Jewish Tradition Quotes

We know from Philo there was already a Jewish tradition of a preexistent being named Jesus who was the Form of God (Element 40). It cannot be claimed Philo came up with this notion on his own, since that would entail a wildly improbable coincidence. So we surely are looking at a derivation from an earlier Divine Logos doctrine. Then we're told this Jesus did not try to seize power from God in heaven (as by some accounts Satan had once done, resulting in his fall to the lower realms), but instead divested himself of all his power and higher being, enslaving himself (either to God's plan or the world of flesh) by 'being made' [genomenos] in the 'likeness' of men (not literally becoming a man, but assuming a human body, and thus wearing human 'flesh'). ~ Richard C. Carrier

In ancient Jewish tradition, as far back as we can tell, the Song of Songs was not interpreted as a love poem or as an allegory of the individual soul; it was interpreted as an allegory of God's spousal love for the people of Israel. ~ Brant Pitre

I have a broad but not an expert or scholarly background in the Jewish tradition. I've tried to learn what I can from childhood, but I am not an expert on Jewish teachings. ~ Michael Sandel

The Jewish tradition presents itself as the greatest revelation of God's truth that can be known in the world. That is why we call ourselves 'the chosen people.' It is not that we choose ourselves. It means that we have been elected by God and given the Torah. ~ David Novak

The Jewish tradition of learning-is learning. Adam chose knowledge instead of immortality. ~ Elie Wiesel

Neither Jewish morality nor Jewish tradition can be used to disallow terror as a means of war, ~ Yitzhak Shamir

You probably never realized this, but God wants to partner with us so that we can establish his kingdom here on earth. Have you heard of the universal principal of receiving? This principal is simply that in order to receive, you have to share. According to the Jewish tradition, an act of charity has the ability to change even a negative heavenly decree. Charity is not just meant to improve the world and those around you. It may surprise you to learn that it mostly serves to improve ourselves. ~ Celso Cukierkorn

I was raised in the Jewish tradition, taught never to marry a Gentile woman, shave on a Saturday night and, most especially, never to shave a Gentile woman on a Saturday night. ~ Woody Allen

When Zionism becomes co-extensive with Jewishness, Jewishness is pitted against the diversity that defines democracy, and if I may say so, betrays one of the most important ethical dimensions of the diasporic Jewish tradition: namely, the obligation of co-habitation with those different from ourselves. ~ Judith Butler

Landsman has put a lot of work into the avoidance of having to understand concepts like that of the eruv, but he knows that it's a typical Jewish ritual dodge, a scam run on God, that controlling motherfucker. ~ Michael Chabon

We in the Jewish community are comparatively lucky. All of traditions have anti-gay pieces but the Jewish tradition doesn't have as many anti-sexuality and anti-body teachings. It's a lot easier to fit affirmation of sexuality and gender. ~ Jay Michaelson

I am a judge born, raised, and proud of being a Jew. The demand for justice runs through the entirety of the Jewish tradition. I hope, in my years on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, I will have the strength and the courage to remain constant in the service of that demand. ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

I noticed that people were craving a way of reinterpreting tradition and of being Jewish without joining a synagogue. ~ Jill Soloway

Jewish tradition holds that, given a choice between life and death, one should always choose life. ~ Miriam M. Brysk

I grew up in a Jewish family, and we have raised our children in a Jewish tradition. Religion gives a framework for moral enquiry in young minds and points us to questions beyond the material. ~ Michael Sandel

In short, according to the Old Testament and ancient Jewish tradition, the hope of God's people was for the restoration of Israel from exile, the ingathering of the Gentile nations, and the renewal of creation itself. It was a hope that God, by means of a new exodus, would one day "make all things new" (Revelation 21:5). ~ Brant Pitre

There's never really been a tradition of making films about Jewish themes or using Judaism as a constant. ~ James Gray

In Jewish tradition, death-defying devotion to scholarship was the stuff of saintliness. ~ Israel Shenker

What are you going to do to preserve a tradition that is the peculiar and unique culture that Judaism inculcates? The American Jewish community is not going to survive by lining up against its common enemy. ~ Arthur Hertzberg

Fasting is meant to take you, temporarily, out of the realm of the physical and focus your attention heavenward; as one Jewish guide to fasting puts it, 'at the heart of this practice is a desire to shift our attention away from our immediate needs and to focus on more spiritual concerns. ~ Lauren F. Winner

In the words of Jewish liturgical scholar Lawrence Hoffman, 'Jews do offer freely composed prayers ... But overall, it is the fixed order and content of Jewish prayer that gives it its distinctiveness and that demands the personal commitment to prayer as a discipline. ~ Lauren F. Winner

It is obvious that the war which Hitler and his accomplices waged was a war not only against Jewish men, women, and children, but also against Jewish religion, Jewish culture, Jewish tradition, therefore Jewish memory. ~ Elie Wiesel

The concept known as bal tashchit
'Do no destroy'
has a special significance in Jewish tradition ... We are constantly being warned in our faith that the capricious, thoughtless, wasteful destruction of the elements and creatures of the earth is wrong ... We should remind ourselves daily of our responsibility to all aspects of creation. ~ David Geffen

In the Jewish tradition of the Bible it says, "Speak to her softly, so that she will want to engage in sexual activity." In today's world, there's a little bit of a danger in that people don't really talk to each other. You see couples walking in the street, each one of them texting someone else. That worries me. ~ Ruth Westheimer

But if roteness is a danger, it is also the way liturgy works. When you don't have to think all the time about what words you are going to say next, you are free to fully enter into the act of praying; you are free to participate in the life of God. ~ Lauren F. Winner

[Europe has] this tradition of self revelation in popular music. We have it here - it's called Country Western Music ... I think that's where the deeper and more complex subjects are treated. ~ Leonard Cohen

The only place where I felt at home, on familiar ground, was the Jewish cemetery. And yet I had never set foot in it before. Children had been forbidden to enter. ~ Elie Wiesel

Is it intelligent to make ourselves miserable while living in the past, haunted by memories while being inexorably swallowed by them? Whenever we reminisce about our past life, we are advised in our tradition to be in a state of gratefulness. Be mindful of nurturing unnecessary grief and staying stuck in old pain. ~ Hiram Crespo

Before Kuhn , most scientists followed the place-a-stone-in-the-bright-temple-of-knowledge tradition, and would have told you that they hoped, above all, to lay many of the bricks, perhaps even the keystone, of truth's temple. Now most scientists of vision hope to foment revolution. We are, therefore, awash in revolutions, most self-proclaimed. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

Because trying to see all sides, such an instinct is particularly Jewish. ~ Elizabeth Wurtzel

Extol Jewish virtue, modern Zionism and the Israeli Defense Forces. ~ Geraldo Rivera

I would want to conceive of philosophy as grounded in the very long humanist tradition that is the best of the West, which is open to the East and North and South. ~ Cornel West

'Jackass: The Movie' is great. I think it's in the tradition of physical comedy, which I'm really interested in. Its relationship to gravity, and how gravity acts on the body. ~ Matthew Barney

It was natural to see the struggle for dignity for black people in America as a sister struggle of the Jewish struggle. So growing up, it was always a part of my breakfast cereal to think of myself as someone who was part of a larger struggle. ~ Eugene Jarecki

I have spent a great deal of my life during the past thirty-five years advocating the rights of the Palestinian people to national self-determination, but I have always tried to do that with full attention paid to the reality of the Jewish people and what they suffered by the way of persecution and genocide. The paramount thing is that the struggle for equality in Palestine/Israel should be directed toward a humane goal, that is, coexistence, and not further suppression and denial. Not accidentally, I indicate that Orientalism and modern anti-Semitism have common roots. Therefore, it would seem to be a vital necessity for independent intellectuals always to provide alternative models to the reductively simplifying and confining ones, based on mutual hostility, that have prevailed in the Middle East and elsewhere for so long. ~ Edward W. Said

As the spiral of modern art history continues to wind down, we can see the increasing demand for tradition in the visual arts. ~ Igor Babailov

A yogi is much more disciplined in his speech. Yogic tradition has it that speech must pass before three barriers prior to being uttered aloud. These barriers come in the form of three questions: Is it kind? Is it true? Is it necessary? (112-113) ~ Prem Prakash

Every hunchback has his gypsy, each phantom his diva, and flames of passion consume witches and martyrs alike. For any lonely monster, tradition demands that one sacrificial soul seek immolation.
Ashe to ashes.
It remains the ultimate, transformative act of love. ~ Robert Dunbar

Fiction about mining has a long tradition - Emile Zola's 'Germinal' and Upton Sinclair's 'King Coal' come to mind - and most readers will be aware of the industry's harsh conditions. ~ Floyd Skloot

Many countries in the Middle East are artificial creations. European colonialists drew their national borders in the nineteenth or twentieth century, often with little regard for local history and tradition, and their leaders have had to concoct outlandish myths in order to give citizens a sense of nationhood. Just the opposite is true of Iran. This is one of the world's oldest nations, heir to a tradition that reaches back thousands of years, to periods when great conquerors extended their rule across continents, poets and artists created works of exquisite beauty, and one of the world's most extraordinary religious traditions took root and flowered. ~ Stephen Kinzer

Where is the society which does not struggle along under a dead-weight of tradition and law inherited from its grandfather? ~ Suzanne La Follette

I do not belong to any spiritual group or tradition. I am just interested in exploring what it means to live with open eyes.
People in spiritual organizations also tend to get caught in ideas of how it should be, and in the need of the ego to create hierachies of power, status, roles, ambition and obidience.
Spiritual Masters teach on many different levels at the same time. Some people take what they can, and some take something deeper. ~ Swami Dhyan Giten

By tradition, a teacher was a most revered figure, a mentor for life, who imparted wisdom as well as knowledge, and who must be respected like a parent. (The murder of a teacher was classified as parricide, which, like treason, was punishable by death of a thousand cuts.) Emperors and princes set up shrines in their homes to honour their deceased tutors. ~ Jung Chang

The president welcomes peaceful protests - it is a time-honored tradition. The president agrees violence is not the answer in Iraq, and that's why he hopes Saddam Hussein will disarm. ~ Ari Fleischer

In the Christian tradition, for example, the only model for faith is Jesus of Nazareth. His proclamation, one observes in the New Testament, was not particularly religious: he spoke of God, certainly, but only in relation to ordinary human life with its quotidian struggle and suffering. Nor did he speak or preach in especially religious or secretarian terms; in fact, it maybe be said that Jesus came to set the world free from enslavement to and obsession with mere (humanly made) religion. "He went about doing good" is the biblical summary of his life and mission, and no words are more moving or provocative. ~ Donald Spoto

Every other country where there's absolute chaos now, what is it? They're pluralistic without consensus. Look at almost every single country, from Syria, to Iraq, to Iran, Ukraine, no matter where it is. I just think it is totally counter to our tradition. ~ Joe Biden

[Biographical info on Rita]
Born and raised in a Sephardic Jewish family in which culture and love of learning were categorical imperatives, she abandoned religion and embraced atheism. She devoted herself to Science, getting to the point of renouncing marriage for scientific research.
... Unlike other people, Rita Levi Montalcini was a complete human being. ~ Rita Levi-Montalcini

I was born in Russia in 1901 of Jewish parents and came to the United States in 1922 to join my father, who left Russia for the United States before World War I. ~ Simon Kuznets

If I see another David Gold interview on the poor East End Jewish boy done good I'll impale myself on one of his dildos. ~ Simon Jordan

Redemption basically is about holistic health, if you want to translate it into modern parlance. What I suggest - based on the Christian tradition but not often preached - is that you can't enter into the fullness of the Pascal mystery of the redemption unless there is a radical transformation of motivation within you. ~ Thomas Keating

Of the approximately 2,900 Jewish Nasielskers who remained in Poland, fewer than ten survived the war. ~ Glenn Kurtz

On July 18, we will mark the 12th anniversary of the senseless loss of 85 lives in the bombing of the Jewish Cultural Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina. ~ Tom Lantos

There are two traditions in Northern Ireland. There are two main religious denominations. But there is only one true moral denomination. And it wants peace. ~ David Trimble

November is Jewish book month, so Jewish Community Centers all around the country have book fairs where they invite authors and sell books in advance of the holidays. ~ Anita Diament

The Jewish people and their fate are the living witness for the absence of redemption. This, one could say, is the meaning of the chosen people; the Jews are chosen to prove the absence of redemption. ~ Leo Strauss

If ... [Alban] Berg departs so radically from tradition, through his substitution of a symmetrical partitioning of the octave for the asymmetrical partionings of the major/minor system, he departs just as radically from the twelve-tone tradition that is represented in the music of Schoenberg and Webern, for whom the twelve-tone series was always an integral structure that could be transposed only as a unit, and for whom twelve-tone music always implied a constant and equivalent circulation of the totality of pitch classes. ~ George Perle

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the holy of holies of Jewish time. It is that rarest of phenomena, a Jewish festival without food. Instead it is a day of fasting and prayer, introspection and self-judgment when, collectively and repeatedly, we confess our sins and pray to be written into God's Book of Life. ~ Jonathan Sacks

Perhaps the main stumbling block to a better, and more fruitful, theological relationship with Judaism and the Jewish people has been the tendency of many Christian theologians to see the Christ event as the end of history. ~ David Novak

Few except the poor preserve traditions. Aristocrats live not in traditions but in fashions. ~ G.K. Chesterton

For millennia, religions in general, and Jewish, Christian, and Islamic churches in particular, have had little problem with the forced enslavement of hundreds of millions of people. It was only after the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment that rational arguments were proffered for the abolition of the slave trade, influenced by and citing such secular documents as the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. After an unconscionably long lag time, religion finally got on board the abolition train and became instrumental in helping to propel it forward. ~ Michael Shermer

My parents decided - because they were not going to teach us anything Jewish at home - to send both me and my sister to a Jewish primary school. So I went to Kerem Primary School in Hampstead Garden Suburb. But, for me, that school really didn't work that well. ~ Noreena Hertz

You can imagine what a trip this is for a Jewish girl from Great Neck-I get to win an Academy Award and meet Elizabeth Taylor at the same time. ~ Julia Phillips

Whether or not we follow any particular spiritual tradition, the benefits of love and kindness are obvious to anyone. ~ Dalai Lama

Results from a given approach are " facts " as long as the approach fits the group or the tradition that is being addressed ~ Paul Feyerabend

Brutality goes hand in hand with orthodoxy, be it Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Atheistic or any other. ~ Abhijit Naskar

A friend of mine is trying to do a documentary where he brings Jewish and Arab comedians to occupied territories in Israel. He wants to do shows as a way of finding some comedic common denominator. When he proposed the idea to one of the officials at the Jenin refuge camp, the guy just stared at him and said, "This is not a joke to us. We don't think that laughing is the answer." ~ Harold Ramis

The Jewish problem is as old as history, and assumes in each age a new form. The life or death of millions of human beings hangs upon its solution; its agitation revives the fiercest passions for good and for evil that inflame the human breast. ~ Emma Lazarus