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.
Jews have not only become equal citizens in Western democracies, they have become leading citizens. And, of course, the reestablishment of the State of Israel has given Jews a political presence in the world they have not had since biblical times.
Modernity has been largely shaped for Jews by three momentous experiences: the acquisition of citizenship by individual Jews in secular nation-states, the destruction of one-third of Jewry in the Holocaust, and the founding of the State of Israel.
The slogan 'Never Again!' that emerged after the Holocaust implies that the Holocaust has a universal moral meaning, which, if properly learned, can provide at least a theoretical prophylactic against its repetition against anyone.
All modern secularity requires is that our public norms and the arguments for them not presuppose common acceptance of Jewish or Christian revelation, even if these public norms are consistent with a particular community's revelation and the authorit...
In deciding among theological views, one should be something of a consequentialist: the choice of one theological position over another should be, if not actually determined, at least heavily conditioned by the fact that it implies a better ethical o...
Dad: [while canvassing for the 2008 Presidential Election] Hey, grab that McCain sign, would you? Mason: Dad, isn't that illegal? Dad: Just put it in the car. I'm being patriotic.
[Impersonating Bela Lugosi] Dr. Tom Mason: I want to suck your blood. I want to suck your blood! Bunny Breckinridge: Let's hear you call Boris Karloff a cocksucker.
[about killing] Stanley Goodspeed: How do you... do it? John Mason: I was trained by the best. British intelligence. But in retrospect I would rather have been a poet. Or a farmer. Stanley Goodspeed: Okay.
John Mason: When all this is over, you'll go back home driving Carla and your baby insane in your beige Volvo. And I'll be dead, or back in prison which is the same thing.
Stanley Goodspeed: How'd you do it? John Mason: Nurtured the hope that there was hope. That one day I'd breathe free air. Perhaps meet my daughter. Modest hopes, but they kept a man alive.
Madonna is a pro. I don't like her and have no respect for her but- I don't think she should be called a musician or a dancer or whatever you know, but I do have, well I do have respect for her ability to completely manipulate the media and have them...
Mason knew what it was like to say things you didn’t mean, to just have them vomit out, and then feel that crushing ache when you realized you could never pull them back.
Everything we know and believe about deity and divinity nowadays, is a direct origin of old civilizations. Everybody, Greeks, Saxons, Assyrians and Soumerians, all imitate the ancient ways of the first tribes of central Africa (Mason father to his so...
I walked out of the show business in 1968 because I thought that would be good for the family. It took me some time to decide but I wanted to spend more time with my wife and two daughters who were always beside me. I wanted to do everything I could ...
My mother's dad dropped out of the eighth grade to work. He had to. By the time he was 30, he was a master electrician, plumber, carpenter, mason, mechanic. That guy was, to me, a magician. Anything that was broken, he could fix. Anybody anywhere in ...
Each person is responsible only for his or her own sins. Even the Christian doctrine of 'original sin' does not mean that humans are punished for the sin of the first human pair but, rather, that humans seem inevitably to copy the sin of the first hu...
All the questions discussed in the Talmud and related rabbinic literature are normative questions: either they are questions of what one is to think or what one is to do. Every prescribed thought has some practical implication; every prescribed act h...
Mason: You know, Jim, you're not my dad. Jim: No, I'm not your dad. You know how I know that? 'Cause I'm actually here. I'm the guy with the job, payin' the bills, takin' care of you, your mom, your sister.
Mason: [Finding his mom lying on the garage floor next to Bill] What happened? Professor Bill Welbrock: Your mother had a little accident and now she's being dramatic. [to mom] Professor Bill Welbrock: Get off the fucking floor.
I love soap operas - the stories, the plots! And I love the game shows and the courtroom dramas and the detectives - Jessica Fletcher, 'Columbo,' 'Perry Mason,' 'L.A. Law.' Any sense of guilt appeals to me in a television program - a sense of guilt, ...
