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The Rabbi Sacks Legacy Profile picture
@rabbisacks
Sep 26, 2019 • 9 tweets • 9 min read • Read on X
Here is a thread from my Covenant & Conversation essay on #Nitzavim called "Not Beyond the Sea". You can read it at bit.ly/2lDoxzZ, listen to it at bit.ly/2mHceCQ, or download the accompanying Family Edition at bit.ly/2lNnkpI. #shabbatshalom
The beauty of #Jewish #spirituality is precisely that in #Judaism, #God is close. You do not need to climb a mountain or enter an ashram to find the Divine Presence.
It is there around the table at a #Shabbat meal, in the light of the candles and the simple #holiness of the Kiddush wine and the challot, in the praise of the Eishet Chayil and the #blessing of #children, in the #peace of mind that comes when you leave the #world to look after…
…itself for a day while you celebrate the good things that come not from working but resting, not from buying but enjoying the gifts you have had all along but did not have time to appreciate.
In #Judaism, #God is close. He is there in the poetry of the #psalms, the greatest literature of the #soul ever written. He is there listening in to our debates as we study a page of the #Talmud or offer new interpretations of ancient texts.
#God is there in the joy of the festivals, the tears of #TishaBAv, the echoes of the #shofar of #RoshHashanah, and the contrition of #YomKippur.
#God is there in the very air of the land of #Israel and the stones of #Jerusalem, where the oldest of the old and the newest of the new mingle together like close friends.
In #Judaism, #God is near. That is the overwhelming feeling I get from a lifetime of engaging with the #faith of our ancestors. #Judaism needed no cathedrals, no monasteries, no abstruse theologies, no metaphysical ingenuities – beautiful though all these are – because for us…
…#God is the #God of everyone and everywhere, who has time for each of us, and who meets us where we are, if we are willing to open our #soul to Him.

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More from @rabbisacks

The Rabbi Sacks Legacy Profile picture
Sep 6, 2021
As we approach Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and the start of the Jewish year, here are ten short ideas from Rabbi Sacks zt"l which might help you focus your davening and ensure you have a meaningful and transformative experience.
(1) Life is short. However much life expectancy has risen, we will not, in one lifetime, be able to achieve everything we might wish to achieve. This life is all we have. So the question is: How shall we use it well?
(2) Life itself, every breath we take, is the gift of God. Life is not something we may take for granted. If we do, we will fail to celebrate it. Yes, we believe in life after death, but it is in life before death that we truly find human greatness.
Read 12 tweets
The Rabbi Sacks Legacy Profile picture
Oct 1, 2020
THREAD -> #Succot is the festival of insecurity. It is the candid acknowledgment that there is no life without risk, yet we can face the future without fear when we know we are not alone. Image
God is with us, in the rain that brings blessings to the earth, in the love that brought the universe and us into being and in the resilience of spirit that allowed a small and vulnerable people to outlive the greatest empires the world has ever known.
Succot reminds us that God’s glory was present in the small, portable Tabernacle that Moses and the Israelites built in the desert even more emphatically than in Solomon’s Temple with all its grandeur. A temple can be destroyed. But a succah, broken, can be rebuilt tomorrow.
Read 9 tweets
The Rabbi Sacks Legacy Profile picture
Sep 30, 2020
THREAD -> #Succot is the time we ask the most profound question of what makes a life worth living.
Having prayed on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to be written in the Book of Life, Kohelet (the book we read on Succot) forces us to remember how brief life actually is, and how vulnerable. “Teach us rightly to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Ps. 90:12).
What matters is not how long we live, but how intensely we feel that life is a gift we repay by giving to others. Surely this is a message that resonates even more forcefully this year as we approach Succot in the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic.
Read 6 tweets
The Rabbi Sacks Legacy Profile picture
Sep 29, 2020
THREAD -> More than any other festival, #Succot (which begins on Friday evening) represents the dual character of Jewish faith. We believe in the universality of God, together with the particularity of Jewish history and identity. Image
All nations need rain (which we pray for on Succot). We are all part of nature. We are all dependent on the complex ecology of the created world.
We are all threatened by climate change, global warming, the destruction of rain forests, the overexploitation of non-renewable energy sources and the mass extinction of species.
Read 9 tweets
The Rabbi Sacks Legacy Profile picture
Sep 26, 2020
There is an old story that I find incredibly moving and powerful, particularly as we approach #YomKippur in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic (and which appears in my 'Ceremony & Celebration' educational resource for Yom Kippur -> rabbisacks.info/2E0XMhR). Image
One Yom Kippur, the Baal Shem Tov was praying together with his students, and he had a worrying sense that the prayers were not getting through, and the harsh heavenly decree against the Jewish people was not being overturned.
As Ne’ila approached, and with it the final opportunity for the Jewish people to avert this harsh judgement, he and his students increased their fervour and passion in their prayers, but to no avail.
Read 12 tweets
The Rabbi Sacks Legacy Profile picture
Sep 25, 2020
“Wherever you find God's greatness,” said Rabbi Yohanan, “there you will find His humility.” And wherever you find true humility, there you will find greatness.
That is what #YomKippur is about: finding the courage to let go of the need for self-esteem that fuels our passion for self-justification, our blustering claim that we are in the right when in truth we know we are often in the wrong.
Most national literatures, ancient and modern, record a people's triumphs. Jewish literature records our failures, moral and spiritual. No people has been so laceratingly honest in charting its shortcomings. In Tanakh there is no one without sin.
Read 10 tweets

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