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The secular world needs our help to develop healthy limits.

The shock of the Shoah undermines the credibility of modern culture’s promises and reveals that all these glittering redemptive visions disarmed the victims even as modern technology armed the victimizers.

The Talmud says every human being should be treated as if they were infinitely valuable. God is not white or black. God is not a Jew or a gentile.

In the history of brit, with the passage of time, God intervenes less and less openly, and gives humans more and more freedom. I believe that we are living through the climax of that process. In this era, God does not strike you dead for sin; God does not stop the rain if a people do not obey. Genuine freedom is scary.

Great leadership is not always crowned with success. In order to be a great leader, you have to be willing to fail.

People remember Hillel’s famous statement of the basis of Torah, what you do not want the other one to do you, do not do to the other. People forget that Hillel continued with the instruction: ‘go study [and apply] the rest.’ All these issues require a lifetime of application and wrestling.

My thinking and my institutional leadership have been driven by the messages and friendship that the audience and co-workers have communicated to me, nonverbally as well as verbally. And when I have gone through periods when I felt that I could not go on (there have been such times), the people have renewed my strength…and propelled me onward. This is as it should be. A leader should not simply follow, but should be sustained by the people.

Jewish educators must recognize that there is an unprecedented level of impact of the dominant world civilization on all ‘local’ worlds—including ours, the Jewish world…I would argue that the issue of relating the two worlds positively—or creating syntheses that bring out the best in both—is the particular mission of our generation.

The covenant becomes a treaty with all the generations. Each generation will have to do its share of redemption and pass it on to the next generation until the redemption is complete.

What is my mission, what is my shlichut, which God has in mind for me? Unfortunately, there are no neon lights flashing the answer or messages directly from God that tell us what do…each of us must figure the mission out for ourselves, and that task may take a lifetime.