“We no longer believe we are holy ….
we must face
this”
“God created the world, not religion.”
“The endeavour to integrate the abiding teachings and aspirations of the past into our own thinking will enable us to be creative, to expand, not to imitate or to repeat.”
Who is wise ? איזהו חכם
הלומד מכל אדם One who learns from every person.
"The Baal-Shem says, “We say
‘God of Abraham, God of Isaac and God of
Jacob’ we do not say ‘God of Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob’ so that you may be told: Isaac
and Jacob did not rely on Abraham’s
tradition, but they themselves searched
for the Divine.”
“Feminist Jews, like other minority feminists, live with multiple loyalties that are difficult to reconcile and impossible to relinquish. We have refused to disavow the sacred stories of Jewish tradition, to cease to converse with them or attempt to appropriate them.”
“I believe we are the ever-evolving people and that there will always be among us those who are rigorously attached to ancient forms. I believe it is critical that there will also always be among us those who vigorously dream and search for new vessels into which to decant the sam chayyim, the living elixir of Torah. If we only look backward as we move into the future, we will surely stumble. We need scouts, envoys, chalutzim, pioneers to blaze new ways into the ancient-newness of Judaism.”
“It seems to me we are ready to rethink ourselves in America now: to preserve ourselves by a new culture-making ... We can do what we have never before dared to do in a Diaspora language: make it our own, our own necessary instrument, understanding ourselves in it while being understood by everyone who cares to listen or read … we can become masters of our own civilization.”
“How much value can ‘Jewish heritage’ have if it signifies nothing beyond its own perpetuation? … the loss of Jewishness as a meaningful identity in America is the kind of loss that occurs when individuals are free to engage in the pursuit of happiness.
“Jewish history and world history / grind me between them like two grindstones, sometimes / to a powder. And the solar year and the lunar year / get ahead of each other or fall behind,/ leaping, they set my life in perpetual motion. / Sometimes I fall into the gap between them to hide, / or to sink all the way down.”
“You m u s t build your life
as if
it were a work of art”
בכל דור ודור חיב אדם
לראות את עצמו כאלו הוא יצא ממצרים
In every generation, a person is obligated to see herself as if she left Egypt
Blessed are You, Majesty of the Universe,
who gives us life, sustains us, and shepherds us to this time
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה' אֱלֹקינוּ מֶלֶךְ הַעוֹלָם
שֶׁהֶחֱיָנוּ וְקִיְּמָנוּ
וְהִגִּיעָנוּ לַזְּמַן הַזֶּה
“Help us
find the courage to make our lives a blessing”