Let My People Know

"A person must focus his consciousness"

 

All the holidays, festivals, and memorials have many features, often seen as difficult restrictions or customs, each one of which grows organically out of the fundamental idea of the sacred day to which it belongs. 

Thus, in order for a person to gain the benefit of the special day, he must concentrate his energies and focus his consciousness on this significant idea and its symbolic representations.

He has to attune himself to catch its resonance. 

The numerous and various details of the commandments then cease to be burdensome and are accepted wholly as an outer expression, the clear and specified relationship of the person with the fundamental spiritual experience.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From The Thirteen Petalled Rose by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz