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

Judaism never left its ideals at the level of lofty aspirations, but instead translated them into deeds that we call mitzvot, and a way, which we call the halakhah, and thus

Unlike Christianity, Judaism is not a religion of salvation. We do not believe that we stand under the shadow of “original sin” and therefore need to be saved. Nor, like so many secular systems from ancient Greece to today, do we see the individual as fundamentally alone in a sea of hostile, or at best indifferent, forces.

Ambivalence spells the end of an identity because it cannot be passed on to our children. They will seek, for their own psychic health, to escape from it; and that in effect is what a whole generation is doing by leaving Judaism.

The fallacy was that Jews are the cause of anti-Semitism. Therefore if Jews change, anti-Semitism will disappear. This is false simply because Jews are the object rather than the cause of anti-Semitism,

It is the courage to see the world as it is, without the comfort of myth or the self-pity of despair, knowing that the evil, cruelty and injustice it contains are neither inevitable nor meaningless but instead a call to human responsibility—a call emanating from the heart of existence itself.

Because they know that if they call me ‘Jew’ I will take it as an insult. But if they call you ‘Jew’ you will take it as a compliment.”

One of the best-known facts about anti-Semitism is that its existence does not require the presence of Jews. It exists in countries that do not have, perhaps never had, a significant Jewish population.

“The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, an almost fanatical love of justice and the desire for personal independence—these are the features of the Jewish tradition which make me thank my stars I belong to it.”

God loves diversity; He does not ask us all to serve Him in the same way. To each people He has set a challenge, and with the Jewish people He made a covenant, knowing that it takes time, centuries, millennia, to overcome the conflicts and injustices of the human situation, and that therefore each generation must hand on its ideals to the next, so