Torah Quotes

“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, In the Beginning

“Just as the Torah and Bible teach concern for those in distress, the Koran instructs all Muslims to make caring for widows, orphans, and refugees a priority.”
― Greg Mortenson, Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time

“Torah is not just a book, not just a bunch of laws, and not just a history, but so much more. The Torah is a way ofd life to learn and live, and when studied, a spiritual way to understand life as well as providing instructions on getting closer to Adonai (God). When we treat others kindly, fairly, and lovingly, both in our home, social, and business lives, we are living Torah. The "truth" is the Torah is many things simultaneously.”
― Laura Weakley

“The sages advise us to study Torah lishma-"for its own sake" rather than to impress others with our scholarship. A paradox of parenting is that if we love our children for their own sake rather than for their achievements, it's more likely that they will reach their true potential.”
― Wendy Mogel, The Blessing of a Skinned Knee: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children

“Like Yeshua, James is against the idea that we can just pick and choose which commandments are relevant to our lives. We have no authority to declare some commandments valid and others invalid. All of the Torah is important.”
― David Wilber, When Faith Works: Living Out the Law of Liberty According to James

“God did not intend the Sabbath to be a burden, but rather a time of joy. The Bible says that blessings come when we honor the Sabbath and call it a delight (Isaiah 58:13). Yeshua said the Sabbath was made for our benefit (Mark 2:27). So enjoy it and give thanks to God for giving us rest.”
― David Wilber, A Christian Guide to the Biblical Feasts

“The law envisions a different kind of life, characterized by self-discipline and self-giving love. Imagine a community where every member actively worked to love and protect their neighbor!”
― Carmen Joy Imes, Bearing God's Name: Why Sinai Still Matters

“Let my people go”
― Anonymous, The Holy Bible: King James Version

“We must not become so overly obsessed with the minute details of the Torah that we neglect the more important parts. However, we also must not say that the “less important” parts of the Torah aren’t important at all. God forbid! While we certainly must emphasize the weightier matters of the Torah, at the same time we must not invalidate the lighter matters”
― David Wilber, When Faith Works: Living Out the Law of Liberty According to James

“God expresses His will to us through His written word. Do we truly believe that? Because to say, “This commandment is irrelevant,” is to say, “God’s will for my life in this area isn’t important to me.” God is the one who makes the rules, not us.”
― David Wilber, When Faith Works: Living Out the Law of Liberty According to James

“The essence of the Torah is the command: Do not do unto others as you should not want them to do unto you—the rest is commentary. Go and study.”
― Erich Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods: A Radical Interpretation of the Old Testament and Its Traditions

“The religious Jew is to study Torah for the sake of studying Torah. Torah lishmah. The ingenuity of the edict, I realized was that it relieved you of the obligation to be qualified. You studied because you had to study, and those who taught had to take you as a student.”
― Judith Shulevitz, The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time

“God made nature, and is therefore not natural. This led to the end of the universal human belief in nature gods (such as rain gods). And sure enough, as belief in the Torah’s God declines, nature worship seems to be returning.”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“Proper Torah observance must flow from a heart of love for our neighbor. If we claim to be Torah observant but neglect matters of justice, mercy, and faithfulness, then we are not truly Torah observant.”
― David Wilber, When Faith Works: Living Out the Law of Liberty According to James

“It was the titanic that sank and the ark that floated.”
― Aiyaz Uddin

“If God doesn’t exist, no value is absolute. Life is just one big crapshoot.”
― Gershon Schusterman, Why God Why: How to Believe in Heaven When it Hurts Like Hell

“The Law taught the Israelites how to rest on the Sabbath, treat immigrants with compassion, and celebrate their deliverance story through rituals and holidays. It called them to worship one God, denouncing all forms of idolatry, and to honor that God with a community characterized by order and neighborliness. In an ancient world that often celebrated violent indulgence, the Law offered a sense of stability and moral purpose.”
― Rachel Held Evans, Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again

“I cling to this notion now because it is what allows me to feel a connection to a vast body of knowledge of which I am not master, much as I am able to live in a society bursting with information that I will never wholly comprehend. I take comfort from a lesson that seems implicit in the Talmud itself, which is that not knowing Torah is part of the lesson of Torah.”
― Jonathan Rosen, The Talmud and the Internet: A Journey between Worlds

“„Kto jest zbyt miłosierny w stosunku do okrutników, staje się w końcu sam okrutnikiem w stosunku do miłosiernych”.”
― Agady Talmudyczne

“A religion is not judged by the contents of its book but by the power of its Spirit.”
― Eli Of Kittim, The Little Book of Revelation: The First Coming of Jesus at the End of Days

“The God of my disbelief is magnificent
The Torah we recieved at Sinai,
And in Lublin we gave it back.
Corpses do not praise God.”
― Jacob Glatstein

“Even one item from the Torah is worth several thousand gold dinars (Midrash haGadol, 14th century Yemen).”
― David Adani

“God isn't a competition to be won but a destination to be reached,
Within humans, this truth must be realized.”
― Aiyaz Uddin

“If I am not for myself, who is for me? And if I am for my self only, what am I?”
― Hillel, Pirkei Avot, Ethics of Our Father

“Torah" can be construed as "law," but to prioritize this sense assumes the perspective of early Christians, who regarded Jewish devotion as fixated on obeying divine law and thus insufficient for salvation. For Jews, the broader meaning of "Torah" is "teaching" or "instruction." Its organizing narrative relates the People of Israel's fortunes from the time of their progenitor, Abraham, until they stand along the River Jordan poised to conquer Canaan; it also contains myths, cosmology, genealogies, and poetry, as well as legal codes.”
― Charles L Cohen, The Abrahamic Religions: A Very Short Introduction: A Very Short Introduction

“Although no longer gospel, the assumption that multiple sources underlie the Torah can still help clarify many of the text's contradictions. Some version of it existed in 458 BCE, when Ezra, a Jewish priest in the Persian emperor's service, read it to the Yehudites in Jerusalem, but that scroll included less than what exists today.”
― Charles L Cohen, The Abrahamic Religions: A Very Short Introduction: A Very Short Introduction

“1.27: He. In the present age many people choose not to conceive of the deity as male or female. In the Torah, however, there are passages in which one cannot help but understand and translate a divine reference as masculine. The Torah depicts God as male.”
― Richard Elliott Friedman, Commentary on the Torah

“From the very beginning, humans name animals and humans name each other. Yet here, for the first and only time in a Divine encounter, a human, a woman, names God. Hagar names God el ro'i, "God Who sees me.”
― Elyse Goldstein, The Women's Torah Commentary: New Insights from Women Rabbis on the 54 Weekly Torah Portions

“Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?’ Jesus didn’t reply, ‘Well, you’ve got a Bible verse. If the Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it. Where are the rocks? Let’s get this stoning started!’ No, Jesus says something new: ‘Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’ That wasn’t what the Law said, but Jesus was revealing the heart of God, not giving a conservative reading of the Torah. Jesus gives us a new ethic of life-affirming mercy, which sets aside the old ethic that supported death penalties. Biblicists who desire to condemn sinners to death can quote the Bible by citing Moses. But Jesus says something else. [...] We cannot create Christian ethics while ignoring Christ!”
― Brian Zahnd, Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God: The Scandalous Truth of the Very Good News

“[T]he clear text of Matthew 5:18 should serve as our reference point while examining the more ambiguous texts in Hebrews and Paul’s epistles, rather than using the ambiguous texts to interpret Matthew 5:18.”
― David Wilber, How Jesus Fulfilled the Law: A Pronomian Pocket Guide to Matthew 5:17-20