Transcendence & Immanence

Meaningful experiences are a compromise. Transcendental ones leave you in the dust. There’s a third way to get to G‑d, the one you would least expect.

A borderline birth

When the world was made, G-d was left with two lights: A light of boundless energy that encompasses all things and gives them being, but transcends them, and a penetrating light that vitalizes all things but is limited and darkened by them. The first ...

To successfully escape from prison, you need someone on the outside pulling for you. Take it from Jacob, who wouldn't be found dead in Egypt.

Somewhere there is a boundary, a line that separates the near from the far, the within from the without. If you can straddle that line, if you can stand with one foot inside and the other foot outside, you can be both

On the awesome day of Rosh Hashanah, G-d shifts into transcendent mode. "The Throne of Judgment," our sages call it. Our mission: to re-awaken the flow of energy to the cosmos. To re-engage G-d

We're in this world. It seems real to us, but it's really an ingenious charade designed to make us think that it's real, act as if it's real, and thus allow it to feed on our vitality (didn't I see this in a movie somewhere?)

Solitary and without friend/ Is he/ Therefore/ Every man/ Is his brother

The paradox of the flame's life: its attachment to wick and fuel in the lamp sustains both its continued existence and its incessant striving for oblivion

Torah study or prayer? Man or Woman? A transcendent perspective or an emphatic view? Two pathways through life, and two consolations in the future redemption...