Orthodox Jews Quotes & Sayings

In the United States we have all across this country, we have dozens of Halakha courts, in which particularly observant Jews can take these issues of family law to an orthodox Court and have that judge, judge for them. As long as the courts don't violate the laws of the land and as long as there's a room for appeal should one or two parties disagree with the verdict, I don't see how this would have anything to do with being incompatible with what we refer to as Western ideas of democracy. — Mark Durie

There is another viewpoint that must be stated without equivocation: if Muslims want to immigrate to open and developed societies in order to better themselves, then it is they who must expect to do the adapting. We no longer allow Jews to run separate Orthodox courts in their communities, or permit Mormons to practice polygamy or racial discrimination or child marriage. That is the price of "inclusion," and a very reasonable one. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

All countries take the kidnapping of their troops seriously. But it drives Israel absolutely crazy. It is an affront to every person. Almost everyone in Israel is or has been a soldier. There is total commitment to the principle "leave no man behind" because nearly everyone could be that man or woman. All men and women, except some Israeli Arabs and ultra-Orthodox Jews, serve in the military, and remain in the reserves. When a soldier is kidnapped, Israelis think of their own sons and daughters. That — Richard Engel

Not all Modern Orthodox Jews, at the present juncture, identify with what the Israeli government does. In Israel many religious Zionists strongly oppose the government because of the disengagement. — Norman Lamm

The Christians tried to separate themselves from the Jewish crowd so they wouldn't be the recipients of the persecution of the Romans. And the way they did it was to say, the Jews killed our hero too. And so Christians began to define themselves over against the orthodox party of the Jews as a way of surviving against the Roman onslaught. — John Shelby Spong

My grandfather was Orthodox, and he was religious, but neither of my parents were. Of course, as they got older, it seems like they get more religious the older they get, even though they're still not practicing Jews. — Scott Ian

You don't like the Goths?"
"No! Not with the persecution we have to put up with!"
"Persecution?"
"Religious persecution. We won't stand for it forever."
"I thought the Goths let everybody worship as they pleased."
"That's just it! We Orthodox are forced to stand around and watch Arians and Monophysites and Nestorians and Jews going about their business unmolested, as if they owned the country. If that isn't persecution, I'd like to know what is! — L. Sprague De Camp

It's something fundamental to me, human rights that people are equal under law simply because they are human beings. And I can no more imagine falling in love with someone who believed, for instance, as Orthodox Jews do, that women are unclean during their menstrual periods. — Susan Jacoby

Whisper it softly, but many Greeks, including clergy, welcomed the Ottomans. On the whole Muslim rulers have been much more tolerant of infidels than their Christian counterparts have. As long as their subjects paid taxes and provided recruits to the harems and armies of the Sultan, they could have whatever religion they liked. Only when they joined religion with revolt did scimitars and stakes come out. Orthodox Christianity was under far greater threat from the Roman variety imposed by Venetians and Franks and Catalans. Jews too were safer from pogrom under the crescent than the cross. This is not a line of thought that goes down well in Greek company. — John Mole

I'm someone who can sit in a Buddhist temple, and I can sit with Pentecostals or with Orthodox Jews, and I still feel like I am in tune with all of them. — Vera Farmiga

Israel is a very young country, a cultural melting pot, and unlike the structured life of the Orthodox Jews, I grew up in a non-religious part of society where people were totally open to new experiences on many levels. I learned that when things are missing, you invent them. — Noma Bar

And in all truth it can be said- yes the zionist jews were responsible for 9/11. — Henry Makow

One notorious apikoros named Hiwa al-Balkhi, writing in ninth-century Persia, offered two hundred awkward questions to the faithful. He drew upon himself the usual thunderous curses - 'may his name be forgotten, may his bones be worn to nothing' - along with detailed refutations and denunciations by Abraham ibn Ezra and others. These exciting anathemas, of course, ensured that his worrying 'questions' would remain current for as long as the Orthodox commentaries would be read. In this way, rather as when Maimonides says that the Messiah will come but that 'he may tarry,' Jewishness contrives irony at its own expense. If there is one characteristic of Jews that I admire, it is that irony is seldom if ever wasted on them. — Christopher Hitchens

I do not want to be misunderstood that you need a dose of persecution in order, really, to have a sense of your identity. Otherwise, you know, there would be no American Jews. Even if you're not strictly, fiercely Orthodox, you commit yourselves to a community of memory. — Simon Schama

It's been quite the experience for two brothers who were Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn, who had no idea that they were going to end up in the entertainment industry. To be where we are now, making features, TV shows and getting a hundred million views online is kind of an amazing thing. — Rafi Fine

Le Marais?'

'It's a little district in the centre of Paris. It is full of cobbled streets and teetering apartment blocks and gay men and orthodox Jews and women of a certain age who once looked like Brigitte Bardot. It's the only place to stay. — Jojo Moyes

My parents were practicing Jews. My mother grew up in an orthodox synagogue, and after my grandfather died, she went to a conservative synagogue and a little later ended up in a reform synagogue. My father was in reform synagogues from the beginning. — Judith Butler

Today the eyes of orthodox Jews of earth are fixed upon Palestine. — Joseph Franklin Rutherford

Indeed, religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it was at any time in the past. The recent conflicts in Palestine (Jews v Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians v Catholic Croatians; Orthodox Serbians v Bosnian and Albanian Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants v Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims v Hindus), Sudan (Muslims v Christians and animists), Nigeria (Muslims v Christians) and Iran and Iraq (Shia v Sunni) are merely a few cases in point. These are places where religion has been the explicit cause of millions of deaths in the past decade. — Sam Harris

Democrats are people who raise your taxes and spend your money on weird stuff. They steal your guns, and they spit on your faith. And because the Democratic Party was taken over by the aggressive secular guys, they became hostile not just to conservative Catholics and evangelical Christians, but Orthodox Jews and Muslims and Mormons. — Grover Norquist

The Orthodox believe in Jewish literacy, and most of the rest of us couldn't care less. Rabbis and other creatures have a monopoly on Judaism. This is a turnoff in a world that is increasingly secular and that has turned away from religion. Jews are simply turning away from Judaism. — Michael Steinhardt

When modern political Zionism emerged around the turn of the twentieth century, most Orthodox Jews opposed it. — David Novak

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

excellent relations between these two long-intermarried families of constitutional monarchs. In Jerusalem, under the authority of the Great Powers Condominium for the Holy Land, renewed clashes have occurred between Orthodox Jews and their Muslim counterparts at the Temple Mount. In India the governor general, Gurchuran Singh, is on holiday at a hill station but has met with representatives of India's sporting and business elite for a briefing on their preparations for hosting next year's Commonwealth Games. They will hold — Richard Ned Lebow

When you see another tall woman on the street, you nod, sort of like Orthodox Jews. — Judy Gold

Most people know that 30 to 40 percent of the world's Jews were killed during World War II, but not that 80 to 90 percent of the Orthodox community perished, among them many who had kept alive an ancient tradition of mysticism and meditation reaching back to the Old Testament world of the prophets. — Diane Ackerman

Orthodox Jews often ask you: "Are you an Israeli first, or a Jew?" I see no difference between the two. After all, I'm also simultaneously the son of my parents, the husband of my wife and the father of my children. — Yair Lapid

Gypsy cabs jostled and honked...Dollar vans lined the sidewalk and people piled in and out. As I walked down the slope, the buildings grew smaller and squalid. Trees vanished...and the heat picked up. Beyond the brick wall of the Navy Yard, the silver skyline of Manhattan glimmered in the distance like a mirage. The industrial remains of the flats were low and decrepit and mostly abandoned, though a few beeping forklifts unloaded trucks here and there. The storefronts were shuttered except for a bank busy with Orthodox Jews. The funk of a chicken processing plant contaminated the air.

I walked along the high brick wall that separated the Navy Yard from the street, frequently stepping over pulverized vials that sparkled like jewels on the sidewalk. There was no shade. I blinked away the dust. — Andrew Cotto

From its earliest days in the nineteenth century, and until the Holocaust, the Orthodox rabbinate in eastern Europe was not enthusiastic about the Zionist movement, which at the time was led by irreligious Jews. — Elliott Abrams

The last generation's Religious Right activism was, to the contrary, the exact opposite, affirming and reaffirming that they were not a theological movement but a political one. The tent was broad enough to include evangelical Protestants, Roman Catholics, Latter-day Saints, Orthodox Jews, and even socially conservative agnostics and atheists.7 The rhetoric was focused much less on the kingdom of God or on the gospel of Christ than on "traditional family values" or "our Judeo-Christian heritage. — Russell D. Moore

The whole upbringing was interesting because we grew up Orthodox Jews all the way until we were teenagers. — Benny Fine

The extremists are talking too loudly, and everyone is convinced that only he is on the right side. It's not just Jews against Arabs. It's the Orthodox versus those who don't think they can keep all six hundred and thirteen commandments of the Bible. It's rich people versus poor people. At some point, something came over Israel so that everyone has his own ideas - and everyone else is an enemy. It's a dialogue among deaf people and it is getting more and more serious. — Reuven Rivlin