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" Religious traditions are in a constant state of development and renewed self-understanding. "
David Novak
Religious
Traditions
Development
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" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Jews have long experience with Christians who have tried to help us in putting our Judaism behind us. "
David Novak
Experience
Behind
Help
" 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 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
" 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
" 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
" It was in the early 1960s that my late revered teacher, Professor Abraham Joshua Heschel, became the first major Jewish theologian in America to enter into dialogue with Christian theologians on a high theological level. "
David Novak
America
Teacher
Late
" 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
" 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
" At the political level, most Jews and most Catholics have accepted the liberal idea of religious freedom. "
David Novak
Level
Most
Political
" Theological reflection takes place within history, but the history within which it takes place is an ongoing, open-ended process. "
David Novak
Place
History
Process
" 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
" 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 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
" 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
" 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
" 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 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
" When modern political Zionism emerged around the turn of the twentieth century, most Orthodox Jews opposed it. "
David Novak
Political
Turn
Modern
" Historically, Jews only accept converts rather than actively seeking them. "
David Novak
Only
Than
Seeking
" Roots can live without branches, although truncated; branches cannot live without roots. "
David Novak
Cannot
Without
Roots
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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