- "Such conduct is an affront to those religious values which give meaning and purpose to our lives. Each of us, no matter how rich or powerful, is bound by the same moral order. Sexual impropriety, lying, and otherwise morally reckless behavior undermine the sacred foundation on which our sense of community rests." (page 2)
- In Deuteronomy 7:7 God says: I chose you not because you are more numerous or powerful, and not because your are morally, spiritually, or intellectually superior. You are not. I chose you out of my unknowable will. The prophet Amos echoes this assessment in the name of God: Only you have I known from among the nations of the earth. But you are no better to me than the children of the Ethiopians (9:7)....and God loves you no more than the Philistines (8:8).
According to authors Hertzberg and Hirt-Manheimer, "Amos defined chosenness not as merit but as responsibility, even as an affliction. God expects Jews to live intensely, creatively, decently, in the moral vanguard of humankind. Chosenness is the ever present and inescapable discomfort caused by conscience." (page 13)
- According to Rabbi Marc Gellman, Jewish texts affirm Judaism's conviction in the hereafter. In Pirkei Avot, Rabbi Yakof teaches, "This world is just a waiting room for the world to come....One hour of bliss in the world to come is better than all the bliss in the world that is." In the tractate Moed Katan we are taught: "This world is only like a hotel. The world to come is like a home." And the rabbis tell us: "There is no good thing in this world which is not better in the world to come." (page 19)
- A Jewish way of studying text in which students learn in pairs. (page 48)
- The wise son: hakham; the rebellious son: rasha; the innocent son: tam; the son who does not know even what to ask: she-aino yodei-a lish-ol (pages 43-44)
- Written by Emille Schindler with Erika Rosenberg, "Where Light and Shadow Meet" offers "a rare and valuable perspective on [Schindler's] husband Oskar's wartime activities, stripping his image of the heroic sheen accorded it by his biographers, while giving full voice to the bitterness his philandering and Nazi collaborations evoked," writes RJ literary editor Steven Schnur. "She recounts her youth and early marriage; revisits the rescue operation that saved some thirteen hundred Polish Jews, correcting misconceptions along the way; and concludes with a detailed description of the couple's unsuccessful efforts to rebuild their live sin Germany after the war."
- According to Rabbi Marc Gellman, supposition of life after death is the only belief shared by all the religions of the world. (page 21)
- Franz Kafka (page 70)
- Pollard's life-without-parole sentence "crosses the line where justice ends and vindictiveness begins," writes UAHC President Emeritus Rabbi Alexander M. Schindler: "In recent years, every person convicted of spying for a friendly state-and even a majority of those who spied for America's enemies-was given a far less severe term. Two years ago, another U.S. Naval intelligence officer, Robert C. Kim, was convicted of selling classified intelligence information to South Korea; he received a ten-year sentence with eligibility for parole. Also in 1996, U.S. Navy Lt. Commander Michael Schwartz was indicted for passing classified documents to Saudi Arabia-his sentence an 'other than honorable' discharge from the Navy." (page 72)
- Rabbi Israel Salanter, the nineteenth-century moralist. (page 14)
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