Torah Quotes - Page 2

• The issue in the Bible is not just "Do you believe in God or not?" Everybody believed in gods of some sort. The question was, "Who is truly the only living God?" And if that God is indeed Yahweh the God of Israel, then there are consequences in real life - as shown in the Torah.

  Christopher J. H. Wright

  Real, Believe, Consequence

  Source: www.patheos.com

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• Since I invoke Torah so often, let me state that I don't personally believe in the God it postulates ... I am not religious, nor were the majority of the early builders of Israel believers. Yet their passion for this land stemmed from the Book of Books ... [The Bible is] the single most important book in my life.

  David Ben-Gurion

  Religious, Believe, Book

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• The truth is that what the great religions preached, the Yiddish-speaking people of the ghettos practiced day in and day out. They were the people of The Book in the truest sense of the word. They knew of no greater joy than the study of man and human relations, which they called Torah, Talmud, Mussar, Cabala.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Book, Ghetto, Men

  Isaac Bashevis Singer, Joseph C. Landis (1986). “Aspects of I.B. Singer”

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• Its no coincidence that the word holiday suggests a holy day, or that the longest book in the Torah concerns the Sabbath. If you wish to advance in any sphere, the best way is to take a retreat.

  Pico Iyer

  Book, Holiday, Holy Days

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• A man with a camera was always suspected of being a spy. Moreover, the Jews did not want to be photographed, due to a misunderstanding of the prohibition against making graven images (photography had not been invented when the Torah was written!). I was forced to use a hidden camera.

  Roman Vishniac

  Photography, Men, Spy

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• If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? But when I am for myself, then what am "I"? And if not now, when?

  Hillel the Elder

  Judaism, Rabbi, Ifs

  "Pirkei Avot". 1:14,

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• I wouldn't even dare read the Torah, let alone attempt a witty observation on the Torah.

  Charles Grodin

  Witty, Dare, Observation

  Interview with Nathan Rabin, www.avclub.com. May 20, 2009.

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• And you can't make a mistake when you are reading the Torah, so you have men standing around who will correct you if you are reading it incorrectly.

  Jami Gertz

  Mistake, Reading, Men

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• Orthodox Jews, or, as they are known in the Talmud, the Really Chosen Ones, are committed to the idea that the entire Torah was dictated by God verbatim to Moses at Mount Sinai... Other forms of Judaism dispute this claim, although it does explain certain passages in the first Torah, such as, I'm sorry, am I boring you? and What do you like better, Moses, Lord Almighty or Big Hoohah?

  Jon Stewart

  Sorry, Ideas, Doe

  "Naked Pictures of Famous People". Book by Jon Stewart, 1998.

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• I assume as a child Jesus had to learn how to do carpentry, learn Torah, learn all the things a human child had to learn. If He was human in all ways except that He did not sin, this must have been the case.

  Anne Rice

  Jesus, Children, Way

  Source: www.patheos.com

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• Nowhere in the Bible, Koran, or Torah does it say, "If you curse, then you're going to hell." But everywhere it says that if you kill, you're going to wherever they send you, depending on the religion.

  Russell Simmons

  Doe, Hell, Curse

  Interview with Nathan Rabin, www.avclub.com. September 26, 2002.

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• Confucius is like the Torah, rules to follow. And Lao-Tzu is even more conservative, saying that if you do nothing you won't break any rules. You have to let tradition fall sometime, you have to take action, you have to eat bacon.

  Christopher Moore

  Fall, Laos, Lao Tzu

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• I'm sentimental about Jesus on the cross. Jesus was a Jew, and also I believe he was a catalyst, and I think he offended people because his message was to love your neighbour as yourself; in other words, no one is better than somebody else. He embraced all people, whether it was a beggar on the street or a prostitute, and he admonished a group of Jews who were not observing the precepts of the Torah. So he rattled a lot of people's cages.

  Madonna Ciccone

  Jesus, Believe, Love You

  Source: www.independent.ie

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• I have also written a book about the Giving of the Torah, and a book on the Days of Awe, and a book on the books of Israel that have been written since the day the Torah was given to Israel.

  Shmuel Yosef Agnon

  Fear, Book, Israel

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• The Torah is the foundational text for Jewish law, but the Haggadah is our book of living memory. We are not merely telling a story here. We are being called to a radical act of empathy. Here we are, embarking on an ancient, perennial attempt to give human lives - our lives - dignity.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Memories, Book, Law

  "Commentaries For A New American Passover Seder, Jonathan Safran Foer Presents New Haggadah", www.huffingtonpost.com. March 29, 2012.

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• You've read the Torah, right? So you know the Torah defines marriage as being between one man and one woman.

  Josh Mandel

  Men, One Woman, Knows

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• I hope to see the two great religions, Islam and Christianity, hand-in-hand, embracing each other. Then the Torah and the Bible and the Qur’an will become books supporting one another being read everywhere, and respected by every nation … [I am] looking forward to seeing Muslims read the Torah and the Bible.

  Muhammad Abduh

  Book, Hands, Two

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• We must stop using the Bible as though it were a potpourri of inerrant proof-texts by which we can bring people into bondage to our religious traditions...We must no longer use the Bible as the Pharisees used the Torah when they gave it absolute and final status. Christian biblicism is no different from Jewish legalism. It is the old way of the letter, not the new way of the Spirit.

  Robert D. Brinsmead

  Bible, Christian, Religious

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• The Koran was assembled from a variety of prior Hagarene texts (hence the contradictions re Jesus' death) in order to provide the Moses-like Muhammad with a Torah of his own.

  Robert M. Price

  Jesus, Order, Islam

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• It specifically says in the Torah that you can eat shrimp and bacon in a Chinese restaurant.

  Jason Alexander

  Chinese, Shrimp, Restaurants

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• The Koran and Islam is about submission, justice and compassion. All people of the "book" - which means the Torah, Koran and Bible are accorded equal respect under Islam.

  Greg Mortenson

  Book, Mean, Compassion

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• My heart has become capable of every form: It is a pasture for gazelles And a monastery for Christian monks, And the pilgrim's Ka'ba, And the tablets of the Torah, And the book of the Koran. I follow the religion of Love: Whatever way love's camel takes, That is my religion, my faith.

  Ibn Arabi

  Christian, Spiritual, Book

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• We are not to make the Torah into God Himself, nor the Bible into a "paper pope." The Bible is only the result of the Word of God. We can experience the return of the Word of God in the here and now, the perpetual return of the actual, living, indisputable Word of God that makes possible the act of witnessing, but we should never think of the Bible as any sort of talisman or oracle constantly at our disposal that we need only open and read to be in relation to the Word of God and God Himself.

  Jacques Ellul

  Bible, Biblical, Thinking

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• To be Christian means to find the decisive revelation of God in Jesus. To be Muslim means to find the decisive revelation of God in the Koran. To be Jewish means to find the decisive revelation of God in the Torah, and so forth.

  Marcus Borg

  Christian, Jesus, Mean

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• My heart can be pasture for deer and a convent for monks, a temple for idols and a Kaaba for the pilgrims. It is both the tables of the Torah and the Koran. It professes the religion of Love wherever its caravans are heading. Love is my law. Love is my faith.

  Ibn Arabi

  Heart, Love Is, Idols

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