Shenker Quotes

We're going to see even more empty restaurants and out of work waiters if fewer of us can pay for our meals. And the end of Taco Tuesdays is only the beginning. When ~ Anat Shenker-Osorio

Monotheism owes its existence not to philosophic speculation about the nature of reality or knowledge or virtue, but to acceptance of reality identified with a supreme being. ~ Israel Shenker

A second-century rabbi said that if 999 angels gave a bad account of a man and one angel reported favorably, God would hear the one angel; even if 999 parts of that one angel's report were unfavorable, God would hearken to the favorable part. ~ Israel Shenker

Yiddish has a down-to-earth quality that makes it remote from high-flown rhetoric, and it has a catch-as-catch-can charm derived from its stunning variety-of syntax, spelling, pronunciation, and vocabulary-from region to region. ~ Israel Shenker

The unlettered man who prayed to his maker would be heard; the pedant reciting a faultless invocation would be ignored. ~ Israel Shenker

Borders are fluid things; they help define our identities, and yet so often we use our identities to push up against borders and redraw them. ~ Jack Shenker

The suggestion that Jews were selected from among all nations of the earth to be God's chosen people suggested a kind of group arrogance, especially when the good news was first reported by Jews. However, the choice was interpreted not as tribute to superior virtue but as divine challenge. ~ Israel Shenker

One rabbi compared wise men studying the law to children tossing a ball to one another: a first sage said the meaning was this, another said the meaning was that, one gave his opinion, another begged to differ. ~ Israel Shenker

Embracing and rejecting tradition, bound and liberated by faith, torn between obscurantism and reason, self-assured and self-critical, they were a kaleidoscope of fragments, positions held and abandoned, images formed and shattered, God-fearing Jew, God-denying Jew, passionate and indifferent, hero and villain, yea-sayer, nay-sayer. ~ Israel Shenker

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

Jews are a singular confusion - difficult to define, awkward to describe, impossible to understand. All the virtues, all the vices, every pleasure, every pain - nothing is spared them. ~ Israel Shenker

One is happy to report that Israel Shenker is still at the aerosol stage. His energy is still compressed. The result distinguishes him both as a Jew and as an observer of Jews. ~ Christopher Lehmann-Haupt