Religion is first a spiritual awakening that is respected through traditional observance

THE JERUSALEM POST
By Nathan Lopes Cardozo

Hoshana Raba is celebrated at the Western Wall in 2013. (photo credit: Marc Israel Ellem)

To be religious is to experience spiritual moments of such rapture that they cause your body to burst open, liberating the soul that you thought you had lost and restoring it to your body as something entirely new, causing a revolution in your mundane life. Only when that happens can one enter the world of religion and decide on unadulterated Halacha. The tragedy is when we do not even strive to get there but live a life of religious mediocrity, convincing ourselves that since we go to synagogue and are very meticulous about every halacha, we are therefore religious. The same is true about our rabbis. [link]