We're both [with Elie Wiesel] a long way from the position of the so-called Biblical minimalists. Some of them see no history in the Bible until Josiah.

I think this century more than any other really has seen the phenomenon of people being uprooted in such numbers, such a degree. They even have a word for it: The refugees. It's a new word, a 20th Century word, but refugee is actually a misnomer.

He wants to see whether we are capable of overcoming out base instincts, of killing the Satan within ourselves. We have no right to despair. And if he punishes us mercilessly, it is a sign that He loves us that much more.

Of course, afterward, I studied [commentary on the Bible by a Rabbi Moshe Dessauer] more closely. But, in truth, it doesn't touch me. It doesn't change my attitude toward the text.

I was the accuser, God the accused. My eyes were open and I was alone - terribly alone in a world without God and without (hu)man(ity).

At Auschwitz, not only man died, but also the idea of man. To live in a world where there is nothing anymore, where the executioner acts as god, as judge-many wanted no part of it. It was its own heart the world incinerated at Auschwitz.

Moses was the greatest legislator and the commander in chief of perhaps the first liberation army.