Let My People Know

"Man has become a captive" –Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

Rabbi Steinsaltz writes:

Sophistication is a deadly poison to Judaism because it eradicates all those things that – even if somewhat “primitive” – are real. 

The sophisticated person no longer has children; he has state-of-the art dolls (sometimes living ones).

He has no life; he has super-modern machinery.

All this sophistication creates a complete and self-sustaining structure, which I often encounter in religious life.

All the explanations, all the attempts to be bigger and brighter, make us lose our most basic understandings. 

This process also occurs with emotions and reactions.

We can no longer say about anything: “how good it is!” – just as we can no longer exclaim: “phooey!”

Man has become a captive of this style, this jargon.

He has become so elaborate, ornate and refined that nothing true remains. 

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz