A Field of Tensions

“Judaism is not just a set of beliefs and practices. It is also a field of tensions: between the universal and the particular, exile and home, priest and prophet, halacha and Aggadah, rationalism and mysticism, tradition and revolution, acceptance and protest, the walls of the house of study and the stalls of the marketplace. Its greatness is that, by and large, it has kept these tensions in play. That is what has given it gifts of survival and creativity unmatched by any other religious tradition in the West.”

Ceremony & Celebration, p. 320