JEWISH QUOTES TO PONDER AS WE BEGIN A NEW YEAR–PART 1
(A community study period led by Rabbi J.B. Sacks on October 8, 2022)
As we have just completed Yom Kippur Wednesday and are about to begin Sukkot tomorrow night, I thought we should take time to ponder various quotes that could help us to set the tone for the New Year 5783 that just began. This will be the first of several.
I will not ask you to avoid look at the quotes beyond page 1, because you will then start peeking ahead. But we are focused this morning solely on the first page. I will read each quote aloud slowly, since we sometimes hear things differently than we read them. As I read them, you are welcome to follow along on your handout, or just close your eyes and take these quotes in. As I read them, please listen for what’s resonating for you right now or as you face the New Year, what’s speaking to you, challenging you, guiding you, calling you. After I have read them all, I will invite you to react to one quote only, and explain how it speaks to you today.
Please listen with open hearts!
- Rabbi Eugene Borowitz (1924-2016)
To be a Jew means the ability to think of our problems in the context of Jewish suffering, and of our goals in the framework of human destiny.
- Rabbi Stephen S. Wise (1874-1949)
Vision looks inward and becomes duty.
Vision looks outward and becomes aspiration.
Vision looks upward and becomes faith.
- Rabbi Eugene Kohn (1887-1997)
To say that G!d is personal does not necessarily mean that G!d is a person. Many things that are not persons are personal: love, honor, friendship, loyalty. None of these ideals is impersonal; they have meaning only as they are manifest in personality.
In the same sense, G!d is personal. G!d is indeed the very source and sponsor of human personality.
- Rabbi Leo Baeck (1873-1956)
So many people go through life filling the storeroom of their minds with odds and ends of a grudge here, a jealousy there, a pettiness, a selfishness–all ignoble. The true task of each person is to create a noble memory, a mind filled with grandeur, forgiveness, restless ideals, and the dynamic ethical ferment preached by all religions at their best.
- Rabbi Saul Lieberman (1898-1983)
Judaism is a continuing conversation between the generations.
- Rabbi Morris Adler (1906-1966)
Our prayers are answered not when we are given what we ask
but when we are challenged to be what we can be.
- Rabbi Abraham Geiger (1810-1874)
How to live: draw from the past, live in the present, work for the future.
- Rabbi Joseph Lookstein (1902-1979)
Judaism emphasizes reason, not blind faith. It stresses understanding, not intellectual surrender; knowledge and inquiry, and not helpless submission.
No, for Judaism, at least, tradition is not a voice from the dead which commands,
“Obey me!” It is rather the thrilling call of living experience which says, “Use me!”
Which quote was most relevant to you or most touched you as I read it? Please do not just give us a quote number or author. Rather, please explain what the quote means to you or how it is speaking to you at this time.
(Full discussion ensued. Please see the accompanying YouTube video of our community discussion. Quotes number three through eight were the most discussed.)
Please use these quotes to have a discussion at your Sukkot tables with family or friends this coming week.
Thank you all for your participation.
Shabbat shalom!