Vocation and Lutheran Higher Education June 5, 2022.Mikva contributed to the recently released book on vocation, Hearing Vocation Differently: Meaning, Purpose and Identity in the Multi-Faith Academy (Oxford University Press, 2019).įollow us on Twitter My Tweets Search for: Recent Posts on Vocation She also enjoys playing with words in crossword puzzles, Scrabble, and any other form-except puns. She works at the intersections of exegesis, culture and ethics. Mikva is the Rabbi Herman Schaalman Chair in Jewish Studies at Chicago Theological Seminary and Senior Faculty Fellow for the InterReligious Institute. From Abraham Joshua Heschel, Who Is Ma n? 1965.ĭo you have any word pairs with nuanced differences that seem particularly significant to you? Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions…To celebrate is to share in a greater joy, to participate in an eternal drama. Entertainment is a diversion, a distraction… from the preoccupations of daily living. To be entertained is a passive state-it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was perhaps contemplating a similar distinction when he wrote that we are losing the power of celebration, settling instead to be entertained:Ĭelebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. Optimistic, but it is one of the great literatures of hope.Ībraham Joshua Heschel featured in Voices & Visions SacksĪlso points out that Hebrew Bible (my favorite book) is not particularly Since it is anĪctive virtue rather than a passive one, I tend to favor it-even though optimismĬan be valuable too, as long as it does not devolve into complacency.
Hope requires far more courage than optimism. Optimism is the belief that the world is changing for the better hope is the belief that, together, we can make the world better” (From To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility). Rabbi Jonathan Sacks teaches, “Optimism and hope are not the same. The distinctions I make are surely idiosyncratic as well asĬulturally bound, but some seem important. I am hopeful.” That set me to pondering the differences between pairs of If I was optimistic about the resiliency of American democracy amidst theĬurrent tidal wave of polarization and disruption. This exercise came to mind recently, after someone asked me But I realized that the words were linked to Inuit cultural Out nuances in texture, timing or other qualities that would be of I remember reading a long time ago that there were fifty different words in Eskimo
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