The Talmud is tough because it assumes holistic knowledge of the whole Talmud, referencing texts and rulings that come much earlier or much later without stopping to really explain what the rabbis are talking about. The Talmud was not meant for beginners.”
— Dr. Sara Ronis
Quotes
Context Elucidated
Blaming others is the suicide of [national] liberty.”
— R’ Jonathan Sacks, zt”l (from https://aish.com/302413231/)
“Be It a Rock or a Pebble…”
Be not ashamed to learn truth from any source.”
— Rabbi Shlomo ibn Gabirol (1021-1058)
Educational Eloquence
IF YOU CAN’T EXPLAIN IT simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
— Albert Einstein
Innovation
THE AX EXISTED FOR 1.4 million years before anyone thought to put a handle on it.”
— James Williams
True Confession
I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT ‘bizarre’ means anymore.”
— Anthony Bourdain
Perspective
It used to freak me out that I’d never see the back of my own head. Now that I’ve accepted it, I can move on to the house of mirrors.”
— Barbatus the Elder
Creators’ Zen
If you can take the song out and it doesn’t leave a hole, then the song’s not necessary.”
— Stephen Sondheim, a”h
Open Wound
Tree of Life’s members will do everything for the 11 dead except show up in their place.”
– Pittsburgh rabbi to Mark Oppenheimer, from the latter’s “The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood”
Why We Divine
When we stand in awe, our lips do not demand speech, knowing that if we spoke, we would deprave ourselves. In such moments talk is an abomination. All we want is to pause, to be still, that the moment may last. … The meaning of the things we revere is overwhelming, and beyond the grasp of our understanding.”
— Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
Loom With a View
… Cervantes compared translation to the other side of a tapestry. At best we see a rough outline of the pattern we know exists on the other side, but it lacks definition and is full of loose threads.”
— Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, z”tl
Tasty Nugget/s
Only great pain is the ultimate liberator of the spirit […] I doubt that such pain makes us ‘better’; but I know that it makes us more profound.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche