What does it take to bring together The Juilliard School and Bais Chana, a high school for Orthodox girls?Answer: a summer conservatory for teenagers, where the art is Juilliard-level professional, and the Judaism is black-hat frum (Orthodox).
Enter a cathedral, and what do you feel? Thesoaring vaulted ceiling, the giant columns, the colossal statues ofsaints and martyrs, the luminous stained-glass images of scripturalheroes — the architecture articulates a spirituality of contrast. Weare small, insignificant, ephemeral creatures, no better than insectson the floor. We are impure, corrupt, stained with sin. Who are we toapproach God? God is magnificent, distant and fearsome in judgment.In the cathedral, it is only the figure of Christ that mediatesbetween my miserable condition as human being and God\’s majesty.Holiness, argued the scholar Rudolf Otto, lies in the contrastbetween our \”utter creatureliness\” and God\’s frightening \”tremendum.\”Holiness is the shiver of vulnerability in the face of theinfinite.
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