ABSTRACT
Religions tend to teach that men will attain moral perfection and a high spiritual state by abstention from the normal pleasures of life and ordinary material satisfactions. A religious existence and an ascetic life are almost synonymous terms. But Judaism, on the contrary, has never propagated self-mortification and extreme self-denial as religious ideals. In numerous ways Judaism has affirmed the belief, expressed simply and forcefully in Psalm 115, that The heavens are the heavens of the Lord, But the earth He has given to man. Much of Judaism can be said to be a commentary on this text. It explains the strong prophetic element in Judaism and in Jewish experience; for if one believes that the earth is the stage on which man must play his role, he will be greatly concerned with what he finds on that stage and will feel compelled to re-arrange things.
