The “demand for spirituality today” is “at the deepest level subjective, it’s in the nominative, not in the accusative, the dative, the genitive. In shul, I’m there because it’s genitive: my poppa belonged to the shul, I’m of it. I’m an accusative Jew because a goy calls me that way. Because I’ve been circumcised and I have this history, my dative

Ever since the Holocaust we are all like priests who have become contaminated by death.

The glory of Judaism is that there is no single voice. There’s no pope setting the key. So it’s a vast musical library.

I decided that the most important baggage Jews carry is an absolute conviction of our significance because we are Jews, because we have survived.

“The Orthodox Jewish community is third world in theology and philosophy. Having a political state of Israel now, I’m convinced the great religious challenge is going to be the pluralist issue. Each culture can no longer present itself as self-evident.”

Modern science and Buddhism cannot contradict, because Buddhism is based on reality.

Marc, a San Francisco ophthalmologist, was the first person to ever describe himself to me as a JUBU—a Jewish Buddhist. I’ve since learned that he is one among many, in a long line that goes back at least one hundred years.

A Jew who has another Jew to argue with can feel at home anywhere, even the Punjab.

Jews have achieved because they consider secular achievement a religious excellence.