Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel - Radical Amazement
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Never once in my life did I ask God for success or wisdom or power or fame. I asked for wonder, and he gave it to me.
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The grandeur or mystery of being is not a particular puzzle to the mind, as, for example, the cause of volcanic eruptions. We do not have to go to the end of reasoning to encounter it. Grandeur or mystery is something with which we are confronted everywhere and at all times. Even the very act of thinking baffles our thinking.
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The grandeur of nature is only the beginning. Beyond the grandeur is God.
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The Sabbath is the presence of God in the world, open to the soul of man. God is not in things of space but in moments of time.
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Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. ....get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.
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Philosophy of religion must be an effort to recall and to keep alive the meta-symbolic relevance of religious terms. Religious thinking is in perpetual danger of giving primacy to concepts and dogmas and to forfeit the immediacy of insights, to forget that the known is but a reminder of God, that the dogma is a token of God's will, the expression the inexpressible at its minimum. Concepts, words must not become screens; they must be regarded as windows.
Martin Buber - Existentialism
Every particular Thou is a glimpse through to the Eternal Thou; by means of every particular Thou the primary word addresses the Eternal Thou.
Meet the world with the fullness of your being and you shall meet God.
When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.
Creation is the origin, redemption the goal. But revelation is not a fixed, dated point poised between the two. The revelation at Sinai is not this midpoint itself, but the perceiving of it, and such perception is possible at any time.
Rabbi Harold Schulweis - Predicate Theology
The Divine predicates are those values and qualities which through human effort unite to satisfy the needs of man. These divine qualities are not invented but are discovered in society.
Traditionally we recite, “Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melekh HaOlam…” Blessed is the Subject, our God, Ruler of the Universe, for providing something to us. This formulation is passive. Rabbi Schulweis reconfigures the traditional blessing: “Brukhah elohut ha-motziah lehem min ha-aretz. Blessed is Elohut which brings forth bread from the earth. The prayer form celebrates the reverent acknowledgment of those values and qualities which through human effort unite to satisfy the needs of man.
We are an old-new people and we require old-new ways to renew our connection with our ancestors’ faith. From Elohim to Elohut is not a path away but towards our spiritual renewal and reconciliation.