Jacob Neusner > Quotes

“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

“The human condition takes on heightened intensity when God cares what you eat for lunch but will reward you for having a boiled egg.”
― Jacob Neusner, Zionism and Judaism

“Civilisation hangs suspended, from generation to generation, by the gossamer strand of memory. If only one cohort of mothers and fathers fails to convey to its children what it has learned from its parents, then the great chain of learning and wisdom snaps. If the guardians of human knowledge stumble only one time, in their fall collapses the whole edifice of knowledge and understanding.”
― Jacob Neusner

“Tosefta Sotah 13:8
(8) The year in which Shimon the Righteous died [he said to them] "in this year I will die" "how do you know this?" they responded. He (Shimon the Righteous) responded: "all of the Yom Kippur days there was an old man dressed in all white who would go with me into the holy of holies and leave with me, on this year he went in with me but did not come out with me." Seven days passed after the holiday and he died. From the time of the death of Rebbi Shimon the Righteous they ceased blessing in the name of Hashem.”
― Jacob Neusner, The Tosefta: Translated from the Hebrew, With a New Introduction

“The Mishnah is a book without a title page, preface, table of contents, introduction, beginning or end. It just starts and stops.”
― Jacob Neusner, The Mishnah: An Introduction

“Exile is what marked Israel as special, elect, subject to the rules of the covenant and its stipulations.”
― Jacob Neusner, Zionism and Judaism

“the Mishnah is a document of imagination and fantasy, describing out of the shards and remnants of reality how things are, meaning how they are supposed to be,”
― Jacob Neusner, The Mishnah: An Introduction

“The Mishnah is from no one special in utopia, to whom it may concern.”
― Jacob Neusner, The Mishnah: An Introduction

“Both the pentateuchal system of Judaism and modern and contemporary Zionism in all forms and all definitions concur that the right place for Israel, the Jewish people, is the land of Israel.”
― Jacob Neusner, Zionism and Judaism

“Zionists maintain that Zionism is the same as Judaism or is part of Judaism. What they mean is that the conception that the Jews form a people, one people, and that they have the right and duty to build a Jewish state in a particular place, which they call "the land of Israel" (a.k.a. "Palestine"), is intrinsic to the religion, Judaism. And, as a matter of fact, Zionists are right.”
― Jacob Neusner, Zionism and Judaism