Deuteronomy Quotes

“Rashi notes that the mourning for Aaron was more widespread than for Moses (of Aaron it says, “The entire house of Israel grieved” [Num. 20:29]; in the case of Moses the word “entire” is missing [Deut. 34:8]). The reason is that Aaron was a man of peace; Moses was a man of truth. We love peace, but truth is sometimes hard to bear. People of truth have enemies as well as friends.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant

“It is when we are most blessed that we are most in need of protection – and the protection for which we pray is that the blessing remain a blessing and not turn into a curse – the curse of forgetting from where the blessings come.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant

“Third, there is no description of the powers of the king – his role, his task, his mission. Instead there is a series of restrictions. He must not accumulate horses, wives, or wealth (Deut. 17:17). He is to have his personal Torah scroll that he is to read “all the days of his life” (17:18–19) and not deviate from its teachings “to the right or to the left” (17:20). He must be humble and “not consider himself better than his fellow Israelites” (17:20).”
― Jonathan Sacks, Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant

“A prophet does not foretell. He warns. A prophet does not speak to predict future catastrophe but rather to avert it. If a prediction comes true it has succeeded. If a prophecy comes true it has failed.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant

“What he tells them is unexpected, counter-intuitive. In effect he says this: “You know what your parents suffered. You have heard about their slavery in Egypt. You yourselves have known what it is to wander in the wilderness without a home or shelter or security. You may think those were the greatest trials, but you are wrong. You are about to face a harder trial. The real test is security and contentment”
― Jonathan Sacks, Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant

“Physically, the taller you are the more you look down on others. Morally, the reverse is the case. The more we look up to others, the higher we stand. For us, as for God, greatness is humility.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant

“Let my teaching drop as rain, My words descend like dew, Like showers on new grass, Like abundant rain on tender plants. (Deut. 32:2)”
― Jonathan Sacks, Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant

“celebrate the good things that come not from working but resting, not from buying but enjoying – the gifts you have had all along but did not have time to appreciate.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant

“Amalek does not die. But neither does the Jewish people. Attacked so many times over the centuries, it still lives, giving testimony to the victory of the God of love over the myths and madness of hate.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant

“Traduced in the media and pilloried by much of the world, Israel continues to produce human miracles in medicine, agriculture, technology, and the arts, as if the word “impossible” did not exist in the Hebrew language.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant

“By the first century, a complete system of universal, compulsory education was in place, an achievement the Talmud attributes to Yehoshua b. Gamla (Bava Batra 21a), the first of its kind anywhere in the world.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant

“Narrative teaches us the complexity of the moral life and the light-and-shade to be found in any human personality. Without this, self-righteousness can destroy the very perceptions and nuances, the tolerance and generosity of spirit on which society depends.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant

“Two phenomena are often confused: righteousness and self-righteousness. Outwardly they appear similar but between them is all the difference in the world. The righteous see the good in people, the self-righteous see the bad. The righteous have a high opinion of others, the self-righteous a high opinion of themselves. The righteous leave us feeling enlarged, the self-righteous leave us feeling diminished. The righteous lift us up, the self-righteous put us down.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant

“There are failings to which intensely religious people are sometimes prone, namely, indifference to the injustices of society, a willingness to overlook corruption within their own ranks, and a tendency to believe that attachment to God relieves one of the duty to be upright, civil, and gracious in one’s dealings with human beings.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant

“God hates hatred between people, and Scripture reckons it as equal to idolatry, forbidden sex, and bloodshed combined.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant

“This therefore was the merit of the patriarchs, that beside the fact that they were righteous and pious and loved God to the utmost extent, they were also upright. In their relations with gentiles – even the worst idolaters – they acted out of love, and sought their good, for this is what allows the world to endure. Thus we find that Abraham, though he hated their wickedness, prostrated himself in prayer for the people of Sodom, for he wanted them to survive.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant

“That is why they are called a “warped and twisted generation,” because good and evil were so interwoven in their conduct, and “it is difficult to separate good and evil when evil is done in a holy cause.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant

“Know that prophecy does not help in-depth study of the meanings of the Torah”
― Jonathan Sacks, Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant

“In general, in the Mosaic books, style mirrors substance. The way something is said is often connected to what is being said.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant

“Judaism is a religion of rejoicing; of remembering where we came from, and therefore not taking our blessings for granted; of recalling the source of the good, and therefore not forgetting the larger truth that it comes to us from the hand of God; of knowing that what we have, God has placed in our trust, to be used for the good of all, not just ourselves.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant

“the greatest challenge comes when we are least conscious of the presence of a challenge.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant

“But few nations other than Israel set it as their highest task to understand why the law is as it is. Shema is the Torah’s call to moral growth.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant

“So, for instance, the law of the red heifer – purification from contact with the dead – occurs just before the death of Miriam and Aaron, as if to say: Bereavement and grief interfere with our contact with God but this does not last forever. We can become pure again. The story explains the law, and the law illuminates the story.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant

“The pinnacle of the moral life, to which we should all aspire, is precisely to do what is right because it is right, because that is what it is to walk in God’s ways. That is why the key word of Deuteronomy is shema, the word that is untranslatable precisely because it covers this multiplicity of senses from simple obedience to deep internalisation. As we grow and mature, we move from thinking of commands as hypothetical imperatives to thinking of them as categorical, and we move from heteronomy to autonomy, because we have made God’s will our will.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant

“The people he is addressing are the children of those he led out of Egypt. They are more used to freedom than their parents, who were slaves. But they have not yet entered the land, or created a society, or been forced to work for a living. For forty years they have had their needs supplied by God. So he speaks to them in very simple terms. Follow God and be blessed, or follow your own inclinations and be cursed. This is the way one might speak to a child. As”
― Jonathan Sacks, Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant

“In a previous essay, I pointed to the strange fact that biblical Judaism, a religion of 613 commands, contains no word that means “obey.” Instead, it uses the word shema, which means, to hear, to listen, to attend, to understand, to internalise, and to respond.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant

“Jewish law is concerned not only with protecting the rights of those who have been wronged, but also helping wrongdoers rebuild their future. Guilt, in Judaism, is about acts, not persons. It is the act, not the person, that is condemned.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant

“Cruelty to animals is wrong, not because animals have rights but because we have duties. The duty not to be cruel is intended to promote virtue, and the primary context of virtue is the relationship between human beings. But virtues are indivisible.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant

“Without law, society becomes chaos. But without narrative, law itself loses contact with the realities of human life. It becomes impersonal and at times inhuman.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant

“[God] gave us only over beast, fish, fowl, Dominion absolute; that right we hold By his donation; but man over men He made not lord; such title to himself Reserving, human left from human free.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant