A Soulful Journey

Bertrand Russell was lecturing in New York on the consequences of a double negative.  He said that while a double negative implied a positive, a double positive did not mean a negative.  Whereupon someone in the audience replied, "Yeah, yeah!" -   Rabbi Louis Jacobs Sweeping statement are always suspect and seldom correct   Question what you hear.

"It is not enough just to know laws.  One must strive to perform them and understand them."  - Rambam It is a vital that we open our minds to fathom the "whys" of life.    As Socrates uttered, "an unexamined life is not worth living."  This is profoundly true with Torah.

Upon her deathbed Gertrude Stein was said to have asked, "What is the answer?" Getting no response she said, " In that case, what is the question?"

"Why doth thou slay my kine?  Kine are hard to come by.  Now I am short kine and I'm not even sure what kine are." - Woody Allen There is a disconnect in language and in epoch between ourselves and Torah times.  Yet, the question remain the same, "Why has this happened to me?"  Generations come and go but we are just like all our forebears.

A thought to ponder: “Lost somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered for they are gone forever. ” –Horace Mann Questions for this day : Am I using my time wisely?    Have I made an effort to improve myself?  Lift the world a bit from its darkness?   Loved as much as I should?

“…the right question is usually more important than the right answer to the wrong question.”   - Alvin Toffler , Third Wave Politicians are experts in evading questions that they do not want to answer, or do not know.   Better to be honest and say, “I do not know.”

"To ask larger questions is to risk getting things wrong. Not to ask them at all is to constrain the life of understanding."  - Alvin Toffler , The Third Wave

“I know of no other group in Jewish life which has developed such a tendency to believe the best in about others and the worst about themselves.” - Rabbi Wolfe Kelman Question: How many groups/people could this possibly apply to? Next Question: Is this a good attribute?  Would you want this said about you?  Why?

Beliefs must rarely be rigid.   There are few “givens” in the world.   Our faith, for example, places life just about higher than anything else.   Life is paramount and even in the last whispers of a person’s life can come redemption.   That is why we never hasten a person’s demise.   And yet. Ambroise Pare is called the father of modern surgery.   In the sixteenth century Pare traveled with the armies of France into battle.   Once entering a barn to stable his horse, he found four dead soldiers and three wounded.   The faces of the living were contorted with pain.   Their clothes still smoldered from when gunpowder had burned them. One solider asked if Pare could cure them of their ailments.   Pare shook his head.   One old solider then rose and cut the throats of those in agony “gently, efficiently, and without ill will.” Pare cried that this man was a demon! “No,” came his response.   “I pray God that if ever I come to b...