Challenges

In the course of our lives,  we many times find ourselves many situations that require a lot of strength to get over them. It may be a truly difficult examination, significant loss or encountering people who do something bad to us. While some of these situations are quite universal, many others have individual dimension. One and the same thing may be for one challenging, and for another it is just a minor bump on the road. 

Our tradition says (just to name a few) three interesting things:

1) Hashem doesn't load on us bigger yoke than we are able to bear.

2) Hashem has higher moral demands on righteous people than on average ones, and their challenges might be bigger than of the others.

3) Any challenge has a potential to help us grow. If we make mistake, even a major one, we can return to the right path (tshuva).

A superficial understanding, based on the culture of personal comfort, or alternatively on ascetic tendencies, would lead to the following conclusions:

1) I can bear anything that happens. I must succeed to overcome all life challenges smoothly and with elegance. People who hurt me are heavenly messengers, and I should maybe thank them.

2) I don't want to be righteous, it really doesn't pay. It is easier not to strive for being a better person, because good people have it more difficult. Alternative reaction: If I find something very difficult, it means I am righteous. 

3) We should look forward to any challenge, and we should even look for it actively, as challenges lead to spiritual growth. Everything has some positive meaning (but to say so, do we not just cheaply comfort ourselves?).

However, the tradition also says that these conclusions are completely wrong. Which conclusions are then correct? Or at least close to being correct?

(to be continued, suggestions welcome)

On religious dialogue

For quite a while, I have been wondering about the nature of a dialogue between various religions. There are many ways how to perceive such dialogue - the scale is wide, from missionary ambitions to its noetic values.  

The main question remains as follows (for people who define themselves religiously committed): Is there any possibility to retain the values, beliefs and principles of your own religion, while acknowledging legitimacy and validity to values, principles and beliefs of a different religion, when these many times contradict yours? 
Is not a deep interest and religious dialogue a mere, almost hypocritical, slogan? Motto of nowadays: Inter-religious dialogue. Who does not participate, is against peace on Earth. Do you say that your neighbour is not correct when he believes in many gods, while you believe in one? - You are not tolerant. And we - the progressive - do not tolerate intolerance. But who says I need to deny my own faith in order to live in peace with my neighbour?


I do want to learn about the neighbour. I want to maintain peaceful relations. What to do?
Basically, in order to have a successful intercultural dialogue (if we want so), we must at first accept the fact, that my partner in dialogue holds different axioms. Our premises, or starting points, are essentially different, sometimes even competing. Therefore, we can never reach a compromise, or some synthesis. We can agree upon particularities, but in general there can be no agreement. 
If we cease to understand this condition, any discussion on spiritual matters will be a disappointment, or even a catastrophe.
Only if we know, that we can reach no universal agreement, only then our discussion may bring some fruits. It might consist just of enriching our knowledge and learning new thing about the world, or, on a different level, may lead to practical cooperation in particular fields, where we can agree, if such a cooperation is needed. 

Ars disputandi of a medieval type, that aimed at finding one Truth (which led to the inevitable, and mostly prescribed denial of the whole religious system - method that is useful and needed when you want to clarify to yourself where you stand, but which is useless in a conversation), should be returned to its original meaning - investigation with no higher ambitions.

Path of life

Sometimes we think the source of happiness is somewhere high in the sky, far far away.

But it is not.

It is waiting for you here, on the Earth, patiently.

But not forever.

Forget about lofty ideas, skies and so-called-right paths.

Your Path of life is down here.

Social justice and divine justice

Many things can be said about justice. Even when we look at the justice from the point of the Torah, we still can bring numerous verses, commentators from here and there, and when we once immerse in the discussion, we may never get out of it, and even then we may never reach the point where we could say: Now we understood what exactly is incumbent upon us to do in the real time.

Therefore, I will speak shortly and touch only one aspect of thinking and doing justice.
Hashem is just. And he commanded us to pursue justice.
And Hashem is merciful and commands us to be merciful.
Does it contradict each other?
Here I would recall Rav Adin Steinsalz's comment: We need to acknowledge the profound difference between Hashem's and our knowledge. There are many suffering people in the world. Had I looked on this sad picture 'from the point of view' of the Almighty (as we say: hakol letova, roughly: Everything happens for a good reason), I would have let people suffer, I would have said: This is Hashem's will, let it be, I should not intervene. But then, I would be viewed as a cruel man. Rightly? Surprisingly enough, yes. How could it be? Had not I only accepted Hashem's decision?
The answer is to be found in the book of Bereshit, ch. 18-19. Hashem decides to destroy Sdom and Amora and some additional settlements for their wickedness. We would expect Avraham to accept Hashem's just decision. But no! He challenges Hashem's justice. And not only that. Our tradition sees this step as something Hashem expected the righteous Avraham to do!
This means, that on one hand Hashem supervises and rules over the world justly, but he wants us on the other hand to challenge him. Why? Because we do not know what he does know. Because with our limited knowledge and insight we cannot judge in the same way He does. We see just a part of the picture. This enables us, and actually this is our moral imperative, to help the needy, the suffering, to pray for the sick, to help one another. If we cease to do that, we will be portrayed as cruel. Rightly. And maybe even blasphemous. We pretend as if we had the same knowledge and the same power as Hashem does. That is why Hashem tells us to follow him 'modestly', and to emulate His attributes of love and mercy, not the attributes of severity and din (judgement). (It is important to say, that we talk here on the level of an individual, not about what is expected from judges in the courts).

Even if we are the most smart, insightful, logic, reasonable and rational thinkers, we still do not reach a tiptoe of Hashem's knowledge.
Precisely this limitation of human mind enables us to fulfil Hashem's will to be merciful, to be social, to create society, using the formulation of r. Jonathan Sacks, based on the covenant of cooperation.