14 Quotes by Amy-Jill Levine

For far too long Jesus has been the wedge that drives Christians and Jews apart. I suggest that we can also see him as a bridge between us.

Conversations across religions need not, and should not, end with all participants proclaiming an ultimate unity of belief. Such an exercise only waters down both traditions into a bland universalism that, in an attempt to be inoffensive, winds up offending everyone.

The point of interfaith conversation is not to convert the person across the table, but it is also not to abdicate one’s own theology for the sake of reaching agreement. Put another way: there is no reason for Jews and Christians to sacrifice their particular beliefs on the altar of interfaith sensitivity. The former bishop of Sweden and dean of Harvard Divinity School Krister Stendahl speaks appropriately of “holy envy,” that is, the appreciation of the beliefs and practices of another.

When personal resentment overrides familial and cultural values, we all lose.

For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.