I was convinced that hatred among nations and among people perished in Auschwitz. It didn't. The victims died but the haters are still here.

We've sort of agreed that the account of Adam and Eve is a story.

The knowledge that I have acquired must not remain imprisoned in my brain. I owe it to many men and women to do something with it. I feel the need to pay back what was given to me. Call it gratitude.

I really don't teach the way Professor [Frank Moore] Cross does. I don't teach the text the same way he does. I teach Biblical themes, Biblical events.

My ambition really was, even as a child, to be a writer, a commentator, and a teacher, but a teacher of Talmud.

Whoever survives a test, whatever it may be, must tell the story. That is his duty.

And to write is to sow and to reap at the same time.