Quotes & Sayings About Shabbat

In my view the study of fairy origins assumes a greater degree of importance than popular opinion is wont to concede to it. Indeed, the ideas associated with it strike at the very roots of human belief and primitive methods of reasoning. It is scarcely to be questioned that the explanation of fairy origins is of the utmost value to the better comprehension of primitive religion. Later it will be made clear that, for the writer at least, the whole tradition of Faerie reveals quite numerous and excellent proofs of its former existence as a primitive and separate cult and faith, more particularly as regards its appearance and tradition in these islands. — Lewis Spence

More lies. But what could you do? That's how you roll when you're a teenage magician! — Lev Grossman

Across the Jewish community, the MLK Shabbat Suppers are part of Repair the World's multi-year effort to mobilize Jews across the nation to serve as tutors, mentors, and college access coaches for public school children. — Lynn Schusterman

The Wall on Shabbat was one of the coolest experiences, full of joy and energy. I left Israel overflowing with pride. It's a magical, welcoming place. — Sarah J. Maas

Now, I don't actually know the exact cut-off age where beautiful ceases and 'must have-once-been-beautiful' begins. It's true it's not forty-five. I can still get attention when I try really hard, even if it's greatly reduced. — Paulina Porizkova

On Shabbat something happens to the world - the world becomes infinite again. — Shlomo Carlebach

I'm a minimalist Jew, but on Friday night, I celebrate Shabbat. At sundown, we light candles, say the blessing, and I don't turn on my computer for 24 hours. — Jill Soloway

When I am halfway there with a painting, it can occasionally be thrilling ... But it happens very rarely; usually it's agony ... I go to great pains to mask the agony. But the struggle is there. It's the invisible enemy. — Richard Diebenkorn

In the little travel I've done to other countries, the Jews there embraced me saying, Come to our house, come and have Shabbat with us. Jews in the Diaspora. I didn't imagine an Israeli traveling to the U.S. would feel this intensity of a forced relationship. — Jill Soloway

I give you my love & my luck. Don't throw either away. — Kelly Moran

Any man's a fool who lets himself be a wage-earning slave, today. — D.H. Lawrence

If God were always visible, humans could not exist at all. "No one can see Me and live," says God. "If we continue to hear the voice of God, we will die," say the Israelites at Sinai. But if God is always invisible, hidden, imperceptible, then what difference does His existence make? It will always be as if He were not there. The answer to this dilemma is holiness. Holiness represents those points in space and time where God becomes vivid, tangible, a felt presence. Holiness is a break in the self-sufficiency of the material world, where infinity enters space and eternity enters time. In relation to time, it is Shabbat. In relation to space, it is the Tabernacle. These, in the Torah, are the epicentres of the sacred. — Jonathan Sacks

One Saturday morning walking to the farmers' market with my lover she tells me she needs to look like a man on the street. She hates binding her breasts. Hates having breasts, hates not passing. I press her. I ask her, but what do you feel like when you're naked in bed with me? Do you like your body then? She is quiet. Later she tells me she had a dream. Her mother brought home a bottle of medicine from the hospital for her. The doctor says she has to take it. The medicine is testosterone.

On Shabbat I remember to pray for enough space inside of me to hold all the darkness of the night and all the sunlight of the day. I pray for enough space for transformations as miraculous as the shift from day to night.

Later when that lover has changed his name and an ex-boyfriend has come out to me as a lesbian I go to visit my best friend's sister-turned-brother-turned-sister-again and she tells me about the blessing of having many names and using them all at once. — M.J. Kaufman

Commercial institutions, proud of their achievements, do not see that healthy living systems - clean air and water, healthy soil, stable climates - are integral to a functioning economy. As our living systems deteriorate, traditional forecasting and business economics become the equivalent of house rules on a sinking cruise ship. — Paul Hawken

The MLK Shabbat Suppers focused on the theme of educational inequity, which Dr. King considered inextricably linked to the struggle for equality and justice. — Lynn Schusterman

God gave Moses a calendar that began in spring. (Ex 12:2) God Himself emphasized the importance of Israel's new calendar at Ex 23:16; Le 23:34 and De 16:13. God's calendar was for marking, and keeping, God's holy days. Using a foreign calendar became illegal. Ignoring Israel's new calendar could cost an Israelite their life. (Nu 15:32-35)
Yet, the Jewish calendar is not the only calendar. There are plenty of calendars to choose from: Assyrian; Egyptian; Iranian; Armenian; Ethiopian; Hindu; Coptic; Mayan; Chinese; Julian; Byzantine; Islamic and Gregorian; just to mention a few. Has the Seventh Day Adventists settled on any one of these calendars? Which one?
pg 5 — Michael Ben Zehabe

I don't know which is worse, going to the library or stealing and breaking the laws of Shabbat, but I know what the prophet's talking about when he says one sin begets another. — Pearl Abraham

I've studied Kabbalah, as you know, for many years, so there are a lot of things I do that one would associate with practising Judaism. I hear the Torah every Saturday. I observe Shabbat. I say certain prayers. My son was bar mitzvahed. So this appears like I'm Jewish, but these rituals are connected to what I describe as the Tree of Life consciousness and have more to do with the idea of being an Israelite, not Jewish. — Madonna Ciccone

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

I admire the Shabbat tradition, and no matter which faith you are of, there is nothing more wonderful than dedicating a certain day to spend time with your family and loved ones, absent of TV, phone, and other interruptions. — Joyce Giraud

Those who see all creatures in themselves And themselves in all creatures know no fear. 7 Those who see all creatures in themselves And themselves in all creatures know no grief. How — Anonymous

Facing him as I lower the glass from my lips, he's giving me one of those intense moonlit stares. — Poppet

More than the Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews. — Ahad Ha'am

My Shabbat dinner is not to be reckoned with. — Judy Gold

When we put his kippah into the museum, everyone was talking about how much money it was worth and the embroidery by some famous artist and how it was a national relic, and all this -- but I was just thinking of Shabbat, and seders, and -- and it didn't mean any of those things to me. It meant lighting candles. It meant he'd hid the afikomen in the palace for me and joking with his advisors as he waited around for me to find it so he could give me a new book. National treasure? I--' She blinked away new tears, but this time the look on her face was one of indignation. — Shira Glassman

Long before man traveled into space, rabbis debated how one would observe Shabbat there-not because they anticipated space travel but because Buddhists strive to live with questions and Jews would rather die. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Shabbat is a day of rest, of mental scrutiny and of balance. Without it the workdays are insipid. — Hayim Nahman Bialik

The psychoanalytic session, like the Sabbath, takes you out of mundane time and forces you into what might be called sacred time--the timeless time of the unconscious, with its yawning infantile unboundedness, its shattered sequentiality. It may not be pleasant, it may not be convenient, you may not want to go, but you do. On time. And the fixed time limits also keep you from losing yourself in that disorienting , disorganizing flux. — Judith Shulevitz

I can be pretty nasty. Not 'mean' nasty, but nasty by your parents' standards. But not by my parents' standards, because my parents were nasty for their day. — Bridget Fonda

I would have used the telephone on the Shabbat even though it's forbidden, and God wouldn't have held it against me because he's probably on my side in this affair. — Barbara Honigmann

Jewish Law is like musical notation; it gives meaning to the stuff of life by regulating it in time. The Sabbath is its most sacred interval — Judith Shulevitz

I think Willim Shakespeare was the wisest human being I ever heard of. To be perfectly frank though, that's not saying much. We are impossibly conceited animals, and actually dumb as heck. Ask any teacher. You don't even have to ask a teacher. Ask anybody. Dogs and cats are smarter than we are. — Kurt Vonnegut

I love lighting Shabbat candles at the onset of Shabbat. It helps me create a strong and firm demarcation of time. — Erica Brown