Words matter. These are the best Meir Soloveichik Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Traditional Judaism has always embraced the doctrine of the immortality of the soul and the ultimate resurrection of the dead.
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.
God can desire to enter into a relationship with us; he can be drawn to some aspect of our identity.
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.
The Hebrew Bible, while firmly opposing pagan sexual practices, nevertheless celebrates man’s and woman’s desire for each other as divinely designed.
Rather than forgive, we can wish ill; rather than hope for repentance, we can instead hope that our enemies experience the wrath of God.
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.
We live in an age in which the biblical-moral traditions that have guided us for centuries are increasingly being forgotten.
The election of the Jewish people is the result of God’s falling in love with Abraham and founding a family with him.
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.
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.
Judaism, I would argue, does demand love for our fellow human beings, but only to an extent. ‘Hate’ is not always synonymous with the terribly sinful.
Jews seek to cleave to the will of God as set forth in the Bible and, particularly, the Pentateuch, with its rabbinic commentaries, the Mishnah and Talmud.
Religious relativism is not the answer to disagreement between faiths; yet relativism, and a blurring of religious distinctions, all too often result when two deeply believing faith communities engage each other in the public arena on theological issues.
Throughout its history, the members of Shearith Israel have observed Thanksgiving by reciting in synagogue the same psalms of praise and gratitude sung by Jews all over the world on festive days like Hanukkah.
We know a great deal about the configuration of the menorah from the biblical book of Exodus. Beaten out of solid gold, the ancient candelabrum boasted six branches emerging from a seventh, its central shaft. The menorah was adorned with golden buttons, cups, and flowers.
For Jews, the paradigmatic convert is the biblical Ruth, who sought not only a new relationship with God but also a new nationality.
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.
The practice of shaving makes its first appearance in the Bible in connection with the story of Joseph, who as a young man was sold by his brothers into slavery in Egypt, where he was subsequently imprisoned on false charges.
By forbidding Jews to destroy their hair, the Bible warns them away from seeking the siren song of eternal youth. By encouraging Jews to grow beards, it reminds them that they will not be young forever, that they must prepare the ground for those who come after, just as their fathers did for them.
As delineated in the biblical book of Leviticus, Israel’s atonement was achieved, year after year, through the sacrifices brought on that day by the high priest.
As with the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, the origins of Shearith Israel trace back to a small group of religious freedom-seekers and a treacherous ocean passage to the New World.
I am humbled and deeply honored to have been asked to serve the congregants of Shearith Israel, a congregation with an incomparable history, where some of America’s most distinguished rabbis have pastored and preached.
I continue to dream of a day when my skullcap will not stick out so much.
Even as Jews and Christians profoundly disagree about the truth, they are united in the belief that there is a truth to be sought.
The giving of the Torah is a story of God seeking to provide humanity with the opportunity to make moral decisions.
For both Protestants and Catholics, and whether or not absolute continence is demanded of the clergy, celibacy remains a blessed spiritual state.
Of all the rabbinic sages of antiquity, perhaps none was more influential or famous than Rabbi Akiva.
In both Israel and America, Jews have experienced unparalleled freedoms, achieved great economic success, and exercised appropriate degrees of political power.
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?’
The moment that one person in an argument claims to be God, dialogue and debate become impossible.
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.
Marriage is about love, but it is not first and foremost about love. First and foremost, marriage is about continuity and transmission.
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.
Humanity was created in the image of God; our love is a reflection of his.
