What of the Exodus? That too, is a wonderful story, but from the viewpoint of an historian, it is - to use a word scholars love - problematic. Let's say there are doubts, to say the least, among many scholars, as to whether the Exodus actually occurred. That's a historical issue.

After all, God is God because he remembers.

Man asks and God replies but we don't understand his replies because they dwell in the depths of our souls and remain there until we die.

Only fanatics — in religion as well as in politics — can find a meaning in someone else’s death.

I did not weep, and it pained me that i could not weep. But I had no more tears. And, in the depths of my being, in the recesses of my weakened conscience, could I have searched it, I might perhaps have found something like--free at last!

In the beginning was belief, foolish belief, and faith, empty faith, and illusion, the terrible illusion. ... We believed in God, had faith in man, and lived with the illusion that in each one of us is a sacred spark from the fire of the shekinah, that each one carried in his eyes and in his soul the sign of God. This was the source—if not the cause—of all our misfortune.

If life is not a celebration, why remember it ? If life --- mine or that of my fellow man --- is not an offering to the other, what are we doing on this earth?