Rabbi Quotes - Page 2

• 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

  Long, Atheism, Doe

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• 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

  Wise, Wisdom, Children

  Israel Shenker (1985). “Coat of Many Colors: Pages from Jewish Life”, Doubleday Books

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• I persist in preferring philosophers to rabbis priests imams ayatollahs and mullahs. Rather than trust their theological hocus-pocus I prefer to draw on alternatives to the dominant philosophical historiography: the laughers materialists radicals cynics hedonists atheists sensualists voluptuaries. They know that there is only one world and that promotion of an afterlife deprives us of the enjoyment and benefit of the only one there is. A genuinely deadly sin.

  Michel Onfray

  Atheist, Philosophical, Afterlife

  Michel Onfray, Jeremy Leggatt (2007). “Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam”, p.219, Arcade Publishing

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• I work with a lot of spiritual people. Now, when I say spiritual people, I not only work with priests, rabbis, and ministers - there's a tremendous amount of people, shamans, medicine men. It depends on the circumstances, what I'm tying in with that I find to be extremely important to do some type of spiritual work over the items before they are brought into the museum.

  John Zaffis

  Spiritual, Men, People

  Source: dailydead.com

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• 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

  Angel, Biblical, Men

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• 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

  Christian, Writing, Suffering

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• It is easy for a rabbi to establish prohibitions, but a rabbi's real strength is to teach Torah and rule on lawwith an emphasis on what is permitted.

  Ovadia Yosef

  Real, Easy, Prohibition

  Jewish Chronicle (p. 22), October 11, 2013.

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• Everyone needs a spiritual guide: a minister, rabbi, counselor, wise friend, or therapist. My own wise friend is my dog.

  Gary A. Kowalski

  Friendship, Wise, Spiritual

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• I see the role of a rabbi or a pastor in general sort of like the role of a quarterback who throws the ball a little bit ahead of the receiver - that is you want to make people run just a bit to catch up to the message that you offer.

  David Wolpe

  Running, People, Balls

  "Round-Table On Refugees: How People Of Faith Are Navigating The Crisis". "All Things Considered" with Michel Martin, www.npr.org. November 21, 2015.

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• [ Rabbi Shlomo ben Isaac] was the greatest commentator [of the Bible] we ever had.

  Elie Wiesel

  Isaac, Commentators

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• Rock music had become my religion. Radio my church. And these DJs my priests, rabbis and gurus.

  Steven Van Zandt

  Rocks, Church, Radio

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• A Catholic priest, a Jewish rabbi, and a Muslim mullah all walk into a bar, and the bartender says:
  - What is this, a joke?
  - Сhurch is the only organization that exists primarily for the benefit of non-members.

  C. S. Lewis

  Organization, Catholic, Bars

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• I've spoken with friends who are rabbis and priests and we've agreed that most people have an emotional attachment to their faith, a desire to fulfill their spiritual longings, but they are not experts in understanding the history of their religion.

  Feisal Abdul Rauf

  Spiritual, Emotional, Attachment

  "Q&A with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf". Religion News Service Interview, www.washingtonpost.com. August 29, 2012.

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• I can hope that this long sad story, this progression of priests and ministers and rabbis and ulamas and imams and bonzes and bodhisattvas, will come to an end. I hope this is something to which science can contribute ... it may be the most important contribution that we can make.

  Steven Weinberg

  Long, Important, Atheism

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• With two children of my own, I know what it means to balance the demands of family and career - and let's not even talk about finding a date for myself. Rabbi Shmuley keeps telling me he'll find me the perfect woman. My response is, 'As long as she's not a journalist'.

  Michael Jackson

  Children, Mean, Careers

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• Nature is my temple; trees are my priests; birds, my rabbis; rains, my imams! Nature is my only true and eternal religion.

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Rain, Bird, Tree

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• It is not the thinker who is the true king of men, as we sometimes hear it proudly said. We need one who will not only show, but be the Truth; who will not only point, but open and be the Way; who will not only communicate thought, but give, because He is the Life. Not the rabbi's pulpit, nor the teacher's desk, still less the gilded chairs of earthly monarchs, least of all the' tents of conquerors, are the throne of the true king. He rules from the cross.

  Alexander MacLaren

  Teacher, Kings, Men

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 78), 1895.

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• We want to create, never mind the leaders or the bishops or chief rabbis or imams, or Popes. We want to create a grassroots movement where people will become attuned to uncompassionate discourse in the same way as we are now attuned to sort of gender imbalance in our speech.

  Karen Armstrong

  People, Leader, Mind

  Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. November 16, 2009.

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• The Talmud tells a story about a great Rabbi who is dying, he has become a goses, but he cannot die because outside all his students are praying for him to live and this is distracting to his soul. His maidservant climbs to the roof of the hut where the Rabbi is dying and hurls a clay vessel to the ground. The sound diverts the students, who stop praying. In that moment, the Rabbi dies and his soul goes to heaven. The servant, too, the Talmud says, is guaranteed her place in the world to come.

  Jonathan Rosen

  Heaven, Soul, Dying

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• From the Rabbis of the early Talmudic age I learned that there is never a last word on God. There's, you always continue to question. Even God himself could be questioned and you can keep arguing with one another and there will be no end to this conversation about the divine because no human expression of God can be ultimate.

  Karen Armstrong

  Expression, Age, Lasts

  Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. November 16, 2009.

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• Human excellence, parted from God, is like a fable flower, which, according to Rabbis, Eve plucked when passing out of paradise--severed from its native root, it is only the touching memorial of a lost Eden; sad, while charming--beautiful, but dead.

  Charles Villiers Stanford

  Beautiful, Flower, Roots

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• I'm not a practicing kabbalist. I'm not a spiritual master. I'm not a rabbi. I don't - but it's part of who I am.

  John Zorn

  Spiritual, Who I Am, Masters

  "At 60, 'Challenges Are Opportunities' For John Zorn". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. September 3, 2013.

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• there comes a time in every rabbi's life when he thinks he's Moses.

  Silvia Tennenbaum

  Thinking, Moses, There Comes A Time

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• The sign work of the Orient it runneth up and down; The Talmud stalks from right to left, a rabbi in a gown; The Roman rolls from left to right from Maytime unto May; But the gods shake up their symbols in an absent-minded way. Their language runs to circles like the language of the eyes, Emphasised by strange dilations with little panting sighs.

  Nathalia Crane

  Running, Eye, Circles

  Nathalia Crane (1925). “The Janitor's Boy and Other Poems”

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• "Elohim," the name for the creative power in Genesis, is a female plural, a fact that generations of learned rabbis and Christian theologians have all explained as merely grammatical convention. The King James and most other Bibles translate it as "God," but if you take the grammar literally, it seems to mean "goddesses." Al Shaddai, god of battles, appears later, and YHWH, mispronounced Jehovah, later still.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Christian, Kings, Mean

  "Everything Is Under Control : Conspiracies, Cults, and Cover-Ups" by Robert Anton Wilson, (p. 197), 1998.

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