David Novak Quotes

Christians and Jews alike are the new exiles of the contemporary world, struggling with how to sing the Lord‘s song in a strange land.

Perhaps the main stumbling block to a better, and more fruitful, theological relationship with Judaism and the Jewish people has been the tendency of many Christian theologians to see the Christ event as the end of history.

The relation between Judaism, Zionism, and Messianism is one that is often hard for Jews to get straight. Needless to say, it is even harder for non-Jews.

Modernity has been largely shaped for Jews by three momentous experiences: the acquisition of citizenship by individual Jews in secular nation-states, the destruction of one-third of Jewry in the Holocaust, and the founding of the State of Israel.

The Vatican‘s recognition of the State of Israel in 1997 could not have occurred without John Paul‘s leadership.

Roots can live without branches, although truncated; branches cannot live without roots.

Because Judaism and Christianity are both covenantal religions, the relationship of the individual Jew or Christian to God is always within covenanted community.

As a practicing Jew, I have studied with Christian teachers whom I respect for who they are and what they are, including their positive concern with Jews and Judaism.

All the questions discussed in the Talmud and related rabbinic literature are normative questions: either they are questions of what one is to think or what one is to do. Every prescribed thought has some practical implication; every prescribed act has some theoretical implication.

Christianity and Judaism are united above all in their common affirmation and implementation of the moral teaching of the Hebrew Bible, or ‘Old Testament,’ and the traditions of interpretation of that teaching.

A traditional rabbi is the man to whom the community and its members turn to rule on what Jewish law requires of them, particularly in cases of doubt.

Jews have long experience with Christians who have tried to help us in putting our Judaism behind us.

Cultural synthesis is how a compromise between various opinions is worked out. But truth does not change, and truth is not arrived at by some sort of compromise.

It seems unavoidable that history will always link the reestablishment of the State of Israel with the tragedy of the Holocaust.

Proselytizing is only wrong if coercive or deceptive. Coercion, whether violent or not, is immoral, just as deception is immoral.

Historically, Jews only accept converts rather than actively seeking them.

In historical messianism, the reign of the Messiah is brought about by a Jewish ruler powerful enough to gather the Jewish exiles back to the land of Israel, reestablish a Torah government there, and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.

The common moral praxis of Jews and Christians is most definitely theologically informed by the doctrine we share in common: The human person, male and female, is created in the image of God.

God chose us to live both in body and in soul, but the body functions for the sake of the soul more than the soul functions for the body.

One cannot accept Christ and still be part of the normative Jewish community; one cannot live by Torah and still be part of the Church.

The work of man is to respond to the Covenant by obeying the commandments of the Torah, those commandments that can be obeyed here and now.

The rabbi is often the regular preacher in the synagogue, the man whose sermons offer his community more general theological and moral guidance.

To view any individual as being independent of relationality is like viewing a point outside of a line, a line outside of a figure, a figure outside of a body.

The right to privacy has both positive and negative connotations for those who consider themselves part of the natural law tradition.

The Holocaust, taken by itself, is a black hole. To look at it directly is to be swallowed up by it.

The slogan ‘Never Again!’ that emerged after the Holocaust implies that the Holocaust has a universal moral meaning, which, if properly learned, can provide at least a theoretical prophylactic against its repetition against anyone.

In deciding among theological views, one should be something of a consequentialist: the choice of one theological position over another should be, if not actually determined, at least heavily conditioned by the fact that it implies a better ethical outcome than the alternatives.

During the Middle Ages, Jews were members of a semi-independent polity within a larger polity.

Although most Christian churches advocate some sort of mission to non-Christians, no Jewish group advocates a mission to non-Jews. Proselytization seems to be foreign to Judaism.

For those who have envisioned the State of Israel to be a democracy, which although primarily a Jewish polity for Jews is one in which non-Jews can become citizens and enjoy equal civil rights with the Jewish majority, the question of natural law is the question of human rights.

If human language, with its logic, is the way God has given us to understand the world, then the Torah must be understood in that same language and with that same logic.

The shortcoming of purely political discourse between Christians and Jews arises from the fact that it is largely built upon the perception of a common enemy.

There is no question that Israelis – indeed, all concerned Jews – have to continue to work out a Jewish public philosophy that truly justifies a Jewish state in the land of Israel.