Great Throughts Treasury

"Yeah, ?Do not destroy anything? is the first and most general call of God. If you should now raise your hand to play a childish game, to indulge in a senseless rage, wishing to destroy that which you should only use, wishing to exterminate that which you should only exploit, if you should regard the beings beneath you as objects without rights, not perceiving God who created them, and therefore desire that they feel the might of your presumptuous mood, instead of using them only as a means of wise human activity ? then God?s call proclaims to you, ?Do not destroy anything! Be a mentsch"

"Yisrael was given the Torah in the wilderness, and there - without a country and land of its own - it became a nation, a body whose soul was Torah. Thereby it came to be a mamleches kohanim, a ''kingdom of priests,'' a nation serving as the guardian of God's Word in the midst of humanity, as a priest serves amidst his people. At the same time, by fulfilling God's Word, it was to become a goy kadosh, a "holy nation,'' standing apart in holiness... Torah, the fulfillment of the Divine Will, constitutes the foundation, basis and goal of this people. Its nationhood is, therefore, not tied to transitory things or dependent on anything of a passing nature; it is as eternal and everlasting as spirit and soul and the Word of the Eternal. However, this people was to enter history as a nation in the midst of other nations in order to become a social model of the Torah's teachings. Therefore, a land, prosperity and institutions of statehood were to be put at Yisrael's disposal not as goals in themselves, but as means for the fulfillment of Torah."

"You wrote that the Torah isolates us. True! If it did not, Israel would long since have lost its identity. Look what struggles are required to preserve the purity of Yisrael's spirit within our people despite this isolation! But does this spell enmity? Or pride? As if God were not the Lord of all creatures, all men? An unfortunate misinterpretation indeed! After all, Yisrael has no other task than to acknowledge as its God the One Who calls and educates all human beings to His service, and to make Him known as such through its destiny and way of life!"