Quotes by Rabbis - Page 3

It's always easier to learn something than to use what you've learned. . . . You're alone when you're learning. But you always use it on other people. It's different when there are other people involved.
Chaim Potok
An important feature of good characterization in a novel is that the characters are dimensionalized and are not all of one piece. Human beings, as Singer noted, have contradictions.
Joseph Telushkin
Every verse in the scrolls of your days sings to us of hope and wonder.
Zoe Klein
I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem,Adore to weeping,Love to laughing,Desire to praising.Tickle, giggle, kiss!Adonai my God,For one moment in love,Let alone a thousand,Let alone my life,For the honor of raising and lovingChildren in love,Praise of You is ever upon my lips.
Zoe Klein
When my late father died — now I'm in mourning for my late mother — that sense of grief and bereavement suddenly taught me that so many things that I thought were important, externals, etc., all of that is irrelevant. You lose a parent, you suddenly realize what a slender thing life is, how easily you can lose those you love. Then out of that comes a new simplicity and that is why sometimes all the pain and the tears lift you to a much higher and deeper joy when you say to the bad times, "I will not let you go until you bless me.
Jonathan Sacks
God is the One who is with us when we have to do something we don't think we are capable of doing.
Harold S. Kushner
Your purpose...should always be to know...the whole that was intended to be known.
Maimonides
It's not a pretty world, Papa.''I've noticed,' my father said softly.
Chaim Potok
I no longer want to see others as humans. I want to learn to see others as brothers, sisters, mothers, & fathers.
Rabbi Shaul David Judelman
Sooner or later, we all learn that our immortality is rooted not in our professional involvements and achievements, but in our families. In time, all of our wins and losses in the workplace will be forgotten. If our memories endure, it will be because of the people we have known and touched.
Harold S. Kushner
Our lives are nothing but a short span of time. And if we spend tons of time earning money that we simply throw away, then we're throwing away part of our potential.
Shmuley Boteach
Success in marriage does not come merely through finding the right mate, but through being the right mate.
Barnett R. Brickner
If a human artist or employer made children suffer so that something immensely impressive or valuable could come to pass, wewould put him in prison. Why then should we excuse God for causing such undeserved pain, no matter how wonderful the ultimateresult may be?
Harold S. Kushner
Pain is the price we pay for being alive. Dead cells—our hair, our fingernails—can’t feel pain; they cannot feel anything. When weunderstand that, our question will change from, “Why do we have to feel pain?” to “What do we do with our pain so that it becomesmeaningful and not just pointless empty suffering? How can we turn all the painful experiences of our lives into birth pangs or intogrowing pains?” We may not ever understand why we suffer or be able to control the forces that cause our suffering, but we can have alot to say about what the suffering does to us, and what sort of people we become because of it. Pain makes some people bitter andenvious. It makes others sensitive and compassionate. It is the result, not the cause, of pain that makes some experiences of painmeaningful and others empty and destructive.
Harold S. Kushner
You can listen to silence, Reuven. I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own. It talks to me sometimes. I feel myself alive in it. It talks. And I can hear it....You have to want to listen to it, and then you can hear it. It has a strange, beautiful texture. It doesn't always talk. Sometimes - sometimes it cries, and you can hear the pain of the world in it. It hurts to listen to it then. But you have to.
Chaim Potok
Love is a weapon of Light, and it has the power to eradicate all forms of darkness. That is the key. When we offer love even to our enemies, we destroy their darkness and hatred...
Yehuda Berg
I went away and cried to the Master of the Universe, "What have you done to me? A mind like this I need for a son? A heart I need for a son, a soul I need for a son, compassion I want from my son, righteousness, mercy, strength to suffer and carry pain, that I want from my son, not a mind without a soul!
Chaim Potok
There is nothing so whole as a broken heart.
Menachem Mendel
How can we expect to know everything about God?"He looked at me, his eyes narrowing."I call that ambiguity," I said. "Riddles, puzzles, double meanings, lost possibilities, the dark side to the light, the light side to the darkness, different perspectives on the same thing. Nothing in this whole world has only one side to it. Everything is like a kaleidoscope. That's what I'm trying to capture in my art. That's what I mean by ambiguity.
Chaim Potok
... an artist is a person first. He is an individual. If there is no person, there is no artist.
Chaim Potok
Art is a person's private vision expressed in aesthetic forms.
Chaim Potok
For all the pain you suffered, my mama. For all the torment of your past and future years, my mama. For all the anguish this picture of pain will cause you. For the unspeakable mystery that brings good fathers and sons into the world and lets a mother watch them tear at each other’s throats. For the Master of the Universe, whose suffering world I do not comprehend. For dreams of horror, for nights of waiting, for memories of death, for the love I have for you, for all the things I remember, and for all the things I should remember but have forgotten, for all these I created this painting—an observant Jew working on a crucifixion because there was no aesthetic mold in his own religious tradition into which he could pour a painting of ultimate anguish and torment.
Chaim Potok
I do not have many things that are meaningful to me. Except my doubts and my fears. And my art.
Chaim Potok
Art is whether or not there is a scream in him wanting to get out in a special way.
Chaim Potok
Art begins . . . when someone interprets, when someone sees the world through his own eyes. Art happens when what is seen becomes mixed with the inside of the person who is seeing it.
Chaim Potok
As we watch the process in which the soul becomes thought or speech, we notice that many a time we ease ourselves into convenient clichés that have little of the new insight in them. Once more we are trapped by habits that are the dunghills upon which the creeds feed. It takes vigilance and humble courage to make acts of faith. After all, where faith is weak, there is an abundance of beliefs. With this in mind we may be more humble about our tradition and our sureness, yet also a bit more proud of the holy process in our inner being that keeps teaching and guiding us.
Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
You should recognize that man’s soul, this single entity whose powers and parts we have described, may be compared to matter, and that the power of reasoning is its completed form. As long as the soul lies dormant and does not acquire its form from knowledge, then the nature of the soul is useless and exists in vain.
Maimonides
Two people who are true friends are like two bodies with one soul
Chaim Potok
The women looked from one to the other, knowing what the men didn’t know. We knew the heartbeat and interior graces, compensation for our own clumsiness; the beatitude as we renounced our bodies, our noble little parasites the higher calling. We knew, without saying, the watery rollover, tremor, seismic shudders, the steadiness of the baby’s hiccups, the reliable stab from a kick to the kidney
Naomi Levy
Reuven listen to me. The Talmud says that a person should do two things for himself. One is to acquire a teacher. Do you remember the other.""Choose a friend," I said."Yes. You know what a friend is, Reuven? A Greek philosopher said that two people who are true friends are like two bodies with one soul."I nodded."Reuven, if you can, make Danny Saunders your friend.""I like him a lot, abba.""No. Listen to me. I am not talking about only liking him. I am telling you to make him your friend and to let him make you his friend.
Chaim Potok
For the elements have the property of moving back to their place in a straight line, but they have no properties which would cause them to remain where they are, or to move other-wise than in a straight line, These rectilinear motions of these four elements when returning to their original place are are of two kinds, either centrifugal,vziz.>the motion of the air and the fire; or centripedal,viz.> the motion of the earth, and the water; and when the elements have reached their original place, they remain at rest.
Maimonides
For the elements have the property of moving back to their place in a straight line, but they have no properties which would cause them to remain where they are, or to move other-wise than in a straight line, These rectilinear motions of these four elements when returning to their original place are are of two kinds, either centrifugal,vziz.>the motion of the air and the fire; or centripedal,viz.> the motion of the earth, and the water; and when the elements have reached their original place, they remain at rest.
Maimonides
Did I know that the reason Hitler had been able to slaughter six million Jews without too much complaint from the world was that for two thousand years the world had been taught that Jews, not Romans, had killed that man?
Chaim Potok
A rewarding relationship occurs when there is a common spiritual goal, shared spiritual values and a mutual desire to build a relationship upon a spiritual foundation and for the purpose of connecting to the light of the creator.
Yehuda Berg
It's like the old question, "Do you lock your house to keep people out, or to protect what's inside?" Should a person act modestly and dress modestly in order to prevent intrusion from the outside, undesirable things from happening, or to preserve and maintain what is inside: the delicate and sensitive ability to have and maintain an intimate relationship.
Manis Friedman
There is greatness in doing something you hate for the sake of someone you love.
Shmuley Boteach
We know – it has been measured in many experiments – that children with strong impulse control grow to be better adjusted, more dependable, achieve higher grades in school and college and have more success in their careers than others. Success depends on the ability to delay gratification, which is precisely what a consumerist culture undermines. At every stage, the emphasis is on the instant gratification of instinct. In the words of the pop group Queen, “I want it all and I want it now.” A whole culture is being infantilised.
Jonathan Sacks
If what is soft wears down the hard, how much the more so shall the words of the Torah, which are as hard as iron, hollow out my heart, which is flesh and blood.
Akiba Ben Joseph
Do not exalt any path above god. There are many paths that lead to god. So people are capable of finding and following the ways that suit them, provided they do not stand still.
Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
There is no financial plateau that you cannot reach
Yehuda Belsky
‎"With each experience we grow and become more aware of the inner beauty that lies within us. Ultimately we are truly our own leader. We lead the connection and flow of life that is our inheritance.
Rabbi Yossi
Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you.
Rashi
A dear and long-time friend,... asked me, "Jack, how long does it usually take you to write a book?" I replied, "Of course it depends on the project and its requirements, each book has its own rules. But for a statement to the world at large, once I've thought a book through and written it in my mind, it takes me around a week or so, depending on this and that, ordinarily at the rate of a chapter a day, but I've had some two-chapters day and some chapters have taken two days. And then of course there is revision, but around a week is about right." He seemed surprised, and I was surprised by his surprise, so I thought, maybe I'm wrong. I went home and wrote this book, at the perfectly normal pace of a chapter a day, as usual...
Jacob Neusner
Even if dogma has a purpose, it can never function as a substitute for faith, only as a dry aspect of it.
Nathan Lopes Cardozo
When faith simplifies things that need to remain complex, instead of giving us strength to live with complexity, when it gives us answers where none exist, instead of helping us appreciate the sacredness of living with questions, when it offers certainty when there needs to be doubt, and when it tells us that we have arrived when we should be searching-then there is a problem with that faith.
Brad Hirschfield
Therefore, the pure righteous do not complain of the dark, but increase the light; they do not complain of evil, but increase justice; they do not complain of heresy, but increase faith; they do not complain of ignorance, but increase wisdom.
Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook
Nature" is another name for the miracles that are so commonplace in our lives that we take for granted and have grown used to seeing them.
Shalom Arush
I honestly do not know if love vanquishes death as our traditional faiths teach but I do know that our vulnerabilities trump our ideologies and that love leavens the purity and logic of our beliefs propelling us to connect as the fiercely gracious human beings we are.
Irwin Kula
With faith, there are no questions; without faith, there are no answers.
Yisroel Meir Ha-Cohen
From every human being there rises a light that reaches straight to heaven, and when two souls that are destined to be together find each other, the streams of light flow together and a single brighter light goes forth from that united being.
Baal Shem Tov
...a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something.
Chaim Potok
Do things for people not because of who they are or what they do in return, but because of who you are
Harold S. Kushner
God help me! I am small and alone but I must help them; and I most not waste a moment, because every moment another soul dies.
Leslie H. Hardman
God is only where you let Him in
Menachem Mendel
If that were God's plan, it's a bad bargain; I don't want to have to deal with a God like that...My sense is God and I came to an accommodation with each other a couple of decades ago, where he's gotten used to the things that I'm not capable of and I've come to terms with things he's not capable of...and we care very much about each other.
Harold S. Kushner
The test of faith is whether I can make space for difference. Can I recognize God's image in someone who is not in my image, who language, faith, ideal, are different from mine? If I cannot, then I have made God in my image instead of allowing him to remake me in his.
Jonathan Sacks
I will go wherever the truth leads me. It is secular scholarship, Rebbe; it is not the scholarship of tradition. In secular scholarship there are no boundaries and no permanently fixed views.”Lurie, if the Torah cannot go out into your world of scholarship and return stronger, then we are all fools and charlatans. I have faith in the Torah. I am not afraid of truth.
Chaim Potok
You must accept the truth from whatever source it comes.
Maimonides
Truth has to be given in riddles. People can't take truth if it comes charging at them like a bull. The bull is always killed. You have to give people the truth in a riddle, hide it so they go looking for it and find it piece by piece; that way they learn to live with it.
Chaim Potok
Truth does not become more true by virtue of the fact that the entire world agrees with it, nor less so even if the whole world disagrees with it.
Maimonides