Gmar Kasima tova

 May Hashem bless you all with a safe and prosperous year. May whatever sins we have done to cause this mess we are in be cleansed and may we seek brighter days ahead.

boundless goodness

 

The boundless goodness of God, that is unfathomable to the limited powers of human understanding, טובו, is the prime mover and mark of all His loving actions. (The English word "God" is also derived from His goodness). Despite its fullness, it does not act blindly, but changes according to the worthiness and need of the person to whom it is given. To the faithful, it is expressed as a bounty in recognition of their worthiness, חן, to the undeserving, as mercy, חסד, and even to those who have forfeited it or could never lay claim to it, as compassion, רחמים.

God's benevolent action is not sparing with its love, but extends לכל בשר, indiscriminately to all, although in differing amounts.

R' Marcus Lehman, Passover Haggadah, p. 236

לשנה טובה

 

לשנה טובה

 תכתב ותחתם

 לאלתר

לחי'ים טובים וארוכים

 !ולשלום 

continuation in the future

 

“It is an important characteristic of God's boundless love, which allows us to conclude from the fact that He has not hitherto allowed us to suffer want, that in the future too, He will not permit us so to suffer. The narrow human attitude, While sparing with its love, is quite the reverse. The greater the benevolence we have received from our fellow-men in the past, the less right and the less expectation do we have of receiving similar benevolence in the future. Only with God's inexhaustible and patient love is the benevolence already received a guarantee of its continuation in the future. This is an aspect of God's loving rule that recurs constantly in our holy writings, and especially so in our prayers."

R' Marcus Lehman, Passover Haggadah, p. 237

love, inexhaustible, unbounded love

 

“The actual Essence of God is love, inexhaustible, unbounded love. Where both this love and the name of God are unrecognised and God therefore finds it necessary to maintain and preserve His glory from lack of recognition and waywardness, it is 'כבוד ה the glory of God which procures recognition by storm, judgement and punishment. Where God appeares in punitive form, as in the overthrow of the
Egyptians, and with devoted love, as in the liberation of His people, He reveals Himself ובעצמו בכבודו in His glory and His whole real Being. Here God appears on the one hand as the sublime, unapproachable and inviolable Holiness, who disseminates death and fear, whereas on the other hand He appears as the source of all love and blessings, all existence and hope, or expressed in other terms: as הקדוש on the one hand, and ברוך הוא the other. קדוש expresses the concept כבודי

(ונקדש בכבודי ) whereas the description of עצמו in shortened from is ברוך הוא”

R' Marcus Lehman, Passover Haggadah, pp. 131-2

The Nineteen Letters

 "The Nineteen Letters [is] a precious and marvelous work on the Jewish faith ... With this distinguished work he achieved great things; he reestablished the glory of our faith in the kehillos in Germany and taught understanding to the confused ... All his words are drawn from holy sources and sevenfold purified in the crucible of true insight and straight thinking ... .I am very pleased that this work has now been translated into our holy tongue .... and I pray to God that.. .just as this work had a great impact upon our brethren in Germany, so may its effect and splendor multiply among the Jews in our country ....I hope that many of our brethren will bring this precious book into their homes for a blessing, for the strengthening of the faith, for our sacred Torah, and the knowledge of Judaism in its holy purity." 

[Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor, 1896]

Thy commandments

 "Thy commandments are the end which I love; all other things have value to me only to the extent that they serve as means to the attainment of this end." Rav Hirsch on Tehillim 119:44-48

God's love

 "As His creating word calls forth the sun, and summons the light of the world, so has God's love appointed Israel as the bearer of the light of spirit and life, and as the bearer of Torah. O that you would be mindful of such a high task! O that you would allow heart and spirit to be infused by the spirit of the Torah and allow your life, in word and deed, to be but a copy of the contents of this Torah! You would thus surrender yourself to God in love just as He summons you in love." Horeb 628