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.

The radical act of freedom is withdrawal, destroying the system by simply exiting the game. Freedom might be as simple as… walking away.  

Hermann Cohen suggested that the concepts of sin, atonement and Teshuvah in Judaism were the actual vehicles through which this transformation occurs.

“In a Bohemian household you have immediacy to all the arts so that you are going to have some aspect of music, poetry, painting, and also the decoration of things at the same level. The minute they’re picked up, it is part of the thing that you do.”

Why should art be clear? Why should art be clear when life and experience are not?

There are times when the soul needs a boundary of protection that doesn’t harden into armor. A container that doesn’t become a cage. A protected space that still has breath in it.

Any viewer of The Matrix understands the idea that our constant need to conform prevents us from asking questions which might undermine the entire existence we choose to give in to. It is always the very few who dare to dig underneath.