rabbijaffe

In my first few weeks of attending this Chabad House, Pinchas, the guy who lived there, said something to me I will never forget.

Pinchas asked me what I was doing at the university.

I told him I was a Judaic Studies major, and was extremely interested in studying Judaism.
Pinchas looked at me and said something that sounded like this:

Yitzchak, Judaism is like an apple.

Sure, you can pick it up and observe massive amounts of details. Every nuance of its shape and color. How shiny it is, how dirty it is, if it has one of those annoying little stickers.

You can even take your observations to the next level.

You can cut open the apple. You can observe the rate at which the inside changes color. You can count how many seeds are inside. You can touch the inside and outside paying close attention to every detail of its texture.

You can do historical research trying to figure out exactly which field and tree the apple came from.

You can bring it to a labratory and find out scores of details about the chemical makeup of that particular apple.

But Yitzchak, you will never -never- understand anything about that apple unless you pick it up and take a bite out of it.

***
Judaism is not something to be studied exclusively.

It’s something to be experienced. Until you do, you know nothing about it.

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