"For certain people the pursuit of truth is an inner need.
We cannot go to sleep until we find out what truth is.
For us, truth is not a trivial matter such as what is the length of my trousers; it is something that we cannot live without.
And in this sense, it is deeply connected to our philosophy and to our faith.
The first sentence in Maimonides’ great halachic work is a good summary of this issue.
He says there that there is one level which is the highest, and there is nothing higher than it:
God alone is truth; nothing else can be called truth.
The search for truth, then, is the search for the Divine essence within this world.
This is what we are really looking for."
--Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
From "The Pursuit of Truth," a lecture by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, to girls' school in Kiev
