Quotes About Torah

The Torah is primarily divine ways rather than divine laws.

There are five incomplete phenomena (or unripe fruits). The incomplete experience of death is sleep; an incomplete form of prophecy is dream; the incomplete form of the world to come is the Sabbath; the incomplete form of the heavenly light is the orb of the sun; the incomplete form of heavenly wisdom is the Torah.

The way to understand the meaning of torah min hashamayim ("the Bible is from heaven") is to understand the meaning of hashamayim min hatorah ("heaven is from the Bible). Whatever taste of "heaven" we have on earth is in the Bible.

The Sages promise us that anyone who studies the Torah will derive spiritual purification from his studies (Berachos 16a).

Vilna Gaon was also an expert in nearly all secular wisdom of his time, for he felt that such knowledge enhanced the understanding of many aspects of Torah and Kabbalah; he even left several volumes which deal with mathematics and astronomy (personal testimony of the Vilna Gaon's children in the introduction of the Hebrew text of this book)/

Human endeavour is not competent to obtain success and wealth. Bread is not the possession of the wise nor wealth the possession of the astute (Kohelet 9:11). No one can be sure that his efforts will succeed as the Torah says many times over, it is God who decides who will be rich and who will be poor (Dvarim 28:12).

The Torah has set limits for every stage of grief: three days for weeping, seven

Our sages commanded that one should not teach one's daughter Torah because the minds of most women are incapable of concentrating on learning, and thus, because of their intellectual poverty, they turn the words of Torah into words of nonsense. Moses Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, "Laws of Torah Study," 1:13

I did study religion for a little while. I studied the Torah and the Holy Koran, Helios Biblos, which is considered by most people to be the Holy Bible. I just wanted to know, even with Buddhism and the Dalai Llama.

The observant Jew has his own sense of values. Torah Judaism is his blueprint for this life, his target for existence.

Most significant of all, perhaps, is that, of the 613 laws in the Torah, Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks points out, not one uses the word obey. God, the rabbi says, does not impose the intractable on Israel. God uses the word shema. Attend to.

the Torah was not an onerous rulebook or a vast catalog of laws as we might think, but a gift from God that taught them how to live.

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.

To Catholic, Orthodox, and some Protestant Christians, communion involves partaking of the physical real presence of God in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. By contrast, the Torah draws the Jew into engagement with God's infinite mind. Torah learning is the definitive Jewish mode of communion with God.

He believed the world was created so people could learn Torah and serve God.

Halakha, as the human way of life in accordance with the Torah, does not aim at absolute truth, nor does it run after the fata- morgana of universal truth. Neither of them is accessible to human beings. Its aim is "earthly truth" that the human intellect is able to grasp and for whose pursuance in life man must accept personal responsibility.

The Torah of Israel is not hidden in the holy Ark in the synagogue, but goes with us in all our steps in all the places we go, enlightening us with its light and sanctifying us with its sanctity....

If we found the decisive revelation of God in the Torah or in the Koran, then we would be Jews or Muslims. But to be Christian is to affirm, "Here, in Jesus, I see more clearly than anywhere else what God is like.

There's a lovely Hasidic story of a rabbi who always told his people that if they studied the Torah, it would put Scripture on their hearts. One of them asked, Why on our hearts, and not in them? The rabbi answered, Only God can put Scripture inside. But reading sacred text can put it on your heart, and then when your hearts break, the holy words will fall inside.

The real subject of this Book of the Wilderness, I suggest, is the longing of the people of Israel to learn directly from God, by learning something new about the Torah, about the world and themselves. What they are developing in their skeptical discourse is a language of imaginative truth, in which the fantasies of return to Egypt will be brought into connection with the miracles of Exodus. In them, traumatic suffering and traumatic revelation seek some subjective expression.

you have to soak the soles in vodka, otherwise the sugar won't take. "Now I get it," I said. "If there's no vodka, the sugar goes to waste. And if there's no sugar, there's no squeak. Like the Mishna says: If there's no food, there's no Torah.

Believe me, I know how to respect a man of learning, a man who sits and studies Torah, despite the fact that he doesn't so much as put his finger into cold water. You think he's lazy? He'd do anything, poor fellow—but there's nothing to do. So he sits and studies. Let him keep studying.

Why is gold called ??? (zahab)? Because there are three principles contained in it: the masculine, zakhar, and the ? (zayin) points to that; the soul, and the ? (he), points to that [obviously the feminine, since the consonant he in the mysticism of the alphabet has always been interpreted as such]; … and ? (bet) avouches its duration, as is written [in the Torah, which starts with this letter]: "in the beginning.

Torah is not theoretical morality but lived theology, a life enflamed by knowing God.