Dear EBCers:
Proverbs 14:16 - A wise man is diffident and shuns evil/ but a dullard rushes in confidently.
Listen to Abraham Heschel, a mid-twentieth century Jewish teacher, discuss the Ashkenazim Jews. We can learn something here:
“For how do we appraise the historic significance of a period? By what standards do we measure culture? It is customary in the modern world to evaluate a period by its progress in general civilization, by the quality of the books, by the number of universities, by the artistic accomplishments, and by the scientific discoveries therein. As Jews, with an old tradition for appraising and judging events and generations, we evaluate history by different criteria, namely, by how much refinement there is in the life of a people, by how much spiritual substance there is in its everyday existence. In our eyes, culture is the style of the life of the people. We gauge culture by the extent to which a whole people, not only individuals, live in accordance with the dictates of an eternal doctrine or strive for spiritual integrity; the extent to which inwardness, compassion, justice and holiness are to be found in the daily life of the masses.
The pattern of life of a people is more significant than the pattern of its art. What counts most is not expression, but existence itself. The key to the source of creativity lies in the will to cling to spirituality, to be close to the inexpressible, and not merely in the ability of expression. What is creative comes from responsive merging with the eternal in reality, not from an ambition to say something.
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“While others have carried their piety, fervor, faith into magnificent songs of architecture, our ancestors had neither the skill nor the material necessary to produce comparable structures. Phoenician craftsmen had to be brought to Jerusalem by Solomon the King to assist in erecting the Temple for the Lord. But there were Jews who knew how to lay bricks in the soul, to rear holiness made of simple deeds, of study and prayer, of care, of fear and love. They knew how to pattern and raise a pyramid that no one could see but God.
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“There was a restrained mourning in their enthusiasm, profound sadness in their joy. Their authentic chants are consistently in the minor key. The melodies which the wedding players intoned before the veiling ceremony would almost rend the soul of the bride. The badhan, the merry-maker, would paint in a wailing voice the suffering and hardship which life holds in store for every human being. Under the hupah - the bridal canopy - bride, mother, and grandmother would sob, and even a man who heard a piece of good news would usually burst into tears. But the Jews all sang: the student over the Talmud, the tailor while sewing a pair of trousers, the cobbler while mending tattered shoes, and the preacher while delivering a sermon.
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“They did not make the mistake of thinking that the good is attained unwittingly and that hours have merely to be lived in order to arrive at the goals of living. To communicate with the goal, one has to address himself to it. What is undirected, what is done at haphazard, goes astray.
They had disdain for the rough, for the coarse, and tried to lend an inward dignity to everything they did. Not only the extraordinary days, not only the Sabbath, even their weekdays had a form. Everything was fixed according to a pattern. Nothing was casual, nothing was left to chance.”
-Abraham Heschel: The Earth is the Lord’s
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