David Novak Quotes
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.
Novak, David. Talking with Christians: Musings of a Jewish Theologian. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2005.
“Goyim” is the Hebrew and Yiddish word for non-Jews. In early Christianity, all Christians were Jews. Christianity was a new form of Judaism. The Last Supper was the Jewish Passover which was observed by all the early Christians who followed all the Jewish laws. Even goyim who wanted to convert to Christianity in the early days were converting to Judiasm and following the teachings of the famous Rabbi, Jesus. Later, St.Paul, allowed some goyim conversion without maintaining the Jewish dietary laws and without males having to be circumcised. The two religions split thereafter, but for many Jews of the time, especially the followers of Jesus, one of the Jewish obligations was to bring light to the goyim. The Cardinal was born of Jewish parents and converted, but just as the disciples of Christ considered themselves Jews so always did Lustiger.
“Mormon” is a nickname for members of “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” Romney was a Mormon who was running for the Republican Presidential nomination. There remains a good deal of anti-Mormon religious bigotry in the nation.
This was early in his career. As he got older, he was very frustrated with the Jews who would not convert to Christianity even after he had “purified” the religion and freed Christians from the “evils” of the Papacy. He became a virulent anti-Semite. See {617773}.
After this statement was issued by the embassy, a mob stormed the embassy as shown in the graphic. The reason that this statement is an important quotation is that that Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate for President took the situation as an opportunity to attack the President. Specifically he claimed that this statement was an “apology” and it was terrible for America to apologize. The administration and most media fact checkers could not find anything in the statement that was an apology as opposed to as statement of United States policy and practice. Romney and his supporters insisted it was an apology. So the statement itself has become a major historical quotation where people can judge for themselves if indeed it was an apology. There are many who believed that under the circumstances an apology might not have been a bad idea. A few years earlier when a Danish magazine had published some insulting cartoons of The Prophet, riots broke out around the world and dozens of people were killed.
No other country would not retaliate with outright war if it was daily attacked by missiles, frequently attacked by terrorists, and threatened with extinction by its neighbors. Only Israel because of its military superiority is supposed to ”turn the other cheek”
This was a remarkable public statement for its time. No other political leader of an Islamic country would dare claim that people have a right to be atheists. Very few would even suggest that people should be free to choose their own religion.
David Novak, FRSC is a Jewish theologian, ethicist, and scholar of Jewish philosophy and law (Halakha). He is an ordained Conservative rabbi and holds the J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair of Jewish Studies as Professor of the Study of Religion and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto since 1997. His areas of interest are Jewish theology, Jewish ethics and biomedical ethics, political theory (with a special emphasis on natural law), and Jewish-Christian relations.
