Being and Becoming: Recent Episodes
Tufts Hillel
Social media creates the illusion of perfection. The lives of others appear faultless while we know our own lives are far from perfect. How to emancipate ourselves from this tyranny while leaning into our brokenness?
Knowledge is power, but power can be blinding. The true path of wisdom is one of intellectual humility.
Knowledge is power, but power can be blinding. The true path of wisdom is one of intellectual humility.
As a child I experienced God’s closeness, as I grew older God became more distant. Then I discovered how to hold these two polarities in tension.
The bible depicts God’s revelation at mount Sinai. But what does a Divine revelation entail? The Ishbitzer Rebbe asserts that God can never be fully revealed, and all that humans are capable of grasping is a pale likeness of the real thing.
The Lebanese American Poet Kahlil Gibran wrote: Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother. This episode highlights the role of doubt in ensuring that faith does not get reduced to dogma.
Underlying and animating all of reality is divine language. This language is revealed in the human realm through the sacred words of Torah. This idea opens a new way of perceiving reality.
How do we cleave to a state of flow? Rabbi Brawer discusses the ebbing and flowing of this state.
God as Ground of Being: Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev (1740 -1810) expands our notion of God, and in so doing, offers a fresh perspective on life
Is it possible to break with the past, and to truly begin anew? That depends on how one defines the passage of time. A striking tale in the Yom Kippur liturgy presents an inspired perspective.
Language is inherently limited. But what if we could cross the boundaries of words and communicate on the deepest of levels?
Rosh Hashanah ushers in a period traditionally known as the Days of ‘Awe.’ What is ‘awe’ and how is it different from ‘fear’? And what does it mean to live an awestruck life?