Quotes from Dennis Prager

Genesis 1:1. When bara is used in the Torah, it is used only with reference to God—because only God can create from nothing.

They must also acknowledge that the only sovereign states to have ever existed on that land have been Jewish: the first Jewish state, 1010 (the reign of King David) to 586 BCE; the second Jewish state, 530 BCE to 70 CE (AD); and the third Jewish state, 1948 to the present. No other sovereign state ever existed in the land of Israel.

God rested, we take over!

The ancient Rabbis associated the names Adonai and Elohim with two characteristics: mercy (Adonai) and justice (Elohim). Their reasoning was that both are necessary for the world to function.

There is work for us to do to be God's partner as it were and to continue. There is something for every one of you to do as a partner with God in this world. He has rested and as it were now, we take over. Later, God does not intervene quite as much as obviously as God did with the Exodus of Egypt.

Unfortunately, most English-language Bibles, going back to the King James translation, have translated this verse as "Thou shalt not kill." This has led to many people using this commandment to defend pacifism and to oppose capital punishment for murder.

The believer has to account for the existence of unjust suffering; the atheist has to account for the existence of everything else.

If you build a society in which children honor their parents, your society will long survive. And the corollary is: a society in which children do not honor their parents is doomed to self-destruction. In our time, this connection between honoring parents and maintaining civilization is not widely recognized.

One reason is the subject of the Torah is all mankind, not just the Jews. That, too, is a major feature of the Torah and this commentary.

A simple test to ascertain how much you enjoy and derive meaning from your work is to ask yourself whether you would continue doing it if you won the lottery.

Judaism has consisted of four components: God,Torah, Israel, and Chosenness; that is, the God introduced by the Jews, Jewish laws, Jewish peoplehood, and the belief that the Jews are God's chosen people. Jews' allegiance to any of these components has been a major source of antisemitism because it not only rendered the Jew an outsider, but more important, it has often been regarded by non-Jews as challenging

I have a simple rule that is of great value in identifying whom to trust: Do not choose friends on the basis of personality, 'chemistry,' or enjoyment alone. Know their character (i.e. their values and whether they act on those values) before you trust them.