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" During the Middle Ages, Jews were members of a semi-independent polity within a larger polity. "
David Novak
Within
Members
Middle
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" 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. "
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Community
Christian
Acceptance
" At the political level, most Jews and most Catholics have accepted the liberal idea of religious freedom. "
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Level
Most
Political
" 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. "
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Political
Only
Become
" 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
" The community in which one hears the voice of God structures how one hears that voice and interprets what it says. "
David Novak
Structures
God
Community
" Most Jews, like most rational persons, know that their personal identity and their ethnic identity are not one and the same. "
David Novak
Know
Identity
Personal
" 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. "
David Novak
Doubt
Turn
Man
" 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
" 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
" When modern political Zionism emerged around the turn of the twentieth century, most Orthodox Jews opposed it. "
David Novak
Political
Turn
Modern
" 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. "
David Novak
Hospitality
Home
Back
" 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
" Roots can live without branches, although truncated; branches cannot live without roots. "
David Novak
Cannot
Without
Roots
" 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. "
David Novak
View
Line
Independent
" 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 Holocaust, taken by itself, is a black hole. To look at it directly is to be swallowed up by it. "
David Novak
Holocaust
Up
Taken
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
David Novak
Children
Anniversary
Her
" 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
" The one and only time I met Pope Benedict XVI was when he was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. "
David Novak
Cardinal
Met
Pope
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Jewish status is defined by the divine election of Israel and his descendants. One does not become a Jew by one's own volition. "
David Novak
Election
Own
Become
" 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
" Religious traditions are in a constant state of development and renewed self-understanding. "
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Religious
Traditions
Development
" 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
" Each person is responsible only for his or her own sins. Even the Christian doctrine of 'original sin' does not mean that humans are punished for the sin of the first human pair but, rather, that humans seem inevitably to copy the sin of the first human pair. "
David Novak
Christian
Copy
Mean
" 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