The kind of "blind obedience" once theologized as the ultimate step to holiness, is itself blind. It blinds a person to the insights and foresight and moral perspective of anyone other than an authority figure.

We each should have 2 pockets: in 1 the message, 'I am dust & ashes;' in the other, 'For me the universe was made.'

In our dreams lies our unfinished work for the world.

Judaism calls for us to honor the rhythm of human life, the demands of the human community around us, the call of the divine order as the filter and scale for the decisions that drive our own small lives. We do not rule the universe, Judaism reminds us. God does. We are not its standard or its norms. We are only its keepers, its agents, its stewards. To do right by the universe at large is the measure of a happiness framed with the entire cosmos in mind but lived in microcosms across time.

An authentic spirituality does not cater to culture; it calls culture to accountability.

I celebrate myself," the poet Walt Whitman wrote. The thought is so delicious it is almost obscene. Imagine the joy that would come with celebrating the self — our achievements, our experiences, our existence. Imagine what it would be like to look into the mirror and say, as God taught us, "That's good.

Prophets are so dangerous because they cry in season and out of season, politely and impolitely, loud and long.