The Source Quotes

“A Roman came to Rabbi Gimzo the Water Carrier, and asked, "What is this study of the law that you Jews engage in?" and Gimzo replied, "I shall explain. There were two men on a roof, and they climbed down the chimney. One's face became sooty. The other's not. Which one washed his face?" The Roman said, "That's easy, the sooty one, of course." Gimzo said, "No. The man without the soot looked at his friend, saw that the man's face was dirty, assumed that his was too, and washed it." Cried the Roman, "Ah ha! So that's the study of law. Sound reasoning." But Gimzo said, "You foolish man, you don't understand. Let me explain again. Two men on a roof. They climb down a chimney. One's face is sooty, the other's not. Which one washes?" The Roman said, "As you just explained, the man without the soot." Gimzo cried,"No, you foolish one! There was a mirror on the wall and the man with the dirty face saw how sooty it was and washed it." The Roman said, "Ah ha! So that's the study of law! Conforming to the logical." But Rabbi Gimzo said, "No, you foolish one. Two men climbed down the chimney. One's face became sooty? The other's not? That's impossible. You're wasting my time with such a proposition." And the Roman said, "So that's the law! Common sense." And Gimzo said, "You foolish man! Of course it was possible. When the first man climbed down the chimney he brushed the soot away. So the man who followed found none to mar him." And the Roman cried, "That's brilliant, Rabbi Gimzo. Law is getting at the basic facts." And for the last time Gimzo said, "No, you foolish man. Who could brush all the soot from a chimney? Who could ever understand all the facts?" Humbly the Roman asked, "Then what is the law?" And Gimzo said quietly, "It's doing the best we can to ascertain God's intention, for there were indeed two men on a roof, and they did climb down the same chimney. The first man emerged completely clean while it was the second who was covered with soot, and neither man washed his face, because you forgot to ask me whether there was any water in the basin. There was none.”
― James A. Michener, The Source

“We seek God so earnestly, Eliav reflected, not to find Him but to discover ourselves.”
― James A. Michener, The Source

“The dead are dead but they rely on us to fulfill their hopes.”
― James A. Michener, The Source

“In these centuries when God,...was forging a Christian church so that it might fulfill the longing of a hungry world, He was at the same time perfecting His first religion, Judaism, so that it might stand as the permanent norm against which to judge all others. Whenever, in the future some new religion strayed too far from the basic precepts of Judaism, God could be assured that it was in error; so in the Galilee, His ancient cauldron of faith, he spent as much time upon the old Jews as He did upon the new Christians.”
― James A. Michener, The Source

“this phrase was meaningless, for no matter where the Jew wandered, if he took with him the Talmud he was”
― James A. Michener, The Source

“Why were these people seeking a new home coming to Israel and not to America? Where had the American dream faltered? And he saw that Israel was right; it was taking people—any people—as America had once done; so that in fifty years the bright new ideas of the world would come probably from Israel and no longer from a tired America.”
― James A. Michener, The Source

“Simple. Judaism had its day, and if the Jews had been smart, when Christianity came along they’d have joined up. Christianity has had its day, and if you were intelligent you’d both join the newest religion. Islam!” He bowed low and said, “Soon all Africa will be Islamic. And all Black America. I see India giving up Hinduism while Burma and Thailand surrender Buddhism. Gentlemen, I represent the religion of the future. I offer you salvation.”
― James A. Michener, The Source

“You say you were lucky that in the critical years between 100 and 800 C.E. Christianity went forward, and we were unlucky that during the same years Judaism went backward. Don’t you see that the real question is forward to what, backward to what?” Cullinane reflected for a moment and said, “By God, I do! That’s what’s been bugging me without my knowing it, because I hadn’t even formulated the question.” “My thought is that in those critical years Judaism went back to the basic religious precepts by which men can live together in a society, whereas Christianity rushed forward to a magnificent personal religion which never in ten thousand years will teach men how to live together. You Christians will have beauty, passionate intercourse with God, magnificent buildings, frenzied worship and exaltation of the spirit. But you will never have that close organization of society, family life and the little community that is possible under Judaism. Cullinane, let me ask you this: Could a group of rabbis, founding their decisions on Torah and Talmud, possibly have come up with an invention like the Inquisition—an essentially anti-social concept?”
― James A. Michener, The Source

“The mystic perceives with his heart what the mind knows to be true... but cannot prove”
― James A. Michener, The Source

“He loved to tell his students a story which summarized his attitudes on this matter of intellectual inspection: “A Roman came to Rabbi Gimzo the Water Carrier, and asked, ‘What is this study of the law that you Jews engage in?’ and Gimzo replied, ‘I shall explain. There were two men on a roof, and they climbed down the chimney. One’s face became sooty. The other’s not. Which one washed his face?’ The Roman said, ‘That’s easy, the sooty one, of course.’ Gimzo said, ‘No. The man without the soot looked at his friend, saw that the man’s face was dirty, assumed that his was too, and washed it.’ Cried the Roman, ‘Ah ha! So that’s the study of law. Sound reasoning.’ But Gimzo said, ‘You foolish man, you don’t understand. Let me explain again. Two men on a roof. They climb down a chimney. One’s face is sooty, the other’s not. Which one washes?’ The Roman said, ‘As you just explained, the man without the soot.’ Gimzo cried, ‘No, you foolish one! There was a mirror on the wall and the man with the dirty face saw how sooty it was and washed it.’ The Roman said, ‘Ah ha! So that’s the study of law! Conforming to the logical.’ But Rabbi Gimzo said, ‘No, you foolish one. Two men climbed down the chimney. One’s face became sooty? The other’s not? That’s impossible. You’re wasting my time with such a proposition.’ And the Roman said, ‘So that’s the law! Common sense.’ And Gimzo said, ‘You foolish man! Of course it was possible. When the first man climbed down the chimney he brushed the soot away. So the man who followed found none to mar him.’ And the Roman cried, ‘That’s brilliant, Rabbi Gimzo. Law is getting at the basic facts.’ And for the last time Gimzo said, ‘No, you foolish man. Who could brush all the soot from a chimney? Who can ever understand all the facts?’ Humbly the Roman asked, ‘Then what is the law?’ And Gimzo said quietly, ‘It’s doing the best we can to ascertain God’s intention, for there were indeed two men on a roof, and they did climb down the same chimney. The first man emerged completely clean while it was the second who was covered with soot, and neither man washed his face, because you forgot to ask me whether there was any water in the basin. There was none.’ ”
― James A. Michener, The Source

“A man is never old if he can still be moved emotionally by a woman of his own age.”
― James A. Michener, The Source

“It was the Sea of Galilee, now known by its Latin name, Mare Tyberiadis, sunk in its deep depression among surrounding hills whose red and brown coloring played across the surface of the water, so that sometimes the lake was its own blue—a deep, pulsating blue of vivid quality which made the heart cry out with joy—while at other times it was red or brown or, where the trees were, green. But always its colors were in motion, a living, twisting kaleidoscope, as marvelous a body of water as there was on earth.”
― James A. Michener, The Source

“Nor was Israel’s historic claim to the land impressive; to Cullinane it was irrelevant. Once a man started opening the historical-rights barrel of eels, no one could predict where the slippery evidence might run.”
― James A. Michener, The Source

“Ибо, когда у людей горит в сердцах религиозная ярость, на глаза их в то же время спускается завеса слепоты.”
― James A. Michener, The Source

“«Он самостоятельно дошел до понимания, что инстинктивная ненависть к евреям совершенно бессмысленна, а в поддержку рациональной неприязни нельзя привести никаких доказательств.»”
― James A. Michener, The Source

“I’m going to live the rest of my life as if I were a great man.”
― James A. Michener, The Source

“To live in harmony with himself a man must labor to untie the knots which bind his soul, and this is a personal matter between man and himself; then he must seek through contemplation an understanding of the Name of God, which is the timeless relationship between man and God.”
― James A. Michener, The Source

“And the anguish that Ur knew that night—the mystery of death, the triumph of evil, the terrible loneliness of being alone, the discovery that self of itself is insufficient—is the anxiety that torments the world to this day.”
― James A. Michener, The Source

“Keep Paul Zodman happy,”
― James A. Michener, The Source

“There were few deaths from torture in the dungeon of Avaro.”
― James A. Michener, The Source

“the Jewish Agency and they had agreed to allocate from the next immigrant ship twenty-four Moroccans to Kibbutz Makor for work at the dig. “They’ll be pretty rough diamonds,” Eliav warned. “No English. No education.” “If they speak Arabic I can handle them,” Tabari assured the leaders, and two nights later the team went to greet the large ship that plied monotonously back and forth across the Mediterranean hauling Jewish immigrants to Israel. “Before we go aboard,” Eliav summarized, “I’ve got to warn you again that these aren’t the handsome young immigrants that you accept in America, Cullinane. These are the dregs of the world, but in two years we’ll make first-class citizens of them.” Cullinane said he knew, but if he had realized how intellectually unprepared he was for the cargo of this ship, he would have stayed at the tell and allowed Tabari to choose the new hands. For the ship that came to Israel that night brought with it not the kind of people that a nation would consciously select, not the clean nor the healthy nor the educated. From Tunisia came a pitiful family of four, stricken with glaucoma and the effects of malnutrition. From Bulgaria came three old women so broken they were no longer of use to anyone; the communists had allowed them to escape, for they had no money to buy bread nor skills to earn it nor teeth to eat it with. From France came not high school graduates with productive years ahead of them, but two tragic couples, old and abandoned by their children, with only the empty days to look forward to, not hope. And from the shores of Morocco, outcast by towns in which they had lived for countless generations, came frightened, dirty, pathetic Jews, illiterate, often crippled with disease and vacant-eyed. “Jesus Christ!” Cullinane whispered. “Are these the newcomers?” He was decent enough not to worry about himself first—although he was appalled at the prospect of trying to dig with such assistance—but he did worry about Israel. How can a nation build itself strong with such material? he asked himself. It was a shocking experience, one that cut to the heart of his sensibilities: My great-grandfather must have looked like this when he came half-starved from Ireland. He thought of the scrawny Italians that had come to New York and the Chinese to San Francisco, and he began to develop that sense of companionship with Israel that comes very slowly to a Gentile: it was building itself of the same human material that America was developed upon; and suddenly he felt a little weak. Why were these people seeking a new home coming to Israel and not to America? Where had the American dream faltered? And he saw that Israel was right; it was taking people—any people—as America had once done; so that in fifty years the bright new ideas of the world would come probably from Israel and no longer from a tired America.”
― James A. Michener, The Source

“Again and again he pleaded with his listeners to be generous, and the joke was circulated through Safed: “Rabbi Zaki wants more than anything else in the world to give things away … especially his daughters.”
― James A. Michener, The Source

“isn’t meant to be easy, it’s meant to be life. And no religion defended so tenaciously the ordinary dignity of living. Judaism stressed neither an after-life, an after-punishment, nor heaven; what was worthy and good was here, on this day, in Zefat. We seek God so earnestly, Eliav reflected, not to find Him but to discover ourselves.”
― James A. Michener, The Source

“Just like the Jews,” he said. “Denied religious liberty by all, they extend it to everyone.”
― James A. Michener, The Source

“This was the way the Turks ruled: Start no pogroms yourself, but if the Arabs went to massacre the Jews, let them; then sweep in and execute the Arabs. Thus each community lost its leaders and relative quiet was maintained. But certainly in this cynical system the Turk treated the Jew no worse than he did the Muslim”
― James A. Michener, The Source

“On May 31, 1834, a sizable earthquake struck Safad, accompanied by much loss of property, and some weeks later word reached town that the Egyptian army was going to conscript Arab men. Superstitious Arabs concluded that some malign influence was working against them, and the Jews were blamed. The logical solution was to massacre them, which the Arabs started to do. For thirty-three unhampered days the Muslims were allowed to riot, destroying synagogues, killing rabbis and defacing over two hundred scrolls of the Torah, each worth more than a man’s home. The remnants of the great Jewish settlement were driven into the countryside, where for more than a month they lived on grass and slaughtered sheep, after which the government came back, caught the Arab ringleaders and hanged thirteen of them.”
― James A. Michener, The Source

“Egypt versus Babylonia; Greece crashing against Persia; Rome vanquishing the east; Crusader fighting infidel; and finally Jew battling Arab.”
― James A. Michener, The Source

“Our fools and jackasses, these priests, bishops, sophists and monks have treated the Jews in such a fashion that if a man wanted to become a true Christian he might better become a Jew. Were I a Jew and saw what blockheads and windbags rule and guide Christendom, I would rather become a sow than a Christian. For they have treated the Jews more like dogs than men. Yet the Jews are kith and kin and brothers-in-blood of our Saviour. If we are going to boast about the virtues of race, Christ belongs more to them than to us. To no other people has God shown such favor in entrusting them with His Holy Word.”
― James A. Michener, The Source

“Our fools and jackasses, these priests, bishops, sophists and monks have treated the Jews in such a fashion that if a man wanted to become a true Christian he might better become a Jew. Were I a Jew and saw what blockheads and windbags rule and guide Christendom, I would rather become a sow than a Christian. For they have treated the Jews more like dogs than men. Yet the Jews are kith and kin and brothers-in-blood of our Saviour. If we are going to boast about the virtues of race, Christ belongs more to them than to us. To no other people has God shown”
― James A. Michener, The Source

“But we are not the center of the universe, you and I, neither as individuals nor as the representatives of the whole human race. God’s universe must be considered as one great whole composed of interrelated parts, and its majestic purpose is not the gratification of our puny selves.’ ”
― Steve Berry, The Source