Samuel Johnson observed at two things imputed to the human heart may not be logical at the same time, but both can be true. Each side of those paired proverbs is true at certain times. Human beings are creatures of contradiction; thus faith is often paradoxical. Judaism understands the wisdom enunciated more than a century ago by Oscar Wilde: A deep truth is anything the opposite of which is also a deep truth.

Therefore our year is laced with paradoxes: happiness in the midst of mourning, advice to cling to the past but never forfeit the future, certainty that we should expend all our efforts and energy on this world yet never despair that something lies beyond it.

Asked what constitutes a true Jew, Rebbe Menachem Mendel of Vorka replied, "Upright kneeling, silent screaming, motionless dance." Clasp all the sides of life whose raging inconsistencies will not allow a smooth, untwisted path. Nothing is absolute-not our kneeling, our screaming, or our dance. For as we dance, kneel, and scream, we also stand upright, motionless, silent, in wonderment at the ambiguities and fruitfulness of God's world.