I was watching the TV broadcasts interviewing people stranded at airports for days on end, losing their holidays, their important business meetings and the long-awaited ability to see their families... In short, suffering. No one complained, though! They kept repeating: we are so grateful for the care taken of our safety, for feeling. They were ready to surrender a good deal of their human dignity, individuality, freedom of choice.

As the run-by-capital society of producers turned since into the run-by-capital society of consumers, I would say that the main, indeed "meta", function of the governments has become now to assure that it is the meetings between commodities and the consumers, and credit issuers and the borrowers, that regularly take place.

The task is to keep the lost opportunities of the past alive.

In Celan's words a Jew is "a man with a little book under the shoulder." We are the keepers of tradition.

An ideal and flawless freedom, "complete freedom", enabling without disabling, is I believe an oxymoron in metaphysics as much as it is an unreachable goal in social life.

In a liquid modern life there are no permanent bonds, and any that we take up for a time must be tied loosely so that they can be untied again, as quickly and as effortlessly as possible, when circumstances change - as they surely will in our liquid modern society, over and over again.

The Bible provides unity without imposing uniformity, without prohibiting change; it is a standing invitation to thinking and to take responsibilities.