Jewish Rabbi Quotes & Sayings

You're at a Jewish wedding. How can you tell if it's Orthodox, Reform, or Liberal? A: In an Orthodox wedding, the bride's mother is pregnant. In a Reform wedding, the bride is pregnant. In a Liberal wedding the rabbi is pregnant. — David Minkoff

A traditional rabbi is the man to whom the community and its members turn to rule on what Jewish law requires of them, particularly in cases of doubt. — David Novak

In a Jewish theological seminar there was an hours-long discussion about proofs of the existence of God. After some hours, one rabbi got up and said, "God is so great, he does not even need to exist." — Victor Frederick Weisskopf

Rabbi Kushner writes from a wealth of Jewish wisdom and pastoral devotion, but his theology is, I find, is wholly in keeping with contemporary Christian thought. So far as there is an answer to the conflict between the goodness of God and the bitterness of suffering, this is it — Gerald Priestland

David was the son of a famous Venetian rabbi. From his youth he had been accustomed to debate good principles and right conduct with all sorts of grave Jewish persons. These conversations had formed his own character and he naturally supposed that a small measure of the same could not help but improve other people's. In short he had come to believe that if only one talks long enough and expresses oneself properly, it is perfectly possible to argue people into being good and happy. With this aim in mind he generally took it upon himself to quarrel with Tom Brightwind several times a week -- all without noticeable effect. — Susanna Clarke

To argue over who is the more noble is nothing more than to dispute whether dirt is better for making bricks or for making mortar. — Teresa Of Avila

The "question" is the inoculation against and the antidote for ignorance. — Ted Agon

The things that make our lives are so tenuous, so unlikely, that we barely come into being, barely meet the people we're meant to love, barely find our way in the woods, barely survive catastrophe every day. — Rebecca Solnit

Until the arrival of Spanish troops in 1920, Chefchaouen had been visited by just three Westerners. Two were missionary explorers: Charles de Foucauld, a Frenchman who spent just an hour in the town in 1883, disguised as a Jewish rabbi, and William Summers, an American who was poisoned by the townsfolk here in 1892. The third, in 1889, was the British journalist Walter Harris, whose main impulse, as described in his book, Land of an African Sultan, was "the very fact that there existed within thirty hours' ride of Tangier a city in which it was considered an utter impossibility for a Christian to enter". Thankfully, Chefchaouen today is more welcoming towards outsiders, and a number of the Medina's newer guesthouses now include owners hailing from Britain, Italy and the former Christian enemy, Spain. — Daniel Jacobs

As a boy, I never knew where my mother was from
where she was born, who her parents were. When I asked she'd say, "God made me." When I asked if she was white, she'd say, "I'm light-skinned," and change the subject. She raised twelve black children and sent us all to college and in most cases graduate school. Her children became doctors, professors, chemists, teachers
yet none of us even knew her maiden name until we were grown. It took me fourteen years to unearth her remarkable story
the daughter of an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, she married a black man in 1942
and she revealed it more as a favor to me than out of any desire to revisit her past. Here is her life as she told it to me, and betwixt and between the pages of her life you will find mine as well. — James McBride

instead of simply saying, "A rabbi, a priest, and a black guy walk into a bar," he'd say, "The subjects of this joke are three males, two of whom are clergymen, one of the Jewish faith, the other an ordained Catholic minister. The religion of the African-American respondent is undetermined, as is his educational level. The setting for the joke is a licensed establishment where alcohol is served. No, wait. It's a plane. I — Paul Beatty

If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when? — Pirkei Avot

The great Jewish Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, "The Greeks learned in order to comprehend. The Hebrews learned in order to revere. The modern man learns in order to use" ('God in Search of Man' p34) — Paul F Herring

When we say a show is successful, it's because, relative to the investment, it's successful, relative to how else we would have spent that money on licensing something else, does this creation - did it attract the audience that it was built for. — Ted Sarandos

I want you to send a hundred red balloons up into the sky every Fourth of July and make everyone who sees them wonder what the story behind them is all about. Let me live on inside of a made up story, Callum Andrew — Emalynne Wilder

So, as I wrote in the paperback edition of The Lexus and the Olive Tree, I started telling anyone who asked "Is God in cyberspace?" that the answer is "no" - but He wants to be there. But only we can bring Him there by how we act there. God celebrates a universe with such human freedom because He knows that the only way He is truly manifest in the world is not if He intervenes but if we all choose sanctity and morality in an environment where we are free to choose anything. As Rabbi Marx put it, "In the postbiblical Jewish view of the world, you cannot be moral unless you are totally free. If you are not free, you are really not empowered, and if you are not empowered the choices that you make are not entirely your own. What God says about cyberspace is that you are really free there, and I hope you make the right choices, because if you do I will be present." The — Thomas L. Friedman

If you follow these simple truths, you will gain control over your financial future, and probably be able to accumulate millions and millions of dollars. These truths are not just about money, but about self discipline and the proof of love between yourself and your family. While I have gleaned these truths from the wisdom of the Jewish people, they will work for anyone in any setting regardless of religious background or income level. This is the oldest financial system in history and the only one that has survived the test of time. — Celso Cukierkorn

Not that the study is not important. A Jewish rabbi I once studies with would often say, 'For us Jews studying the bible is more important than obeying it because if you don't understand it rightly you will obey it wrongly and your obedience will be disobedience.

This is also true. — Eugene H. Peterson

My mom, for most of her life, was a Holocaust denier. And it was terrible for the entire family to have to deal with until, finally, a couple years ago, we had an intervention. And we had a rabbi come into the home, had him walk her through the history of the Jewish people, and then he made her watch "Schindler's List." And after that, my mom did a complete 180. Now she can't believe it only happened once. — Anthony Jeselnik

Come on people! Somebody disagree with me! How can we learn anything if no one will disagree?" Rabbi Stern — Athol Dickson

If you're bumming out, you're not gonna get to the top, so as long as we're up here we might as well make a point of grooving. (Quoting Scott Fischer) — Jon Krakauer

First of all, the Jewish religion has a great deal in common with the Christian religion because, as Rabbi Gillman points out in the show, Christianity is based on Judaism. Christ was Jewish. — Barbara Walters

She was ushered into a passage where the only light came from the tallow taper in the rabbi's hand. The house smelled of chicken soup. In the thousand miles she and Rosa and the children had traveled from Siberia, passed along like parcels from settlement to Jewish settlement, sometimes in houses, often in huts, that smell had been the one constant, as if they had followed its trail by sniffing, like dogs. However poor their hosts, a hen had been killed in their honor because hospitality demanded it. — Ariana Franklin

I'll go for God, country, and my baby. Sure, as these teardrops burn, I promise to return, and when I'm home, I'll cling to the arms of my baby. — Johnny Burnette

And all the time she felt the reflection of his hopelessness in her. She couldn't quite, quite love in hoplessness. And he, being hopeless, couldn't ever love at all. — D.H. Lawrence

All artists are self-sacrificing human beings, and to become an artist is nothing but to devote oneself to the subterranean gods. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

The first profile piece on myself came about after my Rabbi sent information to the Jewish Chronicle on what I was up to. The story was then picked up by one of the nationals and things grew from there. — Benjamin Cohen

We have always existed in different forms - carbon, oxygen, water, heat. Maybe Heaven is this brief period when the elements realize they're alive. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Based on UN statistics, is that before the DDT ban, malaria had become almost a minor illness. Fifty thousand deaths a year worldwide. A few years later, it was once again a global scourge. Fifty million people have died since the ban, — Michael Crichton

I'd never say that. I'm still Jewish, you know, even if I am a vampire. In my heart I remember and believe, even the words I can't say. G - " He choked and swallowed. "He made a covenant with us, just like the Shadowhunters believe Raziel made a covenant with them. And we believe in his promises. Therefore you can never lose hope - hatikva - because if you keep hope alive, it will keep you alive." He looked faintly embarrassed. "My rabbi used to say that. — Cassandra Clare

Sometimes you think, "Oh man, this is going to be a fantastic movie," and then when you see it put together, you're like, "Oh, huh. Well, that didn't turn out quite the way I thought." Sometimes you think you're part of a project and it isn't that great, and then it sort of becomes a pleasant surprise. But I think there's just too many elements that affect the tone of a movie, so I think even for a director, it may be hard to gauge that. — Anna Faris

Rabbi Hiyya advised his wife, "When a poor man comes to the door, be quick to give him food so that the same may be done to your children." She exclaimed, "You are cursing our children [with the suggestion that they may become beggars]." But Rabbi Hiyya replied, "There is a wheel which revolves in this world." - Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 151b — Joseph Telushkin

The Frankenstein of Communism is the product of the Jewish mind, and was turned loose upon the world by the son of a Rabbi, Karl Marx, in the hopes of destroying Christian civilization - as well as others. The testimony given before the Senate of the United States which is take from the many pages of the Overman Report, reveals beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jewish bankers financed the Russian Revolution. — Kenneth Goff

Often autism is portrayed in the media as a very negative condition, as something that prevents somebody from communicating or from socializing or from being able to have any kind of normal, happy life. — Daniel Tammet

I tell people, 'It's just like a cliche, but it's true: In Hollywood, dreams can come true.' — Michael Clarke Duncan