Monday, August 13, 2018

Elul 19, 5778

Rabbi Nico Sokolovsky

At The Gates of a “WONDER -FULL” year

The great leader of nineteenth-century German Orthodoxy, Samson Raphael Hirsch, surprised his disciples one day when he insisted on traveling to Switzerland. “When I stand before the Almighty,” he explained, “I will be asked many questions.… But what will I say when … and I’m sure to be asked: ‘Why didn’t you see my Alps?’” Jewish Wisdom, page 230

The world is out there and it is a positive commandment to discover it. Therefore you should be very careful of placing yourself in the Cage of – I have no regrets, I am done, I am set in my ways, Nothing can surprise me anymore. I have seen everything!

Abraham Joshua Heschel says:

As civilization advances, the sense of wonder declines. Such decline is an alarming symptom of our state of mind. Mankind will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation. The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living. What we lack is not a will to believe but a will to wonder (Heschel, Abraham Joshua. God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism, p. 46).

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