A biography for Meir Soloveichikhasn’t been written yet.
“Of all the rabbinic sages of antiquity, perhaps none was more influential or famous than Rabbi Akiva.”
“Jews bear children not only because the carnal election of Abraham must continue. For Jews, raising children is essential to living a rounded ethical life.”
“Corresponding to the image of a monotheistic God is monogamous marriage. Marriage based on exclusive and definitive love becomes the icon of the relationship between God and his people and vice versa.”
“If R. Akiva was perhaps overly generous in judging his generation, it can perhaps be ascribed to the belief, based on his own experience, that everyone is capable of a dramatic life change.”
“As with the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, the origins of Shearith Israel trace back to a small group of religious freedom-seekers and a treacherous ocean passage to the New World.”
“A society that is all self-interest and no comradeship is not a society at all. But a society that is all comradeship and no self-interest is also not a society; it is a sect - or, on the largest scale, totalitarianism.”
“If God loves human beings and seeks to relate to them because he is drawn to something unique about them, then his love must be exclusive and cannot be universal.”
“Over the course of history, many Jews have ultimately embraced Christianity - some forcibly, some in order to advance in non-Jewish society, some out of wholehearted belief.”
“Traditional Christians cannot conceive of God as Mormons do: a God who has a wife, who invites other human beings to become gods with him.”
“Europe is no longer a Christian continent; few Europeans attend religious services on Sunday, and the European Union recently refused to refer to Europe's religious heritage in its fledgling constitution.”
“Judaism, I would argue, does demand love for our fellow human beings, but only to an extent. 'Hate' is not always synonymous with the terribly sinful.”
“I continue to dream of a day when my skullcap will not stick out so much.”
“Humanity was created in the image of God; our love is a reflection of his.”
“Jews focus on the Torah, the embodiment of God's will; Christians, on an embodied God.”
“I do work a lot on arguing that things which people assume are always wrong are not necessarily so and, indeed, can often be right.”
“Ours is decidedly not an age of Abrahams, Jacobs, or of youthful Elazars proud to be regarded as men of seventy. On the contrary, it is one in which the external signs of aging are avoided at all costs, youth is worshipped, and immortality is sought not in children but in Botox.”
“We live in an age in which the biblical-moral traditions that have guided us for centuries are increasingly being forgotten.”
“God can desire to enter into a relationship with us; he can be drawn to some aspect of our identity.”
“We Americans unite faith and freedom in asserting that our liberties are your gift, God, not that of government.”
“The Hebrew Bible, while firmly opposing pagan sexual practices, nevertheless celebrates man's and woman's desire for each other as divinely designed.”