Quotes from Joseph Telushkin

I learned from this episode that a person can totally disagree with another opinion without feeling that the other opinion has to be silenced. Confidence in your idea means that you don't have to make other people wrong for you to be right. Unfortunately, there are many people, among them many religious people, who don't have this attitude.

This is what true love is about, the Rebbe told Sharfstein. "It's the small acts that you do on a daily basis that turn two people from a 'you and I' into an 'us'.

The fact that you are feeling unhappy does not entitle you to inflict your bad mood on others.

Then when G-d asks [Cain], 'Where is your brother Abel?' he arrogantly responds, 'I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper?' In essence, the entire Bible is written as an affirmative response to this question.

action is the paramount thing. And certainly one should not use words to justify one's own self-interest." When

God gave each of us a soul, which is a candle that He gives us to illuminate our surroundings with His light," the Rebbe taught at a 1990 worldwide Chanukah satellite linkup. "We must not only illuminate the inside of homes, but also the outside, and the world at large.

Whoever cannot survive without taking charity, such as an old, sick, or greatly suffering individual, but who stubbornly refuses to accept aid, is guilty of murdering himself…yet one who needs charity but postpones taking it and lives in deprivation so as to not trouble the community, shall live to provide for others. —Rabbi Joseph Karo (1488–1575), Shulkhan Arukh (The Code of Jewish Law), Yoreh Deah 255:2

On the Rebbe's willingness to offer opinions and advice on a large range of issues, including theology, business, family affairs, and even medical questions: "[First] I am not afraid to answer that I don't know. If I know, then I have no right not to answer. When someone comes to you for help and you can help him to the best of your knowledge, and you refuse him this help, you become a cause of his suffering.

The question of bread for myself is a material question, but the question of bread for my neighbor is a spiritual question.

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

The Rebbe then elaborated: "All knowledge you'll ever learn, every experience you'll have in life, are the circles. They're not the center. If you don't have a solid center, you'll have jagged circles, incomplete circles, many different circles. I sense that you need that center before you start building your circles.

Ameikh ami, ve'Elo-hai-ikh Elo-hai—Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.

As the former British chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks has expressed it: "If the Nazis searched out every Jew in hate, the Rebbe wished to search out every Jew in love.

The cruelty of Plato's thinking, the Rebbe emphasized that day, was not just in breaking up the family unit. It was in depriving children of parental love. For it is the parents, not the state and its functionaries, who have a genuine love for their children. And depriving children of this love, which is their due, was perhaps Plato's greatest cruelty.

Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and they become one flesh. —Genesis 2:24

Only God can give us credit for the angry words we did not speak. —Rabbi Harold Kushner, When All You've Ever Wanted Isn't Enough, page 187

An important feature of good characterization in a novel is that the characters are dimensionalized and are not all of one piece. Human beings, as Singer noted, have contradictions.

Deborah agrees to accompany Barak, but can't resist a jab at the sexism of the Israelite society: "Very well, I will go with you. However, there will be no glory for you in the course you are taking, for then the Lord will deliver Sisera into the hands of a woman

In general, it should be noted, biblical law is evolutionary, not revolutionary...

good people, our belief that what happens to us and our loved ones is what God has willed provides a human being, even when suffering loss, with a great measure of consolation.

Never use damaging personal information to invalidate your adversary and, by implication, his contentions. ... If you watch your words when you fight, the issue can usually be resolved.

We all understand in theory that we should be able to love and respect those with whom we disagree, but few of us can do so. Often, people end up concluding that there is something deficient either in the intelligence or character of those with whom they disagree. Quite characteristically, this is what liberals and conservatives commonly think of each other, that their opponent has something wrong either with his head or his heart.

For three years, there was a dispute between the School of Shammai and the School of Hillel, the former asserting, "The law (halakhah) is according to our view," and the latter asserting, "The law is according to our view." Then, a voice issued from heaven announcing, "Both these and these are the words of the living God, but the law is in agreement with the School of Hillel.

sinat chinam, causeless hatred