Elle Wiesel, premio Nobel, había vivido sólo para Dios durante su infancia en Hungría; su vida había estado configurada por el Talmud y esperaba ser iniciado un día en los misterios de la cábala. Cuan...
Even our contemporary cult of celebrity can be understood as an expression of our reverence for and yearning to emulate models of superhumanity. Feeling ourselves connected to such extraordinary
Ashoka’s dilemma is the dilemma of civilization itself. As society developed and weaponry became more deadly, the empire, founded on and maintained by violence, would paradoxically become the most eff...
The philosopher Karl Popper (1902–94) often remarked We don’t know anything and believed that this was the most important philosophical truth.16
There is a distinction between belief in a set of propositions and a faith which enables us to put our trust in them.
The new Sufi tariqahs founded at this time stressed the unlimited potential of human life. Sufis could experience on the spiritual plane what the Mongols had so nearly achieved in terrestrial politics
To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself to us as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive...
But there were ulama who refused to accept the closing of the gates of ijtihad. Throughout Islamic history, at times of great political crisis—especially during a period of foreign encroachment—a refo...
Politics had never been central to the Christian religious experience. Jesus had, after all, said that his Kingdom was not of this world. For centuries, the Jews of Europe had refrained from political...
Paul’s opponents in Galatia believed that Jesus’s heroic death and resurrection had inspired a spiritual renewal movement within Israel; they advocated continuity with the past. But Paul believed that...
The hajj is one of the five essential practices of Islam when they make the pilgrimage to Mecca, Muslims ritually act out the central principles of their faith.
Like most Middle Eastern kings, the king of Judah was raised to a semidivine state of exception during the coronation ritual, when he became Yahweh’s adopted son and a member of the Divine Assembly of...
It's a great event to get outside and enjoy nature. I find it very exciting no matter how many times I see bald eagles.
Compassion dervies from the Latin patiri and the Greek pathein, meaning to suffer, undergo or experience. So compassion means to endure [something] with another person, to put ourselves in somebody el...
Once you gave up the nervous craving to promote yourself, denigrate others, draw attention to your unique and special qualities, and ensure that you were first in the pecking order, you experienced an...
O călătorie în străfundurile minţii implică mari riscuri personale, deoarece s-ar putea să nu fim în stare să suportăm ce găsim acolo,
I am not interested in the afterlife. Religion is supposed to be about losing your ego, not preserving it eternally in optimum conditions.
One day in Auschwitz, a group of Jews put God on trial. They charged him with betrayal and cruelty. Like Job, they found no consolation in the usual answers to the problems of evil and suffering in th...
Zionism was originally a rebellion against religious Judaism and the PLO Charter was essentially secularist. But because the conflict was allowed to fester without a resolution, religion got sucked in...
When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing wh...
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