Letters

‘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.’

Danielle Haas’s critique should be extended to the UN and its agencies

‘It is as if one is writing about Nigerian Muslim abductions, rape, and marriage of Nigerian Christian girls and feels compelled to add something negative about the nation’s Christian population.’

‘Our institutions should be a model and a support system for individuals who, to an extent not previously seen in the US, are being actively intimidated, harassed, threatened, and even physically assaulted for declaring themselves proud Zionists.’