Debating with G-d

Doesn't G‑d already know what we're going to say?

As a mother, I see myself as a gatekeeper of my children’s innocence. I do my best to protect them, body, mind, and soul. But life has a way of incessantly usurping my control over the content to which they are exposed...

"The Rebbe must know something we do not," whispered disciples of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev. "Perhaps he sees a terrible calamity decreed for the coming year, G-d forbid"

Ours is a generation notorious for its brazenness and audacity. But even the most ostensibly negative trailt, the Rebbe insisted, has a positive application...

Every time He's asked the million-dollar question, He refuses to answer it

We cannot accept the cowardly theology that G-d is not responsible -- that anything that happens in the world that doesn't mesh with our idea of His goodness is just an amoral and indifferent act of nature...

They asked the Baal Shem Tov: "The Talmud tells us that for every thing G-d forbade, He provided us something permissible. What did He permit that corresponds to the sin of heresy?" Replied the Besht : "Acts of kindness"

"She constantly criticizes me . Nothing I do for her is ever good enough. She has no respect for me and no gratitude for all that I provide for her. Where is the trust and loyalty she pledged when we married?"

We were close enough to talk. To scream. To hear each other’s cries. Close enough for me to hear him say, “I’m going to die.” And close enough for him to hear me say, “I love you.”

“It is true,” announced R. Leib, “that according to the law the plaintiff must take his suit to the defendant’s locale; but since in this case ‘there is no place devoid of His presence,’ we will try the case here in Shpoli . . .”