Because Judaism and Christianity are both covenantal religions, the relationship of the individual Jew or Christian to God is always within covenanted community.
Jewish status is defined by the divine election of Israel and his descendants. One does not become a Jew by one's own volition.
Proselytizing is only wrong if coercive or deceptive. Coercion, whether violent or not, is immoral, just as deception is immoral.
During the Middle Ages, Jews were members of a semi-independent polity within a larger polity.
The theological contacts between Jews and Christians during much of the premodern period are best characterized as disputations. Even when not engaged in face-to-face argumentation, Jews and Christians spoke about each other in essentially disputational terms.
Roots can live without branches, although truncated; branches cannot live without roots.
Theology always has moral implications, and morality is always undergirded by theology.
One cannot accept Christ and still be part of the normative Jewish community; one cannot live by Torah and still be part of the Church.
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.
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.
The relation between Judaism, Zionism, and Messianism is one that is often hard for Jews to get straight. Needless to say, it is even harder for non-Jews.
As a practicing Jew, I have studied with Christian teachers whom I respect for who they are and what they are, including their positive concern with Jews and Judaism.
The Holocaust, taken by itself, is a black hole. To look at it directly is to be swallowed up by it.
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.
Christianity and Judaism are united above all in their common affirmation and implementation of the moral teaching of the Hebrew Bible, or 'Old Testament,' and the traditions of interpretation of that teaching.
Religious traditions are in a constant state of development and renewed self-understanding.
In historical messianism, the reign of the Messiah is brought about by a Jewish ruler powerful enough to gather the Jewish exiles back to the land of Israel, reestablish a Torah government there, and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.
The work of man is to respond to the Covenant by obeying the commandments of the Torah, those commandments that can be obeyed here and now.
Even when God chose Israel, he did not create the people of Israel as he created its human members, as natural beings. Instead, God formed the people of Israel from individual human beings already living in the natural world, calling them into a new historical identity.
Jews have long experience with Christians who have tried to help us in putting our Judaism behind us.