Judaism Quotes

“The belief in the bodily resurrection has no religious foundation, and the doctrine of immortality refers to the after-existence of the soul only.”
― Norman Solomon, Judaism: A Very Short Introduction

“The dead will be resurrected.”
― Norman Solomon, Judaism: A Very Short Introduction

“Karl Marx’s early (1844) essay On the Jewish Question is a fascinating example of an intellectual form of Jewish self-hatred. He argues that Judaism is neither religion nor people-hood but the desire for gain; totally ignoring the vast Jewish proletariat of Central and Eastern Europe, he equates Jews, and the Christians whose religion derives from them, with the ‘enemy’ – namely, bourgeois capitalism. Clearly, he is fleeing his own Jewish identity (he was baptized at the age of 6, but was descended from rabbis on both sides of the family), ‘assimilating’ to the cultural milieu of the anti-Semitic Feuerbach, whose perverse definition of Judaism he has adopted, and finding refuge from Jewish particularism in socialist universalism.”
― Norman Solomon, Judaism: A Very Short Introduction

“The old conflicts between religious and secular Jews have by no means disappeared; they constantly resurface in political debate and social tensions within Israel itself. Where”
― Norman Solomon, Judaism: A Very Short Introduction

“On the other hand, anti-Semitism has led Jews to turn away from identification with the Jewish community and to seek to lose or conceal their Jewish identity by merging with the surrounding culture; when Jews perceive that they are devalued by non-Jews, they may feel devalued in their own eyes, somehow internalizing the prejudice against them and falling prey to self-hatred.”
― Norman Solomon, Judaism: A Very Short Introduction

“Anti-Semitism, according to Meyer, has had an ambiguous effect on Jewish identity. On the one hand, rejection by the outside world has led to the reaffirmation of Jewish identity;”
― Norman Solomon, Judaism: A Very Short Introduction

“The child of a Jewish mother was Jewish, and the child of a Jewish father by a non-Jewish woman was not Jewish unless and until formally converted.”
― Norman Solomon, Judaism: A Very Short Introduction

“The key to the Jewish calendar is Nature.”
― Norman Solomon, Judaism: A Very Short Introduction