The Heart of Torah, Volume 1: Essays on the Weekly Torah Portion: Genesis and Exodus
Shai Held
Top 10 Best Quotes
“in the Torah’s values, upholding the worth and dignity of human lives takes precedence over attending to God.”
“if someone comes to kill you, hasten to kill him first” (BT, Berakhot 58a).”
“When all is said and done, religion is, in large part, about softening our hearts49 and learning to care, about cultivating generosity and an eagerness to share one’s bounty.”
“What has changed after the flood is not human nature but God’s attitude toward it.”
“We are charged never to go along to get along; in the face of injustice, we are challenged by God to speak up.”
“To be part of the Jewish tradition is to “argue for justice and plead for mercy.”
“The trajectory of Exodus is unmistakable. When the book begins, the people are enslaved to a merciless despot who refuses to grant them even a moment’s respite (Exod. 5:5); when it ends they are serving the God of creation and covenant, who mandates and regularizes periods of rest (35:2). The mitzvah of Shabbat thus helps move the people from “perverted work, designed by Pharaoh to destroy God’s people . . . [to] divinely mandated work, designed to bring together God and God’s people, in the closest proximity possible in this life.”17 God rejects servility: whereas “Pharaoh places the Israelites under a backbreaking and soul-crushing yoke . . . God invites them to stand tall.”18”
“The Torah wants us to know that Moses is not just offended by injustices perpetrated against his own people. Moses also defends foreigners and strangers, and “his passion for justice makes no distinctions between nations.”
“The God of Israel is against injustice in all its forms, and not just injustice against this people or that (no matter how beloved). Put somewhat differently: what both Moses and Frederick Douglass intuitively understood is that for all the profound importance of ethnic solidarity, a wider human solidarity is also fundamental. One cannot lead this particular people without a concern for justice for all people(s).”
“R. Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–72) writes about prayer applies to life as a whole as well: “God is in exile; the world is corrupt. The universe itself is not at home. To pray means to bring God back into the world, to establish His kingship for a second at least. To pray means to expand His presence. . . . To worship, therefore, means to make God immanent, to make Him present. His being immanent in the world depends upon us.”
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