Before his death, Rabbi Zusya said "In the coming world, they will not ask me: 'Why were you not Moses?' They will ask me: 'Why were you not Zusya?
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of being true to oneself rather than comparing oneself to others.
Rabbi Zusya's words reflect the idea that in the afterlife, individuals will be held accountable for their own unique paths and potential, rather than measuring their worth against others. It encourages authenticity and self-acceptance, suggesting that each person's journey is distinct and valuable in its own right.
In practice
A motivational speaker might use this quote to encourage individuals to embrace their uniqueness during a personal development workshop.
When I confront a human being as my Thou and speak the basic word I-Thou to him, then he is no thing among things nor does he consist of things. He is no longer He or She, a dot in the world grid of space and time, nor a condition to be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. Neighborless and seamless, he is Thou and fills the firmament. Not as if there were nothing but he; but everything else lives in his light.
Play is the exultation of the possible.
There is no room for God in him who is full of himself.
Every person born in this world represents something new, something that never existed before, something original and unique.
It is usual to think of good and evil as two poles, two opposite directions, the antithesis of one another...We must begin by doing away with this convention.
God dwells wherever man lets Him in.
I know people who have a much better recollection of their childhood than I do. They remember very well when they were a year and a half and two years old. I've only one or two daguerreotypes that come to mind.
my mind is a big hunk of irrevocable nothing which touch and taste and smell and hearing and sight keep hitting and chipping with sharp fatal tools in an agony of sensual chisels i perform squirms of chrome and ex -ecute strides of cobalt nevertheless i feel that i cleverly am being altered that i slightly am becoming something a little different, in fact myself hereupon helpless i utter lilac shrieks and scarlet bellowings
I'm in favor of animal liberation. Why? Because I'm an animal.
I believed that there was a God because I was told it by my grandmother and later by other adults. But when I found that I knew not only that there was God but that I was a child of God, when I understood that, when I comprehended that, more than that, when I internalized that, ingested that, I became courageous.
Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine By which alone the mortal heart is led Unto the thinking of the thought divine.
RELIGION: A set of beliefs held as dogmas, dominating the conduct of life, going beyond or contrary to evidence, and inculcated by methods which are emotional or authoritarian, not intellectual.
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