The Stoic Jew

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Contemplate continually all things coming to pass by change, and accustom yourself to think that the nature of the universe loves nothing so much as to change what is and to create new things in their likeness. For everything that exists is, in a way, the seed of what will come out of it, whereas you imagine seeds to be only those which ar...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! All is ephemeral, both what remembers and what is remembered. ---------- Koheles 1:11 There is no memory of the earlier generations, and also the later generations that will be, there will not be a memory of them with those that will come later [yet]. Mahari Kara – Koheles 1:11 There is no memory of the earlier generations , for they have...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Epictetus – Enchiridion Chapter 17 Remember that you are an actor in a play of such a kind as the playwright chooses: short, if he wants it short, long if he wants it long. If he wants you to play the part of a beggar, play even this part well; and so also for the parts of a disabled person, an administrator, or a private individual. For t...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! With your whole will surrender yourself to Clotho to spin your fate into whatever web of things she will. ---------- Plato: The Republic, Book X ... the distaff rotates on the knees of Necessity …  and seated around, at equal interval, three, each upon a throne, daughters of Necessity, in white garments, with wreaths on their heads, Laches...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Words familiar in olden times are now archaisms; so also the names of those whose praises were hymned in bygone days are now in a sense archaisms; Camillus, Caeso, Volesus, Dentatus; a little after, Scipio too and Cato; then also Augustus, then also Hadrian and Antoninus. For all things quickly fade and turn to fable, and quickly, too, utt...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Call to mind by way of example the time of Vespasian: you will see everything the same: men marrying, bringing up children, falling ill, dying, fighting, feasting, trading, farming, flattering, asserting themselves, suspecting, plotting, praying for another's death, murmuring at the present, lusting, heaping up riches, setting their h...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Love the art which you were taught, set up your retirement in this, and pass through what is left of life as one who has committed all that is yours, with your whole heart, to God, making yourself neither despot nor servant to any man. ---------- Aurelius – 5:9 Don't be disgusted, don't give up, don't be impatient if you do...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Here is a philosopher without a tunic, another without a book, another here half-naked. “I have no bread,” he says, “and still I abide by reason.” And I do not get the means of living out of my learning, and I abide by my reason. ---------- Epictetus – Enchiridion 23 If at any time it should happen that you turn to external things with the...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! If he is a foreigner in the Universe who does not recognize the essence of the Universe, no less is he a foreigner, who does not recognize what comes to pass in it. A fugitive is he who runs away from the reasonable law of his City; a blind man, he who shuts the eye of the mind; a beggar, he who has need of another and has not all that is...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! A black character is an unmanly character, a stubborn character; bestial, childish, animalistic, foolish, crafty, ribald, fraudulent, tyrannical. ---------- Aurelius - Meditations 4:18 – How great a rest from labour he gains who does not look to what his neighbour says or does or thinks, but only to what he himself is doing, in order that...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Either an ordered universe or a chaotic medley heaped together mechanically but still an order; but can order subsist in you and disorder in the whole? And that, too, when all things are so distinguished and yet intermingled and sympathetic. ---------- Aurelius – Meditations 12:14-15 Either the necessity of destiny and an order none may tr...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! 4:26 – You have seen those things, look now at these: do not trouble yourself, make yourself simple. Does a man do wrong? He does wrong to himself. Has some chance befallen you? It is well; from Universal Nature, from the beginning, all that befalls has been apportioned for you and the thread was spun. The sum of the matter is this: life i...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! In memory of Yocheved Gouarie (a"h). Click here for the link to the Amudim fundraiser on my Facebook page, or email me at rabbischneeweiss at gmail.com for other donation options. Seneca's Letter #18 (pp.92-96) Yeshayahu 58:1-10 Cry out with a powerful voice, do not restrain yourself; raise your voice like a shofar – proclaim to...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! For the full text of Seneca's Letter #18, click here and skip to pp.92-96. For Rabbi Joshua Maroof's article, The Celebration of Hanukkah: "Rededicating" the Original Winter Festival , click here . -------------------- Rambam – Mishneh Torah: Sefer Zmanim, Hilchos Shevisas Yom Tov 6:19 Even though eating and drinking on...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Make trial for yourself how the life of the good man, too, fares well, of the man who is satisfied with his portion out of the whole and contented by his own just action and kind disposition. -------------------- Avos 4:1 Who is wealthy? One who is satisfied with his portion.  Rambam – Moreh ha’Nevuchim 3:12 … the soul, when accustomed to...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Democritus has said: “Do few things, if you would enjoy tranquility.” May it not be better to do the necessary things and what the reason of a creature intended by Nature to be social prescribes, and as that reason prescribes? For this brings not only the tranquility from doing right but also from doing few things. For if one removes most...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Everything is fitting for me, my Universe, which fits thy purpose. Nothing in thy good time is too early or too late for me; everything is fruit for me which thy seasons, Nature, bear; from thee, in thee, to thee are all things. The poet sings: 'Dear city of Cecrops', and will you not say: 'Dear city of God'? ----------...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Epictetus – Discourses 2.18 (excerpt) In the first place, do not allow yourself to be carried away by [the] intensity [of your impression]: but say, “Impression, wait for me a little. Let me see what you are, and what you represent. Let me test you.” Then, afterwards, do not allow it to draw you on by picturing what may come next, for if y...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Do not wander without a purpose, but in all your impulses render what is just, and in all your imaginations maintain your faculty of comprehension and understanding. -------------------- Epictetus – Discourses 2.18.24-25 (trans. Hard) In the first place, do not allow yourself to be carried away by [the] intensity [of your impression]: but...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! 4:21 – You ask how, if souls continue to exist, the atmosphere has room for them from time eternal. But how does the ground have room for the bodies of those who for so long an age are buried in it? The answer is that, as on earth change and dissolution after a continuance for so long make room for other dead bodies, so in the atmosphere s...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Today's reading is from Seneca's Letter #13: On Groundless Fears . The letter in its entirety, or even in its excerpted form, is too long to include here, but you can access the entire thing in PDF form here , clicking on The Tao of Seneca Volume 1 , and locating Letter #13 on page 66 in the document (page 68 in the PDF file). Ha...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Epictetus – Enchiridion (Handbook) 3-4 With respect to any of those things you find attractive or useful or have a fondness for, recall to mind what kind of thing it is, beginning with the most trifling. So if you are fond of an earthenware pot, say, “I am fond of an earthenware pot.” Then you will not be upset if it gets broken … When you...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! 4:20 – Everything in any way lovely is lovely of itself and terminates in itself, holding praise to be no part of itself. At all events, in no way does what is praised become better or worse. I say this also of what is commonly called lovely, for instance materials and works of art; and indeed what is there lacking at all to that which is...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! 4:19 - The man in a flutter for after-fame fails to picture to himself that each of those who remember him will himself also very shortly die, then again the man who succeeded him, until the whole remembrance is extinguished as it runs along a line of men who are kindled and then put out. And if you should assume that those who remember ar...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! How great a rest from labor he gains who does not look to what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only to what he himself is doing, in order that exactly this may be just and pure, or in accord with a good man's conduct. 'Do not look round at the depraved morals of others,' but run straight along the line without devia...