Letters

‘Rabbi Soloveichik’s words, and those of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks that he quotes, are painful to read, as we watch the attempted demise of everything our founders put in place, and that Abraham Lincoln dedicated his life to preserve and build upon.’

‘October 7 calls for American Jews and Jewish organizations to rethink old allegiances.’

‘Contributing and receiving diverse perspectives — spiritual, intellectual, political, cultural, and otherwise — informs new views, reshapes earlier views, and strengthens existing views by considering alternatives.’

‘My father’s gaze uniquely combined the human and cosmic perspectives, as you could tell from the detached, appraising way he sometimes looked at you.’

‘Disagreeing with the son of an author is a dangerous business.’

‘Hard not to think also of the Homeric Cyclops — reportedly an uncivilized, man-eating bunch — when entertaining the various mythic figures of vision. Sammler’s single, traumatized eye denies him (at least for a while) the multiplicitous moral vision of the author.’

‘It is our individual and communal conceptions of God that mutate as we move through our human experiences of joy, suffering, expansion, and contraction, and as filtered through our earthly limitations.’

‘Traditional Jewish optimism, aside from empowering us with the courage to persevere over the entire course of Jewish history, connotes faith that, flawed as we are, history itself remains purposeful rather than random and our job as individuals and as a people is to nudge it in a positive direction.’

‘Members of all faith-based communities need to consider Isaiah’s directive to provide “a light unto the nations,” and find more, not fewer, ways to interact with those around us.’

‘Even the most dogmatic among us can acknowledge the existence of non-Halachic beliefs among Jews, and especially among American Jews.’