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" A traditional rabbi is the man to whom the community and its members turn to rule on what Jewish law requires of them, particularly in cases of doubt. "

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" Theological reflection takes place within history, but the history within which it takes place is an ongoing, open-ended process. "

" As a practicing Jew, I have studied with Christian teachers whom I respect for who they are and what they are, including their positive concern with Jews and Judaism. "

" If human language, with its logic, is the way God has given us to understand the world, then the Torah must be understood in that same language and with that same logic. "

" Although most Christian churches advocate some sort of mission to non-Christians, no Jewish group advocates a mission to non-Jews. Proselytization seems to be foreign to Judaism. "

" Many of us, both Jews and Christians, want the public square to be pluralistic, which is neither partisan nor naked. "

" Christianity and Judaism are united above all in their common affirmation and implementation of the moral teaching of the Hebrew Bible, or 'Old Testament,' and the traditions of interpretation of that teaching. "

" Even when God chose Israel, he did not create the people of Israel as he created its human members, as natural beings. Instead, God formed the people of Israel from individual human beings already living in the natural world, calling them into a new historical identity. "

" During the Middle Ages, Jews were members of a semi-independent polity within a larger polity. "

" To view any individual as being independent of relationality is like viewing a point outside of a line, a line outside of a figure, a figure outside of a body. "

" All modern secularity requires is that our public norms and the arguments for them not presuppose common acceptance of Jewish or Christian revelation, even if these public norms are consistent with a particular community's revelation and the authoritative teachings it derives from that revelation. "

" Proselytizing is only wrong if coercive or deceptive. Coercion, whether violent or not, is immoral, just as deception is immoral. "

" At the political level, most Jews and most Catholics have accepted the liberal idea of religious freedom. "

" In historical messianism, the reign of the Messiah is brought about by a Jewish ruler powerful enough to gather the Jewish exiles back to the land of Israel, reestablish a Torah government there, and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. "

" Theology always has moral implications, and morality is always undergirded by theology. "

" The Jewish tradition presents itself as the greatest revelation of God's truth that can be known in the world. That is why we call ourselves 'the chosen people.' It is not that we choose ourselves. It means that we have been elected by God and given the Torah. "

" Because Judaism and Christianity are both covenantal religions, the relationship of the individual Jew or Christian to God is always within covenanted community. "

" I first came to Jewish-Catholic relations in 1963, while studying for the rabbinate at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. "

" The relationship between God and his people was always the one having absolute primacy, the one that had basically to determine all human relationships, whether those within the covenanted community itself or those between the covenanted community and the outside world. "

" Perhaps the main stumbling block to a better, and more fruitful, theological relationship with Judaism and the Jewish people has been the tendency of many Christian theologians to see the Christ event as the end of history. "

" The right to privacy has both positive and negative connotations for those who consider themselves part of the natural law tradition. "

" The religious doctrine of traditional Judaism entails the acceptance of the nationhood of the Jewish people and the everlasting sanctity of the Land of Israel for them. "

" In deciding among theological views, one should be something of a consequentialist: the choice of one theological position over another should be, if not actually determined, at least heavily conditioned by the fact that it implies a better ethical outcome than the alternatives. "

" One cannot accept Christ and still be part of the normative Jewish community; one cannot live by Torah and still be part of the Church. "

" The relation between Judaism, Zionism, and Messianism is one that is often hard for Jews to get straight. Needless to say, it is even harder for non-Jews. "

" It was in the early 1960s that my late revered teacher, Professor Abraham Joshua Heschel, became the first major Jewish theologian in America to enter into dialogue with Christian theologians on a high theological level. "

" The shortcoming of purely political discourse between Christians and Jews arises from the fact that it is largely built upon the perception of a common enemy. "

" All the questions discussed in the Talmud and related rabbinic literature are normative questions: either they are questions of what one is to think or what one is to do. Every prescribed thought has some practical implication; every prescribed act has some theoretical implication. "

" The one and only time I met Pope Benedict XVI was when he was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. "

" The slogan 'Never Again!' that emerged after the Holocaust implies that the Holocaust has a universal moral meaning, which, if properly learned, can provide at least a theoretical prophylactic against its repetition against anyone. "

" For those who have envisioned the State of Israel to be a democracy, which although primarily a Jewish polity for Jews is one in which non-Jews can become citizens and enjoy equal civil rights with the Jewish majority, the question of natural law is the question of human rights. "