"There have been many allegorical explanations to answer this question, but we may point to more familiar examples from contemporary science. 

A clinical psychologist performing an experiment may ask certain questions of his subjects and, although he is quite sure of what the answer will be, knowing his subject's personality, he will refrain from exerting any influence.

Hence the answer, even if known beforehand by the scientist, is freely chosen and therefore valid in terms of the experiment.

In terms of Divine providence, however, what is the purpose of testing someone if the results are already known?

A medieval Sage, the Ramban, has ventured the opinion that it is necessary in order for an action to emerge from the realm of the potential to the manifest; a person has to earn the reward for a good deed and not for a good intention.

The trials and tests a man is made to undergo are not meant to provide God with information that He already knows.

They are meant to help a person realize the greater potential in him, to reinforce his capacity to overcome difficulties and to create something new. 

It is a way of letting spiritual powers become expressed in practice.

The emphasis is not on God's knowing but on knowing as a human experience."

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From The Candle of God, p. 201, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

"It has been said that each of the letters of the Torah has some corresponding soul.

That is to say, every soul is a letter in the entire Torah, and has its own part to play.

The soul that has fulfilled its task, that has done what it has to do in terms of creating or repairing its own part of the world and realizing its own essence, can wait after death for the perfec­tion of the world as a whole.

But not all the souls are so privileged.

Many stray for one reason or another.

Sometimes a person does not do all the proper things, and sometimes he misuses forces and spoils his portion and the portion of others.

In such cases the soul does not complete its task and may even itself be damaged by contact with the world.

It has not managed to complete that por­tion of reality which only this particular soul can complete.

And therefore after the death of the body, the soul returns and is reincarnated in the body of another person and again must try and complete what it failed to correct or what it injured in the past." 

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From The Thirteen Petalled Rose, p. 63, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

"By definition, the way of the Torah is not religious in the strict sense of addressing only that part of a person's life concerned only with relations between the human and the Divine.

The Torah is not a narrow domain of holiness a man may enter or leave as he chooses while the domain of ordinary existence remains neutral territory, where God does not interfere much, and where in any case there is not much point in trying to relate to Him.

Since the Torah is the blueprint of the world, it regulates the whole and cannot be confined to any particular part.

True, its directives are not all on the same level of practicality; nevertheless, its instructions and guidelines and modes of relating are valid for all situations in life.

The more one becomes identified with the Torah,the more does its significance expand beyond particular circumstance.

Rather than constituting itself an ideal for the monastic life, say, or a guide or for any other sort of separa­tion from the reality of the world, Torah works in precisely the opposite fashion, introducing more content and meaning into the trivial details of the life of the world.

One finds the Torah significant in every aspect of community, commerce, agricul­ture, and industry, in the life of feeling and love, in relations between the sexes — down to the most minute aspects of living, like buttoning one's shoes or lying down to sleep.

What is surprising is that with the great quantity and range of its laws, what to do and what not to do, Torah still does not really limit the activities of an individual in any field of endeavor.

That is to say, there is no field of action or thought which, in principle, the Torah repudiates. 

The Law, in general and in detail, the­oretically and practically, mostly adds detail to action, qualifies modes of behavior, imposes new modes, directs the conduct of one's daily business from waking to sleeping–the supposition being that if all these actions are properly defined and prepared, then the guidance of the Law need not and does not change their essence, but adds a quality to them."

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From The Thirteen Petalled Rose, p. 94, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

"According to the Kabbalah (in the form expressed in hasidic literature), each man possesses two souls, one animal, the other divine.

The animal spirit is the vital force that gives life to the body, though it possesses, in addition, spiritual components that are oriented beyond this function and do not exist purely as ends in themselves.

The divine soul reflects the pure inner essence of humanity, its yearning toward the divine; it is unconnected to the body or its needs, which, indeed, it frequently overcomes.

It aspires to be and do good.

Every man's life is an ongoing struggle between these two souls, each of which strives to capture and dominate the individual." 

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From The Tales of Rabbi Nachman, p. 85, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

“Rabbi Nachman himself explained why he chose the particular format of storytelling, rather than direct statements of Torah teaching.

In order to absorb knowledge and a message from well constructed and direct Torah teaching, one has first of all to be knowledgeable to a certain extent.

More than that, one has to make a conscious effort to learn while one hears any direct statements.

At the same time, one has to have a willingness to accept what one hears.

Rabbi Nachman stated in his symbolic form that the stories he was telling were even for people who had been sleeping, in a way, for seventy years, meaning that the message in the stories somehow gets to them, even when they are not consciously thinking about it as a teaching.

Rabbi Nachman avoids the possibility of evoking antagonism from the reader who might react to or be unable to accept direct statements.

His stories seep in and later on do the work.

Because of that, even though the stories can be misunderstood, somehow the inner content does not get lost, and afterward, in one way or another, it has some impact on the reader."

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

 From The Tales of Rabbi Nachman, p. 275, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

"For hundreds and thousands of years, the Oral Torah (as the name implies) had consisted of verbal transmission of the tradition from master to student, with nothing committed to writing.

The tradition passed from one Beit Midrash to another, which from generation to generation changed their character and methods of study.

One element, however, remained stable throughout: the tradition was oral, not written.

It is true that in earlier times, and even during the Temple period, Torah scholars would make mnemonic notes for themselves, but these were no more than shorthand comments on unusual events or decisions which the writers saw fit to record for posterity.

As a rule, the Oral Torah was not written down.

These scrolls, known as 'hidden scrolls' and not meant for public use, were neither studied nor used for teaching, and were preserved only as the personal memoranda of individual Sages.

Moreover, there was a halachic ruling to the effect that 'the words which are written, you are not at liberty to say by heart, and the words transmitted orally, you are not at liberty to commit to writing' (Gittin 60b).

One reason given for this was that an oral doctrine enables maximum flexibility in transmission and interpretation, whereas a written text is bound to reach, at a certain stage, a point of ossification beyond which it cannot be developed.

Exposition of a written text becomes by nature supplemental, while the text itself is no longer renewed and invigorated.

Thus, alongside the written Torah there coexisted a more flexible tradition, which conveyed a practical understanding of the Torah's basic terms and concepts and, above all, explained the actual practice of its commandments.

All this had been transmitted in an ancient chain of tradition stretching from Moses through the whole list of Sages detailed in Pirkei Avot (chapters 1-2) until Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi's (Rebbi's) generation.

This heritage was zealously preserved as an oral tradition, not to be recorded, not to be petrified.

Despite these and many other considerations, Rebbi decided that the time had come to change the method of preserving the Oral Torah by establishing hard and fast rules for guiding its interpretation and formulating it in a specific, clearly defined way that would meet the needs of the time."

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

 From Talmudic Images, p.84, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

"For a Talmudic Sage to express a minority opinion was not unusual.

In various controversies, Sages would sometimes express majority opinions, and at other times would be in the minority.

Even when the ruling went against the opinion of a particular individual, he was not required to change his mind.

He was, however, obligated to acquiesce to the halachic ruling of the majority."

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

 From Talmudic Images, p. 59 , by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

"Hillel (d.10 CE) was famous as a lover of humanity, and even more for his appreciation of the uniqueness of each person he encountered.

He was known for his ability to address each one who approached him in a way that was most appropriate for that person.

An interesting expression of this ideal is his attempt to summarize the Torah on 'one leg': 'Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you.'

This negative formulation of the Biblical passage, 'Love your neighbor as yourself' (Leviticus 19: 18), expresses most aptly the notion that each of us has unique qualities, and therefore one must not judge others by the same criteria that one uses to judge oneself."

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

 From Talmudic Images, p.6 by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

"The heroes of the Oral Torah are heroes of a special kind.

Their stories are not tales of war and battles, and their chronicles are devoid of impressive events.

These heroes are heroes of the spirit, whose acts of heroism lie in their thoughts and their words.

The palaces and fortresses they established are invisible to the eye.

The Talmudic Sages themselves declared that it is inappropriate to erect mausoleums on the graves of scholars, since their teachings are their monuments."

 –Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From Talmudic Images, p. xiii, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

“In the Jewish prayer book, there are a great number of blessings. 

Many of them concern simple, mundane activities, such as opening one’s eyes in the morning, stretching, standing on one’s feet, walking, and so on. 

Why must we say them every day? 

Because the significance and wondrousness of our ability to do these things tends to get lost. 

We rarely recognize them as gifts from God until they are suddenly gone.

It is only when pain prevents us from walking with ease that we recognize and acknowledge God’s role in ‘firming our footsteps.’

In fact, we often need to experience the extraordinary in order to reawaken us to the significance of the ordinary. 

When something happens that is remarkable and unusual, we are jolted out of our stupor and re-acquire the ability to see the miraculous in the routine and the habitual. 

This sudden change enables us to see what routine conceals, so that we can once again perceive what is truly important and what is not.

There are two ways of sensing God’s presence in the world. 

One is through thunder and lightning and other extraordinary events; the other is within the world’s natural order. 

Nature is God’s alternate signature, so to speak, when He does not want to sign His work with the Ineffable Name.

Thus, we may say that God wrote the Book of Esther using a pseudonym.

God’s name is there even when it is not written. 

And, more important, God is there.

Even things that seem rational, clear, and ‘natural,’ may be miracles. 

May our experience of Purim enable us to appreciate all of the miracles in our lives." 

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

"A time will come when the Jewish people will be called upon to determine the end of history.

This is one of the lessons of the Book of Esther.

Just when Esther is tempted to stay neutral, when she explains to Mordecai that she cannot go see the king without being invited, Mordecai says to her: 'If you keep silent in this crisis, relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from another place, while you and your father's house will perish.'

Every individual and every nation is familiar with the temptations of neutrality.

Mordecai's message, however, is clear.

If we do not act, our lives will be worth nothing.

Esther must act, or else she is condemned to oblivion.

Inevitably, we are faced with the duty to act and to decide which dangers we are ready to face."

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From The Seven Lights, p. 391, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

"The moment when Esther was required to go to Ahasuerus, and use every means of seduction and temptation at her disposal in order to lift the sentence of death that had fallen on the Jews, was not just a moment of personal danger.

She was required to pass from a passive state to an active one, to become the temptress.

Previously Esther could claim that, to some extent, she was in a situation in which she was held under duress.

From the moment when she took the initiative in approaching the king to seduce him, she lost her last shreds of innocence.

Where previously she could feel pure, at least in spirit, she was now to some extent sullied.

The step Esther took in approaching Ahasuerus with a view to enthralling him by her personal charm, was a step more drastic than her induction into the king's harem, a matter in which she had no choice.

Consciously, she now decided to endanger not only her life but her soul; and from this moment onward, she becomes the savior of the Jewish people.

Inwardly, however, she could no longer regard herself as belonging to the ethical values of her people, not in body and perhaps also not in soul.

Other generations have maintained that, when a man gives up his life while his soul is pure and unsullied, he has reached one level of sacrifice.

And that there is a further level, where an individual not only gives up his life but also exposes his soul to a danger whose result none can foretell.

This test of sacrifice, the hidden, unexplained test which is not stressed in the Scroll of Esther, changes this woman from a mere historical figure to a national heroine.

The mechanism of the miracle is plainly revealed and visible.

All its elements are clearly spread before us.

Esther is the woman around whom this miracle revolves, the savior whom we later bless in the religious festival of Purim recalling her act of heroism."

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From Biblical Images, p. 221, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

"Esther was not involved in a dubious or temporary love affair but actually became the queen, reaching the heights of ambition and achievement which a woman in those days could perhaps hope for.

Nevertheless, Esther felt that her task was more important, and that it was up to her to represent the Jewish people at this moment.

When Mordecai confronted her with the choice between her mission or her rank, her status, and–not least–her life, he was making things very difficult for her.

On the one hand, Esther had attained the highest possible position, that of queen, and she was likely to lose it at one stroke.

On the other hand, if she betrayed her mission, she would be a traitor to her values and beliefs for the rest of her life.

The sages have evaluated a role of this kind in connection with both Yael and Esther: 'Better a transgression for the sake of heaven than a good deed which is not.'

This saying, dangerous to those who abuse it, expresses an understanding of the spiritual dedication that goes beyond mere personal danger and involves also a degree of personal humiliation, a renunciation of self.

From the point of view of the Jewish woman, Esther's role was not honorable.

Had she married a fellow Jew and become a decent housewife in the capital or elsewhere, the feeling would have been that she was fulfilling a mitzvah (for the sake of heaven or otherwise) in a perfect, dutiful way.

The very fact that she was in the palace to begin with was, in a certain sense, the result of a chain of 'transgressions in the name of God.'

Midrashic and Talmudic literature expands this notion and penetrates deep into the problem of this total devotion."

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From Biblical Images, p. 220, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

"Esther is a complex figure, but basically she incarnates the Jewish people.

The Jewish people is always described in the Bible as having the characteristics of a woman.

Sometimes the allusion is purely mystical-for example in the Song of Songs.

But aside from mysticism. the recurrent image in the language of the Prophets is that of the bride, companion, wife of God.

Marital symbolism, as found in Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, is one of the most striking features of biblical prophecy.

It has its roots in what the mystics would later call Knesset Israel, the community of Israel, the mystical unification of the source of Jewish souls, which collectively forms the interlocutor and the "wife" of the Divinity.

The entire history of the world can be seen as a marital relationship. a more or less successful marriage of love (depending on the era) between God and Israel.

Esther is the main figure of the story of Purim, but not because she is a heroine.

Rather, she represents the Jewish people as a whole.

The Jewish people are represented as a woman, because she has two functions.

The first is the function of love: This is what the world should give to God.

The second is to preserve the home.

Home can be a specific land or the whole world, but in any case women are always defined as "the pillar of the home."

She watches over the home both in daily life and on the cosmic level.

In a certain way, the whole universe is feminine.

It is instructed to fructify, and it must undergo suffering in order to create.

This is the definition of the world itself.

The world is the womb of reality, the place where things are born.

This dual feature of passivity and creativity characterizes Esther's attitude.

At first she undergoes events and refuses to act.

Then, when she does act, she changes the course of history."

 –Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From  The Seven Lights, p. 300, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

"We can understand a computer on many levels.

The most fundamental level, the theory of how the computer operates, is extremely complex and requires specialized expertise that very few people are able to master.

But on more superficial levels, one can, with a minimum of mental abil­ity, achieve a certain mastery of the computer.

Say that we wish that the computer should multiply a two-digit number to the power of six.

The dynamics of this operation are beyond the understanding of the vast majority of people making the calculation on the computer, but the computer has an operating system that translates this process into a simple problem that most everyone can solve: Which keys do I punch?

In a similar way, the Torah is incomprehensible at its elemental level, but a great part of it translates into deeds and rules, do's and don'ts, that anyone can relate to.

Were the Torah to remain in the supernal worlds, as abstract chokhmah, it could not relate to the ordi­nary person.

But when the Torah successively reformulates itself to the point that, for example, it instructs that we must give gifts to the poor on Purim, everyone knows what to do.

One need not master the entire array of issues, from the most abstract essence of this law to the final rulings in the Shulchan Aruch (Why "gifts"? What is the defini­tion of "gift"? How much would a "gift" be? and so on).

All one needs to do is give or receive money on Purim.

Thus, the Torah links the infinite to everyday life.

It stretches upward to infinity and extends downward, step by endless step, to a level that anyone can relate to at any time, expressing the divine wisdom within the context of our reality.

And our reality is a reality graspable by the body—a reality with which the body can build an involved physical relationship—so that the soul that dwells and operates within the body can experience it, identify with it, and fuse with it.

So the Torah, while being the infinite divine wisdom, is at the same time also definitive and intelligible to man."

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From Opening the Tanya, p. 15, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

"As manifested in the Song of Songs,

love flows in waves of coming together and parting,

whether in the earthly story

as a lovers' meeting or as a search for the beloved;

or whether in the transcendent aspect

of approach

—the dis­closure of desire and the passionate mutuality of love,

or by the distancing

—as expressed by a certain hesitance or a waiting for an opportunity,

a tarrying for a stirring up of love."

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From On Being Free, p. 141 by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz.

"A body dies; there is no more life in it.

But what does this mean?

It means that its matter will now undergo a transformation—a radical one, perhaps—from a certain liv­ing creature into foodstuff for another creature.

The living cells may disintegrate into simpler elements but will be recomposed into another form of life.

Such a tremendous change is quite unlike the ordinary changes in that creature's life.

Even so, it is not an essential change: the living form has merely undergone one more change in the endless chain of alterations.

The embryo begins in a tiny ovum, a single cell of life that was fertilized. It divides and subdivides, is filled with furrows that become deeper and deeper and turn into empty bundles that gradually are filled with matter, turn into limbs, and continue to alter.

Each such change is death and life.

The previous form dies, and a new form takes shape from it.

The fish in the embryo dies and is transformed into a tailed frog, and the frog in its turn becomes some other monster, a triton or a salamander.

Then this form dies and turns into something else: a rab­bit, a falcon, a man.

This is the resurrection of the dead—not in the ordinary way, but in its precise simple and lit­eral meaning.

And when a body is born, when exactly does it begin to "live"?

It merely begins a new series of transformations, a new cycle of life and death.

Thus, when the moment of death arrives, it is but another transformation, one of many that living matter undergoes.

Now, after its death, it begins to live again, in a different form.

Surely, this sudden transformation frightens us and makes us feel sorry for the sudden disappearance of the previous form, which we knew and loved, and for its sub­stitution by a new form that is foreign and meaningless to us.

This sorrow of eternal farewell will never change; it is our subjective sorrow.

But apart from our personal, lim­ited emotions, death is but a step toward new life: strange, different, unrelated to us, but life nevertheless, just like the other life that we knew and loved.

Death is terrible, but it is terrible only from our own personal, limited viewpoint, which is attached to certain forms.

Let us, then, distance ourselves from our preference for certain forms that are close to our hearts, and try to see things from a place where everything is equally close to us, equally loved by us.

Or, in more precise words, let us try to see things from the perspective of the Creator, with Godly eyes."

 –Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From On Being Free, in "And His Tender Mercies Extend over All His Works" p. 211 by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

"When the persecuted Jewish people went into exile, they had to change their mode of living and the ways in which they sustained themselves.

Once an agricultural people, they now turned to trade and commerce.

Once free and independent, they were now subject to various lords

Once the masters of their own way of life, they now had to sway with every passing wind.

As long as they retained their independent spiritual character, their religious principles, their internal leader­ship, and their distinctive way of life, the Jewish people were never truly enslaved—at least not in the spiritual dimen­sion of their existence.

The darkness and ignorance of the Middle Ages did nothing to damage, alter, or diminish the spiritual creativity and vitality of the exiled Jewish people.

The Jew of this period was persecuted, humiliated, and despised; he had to admit to being weak and helpless in many areas of his life.

Nevertheless, his exile was never really complete, for he did not see himself as being contemptible, nor did he consider himself inferior to anyone else.

As long as he kept his own essential character, his spiritual world was not merely a comfort to him.

It was truly his home, and in this dimension of his life, the exile did not exist."

 –Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

  From On Being Free, p. 21, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz