Home
Welcome
About the Rabbi
Lectures
- Listen
- Read
- Watch
Writing
Archive
Leadership
Contact
- Thanks

Contact

Your Name (required)

Your Email (required)

Subject

Your Message

Δ

CONTACT
Thanks

People remember Hillel’s famous statement of the basis of Torah, what you do not want the other one to do you, do not do to the other. People forget that Hillel continued with the instruction: ‘go study [and apply] the rest.’ All these issues require a lifetime of application and wrestling.

All halachic behaviors are dramatic/mimetic gestures articulating a central metaphor of living. Grasping the metaphor adds depth to action and joy to life.

I believe that contemporary civilization is one of the great cultures of all time; that is why it is so appealing. The greatness of the culture embodies some of the finest Jewish values as well.

What is my mission, what is my shlichut, which God has in mind for me? Unfortunately, there are no neon lights flashing the answer or messages directly from God that tell us what do…each of us must figure the mission out for ourselves, and that task may take a lifetime.

We spend four years—and more—in college to train ourselves for a career…in self-respect and conscience, we must spend at least one year working full-time at becoming a mensch…Only a year of full time student of Torah, deepened by encounter with the holiness and pulsating life of Jerusalem and Israel, can begin to give the inspiration and knowledge of authentic Jewish living to illuminate a lifetime.

Great leadership is not always crowned with success. In order to be a great leader, you have to be willing to fail.

My thinking and my institutional leadership have been driven by the messages and friendship that the audience and co-workers have communicated to me, nonverbally as well as verbally. And when I have gone through periods when I felt that I could not go on (there have been such times), the people have renewed my strength…and propelled me onward. This is as it should be. A leader should not simply follow, but should be sustained by the people.

The Holocaust is the most radical counter testimony to both Christianity and Judaism. After the Holocaust, no statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of the burning children.

If the principal makes the day school into such a covenantal community—in imitation of God—then the student will experience a dignity that anticipates the Messianic world promised by Judaism and modernity.

The educational challenge is no longer how one [Jewish] world can reshape itself to be integrated into the other; rather the question is how do the two worlds [Jewish and non-Jewish]—standing side by side—correlate, integrate or confront each other? The time has come for a two-way conversation of equals, not a one-way conversation between a dominant and a minor culture.