The primary task of a Jew in turbulent times is to be Jewish.

I don't think [governments] use [religious repression ] as a weapon, they use it as a as a means of - of oppression. To stifle opposition. To mute resistance.

What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander.

I was involved in trying to save the Rwandan people and Sudan now. It's a mass murder. Mass murder is a terrifying word. We don't have to go further than that. Cambodia came close to, but what was it, Cambodians killing Cambodians after all. So therefore I think we should be very careful with vocabulary.

One can do without solutions. Only the questions matter. We may share them or turn away from them.

If the Book of the Law could be forgotten for so many years, who knows what was done to it during those years? Maybe it was lost later, too. And another one replaced it, and that one is no longer the original text. These are questions that perturb me much more than whether it's history or not history.

The Holocaust is not a cheap soap opera. The Holocaust is not a romantic novel. It is something else.