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" 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
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" The Vatican's recognition of the State of Israel in 1997 could not have occurred without John Paul's leadership. "
David Novak
Israel
Without
Leadership
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
David Novak
Get
Even
Judaism
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
David Novak
Community
Christian
Acceptance
" 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
" Theology always has moral implications, and morality is always undergirded by theology. "
David Novak
Always
Theology
Moral
" 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
" 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
" The one and only time I met Pope Benedict XVI was when he was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. "
David Novak
Cardinal
Met
Pope
" 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
" Roots can live without branches, although truncated; branches cannot live without roots. "
David Novak
Cannot
Without
Roots
" 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
" 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. "
David Novak
Land
People
Israel
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" When modern political Zionism emerged around the turn of the twentieth century, most Orthodox Jews opposed it. "
David Novak
Political
Turn
Modern
" It has always been inevitable that, living as a small minority among a Christian majority, some Jews would convert to Christianity. "
David Novak
Small
Been
Christian
" 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. "
David Novak
History
People
Relationship
" 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. "
David Novak
Language
Community
Speak
" The work of man is to respond to the Covenant by obeying the commandments of the Torah, those commandments that can be obeyed here and now. "
David Novak
Now
Respond
Man
" Many of us, both Jews and Christians, want the public square to be pluralistic, which is neither partisan nor naked. "
David Novak
Partisan
Naked
Square
" 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
" 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 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