Category: Jewish Tradition

Today’s One-Liner (#91)

It is not in our power to explain either the prosperity of the wicked or the afflictions of the righteous. –R. Yannai, in Joseph Hertz, Sayings of the Fathers 

Today’s One-Liner (#85)

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done:  and there is no new thing under the sun. –Koheleth, 1:9, King James…

Maniacal Obstinacy

I often wonder whether I have in me a single gene or drop off blood inherited from my biblical ancestors, or even from the ghettos of the old Spanish and German cities. Who knows, perhaps…

Genres

[Alexander Kluge’s two books] are sobering inventories of a catastrophe, cool, dry and therefore more gripping.  A card index of all imaginable inhumanities.  Kluge’s books consist of excerpts from diaries, telegrams, official reports, sermons of…

Soul-Power

A healthy ego is transformed into a soul only via the burden of another who must impinge on the ego, causing the ego to shrink, as it were. –Ira F. Stone, A Responsible Life: The…

Today’s One-Liner (#52)

The day is short, and the work is great, and the laborers are sluggish, and the reward is much, and the Master is urgent. –Rabbi Tarfon, in Joseph Hertz, Sayings of the Fathers (or Pirke…

Fidelity

I am not Orthodox, nor am I religiously dogmatic, and my anti-secular views are very far from any proselytizing tendencies. But I am a son of Hillel Zeitlin and a grandson of great-grandfathers… the God-experience…

Found in the Notes of Chapter 9

Pirkei Avot 4:1–“Ben Zoma states, ‘Who is wise? He who learns from all people. Who is strong? He who controls his passions. Who is rich? He who rejoices in his own lot. Who is honorable?…

Searching

It was in Kafka that Scholem discovered a kind of heretical, secular Kabbalah, a literature paradoxically at once canonical and nihilistic. With Max Brod and Walter Benjamin, Scholem saw in Kafka a deeply Jewish writer,…