We have no answer to ultimate problems. We really don’t know. In this not knowing, in this sense of embarrassment, lies the key to opening the wells of creativity.

The essence of Judaism is the awareness of the reciprocity of God and man, of man’s togetherness with Him who abides in eternal otherness.

What we do as individuals may be a trivial episode; what we attain as Israel causes us to grow into the infinite.

Judaism does not stand on ceremonies … Jewish piety is an answer to God, expressed in the language of mitzvot rather than in the language of “ceremonies.”

The deepest human longing is to be a thought in God’s mind, to be the object of His attention.

The establishment or destruction of the kingly dignity of God occurs now and in the present, through and in us.

Who is a Jew? A person whose integrity decays when unmoved by the knowledge of wrong done to other people.

Ceremonies are created for the purpose of signifying: mitzvot were given for the purpose of sanctifying. This is their function: to refine, to ennoble, to sanctify man. They confer holiness upon us, whether or not we know exactly what they signify. A mitzvah is more than man’s reference to God; it is also God’s reference to man.

In contrast to the Muslim view of the Koran as the eternal uncreated Word, Maimonides insisted that all Jews agree “that the Torah is a created entity,” brought into being in the same manner as all other created beings.