I do not want to deliver a sermon that would be written somewhere in heaven.
Or, in the words of the Kotsker Rebbe: “Other rabbis want to speak so that their words can reach the sky; I want to speak so that my words will reach the stomach”—in pupik arein, as he said in Yiddish.
I do not want to offer sparkling words about Torah and Halakhah or mysticism, or about what can and has been done, but rather to infect all of you with the feeling that time is so short, and the work is so great, and
how can anyone be idle, how can anyone say, “I am not trying to do something.”
–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz