Shenker Quotes & Sayings

A second-century rabbi said that if 999 angels gave a bad account of a man and one angel reported favorably, God would hear the one angel; even if 999 parts of that one angel's report were unfavorable, God would hearken to the favorable part. — Israel Shenker

You don't have to settle. It's a choice you get to make every day. — Seth Godin

We're going to see even more empty restaurants and out of work waiters if fewer of us can pay for our meals. And the end of Taco Tuesdays is only the beginning. When — Anat Shenker-Osorio

Writing is an affair of yearning for great voyages and hauling on frayed ropes. — Israel Shenker

One is happy to report that Israel Shenker is still at the aerosol stage. His energy is still compressed. The result distinguishes him both as a Jew and as an observer of Jews. — Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

America has a way of inventing tradition each morning and erasing the past by nightfall, and thehold of ancient custom is endangered by a thousand cicumstances. — Israel Shenker

In the Bible, fate was often presented as the handmaiden of morality: sin was succeeded by misfortune, righteousness by prosperity, with reward and punishment instrumental in persuading man to obey divine commandments. — Israel Shenker

When we cling, often forever, to our old patterns of thinking and behaving, we fall to negotiate any crisis, to truly grow up, and to experience the joyful sense of rebirth that accompanies the successful transition into greater maturity. — M. Scott Peck

In Jewish tradition, death-defying devotion to scholarship was the stuff of saintliness. — Israel Shenker

It was God who dictated what man should believe and do, leaving man the freedom to accept or scoff, to obey or disregard. — Israel Shenker

No matter what meditation technique you use, just let the mind slow down and begin to explore its internal surroundings. — Tim McCarthy

I'm not an abrasive person. I do speak my mind, but my goal is never to offend. I don't intentionally want to strike a chord. — Trevor Noah

If you treat your wife poorly do not think you'd treat Jesus well. — Matshona Dhliwayo

When we love a thing similar to ourselves, we endeavor, as far as we can, to bring about that it should love us in return. — Baruch Spinoza

As is often the case with religion, repression only led to expansion, and the rebellion continued still. — Damien P.

Do what you gotta do and stay fly — Michael Chabon

The suggestion that Jews were selected from among all nations of the earth to be God's chosen people suggested a kind of group arrogance, especially when the good news was first reported by Jews. However, the choice was interpreted not as tribute to superior virtue but as divine challenge. — Israel Shenker

better than Sherman. — Robert L. O'Connell

Borders are fluid things; they help define our identities, and yet so often we use our identities to push up against borders and redraw them. — Jack Shenker

Yiddish has a down-to-earth quality that makes it remote from high-flown rhetoric, and it has a catch-as-catch-can charm derived from its stunning variety-of syntax, spelling, pronunciation, and vocabulary-from region to region. — Israel Shenker

To me art is a form of manifest revolt, total and complete. — Jean Tinguely

One rabbi compared wise men studying the law to children tossing a ball to one another: a first sage said the meaning was this, another said the meaning was that, one gave his opinion, another begged to differ. — Israel Shenker

Monotheism owes its existence not to philosophic speculation about the nature of reality or knowledge or virtue, but to acceptance of reality identified with a supreme being. — Israel Shenker

At first sin was as fragile as a spiders thread, and finally as stout as a ship's hawser; sin arrived as a passerby, next lingered for a moment, then came as a visitor, and finally became master of the house. — Israel Shenker

Dussel promised her the moon, but, as usual, we haven't seen so much as a beam. — Anne Frank

The unlettered man who prayed to his maker would be heard; the pedant reciting a faultless invocation would be ignored. — Israel Shenker

A [Jewish] woman could not divorce her husband, but she could petition for divorce, and the religious courts could force him to grant the divorce on grounds of impotence, denial of conjugal rights, or unreasonable restriction of her freedom-for example, preventing her from attending funerals or wedding parties. — Israel Shenker

Jews are a singular confusion - difficult to define, awkward to describe, impossible to understand. All the virtues, all the vices, every pleasure, every pain - nothing is spared them. — Israel Shenker

At Vatican Council II, one dissenting Roman Catholic theologian declared: "Yes, the Bible says "Be fruitful and multiply," but that was when the population was two per square world. — Israel Shenker

God's greatest blessing is children. The only problem is that you have to support them. It's a problem, not a disadvantage. — Israel Shenker

The [Jewish] Sabbath was not intended to be simply a desert of prohibitions, but rather an oasis for moral restoration and seemly pleasure-one was to eat, drink, even be merry. — Israel Shenker

Fundamentalists are less concerned to be systematic and rational than to be humble and faithful, accepting God's commandments because they come from God, not because they proceed from common sense or sophisticated reason. — Israel Shenker

Embracing and rejecting tradition, bound and liberated by faith, torn between obscurantism and reason, self-assured and self-critical, they were a kaleidoscope of fragments, positions held and abandoned, images formed and shattered, God-fearing Jew, God-denying Jew, passionate and indifferent, hero and villain, yea-sayer, nay-sayer. — Israel Shenker

Theology emerged not as a course of knowledge but as a feast of homily and imagination and exaggeration in which every man could find his image and his portion. And yet there were limits. — Israel Shenker

He was really trying to be my friend, without all the emotional baggage we both carried - mine still with me, but carefully folded in vacuum bags so they'd occupy as little room as possible and his, hangin on his shoulders like lead armor, making him slouch sometimes. And yet, as pinned down as he was, he was the one comforting me, supporting not only his weight but mine, too. It wasn't fair. — Diana T. Scott