These lines are not the echo of a parrot. People and media may parrot, but I return to these themes because they refuse to fade. I write as Orthodoxy reaches the Summer Pascha of the Dormition and Jewish tradition dwells in the seven Shabbatot of consolation before repentance. Both seasons teach that repetition can be revelation: memory that seeds the future, conscience that insists on hope.

The Byzantine Easter troparion proclaims: “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and to those in the tombs he has given life.” It resonates with the Amidah prayer of Jewish tradition: “You revive the dead in great mercy… You sustain the living with lovingkindness, support the fallen, heal the sick, free the captives, and keep faith with those who sleep in the dust.”

Both affirm resurrection as more than a doctrine: it is the assurance that human destiny transcends mere survival. Yet, alongside this affirmation runs a stubborn countercurrent: denial of resurrection, reduction of faith to ritual, negation of destiny. In antiquity this was the stance of the Sadducees. Today, it reappears in new guises across political life—whether in Western hyper-individualism, Eastern ritualized renewal, or Israel’s inner struggle between secularism, pseudo-messianism, and the absence of true prophecy.

The Sadducees emphasized strict ritual rules – about purity, Sabbath limits, or the ashes of the red heifer – yet rejected eschatology.

This mindset did not die with the destruction of the Temple. It reappears whenever politics or religion is stripped of memory and destiny, reduced to survival and procedure. The Sadducean temptation is to close the horizon, to freeze time, to deny that history points beyond itself.

In our day, this temptation is evident across East and West. It takes the form of hedonism and consumerism in the West, ritualized religio-political masquerade in the East, and secular pragmatism—or pseudo-messianism—in Israel. Each risks repeating the Sadducean error: clinging to ritual or technique while denying destiny.

The contemporary West is shaped by a paradox. On the one hand, it cultivates unprecedented individual freedom, material abundance, and technological advance. On the other, it struggles with emptiness. We still use the vocabulary of morality – justice, rights, compassion – while having lost the frameworks that give these words meaning. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks saw in this a deep fracture: we feign moral........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)