Quotes from Meir Soloveichik

We live in an age in which the biblical-moral traditions that have guided us for centuries are increasingly being forgotten.

By forbidding Jews to destroy their hair, the Bible warns them away from seeking the siren song of eternal youth. By encouraging Jews to grow beards, it reminds them that they will not be young forever, that they must prepare the ground for those who come after, just as their fathers did for them.

I am humbled and deeply honored to have been asked to serve the congregants of Shearith Israel, a congregation with an incomparable history, where some of America's most distinguished rabbis have pastored and preached.

The election of the Jewish people is the result of God's falling in love with Abraham and founding a family with him.

Jews seek to cleave to the will of God as set forth in the Bible and, particularly, the Pentateuch, with its rabbinic commentaries, the Mishnah and Talmud.

Over the course of history, many Jews have ultimately embraced Christianity - some forcibly, some in order to advance in non-Jewish society, some out of wholehearted belief.

As with the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, the origins of Shearith Israel trace back to a small group of religious freedom-seekers and a treacherous ocean passage to the New World.

The practice of shaving makes its first appearance in the Bible in connection with the story of Joseph, who as a young man was sold by his brothers into slavery in Egypt, where he was subsequently imprisoned on false charges.

Ours is decidedly not an age of Abrahams, Jacobs, or of youthful Elazars proud to be regarded as men of seventy. On the contrary, it is one in which the external signs of aging are avoided at all costs, youth is worshipped, and immortality is sought not in children but in Botox.

We know a great deal about the configuration of the menorah from the biblical book of Exodus. Beaten out of solid gold, the ancient candelabrum boasted six branches emerging from a seventh, its central shaft. The menorah was adorned with golden buttons, cups, and flowers.

Marriage is about love, but it is not first and foremost about love. First and foremost, marriage is about continuity and transmission.

Even as Jews and Christians profoundly disagree about the truth, they are united in the belief that there is a truth to be sought.

For Jews, the paradigmatic convert is the biblical Ruth, who sought not only a new relationship with God but also a new nationality.

Bride and groom are not just two contracting parties but two loving and beloved companions, joined in establishing a home that will be nothing less than a source of immortality.

If Christians see Mormonism as a dramatic deviation from a millennia-old, biblically-based faith, Jews see Christianity in the same light.

To the Christian Church, the destruction of the Temple served as an ultimate sign that the Jews were no longer God's chosen people, divine favor having now been transferred to a newer and better Israel.

Traditional Judaism has always embraced the doctrine of the immortality of the soul and the ultimate resurrection of the dead.

Europe is no longer a Christian continent; few Europeans attend religious services on Sunday, and the European Union recently refused to refer to Europe's religious heritage in its fledgling constitution.

If God loves human beings and seeks to relate to them because he is drawn to something unique about them, then his love must be exclusive and cannot be universal.

Stanley Hauerwas is correct that Judaism insists on the bearing of children because it is essential to Jewish continuity. But to end the matter there is to miss an essential point: if we are to learn to love others, Judaism says, we must begin by loving those who are closest to us.

When the Temple was destroyed, the Jewish people faced a crisis unlike any other in its history. For centuries, the sacrificial system had served as the primary medium of atonement before the Almighty.

In both Israel and America, Jews have experienced unparalleled freedoms, achieved great economic success, and exercised appropriate degrees of political power.

I continue to dream of a day when my skullcap will not stick out so much.

If R. Akiva was perhaps overly generous in judging his generation, it can perhaps be ascribed to the belief, based on his own experience, that everyone is capable of a dramatic life change.