Judaism

"The free movement of the moral impulse to establish justice for animals generally and the claim of their rights from mankind are hidden in a natural psychic sensibility in the deeper layers of the . In the ancient value system of humanity … the moral sense had risen to a point of demanding justice for animals. … Just as the democratic aspiration will reach outward through the general intellectual and moral perfection … so will the hidden yearning to act justly towards animals emerge at the proper time. What prepares the ground for this state is the commandments, those intended specifically for this area of concern. There is indeed a hidden reprimand between the lines of the Torah in the sanction to eat meat."

"One respectful question will be addressed to Jews who plan to continue to eat meat: In view of strong Jewish mandates to be compassionate to animals, preserve our health, help feed the hungry, preserve and protect the environment, conserve resources, and seek and pursue peace, and the very negative effects animal-centered diets have in each of these areas, will you now become a vegetarian, or at least sharply reduce your consumption of animal products?"

"My own view is that a vegetarian diet may in fact hasten the coming of Moshiach (the Messiah). The more we live as if this were the messianic age the closer we are to it."

"When a human kills an animal for food, he is neglecting his own hunger for justice. Man prays for mercy, but is unwilling to extend it to others. Why should man then expect mercy from God? It's unfair to expect something that you are not willing to give."

"The first man had not been allowed to eat meat."

"What was the necessity for the entire procedure of ritual slaughter? For the sake of self discipline. It is far more appropriate for man not to eat meat; only if he has a strong desire for meat does the Torah permit it, and even this only after the trouble and inconvenience necessary to satisfy his desire. Perhaps because of the bother and annoyance of the whole procedure, he will be restrained from such a strong and uncontrollable desire for meat."

"Indeed, Judaism as a way of life, seeks to inculcate in us a consciousness of the Divine Presence in the World and respect for life accordingly. The more we care for life, the closer we are in fact to God. Accordingly, an ethical vegetarian way of life expresses the most noble and sublime values and aspirations of Judaism itself, bringing us closer to its vision for society as a whole."

"We must clearly advocate dietary practices that are truly in consonance with the sublimest values of the Torah, and today more than ever before these are overwhelmingly incompatible with carnivorous indulgence."

"There is a distinct reluctance, almost an unwillingness, on the part of Torah to grant man the privilege to consume meat. Man as an animal-eater is looked at askance by the Torah. There are definitive vegetarian tendencies in the Bible."

"The mixing of meat and milk is a grave offense, an act that is pervaded altogether with the oppression of life, an oppression of a living being—and of property. Milk, which serves so naturally to feed the tender child, that he might enjoy the mother's breast, was not created so as to stuff with it the stomach, when you are so hard and cruel as to eat meat. The tender child has a prior and more natural right than you."

"With the possible exception of sex, there is no more basic human activity than eating, rendering it an appropriate candidate for Jewish rituals designed to maintain our focus on Godliness. The table is seen as an altar, and the concern with Kashrut extends to removing knives, instruments of war, from the table during the Birkat HaMazon (blessing after the meal). Tsaar baalei khayim, the concern for the pain of all living things and the reverence for life, is another essential aspect of kashrut. Vegetarianism is clearly the Torah's ideal; the is a vegetarian society."

"Vegetarianism is an ideal way to actualize the Torah's vision of a world in which the divine spark in all creation is respected and revered."

"Animal hunters and flesh-eaters are people that lust. Of course it is legalized, approved. Yet it is classified Num. 11:34] as ta'avah, lust, repulsive and brutish."

"Your children who follow you in later generations and foreigners who come from distant lands will see the calamities that have fallen on the land and the diseases with which the LORD has afflicted it. The whole land will be a burning waste of salt and sulfur—nothing planted, nothing sprouting, no vegetation growing on it. It will be like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboyim, which the LORD overthrew in fierce anger."

"Elizabeth: I am here to finish my father's work. As he baptized me with water, I shall baptize the Sodom Below with fire...and prepare for the coming of the Lord."

"As men, being unable to bear discreetly a satiety of these things, get restive like cattle, and become stiff-necked, and discard the laws of nature, pursuing a great and intemperate indulgence of gluttony, and drinking, and unlawful connections; for not only did they go mad after other women, and defile the marriage bed of others, but also those who were men lusted after one another, doing unseemly things, and not regarding or respecting their common nature, and though eager for children, they were convicted by having only an abortive offspring; but the conviction produced no advantage, since they were overcome by violent desire; and so by degrees, the men became accustomed to be treated like women, and in this way engendered among themselves the disease of females, and intolerable evil; for they not only, as to effeminacy and delicacy, became like women in their persons, but they also made their souls most ignoble, corrupting in this way the whole race of men, as far as depended on them"

"About this time the Sodomites grew proud, on account of their riches and great wealth; they became unjust towards men, and impious towards God, in so much that they did not call to mind the advantages they received from him: they hated strangers, and abused themselves with Sodomitical practices” "Now when the Sodomites saw the young men to be of beautiful countenances, and this to an extraordinary degree, and that they took up their lodgings with Lot, they resolved themselves to enjoy these beautiful boys by force and violence; and when Lot exhorted them to sobriety, and not to offer any thing immodest to the strangers, but to have regard to their lodging in his house; and promised that if their inclinations could not be governed, he would expose his daughters to their lust, instead of these strangers; neither thus were they made ashamed."

"Elizabeth: Some men dream of money, some men dream of love. My father dreamt of a flood of fire. We were given Eden, and we turned it into Sodom."

"But before they lay down, the men of the city, [even] the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter:"

"And among the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen something horrible: They commit adultery and live a lie. They strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that no one turns from his wickedness. They are all like Sodom to me; the people of Jerusalem are like Gomorrah."

"The bible never links the story of Sodom with homosexuality. To use the Sodom story as evidence that the Bible condemns homosexuality is totally inaccurate. It is an anachronism, projecting later Church interpretation onto the biblical text, which is essentially about hospitality… Even if the story were about lust, it is about rape, not homosexuality. The Sodomites were not “gay”. They were rapists. This is why Lot could offer his daughters in replacement, why the Judges version of the tale actually has a female substitute, and why those few Biblical references to Sodom as being sexually-related speak in general terms rather than specific ones."

"Wilt Thou indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Peradventure there are fifty righteous within the city; wilt Thou indeed sweep away and not forgive the place for the fifty righteous that are therein? That be far from Thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked, that so the righteous should be as the wicked; that be far from Thee; shall not the Judge of all the earth do justly? … Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the LORD, who am but dust and ashes. Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty righteous; wilt Thou destroy all the city for lack of five? … Oh, let not the LORD be angry, and I will speak yet but this once. Peradventure ten shall be found there?"

"God tells us men fucking men is a terrible thing, but a father offering his two daughters, vestal virgins no less, to a horde of horny buggers is heroic. Now that's straight. … God destroys the faggots with fire and brimstone. He turns a disobedient wife into salt. But he asks us to idolize drunks who sleep with their daughters or offer them to a horny, unruly mob."

"As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, your sister Sodom and her daughters never did what you and your daughters have done. Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen."

"When the Sages went to Yavneh they said: The time will come that a man will seek a matter in the Torah but will not find it. He will seek a matter from the Scribes but will not find it. … They said: Let us begin [to record] with Hillel and Shammai."

"The Oral Law is a legal commentary on the Torah, explaining how its commandments are to be carried out. Common sense suggests that some sort of oral tradition was always needed to accompany the Written Law, because the Torah alone, even with its 613 commandments, is an insufficient guide to Jewish life. For example, the fourth of the Ten Commandments, ordains, "Remember the Sabbath day to make it holy" (Exodus 20:8). From the Sabbath's inclusion in the Ten Commandments, it is clear that the Torah regards it as an important holiday. Yet when one looks for the specific biblical laws regulating how to observe the day, one finds only injunctions against lighting a fire, going away from one's dwelling, cutting down a tree, plowing and harvesting. Would merely refraining from these few activities fulfill the biblical command to make the Sabbath holy? Indeed, the Sabbath rituals that are most commonly associated with holiness-lighting of candles, reciting the kiddush, and the reading of the weekly Torah portion are found not in the Torah, but in the Oral Law. Without an oral tradition, some of the Torah's laws would be incomprehensible. In the Shema's first paragraph, the Bible instructs: "And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart. And you shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk on the road, when you lie down and when you rise up. And you shall bind them for a sign upon your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes." "Bind them for a sign upon your hand," the last verse instructs. Bind what? The Torah doesn't say. "And they shall be for frontlets between your eyes." What are frontlets? The Hebrew word for frontlets, totafot is used three times in the Torah — always in this context (Exodus 13:16; Deuteronomy 6:8, 11:18) — and is as obscure as is the English. Only in the Oral Law do we learn that what a Jewish male should bind upon his hand and between his eyes are tefillin ( phylacteries)."

"A man of valor is one who is mighty of heart with perfect trust to perform mitzvot at all times and to meditate upon the Torah day and night, even though there is no food or clothing in his house, and his children and the members of his household cry out to him: Provide us with our support and maintenance. And he does not heed them at all, or listen to their cries."

"Make the study of the Torah your chief occupation; speak little, but accomplish much; and receive every man with a friendly countenance."

"I hardly remember reading the Torah in school. On the rare occasion we did, it was always as a series of mythical stories: a plotline with characters, good and evil, who behave all the time like the rest of us, trying to find meaning in life when none is available. Years later, when I was already an adult, I remember feeling struck by the religious emphasis in just about every episode. How could I have missed it? My gut feeling is that our teachers were ambivalent about it, too. They liked storytelling, and that's what they stressed. Today I'm grateful to them for introducing me to the Bible not as a Halakhic (legal) manual but as a depository of collective memory. For that reason, my relationship with it isn't tyrannical."

"[A Jew] should make Torah his principal occupation and his work his casual one. He should minimize his business pursuits and occupy himself with Torah. And he should remove fleeting pleasures from his heart, and work each day enough to maintain himself. ... The rest of the day and night, he should occupy himself with Torah."

"I do not care if they insult me or Aaron, but I insist that the insult of the Torah be avenged. 'If these men die the common death of all men,' I shall myself become a disbeliever and declare the Torah was not given by God."

"A learned mamzer takes precedence over an ignorant High Priest."

"Had they observed Torah and Gospel and what is revealed to them from their Lord, they would certainly have been rewarded from above and from beneath their feet. Among them are people who are keeping to the moderate course; but evil is what most of them do!"

"An artisan busies himself with his work for three hours each day and spends nine hours in study."

"Though all the nations that are under the king's dominin obey him, and fall away every one from the religion of their fathers, and give consent to his commandments: Yet will I and my sons and my brethren walk in the covenant of our fathers. God forbid that we should forsake the law and the ordinances. We will not harken to the king's words, to go from our religion, either on the right hand, or on the left."

"The Torah is the method of achieving hope—in effect it embodies the principles and pathways that sustain hope."

"The entire oral law in the wider sense, namely, the entire material of the Mishnah, the Tosefta, and the halakic midrashim, was preserved only orally, and was not reduced to writing until the beginning of the third century C.E., because there was a prejudice against recording halakot. The origin of this objection is unknown. There has never been any formal interdiction against recording halakot, nor are there any references to any date of such a prohibition or to any person who issued one. Even the two Talmudic passages which allude to the custom of not recording halakot do not mention a formal interdiction. One of these passages, the comment of Judah b. Naḥmani, "What has been said orally thou mayest not say in writing, and vice versa" (Giṭ. 60b and parallel passages), is merely a haggadic explanation of the prevailing custom. If this interpretation had been taken literally, the Prophets would not have been allowed to commit their prophecies to writing (comp. Weiss, "Dor," i. 92 et seq.). The second passage, which is by R. Johanan and reads as follows: "He who records halakot is like him who burns the Torah; and whosoever studies these written collections has no reward" (Tem. 14b), is merely a reproof directed against those who make such compilations for public use. As the Mishnah had been committed to writing by the time of R. Johanan (199-279), there could be no question of a prohibition against recording halakot."

"The origins of Rabbinic literature go at least as far back as the second century BCE. Some of the books Misrash of Rabbinic interpretations of the Bible, or misrash although based on materials dating earlier than the sixth century CE, were not committed to writing and edited together until the eleventh or twelfth century CE. The scholars of the Bible from the time of Ezra on are first called “scribes,” because their first job was to make copies of the Torah. They are then called “sages” (‘’hakhamim’’), because in copying the Torah they came to know it and to interpret and apply it. The title “rabbi”, meaning master and teacher of the tradition, appears in the first century CE. The title persists to this day, but it is the classical Rabbis of the second century BCE through the sixth century CE to whose words we refer when we speak of Rabbinic literature."

"Every Israelite has a duty to study whether he is poor or rich, whether healthy or suffering, whether young or very old and in failing strength, even if he is poor and supported by charity or begs from door to door."

"The Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their fathers which are not written in the law of Moses; and for that reason it is that the Sadducees reject them, and say that we are to esteem those observances to be obligatory which are in the Written Word, but are not to observe what are derived from the tradition of our forefathers."

"For how long is it a duty to study the Law? To the day of death."

"That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation."

"Returning to the Levitical list of sexual taboos, curiously missing from the list is any mention of masturbation."

"You may, however, present as a freewill offering an ox[a] or a sheep that is deformed or stunted, but it will not be accepted in fulfillment of a vow."

"He may eat the most holy food of his God, as well as the holy food."

"Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly."

"If a man marries his brother’s wife, it is an act of impurity; he has dishonored his brother. They will be childless."

"Keep all my decrees and laws and follow them, so that the land where I am bringing you to live may not vomit you out."

"If in spite of this you still do not listen to me but continue to be hostile toward me, then in my anger I will be hostile toward you, and I myself will punish you for your sins seven times over. You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters. I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars and pile your dead bodies on the lifeless forms of your idols, and I will abhor you."

"The stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt."