- Lawrence H. Silberman and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. (page 7)
- In the words of the late Rabbi Moses Sherer, who served for many years as president of the ultra-Orthodox Agudath Israel: "Proponents of classical Judaism are fighting...a defensive war-against Jewish assimilation and intermarriage." Says RJ author Rabbi Simeon Maslin, "the ultra Orthodox see themselves as the defenders of the Jewish people in a 'milchemet mitzvah,' a divinely commanded war. Such a war, according to halachah (traditional Jewish law), permits the suspension of the rules of normal conduct among the opposing factions...and even justifies the desecration of the Sabbath, which explains the ardor of those religious zealots in Jerusalem who throw rocks at passing automobiles on the sacred day of rest."
- The ultra-Orthodox see themselves as "proponents of classical Judaism" Ironically, as Rabbi Maslin points out, the Judaism to which the Orthodox lay exclusive claim--the rabbinic Judaism fashioned by such Pharisaic sages as Hillel and Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai in the first century--was the product of a revolution against the aristocratic temple priests known as the Saducees. "The Saducees, the proponents of 'classical Judaism,' refused to accept as sacred any law not recorded in scripture. The Pharisees modified and even abrogated Torah laws that they considered untenable in their days." Rabbi Maslin concludes: "Yet what the Pharisees had the foresight and the chutzpah to do in their time-preserving allegiance to the Torah by interpreting it to meet contemporary needs-is what some Orthodox authorities condemn today with the invective of a holy war."
- According to RJ authors Mary and Everett Gendler, "Active violence...is often far more effective than violence. The Indians whose heads were cracked by the British during the salt march were certainly brave; they were also effective...The British never recovered their self-respect after that event, and their hold on India was quietly but permanently weakened. Consider the dramatic overthrow of the Marcos regime in the Philippines in 1986 and the success of the Latvian independence struggle against the USSR in 1989."
- Moritz Loth, UAHC president, 1873-1910; Rabbi George Zepin, executive secretary, 1910-1943; Rabbi Maurice Eisendrath, executive director, 1943-1973; Rabbi Alexander M. Schindler, president, 1973-1996; Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, current president
- Raphael Lemkin, a Holocaust survivor and attorney, invented the term "genocide"--the willful destruction of a people--and drafted an international treaty at UAHC headquarters to prevent and punish violations of its terms. As Al Vorspan relates, Lemkin worked to "whip the conscience of the world into adopting the Genocide Convention and then badger[ed] the nations of the world, especially the U.S., into ratifying it....Before he died he succeeded in winning unanimous UN support for the Convention. A decade later, the U.S. Congress finally ratified his law."
- Doña Gracia Nasi (1510-1570) orchestrated what is believed to have been the first attempt since antiquity to organize an autonomous Jewish settlement in Palestine. In June 1560, Doņa Gracia proposed to Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent the establishment of a self-governing Jewish settlement around the ruined city of Tiberias, the last great center of Jewish government in the earliest years of the Common Era. With his consent, a year later the city walls were rebuilt, synagogues bathhouses and patio homes were constructed, mulberry treees were planted. The cooperative style of the settelement foreshadowed a twentieth-century kibbutz. (page 46)
- "The President Warfield." In America she had been an excursion boat, named for the president of the shipping line. Eighteen years after she had been built in Baltimore, friends of the Haganah, the Jewish army of Resistance, purchased her to move Jews out of Europe. They rechristened her the "Exodus 1947," guessing that she might take her place in history with the other great exoduses of Jews. (page 50)
- According to RJ author Samuel Montague, "If it hadn't been for [this] little-known Reform Jew from Kansas City, Missouri, there might not have been a State of Israel." A close childhood friend and former business partner of Harry Truman, Eddie Jacobson convinced the U.S. president, who was angry and disgusted by Jewish pressure regarding Palestine, to reschedule a canceled meeting with Chaim Weizmann. During the Truman-Weizmann meeting, Truman assured Weizmann that if a Jewish state were declared, with or without UN affirmation, the US would recognize it without delay. Truman kept his word. (pages 55-58, 86)
- During the Israeli War of Independence, Adolph William Schwimmer was the single most important figure in procuring and delivering military supplies to the emerging Jewish state. Most importantly, he acquired combat and cargo planes, made them flight worthy, and secretly transferred them to Israel. Later, Schwimmer established the all-volunteer Israeli Air Transport Command, which became the prototype of the Israeli Air Force. At Ben-Gurion's request, he also established Bedek, later renamed Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI), which became the linchpin for the emerging nation's technical and industrial infrastructure. Under his command, IAI became the sixth largest air industry in the world. (pages 59-60)
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