Quotes from Meir Soloveichik

We Americans unite faith and freedom in asserting that our liberties are your gift, God, not that of government.

There is, of course, only one chosen nation. But Abraham Lincoln would call America 'an almost chosen nation' because he believed that America had a providential role to play in history, inspired by the example of God's ancient covenant people.

The Hebrew Bible, while firmly opposing pagan sexual practices, nevertheless celebrates man's and woman's desire for each other as divinely designed.

The moment that one person in an argument claims to be God, dialogue and debate become impossible.

As delineated in the biblical book of Leviticus, Israel's atonement was achieved, year after year, through the sacrifices brought on that day by the high priest.

Not only were the Jewish people beloved, but God himself had taken pains to let them know it. Could there be any clearer sign that he continued to believe in their potential, even without the Temple, to achieve forgiveness and ultimately merit the Temple's rebuilding?

While Jews and Christians both agree on many religious issues, we disagree, and believe each other profoundly wrong, about others.

Judaism, I would argue, does demand love for our fellow human beings, but only to an extent. 'Hate' is not always synonymous with the terribly sinful.

The eternal link between Lincoln's life and Passover - the fact that Lincoln's death, marked in the Hebrew calendar, coincides with Passover every year - is certainly fitting, and perhaps even part of the providence that Lincoln began to see in his own life and the life of his nation.

To Catholic, Orthodox, and some Protestant Christians, communion involves partaking of the physical real presence of God in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. By contrast, the Torah draws the Jew into engagement with God's infinite mind. Torah learning is the definitive Jewish mode of communion with God.

Of all the rabbinic sages of antiquity, perhaps none was more influential or famous than Rabbi Akiva.

Jews bear children not only because the carnal election of Abraham must continue. For Jews, raising children is essential to living a rounded ethical life.

Religious relativism is not the answer to disagreement between faiths; yet relativism, and a blurring of religious distinctions, all too often result when two deeply believing faith communities engage each other in the public arena on theological issues.

Humanity was created in the image of God; our love is a reflection of his.

The giving of the Torah is a story of God seeking to provide humanity with the opportunity to make moral decisions.

Jews focus on the Torah, the embodiment of God's will; Christians, on an embodied God.

How can finite man commune with an infinite God? To both Christians and Jews, God himself has made that possible by irrupting into the temporal world. To Christians, God became man in the Incarnation; to Jews, the God that spoke out of the fire on Mount Sinai gave his Torah.

A society that is all self-interest and no comradeship is not a society at all. But a society that is all comradeship and no self-interest is also not a society; it is a sect - or, on the largest scale, totalitarianism.

Religions, by definition, disagree as to the truth - a reality that cannot be overcome by demanding that one or the other faith repudiate its claim to truth.

For both Protestants and Catholics, and whether or not absolute continence is demanded of the clergy, celibacy remains a blessed spiritual state.

God can desire to enter into a relationship with us; he can be drawn to some aspect of our identity.

I do work a lot on arguing that things which people assume are always wrong are not necessarily so and, indeed, can often be right.

Rather than forgive, we can wish ill; rather than hope for repentance, we can instead hope that our enemies experience the wrath of God.

Traditional Christians cannot conceive of God as Mormons do: a God who has a wife, who invites other human beings to become gods with him.