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Covenant & Conversation: Numbers QUOTES

Covenant & Conversation: Numbers QUOTES

1 " Do not think the connection between the law and the reason for the law is always direct, palpable, and immediate. He had taught his students to search for taamei hamitzvot, the reasons for the commands. But now he was teaching them something no less fundamental: the limits of reason. The human mind must learn humility. We cannot understand everything at once. There are elements of existence that, at any given time, are opaque to reason. Wisdom, if it is truly to be wise, must respect its own boundaries. "

― Jonathan Sacks , Covenant & Conversation: Numbers

2 " . Instead we hear a constant insistence that the strength of a nation – certainly of Israel/Judah – is not military or demographic but moral and spiritual. If the people keep faith with God and one another, no force on earth can defeat them. If they do not, no force can save them. "

― Jonathan Sacks , Covenant & Conversation: Numbers

3 " The message of the story of Balaam as a whole is this: God saves Israel from its enemies but even God cannot save Israel from itself. To be defended by the Holy One, Israel must be holy, and that includes – as Leviticus insists in chapters 18 and 20 – a strict sexual ethic. Lose that and the nation will lose everything. "

― Jonathan Sacks , Covenant & Conversation: Numbers

4 " We are probably the first people they have met who care for them unconditionally. And we are the first people in their lives who cared enough to say no. "

― Jonathan Sacks , Covenant & Conversation: Numbers

5 " The text is candid about the dangers. In the heat of the moment, R. Yoĥanan and Resh Lakish both say things they subsequently regret, with devastating consequences. But R. Yoĥanan remains insistent that the search for truth can be no less important than the truth itself, that scholarship thrives on challenge, and that, as the sages put it, “rivalry between scribes increases wisdom "

― Jonathan Sacks , Covenant & Conversation: Numbers

6 " Understanding – religious understanding – comes from the willingness to be challenged. "

― Jonathan Sacks , Covenant & Conversation: Numbers