"The existence of the world is composed of the shadows of the divine reality"

"The statement that 'everything is of no reality whatever in His presence' means that God exists whether or not the world exists, whether it has or has not yet been created.

The world's existence in no way conceals the divine presence.

The simplest, most primary, and most undeveloped understanding of the verse 'The world is filled with His glory' is that God's glory permeates everything like the air that fills a room.

A more sophisticated conception of this verse is that 'there is no other than He' —that all reality that is visible to us, with its many aspects, is only He.

For example, some pictures, like those of M. C. Escher, confuse foreground and background.

The more one focuses, the less sure one is whether one is looking at a black image on a white background or vice versa.

A similar question, with several layers of meaning, is whether a letter is defined by the black of the letter itself or by the white that surrounds it.

(In regard to a Torah scroll, this question acquires a halakhic aspect, for its sanctity extends to the parchment itself.)

In general, we experience the world as the foreground and divinity as its background.

But on the level where 'everything is no reality whatever in His presence,' we attempt to see the world differently.

Rather than perceiving the divine in the background, filling all spaces between things, we look at the things of the world as spaces in the midst of divine Being.

Previously, we may have thought of a real world in whose unreachable shadows God dwells.

Now, to the contrary, we consider that the existence of the world is composed of the shadows of the divine reality."

--Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From Understanding the Tanya by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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"When a person builds the sanctuary of God in his life, he must include its holy courtyards"

"Every part of a person's life, even if he is not aware of it at the moment, contributes to a sum total of holiness—not only when he stands within the four cubits of halakhah but also when he is engaged in other activities and has other matters on his mind.

A person can arrive in one way or another from every sphere of his being to the divine light, splitting apart the darkness from one end of the universe to the other and making himself an abode where God may dwell.

When a person builds the sanctuary of God in his life, he must include its holy courtyards.

Then even if he does not succeed in bringing all of reality to the innermost chamber of holiness, he will at the very least be able to bring it to the courtyards of the House of God."

--Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From Understanding the Tanya by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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"Each soul understands and does things in a way not suitable for another soul"

"Divine service in the world is divided up, with each human being, like the primordial Adam, put in charge of a certain portion of God's garden, to work it and keep it.

It is said that in the Torah there are seventy faces which are the seventy faces of the divine Shekhinah, and that these contain six hun­dred thousand faces in accordance with the number of primary souls of Israel, so that every individual soul has a certain part in the Torah.

In other words, each soul understands and does things in a way not suitable for another soul.

Everyone can and should learn from others the proper way of doing things, but in the end each person has to follow his own winding path to the goal that is his heart's desire.

Some lives have an emotional emphasis.

Others, an intellectual.

For some the way of joy is natural.

For others existence is full of effort and struggle.

There are people for whom purity of heart is the most difficult thing in the world, while for others it is given as a gift from birth."

--Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From The Thirteen Petalled Rose by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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"My little wrongdoing is as important as my whole life"

"Just as nothing is too big for God, so, too, nothing is too small for God.

Nothing is insignificant or small enough to go unnoticed, because God has an all-encom­passing view that contains absolutely everything.

There­fore, the belief that something is so insignificant that it can escape God's attention is worse than blasphemy: it is nonsense.

The very notion of facing the Infinite means facing it down to the last detail, and the tiniest detail be­comes as significant as one's whole being.

But does God care at all?

Why should God care?

For me, as a human being, my life, my business, or my gold­fish may be very important; but I am limited in every sense, and therefore many things bother or gladden me.

God is infinite; why should the Almighty care for the whole universe, as huge as it may seem to me?

It is very difficult to give an answer on God's behalf; but we can say that He obviously does care.

For some in­explicable reason, God bothered to create the world, and form quite elaborate rules (which we call "laws of nature") for its functioning—and that means that God cares.

The world may be, for God, a plaything or an experiment—but He bothered to have it.

Since the world exists, one cannot say that God is so vast as not to be aware of it, and in some way, care for it.

Therefore, if I do something wrong, my little wrongdo­ing is as important as my whole lifetime, and my barely expressed thought is as significant as the most glorious epic poem.

The cry of a little child weeping in bed is as audible to God as what the President of the United States says in a public address transmitted from coast to coast.

It is only the idolatry of making God in a finite size, with finite knowledge, that gives rise to the question, 'Does God care?' with all its ensuing confusion."

--Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From Simple Words by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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"If five billion people cry out in prayer, or if one little child prays, they are heard equally"

"It is a basic mathematical fact that compared to infinity, every other number is zero, and every other size is equal.

One million, or two thou­sand quadrillion, when compared to infinity, are both ex­actly zero.

Theologically, saying that God is infinite means that all the details become equally insignificant, regardless of their size.

In that sense, a galaxy, with all the gigantic stars it contains, is exactly equal to the small­est particles of an atom.

Therefore, if it makes any sense for God to care about what happens to a galaxy, it makes exactly the same amount of sense for God to care about what happens to a blade of grass.

Compared to God, they are of exactly the same magnitude.

If God cares for the whole universe (which, however big it may be, is still limited), then all its little parts are of equal importance in God's eyes.

If one thousand people, a hundred thousand people, or five bil­lion people cry out in prayer, or if one little child prays, they are heard equally.

The number does not make any dif­ference.

When the stars sing, or a little bird sings, they are all heard equally."

--Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From Simple Words by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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"Walking through life is like wandering in a labyrinth"

"The questions which bring most people to Faith are, in the very simplest words, "What is the meaning of all this? What is the pur­pose?"

These are questions that, basically, do not have an­swers—unless one makes the leap of faith.

Each of us asks our own question in our own way, at our own time.

Some­times, questions are asked in a moment of crisis, but of­ten, in the midst of ordinary life, a person will say to himself:

"I have a busy life; I do things, I run from place to place, I live, I eat, I go through the motions, but where am I running to? What is the meaning and purpose of all this?"

Then the search for an answer begins.

Walking through life is like wandering in a labyrinth, constantly probing and searching for the opening, the an­swer to that riddle.

It is depressing enough when we feel that we are not getting anywhere, but the deepest despair is when one knows that the labyrinth has no way out, that one will wander aimlessly from corridor to corridor until death.

We do not always think about meaning and pur­pose, but when this question does come to awareness, it becomes a haunting, gnawing pain.

We want a response to our deep existential questions, and we want a nontrivial answer.

We have trivial, temporary answers—too many of them. "I am here to make money" and "I am here to de­vour as many hamburgers as possible" may be purposes, but they are not fulfilling ones.

The very concept of purpose is essentially a religious statement, and the quest for purpose is a spiritual journey."

--Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From Simple Words by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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"We do indeed believe in thousands of things--some of them pure nonsense"

"The decades or centuries of belief come and go, to be replaced by periods of skepticism or indifference, and then, by a profound change in the attitude toward faith.

In an age of faith, it is easy to believe.

In fact, in such an age, faith does not even require any belief.

In certain times and places, one could not even speak about belief in God; it was a simple, self-evident fact.

Not believing in God was a little more bizarre than doubting that the earth is round.

Generally, we accept the dictates of society almost without noticing.

We take things for granted, we jump to conclusions, and we accept common knowledge and every­day realities unchallenged.

None but the most abstract philosopher would doubt the existence of his own nose. However, when it comes to Faith with a capital F, things become more difficult; many people just cannot accept it.

Our times are clearly different. Our fin de siècle is not an age of Faith.

Incidentally, we are not in an age of ratio­nality or skepticism either, but rather in a time of credulity.

We do indeed believe, or half-believe, in thou­sands of things—some of them pure nonsense—but not in Faith, in the capital F sense.

There is a Jewish anecdote about two students who went for a walk in the woods, and happened to be in the line of fire of a hunter.

When the shots whizzed over their heads, they were frightened and fell down, imagining that they were hit.

After some time, one of them raised his head cautiously, saying, "It seems that we are still alive."

To which his friend responded, "And what is the basis for this assumption?"

Surely, most people would not go that far.

The difference between the two levels of faith—faith in conventional wisdom, and faith in God—is not grounded in any psychological disparity, but rather in societal norms.

When a person says that he is a nonbeliever, it is not a very accurate statement.

A real nonbeliever would not get out of bed.

If he did get out of bed, he would not take a step, because almost everything that we do depends on hundreds or thousands of beliefs, from believing that the sun will rise tomorrow to believing that salt is still salty."

--Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From Simple Words by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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