Holiness in space, in nature, was known in other religions. New in the teaching of Judaism was that the idea of holiness was gradually shifted from space to time, from the realm of nature to the realm of history, from things to events. The physical world became divested of any inherent sanctity. There were no naturally sacred plants or animals any more. To be sacred, a thing had to be consecrated by a conscious act of man. The quality of holiness is not in the grain of matter. It is a preciousness bestowed upon things by an act of consecration and persisting in relation to God.
Never before has man come so close to the fulfillment of his most cherished hopes as today. Our scientific discoveries and technical achievements enable us to visualize the day when the table will be set for all who want to eat, a day when the human race will form a unified community and no longer live as separate entities.
Jerusalem is short and crouched among its hills,
unlike New York, for example.
Two thousand years ago she crouched
in the marvelous starting-line position.
The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting their bad advice-
In the late 1800s, Galveston rabbi Henry Cohen was puzzled by the word fronthall, which he had often heard in reference to a person of unusual courage. He investigated and found that the word described a Jewish Confederate soldier named Max Frankenthal. Enlisted as a drummer boy, Frankenthal fought in many battles, the most memorable being the one known as the Bloody Acute Angle.
