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Talmud
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Charity
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- See also: Tzedakah (Wikipedia)
- אָמַר רַבִּי אֶלְעָזָר: גָּדוֹל הָעוֹשֶׂה צְדָקָה בַּסֵּתֶר, יוֹתֵר מִמֹּשֶׁה רַבֵּינוּ
- B. Bava Batra 9b:7
- Translation:
- Rabbi Elazar said: One who performs acts of charity in secret is greater than Moses, our teacher.
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Torah study
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- כׇּל הַלּוֹמֵד תּוֹרָה וְאֵינוֹ מְלַמְּדָהּ, דּוֹמֶה לַהֲדַס בַּמִּדְבָּר.
- B. Rosh Hashanah 23a:12
- Translation:
- Anyone who studies Torah but does not teach it to others is likened to a myrtle in the wilderness. The myrtle has a pleasant fragrance, but there is nobody to enjoy it in the wilderness.
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Quotes about the Talmud
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Rabbinic literature
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- The doctrines of religion are resolved into carefulness; carefulness into vigorousness; vigorousness into guiltlessness; guiltlessness into abstemiousness; abstemiousness into cleanliness; cleanliness into godliness.
- Division of Mishna, as translated by Dr. A. S. Bettelheim. Religious zeal leads to cleanliness, cleanliness to purity, purity to godliness, godliness to humility to the fear of sin. Rabbi Pinhasben-Jaïr—Commentary on the lines from the Talmud. See also Talmudde Jerusalem, by Schwab, IV. 16. Commentary on the treatise Schabbath. Schul—Sentences of Proverbes du Talmud et du Midrasch. 463.
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Fiction
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- Abe Petrovsky: Michael, may I tell you a story?
Mike McDermott: Please.
Abe Petrovsky: For generations, men in my family have been rabbis. In Israel; before that, in Europe. It was to be my calling. I was quite a prodigy, the pride of my yeshiva. The elders said I had a 40-year-old's understanding of the Midrash by the time I was 12. But by the time I was 13, I knew I could never be a rabbi.
Mike McDermott: Why not?
Abe Petrovsky: Because for all I understood of the Talmud, I never saw God there.
Mike McDermott: You couldn't lie to yourself.
Abe Petrovsky: I tried. I tried like crazy. I mean, people were counting on me. … My parents were destroyed, devastated by my decision. My father sent me away to New York to live with distant cousins. …
Mike McDermott: And did your parents get over it?
Abe Petrovsky: No. I always hoped that I would find some way to change their minds, but they were inconsolable. My father never spoke to me again.
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Miscellaneous
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Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz
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- Once upon a time, under pressure of censorship, printers would inscribe in the flyleaves of volumes of the Talmud: "Whatever may be written herein about gentiles does not refer to the gentiles of today, but to gentiles of times past." Today, the flyleaves of our books bear a similar inscription, albeit an invisible one: "Whatever may be written herein about Jews does not refer to the Jews of today, but to Jews who lived in other times." So we are able to sit down and study Torah, Talmud, books of ethics, or books of faith without considering their relevance to our lives. Whatever is written there does not apply to us or to our generation, but only to other people, other times. We must expunge from those invisible prologues the notion that the words are written about someone else, about others, about anyone but us. Whether the book is a volume of Torah, a tractate of the Talmud, or a tract of faith, the opposite must be inscribed: "Whatever is written herein refers only to me; is written for me and obligates me. First and foremost, the content is addressed to me."
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Yechiel of Paris
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- Without the Talmud, we would not be able to understand passages in the Bible. … God has handed this authority to the sages and tradition is a necessity as well as scripture. … Anyone who does not study the Talmud cannot understand Scripture.
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Laura Geller
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- Jews don't read the Bible literally. We read it through the lens of generations of interpretations and acknowledge the evolution of human understanding of God. The Talmudic image of God is vastly different from the image of God presented in the Bible.
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Richard Feynman
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- I had never seen the Talmud. It was very interesting. It's got big pages, and in a little square in the corner of the page is the original Talmud, and then in a sort of L-shaped margin, all around this square, are commentaries written by different people. The Talmud has evolved, and everything has been discussed again and again, all very carefully, in a medieval kind of reasoning. … The Talmud is a wonderful book, a great, big potpourri of things: trivial questions, and difficult questions—for example, problems of teachers, and how to teach—and then some trivia again, and so on.
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- While I was at the conference, I stayed at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where young rabbis—I think they were Orthodox—were studying. Since I have a Jewish background, I knew of some of the things they told me about the Talmud, but I had never seen the Talmud. It was very interesting. It's got big pages, and in a little square in the corner of the page is the original Talmud, and then in a sort of L-shaped margin, all around this square, are commentaries written by different people. The Talmud has evolved, and everything has been discussed again and again, all very carefully, in a medieval kind of reasoning. I think the commentaries were shut down around the thirteen- or fourteen- or fifteen-hundreds—there hasn't been any modern commentary. The Talmud is a wonderful book, a great, big potpourri of things: trivial questions, and difficult questions—for example, problems of teachers, and how to teach—and then some trivia again, and so on. The students told me that the Talmud was never translated, something I thought was curious, since the book is so valuable.
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Moses Hess
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- In the Jewish Quarter [Judengasse] was I born and educated; until my fifteenth year, they tried to beat the Talmud into me. My teachers were inhuman beings [Unmenschen], my colleagues were bad company, inducing me to secret sin; my body was frail, my spirit raw.
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- I was supposed to devote myself only to the Talmud. But the Talmud utterly repelled me, thought I was still a pious Jew-boy [Judenkind]. I wanted to satisfy my craving to be active, to do something: this craving looked for a sphere for itself because none was offered it. I did not want to be a good-for-nothing – and therefore I became a writer.
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Maurice Samuel
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- A hundred thousand men labored for twenty years to build the great pyramid: one man wrote the book of Isaiah. You will answer: "One man also wrote Hamlet and the Critique of Pure Reason and the Republic." But I ask: Are Plato and Shakespeare and Kant in your life what the Bible, the Talmud, the rabbis are in ours? To our very masses, the Jewish masses, the wonders of the world are Moses, Elijah, the Rambam, the Vilna Gaon, the Dubna Maggid, the chassid in the neighboring village. These actually dominate our life, as governments, mass radio exploits, armies and Woolworths dominate yours. We are the people of the Book. But we were the people of the Book before a million copies could be printed in a single day.
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Leo Tolstoy
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- A person who understands the law but who is far from the love of God is like a bank official who has the keys for the inside of the building but not the key for the front door.
- Leo Tolstoy's paraphrase of The Talmud, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), June 15
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- The commandments of God should be followed because of love of God, not because of fear of God.
- Leo Tolstoy's paraphrase of The Talmud, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), June 15
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H. P. Blavatsky
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- Maimonides, the great Jewish theologian and historian, who at one time was almost deified by his countrymen and afterward treated as a heretic, remarks that the more absurd and void of sense the Talmud seems, the more sublime is the secret meaning.
- H. P. Blavatsky in Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology (1877), p. 19
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- Maimonides, the great Jewish theologian and historian, who at one time was almost deified by his countrymen and afterward treated as a heretic, remarks that the more absurd and void of sense the Talmud seems, the more sublime is the secret meaning. This learned man has successfully demonstrated that the Chaldean Magic, the science of Moses and other learned thaumaturgists was wholly based on an extensive knowledge of the various and now forgotten branches of natural science. Thoroughly acquainted with all the resources of the vegetable, animal, and mineral kingdoms, experts in occult chemistry and physics, psychologists as well as physiologists, why wonder that the graduates or adepts instructed in the mysterious sanctuaries of the temples, could perform wonders, which even in our days of enlightenment would appear supernatural? It is an insult to human nature to brand magic and the occult science with the name of imposture. To believe that for so many thousands of years, one-half of mankind practiced deception and fraud on the other half, is equivalent to saying that the human race was composed only of knaves and incurable idiots. Where is the country in which magic was not practised? At what age was it wholly forgotten?
- H. P. Blavatsky in Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology (1877), p. 19
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- Once upon a time, under pressure of censorship, printers would inscribe in the flyleaves of volumes of the Talmud: "Whatever may be written herein about gentiles does not refer to the gentiles of today, but to gentiles of times past." Today, the flyleaves of our books bear a similar inscription, albeit an invisible one: "Whatever may be written herein about Jews does not refer to the Jews of today, but to Jews who lived in other times." So we are able to sit down and study Torah, Talmud, books of ethics, or books of faith without considering their relevance to our lives. Whatever is written there does not apply to us or to our generation, but only to other people, other times. We must expunge from those invisible prologues the notion that the words are written about someone else, about others, about anyone but us. Whether the book is a volume of Torah, a tractate of the Talmud, or a tract of faith, the opposite must be inscribed: "Whatever is written herein refers only to me; is written for me and obligates me. First and foremost, the content is addressed to me."
- In the Jewish Quarter [Judengasse] was I born and educated; until my fifteenth year, they tried to beat the Talmud into me. My teachers were inhuman beings [Unmenschen], my colleagues were bad company, inducing me to secret sin; my body was frail, my spirit raw.
- I was supposed to devote myself only to the Talmud. But the Talmud utterly repelled me, thought I was still a pious Jew-boy [Judenkind]. I wanted to satisfy my craving to be active, to do something: this craving looked for a sphere for itself because none was offered it. I did not want to be a good-for-nothing – and therefore I became a writer.
- The Talmud states, it was proved to Elisha that Metatron could not be a second deity by the fact that Metatron received 60 "strokes with fiery rods" to demonstrate that Metatron was not a god, but an angel, and could be punished.
- Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies, Society for Jewish Study (1983). The Journal of Jewish Studies, Volumes 34-35. The Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies. p. 26. Retrieved 5 March 2014.
- Just as Hillel's actions were not based (even in theory) on any reasoned ethical system, so his moral teaching did not take the form of a systematic treatise, but was expressed in aphorisms, which were, no doubt, occasioned by particular circumstances, but have none the less a universal value. This value, indeed, is not for the doubter, who must needs either find a rational basis for morality, or discard it. They appeal to those who accept, as Hillel accepted, the fundamental postulates of Judaism; and their claim to universality rests, therefore, on the extent to which those postulates are in accord with the root facts of human nature. They are interpretative, not speculative. The moral sayings of Hillel recorded in the Talmud are few in number, but they embody with sufficient fulness the point of view which was expressed no less fully in his conduct. They are contained almost exclusively in the first two chapters of the "Ethics of the Fathers."
- A hundred thousand men labored for twenty years to build the great pyramid: one man wrote the book of Isaiah. You will answer: "One man also wrote Hamlet and the Critique of Pure Reason and the Republic." But I ask: Are Plato and Shakespeare and Kant in your life what the Bible, the Talmud, the rabbis are in ours? To our very masses, the Jewish masses, the wonders of the world are Moses, Elijah, the Rambam, the Vilna Gaon, the Dubna Maggid, the chassid in the neighboring village. These actually dominate our life, as governments, mass radio exploits, armies and Woolworths dominate yours. We are the people of the Book. But we were the people of the Book before a million copies could be printed in a single day.
- A person who understands the law but who is far from the love of God is like a bank official who has the keys for the inside of the building but not the key for the front door.
- Leo Tolstoy's paraphrase of The Talmud, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), June 15
- The commandments of God should be followed because of love of God, not because of fear of God.
- Leo Tolstoy's paraphrase of The Talmud, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), June 15
- We have quoted and have usually explained texts from talmudic literature. Such texts have been and still are often used in Israeli politics and often quoted in the Israeli Hebrew press. We have concluded that in the usual English translations of talmudic literature some of the most sensitive passages are usually toned down or falsified – as a result, we have ourselves translated all of the texts from talmudic literature that we have quoted in the book.
- Maimonides, the great Jewish theologian and historian, who at one time was almost deified by his countrymen and afterward treated as a heretic, remarks that the more absurd and void of sense the Talmud seems, the more sublime is the secret meaning. This learned man has successfully demonstrated that the Chaldean Magic, the science of Moses and other learned thaumaturgists was wholly based on an extensive knowledge of the various and now forgotten branches of natural science. Thoroughly acquainted with all the resources of the vegetable, animal, and mineral kingdoms, experts in occult chemistry and physics, psychologists as well as physiologists, why wonder that the graduates or adepts instructed in the mysterious sanctuaries of the temples, could perform wonders, which even in our days of enlightenment would appear supernatural? It is an insult to human nature to brand magic and the occult science with the name of imposture. To believe that for so many thousands of years, one-half of mankind practiced deception and fraud on the other half, is equivalent to saying that the human race was composed only of knaves and incurable idiots. Where is the country in which magic was not practised? At what age was it wholly forgotten?
- H. P. Blavatsky in Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology (1877), p. 19
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Unknown translations
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- Quotes where the particular translation is unknown.
- There are three gates to Gehinam (purgatory) — one of them is in Jerusalem.
- Our Rabbis taught: It says, "Honour your father and your mother" (Exodus 20:12), and it says, "Honor God with your wealth" (Proverbs 3:9). By using the same terminology, the Torah compares the honour you owe your father and mother to the honour you have to give to the Almighty. It also says, "Every person must respect his mother and his father" (Leviticus 19:3), and it says, "God your Lord you shall respect, Him you shall serve" (Deuteronomy 10:20). Here the same word, respect, is used. The Torah equates the respect you owe your parents with the respect you must show God. Furthermore it says, "Whoever curses his father or mother shall be put to death" (Exodus 21:17). And furthermore it says, "Anyone that curses God shall bear his sin" (Leviticus 24.–15). By using the same terms the Torah compares cursing of parents with cursing the Almighty.
- A man should endeavor to be as pliant as a reed, and never unyielding like the cedar.
- Let every man divide his money into three parts, and invest a third in land, a third in business, and a third let him keep by him in reserve.
- One may decline the request of a lesser person, but one may not decline the request of a great person.
- A legal decision depends not on the teacher's age, but on the force of his argument.
- Whoever did not see Jerusalem in its days of glory, never saw a beautiful city in their life.
- Ten measures of beauty descended to the world, nine were taken by Jerusalem.
- "Eternity" — this refers to Jerusalem.
- Even during the time of Jerusalem's stumbling, men of faith did not cease from [living] there.
- Jerusalem does not become impure through touching; Jerusalem will not be split by the tribes.
- Jerusalem was only destroyed because its inhabitants desecrated the Shabbat, they refrained from reciting the Morning and Evening Shema, the children in the Torah day schools wasted their learning time, because they were not shame faced (to sin), because they made the minors equal to the adults, because one did not rebuke another, because they embarrassed Torah Scholars.
- Whoever mourns for Jerusalem will be meritorious and will see its rejoicing and all who do not mourn for Jerusalem will not see its rejoicing.
- Why did G-d exile the Jewish people? To make converts of the world.
- Whosoever denies idols is called a Jew.
- If you steal from a thief, you also have a taste of it.
- Who takes vengeance or bears a grudge acts like one who, having cut one hand while handling a knife, avenges himself by stabbing the other hand.
- In old men there is no taste, in young no insight.
- Youth is a crown of roses, old age a crown of willows.
- When the wine's in, murder will out.
- The burden is equal to the horse's strength.
- Let your left hand turn away what your right hand attracts.
- The myrtle that grows among thorns is a myrtle still.
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- For we are like olives: only when we are crushed do we yield what is best in us.
- A quotation at the right moment is like bread to the famished.
- Ambition destroys its possessor.
- Be of an exceedingly humble spirit, for the end of man is the worm.
- Beware of the ruling powers! for they do not befriend a person except for their own needs: they when it is to their advantage, but they do not stand by a man when he is hard-pressed.
- Breed not a savage dog, nor permit a loose stairway.
- Deeds of kindness are equal in weight to all the commandments.
- Despise no man and consider nothing impossible, for there is no man who does not have his hour and there is no thing that does not have its place.
- Do not appease thy fellow in his hour of anger; do not comfort him while the dead is still laid do not question him in the hour of his vow; and do not strive to see him in his hour of misfortune.
- Do not attempt to confute a lion after he's dead.
- Don't use the conduct of a fool as a precedent.
- Doubt cannot override a certainty.
- Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, "Grow, grow."
- Examine the contents, not the bottle.
- For the unlearned, old age is winter; for the learned it is the season of the harvest.
- He that gives should never remember. He that receives should never forget.
- He who carries out one good deed acquires one advocate in his own behalf, and he who commits one transgression acquires one accuser against himself. Repentance and good works are like a shield against calamity.
- He who loves money will not be satisfied with money.
- He who promises runs in debt.
- He whose wisdom exceeds his works, to what may he be likened? To a tree whose branches are numerous but whose roots are few. The wind comes along and uproots it and sweeps it down.
- Hire yourself out to work, which is beneath you, rather than become dependent on others.
- If one man says to thee, "Thou art a donkey", pay no heed. If two speak thus, purchase a saddle.
- If one profanes the name of heaven in secret he shall be punished in broad daylight: unwittingly is all one in profaning the name.
- If silence be good for the wise, how much better for fools.
- Into the well which supplies thee with water, cast no stones.
- Keep far way from an evil neighbor, do not associate with the wicked, and do not despair of retribution.
- Let your left hand turn away what your right hands attracts.
- Life is so short we must move very slowly.
- Loving kindness is greater than laws; and the charities of life are more than all ceremonies.
- Make thy study of the word of The Eternal a fixed practice; say little and do much; and receive all countenance.
- Man has three friends on whose company he relies. First, wealth— which goes with him only while good fortune lasts. Second, his relatives— they go only as far as the grave and leave him there. The third friend, his good deeds, go with him beyond the grave.
- Mark well three things and thou wilt not fall into the clutches of sin: Know what is above thee— an eye that sees, an ear that hears, and all thine actions recorded in the book.
- More people die from over-eating than from undernourishment.
- Never expose yourself unnecessarily to danger; a miracle may not save you...and if it does, it will be deducted from your share of luck or merit.
- No labor, however humble, is dishonoring.
- Only a fraction of a man's virtues should be enumerated in his presence.
- Power buries those who wield it.
- Rather be the tail of a lion than the head of a fox.
- Richer is one hour of repentance and good works in this world than all of life of the world to come; and richer is one hour's calm of spirit in the world to come than all of life of this world.
- Sin is sweet in the beginning, but bitter in the end.
- The burden is equal to the horse's strength.
- The deeper the sorrow the less tongue it hath.
- The Divine Spirit does not reside in any except the joyful heart.
- The doctrines of religion are resolved into carefulness; carefulness into vigorousness; vigorousness into guiltlessness; guiltlessness into abstemiousness; abstemiousness into cleanliness; cleanliness into godliness.
- The end result of wisdom is... good deeds.
- The highest form of wisdom is kindness.
- The myrtle that grows among thorns is a myrtle still.
- The sun sets without thy assistance.
- These things are good in little measure and evil in large; yeast, salt, and hesitation.
- Thy friend has a friend, and thy friend's friend has a friend; be discreet.
- Seder Nezikin, Baba Bathra, Ch III, 28b seems the likely source. As translated on the linked-to page by Isidore Epstein, it reads "Your friend has a friend, and the friend of your friend has a friend," with a footnote that it is "a popular saying. Someone is bound to tell the holder that the claimant has protested against his occupation of the land, and he will therefore take care not to lose his title-deed." On his WIST (Wish I'd Said That) website Dave Hill notes, "The summary 'be discreet' does not appear in the actual Talmud translations I found, but seems to be an explanation from early Christian reviews of the Talmud for when the verse is given as a stand-alone proverb." That jibes with my on-line research as well. --Hughh (talk) 02:43, 21 July 2017 (UTC)Reply
- Trust not your own powers till the day of your death.
- When choosing a wife look down the social scale; when selecting a friend, look upwards.
- When you teach your son, you teach your son's son.
- When you add to the truth,you subtract from it.
- Who can protest an injustice but does not is an accomplice to the act.
- Who is mighty? One who subdues his urges.
- Who is wise? One who sees the future.
- Who is wealthy? One who is satisfied with his lot.
- Who is a wise man? He who learns of all men.
- You can educate a fool, but you cannot make him think.
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