Let My People Know

Rabbi Steinsaltz: “Feet of clay.”

When man himself is the measure and gauge of everything, judgment has no real meaning, for there is no objective external standard.

What is worse, when man ascends to the seat of authority, he faces the test of being an all-powerful god who establishes what is good and what is evil in accordance with his own will.

This god who is called “man” not only has feet of clay, points of weakness here and there; he is entirely caught up in a fundamental contradiction between ordered, defined creation (the “Universe of Rectification” in kabbalistic terminology) and the influence of the depths of the soul (the “Universe of Chaos”), whose desire is death, ruin, and self-destruction.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz