Quotes from Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz

If anything is clear, it is that a rigid, unchanging way is wrong.

Torah and the world is thus the relation between idea and actualization, between vision and fulfillment. So that the intellectual study of Torah and the emotional involvement in its contents are a form of identification with the divine will, with what may be called God's dream of the existence of the world and the existence of man.

Peace with no content, meaningless tranquillity, rest without sanctity – all are empty vessels. At best, the emptiness is soon filled with positive content.

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.

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.

The concept of time in the Jewish way of thinking is not one of linear flow. Time is a process, in which past, present, and future are bound to each other, not only by cause and effect but also as a harmonization of two motions: progress forward and a countermotion backward, encircling and returning.

The physical world in which we live, the objectively observed universe around us, is only a part of an inconceivably vast system of worlds. Most of these worlds are spiritual in their essence; they are of a different order from our known world.

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.

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.

Just as man's true soul, his inapprehensible self, is never revealed to others but manifests itself through his mind, emotions, and body, so is the Self of God not revealed in His original essence except through the ten Sefirot.

Righteousness and evil are not character traits determined in advance or by heredity, but lie rather in the hand of each one of us.

The surrender of oneself on the Sabbath is not simply a matter of no activity but of opening oneself to the influence of the higher worlds and thereby receiving the strength for all the days of the week that follow.

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.

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.

Torah is an essence unto itself and everything in it is independent of the world.

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.

The movement of a man's finger is as important or unimportant as the most terrible catastrophe, for as against the Infinite both are of the same dimension.

Prophecy is an abundance that comes to man from without, from a higher source.

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.

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.

Repentance does not bring a sense of serenity or of completion but stimulates a reaching out in further effort.

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.

Thus it is written in the Talmud: "He who translates a passage as it seems to be, is a deceiver.

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.