Desire; Will

My daughter was hoping that I'd detect some excuse in the fine print on the wrapper, but I found no visible certification. "I'm sorry, Sarah," I said, handing it back to her after a careful search. "I just don't see any kosher mark."

There is good and there is evil, blessing and curse, light and darkness; now choose. Not much of a choice, is it? So what's all this talk about "freedom of choice"?

When the two neighbors would pass each other in the yard, the scholar would throw the crass materialist a look of contempt and hurry on to his holy pursuits

The connection between "Honor your father and your mother" and "Do not covet... anything of your fellow's": both straddle the distinction we commonly make between the human and the divine, the physical and the metaphysical, between desire and deed

The Kabbalists describe a cosmic drama which repeats itself each year, as the world "falls asleep" on the eve of Rosh Hashanah and is "awakened" the following morning by the sound of the shofar.

If G-d is G-d, then obviously He is in no way altered or affected by His creations. But if a world full of people means nothing to Him, why did He create one?

With a final leap and twist, Reb Shmuel Munkes dumped the roasted lung into the spittoon, and broke out in a merry k'zatzkeh dance

We "raise" our children, "climb" the ladders of our careers, "rise" to life's occasions, think "highly" of people we admire, "aspire" to high ideals, regard "heaven" as representative of all that is good and "lofty". Why all this uppity talk?

In each moment of life, a door opens through which we can step out of the fantasy and plug our world into the realm of reality. Eventually, we create the ultimate interactive game (that's right, we're still in beta)

According to the ancient mystics, all actions of man -- indeed all workings of creation -- derive from two general forces: love and awe. More specifically, there is "lower awe", "lower love", "higher love", and "higher awe" -- in that order