If you’re looking for a silver lining in these years of chaos and rancor, consider this: We now know, beyond a shadow of doubt, that the calvary ain’t coming. We know that our elected officials, our pundits, our philanthropists, our self-appointed intellectual and moral betters can’t save us from sliding further and deeper into discontent. Only we can redeem us, and we can do it by working together in ways that shun the stentorian tones of absolute truths and that seek instead, like Rabbi Yehoshua did, to see each other’s humanity, each other’s flaws, each other’s suffering.
–Liel Leibovitz, How the Talmud Can Change Your Life: Surprisingly Modern Advice from a Very Old Book, 221
