The Veracity of Torah: Essays in Jewish Spirituality by Tal Sessler

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Eight decades ago, the Jewish people underwent genocide in Europe. This apocalyptic event, was followed almost immediately by astonishing Jewish political and theological resurrection and renewal. This unique book ponders the tumultuous vicissitudes of the modern Jewish condition. Part memoir, part scholarship, and part theological conjectures, the book posits that to be a modern Jew entails constantly oscillating between seemingly disparate and contradictory polarities such as logos and revelation, worldliness and eternity, tradition and modernity, continuity and change. To be a modern Jew, postulates the author, is both fate and destiny, historicity and vocationalism.

The Jewish saga, argues Rabbi Dr. Tal Sessler, is emblematic of the human saga writ large, inasmuch as all of us are, in the words of Abraham, “residents and temporary dwellers” in this world. Despite the hitherto unrivaled mastery and dominion which humanity achieved in our epoch over the tangible and the concrete, man remains finite and ephemeral, and so are his victories. The song of the soul however, is perpetual and everlasting. For it is an echo of eternity, a sacred murmur, a glimmer of our untarnished inner core, our innermost subliminal longings.

Year first published: 2020