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.

When I began teaching you hardly could find a university in America or a college where they would teach either Jewish studies or Holocaust studies.

Still I believe that Hanna Arendt, she was wrong when she tried to say that we are all actually capable of this, it's not true. I think it's not true. There are certain things human beings are not capable of. I mean people, even normal human beings. You have to do certain things in order to become what the enemy was and I didn't accept her philosophical outlook on that.

We believed in God, trusted in man, and lived with the illusion that every one of us has been entrusted with a sacred spark.

War is like night, she said. It covers everything.

My faith is a wounded faith, but it's not without faith. My life is not without faith.

Indifference is the sign of sickness, a sickness of the soul more contagious than any other.