Rabbis Quotes

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Quotes About Rabbis

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Did you know that Judaism is based on paradigm shifts, Henry? First came Abraham, then came Moses. Then came the prophets, then came the rabbis. Pretty amazing stuff. Each iteration, reaching for the godhead. What comes next, Henry? What comes next? ~ Michael Davidow
Rabbis quotes by Michael Davidow
There are sincere and reputable people on both sides. They disagree, but their disagreement has not undone Christianity. And neither side is blowing anyone else up over it. Week in and week out, rabbis, ministers, and priests do not stand before their congregations, preaching about the world to come and exhorting them to seek martyrdom as a fast track to heaven. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Rabbis quotes by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
whereas the Arabs were in favour of the man but against the message, the Jews were in favour of the message but against the man. For how could God send a Prophet who was not one of the chosen people? None the less, when the pilgrims brought news of the Prophet to Yathrib, the Jews were interested despite themselves and eagerly questioned them for more details; and when the Arabs of the oasis sensed this eagerness, and when they saw how the monotheistic nature of the message increased the interest of the rabbis tenfold, they could not fail to be impressed, as were the bearers of the tidings themselves. ~ Martin Lings
Rabbis quotes by Martin Lings
Something always happened, you see. A Yiddish song on Hanukkah, a British rabbi's prayer on the radio, some kindness on a train or in the street that reminded me, no matter how far I retreated, no matter how deep into self-denial my fear drove me, that the Jews would always be my people and I would always belong to them. ~ Edith Hahn Beer
Rabbis quotes by Edith Hahn Beer
The Oxford Classical Dictionary firmly states: "No word in either Greek or Latin corresponds to the English 'religion' or 'religious.' "6 The idea of religion as an essentially personal and systematic pursuit was entirely absent from classical Greece, Japan, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran, China, and India.7 Nor does the Hebrew Bible have any abstract concept of religion; and the Talmudic rabbis would have found it impossible to express what they meant by faith in a single word or even in a formula, since the Talmud was expressly designed to bring the whole of human life into the ambit of the sacred.8 ~ Karen Armstrong
Rabbis quotes by Karen Armstrong
You've been the rabbi here for thirty years and these guys who've never set foot here want to decide who should be rabbi or not. And to lead prayer in Hebrew for Jews who speak Arabic, they want you to write in French. So I say they're nuts. ~ Joann Sfar
Rabbis quotes by Joann Sfar
Mainstream rabbis essentially closed the book on dreams by the sixth century, and Church fathers established that only certain saints have the discernment to determine which dreams are from God. The dream is exiled. ~ Rodger Kamenetz
Rabbis quotes by Rodger Kamenetz
Nature is my temple; trees are my priests; birds, my rabbis; rains, my imams! Nature is my only true and eternal religion. ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan
Rabbis quotes by Mehmet Murat Ildan
Some rabbis say that, at birth, we are each tied to God with a string, and that every time we sin, the string breaks. To those who repent of their sins, especially in the days of Rosh Hashanah, God sends the angel Gabriel to make knots in the string, so that the humble and contrite are once again tied to God. Because each one of us fails, because we all lose our way on the path to righteousness from time to time, our strings are full of knots. But, the rabbis like to say, a string with many knots is shorter than one without knots. So the person with many sins but a humble heart is closer to God. ~ Rachel Held Evans
Rabbis quotes by Rachel Held Evans
Unfortunately, in America, babies are not found in cola cans. I asked my mother when I was four, and she said they came from eggs laid by rabbis. If you aren't Jewish, they're laid by Catholic nuns. If you're an atheist, they're laid by dirty, lonely prostitutes. ~ Max Jerry Horovitz
Rabbis quotes by Max Jerry Horovitz
Dear rabbis, I'm so sorry, I nuked your circle dude. Here is his head as a souvenir. Yeah, that would fly. ~ Ilona Andrews
Rabbis quotes by Ilona Andrews
Nature is behaving with us like that elderly rabbi to whom two men went in order to settle a dispute. Having listened to the first, the rabbi says: "You are in the right." The second insists on being heard. The rabbi listens to him and says: "You're also right." Having overheard from the next room, the rabbi's wife then calls out, "But they can't both be in the right!" The rabbi reflects and nods before concluding: "And you're right too." A ~ Carlo Rovelli
Rabbis quotes by Carlo Rovelli
Reformed rabbis are generally political in nature. It's almost like Islam, radicalized Islam in a way, to where it is just radicalized Islam is less about religion than it is about politics. When you look at the Reform Judaism, it is more about politics. ~ Glenn Beck
Rabbis quotes by Glenn Beck
What did they care if the rabbis who found them with the books of haskala, of enlightenment, called them epicureans, atheists, breakers of the wall? These old epithets they began to take as names of honor. Out of their ranks came the minds and spirits that created modern Zionism. The fact that Zionism was cradled against the separatist learning of the old yeshivas colors the state of Israel to this hour. ~ Herman Wouk
Rabbis quotes by Herman Wouk
Since this is the age of science, not religion, psychiatrists are our rabbis, heroin is our pork, and the addict is the unclean person. ~ Thomas Szasz
Rabbis quotes by Thomas Szasz
The wisdom of the most sagacious ancient Greeks, the wisdom of the most perceptive rabbis of ancient Canaan, and all the parables of Christ teach us to believe not in justice, but in truth. In a world of rampant lying, where so many lies are used to inflame passions and justify false grievances, the indiscriminate pursuit of justice leads sooner or later to insanity, mass murder, and the ruin of entire civilizations. ~ Dean Koontz
Rabbis quotes by Dean Koontz
From the Rabbis of the early Talmudic age I learned that there is never a last word on God. There's, you always continue to question. Even God himself could be questioned and you can keep arguing with one another and there will be no end to this conversation about the divine because no human expression of God can be ultimate. ~ Karen Armstrong
Rabbis quotes by Karen Armstrong
For the Hebrews, names provided a direct link with the Creator. They understood words as being the creative fire of God, the 'black fire on white fire' of His Law. Every utterance and every act of creation through which He revealed Himself was not only word made flesh but fire made flesh.

The word for 'being', yesh, 'to exist' or 'to have substance' was flame–breathed.

The word for 'fire', esh, was embedded in the word for 'being' and in the very notion of 'being human'.

The rabbis were said to have asked: Why is the word for 'woman', ishah? Because she is fire, esh. Why is the word for 'man', ish? Because he too is fire, esh.

They noted that when the Hebrew letters for 'man' and 'woman' came together they produced a new word as part of the union: yah, a reference to Yahweh, the Name of God. ~ Anne Hamilton
Rabbis quotes by Anne   Hamilton
The disinhibition caused by said brain damage, can also spur the infected individual to seek the pleasure of compulsive, casual sexual activity ~ Chuck Palahniuk
Rabbis quotes by Chuck Palahniuk
The connection between radical attentiveness, prayer, and joy pervades Jewish mystical thinking in its diverse phases but never so brightly, so every-day-related, and so clearly as in Hasidism. Melancholy is the dust in the soul that Satan spreads out. Worry and dejection are seen to be the roots of every evil force. Melancholy is a wicked quality and displeasing to God, says Martin Buber.

Rabbi Bunam said: "Once when I was on the road near Warsaw, I felt that I had to tell a certain story. But this story was of a worldly nature and I knew that it would only rouse laughter among the many people who had gathered about me. The Evil Urge tried very hard to dissuade me, saying that I would lose all those people because once they heard this story they would no longer consider me a rabbi. But I said to my heart: `Why should you he concerned about the secret ways of God?' And I remembered the words of Rabbi Pinhas of Koretz: 'All joys hail from paradise, and jests too, provided they are uttered in true joy' And so in my heart of hearts I renounced my rabbi's office and told the story. The gathering burst out laughing. And those who up to this point had been distant from me attached themselves to me." (a quote from Tales of the Hasidim by Martin Buber).

Joy, laughter, and delight are so powerful because, like all mysticism, they abolish conventional divisions, in this case the division between secular and sacred. The often boisterous laughter, especially of wome ~ Dorothee Solle
Rabbis quotes by Dorothee Solle
I've spoken with friends who are rabbis and priests and we've agreed that most people have an emotional attachment to their faith, a desire to fulfill their spiritual longings, but they are not experts in understanding the history of their religion. ~ Feisal Abdul Rauf
Rabbis quotes by Feisal Abdul Rauf
They decreed that rabbis were no longer to function as rabbis, that they could not teach, or decide Jewish questions in rabbinical courts, or be paid by their community. Each of them had to announce in the Yiddish press that he had ceased all rabbinical duties and that no one was to consult him about anything. This was to be the end of hundreds and hundreds of years of religious life. ~ Lucy Beckett
Rabbis quotes by Lucy Beckett
As the Holy One of Israel, the foretold Messiah of the Hebrew prophets, Jesus was the exemplary Jew of all Jews, the Rabbi of all rabbis, the Lord of all lords, the King of all kings, and the Human Being of all human beings. ~ James Mikolajczyk
Rabbis quotes by James Mikolajczyk
Contact with secular and Christian ways of thinking increased Spinoza's dissatisfaction with the biblical interpretations he received from the rabbis, who in turn frowned on his interest in natural science, and on his study of the pernicious Latin language, in which so much heresy and blasphemy had been so engagingly expressed. ~ Roger Scruton
Rabbis quotes by Roger Scruton
Jewish Warsaw, which was roughly a third of Warsaw proper, was a city of rabbis and swindlers, capitalists and poets; but, most of all, it was a city of talkers. There were so many ideas in the air you could get an education simply by breathing deeply. (p. 206) ~ Rebecca Goldstein
Rabbis quotes by Rebecca Goldstein
Human excellence, parted from God, is like a fable flower, which, according to Rabbis, Eve plucked when passing out of paradise
severed from its native root, it is only the touching memorial of a lost Eden; sad, while charming
beautiful, but dead. ~ Charles Villiers Stanford
Rabbis quotes by Charles Villiers Stanford
It is simply not true that "religion" is always aggressive. Sometimes it has actually put a brake on violence. In the ninth century BCE, Indian ritualists extracted all violence from the liturgy and created the ideal of ahimsa, "nonviolence." The medieval Peace and Truce of God forced knights to stop terrorizing the poor and outlawed violence from Wednesday to Sunday each week. Most dramatically, after the Bar Kokhba war, the rabbis reinterpreted the scriptures so effectively that Jews refrained from political aggression for a millennium. Such successes have been rare. Because of the inherent violence of the states in which we live, the best that prophets and sages have been able to do is provide an alternative. ~ Karen Armstrong
Rabbis quotes by Karen Armstrong
Each generation of rabbis is necessarily less perfect than the rabbis that came before, since each generation is more removed from the perfection of the Garden. Therefore, no rabbi is allowed to overturn any of his forebears' wisdom, since they are all, by definition, smarter than him. ~ Cory Doctorow
Rabbis quotes by Cory Doctorow
The Song of Songs, the book of Ruth, and the cycle of stories associated with King David demonstrate that biblical perspectives on sexual desire and family ties remain much more complicated than is often thought. The appropriate expression of desire is not limited to marriage between a man and a woman, but can include the love of a son of a king for his charismatic ally, the love of rabbis and theologians for God, their "husband," and the love of a faithful Moabite for her Israelite mother-in-law. The nuclear family is also not idealized: Naomi, Ruth, and Obed are a family, bound together by their common love for one another, and, in the Song of Songs, the woman's mother supports her daughter's premarital encounters over the objections of her sons, who seek to control their sister's sexuality and are overruled. King David never even bothers to pursue marriage as commonly envisioned today. His ~ Jennifer Wright Knust
Rabbis quotes by Jennifer Wright Knust
God does not reveal Himself; he only reveals His way. Judaism does not speak of God's self-revelation, but of the revelation of His teaching for man. The Bible reflects God's revelation of His relation to history, rather than of a revelation of His very Self. Even His will or His wisdom is not completely expressed through the prophets. Prophecy is superior to human wisdom, and God's love is superior to prophecy. This spiritual hierarchy is explicitly stated by the Rabbis. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel
Rabbis quotes by Abraham Joshua Heschel
For thousands of years priests, rabbis and muftis explained that humans cannot overcome famine, plague and war by their own efforts. Then along came the bankers, investors and industrialists, and within 200 years managed to do exactly that. ~ Yuval Noah Harari
Rabbis quotes by Yuval Noah Harari
The metaphorical or pantheistic God of the physicists is light years away from the interventionist, miracle-wreaking, thought-reading, sin-punishing, prayer-answering God of the Bible, of priests, mullahs and rabbis, and of ordinary language. Deliberately to confuse the two is, in my opinion, an act of intellectual high treason. ~ Richard Dawkins
Rabbis quotes by Richard Dawkins
The Divine Law was revealed to Moses, not only through the Commands that were found written in the Bible, but also through all the later rules and regulations of post-exilic days. These additional laws it was presumed were handed down orally from Moses to Joshua, thence to the Prophets, and later still transmitted to the Scribes, and eventually to the Rabbis. ~ Maurice H. Harris
Rabbis quotes by Maurice H. Harris
GERTRUDE
Gertrude Appleman, 1901-1976

God is all-knowing, all-present, and almighty.

--A Catechism of Christian Doctrine

I wish that all the people
who peddle God
could watch my mother die:
could see the skin and
gristle weighing only
seventy-nine, every stubborn
pound of flesh a small
death.

I wish the people who peddle God
could see her young,
lovely in gardens and
beautiful in kitchens, and could watch
the hand of God slowly
twisting her knees and fingers
till they gnarled and knotted, settling in
for thirty years of pain.

I wish the people who peddle God
could see the lightning
of His cancer stabbing
her, that small frame
tensing at every shock,
her sweet contralto scratchy with
the Lord's infection: Philip,
I want to die.

I wish I had them gathered round,
those preachers, popes, rabbis,
imams, priests – every
pious shill on God's payroll – and I
would pull the sheets from my mother's brittle body,
and they would fall on their knees at her bedside
to be forgiven all their
faith. ~ Philip Appleman
Rabbis quotes by Philip Appleman
The conventional explanation for Jewish success, of course, is that Jews come from a literate, intellectual culture. They are famously "the people of the book." There is surely something to that. But it wasn't just the children of rabbis who went to law school. It was the children of garment workers. And their critical advantage in climbing the professional ladder wasn't the intellectual rigor you get from studying the Talmud. It was the practical intelligence and savvy you get from watching your father sell aprons on Hester Street. ~ Malcolm Gladwell
Rabbis quotes by Malcolm Gladwell
Who wishes that there was a permanent, unalterable celestial despotism that subjected us to continual surveillance and could convict us of thought-crime, and who regarded us as its private property even after we died? How happy we ought to be, at the reflection that there exists not a shred of respectable evidence to support such a horrible hypothesis. And how grateful we should be to those of our predecessors who repudiated this utter negation of human freedom. There were many people long before Darwin or Einstein or even Galileo who saw through the claims of the rabbis and priests and imams. In earlier times, such repudiation often involved extraordinary courage. The ensuing pages will, I hope, introduce you to some of those who manifested this quality. ~ Christopher Hitchens
Rabbis quotes by Christopher Hitchens
A rabbi had a conversation with the Lord about Heaven and Hell. "I will show you Hell," said the Lord, and he led the rabbi into a room containing a large round table. The people sitting around the table were famished and desperate. In the middle of the table was an enormous pot of stew that smelled so delicious that the rabbi's mouth watered. Each person around the table held a spoon with a very long handle. Although the long spoons just reached the pot, their handles were longer than the would-be diners' arms: thus, unable to bring food to their lips, no one could eat. The rabbi saw that their suffering was terrible indeed.


"Now I will show you Heaven," said the Lord, and they went into another room, exactly the same as the first. There was the same large round table, the same pot of stew. The people were equipped with the same long-handled spoons - but here everyone was well nourished and plump, laughing and talking. The rabbi could not understand. "It is simple, but it requires a certain skill," said the Lord. "In this room, you see, they have learned to feed each other. ~ Irving Yalom
Rabbis quotes by Irving Yalom
The Orthodox believe in Jewish literacy, and most of the rest of us couldn't care less. Rabbis and other creatures have a monopoly on Judaism. This is a turnoff in a world that is increasingly secular and that has turned away from religion. Jews are simply turning away from Judaism. ~ Michael Steinhardt
Rabbis quotes by Michael Steinhardt
Historically, the rabbis are split on the question of dreams. None of them denied their power. ~ Rodger Kamenetz
Rabbis quotes by Rodger Kamenetz
I remember the tale of the rabbi to whom a dead man came with a problem: he believed that he was alive. "Don't you know," the rabbi told him, "that you are no longer among the living? You are in the Land of Confusion." On hearing the story, the rabbi's son worried that he too was in the Land of Confusion. "Once you know that there exists such a world, you cannot be in it," explained the father. (208) ~ Michael Greenberg
Rabbis quotes by Michael Greenberg
Rock music had become my religion. Radio my church. And these DJs my priests, rabbis and gurus. ~ Steven Van Zandt
Rabbis quotes by Steven Van Zandt
Hope does not mean that our protests will suddenly awaken the dead consciences, the atrophied souls, of the plutocrats running Halliburton, Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil or the government.

Hope does not mean we will reform Wall Street swindlers and speculators.

Hope does not mean that the nation's ministers and rabbis, who know the words of the great Hebrew prophets, will leave their houses of worship to practice the religious beliefs they preach. Most clerics like fine, abstract words about justice and full collection plates, but know little of real hope.

Hope knows that unless we physically defy government control we are complicit in the violence of the state. All who resist keep hope alive. All who succumb to fear, despair and apathy become enemies of hope.

Hope has a cost. Hope is not comfortable or easy. Hope requires personal risk. Hope does not come with the right attitude. Hope is not about peace of mind. Hope is an action. Hope is doing something.

Hope, which is always nonviolent, exposes in its powerlessness the lies, fraud and coercion employed by the state. Hope does not believe in force. Hope knows that an injustice visited on our neighbor is an injustice visited on us all.

Hope sees in our enemy our own face.

Hope is not for the practical and the sophisticated, the cynics and the complacent, the defeated and the fearful. Hope is what the corporate state, which saturates our airwaves with ~ Chris Hedges
Rabbis quotes by Chris Hedges
My brothers were rabbis. My grandfather was a rabbi. ~ Saul Leiter
Rabbis quotes by Saul Leiter
Sometimes rebuffing him was a difficult, but this evening Margo whispered something about the prohibition on sex during the Yom Kippur holiday--as if they were a family of rabbis!--and he gave in and turned on his side. Rejected and repelled, he would fall into his nighttime sleep; in just a few moments she would hear that sound she hated, the heavy breathing that would rise to his nostrils and turn into a saw-like din, and Margo would wonder whether to shake him or let him be. If she awaken him, there was a chance he might start probing all over again; if she let him snore, he would disrupt her thinking, and she would not be able to give herself over to the brilliant idea she had come up with while staring in the mirror. ~ Anat Talshir
Rabbis quotes by Anat Talshir
And so our rabbis decreed that a man should honor his wife more than himself, and love her as much as he loves himself. ~ Maimonides
Rabbis quotes by Maimonides
A Great Rabbi stands, teaching in the marketplace. It happens that a husband finds proof that morning of his wife's adultery, and a mob carries her to the marketplace to stone her to death.

There is a familiar version of this story, but a friend of mine - a Speaker for the Dead - has told me of two other Rabbis that faced the same situation. Those are the ones I'm going to tell you.

The Rabbi walks forward and stands beside the woman. Out of respect for him the mob forbears and waits with the stones heavy in their hands. 'Is there any man here,' he says to them, 'who has not desired another man's wife, another woman's husband?'
They murmur and say, 'We all know the desire, but Rabbi none of us has acted on it.'

The Rabbi says, 'Then kneel down and give thanks that God has made you strong.' He takes the woman by the hand and leads her out of the market. Just before he lets her go, he whispers to her, 'Tell the Lord Magistrate who saved his mistress, then he'll know I am his loyal servant.'

So the woman lives because the community is too corrupt to protect itself from disorder.

Another Rabbi. Another city. He goes to her and stops the mob as in the other story and says, 'Which of you is without sin? Let him cast the first stone.'

The people are abashed, and they forget their unity of purpose in the memory of their own individual sins. 'Someday,' they think, 'I may be like this woman. And I'll hope for forgiv ~ Orson Scott Card
Rabbis quotes by Orson Scott Card
The rabbis, the Jewish religious people, the priests of the temple of Jerusalem, they were learned fools. They could not tolerate Jesus. The learned fools are always disturbed by the blessed fools. They had to murder him because his very presence was uncomfortable; his very presence was such a pinnacle of peace, love, compassion and light, that all the learned fools became aware that their whole being was at stake. If this man lived then they were fools, and the only way to get rid of this man was to destroy him so they could. again become the learned people of the race. ~ Rajneesh
Rabbis quotes by Rajneesh
The contemporary Christian Church, precisely, has understood them in this' 'wrong way, to the letter, 'like the Jews,' exoterically, not esoterically. Nevertheless to say 'like the Jews' is an error. One would have to say 'as the Jews want.' Because they also possess an exotericism, for their masses, represented by the Torah and Talmud, and an esotericism, in the Cabala (which means: 'Received Tradition'), in the Zohar ('brightness'), the Merkaba or Chariot being the most secret part of the Cabala which only initiated rabbis know and use as the powerful tool of their magic. We have already said that the Cabala reached them from elsewhere, like everything else, in the Middle Ages, even though they tell us otherwise, using and transforming it in concordance with their Archetype. The Hasidim, from Poland, represent an exclusively esoteric sect of Judaism.

Islam also has its esoteric magic, represented by Sufism and the sect of the Assassins, Hassanists, oflran. They interpret the Koran symbolically. And it was because of contact with this sect of the 'Old Man of the Mountain' that the Templars felt compelled to secede more and more from the direction of Rome, centering themselves in their Esoteric Kristianity and Mystery of the Gral. This was also why Rome destroyed them, like the esoteric Cathars (katharos = pure in Greek), the Bogomils, the Manichees and the gnostics.

In the Church of Rome, called Catholic, there only remains a soulless ritual of the Mass ~ Miguel Serrano
Rabbis quotes by Miguel Serrano
Once, [Rabbi Chanoch] Teller was traveling with 16 of his [18] offspring ... while changing planes in Frankfurt, Teller noticed a German woman gaping.
'Are all of these your children?' the woman asked. 'From one wife?'
'Yes, God has blessed me with all these children,' the rabbi replied.
'Haven't you heard about the population problem?'the woman sniffed. 'How many more children do you want to have?'
Rabbi Teller paused and looked the woman in the eye: 'About 6 million,' he said. ~ Lynn Vincent
Rabbis quotes by Lynn Vincent
Or how he was once found on the well regarded Rabbi's front lawn, bound in white string, and said he tied one around his finger to remember something terribly important, and fearing he would forget the index finger, he tied a string around his pinky, and then one from waist to neck, and fearing he would forget this one, he tied a string from ear to tooth to scrotum heel, and used his body to remember his body, but in the end could only remember the string. Is this someone to trust for a story? ~ Jonathan Safran Foer
Rabbis quotes by Jonathan Safran Foer
Symbolically, what the rabbis say is that at Passover, what we have to do is try to get rid of our hot air - our pride, our feeling that we are the most important people in the whole entire world and that everything should revolve round us. ~ Jackie Tabick
Rabbis quotes by Jackie Tabick
According to Jewish legend, only the very wisest and very holiest rabbis had the power to make golems, animated servants of clay. Strictly speaking, the golem is not in the same class with Frankenstein's monster, because the golem is neither alive nor dead. He is, rather, the ancestor of all robots. ~ Kage Baker
Rabbis quotes by Kage Baker
Long before man traveled into space, rabbis debated how one would observe Shabbat there-not because they anticipated space travel but because Buddhists strive to live with questions and Jews would rather die. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer
Rabbis quotes by Jonathan Safran Foer
I think everybody has had the experience at some point when they feel that there's more to life than just matter. But I think it's very important to keep that under control and not to hand it over to be exploited by priests and shamans and rabbis and other riffraff. ~ Christopher Hitchens
Rabbis quotes by Christopher Hitchens
It's not about terror or anything else, it's about politics, and so it becomes more about politics than it does about faith. Orthodox rabbis - that is about faith. There's not a single Orthodox rabbi on this list. This is all Reformed rabbis that were - that made this list. ~ Glenn Beck
Rabbis quotes by Glenn Beck
Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah said, "Where there is no money, there is no learning." The rabbis explain that unless people's stomachs are full and satisfied, they cannot study, grow spiritually, and do good works. ~ H.W. Charles
Rabbis quotes by H.W. Charles
We'll have to consult Aglie. I doubt that even he knows all these organizations."
"Want to bet? They're his daily bread. But we can put him to the test. Let's add a sect that doesn't exist. Founded recently."
I recalled the curious question of De Angelis, whether I had ever heard of the Tres. And I said: "Tres."
"What's that?" Belbo asked.
"If it's an acrostic, there has to be a subtext," Diotallevi said. "Otherwise my rabbis would not have been able to use the notarikon. Lets see ... Templi Resurgentes Equites Synarchici. That suit you?"
We liked the name, and put it at the bottom of the list.
"With all these conventicles, inventing one more was no mean trick," Diotallevi said in a sudden fit of vanity. ~ Umberto Eco
Rabbis quotes by Umberto Eco
I persist in preferring philosophers to rabbis priests imams ayatollahs and mullahs. Rather than trust their theological hocus-pocus I prefer to draw on alternatives to the dominant philosophical historiography: the laughers materialists radicals cynics hedonists atheists sensualists voluptuaries. They know that there is only one world and that promotion of an afterlife deprives us of the enjoyment and benefit of the only one there is. A genuinely deadly sin. ~ Michel Onfray
Rabbis quotes by Michel Onfray
The scientists not only sanctified human feelings, but also found an excellent evolutionary reason to do so. After Darwin, biologists began explaining that feelings are complex algorithms honed by evolution to help animals make correct decisions. Our love, our fear and our passion aren't some nebulous spiritual phenomena good only for composing poetry. Rather, they encapsulate millions of years of practical wisdom. When you read the Bible you are getting advice from a few priests and rabbis who lived in ancient Jerusalem. In contrast, when you listen to your feelings, you follow an algorithm that evolution has developed for millions of years, and that withstood the harshest quality-control tests of natural selection. Your feelings are the voice of millions of ancestors, each of whom managed to survive and reproduce in an unforgiving environment. ~ Yuval Noah Harari
Rabbis quotes by Yuval Noah Harari
(When asked merely if they accept evolution, 45 percent of Americans say yes. The figure is 70 percent in China.) When the movie Jurassic Park was shown in Israel, it was condemned by some Orthodox rabbis because it accepted evolution and because it taught that dinosaurs lived a hundred million years ago-when, as is plainly stated at every Rosh Hashonhan and every Jewish wedding ceremony, the Universe is less than 6,000 years old. ~ Carl Sagan
Rabbis quotes by Carl Sagan
In the Talmud (a record of discussions of Jewish law and ethics by ancient rabbis) it is said that charity is equal in importance to all the other commandments combined, and that Jews should give at least 10 percent of their income as tzedakah. ~ Peter Singer
Rabbis quotes by Peter Singer
I can hope that this long sad story, this progression of priests and ministers and rabbis and ulamas and imams and bonzes and bodhisattvas, will come to an end. I hope this is something to which science can contribute ... it may be the most important contribution that we can make. ~ Steven Weinberg
Rabbis quotes by Steven Weinberg
We look to our pastors and priests and rabbis and counselors of all kinds to testify of the enduring principles upon which our society is built: honesty, charity, integrity and family. ~ Mitt Romney
Rabbis quotes by Mitt Romney
I am a reformed Taoist, part-time Buddhist, Hindu, animist, pagan, Jewish mystic, and Christian. I always got along great with priests and rabbis and mullahs and gurus, even though I spend most of my life constructively criticizing them. ~ Steven Van Zandt
Rabbis quotes by Steven Van Zandt
I am humbled and deeply honored to have been asked to serve the congregants of Shearith Israel, a congregation with an incomparable history, where some of America's most distinguished rabbis have pastored and preached. ~ Meir Soloveichik
Rabbis quotes by Meir Soloveichik
I tried to keep things light. I said: Would you believe, this thing here where your arm bends, this they call an elbow. I said: Two rabbis diverged in a yellow wood. I said: Moshe goes to the doctor. Doctor, he says, etcetera, etcetera. Many things I did not say. Example. I waited so long. Other example. And were you happy? With that nebbish that clod that numbskull schlemiel you call a husband? The truth was I'd given up waiting long ago. The moment had passed, the door between the lives we could have led and the lives we led had shut in our faces. ~ Nicole Krauss
Rabbis quotes by Nicole Krauss
There is a moment in the tractate Menahot when the Rabbis imagine what takes place when Moses ascends Mount Sinai to receive the Torah. In this account (there are several) Moses ascends to heaven, where he finds God busily adding crownlike ornaments to the letters of the Torah. Moses asks God what He is doing and God explains that in the future there will be a man named Akiva, son of Joseph, who will base a huge mountain of Jewish law on these very orthographic ornaments. Intrigued, Moses asks God to show this man to him. Moses is told to 'go back eighteen rows,' and suddenly, as in a dream, Moses is in a classroom, class is in session and the teacher is none other than Rabbi Akiva. Moses has been told to go to the back of the study house because that is where the youngest and least educated students sit.

Akiva, the great first-century sage, is explaining Torah to his disciples, but Moses is completely unable to follow the lesson. It is far too complicated for him. He is filled with sadness when, suddenly, one of the disciples asks Akiva how he knows something is true and Akiva answers: 'It is derived from a law given to Moses on Mount Sinai.' Upon hearing this answer, Moses is satisfied - though he can't resist asking why, if such brilliant men as Akiva exist, Moses needs to be the one to deliver the Torah. At this point God loses patience and tells Moses, 'Silence, it's my will. ~ Jonathan Rosen
Rabbis quotes by Jonathan Rosen
When the Rabbis stated that obedience or disobedience to the commandments depends not on the will of Hashem but on man's free will, they echoed Jeremiah, who said, "Out of the mouth of the Most High there comes neither the bad nor the good" (Lamentations 3:38). By the bad he meant vice, and by the good he intended virtue, meaning that Hashem does not predetermine any person as bad or good. Since this is so, a person owes it to himself to mourn his sins and transgressions, since he has committed them of his own free will, as Jeremiah says, "For what should a living man mourn? Let every man mourn because of his sins" (Lamentations 3:39). Jeremiah answers his question positively, telling us that the remedy for our disease lies with us. Just as our failings stemmed from our own free will, so do we have the power to repent of our evil deeds. ~ Maimonides
Rabbis quotes by Maimonides
Priests, ministers and rabbis are asking where the children are going. Slowly but surely, they're seeing that people are hungry for something beyond the doctrine. It isn't that they don't want religious truth. But they want the mystical core, the heart of the religious truth. ~ Marianne Williamson
Rabbis quotes by Marianne Williamson
Those of you who have listened to me before will understand that I - or rather that the League of Forgotten Men - has no quarrel with individual Jews; that we are proud to have Rabbis among our directors; but those subversive international organizations which, unfortunately, are so largely Jewish, must be driven with whips and scorpions from off the face of the earth. ~ Sinclair Lewis
Rabbis quotes by Sinclair Lewis
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