A Challenge

This place is really intellectually challenging especially to my liberal northeastern upbringing. I’ve been realizing in the last couple of years that I’m not nearly as liberal as I once thought I was, but it can still be quite a shock when I find a teacher talking about things and I find myself agreeing. Only to realize after some thought that many of my friends at home would think me quite the radical for agreeing with those ideas. But you know what? That’s okay, because it shows my willingness to grow and expand as a human being. After all Winston Churchill said “any man who is under thirty and not a liberal has no heart, any many who is over thirty and not a conservative has no brains.” Not to mention I’ve always had the motivation to challenge my own ideas and the openness to realize I could be wrong. Still it can be quite a shock just the same after all these years, in addition to that my father is no liberal in the American sense of word and I am my father’s son, that’s for certain. Some notes from the last week of classes:

“Judaism is the world’s most politically incorrect idea system”; “America was made great by a bunch of non-Jews who believed in Jewish values and has been taken down by a bunch of Jews who don’t believe in Jewish values.” – Ken Spiro

“How did g-d create the universe? It doesn’t really matter at this point does it?”; “The point of creation is so that g-d should have a dwelling in your most basic, most physical, darkest places.” – Yom Tov Glazer

“The world is more of a thought then a thing” – G. Schroeder, he more then anyone else makes me feel like I’m in the movie Waking Life, which I mentioned in a past post.

“No one can do it perfectly, that’s impossible. It’s a question of how honest you are with yourself.”; “There’s a difference between having an open mind and a hole in your head.”; “In life if you don’t have gratitude you’ll have nothing.”; – M. Berger, he’s quickly becoming my favorite Rabbi here, I don’t agree with him about everything(or much really) but he always leaves me thinking.

“The price you pay for love is commitment.” – S. Schwartz