FOSTERING A VIBRANT RENEWAL OF JUDAISM IN POLAND
I was born and raised in a secular family where certain wisdom and values were instilled in me from early childhood. Among them were values such as education (which is generally considered a carrier of all values), truthfulness, diligence, ambition, being compassionate, sensitiveness to beauty and many others. Both my childhood and adolescence were a happy time for me.[…]
Religion has the beautifully inherent purpose of helping us gain control and guide us in organizing what is irrational within both our spiritual and practical realms. Maimonides’ view on animal sacrifices, which was performed by the ancient Israelites in the Temple, is an illustrative example.[…]
Human beings are religious beings. This means we have a natural tendency to develop religion or something that metaphysically deals with the problematic mystery of human existence. Every time human beings want to get rid of religion something else fills this gap and becomes a new religion. This new religion is usually a political ideology, an ideologized science or a random stream of philosophy that was[…]
Human beings are more prone to be preoccupied with the negative aspects of our existence and tend to ruminate more about unpleasant events. In general, there is not much we can do about this: that’s how our brains have evolved throughout millions of years of evolution – this mechanism helped us survive in the world that was incredibly[…]
Is it possible to eliminate crime from our societies completely? Or is it possible only to eliminate one type of crime, let’s say the worst – murder? It probably is possible. What about locking all the people down in prison cells, separately. Let’s construct our societies like that. It would require three social castes: prisoners (let’s say 90% of the society), guards (9%) and various administrators and rulers[…]
How do you know if those you think are wicked are really wicked? Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said that there is no absolutely evil person in the world and no one who is absolutely good either (paraphrasing his famous saying which I quoted in my drasha a few weeks ago). Similarly, the great Kabbalist Rabbi Isaac Luria taught that every created thing possesses a “spark” of divine energy that constitutes its essence[…]
