Words matter. These are the best David Novak Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
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.
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.
Foundational autonomy asserts instead that in the most fundamental practical sense, I am my own creator, which means that at the core, I am alone.
The community in which one hears the voice of God structures how one hears that voice and interprets what it says.
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.
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.
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.
The right to privacy has both positive and negative connotations for those who consider themselves part of the natural law tradition.
Theology always has moral implications, and morality is always undergirded by theology.
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.
There is no question that Israelis – indeed, all concerned Jews – have to continue to work out a Jewish public philosophy that truly justifies a Jewish state in the land of Israel.
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.
At the political level, most Jews and most Catholics have accepted the liberal idea of religious freedom.
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.
I first came to Jewish-Catholic relations in 1963, while studying for the rabbinate at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.
During the Middle Ages, Jews were members of a semi-independent polity within a larger polity.
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.
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.
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.
The rabbi is often the regular preacher in the synagogue, the man whose sermons offer his community more general theological and moral guidance.
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.
Historically, Jews only accept converts rather than actively seeking them.
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.
Many of us, both Jews and Christians, want the public square to be pluralistic, which is neither partisan nor naked.
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.
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.
The common moral praxis of Jews and Christians is most definitely theologically informed by the doctrine we share in common: The human person, male and female, is created in the image of God.
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.
Jews have long experience with Christians who have tried to help us in putting our Judaism behind us.
Jewish status is defined by the divine election of Israel and his descendants. One does not become a Jew by one’s own volition.
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.
It has always been inevitable that, living as a small minority among a Christian majority, some Jews would convert to Christianity.
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.
It seems unavoidable that history will always link the reestablishment of the State of Israel with the tragedy of the Holocaust.
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.
