Spiritual Teaching from the Jewish Tradition
"Do not exalt any path above God. There are many paths that lead to God.
So people are capable of finding and following the ways that suit them,
provided they do not stand still." Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
A Cure for Indifference to God
According to the cardinal principle of the Hasidic Master, “let atar panui minei”
no place in creation is devoid of God; God is everywhere.
Hasidism answers emphatically:
“God is not indifferent; God is the answer to indifference.”
Hasidism – the Way of the Fervently Pious: One who acts out of Love, with Tenderness.
What was Hasidism if not an attempt to tear down everything that separated one man from another – and from himself? Hasidism tore down the walls that exist between God and man, creation and creature, thought and deed, past and present, reality and soul: the secret lay in oneness.
You can defeat misfortune; invoke joy or create it, and things will change for you and for others as well. For this is basic to the Hasidic message: there is total interdependence between man and heaven; one affects the other.
Weeping over God and men alike, some Hasidic Masters could not help sinking into melancholy. They knew that the secret of redemption lies in the union between Creator and creation. But what if the Creator and creation were to remain strangers forever? Thus their despair was of an existential nature. Divine severity was less threatening to them than divine separation. Let God be our king, our father, or even our judge – but let Him not be estranged from us!
In some places, men are one another’s prisoners; in the Hasidic kingdom they were one another’s companions. One man was not another man’s boundary but, on the contrary, an opening to other men. God dwells in both places. For, according to the cardinal principle of the Hasidic Master, “let atar panui minei” – no place in creation is devoid of God; God is everywhere.
Hasidism answers emphatically: “God is not indifferent; God is the answer to indifference.”
