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" My mother was a modern woman with a limited interest in religion. When the sun set and the fast of the Day of Atonement ended, she shot from the synagogue like a rocket to dance the Charleston. "

Lionel Blue

Dance

Mother

Religion

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" An aged rabbi, crazed with liberalism, once said to me, We Jews are just ordinary human beings. Only a bit more so! "

" Praying privately in churches, I began to discover that heaven was my true home and also that it was here and now, woven into this life. "

" My mother enjoyed old age, and because of her I've begun to enjoy parts of it too. So far I've had it good and am crumbling nicely. "

" Because of my Marxism, I was not into myths or miracles, whether it was the virgin birth, the physical resurrection or casting out demons from an epileptic. "

" What would I have done if I'd been put to the test? Would I have risked my own life for people I hardly knew? Probably, I would have looked the other way at best or become another apologist for evil at worst. "

" I recovered my infant Judaism, but in a reformist version. "

" The real evidence for Jesus and Christianity is in how Jesus and the Christianity based on him manifest themselves in the lives of practicing Christians. "

" I literally fell among Quakers when I went up to Oxford. "

Lionel Blue

Among

Quakers

" For some years I deserted religion in favour of Marxism. The republic of goodness seemed more attainable than the Kingdom of God. "

" So many plusses, so many minuses. "

Lionel Blue

Many

" To change, to convert? Why bother? "

" Someone gave me a New Testament. I had never before read it systematically. Some parts made sense, some parts shocked me. "

Lionel Blue

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Never

" I was certainly open for something being on the edge of a nervous breakdown, perplexed by my own sexuality. I was gay. "

" Some of the parables of the Kingdom made wonderful sense, but the exclusivity in the New Testament put me off. "

" On the way to work good-hearted young girls sometimes offer me their seats, which I accept and bless them in return, a transaction satisfying to all concerned. "

Lionel Blue

Sometimes

Young

" I still go to a Christian priory for retreats. "

" Discrimination against Jews can be read in Thomas Aquinas, and insults against Jews in Martin Luther. "

" I thought of such Christian inventions as the ghetto and the Jewish badge of shame. The Nazis didn't have to go very far to pick up their know-how. "

Lionel Blue

Christian

Ghetto

" The Christian use of religion as a personal love affair both shocked me, and attracted me. "

Lionel Blue

Christian

Love

" I didn't want to be on the losing side. I was fed up with Jewish weakness, timidity and fear. I didn't want any more Jewish sentimentality and Jewish suffering. I was sickened by our sad songs. "

" I am pleased now that I have lived in a gay as well as a religious ghetto, though it hasn't been very comfortable. Taken together, their limitations cancel each other out and I have seen the world more kindly and more honestly. "

" To my surprise, my 70s are nicer than my 60s and my 60s than my 50s, and I wouldn't wish my teens and 20s on my enemies. "

" The secular world is more spiritual than it thinks, just as the ecclesiastical world is more materialist than it cares to acknowledge. "

" Good things come, and I'm not just referring to riding the buses. "

" It is not possible to unknow what you do know - the result of that is fanaticism. "

" I was not comfortable worshipping another Jew. "

" I began to see that my problems, seen spiritually, were really my soul's plusses. "

" I learnt pity, sympathy, and what it was like to be at the other end of the stick. Such lessons can't be learnt in lecture halls. "

" Christianity had two faces which bewildered me - two pictures which didn't fit. "