There is a difference between “telling the truth” and “telling the whole truth.” I think of that old Peter Sellers routine where he walks up to the register at a hotel and sees a dog lying beside the desk. He looks at the clerk and asks, “Does your dog bite?”…...
A famous rabbi asked the Lubliner Hasidim: “Why do so many thousands come to you and not to me? I have learned more Talmud than you, and I can discourse on the Halakhah more profoundly?” The Lubliner replied: “I am likewise surprised at the multitudes who come. Who am...
An ancient Jewish parable: A king sent forth several armies against his enemies, one of them under his son’s command. The son loved his father deeply, and concerned himself only with pleasing him, rather than with his own glory. Hence the victory of his army gave him...
Rabbi Moshe Leib (1745-1807) of Sassov (now Ukraine) has often been compared to St. Francis, whom the Hasidim call a “Catholic Chasid.” He is famous for saying “He who cannot suck the boils of a child sick with the plague has not gone half-way up the heights of love...
“We live under the illusion that if we can acquire complete control, we can understand God or we can write the great American novel. But the only way we can brush against the hem of the Lord or hope to be part of the creative process, is to have the… To access...
“Come back to your heart, and from there, to God, for the path is not long from your heart to God. All of the difficulties that are troubling you come from what is outside of you, you who are the exile of your own heart. You let yourself be moved… To access...
