"The Jewish attitude is that life in all its aspects, in its totality, must somehow or other be bound up with holiness"

"Seen as separate and unrelated command­ments, each as an individual obligation and burden, the mitzvot seem to be a vast and even an absurd assortment of petty details which are, if not downright intimidating, then at least troublesome.

What we call details, however, are only parts of greater units which in turn combine in various ways into a single entity.

It is as though in exam ining the leaves and flowers of a tree, one were to be overwhelmed by the abundance, the variety, and the complexity of detail.

But when one realizes that it is all part of the same single growth, all part of the same branching out into manifold forms of the one tree, then the details would cease to be dis turbing and would be accepted as intrinsic to the wondrousness of the whole.

A basic idea underlying Jewish life is that there are no special frameworks for holiness.

A man's relation to God is not set apart on a higher plane, not relegated to some special corner of time and place with all the rest of life taking place some where else.

The Jewish attitude is that life in all its aspects, in its totality, must somehow or other be bound up with holiness."

--Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From The Thirteen Petalled Rose by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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"We have to get rid of our preconceived and learned structures and images, which blur our real belief"

"Belief in God can be naïve and childish, or sophisticat­ed and elaborate.

The images we have of God may be non­sensical, or well constructed philosophically.

Yet the essence of this belief, when stripped of verbiage and frills, is simply: existence makes some sense.

Sometimes, one may think—probably mistakenly—that one knows exactly what that sense is, while others may just ponder it.

In any case, there is a firm belief—which precedes any kind of thought, rational and irrational—that there is some sense in things.

What we experience, through our senses or in­wardly are only disjointed pieces.

The fact that we some­how connect these particles of information stems from our a priori faith that there is a connection—because it precedes reason.

Accepting this assumption is the first, most funda­mental 'leap of faith'; not an experience, but a belief.

Of course, people would not call this 'religious belief,' nor see it as a point of faith.

Nevertheless, when analyzed properly, it becomes—for those people who are afraid of the word—frightfully close to believing in God.

This be­lief is like our belief in the existence of the world: it is the foundation of our relation to everything; indeed, on some levels, it is perhaps even more fundamental.

This deep, native belief can be found when we 'undo' our childhood training and eliminate everything we were taught about belief as children.

Then we must answer the question 'What is God?' not on a philosophical level that claims objective definitions, but as an attempt at least to under­stand 'What is God for me?'

To do this, we have to get rid of our preconceived and learned structures and im­ages, which blur our real belief. We must delve very deeply into ourselves, into our most primal thinking, indeed—to begin at the beginning."

--Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From Simple Words by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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"We are the sum total of nature, containing the macrocosm in our own microcosm"

"When God created man, God said (Genesis 1:26), 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.'

Traditionally, it is understood that God was speaking to the angels.

If so, the plan was not very successful; we are not like angels.

According to another interpretation, God was speaking to the whole of creation, to all of nature.

In that case, 'Let us make man in our image' means, 'Let each of you contribute something.'

The fox and the dove, the tiger and the sheep, the spider and the bee each contributed a small part—as did the angels and the devils.

We humans contain all the parts.

Some of us are foxier than others, or more sheepish than others, but altogether, we contain all the traits found in nature.

In that way, we are the sum total of nature, containing the macrocosm in our own microcosm.

Somehow, we have to learn from all our partners, and perhaps pray that the extra part—that "Divine spark" contributed by God—will help us make the right choices."

--Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From Simple Words by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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"Judaism does not see sexuality only as an instrument for the propagation of the human race"

"In Judaism, sex is never looked on as something wrong or shameful.

It is, on the con­trary, considered to be a high level of action poten­tially capable of bringing out the noblest attributes, not only in the realm of individual feeling, but also in the realm of holiness.

And it is nevertheless precisely because of this potential that strict re­straints are called for.

Indeed, the whole order of relations among the various worlds may be con­ceived in images of intimate engagement, a kind of sexual contact between one world and another, between one level of being and another.

That is why sexual relations themselves have an enor­mous influence on the soul.

All this, besides their primary power—to create a new human being—makes it clear why it is necessary to be extremely respectful to and solicitous about all that concerns the use of the power of sex.

In principle, Judaism does not see sexuality only as an instrument for the propagation of the human race, a means of being fruitful and multiplying."

--Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From The Thirteen Petalled Rose by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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"If anything is clear, it is that a rigid, unchanging way is wrong"

"What the Jewish sages recommend is not only a middle way, it is a rejection of extremes in terms of a clear knowledge of how to keep everything, including the extreme, in its proper place.

Consequently, in general, there are no preconceptions about what is the correct con­duct for all situations, since the correctness of a way of being is itself only measurable in terms of a specific set of circumstances that may or may not recur.

There is therefore no possibility of fixing a single standard of behavior.

If anything is clear, it is that a rigid, unchanging way is wrong.

Further­more, this principle of movement, of constant change, is the principle manifested by the soul itself in its life on earth.

To be sure, a person needs a special teacher or a great deal of guidance in order to be able always to find the right measure; usually choosing the correct way grows out of the soul's continual oscillation from one extreme to another.

This pendulum swing of experience brings about a certain synthesis somewhere in the middle — al­though too often it is an artificial middle, merely halfway between good and evil and neither one nor the other."

--Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From The Thirteen Petalled Rose by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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"A Jew will choose to die rather than cut off his soul from Klal Yisrael"

"What role does each individual Jew who lives an 'ordinary' life play in the chosen collec­tive that is Klal Yisrael?

Just as all the mitzvot and all the spiritual and moral imperatives are imposed upon every individual Jew without ex­ception, so too is the potential for greatness the heritage of every Jew.

Not only is it an attribute of the Jewish collective, but it is engraved on the being, on the soul of every single Jew.

The deepest understanding of this characteristic of each Jewish neshomah (soul) is found in the Torat HaKabbalah, the mystical aspect of Torah instruction, as it is expounded upon and interpreted through the teachings of Rabbi Schneur Zalman, founder of Chabad, who is reverently known as the Alter Rebbe.

In the Alter Rebbe's approach, the greatness of the Jewish people and their uniqueness begins with, and is composed of, the hidden strength in every Jew, no matter how low he has sunk, and no matter how sinful he be.

It is this hidden strength that makes even such a Jew ready to give up his life: to die when forced to choose between renouncing his Jewishness or losing his life.

This power to withstand the ultimate test of human endurance, to give one's life so as not to compromise the collective Jewish holiness, is the manifestation of the uniqueness of the nation as a collective, and the Jew as an individual.

This capacity is not confined to the great and the wise among our people; it is shared by every Jew, great and small, learned or illiterate, even by a Jew who has throughout his lifetime turned his back on all of the Torah imperatives and led a life virtually devoid of mitzvot.

A Jew, given the option of choosing the publicly denying of God and renouncing his Jewishness, or death, will choose to die rather than cut off his neshomah from Klal Yisrael."

--Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From The Strife of the Spirit by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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"Every child has his own true name"

"It is said that when parents give their child a name, thinking that they know exactly why they are doing so, the truth is that they don't know why they are choosing it.

And if they make a mistake and give a wrong name, the child will afterward change it because the name is not his correct one.

This attempt to define who one is spills over into the identity of every soul, which also has an appropriate name, a specific formula.

It is so for every star in the sky, too, each one with its name: 'He counts the number of the stars; He calls them all by their names . . .' (Psalm 147:4).

***

Every child has his own true name, which the parents try to hit upon when the child is born.

But if they fail, then the child will keep on searching and changing his name until the true name is discovered.

Incidentally, it is written in some books that every person has two names—the name of the sanctified self and the name of the outer shell — and that the name of the outer shell should not be known by any man, it being the name of one's other side, the unholy aspect of personality."

--Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

In The Sustaining Utterance by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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