Sudeshna Bora

“Enlightenment thinkers, both French and German, argued that the objectionable features of Judaism had to be erased before the Jew could be free: Jews who were discriminated against accepted this, and thus often directed their rage more towards the unregenerated Jew than those who persecuted them both.”
― Paul Johnson, History of the Jews

“is essential to become aware of what our critic is saying. Before we become aware, we tend to believe what the critic says without even realizing it’s the critic speaking, and not us. In other words, your critic might be so persistent and familiar that you believe the voice you’re hearing is actually how you truly think about things—that the critic is who you are.”
― Aziz Gazipura, The Solution To Social Anxiety: Break Free From The Shyness That Holds You Back

“The bifurcation of Christianity and Judaism was a gradual process. To some extent it was determined by the actions of the Jews themselves. The consolidation of Judaism round the rigorous enforcement of Mosaic law, as a result of the crushing of the reform programme by the Maccabees, was the essential background to the origin and rise of Jewish Christianity. Equally, the drift of Jewish rigorism towards violence, and the head-on collision with the Graeco-Roman world which inevitably followed in 66–70 AD, finally severed the Christian branch of Judaism from its Jewish trunk.”
― Paul Johnson, History of the Jews

“The process, which occurs again and again in Jewish history, can be seen in two ways: as the pearl of purified Judaism emerging from the rotten oyster of the world and worldliness; or as the extremists imposing exclusivity and fanaticism on the rest.”
― Paul Johnson, History of the Jews