Sunday, January 18, 2009

"Man is the chief actor on a cosmic stage"


“In Judaism man is conceived, in all the power of his body and soul, as the central agent, the chief actor on a cosmic stage.


He functions, or performs, as a prime mover of worlds, being made in the image of the Creator.

Everything he does constitutes an act of creation, both in his own life and in other worlds hidden from his sight.

Every single particle of his body and every nuance of his thought and feeling are connected with forces of all kinds in the cosmos, forces without number.

So that the more conscious he is of this order of things, the more significantly does he function as a Jewish person”

--Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz


From The Thirteen Petalled Rose, p. 155, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz