Matters of Interpretation

The true community does not arise through peoples having feelings for one another (though indeed not without it), but through, first, their taking their stand in living mutual relation with a living Centre, and, second, their being in living mutual relation with one another. … The community is built up out of living mutual relation, but the builder is the living effective Centre.

Martin Buber, I and Thou, Translated by Ronald Gregor Smith, Scribner Classics, 2000 (1956), 53-4.

Unless Adonai builds the house,
its builders work in vain.
Unless Adonai guards the city,
the guard keeps watch in vain.

Psalm 127:1

Image: “Old New Synagogue,” Jiří Meitner / CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons