The Strife of the Spirit Quotes

“It is, in any case, the unavoidable lot of most men to choose, not between turmoil and tranquil perfection, but rather between a harsh struggle to find themselves and a degeneration that in the last analysis offers no peace of mind either.”
― Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Strife of the Spirit

“one must judge each situation and each action, not according to its “comfortableness” but according to whether or not it is likely to bring one nearer to that goal.”
― Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Strife of the Spirit

“Peace with no content, meaningless tranquillity, rest without sanctity – all are empty vessels. At best, the emptiness is soon filled with positive content.”
― Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Strife of the Spirit

“Prophecy is an abundance that comes to man from without, from a higher source.”
― Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Strife of the Spirit

“On the other hand, there are people who seek a certain reality in religion and in doing so reach different sorts of supernatural experiences – inner experiences that give one a feeling of reality, accompanied by perceived unnatural phenomena, which science cannot (or does not wish to) explain.”
― Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Strife of the Spirit

“Waiting for salvation is, therefore, not a passive state of being; it is rather the active doing of every person whose every thought and deed can contribute to the redemption of the universe.”
― Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Strife of the Spirit

“Thus, it is the task of man to redeem these shattered fragments, or sparks, to find in them their higher significance, and to restore them to their divine origin.”
― Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Strife of the Spirit

“But this was all story.”
― Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Strife of the Spirit

“Torah is an essence unto itself and everything in it is independent of the world.”
― Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Strife of the Spirit

“Inspiration as the primary source of artistic creativity is no more than an attractive fiction, for spontaneity plays as relatively minor a role in art as it does in philosophical and scientific thinking.”
― Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Strife of the Spirit

“Chapter Nine Dissonance in the Book of Psalms”
― Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Strife of the Spirit

“However, in contrast to the consistency of meaning of imagery concepts used in the Kabbala, which, as we have seen, resemble symbols, the situation in the Bible and the Talmud is quite different. There, the significance of any given concept is not uniform, and even in those cases where there is no doubt that such a covert meaning is intended, no standard key exists for its interpretation. Furthermore, there may well be more than one key for different aspects of its meaning.”
― Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Strife of the Spirit

“Thus it is written in the Talmud: “He who translates a passage as it seems to be, is a deceiver.”
― Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Strife of the Spirit

“For example, when we see how frequently the concept regel (foot) is used in Talmudic discussions of the laws of torts (regel is the damage caused by a domestic animal while walking, during its customary activities), it is plain that the Jewish thinkers of the past simply had a strong reluctance to coin obvious abstract concepts. Imagery concepts were used, then, as a matter of deliberate and conscious choice. They do not reflect a weak or primitive mode of thought. They are rather a special form of expression, marked by its own advantages and disadvantages. This Jewish conceptual structure is neither better nor worse, neither more advanced nor more backward than Western abstract conceptual thinking: it is a parallel development.”
― Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Strife of the Spirit

“Modern Western thought is characterized by an extensive use of abstract concepts that exist and operate within a more general abstract system. Jewish thought, on the other hand, has, with very few exceptions, done without them. Abstract concepts are not to be found in the Bible, the Talmud, or even in relatively modern Hasidic texts.”
― Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Strife of the Spirit

“The controversy lay in determining the degree of freedom allowed. In contradistinction to this view, Maimonides held that divine providence was reserved only for certain exceptional individuals.”
― Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Strife of the Spirit

“Maimonides, one of the few people in the Middle Ages to deny the validity of astrology, quoted the phrase “Israel has no star of fortune” in support of his argument, while others produced opposing opinions to back their views.”
― Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Strife of the Spirit

“Righteousness and evil are not character traits determined in advance or by heredity, but lie rather in the hand of each one of us.”
― Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Strife of the Spirit

“In other words, as long as the matter in question is assessed on the basis of the same fundamental assumptions with which one started out, the errors in the account will remain standing until some disaster occurs to reveal the defect.”
― Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Strife of the Spirit

“Normally, routine is the common element of daily life everywhere, the element that prevents man from reexamining his circumstances, because human beings are creatures of habit. People become accustomed to, and learn to live with, not only good things but also those that are – even in their own eyes – undesirable.”
― Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Strife of the Spirit

“There can be no greater danger to one laboring to reach a higher spiritual and moral plane than the feeling that he has achieved it. Such feelings of self-satisfaction generally indicate a blurring of the vision of the goal itself.”
― Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Strife of the Spirit

“Furthermore, while stress is likely (particularly when unremitting) to be unpleasant, it has the potential of achieving meaningful, valuable change. An equilibrium from which stress has been eliminated can be a terminal state, a condition from which all further development is likewise excluded – in short, the peace of death.”
― Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Strife of the Spirit