Arthur Hertzberg

A large part of the problem, is that young people are being born into the world and growing up without much hope. And so, they become murderers, they become suicide bombers.

Jewish fundamentalism is teaching that Jews can fight with guns and with civil war, against being relocated off the West Bank, and disobey the orders of their government. That is the call to jihad, to several kinds of jihad.

My purpose is to have American Jews look away from the success story with which they’ve cheered themselves up, and to have them remember the classical tradition, whatever it is.

The Roosevelt enactment of Social Security was a moral revolution in our country: We were assured that we would never reach the very depths of poverty. And to be told, that we are now going to gamble it, on Wall Street, is nonsense!

But, I know enough people in that court, through the years, to know one thing: There’s always somebody who surprises you, who rises above what they thought they appointed him for, and stays with the separation of powers, and with the right of the law to decide.

I argue that the Talmud is about the constant struggle to understand.

I don’t know where Bush is going – yet. But, Sharon obviously – I wrote somewhere in the last several months, that Sharon has adopted, essentially, the position of the Labor Party: that the Palestinians are here to stay.

Look, the hard-line Jewish position is based, to this day, on the idea that the Palestinian Arabs somehow or other will either accept third-class status, or they will pick up and go away. Now, this isn’t happening.

What are you going to do to preserve a tradition that is the peculiar and unique culture that Judaism inculcates? The American Jewish community is not going to survive by lining up against its common enemy.

Most American Jews came from the lower middle classes, and therefore they brought with them not a lot of Jewish culture. The American Jewish story starts with Ellis Island, and the candy store in the Bronx.

How can a rabbi not live with doubt? The Bible itself is a book of doubt.

I regard Christian and Jewish fundamentalism, and all other forms of fundamentalism, as the enemies of God – and I hope you’ll quote me on that.

I think anti-Semitism is the meal ticket of the organizations that fight it.

I write to tell my grandchildren where they come from, and what their grandparents were up to, and I hope they will in their own way continue. I invite anyone else to listen in.

Nobody is in the process of making any changes that we can be specific about.