Leo Baeck Quotes & Sayings

From all that urges and admonishes, the romantic turns away. He wants to dream, enjoy, immerse himself, instead of clearing his way by striving and wrestling. That which has been and rises out of what is past occupies him far more than what is to become and also more than what wants to become; for the word of the future would always be command. Experiences with their many echoes and their billows stand higher in his estimation than life with its tasks; for tasks always establish a bond with harsh reality. And from this he is in flight. He does not want to struggles against fate, but rather to receive it with an ardent and devout soul; he does not want to wrestle for the blessing, but to experience it, abandoning himself, devoid of will, to what spells salvation and bliss. — Leo Baeck

Romantic enthusiasm lifts the good aloft and removes it into the dim distance of the incomparable and unattainable; at the same time it portrays the good in a human countenance out of which it looks at us and we can look back at it, face to face, in admiration and ecstasy, and stretch out our arms towards it. Thus the moral good is represented in human, and at the same time superhuman, form; it is of our own kind, and yet above our kind; it confronts us, but makes no demands. IT is not really a standard and lacks the power to issues commandments. Both are given at once: the ethical which one would like to love; and the passive, the romantic, in which one wants to live. As a substitute for constant activity demanded by the ethical commandment, we have adoration in which the romantic impression of the moment in vented, and yearning which need only admire and enjoy but not achieve anything. — Leo Baeck

The mark of a mature man is the ability to give love and receive it joyously and without guilt. — Leo Baeck

In Judaism social action is religiousness, and religiousness implies social action. — Leo Baeck

Through faith man experiences the meaning of the world through action he is to give to it meaning. — Leo Baeck

Service of God consists in what we do to our neighbor. — Leo Baeck

A tradition is entrusted to human personalities which it reflects. What a man recalls as a word or an experience of the master is, even against his will and without his knowledge, colored by his own personality and character, by the littleness and the greatness in him, by his hopes, his longing, and his faith. — Leo Baeck

That which elevates the Christian to an essential superiority over the non-Christian is therefore not a higher level of morality as such. The decisive difference is to be found in baptism, where the miracle becomes effective. The sacrament gives everything and leads to everything. The preaching of Paul proclaims, not a new ethic, but a new salvation, a miracle which creates immortal men. — Leo Baeck

Faith is the capacity of the soul to perceive the abiding, the invisible in the visible. — Leo Baeck

The whole love of the "Law" has been lavished on and has cherished the Sabbath. As the day of rest, it gives life its balance and rhythm; it sustains the week. Rest is something entirely different from a mere recess, from a mere interruption of work, from not working. A recess is something essentially physical, part of the earthly everyday sphere. Rest, on the other hand, is essentially religious, part of the atmosphere of the divine; it leads us to the mystery, to the depth from which all commandments come, too. It is that which re-creates and reconciles, the recreation in which the soul, as it were, creates itself again and catches the breath of life-- that in life which is sabbatical. — Leo Baeck

A minority is always compelled to think. That is the blessing of being in the minority. — Leo Baeck

Honesty is the precondition for genuine scientific and scholarly work. — Leo Baeck

It is the right of art to consider an impression valid simply as an impression and to accept it as something entire and complete without critical scrutiny. Art is, as Schopenhauer puts it, "everywhere at its goal." But for life, and hence surely also for religion, there is a danger, the romantic danger, in making the impression of an experience all-important. For then the sense for the content and commandment of life must all too soon evaporate together with any sense for reality with its definite tasks; and the place of all aspiration and expectation will be taken over by the sole dominion of the mood of faith which simply feels itself, and then finds it easy to deem itself, complete. This is faith for faith's sake. — Leo Baeck