‘‘And anyone who is not lame or blind but pretends to be as one of these, he will not die of old age before he actually becomes one of these.’’

The throughline between Italian Futurism and Zionism is that, the positivity about the future that both projected took a beating when they tried to move from theory to the creation of societies founded on their idealistic interpretations and projections of the possible futures based on their reasonable observations of reality.

I am exploring how my Jewishness relates to an interest in Christianity. It’s no secret that I like to deconstruct the boundaries between our religious traditions—in the past, I have written about the interaction between Sufism and Kabbalah, and neo-Platonism which in turn influenced Christian mystics as well.

Inspired by Purim, I took a look at a piyyut called "Kikhlot Yeini." The earliest version of it is housed in the Masekhet Purim manuscript in the Italian Biblioteca Palatina, is dated to the 14th century, and was, perhaps incorrectly, attributed to R. Shlomo Ibn Gabirol.

“WHAT is a rebel? A man who says no: but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation. He is also a man who says yes as soon as he begins to think for himself. A slave who has taken orders all his life, suddenly decides that he cannot obey some new command.”

On the 24-hour journey home from Romania, refrains from two poems were ringing in my mind. The two poems are "Corona" by Paul Celan and "Once I Was Young" by Anna Margolin.

The Torah provides short, unfinished and sometimes absurd commandments which, if not interpreted, can lead to ridiculous situations at best, or be extremely dangerous at worst.

As I came to the corner and stopped to wait for the light I was overcome with a sense of appreciation and wonder. I could feel the magnificence of creation and I was grateful that I got to be a part of it for a brief moment in eternity.

עפּעס אַ ביסל מאָדנע איז געשען מיט זיך אַלײן די וואָך: איך האָב אַנטדעקט מײַן אינטערעס אין קריסטלעכקײט.

“The plain meaning of abstinence is to bridle the inner lusts and to refrain from something that one has the ability and opportunity for due to a reason which obligates this. It is said: "the abstainer is one who has the power but does not use it".’’

Time has an absolute limit on what can actually come of our efforts and choices have to be made, but as we make choices, we whittle away at the range of our potential accomplishments.

Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote in his Nobel Prize banquet speech that “nothing fits a ghost better than a dying language. The deader the language the more alive is the ghost. Ghosts love Yiddish, and as far as I know, they all speak it.”

The Natziv says here that God has not only drowned the Egyptian societal structure which was based on hierarchy, but also the arrogance of it. This arrogance, with which we speed forward, has now pushed us to the brink of a great unknown. Our Torah portion puts limits on this arrogance, in the face of the sea, the natural strength which finally drowns mastery. 

With practice we can be perfectly sane and able to access the ideas in Jewish mysticism without losing ourselves.

The divine must find a way to communicate itself to human beings, even though for humans to really understand the divine would be impossible.

"The soul of every formed being, and the soul of every being yet to be formed." 

Instead of treating the letters as ideas to study, we treated them as something you can rest on, as though the alphabet itself could become a floor beneath the soul.

It is fascinating to me how Celan’s lack of clarity leads readers to assume that he is talking about the Holocaust indirectly. How can this be the case, that lack of clarity leads us to an obvious explanation?

Don’t be fooled by the lightness and indiscretion of the poetry, because this is what props open the door for the honest conversation with God and tradition that Joelle seeks.

Within Judaism we have a range of approaches to certainty.