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

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

David Novak

Law

Negative

Right

" Most Jews, like most rational persons, know that their personal identity and their ethnic identity are not one and the same. "

" There is no question that Israelis - indeed, all concerned Jews - have to continue to work out a Jewish public philosophy that truly justifies a Jewish state in the land of Israel. "

" 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. "

" It seems unavoidable that history will always link the reestablishment of the State of Israel with the tragedy of the Holocaust. "

" Christians and Jews alike are the new exiles of the contemporary world, struggling with how to sing the Lord's song in a strange land. "

" To be a Jew, essentially and not just accidentally, is to regard the Jewish people as one's sole primal community. Election by the unique God requires total and unconditional loyalty to one people. "

" The most important part of the process of mourning is regularly reciting kaddish in a synagogue. Kaddish is a doxology, which Jewish tradition has mandated children to recite daily in a synagogue during the year of mourning for a deceased parent and then on the anniversary of his or her death thereafter. "

" 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. "

" Jewish status is defined by the divine election of Israel and his descendants. One does not become a Jew by one's own volition. "

" The rabbi is often the regular preacher in the synagogue, the man whose sermons offer his community more general theological and moral guidance. "

David Novak

Guidance

Community

" Unlike the issue of messiahhood, which arose when Jews and Christians were members of the same religio-political community and spoke the same conceptual language, the issues of the incarnation and the Trinity divide people who are no longer members of the same community and who no longer speak the same language. "

" The community in which one hears the voice of God structures how one hears that voice and interprets what it says. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" A fully positive relationship between Christians and Jews is one that would elide all differences. "

" A religious commitment coupled with theological awareness gives Jews a much better way to answer the claims made upon us by missionaries representing other religions than do the rather weak political and cultural arguments of the secularists. "

" Foundational autonomy asserts instead that in the most fundamental practical sense, I am my own creator, which means that at the core, I am alone. "

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

" We Jews who willingly and happily confirm our covenantal status and its attendant rights and duties must take the question of mission seriously: either to accept it or reject it knowingly and with conviction. "

David Novak

Seriously

Mission

" Historically, Jews only accept converts rather than actively seeking them. "

" Jews have long experience with Christians who have tried to help us in putting our Judaism behind us. "

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

" As a traditional Jew, I have benefited personally from the hospitality of Chabad Hasidim on many occasions, and I marvel at how many Jews Chabad has brought back to their primordial home. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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 theological contacts between Jews and Christians during much of the premodern period are best characterized as disputations. Even when not engaged in face-to-face argumentation, Jews and Christians spoke about each other in essentially disputational terms. "