The Skeptic and the Rabbi

We shared a sense of the ridiculous.

At one point during the conversation, one guest asked, “Come on, Rabbi, don’t you really want all the people who come to your Torah classes to become religious like you are?” “Not at all,” he said. “I’m here to show what the Torah says about how to live a successful life. I believe that there is an intuitive hunger in the human soul for timeless ideas. People value many things because they are old, which is why you have retro chic and antique collectibles. These days, it’s rarer to find teachers who are transmitting old ideas that people sense are valuable. I’m teaching what I am convinced is the most soul-nourishing idea of all, about God. After that, people will obviously make up their own minds. I’m simply offering them an important option to consider.” Note: Precisely...

One night when she was teaching a class based on the Rambam (Moses ben Maimon, the 12th-century rabbi from Spain and one of the foremost Jewish thinkers of all-time), Susan advised, “Even when your kids can read and understand better than you can, and even when they know more halacha than you know, don’t ever think—or let them think—that they know more Torah than you do. Torah knowledge is more than just laws or knowing verses by heart. It’s also the understanding of what it means to have a Torah personality and the refinement that comes along with that. You as a parent will always have that more than they do until they’re grown up.”