Spiritual Quote of the Day (Abraham Joshua Heschel, on the Prophet Vs. His Corrupt Society)

“The prophet…said No to his society, condemning its habits and assumptions, its complacency, waywardness, and syncretism. He was often compelled to proclaim the very opposite of what his heart expected. His fundamental objective was to reconcile man and God. Why do the two need reconciliation? Perhaps it is due to man's false sense of sovereignty, to his abuse of freedom, to his aggressive, sprawling pride, resenting God's involvement in history.”— Polish-born American Jewish theologian Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972), The Prophets (1962)

Quote of the Day (Elie Wiesel, on Abraham, ‘The First Angry Young Man’)

“Abraham: the first enemy of idolatry. The first angry young man. The first rebel to rise up against the ‘establishment,’ society and authority. The first to demystify official taboos and suspend ritual prohibitions. The first to reject civilization in order to form a minority of one. The first believer, the first one to suffer for his belief. Alone against the world, he declared himself free. Alone against the world, he braved the fire and the mob, affirming that God is one and present wherever His name is invoked; that one is the secret and the beginning of all that exists in heaven and on earth and that God's secret coincides with that of man.” —Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Holocaust survivor and human-rights activist Elie Wiesel (1928-2016), “The Sacrifice of Isaac: A Survivor’s Story,” in Messengers of God: Biblical Portraits and Legends (1976)

The image accompanying this post is God Renews His Promises to Abraham (c. 1896-1902), gouache on board, by the French painter James Jacques Joseph Tissot (French, 1836-1902), at the Jewish Museum, New York.

Quote of the Day (Simon Schama, on ‘2 Special Things About the Jews’)

“I understood when I was quite small that there were two special things about the Jews. That we’d endured for over 3,000 years despite everything that had been thrown at us, and that we had an extraordinarily dramatic story to tell. And somehow that these two things were connected, that we told our story to survive. We are our story.” ―Historian Simon Schama quoted in Elizabeth Jensen, “The Historical Becomes Personal,” The New York Times, March 23, 2014

(Photograph of Simon Schama at Strand Book Store, New York City. taken August 15, 2006, by David Shankbone)

Quote of the Day (Thomas Cahill, on Judaism’s Contribution to Democracy)

“[B]ecause capitalism and communism are processive faiths without God, each is a form of madness—a fantasy without a guarantee. Democracy, in contrast, grows directly out of the Israelite vision of individuals, subjects of value because they are images of God, each with a unique and personal destiny. There is no way that it could ever have been ‘self-evident that all men are created equal' without the intervention of the Jews.”—Thomas Cahill, The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels (1999)