28 August 2003 - 9:09 a.m.

Responsive reading:

(please read aloud the lines in italics)

Rabbi Baer of Radoshitz said to his teacher, the Rabbi of Lublin:

Show me one comprehensive way to serve God.

The Tzaddik replied:

It is impossible to tell people the way they should take.

For one, the way is through action,

for another through prayer,

for a third through fasting,

for a fourth through eating.

Like everyone else, you must observe carefully the way your heart directs you,

and then choose that way with all your strength.

Chasidic story, retold in Day by Day: Reflections on the Themes of the Torah from Literature, Philosophy and Religious Thought, ed. Rabbi Chaim Stern (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998).