David Novak

It has always been inevitable that, living as a small minority among a Christian majority, some Jews would convert to Christianity. ”

Religious traditions are in a constant state of development and renewed self-understanding. ”

As a traditional Jew, I have benefited personally from the hospitality of Chabad Hasidim on many occasions, and I marvel at how many Jews Chabad has brought back to their primordial home. ”

A traditional rabbi is the man to whom the community and its members turn to rule on what Jewish law requires of them, particularly in cases of doubt. ”

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. ”

During the Middle Ages, Jews were members of a semi-independent polity within a larger polity. ”

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. ”

Unlike the issue of messiahhood, which arose when Jews and Christians were members of the same religio-political community and spoke the same conceptual language, the issues of the incarnation and the Trinity divide people who are no longer members of the same community and who no longer speak the same language. ”

The community in which one hears the voice of God structures how one hears that voice and interprets what it says. ”

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. ”