David Novak
David Novak

The shortcoming of purely political discourse between Christians and Jews arises from the fact that it is largely built upon the perception of a common enemy.

David Novak
David Novak

Every individual is a person necessarily imbedded in a range of multiple relations, and therefore, no one is really independent in anything but a relative sense; no one is truly autonomous.

David Novak
David Novak

Roots can live without branches, although truncated; branches cannot live without roots.

David Novak
David Novak

The Jewish tradition presents itself as the greatest revelation of God's truth that can be known in the world. That is why we call ourselves 'the chosen people.' It is not that we choose ourselves. It means that we have been elected by God and given the Torah.

David Novak
David Novak

Jews have not only become equal citizens in Western democracies, they have become leading citizens. And, of course, the reestablishment of the State of Israel has given Jews a political presence in the world they have not had since biblical times.

David Novak
David Novak

God chose us to live both in body and in soul, but the body functions for the sake of the soul more than the soul functions for the body.

David Novak
David Novak

We Jews who willingly and happily confirm our covenantal status and its attendant rights and duties must take the question of mission seriously: either to accept it or reject it knowingly and with conviction.

David Novak
David Novak

The most important part of the process of mourning is regularly reciting kaddish in a synagogue. Kaddish is a doxology, which Jewish tradition has mandated children to recite daily in a synagogue during the year of mourning for a deceased parent and then on the anniversary of his or her death thereafter.

David Novak
David Novak

I first came to Jewish-Catholic relations in 1963, while studying for the rabbinate at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.

David Novak
David Novak

Each person is responsible only for his or her own sins. Even the Christian doctrine of 'original sin' does not mean that humans are punished for the sin of the first human pair but, rather, that humans seem inevitably to copy the sin of the first human pair.

David Novak
David Novak

A fully positive relationship between Christians and Jews is one that would elide all differences.

David Novak
David Novak

To be a Jew, essentially and not just accidentally, is to regard the Jewish people as one's sole primal community. Election by the unique God requires total and unconditional loyalty to one people.

David Novak
David Novak

Jewish status is defined by the divine election of Israel and his descendants. One does not become a Jew by one's own volition.

David Novak
David Novak

Theological reflection takes place within history, but the history within which it takes place is an ongoing, open-ended process.

David Novak
David Novak

The Holocaust, taken by itself, is a black hole. To look at it directly is to be swallowed up by it.

David Novak
David Novak

Theology always has moral implications, and morality is always undergirded by theology.

David Novak
David Novak

The one and only time I met Pope Benedict XVI was when he was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.

David Novak
David Novak

Although most Christian churches advocate some sort of mission to non-Christians, no Jewish group advocates a mission to non-Jews. Proselytization seems to be foreign to Judaism.

David Novak
David Novak

A religious commitment coupled with theological awareness gives Jews a much better way to answer the claims made upon us by missionaries representing other religions than do the rather weak political and cultural arguments of the secularists.

David Novak
David Novak

Proselytizing is only wrong if coercive or deceptive. Coercion, whether violent or not, is immoral, just as deception is immoral.