One must be made to feel trusting, so that one “does not fear that he will be stripped of his emotions if he becomes Maimonides and re-experiences his Judaism: he is not concerned less he abandon rational thinking because he temporarily refeels the mystic fervor of Isaac Luria. He can be both the Vilna Gaon poring over the folios of the Talmud and the Ba’al Shem Tob who communed with all that is. He can do all this because he has grasped the fact that Judaism is the historical rendition of man’s groping with life and hence it has been as manifold, contradictory, and conflicting as that groping itself.
Ellis Rikin
Pick a time, a theme, chances are there is a Jewish Connection
“Pick a time: choose a place: select a mood: conceive an idea: the chances are certain that Jewish history has encompassed it, that some form of Judaism embodied it. The rationalistic tradition has had its Philos, and its Maimonides: the mystical yearning has produced its Isaac Lurias: the simple religious yearnings of the downtrodden and the illiterates have their Baal Shem Tobs: the austere rigor of the law has had its Joseph Karos and its Vilna Gaons. Poetry, drama, art, historiography, and every variety of literature have found a welcome in some form of Judaism, in some period of Jewish history. Orthodoxy and heresy, compassion and cruelty, creativity and stagnation, innovation and tradition – indeed the total range of human experience and emotion has manifested itself in Judaism.” 33
Ellis Rivkin