, it contains the thoughts of God on humanity. The Torah is our guide for understanding human conditions from God's point of view

There are two levels of holiness. The first level is taharah - purity. It is a state of spiritual and moral fitness and life. In this sense, kedushah (holiness) means to be set aside and be dedicated to something. The loss of that state is tumah - impurity; it is that which debases and degrades. Tumah can only come about when there was a potential for holiness to begin with

God wanted us to sanctify the weekdays with the spirit of the Shabbat. Havdalah is not therefore a note of regret that the holy Shabbat is over. It is an announcement that our week will now be a different week because of the Shabbat we just had

Knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows, for details are swallowed up in principles ~ Alfred North Whitehead

The Torah instructs us, "And you should tell child..." We have to tailor make the Exodus story to the understanding of each child. But how do we know what each child needs? We look at his questions.

Protest is not to effect change as much as it is the moral voice that keeps the issue-and our souls-alive. We get used to injustice and all sorts of evil. Protest tells us that even though we feel helpless right now, we refuse to lose our sensitivity; we refuse to accept that this is norm.

At the same time, when it comes to translating the Torah into the world, since each level of Pardes exists at a different plane of reality, an event can take place at a level of derush but not at a level of pshat, and so on. Hence, Jacob can be described as not dying even though the Torah reports his death (Pachad Yitzchak, Pesach 52)

God has His own definition of greatness. It is someone who takes a step forward from wherever he is

It is with the ground firmly under our feet that we inch forward. You can decide in a moment of inspiration to become righteous and holy, but you can't do it all at once. Engaging in spiritual growth is a process, and someone who takes it all on in one shot will drop it just as fast. This is one perspective of Rabbi Tarfon's maxim: "You are not required to complete the task, but you are not free to exempt yourself from it." Don't think of perfection now-of completing the task. Think of moving forward. Growth is a slow business.

William Blake once commented, "He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars: general Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer."

The word for "test" in Hebrew is nisayon. According to some, the root of this word is nes, which means "miracle." A test is that which brings out the miracle of self-the part of us that we had no idea was inside of ourselves. It is the capacity to rise above one's nature-to be supernatural within one's own self

One who has really internalized this idea-that the test is really his friend and is there to elevate him-will face most difficulties in a matter-of fact manner, as this is exactly the reality he anticipates in this world. He doesn't think, "This is so unfair," and "why me?" He simply focuses on facing the challenge itself.

If love is a feeling, then indeed it cannot be commanded. God cannot order us to feel something that we don't. But if love is a process, then we can be directed to that process

The Kabbalists tells us that before God created this world, He created other worlds and destroyed them. He then used the remnants of those worlds to create our world. It was into this reality that God said, "Let there be light." What was the purpose of all of this destroying and creating world's? It was, say the Kabbalists, so that every type of moral and spiritual destruction that could ever take place will have already been done when God destroyed the universes. God built our universe based on the destroyed remnants of those worlds. So now, every type of destruction already has its solution built into the fabric of creation. Any type of distortion or sin we might do has already been done and corrected. The force to correct our actions now exists long before we commit any sin. That force is teshuvah.

Evil is often the mirror image of good. It is the same force going in the opposite direction. Since the negative action is the opposite of a positive one, it already contains within it the possibility of redemption. The sinner can take the same force that produced the impurity and transform it into the positive