Arthur Hertzberg
Arthur Hertzberg
Arthur Hertzbergwas a Conservative rabbi and prominent Jewish-American scholar and activist...
NationalityPolish
ProfessionTheologian
Date of Birth9 June 1921
CountryPoland
arabia bush controlled democracy hole iraq islamic middle oil regimes wants
Do the Americans want democracy in the Middle East? Do the Americans want the oil wells of Iraq and of Saudi Arabia controlled by regimes which are revolutionary, and which are Islamic fundamentalist? Mr. Bush wants that like he wants a hole in the head.
air commander president question war
I think on the question of this war President - if he's a war President, I'm the commander of the American Air Force.
bush obviously position several sharon somewhere wrote
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.
changes nobody process specific
Nobody is in the process of making any changes that we can be specific about.
act dove early recognized remain
I have never been a dove because I'm some kind of woolly-eyed liberal. I have been a dove from the very early period, because I recognized that the Palestinians weren't going to go away, and they weren't going to remain passive. And all of these predictions were correct. And we'd better now act on them and make peace.
angel men compassion
The world was created because God willed it, but why did He will it? Judaism has maintained, in all of its versions, that this world is the arena that God created for man, half beast and half angel; to prove that he could be a moral being...man was given dominion over nature, but he was commanded to behave towards the rest of creation with justice and compassion. Man lives, always, in tension between his power and the limits set by his conscience.
unique jewish-tradition community
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.
fighting thinking organization
I think anti-Semitism is the meal ticket of the organizations that fight it.
suicide growing-up people
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.
country wall poverty
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!
years law people
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.
book doubt rabbi
How can a rabbi not live with doubt? The Bible itself is a book of doubt.
children book teaching
In mid-career, I was at one and the same time the rabbi of a major congregation, writing books, and teaching at Columbia. I didn't spend enough time with my children. Now, when I get an all-important call, I sometimes say that I'm having lunch with my granddaughter. And I do not apologize
hunger speak campus
On campuses, and when I speak to the younger intelligentsia, I am getting a hunger for the text - the authentic text for Jewish knowledge.