Rabbi Zusya Quotes & Sayings

becoming one's self: Rabbi Zusya, when he was an old man, said, "In the coming world, they will not ask me: 'Why were you not Moses?' They will ask me: Why were you not Zusya?"'=
If you doubt that we all arrive in this world with gifts and as a gift, pay attention to an infant or a very young child. A few years ago, my daughter and her newborn baby came to live — Parker J. Palmer

Rabbi Zusya said that on the Day of Judgment, God would ask him not why he had not been Moses, but why he had not been Zusya. — Walter Kaufmann

The biblical passage which says of Abraham and the three visiting angels: "And He stood over them under the tree and they did eat" is interpreted by Rabbi Zusya to the effect that man stands above the angels, because he knows something unknown to them, namely, that eating may be hallowed by the eater's intention ... Any natural act, if hallowed, leads to God, and nature needs man for what no angel can perform on it, namely, its hallowing. — Martin Buber

Before his death, Rabbi Zusya said In the coming world, they will not ask me: 'Why were you not Moses?' They will ask me: 'Why were you not Zusya? — Martin Buber