> Floating Takes Faith
Excerpt: A Dialogue through Time

There was a time when little changed: People grew up in the same villages as their parents, knew the same people their whole lives, did the same work, ate the same food, heard the same languages as their parents and grandparents. Today we are constantly meeting new people, hearing new philosophies and ideas, meeting challenges posed by the shifting world around us. History has accelerated, and there is no turning back.

Judaism has been struck by the same acceleration. New ideas and new philosophies have flooded this ancient faith. In this bewildering array, is there a bottom line?

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once wrote an essay he called "Toward an Understanding of Halacha." It was subtitled "Jewish Law as a Response." That is the bottom line: If Jewish tradition is a response to God, then it can flourish. If it is an arbitrary mélange of customs, it will wither. But although Jews disagree about the history of our tradition, how it came to be and in what stages it developed, one idea must endure: Judaism is a dialogue, not a human monologue addressed to an indifferent universe.

We are all bound by the mitzvah of relationship: to God, to other human beings, indeed, to all that God has created. All of those relationships are touched by the changes in the world. But in each generation, in each new context, the ancient and blessed conversation—the dialogue that is Judaism—continues.


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