Musings and Bemusings on American Judaism

God may be not only an answer but a question.

Faith may be not an arrival but a journey.

Traveling may be not only the journey but knowing when to pause.

Traditions are the shorthand of life.

An abstract God lets Judaism continue. But that same abstraction limits the number of Jews.

The Torah is teaching. Teaching is guidance. The quantum effect: Each guidance is illumination, and changes the subject.

Jewish security is not a policecar out front, but Jews wanting to come to synagogue.

Jews have a contract with destiny.

Judaism is not just a religion but a history of religion. It is not just a faith but a test of faith.

Saying one is an ethical monotheist does not make one a Jew or keep one a Jew.

God-fearing = awe today. We can be God-loving, and act on the belief God can’t act, except through us.

Jewish services should not be interfaith meetings. If Jews can’t say Judaism is preferable, and in synagogue, who can, and where?

Having an outreach program might sensitize a congregation and perhaps some officials to the primary mission of teaching Judaism, seeing its appreciation and value in new eyes. .

We are touched by the thought of God. His hand tousles our mind.

Judaism has to mean. It is not enough to be.

Judaism needs more than memory. It needs numbers. Without Jews there is no Judaism. Memory of Judaism is not Judaism.

What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?

What is man, that he is mindful of Thee?

Jews err by accepting Christianity and Islam as equals in monotheism. One is first. Two adapt, appropriate.

When Deuteronomy 29 speaks of the covenant with generations not yet born, it can also mean that your parent need not have been at Sinai—Judaism has in open times accepted new people, from the "stranger in your midst" to Jews-by-Choice.

The covenant between God and Israel is an oral contract—it depends on the memory of each Jew to be perpetuated. Forgetfulness breaks the covenant.

What is the payoff for belief? If it can not be for eternal salvation, it is that we can accept our own satisfaction for having from time to time done what might be right in the sight of the Lord.

What is Jewish salvation? Judaism is communal. Jewish salvation is Jewish continuance.

Our majority civilization can overwhelm us. We can insist that God’s primary definition is as the God of Law, and secondarily as of Love, and reject Christianity’s glib prattle about Love superior to Law. Without discipline, can society exist?

We are all Moses, not crossing the river to the Promised Land.

As the Jewish concept of God broadens, it is from a God of quid pro quo to a God of responsibility—where what we do is important under the God we accept.

Judaism encompasses both pessimism and optimism: It had to have been better than this—the Garden of Eden. It has to be better than this—the Messianic age.