A Soulful Journey

“What guarantees the objectivity of the world in which we live is that the world is common to us with other thinking beings.   Through the communications that we have with other men we receive from them ready-made harmonious reasonings.   We know that these reasonings do not come from us and at the same time we recognize in them, because of their harmony, the work of reasonable beings like ourselves.”   -Zen ad the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

"It is true we have won all our wars, but we have paid for them. We don't want victories anymore."  -Golda Meir

"We Jews have a secret weapon in our struggle with the Arabs; we have no place to go."   -Golda Meir

 I reported to my partner in dialogue how dreadful it had already been to me when I was a boy to read this as the message of God.   I told him how already at that time it horrified me to read or to remember how the heathen king went up to the prophet with the words on his lips, "Surely the bitterness of death is past," and was hewn to pieces by him. I said to my partner: "I have never been able to believe that this is a message of God. I do not believe it."             With wrinkled forehead and contracted brows, the man sat opposite me and his glance flamed into my eyes. He remained silent, began to speak, became silent again. "So?" he broke forth at last, "so?" he repeated almost threateningly. "You do not believe it?" And I once again: "No." "What ... what..." he thrust the words before him one after the other — "what do you believe then?" "I believe," I replied without...

Professor Yeshiahu Leibowitz warned that the veneration of stones can be a form of idolatry. – Rabbi Chaim Pearl God is God.   Nothing else.

Rav Judah said in the name of Samuel: To enjoy anything of the world without [reciting] a blessing is like making personal use of things consecrated to heaven, since it says: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.”  (Psalm 24:1) Talmud, Berachot 35a

"The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes."   -   Goethe  

“Let me tell you the one thing I have against Moses. He took us forty years into the desert in order to bring us to the one place in the Middle East that has no oil!”  - Golda Meir

Shimon Peres had a reputation for being a consummate politician.  A story is told of him traveling down  road and coming to a fork.  At the crossroads, Peres asked which route Ben Gurion would have taken.  The driver responded, "He would have left his options open." Peres then asks what Menachem Begin would have done.  The driver answered, "Begin would have chosen a route and then obtained a legal document attesting to the fact that there were no other options available." Peres thought and then said to the driver, "Signal left, and then turn right."

Abraham Joshua Heschel commented on the most historic and sacred stories in Jewish history -- the Stone Tablets Moses brought down from Mount Sinai.  The Torah states that they were, "written by the finger of God."  Yet Moses smashed them - these holy stones - when he saw the people worshipping the golden calf.

Abraham Lincoln once asked:   If you call a dog's tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?  It only has four; just because you call it a leg doesn't mean it is a leg.