Quotes About Torah

I cling to this notion now because it is what allows me to feel a connection to a vast body of knowledge of which I am not master, much as I am able to live in a society bursting with information that I will never wholly comprehend. I take comfort from a lesson that seems implicit in the Talmud itself, which is that not knowing Torah is part of the lesson of Torah.

The student of Torah is like the amnesia victim who tries to reconstruct from fragments the beautiful world he once experienced. By learning Torah, man returns to his own self.

Simchat Torah (rejoicing of the Torah) marks the day we complete the Torah and start it all over again. The last verses of the last book (Deuteronomy) are read, followed by the first verses of the first book (Genesis). It's a clear snapshot of how we hold both the ending and the beginning in the same moment, not to mention that the ending never ends.

in the Torah, the word torah never refers to the Torah. In fact, the Torah does not explicitly suggest that it was compiled by Moses himself. (The phrase "the Torah" in passages such as Deut. 4.44, "This is the torah that Moses set before the Israelites," never refers to the complete Torah—there the reference is to [most of] the book of Deuteronomy.)

Had possession of the land remained central to the covenant during the exile, Israelite religion would have collapsed. By concluding the Torah with Deuteronomy and not Joshua, the fulfillment of the Torah is defined as obedience to the requirements of covenantal law rather than the acquisition of a finite possession.

Torah and the world is thus the relation between idea and actualization, between vision and fulfillment. So that the intellectual study of Torah and the emotional involvement in its contents are a form of identification with the divine will, with what may be called God's dream of the existence of the world and the existence of man.

Torah is an essence unto itself and everything in it is independent of the world.

Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz

The more one becomes identified with the Torah, the more does its significance expand beyond particular circumstance.

A pragmatic examination of the way of life that results from obedience to the Torah shows that in the long run, besides offering considerable freedom in almost every area of endeavor, such obedience lends to every act the quality of ritual and makes it seem a direct link between man and his Maker.

This likely means the Torah of Deuteronomy, but it is not spelled out. Most spectacularly, there is only one condition spelled out … keep Sabbath!

One compelling alternative to land theology is the recognition that Judaism consists most elementally in interpretation of and obedience to the Torah in its requirements of justice and holiness.

the father God is attentive to the vulnerable and unproductive, a theological claim that is reflected in the Torah provision for widows, orphans, and immigrants. Ancient Israel is to care for and protect precisely those God is attentive to.

Torah is not merely a collection of prohibitions, rigid strictures and boring observances. Rather, it is a narrative of the blessings and promises of God initially offered to one person and family, but through which the whole world will ultimately be blessed.

The sages advise us to study Torah lishma-"for its own sake" rather than to impress others with our scholarship. A paradox of parenting is that if we love our children for their own sake rather than for their achievements, it's more likely that they will reach their true potential.

I had traveled far, had circled the planet and studied my Torah, and at the very end of my search I was standing, finally, in the place where everything begins: the tree in the garden, the tree of knowledge that, as I learned long ago, is something divided, something that because growth occurs only through the medium of time, brings both pleasure and, finally, sorrow.

At age twelve, boys would begin to apprentice to learn a trade. Girls would learn homemaking skills in preparation for marriage. Between the age of twelve and eighteen, a boy might begin an apprenticeship to become a rabbi. He would finish memorizing the Torah, along with much of the Old Testament, and the teachings of his mentor.

In Pirkei Avot4 we learn that "the world stands on three things: on the Torah, on the service of God, and upon acts of loving-kindness.

Rabbi Elyakim Krumbein puts it, "To fulfill the Torah means to grow as a person, and to grow truly as a person is tantamount to the fulfillment of Torah.

Zeal implied a strict adherence to the Torah and the Law, a refusal to serve any foreign master—to serve any human master at all—and an uncompromising devotion to the sovereignty of God.

Muhammad's example must have had a lasting effect on his early followers: as Nabia Abbott has shown, throughout the first two centuries of Islam, Muslims regularly read the Torah alongside the Quran. Certainly

By increasing the amount of Torah (obligatory religious laws) in the world, they were extending His presence in the world and making it more effective.

The sage acquired Wisdom by meditating on the marvels of the physical world, not by studying Torah.

De rabbijnen wezen er graag op dat koning Salomo ter verklaring van elk vers van de Tora 3000 gelijkenissen gebruikte en dat hij van elke gelijkenis 1005 interpretaties kon geven. Dit betekende dat er 3 015 000 verklaringen waren voor elk stukje tekst. Een tekst die niet radicaal geherinterpreteerd kon worden om de actuele behoeften te bevredigen was dan ook dood.