“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

"What is it that is more precious than anything else to a person?

Money? Pleasure? Power?

As the Talmud story of Rabbi Abahu describes: His face shone with great beauty and joy because he had come upon a new explanation to an old Mishnaic text.

The soul's fulfillment causes a radiance to shine forth from a person.

The priestly blessing says: "May the Lord let His counte­nance shine upon thee" (Numbers 6:25).

What does this mean?

After all, God looks upon all men on earth, and His Presence is always with us.

But He does not always smile —and the invocation to let His face shine upon us is the expression for such a need.

When we meet someone we love in the street, there is no need for words; 

immediately there is the smile of the heart's recognition.

The eyes speak before the tongue has found words.

The inner light is readily emitted."

 –Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From In the Beginning, p.281, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

"There are two kinds of secrets in the world, make-believe secrets and real secrets.

A make-believe secret is one that depends on its concealment; it is shrouded in mystery.

Such a secret relies on darkness and the unknown.

So long as it remains hidden, it arouses interest, but when it is revealed, the mystery vanishes and the secret loses its fascination.

Such is the secret of the trickster and the charlatan, the stage magician and the mystigogue; their spell lies in the undisclosed, the mysterious wrapping.

When the inner content or the trick becomes apparent, the magic disappears.

Such is not the case with a real secret.

A real secret can be open and apparent to everyone.

All can see the matter clearly and examine it from all sides.

Nevertheless, the more it is looked at and examined, the more of a secret it becomes, profound and insoluble.

The story in the first part of the Book of Genesis is very well-known — children learn it at school, adults read about Adam in the Garden in many books — and still it remains a

secret.

And the more the extremely simple words of the Bible text are studied, the more numerous the aspects of riddle and mystery.

Thousands of interpretations have al­ready been written on Genesis, all trying to explain, reveal, and decipher the story—and still the secret remains inviola­ble, because the secret of the Torah is a real secret.

As greater illumination is turned on it, new facets of inscrutability become apparent.

Consequently, additional contemplation or study of the story in Genesis does not propose to reveal the mystery of the secret or to make it more simple and comprehensible, but rather to disclose it further, to reveal additional sides to it.

Every deepening of inquiry merely shows how these short, plain sentences lead to another intersection from which innumerable paths branch out, paths which a person can continue to trod all the days of his life."

 –Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From In the Beginning, "Introduction," by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

"The concept of time in the Jewish way of thinking is not one of a linear flow.  

Time is a process, in which past, present, and future are bound to each other, not only by cause and effect but also as a harmonization of two motions:  progress forward and a countermotion backward, encircling and returning.  

It is more like a spiral, or a helix, rising up from Creation.  

There is always a certain return to the past; and the past is never a condition that has gone by and is no more, but rather one that continually returns and begins again at some significant point whose significance changes constantly according to changing circumstances.  

There is thus a constant reversion to basic patterns of the past, although it is never possible to have a precise counterpart of any moment of time."

 –Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From The Thirteen Petalled Rose, p. 74, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

"Adam and Eve had profound attraction to each other as a result of the fact that they were once one.

Two halves who seek to reunite is the essence of  life and love, not the desire to know the other but to know one's self, to make for wholeness."

 –Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

 From In The Beginning , p 220, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

"In the last moments of Rabbi Schneur Zalman's life, as he was fleeing Napoleon and taking refuge in a cabin in an out-of-the-way Russian village called Pyena, he asked his grandson, "What do you see?"

His grandson replied, "I see the cabin, the wooden wall, the beam in the ceiling."

R. Schneur Zalman answered him, "And at this moment, I see only Divinity!"

A person who sees only divinity is no longer a participant in the game of the world.

For him, the world is no longer a world, for it no longer conceals divinity.

Even the greatest tzaddikim need at least the possibility of not seeing divinity directly.

That clear sight will consti­tute the reality of the end of days, when people will see that "This is our God!"

Then there will no longer be any meaning to concepts such as free will or eternal life.

The present structure will melt away and lose all its meaning, and the world will become a transformed reality where nothing is hidden."

 –Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From Learning from the Tanya, p. 170, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz 

"The Bible and the other literary creations of the Jews, such as Aggadah and the Kabbalah, abound with anthropomorphisms of all kinds, not only in relation to the deity but in every sort of description.

This humanization of the world's re­ality, both of the objects and creatures lower than man and of those higher, are among the pro­foundly consistent aspects of the use of the holy tongue.

As one of the sages expressed it: The soul describes everything according to the configura­tion of its mansions, which is the body.

In other words, the world is conceptualized and its objects described by a system of metaphors based on the human body.

The language thus "raises the low­ly" by images like "the head [top] of the mountain" and "the foot of the mountain"; and it "brings down the high" by descriptions such as the "seat" of the Almighty, the "hand" of God, the "eye" of the Lord, and the like.

This use of plastic imagery and symbols is so characteristic of the language that it is hard to find a sentence in the Scriptures that is not constructed on the basis of metaphorical description rather than of abstract conceptualization.

Imagery-bound concepts are to be found everywhere, in almost every paragraph of the books of law and jurispru­dence as well as in poetry and literature, and serve primarily, and most strikingly, to describe all that pertains to the holy.

Precisely because of this prevalence of meta­phorical statement, and the widespread use of fig­ures of speech drawn from the human image, it becomes all the more necessary to emphasize that they are allegorical truths and not actual descrip­tions of reality.

For there was a certain danger that the word pictures, or imagistic descriptions, of sacred symbols in the Bible — and even more so in the Kabbalah — could lead to a crude material appre­hension of the divine essence and of the higher reality."

 –Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

 From The Thirteen Petalled Rose, p112, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

"A trait that is found among Jews, which is actually essential to their existence, is a high degree of stubbornness.

From this we may understand that every Jew who did not have the ability to cling—stubbornly, steadfastly, ceaselessly—to his identity, his faith, the structural pattern of his life, would not have had the ability to continue to exist, or at least to continue existing as a Jew.

This stubbornness is part of the structural makeup, the essential nature, of the Jew.

In principle, it is this obduracy—'for it is a stiff-necked people' (Exodus, 32:9, 34:9; Deuteronomy 9:13, 10:16)—that is the basis for the hold on the very essence of being a Jew, of remaining a Jew, and, in another sense, of remaining alive at all.

However, like all other character traits, it does not confine itself only to the sphere of beliefs and opinions, but pervades all other aspects of the mind and of life.

So a person whose stubbornness and persistence are no longer directed at maintaining Judaism still retains these qualities but directs them to other aims—either to business and material success, or to intellectual enterprises and so on."

 –Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From We Jews, p. 70, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz 

"The Talmud is unique in that no student can master it fully without taking an active part in the creative process.

He must be responsive to questions and answers, be able to sense instinctively how a subject will develop, and be ready at any time to move the discussion in a certain direction.

A true scholar is therefore always part of the Talmud, himself creating through his study and his own innovations.

There was good cause for the demand made of every scholar that he not only study but also introduce new interpretations, since in creating something new he increases his understanding of the source and becomes capable of continuing it.

Not every scholar is capable of independent interpretation.

The solitary scholar who makes his own discoveries will very often find that his views have already been recorded by the scholars of previous generations.

But, unlike other spheres of knowledge, talmudic study does not insist that interpretations be original and innovative.

To a certain extent every scholar tries to prove that his own revelations are not totally new but are implied in the remarks of his predecessors.

There is no greater glory for a scholar than to find that the thought he has developed independently has already been formulated by others before him, since this constitutes sound proof that his methods of study have not exceeded the bounds of true knowledge and are a continuation of talmudic thought itself."

 –Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

 From The Essential Talmud,  p.264, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

"The difficulty in reaching a reliable definition of 'who is a Jew' is understandably connected with the more basic problem of 'what is a Jew.'

An abstract definition of Judaism that would be both meaningful and inclusive is not at all easy.

Such an endeavor, to determine the basic principles of Judaism, has never been able to get very far, not only because the number of such basic principles is so great that they no longer serve to define anything, and also because an abstraction of Judaism cannot demonstrate its singularity.

It is true that the Maimonides’ thirteen articles of faith do have considerable positive value in this respect and do manage to distinguish the Jewish religion from others.

Nevertheless, even these do not provide a conclusive, positive depiction of a Jew.

More precisely, if we examine the more abstract principles, these define many frontiers of the Jewish religion but not its essence.

And if we insist on finding the principle of faith in the Torah that we possess, then, in fact, all the details of the Torah are brought in.

In this case, there is certainly unity, but again it is not an abstract definition.

Not in vain have sages claimed that a genuine definition of Judaism that would be both meaningful and really Jewish was not possible through any listing of a number of principles, but rather required a wide grasp of certain essentials: the acceptance of the Torah and what this involved in terms of the mitzvot, the whole structure of Halakhah, and the study of certain volumes of thought.

And yet even such very broad qualifications do not bring  us closer to a precise definition.

Even the sages of the Talmud spoke of various such attempts to base the whole Torah on a limited number of principles (e.g., Shabbat 31a, Makot 24a). But ultimately these principles, no matter how splendid and satisfying they are, cannot define Judaism.

Always a significant truth had to be added: that all this referred to matters of religious practice that belonged to a specific kind of Judaism.

In short, there was no way of getting to the essence of Judaism by any abstract definition.

Neither a minimalistic religious determination nor general humanistic qualifications had the capacity of defining the specificity of the Jews.

Such minimalistic definitions may be valued for all religions or for no religion at all, but they do not really define anything.

Therefore, too, the attempt to define the Jews as a religious entity cannot serve its purpose because the more detailed and specific the qualification of the Jewish religion, the less one finds Jews who follow it, while any attempt to define the religion as that which includes all or most of the Jews would be empty of all content, and certainly of 'Jewish' content.

The more basic issue here is the question of whether it is possible to call Judaism a religion in the ordinary sense of the word."

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From We Jews, p. 43, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

"An abstract, clean-cut, primal nature, a true self, pos­sibly does not exist at all.

Finding the true self is not just a question of whether it is possible to undress completely, or whether undressing reveals a greater truth; there is also a need to understand whether this undressing is any kind of an achievement.

Is the creature who was stripped of everything better?

Is a person who reveals naked, shame­less desire superior?

Should passion be sublimated, to use Freud's expression?

Should it be changed and dressed?

Is that changed, dressed, more formal creature not superior to the other one?

One story that deals with this complex notion is the story of an encounter between Rabbi Akiva and the Ro­man ruler of Palestine, Tinneus Rufus (whom the Jews nicknamed Tyrannus Rufus).

The two leaders had a philosophical dispute, which on the one hand was con­nected with the spiritual collapse of paganism in

Rome it­self, and on the other, with the political friction between the Jewish population and the Roman rulers.

The Roman asked Rabbi Akiva which is superior: na­ture, or what people make of it—that is, what God does, or the handicraft of man.

Rabbi Akiva immediately answered, "What humans do is superior to what God does."

So the Roman asked, "Can man create Heaven and earth?"

"No," said Akiva, "we cannot create Heaven and earth, but when we speak about things that human beings can do, we do it better.

Look at a stalk of flax on the one hand, and the piece of linen cloth that is made from it; look at a sheaf of wheat, and look at a loaf of bread.

Which is superior?"

When the Roman came to this impasse, he asked, "Tell me, why are you circumcised?"

So Akiva answered, "I told you, what man does is better than what God does."

Tinneus Rufus wanted to make the point that the nat­ural world is superior, thus negating one of the basic premises of Judaism, that humans, too, bear a responsi­bility for this world, and that they are supposed, and even commanded, to make it better.

Rabbi Akiva did not allow him to develop his idea.

The Rabbi was not making a joke, nor was his just a tactical move.

Rabbi Akiva's stance has broad implications.

The natural object is not necessarily the superior object.

The natural creature it­self, the naked creature, is not always the superior crea­ture."

 –Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From Simple Words, p.155-156, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

"Everybody is for the unity of the Jewish people.

That’s obvious.

But just how important is it?

If I don’t consider the little divisions of my small synagogue to be of supreme importance, the unity cannot become real.

When the point of unity is not an important one, the result can be war.

The American Civil War, for example, was about unity.

In the beginning it was not a war about slavery, but a war about unity.

An undivided nation was so important as to go to war for it, and to fight your own people for it, and to kill your own people for it.

That means it was important.

So if unity is important, sometimes you have to fight your own rabbis, to fight your own leaders and many others, in order to push them.

You can push toward it.

If there is enough push, there will be some results.

But it depends very much on how much importance you give to unity."

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From We Jews, p. 34-35, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

"There are countless examples in which Jews, in any place whatsoever, have initiated, participated in, and been the leaders not only of campaigns, but of entire movements of freedom, of liberation from suffering—in other words, movements that attempt to reach some degree of redemption.

The huge percentage of Jews participating in revolutionary movements is a phenomenon that does not need much proof.

In fact, over the past few centuries, there has hardly been a revolutionary movement in which Jews did not take an active part.

Even in places where the proportion of Jews in the population was small, the part they played in revolutionary movements was immeasurably great.

If we examine it, we shall see that the focal point of all these movements is the desire to better the existing situation and to improve reality, whether it applies to national liberation or social liberation, whether these are movements that work in an extreme and revolutionary manner or whether they try to gain their objectives through teaching, influence, help, or support.

They may be peace movements or movements for the liberation of the spirit; movements to improve the condition of starving, sick, and suffering people; or, beyond these, movements to improve the environment, to reform the world, to redeem reality in general.

As we have pointed out, one may indeed find an impressive percentage of Jews—including initiators and leaders—in movements of all kinds that apparently have nothing in common.

Jews have participated with enthusiasm and great devotion in leftist movements, but also in revolutionary movements that were explicitly rightist. Jews have participated in and been active in movements that were essentially cosmopolitan, but, no less so, in liberation movements that were national and partisan.

Jews have been active in many movements that were materialistic and atheistic by definition, but no less so in movements that had a deeply religious trend, not specifically Jewish.

What these movements have in common is not their particular ideology, but their being a general dream of redemption, that same dream that springs from seeing distress and understanding the need, from the denial of servitude and the wish to bring some part of the world—a state or a nation or a certain race—to a higher level.

In other words, the dream contains the intention and the desire to bring redemption to the world."

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From We Jews, p. 103

"It has been said that Israel is destined to be a light unto the nations.

This task is like the action of a candle.

The candle makes no effort to combat the darkness; it does not go from place to place to shed its light.

Its sole function is to burn with a little flame of its own, and without ulterior motive, it casts a light which dispels shadows.

"Israel has no purposeful duty other than to be itself as a candle, to give forth light and let persons who are drawn to it come and become part of it.

Count Potozki was a rather famous convert to Judaism, a Polish aristocrat with lands and fortune.

He was burned at the stake in Vilna and his buried ashes became a holy place.

One of the many anecdotes attributed to him was his response to the frequently asked question: Dear Count, if you really wish to be a decent person, or even a religious man, we could understand, but why on earth should you want to be a Jew?

His answer was based on the Midrash that the Torah was originally offered to all the peoples of the earth and only the Jews accepted it.

Furthermore, as it is written in the Bible, the choice remains open for all men: 'Because not only with you alone do I make this covenant, I make it with those who are here this day before the Lord and with those who are not here with us today' (Deuter­onomy 29:13-14).

In fact, the covenant is an eternal bond with all the generations of those who choose to be of Israel.

When those of the nations are drawn to the covenant, they convert; when Jews feel that they do not wish to be a part of it, they leave the fold.

From this it follows that one of the reasons for the Exile is to enable the Jews to wander among the peoples of the earth and gather up these isolated sparks."

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

 From In the Beginning, p. 79-80

"A passage in the Zohar says that with one thought were all the worlds created, and it is a matter of looking out and seeing to the end of all time in one survey.

That is, the worlds are not confined only to space.

All the generations of time are included.

All of reality in all the worlds comes from one original thought, the point concentrating past, present, and future.

Thereafter there is the breakdown into detail, into the specific things which make up the worlds in all their levels.

This idea can be likened to scanning a three-dimensional object overall from a distance and then, only as one enters into it can one recognize details and measure the length,breadth, and height.

At first there is the one all-inclusive survey of the whole.

Afterward details become apparent.

In fact, the closer one gets to the lower levels, the more particulars become available.

And if we could conceive the notion of regarding a four-dimensional world, with time as the additional dimension, then we could have some idea of what is meant by the single thought that created the universe."

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From In the Beginning by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz