It was never easy to be a Jew, but it was never as hard as it is to-day. I do not refer to the restrictions and prohibitions that limit the activities of the observant Jew. For the Jew who believes, these practical regulations are a joy, an expression of love. Nor do I mean the exposed political position of the Jew in modern society, a role that has, to some in extent, become even more difficult for him in the Diaspora because of the State of Israel. For the Jew who chooses to identify himself with his people, these obstacles are all part of the unfolding of the great and long-awaited drama of redemption.I mean, rather, that it is hard to feel like a Jew, to experience the depth of Jewish religious emotion that scans the spectrum from fear and awe to love and joy. It becomes more and more difficult seriously to engage G-d in a dialogue which will lift us above the commonplace and the pedestrian to a new level of vision and purity. Oar hearts have run dry. The spirit is parched. The soul is overladen with the dreaded dust of despair.Our society and culture are composed of many elements, and all of them conspire against us. Protestantism tells us to look Into ourselves first for the source of religion. And so we look and we find nothing. The pay-chologiats tell us to consider only the experience of religion, rather than its practice or creed, but we experience nothing. Scientists present us with a cold, depersonalized world, in which man's eyes turn heavenward only to follow the orbit of the newest satellite. And 80 it 18 not worth looking at all. G-d seems to have vanished from dis world, to have packed a suit-case filled with all the pleasures and agonies, the awe and the ecstasy, formerly reserved for Him by His people, and to have left without so much as saying "Goodbye.”What, then, are wo to say to the Jew, enstranged from the sources of the Jewish tradition, one who feels himself awkward in the milieu of maximal Jewishness but yet pines for some sensation of pi…

The way out of the dilemma, then, is to reverse the order to which we have become conditioned by modern life. First live like a Jew, so that later you may love like a Jew. Begin with a full life of Torah and Mitzvot, so that afterwards you may experience the mighty range of feeling that is reserved for the truly devout. One cannot possibly be uplifted by the majesty and mystery of the Shabbat until he has first fully observed its regulations. The pleasures and the wonders are incommunicable; we can only talk about them, we cannot transmit them themselves. Only a personal participation can accomplish that. So, he who waits for inspiration to pray—will not pray. He who prays anyway may yet rise to full inspiration. The Halakhah does not demand full kavvanah before one begins his prayer (except for the beginning of the Shema and the first blessing of the Amidah); it demands only that nothing be present which will hinder kavvanah should it arise.But we must go one step further. In order to be a Jew, one must not only act like a Jew in practice. One must also act as if he were experiencing the emotional wealth of Judaism. In other words, what is recommended is a bit of conscious self-delusion. We must emulate the outward manifestations of religious experience in order to arrive at the experience itself. We must convince ourselves that we have kavvanah so that we may indeed ultimately possess it. We must, in good conscience, tell ourselves that we love G-d and fear Him, that our hearts are filled with awe and joy, so that in the end they really will be.Norman Lamm

We meet on this very sad day to express our grief at the loss of the seven astronauts – men and women, each and every one an accomplished human being worthy of the greatest admiration. And we meet with special poignancy as Jews and friends of the State of Israel because this is the day that Israelis, beset by all kinds of problems – economic, security, political – have anticipated as a day of jubilation. All of us hoped to have an opportunity to see the sun break through the clouds – and unfortunately it turned into something quite the reverse. One thinks of the words of the prophet Amos who said, “ve’hafachti chageichem le’eivel ve’chol shirayich le’kinah ve’samtihah ke’eivel yachid” – “I will turn your festivals into days of mourning and your songs into dirges, and I will make it as a day that one mourns for an only son.” Indeed, this is a day of eivel yachid – for an only son – Colonel Ilan Ramon, zikhrono livrachah, may his memory be for a blessing. There is a special painful and poignant coincidence that this day is the first day of the month of Adar, about which our tradition tells us, “Mi shenichnas Adar marbin be’simchah.” A day that ushers in a month – and this year two months – of joy and happiness. Yet, as Amos had said, the joy and the happiness have turned into ashes, into eivel, into mourning. I cannot begin these words of tribute without mentioning the powerful and moving announcement by President Bush, a truly religious person, who spoke genuinely spiritual words. He quoted the prophet Isaiah: “Raise your eyes to the heavens and see who created all this, who calls by name all the multitude of stars in the heavens – none is missing.” President Bush added that the same Creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today. They include Michael Anderson, David Brown, William McCool, Rick Husband, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, and Ilan Ramon – aleihem hashalom, may they rest in peace. So we gather to mourn these seven galla…

I. In the Beginning: In the vocabulary of contemporary man, the words "progress" and "progressive" hold a distinct place of honor. Progress is regarded as an unimpeachable virtue, a synonym for all that is good and noble in life. Indeed, the progress resulting from the advances of science in our day is a tribute to the creativity of modern man. It is amazing to note, therefore, that our Torah does not seem to share this popular unconditional adulation of Progress. The Torah, in its hesitation, seems to indicate that there are also pitfalls and perils in Progress. For, as Dr. Israel Eldad in his Hegyonot Ha-Mikra points out, in Genesis it is Cain who represents the man of creativity. Of the two brothers, it is he who is the oved adamah, the farmer who digs and plants and fertilizes and weeds and prunes in order to develop a plant -- a thing of value from a mere seed. And Cain, surely, did not have the most desirable character. And yet there is another aspect to the Torah's estimation of Progress. For if we are to accept this identification of avodah with creativity, "work" as a synonym or at least prerequisite for progress, then we must go back one generation earlier in order to find its true originss. It was Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden who were commanded l'avdah u le'shamrah, "to work it and keep it". The concept of avodah, or Progress, was already known to Adam. And since this is a divine command, and is the occupation of man in Paradise, it would seem that the reverse of what we said above is true; that creativity and progress and technical advances are accepted as noble virtues and praiseworthy goals of human activity in the world-view of the Bible. II. Controlled Creativity: The correct understanding of the Torah's conception of Progress comes when we realize that in the Garden of Eden, God gave two commandments to Adam and Eve: l'avdah u-le'shamrah. The first was "to work it": avodah, creativity, the forward impulse, the capacity to produce and build. T…