Infinity and Us

“Who brought you out of the land of Egypt.”

"God is not portrayed here as the Creator, because the cosmic experience is too formal and abstract. God does not wish to appear as a tyrant to whom man must submit. The vastness of the cosmos frightens man, and he cannot transport himself to the outer fringes of the universe to meet Him. The mystics have termed the act of creation as a sacrifice. Since He is infinte and unique, for Him to tolerate another creature is an expression of grace – and sacrifice. God, therefore, moves from all-exclusiveness to all-in-inclusiveness, where the world shares His existence and God imprisons Himself, as it were, in the finite order; this is the notion of tzimtzum. God contracted to make room for the world. But man is still overwhelmed by the cosmos and he thus insists on another act of sacrifice: he invites God to join him in his historic destiny, to become his leader, friend, and guide, but also his prisoner. It is in a sense impudent on man's part to restrict God's Presence to an even smaller area by including Him in a comparatively limited historical process, thereby making His "sacrifice" even greater. Yet God indeed engages in this act of regression, from infinite to finite, He willingly descends from the unalterable cosmic drama to the fleeting historical process."

Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Mesorat HaRav Siddur, pp. 112-5.

Judaism never remained aloof from true civilisation

"We declare before heaven and earth that if our religion demanded that we should renounce what is called civilisation and progress we would obey unquestioningly, because our religion is for us truly religion, the word of God before which every other consideration has to give way. We declare, equally, that we would prefer to be branded as fools and do without all the honour and glory that civilisation and progress might confer on us rather than be guilty of the conceited mock-wisdom which the spokesman of a religion allied to progress here displays....

"There is, however, no such dilemma. Judaism never remained aloof from true civilisation and progress; in almost every era its adherents were fully abreast of contemporary learning and very often excelled their contemporaries. If in recent centuries German Jews remained more or less aloof from European civilisation the fault lay not in their religion but in the tyranny which confined them by force within the walls of their ghettoes and denied them intercourse with the outside world. And, thank goodness, even now our sons and daughters can compare favourably in cultural and moral worth with the children of those families who have forsaken the religion of their forefathers for the sake of imagined progress. They need not shun the light of publicity or the critical eye of their contemporaries. They have lost nothing in culture or refinement, even though they do not smoke their cigars on the Sabbath, even though they do not seek the pleasures of the table in foods forbidden by God, even though they do not desecrate the Sabbath for the sake of profit and enjoyment."

S. R. Hirsch: "Religion Allied to Progress