A Letter in the Scroll: Understanding Our Jewish Identity and Exploring the Legacy of the World's Oldest Religion

In Judaism, faith is not acceptance but protest, against the world that is, in the name of the world that is not yet but ought to be.

Judaism is the principled rejection of tragedy in the name of hope – precisely because there is no inexorable fate. Nor does hope stand alone. It belongs to a world in which not only God but also human beings, his image, are free, masters of their fate, responsible for their destiny.

Judaism is not peace of mind. ‘The righteous have no rest, neither in this world nor the next’, says the Talmud.12 I remain in awe at the challenge God has set us: to be different, iconoclasts of the politically correct, to be God’s question-mark against the conventional wisdom of the age, to build, to change, to ‘mend’ the world until it becomes a

Remembering Jeremiah, the sages formulated a third way: to sustain their faith through institutions that (unlike the Temple) could be established anywhere – the synagogue, the school, the house of study and the home. In the meanwhile they would practise what today would be called active citizenship in the countries of their dispersion.