Quotes About Community

A number of recent scholars have suggested that the answer lies in the abandonment of the ethics of identity altogether in favour of cosmopolitanism, a world without community.4 But no cosmopolitan society is as tolerant as it seems. In antiquity, both the Greeks and Romans attempted at one time or another to eliminate the practice of Judaism. Europe of the Enlightenment did not end anti-Semitism: it gave rise to a new and violent strain of it.

No one emerges well in this story, which is there to tell us that in the long run, individual piety is unsustainable without collective moral responsibility.

This is one of only two instances in the whole Torah in which the words lo tov, "not good," appear. The other is in Genesis (2:18), where God says, "It is not good [lo tov] for man to be alone." We cannot lead alone. We cannot live alone. To be alone is not good.

Seek the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its prosperity you shall prosper" (Jer. 29:7) – the first statement in history of what it is to be a creative minority.

We have become lonely selves in search of purely personal fulfilment. But that surely must be wrong. Life alone is only half a life. One spent pursuing the satisfaction of desire is less than satisfying and never all we desire. So it is worth reminding ourselves that there is such a thing as ethics, and it belongs to the life we live together and the goods we share – the goods that only exist in virtue of being shared.

Jewish law is concerned not only with protecting the rights of those who have been wronged, but also helping wrongdoers rebuild their future. Guilt, in Judaism, is about acts, not persons. It is the act, not the person, that is condemned.

A fundamental principle of Jewish leadership is intimated here for the first time: a leader does not need faith in himself, but he must have faith in the people he is to lead.

Faith in Judaism is not about ontology (what exists?) or epistemology (what can we know?) but about relationships – about the people with whom we converse.

Communes are good examples of co-operation without kinship. Sosis found that 6 per cent of secular communes were still in existence twenty years after their founding, as compared with 39 per cent of religious ones. In a follow-up study he found the more demanding the religious group, the longer its lifespan.2 Religion creates and sustains communities.

Thanksgiving is the holiday that encompasses all others. All of them, from Martin Luther King Day to Arbor Day to Christmas to Valentine's Day, are in one way or another about being thankful.

Food is not just what we put in our mouths to fill up it is culture and identity. Reason plays some role in our decisions about food, but it's rarely driving the car.

I usually write away from home, in coffee shops, on trains, on planes, in friends' houses. I like places where there's stuff going on that you can lift your eyes, see something interesting, overhear a conversation.

My life story is the story of everyone I've ever met.

Whether the berserker is beneath humanity as an animal, above it as a god, or both, he is cut off from all human community when he is in this state. No living human has any claim on him, not even the claim of being noticed and remembered.

Wrong. I'm not alone. I have my friends.

In Swindon, if you pick your nose in public, they lock you in the can.

We are so fond of one another, because our ailments are the same.

Conversation is but carving!Give no more to every guestThan he's able to digest.Give him always of the prime,And but little at a time.Carve to all but just enough,Let them neither starve nor stuff,And that you may have your due,Let your neighbor carve for you.

There was all the world and his wife.

We should all just face reality and stop taking our meals together.

Rest stops have always made him strangely happy. He couldn't say why. Just the idea of everyone on their way somewhere, united by wanderlust, no one belonging more than anyone else.

And as the room starts to fill with the first somber-faced neighbors coming to pay their respects, it becomes clear to me that the reason for filling the shiva house with visitors is most likely to prevent the mourners from tearing each other limb from limb.

You can't let your dog crap on the sidewalk, but it's perfectly acceptable to blow carcinogens down other people's throats. Somewhere along the way, smokers exempted themselves from the social contract.

Until you found your way out of the woods, it was reassuring to find other people lost in them with you.