Judaism

"Such was the miraculous nature of what Schechter found in the Cairo Geniza that some have compared its discovery to that of the Dead Sea Scrolls. ... One of the twentieth century's greatest historians, S. D. Goitein, whose writing about the daily and most mundane Geniza documents unfurled a vibrant panorama of this Mediterranean society, clearly had such a comparison in mind when he titled a 1970 talk about the Geniza "The Living Sea Scrolls.""

"The Jews used to deposit all sorts of written and printed material in such rooms which were provided in or near their synagogues; they were not intended to be kept as in archives, but were to remain there undisturbed for a certain time. The Jews were afraid lest such writings which might contain the name of God should be profaned by misuse. So such written—and in later times also printed—matter was taken from time to time to consecrated ground and buried; thus it perished."

"The sacredness of the divine names must be recognized by the professional scribe who writes the Scriptures, or the chapters for the phylacteries and the mezuzah. Before transcribing any of the divine names he prepares mentally to sanctify them. Once he begins a name he does not stop until it is finished, and he must not be interrupted while writing it, even to greet a king. If an error is made in writing it, it may not be erased, but a line must be drawn round it to show that it is canceled, and the whole page must be put in a genizah and a new page begun."

"A few remarks are necessary at this point, since the name Jesus has been introduced into this work. It is not the desire of the writer to be drawn into the maelstrom of controversy with regard to the character or nature of Jesus, the individual sacred to Christians; nor is it his intention to engage in polemics as to whether Jesus actually lived, whether he was a great Adept, or simply a solar myth, as many of the exponents of the higher criticism claim. The Qabalah simply uses the name יהשוה‎ Yeheshua because it implies a certain philosophy descriptive of certain of its prime theorems. … I make this remark to reassure those of my readers who may be of Jewish persuasion."

"He impelled people to believe that he was a prophet sent by God to clarify perplexities in the Torah, and that he was the Messiah that was predicted by each and every seer. He interpreted the Torah and its precepts in such a fashion as to lead to their total annulment, to the abolition of all its commandments and to the violation of its prohibitions."

"One of the ironies of early Christianity is that Jesus himself was a Jew who worshiped the Jewish God, kept Jewish customs, interpreted the Jewish law, and acquired Jewish disciples, who accepted him as the Jewish messiah. Yet, within just a few decades of his death, Jesus's followers had formed a religion that stood over-against Judaism. How did Christianity move so quickly from being a Jewish sect to being an anti-Jewish religion?"

"Esoteric tradition avers that the boy Jesus ben Joseph, when His calibre was recognised by the learned doctors of the Law who heard Him speak in the Temple at the age of twelve, was sent by them to the Essenian community near the Dead Sea to be trained in the mystical tradition of Israel, and that He remained there until He came to John to be baptised in the Jordan before commencing His mission at the age of thirty. Be that as it may, the closing clause of the Lord's Prayer is pure Qabalism. Malkuth, the Kingdom, Hod, the Power, Netzach, the Glory, form the basal triangle of the Tree of Life, with Yesod, the Foundation, or Receptacle of Influences, as the central point. Whoever formulated that prayer knew his Qabalah."

"As a child, I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene."

"Certainly Jesus' teaching was in accord with major tenets of the Pharisees, since he also believed that charity and loving-kindness were the most important of the mitzvot. Like the Pharisees, he was devoted to the Torah and was said to have preached a more stringent observance than many of his contemporaries. He also taught a version of Hillel's Golden Rule, when he argued that the whole of the Law could be summed up in the maxim: do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

"The titles of the Qliphoth, generally speaking, suggest the vice characteristic of the Sephira or other idea to which they are attributed. Thus the Thaumiel refer to Kether, because their characteristic is to possess two contending heads, and so to deny the unity of Kether. So also the Golachab are giants like volcanoes, symbolizing energy and fire, and their liability to appear as tyranny and aimless destruction. Similarly, the Qliphoth of Venus are carrion birds, as opposed to the dove, sparrow, etc."

"According to Gen. ii. 9, there stood in the midst of the Garden of Eden a "tree of life," apparently by the side of the "tree of knowledge of good and evil." Although Gen. iii. 3 seems to presuppose but one tree there, Gen. iii. 22 asserts that, after the primitive pair had eaten of the tree of knowledge, they were expelled from Eden lest they should put forth their hands and take of the tree of life and live forever. The view of the writer was that Eden contained a tree the magical power of the fruit of which conferred immortality upon him who partook of it, though Yhwh prohibited mortals from partaking of this fruit."

"In a previous chapter we have referred to the Qliphoth, the evil and averse Sephiroth; the time has now come to study them in detail, even though "these are awful forms, dangerous even to think upon." ... The Qliphoth are aptly termed the evil and averse Sephiroth, for they are not independent principles or factors in the cosmic scheme, but the unbalanced and destructive aspect of the Holy Stations themselves. There are, in fact, not two Trees, but one Tree, a Qliphah being the reverse of a coin of which the obverse is a Sephirah."

"The Tree of Life can never be disjoined from the Tree of Knowledge for both have one and the same root."

"The process which the Kabbalists described as the emanation of divine energy and divine light was also characterized as the unfolding of the divine language. ... They speak of attributes and of spheres of light; but in the same context they speak also of divine names and the letters of which they are composed. ... The elements of the divine language appear as the letters of the Holy Scriptures. Letters and names are not only conventional means of communication. They are far more. Each one of them represents a concentration of energy and expresses a wealth of meaning which cannot be translated, or not fully at least, into human language."

"The word "Qabalah" is derived from a Hebrew root (QBL) meaning "to receive". The legend is that this philosophy is a knowledge of things first taught by the Demiurgos to a select company of spiritual intelligences of a lofty rank who, after the Fall, communicated its divine injunctions to Mankind—who, in reality, were themselves in incarnation. It is also denominated the Chokmah Nistorah, "The Secret Wisdom", so-called because it has been orally transmitted from Adept to Pupil in the Secret Sanctuaries of Initiation."

"In the literature, there is considerable discussion regarding the term Kabbalah (). Most authorities state that it comes from the root Kabal (), meaning "to receive." Abulafia takes this a step further, maintaining that a mystic is called a Kabbalist because he has received (Kibel, ) the tradition from either the prophets or those who received from them."

"The curious symbol-system known to us as the Tree of Life is an attempt to reduce to diagrammatic form every force and factor in the manifested universe and the soul of man; to correlate them one to another and reveal them spread out as on a map so that the relative positions of each unit can be seen and the relations between them traced. In brief, the Tree of Life is a compendium of science, psychology, philosophy, and theology."

"We are seized with admiration when we penetrate the sanctuary of the Cabala, by the sight of a doctrine so logical, so simple, and at the same time so absolute. The necessary union of ideas and of signs; the consecration of the most fundamental realities with primitive characters, the trinity of words, of letters and of numbers; a philosophy as simple as the alphabet, profound and infinite as the Verb; theorems more complete and illuminating than those of Pythagoras; a theology which we summarize by counting on our fingers; an infinity that could be held in the hollow of a child's hand; ten numbers and twenty-two letters, a triangle, a square, and a circle: those are the whole of the elements of the Cabala."

"The moment you ask a child in Israel what Yom Kippur means to him, and he answers the Yom Kippur War, or a fun day on a bicycle — then I don’t know if that is Zionism or whatever you call it, but it has certainly become bankrupt"

"Magen David Adom said Saturday its paramedics treated 2,842 people across Israel during Yom Kippur, including three lightly hurt by the force of a rocket that exploded in the Western Galilee. Another 12 people were hurt while running to shelters amid , the ambulance service added. Some 320 projectiles were fired or launched into Israel by Hezbollah from Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces said, while two rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip."

"Five or six guys get up on the bimah on the stage, and they are facing the congregation. They get their talit over their heads, and they start this chanting, I think it's called duchening. And my father said to me, "Don't look!" So everybody's got their eyes covered with their hands, or they have got their talit down over their faces, or turned away, turned their back to these guys. ... And then the leader would shout out: "Yeborechecho!" ["The Lord bless thee!"] And the rest of them would respond: "Yeborechecho adonai v'yishmerecho!" ["The Lord bless thee and keep thee!"] It was chilling. Whoa, something major is happening here! So I peeked, and I saw them with their hands stuck out from beneath their talit like this, towards the congregation. ... I had no idea what was going on, but the sound of it and the look of it was magical."

"Some claim to find a satisfactory explanation of the origin of this letter in that it represents an ox-yoke, or the head of an Ox, the horns forming the top part of the letter. This is highly significant, for the letter when pronounced as Aleph and spelt in full h, means an Ox or Bull, an admirable symbol to denote the generative power of Nature."

"The only letter that had refrained from urging its claims was the modest Alef, and God rewarded it later for its humility by giving it the first place in the Decalogue."

"Now as soon as the army had no more people to slay or to plunder, because there remained none to be the objects of their fury, (for they would not have spared any, had there remained any other work to be done,) Caesar gave orders that they should now demolish the entire city and temple, but should leave as many of the towers standing as were of the greatest eminency; that is, Phasaelus, and Hippicus, and Mariamne; and so much of the wall as enclosed the city on the west side. This wall was spared, in order to afford a camp for such as were to lie in garrison, as were the towers also spared, in order to demonstrate to posterity what kind of city it was, and how well fortified, which the Roman valor had subdued; but for all the rest of the wall, it was so thoroughly laid even with the ground by those that dug it up to the foundation, that there was left nothing to make those that came thither believe it had ever been inhabited. This was the end which Jerusalem came to by the madness of those that were for innovations; a city otherwise of great magnificence, and of mighty fame among all mankind."

"For reasons that remain obscure, in the case of the Palestinian Jews of Fustat, or Old Cairo—who worshipped in what would eventually become known as the Ben Ezra synagogue—the tradition of geniza was, it seems, extended to include the preservation of anything written in Hebrew letters, not only religious documents, and not just in the Hebrew language. Perhaps, as one scholar has proposed, "the very employment of the Hebrew script ... sanctified written material.""

"One way or another, the alphabet created a possibility that never existed before, namely of a society of mass, even universal, literacy. With only twenty-two symbols, it could be taught, in a relatively short time, to everyone. We see evidence of this at many places in Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible. Isaiah says "All your children shall be taught of the Lord and great shall be the peace of your children" (Isaiah 54:13), implying universal education."

"Aleph and Tav being the first and the last letters of the alphabet, the expression "from Aleph to Tav" signifies "from beginning to end". Hence, "the observers of the Law from Aleph to Tav" are those that keep the Law in its entirety."

"And when he desired to create the world, all the letters came in turn and each said to the Holy One, blessed be He: Lord of the Universe, may it be Your will that the world be created through me. ... When aleph saw that the Holy One, blessed be He, desired to create the world through bet, she stood to one side and was silent, until the Holy One, blessed be He, called her and said to her: aleph, why are you silent; why do you not speak as your companions? Aleph answered and said before Him: Lord of the Universe, My companions amount to much, but I am of little value. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to her: No wonder that you are the first and the sovereign, since I am One and you are one. Since you have been humble, I will glorify you by making you a thousand (elef)."

"When the Temple was constructed it was, together with Solomon's palace, by far the most splendid pile of buildings that the Hebrews had ever seen."

"The Jews were loth to have their Temple pulled down, fearing lest it might not be rebuilt. To demonstrate his good faith, Herod acccumulated the materials for the new building before the old one was taken down. The new Temple was rebuilt as rapidly as possible, being finished in a year and a half, although work was in progress on the out-buildings and courts for eighty years. As it was unlawful for any but priests to enter the Temple, Herod employed 1,000 of them as masons and carpenters."

"יְהֹוָ֣ה אָמַ֔ר לִשְׁכֹּ֖ן בָּעֲרָפֶֽל׃ בָּנֹ֥ה בָנִ֛יתִי בֵּ֥ית זְבֻ֖ל לָ֑ךְ מָכ֥וֹן לְשִׁבְתְּךָ֖ עוֹלָמִֽים׃"

"מִי שֶׁלֹּא רָאָה בֵּית הַמִּקְדָּשׁ בְּבִנְיָנוֹ — לֹא רָאָה בִּנְיָן מְפוֹאָר מֵעוֹלָם. מַאי הִיא? אָמַר אַבָּיֵי וְאִיתֵּימָא רַב חִסְדָּא: זֶה בִּנְיַן הוֹרְדוֹס.‏"

"فَإِذَا جَآءَ وَعْدُ ٱلْـَٔاخِرَةِ لِيَسُـۥٓـُٔوا۟ وُجُوهَكُمْ وَلِيَدْخُلُوا۟ ٱلْمَسْجِدَ كَمَا دَخَلُوهُ أَوَّلَ مَرَّةٍۢ وَلِيُتَبِّرُوا۟ مَا عَلَوْا۟ تَتْبِيرًا"

"Οὐ βλέπετε ταῦτα πάντα; ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, οὐ μὴ ἀφεθῇ ὧδε λίθος ἐπὶ λίθον ὃς οὐ καταλυθήσεται."

"Understanding the deeper meaning of each of these words—heart, soul, might—enhances the power of this central Jewish prayer."

"The opening verb form, ve-ahavta, rather than the imperative ehov, allows the prefixed vav to be taken as purposive. ... The rest of the verse serves as a topic sentence for a corresponding threefold explication in the following verses—drawn from the key terms heart (, leivav), soul (, nefesh), and might (, meʾod)—that spells out the implementation of the command."

"Following publication of the first edition of this book, some individual anti-Semites and anti-Semitic groups began to utilize parts of what Israel Shahak and I wrote about Jewish fundamentalists to justify their hatred of Jews. They alleged that by revealing ideas of Jewish fundamentalists we have confirmed generalizations about the "evil nature" of Jews. They have taken our criticism of Jewish fundamentalism out of context and have utilized it in an invalid manner for their ugly purpose. … It should be obvious that Israel Shahak and I abhor what these anti-Semites do but that we are not responsible for them or for what they do."

"Robert: The three 6s. Monk: 6 is the sign of the devil. Jennings: But why three 6s? Monk: We think it means the diabolical trinity: the Devil, the Antichrist and the false prophet. Jennings: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Monk: For every holy thing there is an unholy one, that is the essence of temptation."

"The juxtaposition of buying and selling with the mark of the beast refers to the fact that Roman coins normally bore the image and name of the current emperor. The inability to buy or sell would then be the result of the refusal to use Roman coins. Such a refusal is analogous to the Zealot refusal to carry, look at, or manufacture coins bearing any sort of [graven] image."

"George Read thought the words [allowing the Federal government to “emit bills of credit” i.e., print paper money], if not struck out [of the Constitution] would be as alarming as the mark of the beast in Revelation."

"καὶ ποιεῖ πάντας, τοὺς μικροὺς καὶ τοὺς μεγάλους, καὶ τοὺς πλουσίους καὶ τοὺς πτωχούς, καὶ τοὺς ἐλευθέρους καὶ τοὺς δούλους, ἵνα δῶσιν αὐτοῖς χάραγμα ἐπὶ τῆς χειρὸς αὐτῶν τῆς δεξιᾶς ἢ ἐπὶ τὸ μέτωπον αὐτῶν, καὶ ἵνα μή τις δύνηται ἀγοράσαι ἢ πωλῆσαι εἰ μὴ ὁ ἔχων τὸ χάραγμα, τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ θηρίου ἢ τὸν ἀριθμὸν τοῦ ὀνόματος αὐτοῦ."

"An adult man who engaged in intercourse with a minor girl less than three years old has done nothing, as intercourse with a girl less than three years old is tantamount to poking a finger into the eye. In the case of an eye, after a tear falls from it another tear forms to replace it. Similarly, the ruptured hymen of the girl younger than three is restored."

"A man's wife is permitted to him. Therefore, a man may do whatever he desires with his wife. He may engage in relations whenever he desires, kiss any organ he desires, engage in vaginal or other intercourse, or engage in physical intimacy without relations, provided he does not release seed in vain. ... Nevertheless, it is pious conduct for a person not to act frivolously concerning such matters, and to sanctify himself at the time of relations, as explained in Hilchot Deot. He should not depart from the ordinary pattern of the world. For this act was [given to us] solely for the sake of procreation. ... Our Sages do not derive satisfaction from a person who engages in sexual relations excessively and frequents his wife like a rooster. This reflects a very blemished [character]; it is the way underdeveloped people conduct themselves. Instead, everyone who minimizes his sexual conduct is praiseworthy, provided he does not neglect his conjugal duties, without the consent of his wife."

"...in 1648, .. Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II gave the Jews of Prague permission to fly a "Jewish flag" over their synagogue, in recognition of their part in saving the city from the Swedish invaders, who besieged the city as part of the 30 Years War. This "Jewish flag" was red with a yellow Star of David at its center."

"The light blue Star of David lies in a sea of white, between a single light blue stripe on top, another on the bottom. This elegant design is the Flag of the State of Israel."

"Everyone recognizes the blue stripes and Magen David of the State of Israel's flag. Likewise, the LGBTQ Jewish flag – a Magen David centered on the rainbow flag – is commonplace and self-explanatory."

"The object of the theoretical (as separate from the practical) Qabalah, insofar as this thesis is concerned, is to enable the student to do three main things: First, to analyze every idea in terms of the Tree of Life. Second, to trace a necessary connection and relation between every and any class of ideas by referring them to this standard of comparison. Third, to translate any unknown system of symbolism into terms of any known one by its means."

"Hearing that the woman will bear children, the only good news in God's grim prophecy of the dismal human future (sorrow, sweat, toil, and death), he grasps at this straw of hope, renaming the woman Eve (Chavah), because she is the mother of all living (chai). From Adam's hopefulness, Eve gets the first genuinely proper name in the Bible."

"The preferred Shofar of Redemption is the Divine call that awakens and inspires the people with holy motivations, through faith in God and the unique mission of the people of Israel. This elevated awakening corresponds to the ram's horn, a horn that recalls Abraham's supreme love of God and dedication in Akeidat Yitzchak, the Binding of Isaac."

"The four species are all plants that need an abundance of water, and at the end of Sukkot, prayers for rain will be said."