Barry W. Holtz > Quotes

“Probably no statement attributed to Akiva is more well-known and more associated with him than this one: of the verse “love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18),”
― Barry W. Holtz, Rabbi Akiva: Sage of the Talmud

“According to Josephus, Gessius Florus never omitted “any sort of violence, nor any unjust sort of punishment; . . . it was this Florus who necessitated us [the Jews] to take up arms against the Romans, while we thought it better to be destroyed at once, than by little and little” (Antiquities 20:254–57).”
― Barry W. Holtz, Rabbi Akiva: Sage of the Talmud

“The clause “whose inside is not like his outside” is used elsewhere in the Talmud (b. Yoma “The Day” 72b) to indicate a person who puts on a nice show for others that does not conform to his inner, true self—a morally deceptive person in other words.”
― Barry W. Holtz, Rabbi Akiva: Sage of the Talmud

“Rabbi Eliezer said to them, “If the law is as I say, let it be proved from heaven.” A heavenly voice went forth and said: “What is it for you with Rabbi Eliezer since the law is according to him in every place?” Rabbi Joshua stood on his feet and quoted scripture, “It is not in heaven” (Deuteronomy 30:12). What did he mean? Rabbi Jeremiah said, “The Torah was already given on Mount Sinai, so we do not listen to a heavenly voice. It is written in the Torah, ‘After the majority one must incline’” (Exodus 23:2). [Later] Rabbi Nathan came upon Elijah and asked him, “What was the Holy One doing at that time?” Elijah said to him, “He laughed and smiled and said ‘My sons have defeated me, My sons have defeated me.’” b. Bava Metzia “The Middle Gate” 59b8 Writers interested in the theological or legal”
― Barry W. Holtz, Rabbi Akiva: Sage of the Talmud

“I will tell you a parable. To what can this situation be compared: A fox was once walking alongside of a river and saw swarms of fish going from place to place. He said to them: ‘From what are you fleeing?’ “The fish replied: ‘From the nets that people throw to catch us.”
― Barry W. Holtz, Rabbi Akiva: Sage of the Talmud

“Third, Akiva adds a different perspective. The real problem, he suggests, is that no one understands the best way to rebuke another person. If the person doing the rebuking understood how to rebuke, rebuke would be more easily accepted by the other.”
― Barry W. Holtz, Rabbi Akiva: Sage of the Talmud

“And he said, “It is not that Eleazar knows more Torah than I do but that he is descended from greater men than I am. Happy is the person whose ancestors have gained merit for him. Happy is the person who has a ‘peg’ on which to hang.”
― Barry W. Holtz, Rabbi Akiva: Sage of the Talmud

“Hear, O Israel Shema yisra’el The Lord is our God Adonai eloheinu The Lord is one! Adonai ehad! The context for this verse in Deuteronomy reveals that it is uttered in a dramatic, interactive situation. The first phrase (“Hear, O Israel”) is spoken by God to Israel; it carries no message, only the fact of being addressed by God, the experience of divine attention. Israel responds to being addressed by proclaiming that “the Lord is our God.” In English this sounds like a redundancy; Hebrew differentiates between Adonai, which is the particular and proper name of God in the Bible (itself already an avoidance of the unpronounceable sacred name), and Eloheinu, which is the generic term for gods or divine beings. So Israel’s response has the force of declaring that God, alone of all the claimants to divinity, is He Whom we choose. The last phrase, Adonai ehad, is understood by some interpreters to stress the exclusivity of the choosing of God (reading ehad as “alone”; “The Lord our God, the Lord alone”) and by others to introduce a further concept: the oneness of God. Exclusive fidelity to God and God”
― Barry W. Holtz, Back to the Sources

“There, God gave a different answer: Akiva is invited into the “world to come.” He is promised an afterlife as compensation. But here, there is no recompense. It is a stark “Quiet!” from God—a response that feels particularly resonant for us today: there is no answer to the suffering of the righteous, and the promise of the world to come offers small comfort. This text seems to be saying that even for the greatest of rabbinic heroes the mystery of death and suffering is somehow beyond human comprehension, locked in the mind of God and inaccessible to any of us.”
― Barry W. Holtz, Rabbi Akiva: Sage of the Talmud

“What, in the end, can we say about Rabbi Akiva? Throughout this book I have tried to keep in mind the words of the novelist Margaret Atwood in the epigraph: “There’s the story, then there’s the real story, then there’s the story of how the story came to be told. Then there’s what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too.”
― Barry W. Holtz, Rabbi Akiva: Sage of the Talmud

“You shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall surely rebuke your neighbor but bear no sin because of him. You”
― Barry W. Holtz, Rabbi Akiva: Sage of the Talmud