Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" The essence of a religion can be discovered by asking its adherents one question: 'What, to your mind, was the seminal moment in the history of the world?' "
Meir Soloveichik
Moment
Mind
Religion
Related Quotes:
" In both Israel and America, Jews have experienced unparalleled freedoms, achieved great economic success, and exercised appropriate degrees of political power. "
Meir Soloveichik
Power
America
Economic
" Even as Jews and Christians profoundly disagree about the truth, they are united in the belief that there is a truth to be sought. "
Meir Soloveichik
Truth
Belief
United
" The giving of the Torah is a story of God seeking to provide humanity with the opportunity to make moral decisions. "
Meir Soloveichik
God
Decisions
Opportunity
" I do work a lot on arguing that things which people assume are always wrong are not necessarily so and, indeed, can often be right. "
Meir Soloveichik
Always
Right
Lot
" The election of the Jewish people is the result of God's falling in love with Abraham and founding a family with him. "
Meir Soloveichik
Election
Him
God
" While Jews and Christians both agree on many religious issues, we disagree, and believe each other profoundly wrong, about others. "
Meir Soloveichik
Believe
Wrong
Others
" Religions, by definition, disagree as to the truth - a reality that cannot be overcome by demanding that one or the other faith repudiate its claim to truth. "
Meir Soloveichik
Reality
Truth
Overcome
" If God loves human beings and seeks to relate to them because he is drawn to something unique about them, then his love must be exclusive and cannot be universal. "
Meir Soloveichik
Love
Because
Human
" To Catholic, Orthodox, and some Protestant Christians, communion involves partaking of the physical real presence of God in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. By contrast, the Torah draws the Jew into engagement with God's infinite mind. Torah learning is the definitive Jewish mode of communion with God. "
Meir Soloveichik
God
Wine
Real
" Traditional Judaism has always embraced the doctrine of the immortality of the soul and the ultimate resurrection of the dead. "
Meir Soloveichik
Judaism
Always
Soul
" We live in an age in which the biblical-moral traditions that have guided us for centuries are increasingly being forgotten. "
Meir Soloveichik
Live
Forgotten
Age
" Of all the rabbinic sages of antiquity, perhaps none was more influential or famous than Rabbi Akiva. "
Meir Soloveichik
Famous
None
More
" Corresponding to the image of a monotheistic God is monogamous marriage. Marriage based on exclusive and definitive love becomes the icon of the relationship between God and his people and vice versa. "
Meir Soloveichik
God
Image
Love
" Traditional Christians cannot conceive of God as Mormons do: a God who has a wife, who invites other human beings to become gods with him. "
Meir Soloveichik
Him
Other
Wife
" Marriage is about love, but it is not first and foremost about love. First and foremost, marriage is about continuity and transmission. "
Meir Soloveichik
Continuity
Marriage
Love
" Rather than forgive, we can wish ill; rather than hope for repentance, we can instead hope that our enemies experience the wrath of God. "
Meir Soloveichik
Hope
Wish
Forgive
" How can finite man commune with an infinite God? To both Christians and Jews, God himself has made that possible by irrupting into the temporal world. To Christians, God became man in the Incarnation; to Jews, the God that spoke out of the fire on Mount Sinai gave his Torah. "
Meir Soloveichik
Possible
Fire
World
" Stanley Hauerwas is correct that Judaism insists on the bearing of children because it is essential to Jewish continuity. But to end the matter there is to miss an essential point: if we are to learn to love others, Judaism says, we must begin by loving those who are closest to us. "
Meir Soloveichik
Loving
Love
Learn
" To the Christian Church, the destruction of the Temple served as an ultimate sign that the Jews were no longer God's chosen people, divine favor having now been transferred to a newer and better Israel. "
Meir Soloveichik
God
Church
Christian
" We Americans unite faith and freedom in asserting that our liberties are your gift, God, not that of government. "
Meir Soloveichik
Freedom
Gift
God
" If R. Akiva was perhaps overly generous in judging his generation, it can perhaps be ascribed to the belief, based on his own experience, that everyone is capable of a dramatic life change. "
Meir Soloveichik
Generation
Change
Life
" For both Protestants and Catholics, and whether or not absolute continence is demanded of the clergy, celibacy remains a blessed spiritual state. "
Meir Soloveichik
Spiritual
Blessed
Catholics
" For Jews, the paradigmatic convert is the biblical Ruth, who sought not only a new relationship with God but also a new nationality. "
Meir Soloveichik
Only
God
Jews
" There is, of course, only one chosen nation. But Abraham Lincoln would call America 'an almost chosen nation' because he believed that America had a providential role to play in history, inspired by the example of God's ancient covenant people. "
Meir Soloveichik
People
Play
History
" God can desire to enter into a relationship with us; he can be drawn to some aspect of our identity. "
Meir Soloveichik
Desire
God
Identity
" The Hebrew Bible, while firmly opposing pagan sexual practices, nevertheless celebrates man's and woman's desire for each other as divinely designed. "
Meir Soloveichik
Hebrew
Man
Other
" Over the course of history, many Jews have ultimately embraced Christianity - some forcibly, some in order to advance in non-Jewish society, some out of wholehearted belief. "
Meir Soloveichik
Belief
Over
Order
" Either Jesus is the son of God, or he is not. "
Meir Soloveichik
Son
Either
He
" Jews bear children not only because the carnal election of Abraham must continue. For Jews, raising children is essential to living a rounded ethical life. "
Meir Soloveichik
Living
Bear
Children
" Europe is no longer a Christian continent; few Europeans attend religious services on Sunday, and the European Union recently refused to refer to Europe's religious heritage in its fledgling constitution. "
Meir Soloveichik
Sunday
Constitution
Heritage