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.

 "All things can be replaced except the wife of one's youth."  -Talmud, Sanhedrin 22a

Rabbi Meir used to give public sermons every Friday evening. A certain women, who enjoyed his lectures greatly, attended regularly. One evening, his sermon was especially long and when the woman returned home she found her house dark and her husband angrily standing at the door. “Where have you been?” he shouted at her. "To hear the rabbi preach," the woman replied. ”Since the rabbi’s preaching has pleased you so much,” the husband said, “I vow that you will not enter this house until you have spat in his eyes. That is his reward for the entertainment he has given you,” he added sarcastically. The husband barred the doorway and refused to allow his wife to enter. The strongest woman went to live with a neighbor. When word of the incident reached Rabbi Meir he sent for the woman. Pretending to have pain in both his eyes, the rabbi asked her if she knew of a cure for his illness. The simple woman nervously said, “No.” “Spit seven times in my eyes,” said the Rabbi, “perhaps that...

“I rose about midnight, took a large earthenware vessel, crept with it under my mother-in-law’s bed, and began to speak aloud in the following fashion: “O Rissia, Rissia, you ungodly woman, why do you treat my beloved son so ill?  If you do not mend your ways, your end is near, and you will be damned for all eternity.” Then I crept out again, and began to pinch her cruelly and after a while I slipped silently back to bed. The following morning she got up in consternation and told my wife that my mother appeared to her in a dream and had threatened and pinched her on my account.  In confirmation she showed the blue marks of her arm. When I came from the synagogue I did not find my mother-in-law at home, but my wife in tears.  I asked her the reason, but he would tell me nothing. My mother-in-law returned, with a dejected look and eyes red with weeping.  She had gone, as I afterward learned, to the Jewish place of burial, thrown herself on my mother...

"Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith." -Paul Tillich.

Count Patotsky, a proselyte from Vilna, had a friend Zaremba who followed Patotsky’s idea – he and his wife had converted to the Jewish faith. After they become Jews Jews, Zaremba said to his wife, “Let us get a divorce now.  You marry a real Jew and I’ll marry a Jewess, and in that manner we will be rooted into the Jewish race.” Zaremba’s wife smiled wisely. “Two people were once stranded in a desert,” she said, “and lost their path.  They wandered aimlessly together, suffered hunger and thirst and were tortured by the burning sand and blistering sun.  Finally, a miracle happened and they found the road back to civilization.  When they reached their destination, they clasped each other’s hands and said, ‘When we lost our way we suffered great pain and agony together.  Now that we have found a place of refuge, is it wise that we should part?  Is it fair’?” Hold hands with the ones you love.  Do not let go.

Rabbi Judah said in the name of Rav, "If you see two people continually quarreling there is a blemish of unfitness in one of them and they are [providentially] not allowed to cleave to each other."  - Kiddushin 71b There are times when people cannot get along.  When that happens wisdom dictates that they avoid one another, and thus avoid conflict and turmoil which affects not only them but everyone around them.