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" 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. "
David Novak
Strange
World
Land
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" 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. "
David Novak
Land
Israel
Philosophy
" 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. "
David Novak
Best
Other
Much
" 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. "
David Novak
People
God
Truth
" In a very real sense, Jews have to believe that Christians have missed the point about how to wait for the end, and Christians have to believe something quite similar about the Jews. "
David Novak
Real
Believe
Wait
" 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. "
David Novak
Logic
God
Language
" Every individual is a person necessarily imbedded in a range of multiple relations, and therefore, no one is really independent in anything but a relative sense; no one is truly autonomous. "
David Novak
Individual
Sense
Person
" 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. "
David Novak
God
Relationship
People
" 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. "
David Novak
Political
Awareness
Better
" Historically, Jews only accept converts rather than actively seeking them. "
David Novak
Only
Than
Seeking
" 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. "
David Novak
Live
Accept
Christ
" 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. "
David Novak
Powerful
Government
Enough
" 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. "
David Novak
Mission
Most
Christian
" Jews have not only become equal citizens in Western democracies, they have become leading citizens. And, of course, the reestablishment of the State of Israel has given Jews a political presence in the world they have not had since biblical times. "
David Novak
Political
Only
Become
" 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. "
David Novak
Respect
Christian
Teachers
" 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
Accept
Mission
" 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
More
Community
" A fully positive relationship between Christians and Jews is one that would elide all differences. "
David Novak
Positive
Relationship
Differences
" Cultural synthesis is how a compromise between various opinions is worked out. But truth does not change, and truth is not arrived at by some sort of compromise. "
David Novak
Change
Out
Truth Is
" 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. "
David Novak
Better
Ethical
Fact
" Modernity has been largely shaped for Jews by three momentous experiences: the acquisition of citizenship by individual Jews in secular nation-states, the destruction of one-third of Jewry in the Holocaust, and the founding of the State of Israel. "
David Novak
Holocaust
Citizenship
Three
" 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. "
David Novak
Literature
Questions
Think
" God chose us to live both in body and in soul, but the body functions for the sake of the soul more than the soul functions for the body. "
David Novak
Us
Body
God
" Proselytizing is only wrong if coercive or deceptive. Coercion, whether violent or not, is immoral, just as deception is immoral. "
David Novak
Only
Deception
Just
" 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. "
David Novak
Political
Enemy
Perception
" I first came to Jewish-Catholic relations in 1963, while studying for the rabbinate at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. "
David Novak
New
First
Jewish
" 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. "
David Novak
Affirmation
Bible
Judaism
" 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. "
David Novak
Moral
Meaning
Repetition
" It seems unavoidable that history will always link the reestablishment of the State of Israel with the tragedy of the Holocaust. "
David Novak
History
Holocaust
Always
" 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. "
David Novak
People
Unique
Loyalty
" 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. "
David Novak
Democracy
Human Rights
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