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

There is no answer to the question, “Why do the innocent suffer?” at the level of thought. The only adequate answer is at the level of deed, in the long journey toward a world in which the innocent no longer suffer. To be sure, there is acceptance in Judaism. We call this tzidduk hadin, coming to terms with suffering and loss, saying that “all that

So biblical Judaism has a carefully elaborated theory of the state. Oddly enough, though, this is only its secondary concern. Far more fundamental is its theory of society and its insistence that the state exists to serve society and not vice versa.

To a degree unrivaled by any other nation, Jews became a people whose very survival was predicated on the school, the house of study, and life as a never-ending process of learning. “When does the obligation to study begin?” asks Maimonides. “As soon as a child can talk. When does it end? On the day of death.”

was reluctant to give up my love of art and literature, music and poetry, most of which had been created by non-Jews and had nothing to do with Judaism.

In the past they had been different and were proud to be different. Now they were embarrassed to be different and went to great lengths to minimize the fact.

Why, then, did the Israelites have to leave the land before they could enter it? Why did they first have to be slaves before they could be free?

At Sinai God made a pact with a people, thus creating covenantal politics.

If it is wrong, it must be changed. If it is right, it must be sustained by a conscious moral decision, an act of the free human will.

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,